*

Chapter 1: Golden Child

"They say your order reveals the depths of your being. Like wearing your heart on your sleeve."

That was the first thing she said to me that day. It had been a coffee shop, three blocks down the street from campus, tucked between a little hair salon and a four-storey Kinokuniya bookstore. It's the bookstore that kept the café full of interesting characters, streaming in and out - books, coffee and cell phones. But surprisingly enough, only a few spend time at the dusty wooden round tables. Tables that look like they have been fished, hook, line and sinker, mismatched and all, out of an antique store from the belly of a fish. I have always been one of those few. Nothing's better than sitting down with a nice paperback novel, cover rolled behind the book in one hand. Books are meant to be read, I always tell whoever happened to inquire why I hold books the way I do.

She didn't talk about the book in my hand however – it was a DeLillo novel – she was talking about my coffee. Surely, one would think to talk about coffee in a coffee shop, yet, that somehow wasn't a common topic. But with her, it was always about the coffee.

She sits down, sets her purse on her lap as if she's bursting to tell her life story or how this girl in her class is a prude – leans forward, so her shirt collar falls just a little too low, causing me to avert my eyes to nowhere in particular – and looks straight at me.

I don't know whether to be intimidated or intrigued. She looks young and carefree. I am certain she's a freshman. But to sit down in front of a stranger like the best of friends and begin with such a profound and penetrating phrase is inviting all kinds of strange impressions. So I straighten a bit to create more distance between us, to say we aren't so acquainted.

She purses her lips and smiles wryly and I make a noncommittal sound of agreement, wondering what to say. She waits and I wait and then I hide behind my cup. The pearl white, smooth porcelain greets my lips. My warm coffee. The temperature of the soul. I watch the depths of its darkness churn and froth and swell, streams of white cream in a swirling galaxy as if it would tell me the answer.

The silence is unsettling. She's still staring at me when I look up.

"My order changes according to mood, season, and my date," I say.

She shrugs. "Then you're a wishy-washy kind of person, like driftwood."

I take it as a compliment and tell her it means I'm adaptive to my environment.

Her nose crinkles in melodic laughter. "Sure, if that helps you sleep at night."

I wait, believing for a moment that she will introduce herself. But she doesn't.

"What's your order?"

She looks at me for a while; she's weighing the value of my question. "Remember this," she says, "tall caramel chai tea latte, soy, 120 degrees, extra whip."

"Don't forget. It can make a big difference," she adds.

I tell her I'll remember. I could imagine the barista at the counter: this young woman with short brown hair - must have been in her teens - bowing and smiling as kindly as she could upon hearing the order. But it would remain in question whether the barista was impressed or not.

I ponder how the order reflects on her person. The contents of her drink aren't visible behind the brim of her cup. She probably drank half of it already; half-empty or half-full. But somehow her order fits like the last tessera in a mosaic. Without it, the picture just won't be complete. If she isn't holding her cup of tall caramel chai tea latte, soy, 120 degrees, extra whip, she might just fall apart, piece by piece, in front of my eyes.

Her face is almost precisely, methodologically, sculpted into flesh on top of creamy pale skin and a large forehead, covered by a painterly cascade of russet hair. Straight, simple hair, well groomed. No stray strands. To one side, it sweeps over her ear like the flow of wine from a bottle. A girl who takes care of her hair is always impressive. Atop her face perches this exquisitely arched nose that points up but not too high, to avoid being arrogant or snarky. But if she tucks her chin in and looks blank, her nose might deem her unapproachable. Still, after a long look at her hair, her face and her complexion, altogether she doesn't stand out all too much - most pretty Japanese girls are the same.

Yet, not every girl has her eyes. It's her eyes that bring to life the world around her. And with those wide stained-glass eyes, deep and intense, she stares at me. A spiraling vortex of jet black and specks of light. Spiraling into the infinite. Enough to crystallize any moment in time. I'm careful not to look into them. If I do, I might be sucked in, deeper and deeper, warping into another dimension with no way to return.

"Have we met before?" I ask.

She looks at me with this perplexed expression as if to say, why, of course not.

"Well, nice to meet you then."

There's an ambiguous smile on her lips now, like hazy fog in the mornings. It's as though she had been waiting all along for me to say that. "Well," she says, "nice to meet you too."

I reach out to extend a handshake. "I'm Maeda. Maeda Naoki," I say.

She examines my hand for a second before taking it. "Kaneko Shizuka."

Her first name, Shizuka, which means quiet, could hardly be fitting. It's quite the opposite, just like her hand, small and gentle. Its warmth seeps through my fingers and up my arm and I let go.

"That's the look everyone gives me when they find out my name. They might be wondering if I had come from another planet or straight out of a strange recurring dream. Have you ever met someone like that? Someone disconcertingly familiar but you can't pinpoint who they are or when you've met them. Yet you'd rather not find out."

She seems to remember something and for a moment, her face is blank. It reminds me of a keen-eyed cat on a stormy day watching its owners come and go, cold and distant.

[...]

The floor-to-ceiling windows here seem like large murals set and painted into the wall. They press pigments flatly together, embellished, thick and generous so that they appear to have a three dimensional quality. Yet, at the same time, it is hard to accept as reality. Just a mere imitation, an impression of realism. If one stares long enough, the colours might blur and distort, blending at the ends, as though their seams are being revealed little by little. Where the fabric meets space and where space meets time, they are unbecoming threads strewn apart. Such is what Shizuka Kaneko is looking at while I watch her over the brim of my cup.

My coffee is still hot fortunately. My paperback is now set neatly on the table, its cover curled up from the way I hold books, and one corner, slightly frayed. And maybe in an unnoticeable way, with every second past, the surface of the paper and its protective varnish has melted already, worn, losing capitalist value, but accumulating eternal weight on my mind. In this fashion, the book seems most appetizing. It is an invitation to be opened again like a comforting old friend with pork buns and TV and a few beers from the convenient store. I don't use bookmarks with old friends: I can always tell where I last left off.

In the same way, for a long time, Shizuka and I sit there in silence, an old married couple with nothing to say, but I am confident that she is not here to sit in silence. Her eyes had told me as much - that she might know more than she should. Her eyes are not ones that wandered or experimented. Despite the shine and glamour of her person, she expresses an air of oddly calculated precision. Such that every exuberant or enthusiastic word in her speech, the way she leans forward, the way she sips from her cup or crosses her pale thighs beneath her skirt, each strand of hair brushed behind a wonderfully shaped ear, even the amount of intensity she gave to her gaze, radiates the impression that they are all conscious decisions.

I choose to wait and follow her gaze and watch the moving murals on the wall. Feet are trampling by, a pitter patter of rain drops: winter boots, worn sneakers, polished and waxed old shoes, high heels, clop clop clop, like horse hooves on bare legs, school socks, skinny jeans, creased trousers, ironed dress pants, multicoloured, with varying musical rhythms and beats, postures and urgency, robotic, stomping, swaying, light-footed and ghosting and drifting and wandering, each as alien as the next.

I realize I don't usually stare at feet in such a way. The heads bobbing by, like schools of fish in a tank, a spectacle - or are we the spectacle to them? - backs straight or hunched, clothing fashionable or disordered, a steady stream of consciousness, but they no longer mattered. The feet attract my attention. She is staring at feet. Somehow, whatever she is staring at or thinking of, it is that much more interesting than the rest of the world.

When she turns back to me, I am suddenly the most interesting thing in her world. Her gaze is just as intense, unraveling me, stripping off my clothes, skinning me alive, revealing my bones and organs, piercing through my heart, exposing my soul - I look at my coffee cup.

"It's cold outside," she says and it sounds like a song.

"It was colder yesterday."

"Do you like the season?"

"No, I prefer the warmth of summer."

"Because women can wear less clothing." She laughs. It must be calculated too. Not too loud, not too quiet. I stare at her, perplexed.

"Don't have such preconceptions of men. Surely not all men are like that."

"Well to entertain the thought, it is intrinsic fundamental design. Even if you consciously deny it, there is a subconscious urge within to find an attractive member of the opposite sex and to mate."

I remain silent.

"It's only natural," she explains, "we exist to reproduce. To carry our species, our memories, our experiences, our skills, our genes. So that we don't expire. Rather than searching for that one person, we are really searching for the concept." I try to laugh it off but grow steadily more perturbed.

"Why are you telling me this?"

She shrugs. "It's just what came to mind," she says, but surely, it isn't what just came to mind.

"What if I had said winter?"

She sits back and sips from her cup and outside, pedestrians breathe white smoke. She tells me she enjoys the winter because it is the season of the soul. "Just like drinking coffee or tea," she says, "no doubt a necessity for the winter. It's when the nights and the hours of the dark are long, when each day becomes significant because the year draws to a close, reaching its climax and turning point. When we are forced into deep contemplation and physical lethargy, with the slumber of the body comes potential for the awakening of the mind. Writers pick up their pens, artists their canvases, musicians record in studios. I mean, we are even obligated to think about our resolutions and what we've done right or wrong, and what the future holds. Like during Christmas, opposite forces and emotions collide: both nostalgia and celebration. The past Christmases rush up to meet the present and the future. Compression into a singularity."

"So summer is the awakening of the body, when life calls us to action and adventure, where we seek to experience the external world around, rather than turn to the world within. The awakening of the flesh and emotion occurs – and sexual meaning," I say.

"I suppose so."

I say nothing else as I watch her drain her cup and set it down with a hollow thud. It's loud, despite the wash of background noise from hushed conversations and bustling customers, pinging devices and squirting and gurgling machines.

Why she chose to speak about this is beyond me, yet somehow, what she said registers with a sense of familiarity, like a whiff of fragrance from an old home, telling me I have known it all along, only never given it any thought.

"Say, have you read Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'?"

I start to feel like I'm in an interrogation room at the end of a long white table, a single blinding fluorescent bulb hanging above. "Yes," I pause, "but it's a play after all."

"You can read it all the same. In some ways, it's better to read plays than to see them." She doesn't elaborate.

"Well, there is more room for personal interpretation. Though that could also be a limitation." I sip from my cup. The contents could still give a burn, yet she has already finished hers. Without a cup, she is transfixed in watching me with those clear eyes. "What about it?"

"I once read it in the winter, in bed, on a fever and painkillers." she says.

"Knowing its absurdist and existential themes – and nothing doing, doing nothing, nothing but waiting and taking off a boot – it can get depressing," I tell her.

"I see it this way: we need the winter season to draw us into our own thoughts and we realize we are stuck in the corner of our minds. Sometimes we think we sit in one spot forever, in constant unchanging repetition like in the play, or maybe we are in constant motion, just one in the crowd marching by, but unmoving in our relative position, and there, we perceive from a single freeze frame, time barely passing. But in actuality, we are temporal fleeting blips in the timeline of history, in the cosmos." Then she looks at me, like a bright intelligent creature coming out of hibernation. I expect she's getting to the point and I watch as the world tips its scales.

"At exactly eight forty five in the morning," she begins, "you visit Kinokuniya, head up to the second floor and browse meaninglessly through the manga section, but you never will find one to your liking, since you are a literature major after all and to play the role, you've decided to be only interested in highbrow literature; so instead, you visit the third floor, last row, where there's fiction, but not just any fiction, because you're looking for soul: soul, you think comes from obscure paperbacks that aren't put onto display shelves, the ones with attractively minimalist cover designs, that look like they might offer some sort of abstract mysticism, and when you happen to find one, you pick it up, smell the pages, shift it from left to right, reading the covers, but you know you've already chosen based on sheer intuition, and then you pretend you're not so certain, meandering down the stairs, pausing at the bestseller shelves and the staff picks and flick through a few jazz records and K-pop CDs and oldies but don't pick up anything, not the magazines, not the CDs, not the stationery and notebooks; you pay for the book, counting out the exact change from your pockets, never missing a coin, come here holding it in your hand, order a seasonal special or a promotional, or if the person ahead of you orders something interesting you will 'give it a try', then you'll take a seat at the back corner, with the window in front of you and the rest of the room behind you so you can easily watch people pass by on the street - and read your book like it will make you wiser; you do this from Monday to Friday, since you don't have morning classes," she says all in one breath.

She continues.

"Now listen, I've been watching you." She says a matter-of-factly. No sing-song voice. Just toneless and flat. Her eyes have changed into the depths of a frigid sea. "Tomorrow, don't take the bus. Take the train and walk the four blocks. Things are starting to change."

Then, she gives a brief little smile, eyes twinkling, shifting, as if the swirls of jet black are changing direction. She stands up, her chair screeches against the floor, and without waiting for my reply, spins around, hair billowing, disappearing into the crowd, the world outside the glass windows.

I try to sip from my cup. It's hot.

--------------

Chapter 26: Tearing the Veil

I had taken hold of the whole stack all at once. I recall tears streaming down from my eyes, freshly burning on my cheeks, as soon as I picked it up, in a monumental release. Never had such a thing happen to me before. Rather than feeling anything, I was confused. But something within had compelled me. Telling me that this would be the only way out.

The pages between my fingers seem to expand rather than compress, and I find it difficult to maintain my grip. My knuckles grow white and fingers red. Then with all my might, as well as I can, I pull. I pull until my muscles are shaking, my joints creak and feel loose and my arms burn and strain like snapping ropes. I feel my eyes pop forward in their sockets, the blood redirect into my arms and rush into my head, pulsing drumbeats and resounding gongs. Still, it doesn't budge. I have the determination to end this once and for all now and discover what lay on the other side, but yet I have not the strength.

I realize the sensation that someone is watching me is returning again for the first time in the woods but it is mere trifle at this point. This deed has to be done.

What are you doing? Shizuka is asking. Like taps on a windowpane. What are you doing? What are you doing? Inside me I hear Shirayuki too. You're not strong enough, she laughs. I struggle harder and pull. Until I'm quaking and sweating. My entire body screams in pain and tells me it is a futile effort.

Nothing ever comes easy, I had realized. Nothing ever does. Whatever will happen, will happen. I can feel the closed gate, the door and all the dark shadows on the other side that had been stemmed and held back, pushing, desperate to reach me. Yes, I tell them, come for me. Break open the door. Break open the gate and come for me. Let's see this to the end. The universe converges within me. Its tides shift.

Then, it comes. My body seems to explode, a shell cracking and breaking apart, just as the sound of ripping paper pierces the air. It sounds like a gunshot, splitting the world in two. The trees freeze and shudder and birds fly away. Something breaks free and I feel the weight taken off my back.

I collapse, in a shower of sweat.

And I hear her no more.

*

I don't know how long I've been sitting there, in complete silence, a comfortable peace, descending on me like a lukewarm blanket, the kind of relief after a huge storm, and I know the deed has been done. The contracts lay in two pieces on the ground. Their shadows are black and inky. Like blood spilt. It is final. It is permanent. The forest has nothing to say. The sun above turns away and heads to the west. In the universe, I hear nothing, everything is utterly still. All there is left is that coffee plant sitting on the beside counter in its glass jar. It has grown into what resembles a miniature tree. Next to it, the second seed looks like a lily pad on a stick. They watch quietly. I look at it and realize how far I've gotten. Now there's no longer any strings or mysterious currents that I could be aware of within me. There's nothing left but me. It is finished.

I sit there and smile.

Then came the knocks. It must have been in the afternoon, after I had gotten up and had a drink, boiled an egg, used the last can of spam in absolute solitude and was in a mid-bite when I hear three solid dull thumps, clearly intonated and separate, so I could be sure they had been knocks. There is a lengthy pause of a minute. Again, I hear three knocks. The whole door rattles and the frame shakes from the impact. As if the door would fall over at any instant.

I had expected something to happen and I am well braced for it. There is no escape. No escape from the System. But I hadn't expected them to knock so soon.

I sit there, forward, facing the door, knife in one hand, a cup of tea in the other.

I say nothing.

Neither do they.

The door darkens as it quivers. I stare at it. I watch the cracks in the doorframe that leak daylight wiggle. I have no fear or regret. No last words. I've done what is right. I would resign to whatever consequences I have been handed. Whatever the universe intends. It didn't matter anymore. All I have to do is remember the cup of caramel chai tea latte and she would forever be mine.

They try a third time. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Then after a split second, as if someone is taking a deep breath, saying "well, if you don't open up, I have no choice," the door comes down, splintering like rotting wood, ripping a part of the doorframe out. Dust and slivers toss into the air. I cough and can't breathe.

For a while I can't see much but a cloud of white particles swimming in the air like a lazy brood of jellyfish. Surely they can't be white but they look white against the wood and the dark shadows of the cabin.

They seem to know I can't see them. So they wait.

After it settles, I see five shapes. Large well-built figures not too fat or muscular, not too slim or long-armed, just hitting an average. I can't see their faces because they appear to be silhouettes but I know they have blank unrecognizable faces, sunglasses and black suits.

I smile.

One raises a pistol.


--------------

Chapter 35: The Start of All Things

I take her to the clearing one day for a change and up its hill under an afternoon sun. The sun has just passed its zenith and hangs like an over-inflated balloon. As before, the sky is startlingly clear and blue, but the air is much hotter, the beginning of summer. There's a strong breeze, but it does nothing to stifle the heat. It's like a blow dryer turned on full blast. Sweat wets our brow yet all around the grass seems to be entirely unaffected, vibrant green overly saturated. The tree tops stretch out towards the horizon, in this strangely flat way. As if a giant printing press had mass-reproduced the image. We hear the cicadas whine and birds dart by above. Weeds rustle. Trees swell and billow. But in this kind of viscous temperature, everything takes on a sluggish pace and sound travels slower, as if the world is retreating to a safe distance away. When I ask if she recalls this place, she tells me she isn't sure. There's a feeling, she says, but like the faded markings on an ancient ruin with no context.

"Everything I once knew, seems to recede away. At nights, I cry and wake up from nightmares I never knew I could have, and when I wake up, I don't know what it had been. And I don't know who I am."

Her voice fades away in the wind.

Then she shakes her head. "I know what's happening. I know I'm dying."

"You'll never die to me."

"You'll forget everything too. The Free Energy current is still there, no matter where we go. Even though here, we are free from physical repressive state apparatuses and cyclic performance, it's all like remote control, invisible wires or something, there's always something there to remind us we are connected to something more powerful than us. We had a little delay, a minor detour for them, like a vacation to someplace far but the System naturally owns us. The flow of the universe takes away everything little by little."

I say nothing.

She sighs. "But it doesn't matter to me anymore. Perhaps I've finally begun to accept it. Each day the inevitable fact grows a little duller. Less cruel. A little more comforting." She lifts her hands and drops them again, as if a half-hearted attempt at flapping wings, "you know what, I really don't care anymore."

She looks at me. I look at her. She leans her head against my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her. She's warm and soft - different from before - a fragment of the past.

"Things come and go." I say. "Even if we don't remember it, it all still happened. Even if we lose ourselves and die and become nothing. If our soul transcends to the Collective, it still had happened once, and is eternally written down somewhere. Inaccessible, but written down. We perceived everything happening in some form, reality, pseudo-reality, delusion and dream-state, and we worry it had been only limited to our consciousness, only in our minds. But if we are taken away, that means wherever it flows, there it will be remembered."

We stay silent for a while.

"I guess that's fine with me. All I know is that I'm here with you right now. And if you say so, I'll believe it." She concludes.

There on the hill, under the sun, she lays down and we make love, as a historic testament to complete the entire course of things.


--------------

Chapter 36: Nice To Meet You

No one knew where she went - the villagers hadn't seen her and had no way of opening the gateway. But I had a firm idea of where she would be. Like gripping the oars of a sinking boat, I refused to believe anything else. Somewhere in this world, she was still alive, I knew, just like before. She would disappear from my grasp just like always. But we would cross paths again at some point. Even the greatest currents in the system wouldn't tear us apart permanently. This was my firm conviction.

It wasn't until two months after, when the old man was supposed to replenish the supplies that I saw the gateway again. The tunnel was there, but it looked different from what I had been expecting. It had changed its form. Perhaps every time it opened it would be in a different place, in a different shape. But somehow I knew what it was.

This time, it was a hole in the ground, just like the coffee plantation out in Chiba. I watched as a skinny man, sunken cheeks and ghastly white skin, crawl out of the hole like a ghoul from a grave. Under the moonlight, I had hesitated once, wondering where or what hell he could have possibly emerged from, but regardless, I took the chance and slipped past him into the hole.

Darkness swallowed me and I returned into the other world.

*

For weeks I had searched for her all over the city but to no avail. I passed every day in some sort of a purgatory, wandering, swimming through the crowds, suffocating and escaping suits until I finally relented, drained and utterly exhausted, in despair, and inconspicuously adopted my customary routines. I read books, drank coffee, holed up in the coffee shop with its glutinous aromatic sea and its hard-backed chairs, and watched as a thick fog of civil unrest and turmoil descended on the city. People died, cars were burnt, consumers suppressed, surveillance was invasive and privacy destroyed. I drank coffee. Then I pulled out a laptop and started writing down things I could still remember. A dying man's last attempt to promise he'd never forget he was searching for her.

Doing so, the Fox showed up one day at the coffee shop with a new proposal.

"You could have at least returned the papers," was the first thing he said.

"There wasn't any time."

"Sure there was, there's always time. Things will complete its course."

I drink from my porcelain cup.

"I can't imagine it being easy during that time."

"I might have never made it out." I say.

"But it looks like you did."

"Yes, I did."

"But she is gone now."

"And the city is unravelling at its seams. Do you know where she is?"

"Of course I don't, but -"

"Your boss might."

"Yes, but all you've got to do, is just something simple."

"What now?"

He leans in close, and in his breath I smell peppermint gum. "This is a new contract." He slides over a stack of paper. Next to it, he lays a printed photograph, the size of a postcard. "And a present."

"Just don't give me more Chopin or something."

He promises he won't.

Week after week, I order the same thing like I always do. Even the barista knows me by now and each day she would make some meaningless conversation to pass the time. I never had to actually say anything but a word of greeting before she gives me a knowing smile and makes my unspoken order. Always with a custom shot of espresso. Today she asks if I had ever been to island town of Enoshima for a holiday. The view and the surf is nice. I ask if she surfs but she doesn't. She likes watching surfers. She wonders if I'd like to go to Enoshima with her some time. I say maybe, that I'll think about it. After I'm done with my writing. She asks if I'm a novelist, but I tell her I'm not very good. She wants to read it anyway, apparently. I tell her I'll let her know when I'm done.

She's a pleasant girl, with a bright smile and not a lot of make up, hair up in a ponytail, deft motions with her hands and studies environmental design nearby. But something seems to be missing in her. Would she understand what I had written? The barista doesn't have Shizuka's eyes.

*

Every week on the same day we had once met, I'd search for those eyes. I'd watch the crowds, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Perhaps I still had hope. As long as I could keep drinking chai tea latte, I decided I would still have hope. At least before my time was up.

If I see her one day, I would make sure to walk over to her table and sit down with my drink. She would be wearing her light grey cardigan over a yellow tank top, and a short skirt that showed off her legs. Sandals because it's the summer. Her hair swept to one side, brushed behind a shapely ear. In her eyes I would see flat black stones. Her skin would be a little tan, slightly roasted as if she had gone on vacation. I could imagine her saying, "Hey, I'm back. It was a place I had seen before in my dreams."

But she would say nothing and I would say nothing.

Then I would tell her that she ought to choose a more distinct order, something that would reflect who she is.

She would ask what I was drinking, and if she knew me, and I would tell her "No, but it's nice to meet you."

The author hasn't added any updates, yet.