Sides of Cherry Blossom

Setting the Trap

My lecture was on narrative schema and cognitive bias.

I took six pages of notes and understood none of them.

I was writing the same four words in the margin: identical twins. France. April. I underlined them and then drew a line under the underline.

The rational case was not in her favour.

She said the name before I did. That meant the name was loaded ready, present, defensive. Not the reflex of someone innocent. She knew the details. The trouble. The people affected. A twin in Paris was a story I couldn't disprove quickly. But stories with that kind of internal consistency are usually rehearsed.

And yet.

The Sakura I remembered was not that girl.

The girl against the plaza wall was shaking. Her voice was almost nothing. Whatever she was hiding, she was not hiding it from a position of strength.

I packed my notes and made a decision.

I found her in the library forty minutes later.

Periodicals section. Window seat. Cross-legged on the bench with a textbook open and a pencil behind her ear, absorbed enough that she didn't see me until I was already sitting down across from her.

She looked up. Her whole body went still.

"I owe you an apology," I said.

Silence.

"This morning," I said. "The way I reacted. It was aggressive. I understand you're not-- " A pause. "I understand. But that wasn't fair."

She looked at me for a long time. Not checking if I meant it. Something else. I couldn't work out what.

"You don't have to apologise," she said.

Her voice was careful. Slightly softened. Maintained.

"What Sakura did," I said, watching her face, "had an effect I don't think she understood. Or maybe she did. I honestly don't know."

"She didn't." The certainty arrived slightly too fast. Personal rather than reported. "She talked about you more than anyone else from that year. She knew what she'd done."

"You were close," I said. "You and her."

A half-second of delay. "We were twins."

"Right." I stood and gathered my bag. "Would it be strange if we started again? Just as two people who are at the same university."

She looked at me. One beat too long. Something moved behind her eyes that she chose not to let through.

"No," she said. "That wouldn't be strange."

I left.

Three days later, the convenience store near the east gate.

She was at the onigiri section with the focused expression of someone making a real decision. She noticed me when the door opened and went still for a second and then arranged her face.

"Oh," she said.

"Hi," I said.

We ended up side by side at the drinks fridge. She chose cold tea. I chose coffee. At the counter we stood in the same queue and she turned to the shelf beside the register, reaching past me without thinking.

A carton of chocolate milk.

She picked it up. One shoulder lifting slightly. The specific shy gesture of someone doing something habitual.

"I always get one in the morning," she said. "Habit."

I looked at the carton.

Then at her hand holding it.

Then at her face, which was already smooth again. Already back.

I paid for my coffee. Walked out. Stood on the pavement for a moment in the early heat.

The trap had been set.

I had set it.

But standing there with a cold can in my hand, I understood for the first time that the trap had two sides.

And I had just walked into mine.

The carton was the same brand. The gesture was the same gesture. And I had absolutely no idea what to do with that.