The Memory Between Us

Chapter 1: The Boy at the Station The train doors opened with a soft chime, and Airi Akiyama stepped out into air that smelled like salt, diesel, and something green she couldn't name. She stood on the platform a moment longer than she needed to, letting the other passengers move around her like water around a stone. Her suitcase wheel had a wobble that made a small, embarrassing squeak with every rotation, and she was suddenly, absurdly aware of it. Kaifu Station, the sign read, white letters on faded blue. She'd seen photographs of this station before , actual photographs, printed and kept in a box in the back of her mother's closet, the kind of box that came out once a year and went back without much explanation. She didn't remember standing here herself. She'd been eleven the last time, and eleven-year-old Airi apparently hadn't thought to memorize the platform. She checked her phone. No messages from her mother, who was still finishing paperwork at the new house. No messages from her brother either, who was probably already unpacking his gaming setup before anything else, because that was exactly the kind of person Kaito was. She was on her own for the walk to school registration, then. Fine. She could manage twenty minutes and a paper map. The station exit put her out onto a street lined with a bicycle shop, a bakery with a hand-painted sign, and a vending machine humming to itself in the shade of a utility pole. Cicadas were already going, even though it was barely nine in the morning, and somewhere beyond the low rooftops she could hear the sea , not loud, just present, the way traffic noise was present in Tokyo, except somehow better. She was squinting at her phone, trying to work out whether the blue line on the map actually corresponded to the street in front of her, when someone said her name. Not a name. Her name. "Akiyama?" Airi looked up. He was maybe her age, tall in the loose-limbed way of boys who'd grown fast and hadn't caught up to their own height yet. Dark hair, slightly overgrown, pushed back off his forehead like he'd given up fighting it. He had a school bag slung over one shoulder , a different uniform than hers, but close enough that he was probably headed the same direction , and he was looking at her with an expression she didn't have a name for. Not quite shocked. Not quite delight. Something in between, like he'd opened a drawer expecting nothing and found something instead. "Sorry," she said, because that seemed like the safest thing to say to a stranger who knew her name. "Do I know you?" The in-between expression flickered. It didn't disappear. It just changed shape. "You're serious," he said. Not quite a question. "I'm sorry," she said again, and this time she meant it as an apology instead of a formality, because whatever had crossed his face made her feel like she'd stepped on something without meaning to. "I just moved here. I don't think we've met." "Right." He rubbed the back of his neck, and for a second looked younger than he had a moment ago, like the confidence had briefly logged off. "Sorry. You just look exactly like someone I used to know. Kind of freaking me out a little, not gonna lie." "Oh." That, at least, was a normal thing for a stranger to say. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. "I get that a lot, actually. Common face, I guess." "I really don't think that's it." Something dry in his voice now, almost amused, though the amusement didn't fully reach his eyes. "But sure. Common face." He was still looking at her a beat too long. Airi shifted her grip on her suitcase handle. "I should probably…" "Kaifu High," he said, nodding at her phone screen without seeming to actually read it. "That's where you're headed, right? New uniform, new-town lost expression. You've got the whole thing going on." "Is it that obvious?" "A little." A real smile this time, quick and a little crooked. "I can point you the right way, if you want. It's easy to miss the turn , everyone ends up walking ten extra minutes past the shrine their first week." She should have said no thank you, she had a map, she was fine. That was the correct thing to say to a boy she'd known for ninety seconds who'd just looked at her like he'd seen a ghost. Instead she found herself falling into step beside him as he turned down the street, past the bakery, past a shop selling fishing tackle and beach umbrellas with sun-bleached price tags. "I'm Haruto," he said, after a silence that had stopped feeling as awkward as it should have. "Shinagawa Haruto." "Airi," she said, then, realizing: "but you already knew that." "Yeah." He didn't offer anything else. They passed a narrow lane that opened briefly onto a view of the water , grey-blue, calm, a single fishing boat motionless near the breakwater , and then the buildings closed back around it like a curtain. "So," she said, mostly to fill the silence, "this person I apparently look like. Old friend of yours?" Something crossed his face too fast to read. "Something like that," he said. "It was a long time ago." "That's very mysterious." "I'm not trying to be." Light, but with a thin edge underneath, like a hairline c***k in glass. "It's complicated. Doesn't matter. You moved here from Tokyo?" She let him change the subject, because it clearly wanted changing, and because she didn't have any claim on a stranger's complicated history. "Yokohama, technically. Close enough." "What brought your family all the way out here?" "My mother's job." It was the answer she'd been giving people for two weeks, ever since the move stopped being hypothetical, and it came out smooth, practiced. "She's a nurse. Apparently there's a shortage out here, so they made her an offer she couldn't turn down." "Huh." Something in how he said it made her look at him again. "Small world." "Is it?" "Small town," he said instead, which wasn't the same thing at all, and Airi noticed the deflection but didn't push it. She was new. He was a stranger. She didn't have the standing to ask why a boy she'd just met kept saying things that sounded like they had a second meaning folded up inside them. They reached the school gate , smaller than her school in Yokohama, ivy climbing one stone pillar, and a groundskeeper's cart parked crookedly near the bike racks. Students filtered through in twos and threes, uniforms slightly different shades of navy depending on how new they were. "Registration office is that building," Haruto said, pointing. "Second floor. They'll make you fill out four forms for something that should be one. Sorry in advance." "Thanks for walking me. Seriously. I probably would've ended up at the shrine." "Everyone does, the first week." The crooked smile again, easier this time. "Welcome to Kaifu." She'd turned to go, suitcase wheel squeaking its small complaint against the pavement, when he said her name again , quieter this time, like he was testing whether it still worked. "Airi." She looked back. He was watching her with that same complicated expression from the station. Whatever he'd been about to say, he seemed to decide against it. He shook his head slightly, like he was clearing water from his ears. "Never mind. It's nothing. See you around, maybe." "Maybe," she agreed, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to. She walked to the registration building without looking back, though for as long as it took to reach the door, she felt like someone was watching her. It wasn't until she was filling out the third of Haruto's predicted four forms , previous school, previous address, emergency contact , that the strangeness of the encounter fully caught up with her. He had known her name before she said it. Not guessed it. Known it, the way you know something you've said a hundred times before. You look exactly like someone I used to know. She thought of the box in her mother's closet, the one that came out once a year. She thought of six blank years sitting behind her like a hallway with the lights off , not gone, just unlit, the kind of forgetting she'd stopped questioning around age thirteen, because questioning it had never once produced an answer. Only her mother's careful, too-quick change of subject. She wrote her current address in the box marked previous address by mistake and had to cross it out. Outside the window, past the bike racks and the ivy-covered gate, she could just make out the shape of the sea , sitting there the way it probably had for six years without her, patient and unbothered and apparently full of things she didn't remember. She didn't know yet that Haruto was standing on the other side of the courtyard, not moving toward his own classroom, watching the window she sat behind. She didn't know yet that he had spent six years believing she'd left without a word. She only knew that a boy she'd never met had looked at her like she'd broken something, and that some small, buried part of her had wanted to ask him what.