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  I made my way to the table against the wall and sat down on one of the stools. The couple next to me was tangled in an intense tongue kiss. I got uncomfortable looking at them, so I leaned out over the railing and stared down at the floor below. People were dancing, giving off heat from every pore, at times looking over their shoulders so as not to bump into the dancers nearby. Their movements looked oddly the same.

  A kid with a different air about him was coming up the stairs, holding two glasses. It was Kato. “Thanks for coming.” He set one of the glasses on the table and sat on a stool. “Iced oolong tea, right?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” We clinked glasses. “Congratulations on being born,” I said, after taking a sip.

  Kato let out a sheepish laugh and glanced downward. “Oh, hey—” He stuck a hand in his pocket, took out a tiny matchbox, and set it on the table.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “LSD. You’re welcome to it if you want,” said Kato, smiling and lowering his eyes timidly.

  I adored Kato—this awkward kid who had no clue how to make any display of friendship because he was never taught how, and yet he smiled that innocent, bashful smile.

  I gently rapped the back of his hand with a fist. “Thanks, but I don’t have time to get high. I’ve got a lot of things going on in my head. Once I get them figured out, we’ll get wasted.”

  Kato peered into my eyes and grinned as if he read something in them. “Or maybe you’d prefer one of these,” he said, holding up a pinky finger, the Japanese gesture for a girl.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Nah, but I could use a sandwich or some fruit or something.” Kato nodded and got up from the stool. “Hey!” I called out toward his back. When he turned around, I tossed the matchbox at him. Kato made a smooth catch and batted both eyes at me in a failed attempt at a wink.

  Just as Kato was descending the stairs, the heavy door opened. A lone girl walked through it. From where I sat, I could only see her from the waist up. Her hair was short, like Jean Seberg’s in Breathless. I loved Jean Seberg in Breathless. Her eyes were round and lovely even from a distance, brimming with the same kind of intelligence as Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence. I loved Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence.

  My eyes drifted down to her nose, to her mouth, until she gave her head a toss as if to spurn my advances. The girl handed Takeshita a ticket somewhat absentmindedly and scanned the dance floor. I studied every minute change in her expression. A guy with long black hair and an earring dangling from one ear walked up to her. Throw a rock in Shibuya and nine times out of ten, you’d hit someone that was the spitting image of this guy. He was a clone. I sipped my iced oolong tea, a little disappointed to know that this was the one she was looking for.

  The clone leaned in and said something to her. The girl shot him a cold, piercing look that ripped out his heart, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it aside. Struck dumb, the clone shrugged in shame before slinking back to where he came from. Clearly, she had a special kind of magnetism that drew the gazes of the men around her. I was no exception. I put down my glass.

  Abandoning her search of the first floor, the girl looked to the loft. She resumed her search at one end of the C-shaped loft. I was sitting on the other end. Slowly, her intense gaze passed over the tables one by one, as if she were crossing each one off in her head before moving on to the next.

  There were quite a few tables in the loft area. She sighed softly, her eyes stopping about two tables away from mine. The light in her eyes seemed to dim a little. She continued to scan the rest of the tables, as if she simply wanted to finish what she started. Then she came to my table.

  Her eyes brightened again. She was staring at me, along with everyone else in the club who’d been tracking her gaze to see where it landed. Despite being taken aback, I fell into to my usual habit and glared. I shot her the most vicious look I could.

  Oddly, a smile spread across her face. All the faces in the crowd melted into smiles at once. If I’d smiled too and maybe even given her a big hug, I suppose the story would have ended happily ever after, but that didn’t happen. I kept on glaring at her. I mean, I didn’t have slightest clue who she was.

  As the crowd sensed the unlikelihood of this scenario and began to turn its gaze back to our fair heroine, the heroine in question came toward me with a slight bounce in her step. I honestly thought she was a sister of one the jerks I beat down and that she was going to pull out a knife and attack me, yelling, “This is for what you did to my brother!”

  But the knife never materialized, and instead she came up to my table and hopped on the other stool. When she landed on the cushion, her short, tartan pleated skirt blew up for a second, giving me a glimpse of her thighs and panties. Both white.

  With that afterimage still with me, I looked back up into her unflinching eyes. I braced myself, expecting her to unleash that same devastating look she gave to the clone earlier. But I expected wrong.

  The girl smiled and looked right and left as if she were chasing a butterfly fluttering overhead. Then she peered into my eyes expectantly, as if to ask, Well? When I blinked and answered with a vacant stare, her eyes traced an arc right to left again, only more slowly this time. For an instant, I wondered if she might be a little wrong in the head. Maybe she really did see a butterfly, I thought, but quickly reconsidered. She appeared to be the most right-minded girl I’d ever met.

  She fixed a stare at me. But the sad truth was I didn’t recognize her face, no matter how good a look she gave me. When I continued to look at her quizzically, she dropped her shoulders a little in disappointment. But soon her eyes were lit with mischief again, as she grabbed hold of the edge of the table with both hands and began swiveling her stool back and forth. Just as I opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing, she twisted her body to the right as far as she could and—whee!—uncoiled her hips and let go of the table at the same time.

  Despite capturing every little detail from the back of her head, nape, and back, I didn’t recognize any part of her. She spun back around to face me, wearing a smile that seemed to say, Pretty cool, huh? She stuck out the tip of her tongue. Years ago, I used to have a puppy that slept with her tongue always sticking out of her mouth. The girl reminded me of the puppy just then.

  Finally, I asked, “Do I know you?”

  Her smile vanished and gave way to a look colored with resignation. But only for a moment. “Have you ever heard of psychometry?” she asked. Her voice was prim and firm.

  I thought about it and nodded. Psychometry was a kind of psychic ability to see the future or past by touching someone or something belonging to that person. I only knew this because I liked The Dead Zone and had seen the movie several times.

  After seeing me nod, she put her hands over the backs of mine resting on the table. Her fingers were slender, delicate, not bony in the knuckles, straight. Her forefingers slid gently over the backs of my hands. Then they stood on end and moved back and forth on my hands.

  “I’m reading you right now,” she said softly.

  I kept quiet and watched her fingers moving. I can’t tell you when humans first began to use their hands, but right then, I wanted to thank that first person.

  The girl let go of my hands. That mischievous look came into her eyes again. “You play basketball.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, making no secret of my surprise.

  “I told you, it’s psychometry.”

  I stared at her face in silence for a moment and asked, “What else did you learn?”

  “You’ve kicked a couple of people.”

  I took my eyes off her and scanned my surroundings. Most of the crowd had lost interest in the sight of us. I locked eyes with Takeshita by the door. He put on a bugged-out look of surprise. I scanned the room for Kato. I knew he had to be behind the girl’s appearance.

  As luck would have it, Kato was coming up the stairs with a plate of sandwiches. Upon reaching the top of the staircase, he caught a glimpse of th
e girl sitting across from me and knitted his brows. When he came around the table and stole a peek at the girl’s face, the vertical creases in his forehead faded, and laugh lines appeared around his eyes. After smiling at the girl politely, Kato set the plate of sandwiches before us, bowed ceremoniously like a well-trained waiter, and moved off.

  “Someone you know?” the girl asked.

  I tried to read her eyes. She didn’t seem like she was acting. Kato didn’t look like he was trying to put one over on me either. So what the hell was going on?

  The only thing I could think of was that she knew someone at my high school and had pumped him for information about me, but her facts were just a bit off from the actual story. Although I used to play basketball, I wasn’t exactly playing now, and I didn’t kick just a couple of people but a whole mess of people. Even if she did have something on me, what reason would she have for going out of her way to tell me about it? Besides, the only thing any of the guys at school would tell her would’ve been: “Stay away from him.”

  “What else did you learn?” I asked again.

  As an indifferent smile came across her lips, she said, “That’s all for today. Do you want to get out of here? This place is so crowded and claustrophobic and loud and boring, don’t you think?”

  I couldn’t help but ask, “Did you read that from me, too?”

  A mysterious smile played on her lips. “Let’s go.”

  She hopped off the stool and headed for the door with the same bounce in her step as when she first entered. I don’t know whether or not she was just convinced that I’d follow, but she never once looked back to see if I was behind her. She was right. Her magnetism pulled me right off the stool. But the sandwiches on the table were also giving off their own magnetic force, however faint, and were begging to be sucked into my belly. The girl’s back was receding into the distance. I gave up on the sandwiches and left the table behind.

  As I opened the door to leave, the people on the dance floor below began to sing “Happy Birthday,” a few tentative bars that quickly grew into a rousing chorus. I thought about sticking around to the end of the song out of respect for Kato, but one look at the girl standing on her tippy toes, waving both arms at me, and I abandoned all reservation. I shut the door behind me and ran after her.

  We decided to walk toward Tokyo Tower. Not down any particular route, but whichever way our mood took us. The tower, lit up against the night sky, made a good marker.

  The girl and I walked in silence, but there wasn’t any awkwardness between us. Every so often, she would peer into my eyes, which made me crack an embarrassed grin, and she’d playfully ram her shoulder against me, like a hockey player, with all her might. I once saw a video of this bear cub sniffing curiously at a video camera and then slamming right into it. The girl reminded me of that cub. I wanted to know more about her.

  After we walked for about half an hour, I decided to break the silence. “So are you in high school?”

  The girl nodded and told me the name of a private school. It was a famous prep school. “I just started year three. Are you second year or third?”

  She spoke as if she knew me. “I have as well,” I answered. “I just started year three.”

  She frowned, wrinkling her intellectual forehead. “‘I have as well’? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  What did she know about me?

  When I told her the name of my high school, she arched a brow as if to say, Yes, I know.

  “That sweater looks good on you,” she said out of the blue. “You look like the boy from The 400 Blows.”

  The 400 Blows was one of my favorite movies. She wore a black knit sweater vest over a dark-blue shirt. The sweater had a red-and-white argyle pattern stitched at the breast. The outfit looked really good on her. I tried to come up with a smooth compliment but couldn’t find one. Unable to think of anything better, I said, “That outfit suits you, too.” She furrowed her brows again.

  What, too formal?

  She walked off several strides ahead of me. I might’ve soured her mood. I shut my mouth and chased after her. There was something I desperately wanted to know; I didn’t even know her name yet.

  Just as I quickened my pace, she stopped. I stopped alongside her. She was looking off to the side. I turned to where she was looking and saw a gated entrance to an elementary school. The girl was contemplating the heavy iron gate that stood about five feet tall. The school ground stretched beyond it, shrouded in darkness.

  A fearless smile appeared on her face. Knowing exactly what she was thinking, I said to her, “Maybe we shouldn’t.” Three vertical lines creased her forehead.

  Paying me no mind, the girl marched up to the gate, grabbed hold of the top with both hands, reared back, and jumped. She swung one foot on top of the crossbar and inched it over to the other side until she was sitting on top of the gate. All she had to do was swing the other leg over to the other side, and she was trespassing on school property.

  Straddling the top of the gate as if it were a horse, the girl looked over at me proudly. I had to look down. Her skirt was bunched up to her waist, exposing her bare legs. But she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.

  I heard a thud, and when I looked up, she was on the other side of the gate, her round eyes seeming to say, Your turn.

  I went up to the gate, put both hands on the crossbar, and jumped over it in one motion. At first, she seemed disappointed at being shown up, but that expression soon faded. “Nice move,” she said, and smiled.

  We strolled around the schoolyard three times.

  “Did you like school lunches back in elementary school?” the girl asked.

  “My school didn’t have school lunches.”

  “That’s weird. Did you go to private school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me? I hated school lunches. Everyone in school eating the same thing at the same time . . . don’t you think that’s kind of creepy?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I was watching Escape from Alcatraz the other day, and there was a scene where the inmates all have to eat the same thing at the same time that reminded me of school lunches. Do you like Clint Eastwood?”

  “Sure. Pale Rider is my favorite.”

  “My favorite has to be Dirty Harry.”

  The two of us grabbed hold of the horizontal bars in the playground and swayed back and forth like a pair of baby monkeys.

  “What kind of music do you listen to?” she asked.

  “All different kinds. But I guess I don’t listen to a lot of Japanese music.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. What kind of music do you listen to?”

  “I listen to all different kinds. But I guess I don’t listen to a lot of Japanese music.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I never really thought about it.”

  “I guess that makes us the same.”

  “I guess it does.”

  We strolled over to a bronze bust of some famous person in the corner of the schoolyard and took turns poking our fingers up his nose.

  “Any dreams for the future?” she asked.

  I thought about it and answered, “If I could, I’d go to a top-tier college, get in with an elite corporation, fly up the promotional ladder, and if I could, marry a pretty girl, have two adorable kids, build a house in the city, retire, and then learn to play Go. If I could, I’d take my wife’s hand in mine on a warm autumn day and tell her how happy I was to have spent my life with her and pass away quietly of old age.”

  “Are you serious? Would you really want to live a life like that if you could?”

  “Yeah.” I noticed her look down. “Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?”

  “You should hear how the boys I know talk. They all say, ‘I’m going to be famous.’ They can never tell you in any concrete terms how they’re going to get famous, but they’re all ready to tell you, ‘I’m
going to be huge someday.’”

  “That’s because they’re trying to get your attention. They’re trying to tell you they’re a sure thing.”

  “Don’t you want to try to get my attention?”

  I floundered for an answer.

  “So why don’t you think you’d be able to have a life like you imagined? You could if you really tried, right?”

  When I didn’t answer, she asked, “What’s wrong? Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?”

  “I’m going to be like Bill Gates someday.”

  “You can’t impress me that way now.” She strode off ahead of me.

  When I caught up to her, we lay down and sprawled out in the middle of the schoolyard.

  “It’s so peaceful,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  We gazed at the stars for a while.

  “Would you mind telling me your name?” I asked.

  “We don’t need to bother with names, do we?” she said. I looked over in her direction. She relented and said, “Sakurai.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “I don’t want to say. I hate my first name.”

  “I’m—”

  “Sugihara.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I read your mind earlier,” said Sakurai, smiling. “But I couldn’t read the first name. What is it?”

  “We don’t need to bother with names.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  A shooting star streaked down above us. Its red tail was clearly visible, even in the well-lit sky of Tokyo.

  Sakurai shot up into a sitting position. “Did you see that?”

  I sat up, turned to her, and nodded.

  “This is horrible! I’ve never been so embarrassed in front of a boy in my life.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “A shooting star? There’s absolutely nothing more embarrassing than gazing up at the sky with a boy and seeing a shooting star. Don’t you think?”

  “Really?”