Letter from Shinagawa

Calpico. How long has it been since I’ve had this drink?
I had just finished teaching in class when I decided to drop by a vending machine. There were many choices: Milkis, Pocari Sweat, but I chose Calpico. When I was in high school, I’d have a can at least once a day...
‘You know I hate this stuff! Gah! Don’t make me drink it!’
What was that? I stared at the hole I was drinking out of. The darkness inside led me to memories. Senior high school, the literature club. Yuri, Natsuki, and...
And...
No. I wasn’t going back there again. I had left both of those memories behind a long time ago.
I gulped down the rest of the can’s contents and went back to work.

A weekly learning plan to pass later, a stack of quizzes to check at home, a student’s floundering grades to be discussed tomorrow. Even after a year of doing it, teaching still overwhelmed me. I wondered if it was karma for not cutting my own teachers some slack when I was still a student.
I started clearing my desk. Just some folders, several books, the odd popular novel. Maybe a few junior league baseball pamphlets, phone numbers of old friends, a stray necktie too.
A sticky note stuck out. ‘Call me some time!’ it said, written in blue ink. Signed, ‘Yuri’. I remembered the time she dropped by town once, looking for our other friends. I guessed if you’re a hotshot popular novelist, you could go on all sort of frivolous adventures.
And then, a white envelope. Unopened, with my name and address written in red ink. Who did this come from? There was no return address on the envelope itself.
I tore it open and a few pages came out. I read all of them. When I got an idea of what they were really about, I read them twice over. Afterward, I stood up to look out the window.
Outside, the December snow fell. In a week, Christmas would arrive like an uninvited guest. I didn’t like it at all. ‘Meet me after Christmas.’ That was what she said. But why? Maybe I was still bitter over everything that had happened. But how could I not be? After all she had done, did she think that sending me a letter would fix everything?
No matter how many letters I receive from her, Sayori wasn’t going to come back.
But refusing to listen to the other side was a sign of immaturity, as I’ve learned over the years. Destroying things further when everything was already beyond repair... I did not want to be responsible for such a thing.
I still had to think things over. It had been years after the festival. I wasn’t about to go jumping towards Tokyo just because Monika told me to.

On the way home, an old man noticed me. He was clearing snow from his front lawn when I happened to pass by. He gave me a bright red glare. I looked around myself, thinking that he might have been looking at someone else. But no—it was definitely me.
Did I know this man? I tried my best to recognize his face.
After I did, I hastened my steps while apologizing to Sayori under my breath.

The 26th of December was a special day. More special than Christmas. It had the same warmth, the same afterglow of Christmas day, but with added insight into all your past expenses, broken relationships, and incoming loan payments in January. A brighter, yet so sobering outlook on life.
I took the train from Shinagawa to the address she sent me. A two-story apartment cramped in the middle of the ward. The kind I would've lived in back in college.
I knocked on one of the doors on the second story. No answer. I guessed she was either sleeping or out. There was also the possibility that the address was fake, and I was only visiting some ghost from the past.
If that was the case, she would have been hovering behind this door without turning the knob. And like a figment, she would fade away into the snowy December lights.
I might've wasted a lot of time going to that place. A little regret welled up in me, then some self-loathing for trusting the letter. I took out and lit a cigarette. As I put the filter in my mouth, an old woman wearing a sweater came out of the adjacent room. We looked at each other for a while before she walked past me, probably deciding she had better things to do than scold some random guy.
Smoke swirled as I looked at the rest of the neighborhood. A thin sheet of snow had shrouded the houses, the cars, the pavement. God had gotten hold of a futon of snow and tossed it over Tokyo. ‘Oh this will do,’ God said as he made his bed for the night. The resulting wasteland felt desolate, empty, lonely.
Did she really live here? My doubt grew with each passing minute.
Around 15 minutes, I had decided to look for the local McDonald's. I would then get on the train again. This time to Akihabara, just to snatch a copy of the Winter Catalog. Then I would never trust letters from random women ever again.
But as I got to the top of the steps, someone was at the bottom. A woman with long hair and square-rimmed glasses draped in a brown coat two sizes too big for her. It was obvious that she had been there for some time, waiting for something. Hesitating.
I threw the cigarette away before Monika noticed it was mine.

In other news, the Yen had dropped on the market due to increasing oil prices.
In other news, tensions were rising over borders in the middle east.
In other news, the prime minister was involved in another financial scandal.
And in other news, Monika and I hadn’t been talking for over fifteen minutes after we went into her apartment.
The place looked decent, if not for the bits of dust here and there.
The interior was built in the traditional style, with wooden sliding doors dividing the bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen. The living room had a kotatsu in the middle, and a vintage TV sat in the corner. The piece probably came with the apartment, and I thought about whether Monika couldn’t afford a newer TV. What did she do for a living anyway?
Monika was in the kitchen, cooking something for both of us. I observed her. She had let her hair down, still as smooth and flawless as it was in high school. She wore a green turtleneck sweater and sweatpants, prioritizing comfort over looks. Her cheeks had no wrinkles, no blemishes. With other women as old as she was, their age would start to show like cracks on a wall. But I could swear Monika looked even younger than in high school. Like she stopped growing up. I had a feeling that she refused to.
“It’s a bad habit to smoke,” she said.
I was surprised. She probably noticed me staring at her. “I know.”
“When did you start?”
“High school.”
“...Oh.”
After 15 minutes, Monika was done cooking. Spaghetti, complete with meatballs. It smelled quite good.
“I worked in an Italian restaurant in Roppongi,” she said. “The chef, he was a real Italian from a place called Lucca. He taught me how to cook it like they did.”
I regarded her for a while, then nodded.
“They like cooking with mushrooms a lot at that restaurant. Mushroom hors-d'oeuvres, mushroom pasta, Arrosto con Funghi—”
“Why did you send me that letter?” I asked.
She stopped speaking and looked at me. Behind her glasses sat those emerald green eyes of hers. Even until then, they disarmed me so much. I felt like I shouldn’t have asked my earlier question. But I already asked it, so I had no choice but to press on.
“You had nobody to spend Christmas with, did you?”
She then looked down at her plate of pasta. “Yes.”
“Didn’t you think that I have people to spend Christmas with?” I asked.
“Do you?”
I tried to hold my gaze for a while. But in the end I sighed.
“Did you finish that philosophy course of yours?” I asked after a few minutes.
She was playing with her pasta. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
“You’re seeing it.”
...Right.
“How about that therapist?” she asked before looking at me again.
I took out a Lucky Strike from my pocket. “This is my therapist.”
“Seriously.”
“I know. It’s... don’t worry about it.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” she said. “You were always like this.”
“Well, at least I don’t pretend nothing happened.”
“We’re talking about you here, not me.”
“Did I just come all the way here just so you can mouth me off like this?”
“No! I...”
Monika was quiet for a while. Then, she stood up and went to her kitchen. When she came back, she laid down two glasses and a bottle of 1998 Burgundy on the table. She filled her own glass first.
“It’s a bad habit to drink,” I said.
“Quiet.” She then filled my glass.
I didn’t know why we did, but Monika and I clinked glasses. For the friend we would never hear from ever again.
“I saw him before I left,” I said. “He still hates us.”
Monika looked up. “Who?”
“Sayori’s dad.”
“Oh.”
“Remember that time he told the principal you should get thrown into an institution?”
“Please don’t remind me,” she said before taking a sip of wine. “I did consider it, though.”
I looked at her after she said that.
“It’s not really an ‘institution’. It’s kind of like a hostel, deep in the mountains. Mom and dad said it might do me better if I had fresh air. ‘Be more in touch with reality’ and all that. But...”
“It’s a lot better than living here alone,” I said.
“I know, but it’s... what would you feel if you had to do it?”
I thought about it for a while. “I’d hesitate.”
“See.”
We were silent again. I had finished my glass, and Monika motioned to fill it up again. But I refused.
“Monika,” I said. “I’ll just have to make a call outside.”
She nodded.
“Don’t drink all the wine.”
“Why?”
I was about to get out of the door. “You want to share it with people, right?”

“Hello? Yes, hi this is... Is she in? Please tell her I’m a friend of hers from high school... Thank you...”
“I’m surprised you called!” Yuri said. “How are you?”
“I’m in Tokyo right now.”
“Really? Where?”
I told her the apartment’s address. When I said Monika’s name, Yuri got so loud that I had to put the phone away from my ear.
“She’s never contacted me at all, but I can’t believe she lives so near the publishing house. Come to think of it, I might’ve even seen her once! I wish I knew earlier.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry. How about Nat—”
“Of course I’ll get her. She lives a little further away, but once I tell her about you and Monika she’ll definitely make her way here!”
“Wow, you seem... really excited about all this.”
“Of course! It’s because I... It’s because I owe Monika so much.”
“I see.”
“The first poem I wrote, she... she said it was beautiful. She was the first ever person who told me such a thing... I’ll make sure that both Natsuki and I get there as soon as possible. I’ll see you later!”
“Take care.”
When I put the phone back into my pocket, I considered having another smoke. Nah.
Maybe I should stop being so bitter about the past. Sayori wouldn’t have liked it either. The best thing to do was work on fixing whatever was still there.