Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Gateway

-Gateway-

It's that same girl from before. She's in her uniform, but the jacket is missing.

"You must be wondering what I'm doing here." Her eyes are bright, as if she is delighted at my surprise.

I fail to make any utterances. The door had been closed.

"You know, I actually went and gave my uniform jacket to one of the homeless guys in Ueno Park. I went walking around for a long time, looking for someone to give it to – sort of like trying to find that right person you would spend the rest of your life with. In this case, I was matching up my blazer with some homeless guy. You just know it's the right person when you come across them. It was hard though, there are too many of them, and I couldn't exactly tell which ones were homeless for sure. I could only guess. Some of them looked very clean and shaven, maybe they had just lost their homes or maybe they're just very image-conscious and managed to shave and clean up somewhere, somehow. Some other guys were unkempt and had scraggly beards." She pauses and searches my eyes. She is much too close to me, almost breathing in my face. All I can see is black hair, her big glasses sitting on a small nose and eyes, one, very green. "They all looked at me funny maybe because I was wandering around peering at them. I got a few perverts staring at my skirt, so they didn't deserve my jacket either. Then I found the right guy. He's an old guy, with a beard, but it isn't too long and scraggly, or too childishly short - it's just right, like he had grown his beard for stylistic purposes. His hair and his beard is just starting to grow white; it is a mix of black and grey hair, which really looked kind of cool. And he was still wearing his suit and white shirt, like he had just gotten off work. It was quite dirty, scruffed and dusty looking, but there's no stains or anything like that. In his eyes there was some kind of glint that told me he was the right guy. He had that intelligent gleam, and probably somewhat cynical. You can tell right off the bat that he didn't belong there as a homeless guy."

When I don't reply, she continues on, "so I went up to him and said I have an extra article of clothing to give to him and asked if he liked uniforms. He said he used to collect high school girls' uniforms but his wife found out and burned it. He told me that it was entirely out of an objective scientific interest, rather than anything perverse. He was interested in the correlation of the design and sewing, the colours and the dimensions with human psychology, and why Japanese culture loved school uniforms. I thought it was all bogus but I gave him my jacket anyway. He started tearing up and crying right there in the park on a bench under a tree. He gave it one long sniff and thanked me."

She shrugs. "And that's that."

She studies me for a long time. I take a step back. "That's nice of you," I say.

But she ignores me. Instead, she peers around the room, like it's her first time seeing books. She's done talking about her uniform and I can almost hear the gears in her mind shift, levers and electronics whirling. "Alice in Wonderland, I wonder if it's still here."

"How did you get in here?"

"Ah, it might be over here."

"How do you know?"

"I just do," she says matter-of-factly and puts her thumb up against the corner of a bookshelf. "Here."

"What month is it?"

"April."

"April," I repeat after her.

The girl reaches up high and plucks out an old dusty copy of Alice in Wonderland. It looks like it hasn't been touched or read in many years. Perhaps in six or seven years.