On Monday I tried to pretend I wasn’t looking for her.
I want that on the record. I was not scanning the courtyard. I was not checking every dark-haired girl who walked past. I was simply a man with excellent peripheral vision, and the fact that it kept landing on the east pillar was a coincidence.
“You’re doing it again,” Takumi said.
“Doing what?”
“The thing. With your face.” He demonstrated by rolling his eyes in slow circles. “Where is she, where is she, why do I care. It’s honestly really embarrassing for a guy as hot as you.”
“I’m eating lunch.”
“You’re eating tragedy. That’s fried rice. Look at it. It has no soul.” He grabbed his tray. “I’ve got a lab. Try not to cry into your cheap meal, okay? And if the astronomy girl shows up, be normal.”
“I’m always normal.”
“Ren.” Takumi gave me a sad, solemn look. “You’re a guy who says ‘fuck your patience’ to a loan shark. You don’t know what normal is.”
He left. I stared at my fried rice.
Fine. Be normal.
I picked up my chopsticks. And that’s when a tray slid onto the table across from me, and a quiet voice said:
“Is this seat taken?”
Up close, she was a lot more real.
Not a ghost by a pillar. Not a face in a crowd. A person. Slim, a little shorter than me, with dark hair that fell just past her shoulders and a loose strand she kept tucking behind her ear. A small mole under her left eye. A white sweater with sleeves too long, so the cuffs covered half her hands.
She was holding the black notebook against her chest like armor.
“...No,” I said. My voice came out weird. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks.”
She sat. Placed her tray down with careful precision: a bowl of udon, a green tea, a small cup of pudding she was clearly saving for last. She didn’t look at me. She looked at her food like it was a bomb she was trying to defuse.
I stared at her for three full seconds before my brain remembered I was supposed to be normal.
“I’m Ren,” I blurted.
“I know.”
I blinked. “You, what?”
Her hand froze halfway to her chopsticks. A faint pink crept up her neck.
“Everyone knows,” she said quickly. “You’re the guy who ran out of Professor Mori’s lecture last Friday yelling about a family emergency. It was... kind of a big moment. In the department.”
“Oh. Right.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “That was less cool than it sounded.”
“It sounded very cool.”
“It sounded like a guy having a panic attack.”
“That’s... also kind of cool.” She cleared her throat. “I’m Mio. Tsukishiro Mio. Astronomy and physics, second year.”
Tsukishiro Mio.
For some reason, my chest did a strange, small thing. Like a door creaking open in a house I’d never been to.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
Something flickered across her face. It was there and gone so fast I almost missed it, a kind of flinch, a wince behind the eyes. Then she smiled, a small, careful, practiced smile, the kind you put on over a bruise.
“You too,” she said.
We ate in silence for a minute.
It wasn’t an awkward silence, which was the strange part. It was more like the silence between two people who had a lot to say and were each waiting for the other to start. She ate her udon in quiet, neat bites. I watched her, and I tried not to be a creep about it, and I failed.
She had this habit. Every few seconds, her eyes would flick up to me and away again, quick and soft, like a bird checking a window. Like she was memorizing me, and every time she looked, she was afraid I’d vanish.
“Is there something on my face?” I asked.
“No!” Too fast. She coughed. “Sorry. No. You just... remind me of someone.”
“Who?”
“Nobody. Someone I knew.” She stirred her tea, though she hadn’t added anything. “What’s your favorite constellation?”
“My what?”
“Constellation. You know. Stars.”
“I know what a constellation is.” I laughed, surprised. “I don’t have a favorite. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the sky for more than five seconds in my life.”
She flinched again.
It was smaller this time. But I saw it, a hairline crack across the surface of her face. Her fingers tightened on her chopsticks. And for a second, she looked so sad that I almost reached across the table without thinking.
Why do I want to touch her hand? What the hell is wrong with me?
“That’s okay,” she said quietly. “Most people don’t.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” A breath. “Not at all.”
She set her chopsticks down. Then, with the smallest, most deliberate movement, she slid her left hand into her sweater pocket and set something on the table between us.
It clinked softly against the wood.
I looked down.
A little silver star. A keychain. Cheap. Scratched on the back with three tiny dots joined by thin lines.
The world stopped.
I don’t know how long I stared. It felt like a year. My blood roared in my ears, and my hand, my traitor of a hand, was already in my pocket. I pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open. And there, tucked behind a black business card and a crumpled train ticket, was a silver star.
I set it down on the table.
Two stars. Side by side. Same shape. Same dents. Same three scratched dots.
Neither of us moved.
“Where did you get yours?” My voice was a rasp.
Mio was looking at the keychains too. Her knuckles were white against the table edge. When she finally spoke, it came out so softly I had to lean in.
“A planetarium gift shop.”
“Which one?”
“...Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.” My throat was so tight I could barely speak. “I don’t know where I got mine.”
She didn’t say anything.
I looked up. And the second our eyes met, I felt something I can’t explain. Not love. Not recognition. Something older and more broken than either. A huge, empty hollow in the center of my chest, exactly the shape of this girl.
I realized I was crying.
Not dramatically. No sobbing. Just a single hot tear that slid down my cheek and dripped onto the table before I even knew it existed.
“Shit,” I said, scrubbing at my face. “Sorry. Sorry. That’s, I don’t know why, it’s, hay fever. It’s October. I get it in October.”
“Ren.”
“It’s stupid. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Ren.”
I stopped.
She was looking at me with such terrible, careful tenderness that I forgot how to breathe. Her eyes were wet, too. Her lips were pressed tightly together, like she was holding something back by force.
And she said, in a voice so gentle it hurt:
“It’s okay.”
That was all. It’s okay. Like she was talking to something frightened. Like she knew exactly how much it hurt, and exactly why, and was not going to say.
I wanted to ask her a thousand questions.
Who are you?Do I know you?Why does it feel like you’re the only person who’s ever looked at me and actually seen me?
But before I could force a single word out, she stood. Swept her keychain back into her pocket, grabbed her notebook, and picked up her pudding cup, which she hadn’t touched.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have a lab.”
“Wait...”
“Take this.”
She pulled a folded flyer out of her notebook and pressed it into my palm. Her fingers brushed mine. They were cold. They were shaking.
“The astronomy club does a rooftop stargazing night every Saturday,” she said. “You don’t have to come. But if you ever want to...” Her voice wobbled. She swallowed it down. “If you ever want to look, it’s there.”
“Mio...”
She was already walking away.
I watched her go, small and straight-backed, weaving through the crowded cafeteria. She didn’t look back. But at the doorway, I saw her lift one sleeve to her face and wipe quickly at her eyes.
Then she was gone.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the empty seat.
The fried rice had gone cold. My tea had gone cold. Around me, the cafeteria roared and clattered like nothing had happened, because to everyone else, nothing had.
I looked at the flyer in my hand.
It was a simple thing. A photocopied sheet with a cartoon telescope and the words TEITO ASTRONOMY CLUB, SATURDAY NIGHT STARGAZING. ROOFTOP OF BUILDING 7. 8 PM. EVERYONE WELCOME!
I almost put it in my pocket.
Then I noticed the back.
There was handwriting on it. Small. Neat. A little slanted, like the writer had been in a hurry. Just one line, in blue pen:
You take two sugars in your coffee, and you always lie and say it’s one.
I read it three times.
I stopped breathing at least twice.
Because it was true. I’d taken two sugars every day since I was fifteen. I’d told every barista, every friend, every roommate, just one. It was a stupid, petty lie. A small pride thing. A weird little shame about wanting something sweet.
I’d never told anyone the truth.
Not Takumi. Not Yui. Not even my mother.
My hands were trembling.
I looked at the silver star beside the flyer. I looked at the empty chair across from me. And I felt it, a vast, silent, bottomless wrongness, like the floor of the world had been quietly replaced with a thin sheet of paper.
Who the hell are you, Tsukishiro Mio?
And what did I do to you?