Okinawa Prefecture
2017, October 5th
I remember the crunch of loose gravel, how my shoes would drag against the unpaved road, skin blushing against the soft warmth of a subtropical fall.
In this secluded edge of town, there used to be a paddy field right next to the sidewalk, but after years of undrained rain from pacific storms, a shallow lake has taken its place. Grass, despite the pool that had began to reside, still grew – each blade breaking the surface, swaying in the wind. Some days, the water sparkles like my mom’s godawful sequined dress, thrifted from Shimokitazawa – that knew a version of her that I’ve never known – the light creating a pattern that reflected the golden hue of every afternoon. The lake, like the dress it reminds me of, is now simply a bowl meant to hide this town’s lost secrets.
A version of it, that only a few knew about.
I once read about deserts becoming freshwater sanctuaries in certain parts of the world after growing curious about why a patch had sunk back into the earth to give this town something no one had anticipated. Something like that — of wastelands becoming lakes, of dust flats coming to life once in a decade, of monsoons filling up what’s supposed to be dead and dry — had somehow rattled a piece of me the day I heard Tachibana Ojī gently talking to his late wife near the farmer’s market about how the plot of submerged land may be a hopeless case after all. How it never ended up drying like it was supposed to, and how she had only smiled sadly.
In this almost barren town, the lake doesn’t move anyone. It doesn’t have anything to offer. It’s no oasis, no miracle, just a paddy field locals no longer find useful. Too small to throw fish in, too deep to plant any local crops.
It’s lonely. On certain days, it almost looks like a broken promise that someone ended up losing.
(A hole in a pocket kind-of-lose.)
Something’s out of place.
There’s a glimmer, a break in the center, a face — looking back at me from where I’m standing. The afternoon grows warmer. The stranger tilts their head back.
“Are you going to take a photo of me?”
He asks, voice light enough to be carried away by the wind that patterns the surface from where he’s submerged. His eyes dart to my phone held in front of my face, thirteen seconds into a recording.
“No,” I answer, crisp enough to cut the wind carrying the remains of his voice away. Another gust rattles the grass, and my resolve sways. The elastic in my hair snaps. “I’m filming the view.”
The wind picks up after I say that, and he looks at me with a stone for a face, grown out strands of his bleached hair being billowed by the breeze. I stop filming, but I don’t put my phone away.
“Do you want me to take one?” I ask, flat tone serious, eyes watching him through the screen. A glint dances across his irises. Perhaps a trick of the light through the lens.
“No…” He hides his smile by disappearing under the water, now a pink soup, sparkling brighter than what I imagine of milky way’s trails. The world basks in a rosy filter, a twilight I almost want to drown in. I stand there dumbly, wondering why someone would swim in a lake filled with stale rainwater. If he’s, maybe, someone like me; lost in a town that we used to call home.
He gasps for air, breaking the surface. A lone breeze moves the strands of my hair back. The trees rustle, the water moves, the pieces remain in place. I feel a subtle, curious gaze as he shakes away the droplets out of his hair that refract the light. It moves me a few steps back — the view of the sun in that moment, how it blankets itself within the strands of his wet hair. His body almost one with the lake that reflected the world like a mirror. “But you can film me.”
I turn to look at his discarded bicycle on the sidewalk and his abandoned sneakers still perfectly laced, canvas folded to fit his heels. Haphazard. The wind picks up again, just like it did once in a distant dream.
“I’m out of memory.”
He grins at my face remaining stony, eyes in crescents. “Do you live around here?” He pauses, something cheeky swelling under the feint tone of his question. “Will I be seeing you again?”
“What, you miss me already?” I drone, blunt in a way that’s throat heavy.
When he grins, I decide to smile back.
“Where’d you learn how to do this?” He asks as he scrolls through my phone with wet hands, sprawled on a damp shirt he’d laid out on the grass. “D’you like photography?”
“Not really,” I shrug. The last remains of golden hour peeks through the distance. The view must’ve been better near the sea. He spares me a glance before tossing me half of his bottled tea. “I just picked up the hobby from someone I–”
Lemon crowds my mouth.
He turns to me as I cut myself off, foggy eyes watching me think. A white lie settles on my tongue, but I wonder if I have the need to say it. “Someone you… what?”
“Someone I,” I stare at the bottle, then at his face, at how the droplets hugging his eyelashes seem to feel lonely. If it’s maybe just my reflection I’m seeing in them. “Someone I used to know.”
“Used to?” He drops my gaze, tapping on a photo. “So you no longer talk to them.”
“You’re awfully talkative.” I state flatly rather than comment, eyes in slits as he shows off the video I just took with him in frame. Cheeky, haphazard — the type who slips on laced up shoes like they’re slippers. The type who isn’t bothered about loose bike chains and dragging yourself home twice as heavy. The type to jump in rain pools just because.
“I’m just friendly.” He oppugns, a stray dimple poking his left cheek.
A shaky hand rakes through his brassy strands out of the blue, the foxy smile directed at me melting away like the sun’s last rays. His hands pause on my phone, the stray breeze brushing his face.
“Cool hair.”
“T-Thanks,” He absentmindedly grabs a wet strand, laughs off the redness crawling up his ears. His hand brushes mine. “Got it bleached when I got dumped.”
“I thought you did it to look cool,” I hum, retracting my hand and taking a sip of the oolong that’s been condensing inside the bottle. The liquid feels warm in my mouth. “Assumed you were one of those jerks who’d hang around Shibuya.”
“I hang around city proper, what does that make me?” He laughs, pauses on a photo, examines it and brings two fingers to rub his bottom lip. “Did your boyfriend take this?”
My eyes focus on a photo of my silhouette and the sea, the sky as pink as the lake calmly sashaying before us. The rustling grass begins to ring in my ear. I can feel his gaze boring into the side of my face.
A corner of his mouth twitches, the first hint of a scowl. I can’t get myself to answer. “Ah. So that someone was your boyfriend.”
“Give me back my phone,” He regards me with an expression I’m too choked up to understand, the wind strong enough to make the back of my eyes burn. I shiver as he hands the cool piece of metal back to me, a reminiscent feeling. The sour taste in my mouth stings. “No, he wasn’t my boyfriend.”
He stays quiet. The hanbaiki tea bottle sits empty between us. It feels like a familiar after school afternoon, stray mutters and the sound of air moving water – but the pieces stay in place.
The nostalgia doesn’t sit right and it tethers off balance.
“Ophelia’s Drowning.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve always been fascinated with it,” I play with a few blades of grass under my uniform skirt, voice growing quiet. The cut off pieces stain the tips of my fingers green. “That day, that’s what you looked like, so I wanted to capture it for myself.”
It stays quiet between the two of us. He doesn’t respond. He simply stares at me from the corner of his eye as I watch the water move like it’s meant to be there. The night sky saturates into a deeper black, settling over our heads as we sit there, drawn in by a stagnant pool of a few hundred nights that occasionally keeps the town’s lost kids company. The streetlight flickers and basks us in a chaffy, yellowing light. The fluorescent hums in the background, our shadows looking lonely against the asphalt.
“You’re weird,” He grabs a dry shirt from his bag and wears it as I sit there and watch him get swallowed by the oversized garment. My perspective skews. Maybe I thought wrong. Maybe that dream wasn’t a dream but a memory. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed when he smiled. Maybe he isn’t the type to jump in rain pools just because. Maybe finding the lost pieces in other faces won’t move you at all.
It makes sense. Maybe. I’ve always thought things are less poetic when they’re dry.
I turn my head, looking away from how he’s staring like he’s sorry for me. The water is beginning to grow calm, the last breaths of wind disappearing down the road.
“I think it’s endearing,” He continues, the droplets in his hair staining the dry cotton of his shirt. “How I can’t seem to tell or imagine what’s on your mind.”
“I thought you were dead,” I say, stoic around the edges, a slight shrug causing my elbow to brush his. I turn to look at him when he chokes up a laugh, amused by my statement. “I thought you fell off that branch, and broke your neck. It’s shallow around that area after all–”
He bursts out laughing. Stray droplets from his hair land on my cheek as he shakes. My gaze must have felt heavy on him, because he eventually mellows down. “My bad. It’s just– I didn’t expect you to be a funny one.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“That’s why I’m growing more fond of you,” He finally stops shaking, running a hand over his hair. It glows under the streetlight. The air shifts. “The first thing you do when you find a supposed corpse, is to film it before a nice sunset, because what? It reminds you of Hamlet?”
“So, you do know what I’m talking about.”
“Surprised, aren’t you?” He smirks, proud of himself as he raises an eyebrow. “That someone other than you in this small, quiet town knows about classic English Literature?”
I scoff. “I’m surprised you know.”
“I know,” His eyes soften. “I’m just not sure if I actually understand.”
“I don’t expect you to.” I state. The way it pierces through the emptiness of the night tastes bland against my teeth. It falls quiet, but our eyes are still on each other.
The wind brushes past us, again. This time, something feels different.
“I’d like to understand you better,” The way he says it sounds like a confession. It echoes. There’s no wind to distract us. His cheeks bloom as I blankly stare at him. A blade of grass cuts through my finger, and I begin to bleed. The sting tastes nostalgic around the corners.
“Was that a confession?”
He hesitates. “Yeah.”
I laugh bitterly, sprawling out on the grass, the scent of earth rubbing off on my clothes. He looks at me, confused, nothing but a nameless girl that’s somehow still dry. “Modern dating really is comical.”
“Tell me about it,” He rubs a hand over his neck, hair masking over his eyes. “But I am interested… in you.”
“Why?” He turns to look down at me, face serious as my question slowly chokes under my weight. I don’t know how long he observed me just grinning at his face that’s now all quiet and serious.
“Because you look sad.”
It sinks and settles into my gut.
My hand reaches out to run a finger over the neckline of his shirt. It stains the white cotton green. I pull lightly. I don’t expect him to inch closer, but he does. “Why? Will you be able to change that?”
“Maybe not,” He retorts, grabbing my hand. Bony fingers rub over the loose bandaid wrapped on one of mine. There’s a subtle clench in my jaw at the touch. He notices because he gently lets go of my hand.
“I might break you,” I crane my neck, a question, a whisper. “What would you do then?”
He hums, teasing a ponder. His eyes look glassy under the yellow tint. A hand cups against the side of my face, and in a lower whisper, a breeze carries out a promise. “I’ll shave all of my hair off.”
I scoff a laugh because I find it funny. How easy it is for other people to make promises that weigh nothing. Not enough to drown, not enough to break.
I turn my head so the grass can chase away his voice and the faint ghost of his hand that touched my face. In this part of town, his hunched silhouette sitting next to me as I lie on the ground melts into the back of my mind completely.
“Do you still think about her?” He gives me a quizzical look. “The girl who dumped you.”
It’s beginning to feel cold out in the open. The yellowing light haloing behind him burns through my vision. The specks of black obscure his face that I almost can’t recognize the expression on him.
“Sorry.” He mutters. The sound of his half-cloy apology rings.
I don’t respond, instead I take my socks off and dip my legs into the lake. It’s warm, even in the night. We don’t say a thing. I think we’ve began to understand that we don’t have the need to. He watches me slowly submerge myself, fully clothed in my uniform on a school night. In the water, it feels less lonely. The sky’s tears a quiet reminder.
He sits there, in thought. “What do you say?”
“About your confession?”
“Yeah,” It’s serious, the way he’s looking at me, even when his voice remains light. “Let’s meet again — outside of our coincidental encounters.”
“Hm,” I smile to myself, walking further until I’m waist-deep. I don’t look back to acquaint myself with the expression he would’ve looked at me with. “It’s better if we don’t.”
“But…” He doesn’t continue. I understand why. It’s easier to stop if the promise still weighs nothing. When it doesn’t choke up your throat, doesn’t scar when it breaks.
“You don’t wanna lose all your hair now, do you?”
He laughs.
It only took six months of four light showers and unceasing heat to dry up the lake that once reflected the world on this obscure part of the district.
We don’t see each other again.
I saw it coming. What I didn’t imagine was for the lake to disappear along with him — another lost stranger that’s gone to someplace far off better. Maybe in city proper, or Shibuya – where nameless girls are afraid of death and don’t bother with odd novels.
I wonder if it’ll take another ten years for it to return, if it even has the chance to.
It was subtle at first. A break in the center. A face, a confession, a stray memory – but the taste of oolong had somehow stained the inside of my cheeks.
Some days, I’d sit on the same spot we found each other in to calculate which branch would be flimsy enough to kill a dreamer, until the lake was too dry to mirror the sun it once captured under the patterned surface. Sometimes, I fall asleep under the tree and dream of grown bleached strands falling to the floor. Sometimes, I recall a fragment of our last conversation, in memory of the miracle that once existed in this town.
“Why were you in the lake?”
He drags a foot down to stop his bike at my question, his once dry shirt damply billowing against the wind as he looks back at me. I stand there quite dumbly, uniform heavy, creating a small pool in the middle of the road. I notice his shoes, and how they’re laced up tidily.
Maybe I thought wrong.
He digs through his pocket, and holds up something delicate. A bracelet weaved from black thread. Against the streetlights, something sparkles. Attached to the clasp is a silver charm the size of a button. The world feels smaller as I stare at him, at how he looks at it, held gently between his fingers.
Maybe, he isn’t like me at all.
“I threw it in there the day she moved to Tokyo.”
“When did she move to Tokyo?” He smiles at my question, like he’s unloading something precious. A faint, familiar emotion stirs inside of me. A distant memory of something sour and cold clogs up my throat, the silver of the charm shining gold under the streetlights.
He turns around and pedals away.
And maybe, in some ways, he is.
“Back in Spring.”
Where the Lake Cracks in Two
2020
© Rizu Lu
All Rights Reserved.
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