The train moved through darkness with a lazy and comforting lurching. It was bathed in starlight and breeze. It was bathed in the sound of flowing water accompanied by the rush of leaves in the mountains. It was a cool slide of silver through the darkness.
Somewhere near the back, he laid in his car. Solitary him, riding, shades pulled open against the black night passing, the procession of the shadowy hulks of trees. He did not want to arrive. He wanted to last in this murky, liminal space between stations. He wanted the fog to let down. He reclined into his aloneness.
And yet he lifted his phone and sent out a thread of of connection. The cherry blossom emoji. Pause. The sparkling heart.
In a short moment, the waving hand appeared. It was Ranko replying from her lighthouse.
The lighthouse sat on a coast of Japan and he had never been there. He had never met Ranko. But she had said that it often rained there and that she liked that, and he liked that about her. He often felt that his life was littered with mistakes. Decisions and hesitations that sat just off, like chess pieces placed on a board with bad aim. Perhaps the right move. Perhaps a well-considered move. But just too close to the line or something. It bothered him.
The rain helped with that. It was a kind of reset. Like, for example, the cat that died in the dried creek right near his house. The carcass just moldering there for days. He wanted to bury it, but couldn’t get near it for heartbreak. For heartbreak, couldn’t stop looking at is as he passed either. They were both stuck.
Then the rains came and flooded the creek and the next day the cat was gone. It wasn’t that the rotting hadn’t happened. But it was gone now. That made things a little easier.
In truth, his conversations with Ranko were like the rain in that way. Simple conversations. About macaroons sometimes, and chocolate. About dancing and butterflies. They were sad. But they were sad together. They were sad together which made them happy while they were lonely and apart.
And so they chatted every day. He teased her and she pretended to be aghast and it was wonderful. Frustrating but wonderful, like Ranko herself.
If she ever had work to do, a ship to warn clear of hazards, she never said so. Maybe they didn’t have that many ships in that part of Japan. Maybe she didn’t really live in a lighthouse. Maybe he was the ship that she was warning. Maybe Ranko was the light.
The train stopped. No sounds. All were asleep.
There was hot coffee somewhere, but he was in his room with no one and also with someone and he did not want to leave. Please tell me about your day, he said.