inside a covered shopping arcade near the station — a long barrel-vaulted passage with aging fluorescent tubes running its length, shop frontages in pale tile and rusted metal signage, the arcade floor a pale composite stone worn smooth at the center, grey morning light from both open ends competing with the fluorescents and losing — standing just inside the arcade entrance, shirt still open, rain beginning audibly behind her on the pavement she just left
The rain came before I was ready for it.
I had the linen shirt open when I stepped out — not a choice exactly, more a postponement. The morning was the kind of grey that hasn't decided what it's doing yet. The arcade near the station was already lit inside, its fluorescents making no distinction between 7am and 2pm. That sameness felt appropriate for a last morning.
I had no plan. Three blocks, maybe four, before the train.
The shop was small and set back slightly from the arcade's main line — a narrow door, a glass case, shelves of things in graduated sizes. The owner was behind the counter watching a small television that had the sound low. Sports results, or news, or something with a scroll at the bottom. He didn't look up. I looked at the cups. One of them was plain celadon, a matte glaze, nothing distinguishing it except that it sat right. I held it. It weighed almost nothing.
A plain white ceramic cup of drip coffee on a laminate counter, steam curling off the surface, a paper napkin underneath
I put it on the counter. He looked at it, not at me, quoted the price, and went back to the television.
I buttoned the shirt before going in. An involuntary thing. Old instinct.
Outside, the rain had decided. I changed into the sweater at the station entrance, standing under the overhang with the bag between my feet, watching the wet pavement go darker. I was carrying one more thing than I arrived with, wrapped in a wool sock, tucked beside a clean shirt I hadn't worn.
the station overhang — a shallow concrete canopy projecting from the station's exterior wall, its underside stained in long vertical streaks from decades of drainage, the pavement beneath it darkening unevenly as rain moves across it in pulses, a low kerb separating the overhang from the open platform approach — sweater change completed; she stands watching rain darken the pavement in real time, bag between her feet, wrapped cup inside it
The platform smelled of rain and the particular concrete of stations everywhere that have been cleaned too many times to smell like anything specific anymore.
The cup has no story. That's not quite true. It has one that belongs to it, from before, somewhere I'll never know. I just don't have it.
The train to Sapporo came on time.
The Otaru Station facade and platform entrance, Japanese station signage in katakana — 小樽 — visible above the overhang, wet concrete forecourt going dark with rain
the station platform — a narrow open platform with a low concrete parapet, overhead steel canopy with rain ticking on it, the tracks wet and reflecting the grey cloud above in two thin parallel lines running to a vanishing point, the platform surface dark from cleaning and rain, a station clock mounted on a painted steel post — train not yet visible; she has stopped checking the clock; eyes on the far end of the track where the reflection runs out
What she wore
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I wore the linen shirt open because I wasn't ready to commit to the day yet — or to the rain.
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I buttoned the shirt before I went inside — the kind of unconscious tidying you do before speaking to someone, even if they don't look up.
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By the time I was at the station I'd swapped into the sweater — the rain had made the morning colder than the forecast suggested, and I was carrying one more thing than I arrived with.