“I want to know.” 

Though she said those things, the shadow of her hands did not reach. 

“Surely you know it?” My own words—hollow supplications. 

Refrain. Announce the unhappiness at last. Those were the desires in the heart beneath me. Proclamation. Exaggeration. Something of a sort between those ideas. Tell her, at least, that she must have known and it was because she knew that we were together in that room at all. It must have been so, otherwise why was I really there? 

Outside the window the masses of Fushi ranted in unison. A countdown had begun out there amid the rain and sleet. She got up from the stiff bed and went there, dressed in all white. Her ghostly visage alight by the neon sign of a pachinko parlor across the street. Her eyes took it in, but did not reflect a thing. Tenebrous, they consumed all. Such was their hunger. 

“Still, I want to know. At least a bit more.” 

Words could not come to me. I watched, the stone facade strong against the desires shown to me. I hated those bricks, I detested the mortar so dried. Like a cicada those wishes which had clung to the outside carapace would be shed and left behind all the same. Those were the habits of my species. Still I had chattered on and sang to her. Had led her there. Had created a will there. Foisted upon her like a vain Prometheus. The passport in my jacket pocket felt all the weight of my body itself. 

“How could you not know?” 

Her lightless eyes drank me as they gazed in the direction of those toxic words. 

She could not know. She should never have known. A poltergeist at once alive in a vessel of bone and meat. Phrases had passed over whim and wind in passing regard for the person who shared them with me through her gaze. I saw her, and she saw me, and her eyes were my own. Pleading. Wanting. I saw myself, she saw herself, and our souls. Passing. Fading. We should have continued, should have forgone. We gave the rest and took only a little of each other, leaving nothing. Leaving each other alone in the room. Gazing. 

“Tell me.” 

As the outside roared to life with the passing of the new year, I told her what she wanted to know.