( this Chapter is told from Ethan’s pov )
Raina had just co back from Japan.
To be honest, I was glad she was back.
The house felt less empty when she was around. Even when she was busy, even when she was glued to her phone dealing with work or streams or whatever crisis seed determined to follow her around these days, her presence alone made things feel normal.
At least that was what I kept telling myself.
Because sothing wasn’t sitting right with .
Sothing hadn’t been sitting right for a while and her coming back did not fix it. If anything it made the feeling more specific, like her presence had given the wrongness a shape it did not have when she was absent.
Before she left for Japan, I had received a text from a number I did not recognize.
The ssage said it was Felix.
Felix Stein. My college roommate. My closest friend for two years. The person who had simply stopped existing one sester and left no explanation behind him.
I went to the diner the ssage pointed toward. I sat there for over an hour and nobody ca. I was ready to write the whole thing off as sothing cruel and strange, soone’s idea of a joke, when Raina appeared. She had followed across the city.
And gave an excuse that made less sense the more I thought about it.
She claid she was worried.
Worried enough to follow across town.
Worried enough to sit outside for hours watching .
No normal person does that.
At the ti I let it go because arguing with her felt pointless.
But I never forgot it.
Then there was the look on her face when I first ntioned Felix.
It wasn’t confusion.
It wasn’t curiosity.
It was sothing else.
Shock.
Pure shock.
The kind that appears before soone rembers to hide it.
And after that ca the sudden trip to Japan.
Family ergency.
That was the explanation she gave .
I accepted it because I trusted her.
But trust and understanding weren’t the sa thing.
Nothing was adding up.
The more I thought about it, the less sense any of it made.
While she was gone, another ssage arrived.
Another ssage from Felix.
This ti he wanted to et him in a park.
Co to the park on Elmfield Road. Co alone. You have questions. I have answers.
My first instinct was to delete it.
Whoever was behind this had already wasted my ti once.
I wasn’t interested in being made a fool of again.
Then I read the last part again.
You have questions. I have answers.
I stared at the screen for a long ti.
Because whoever was sending those texts wasn’t wrong.
I did have questions.
Too many questions.
So I went.
The park was cold and quiet, the kind of weekday afternoon that belonged to elderly dog walkers and nobody else. I sat on a bench near the central path and waited.
Half an hour passed.
Then forty minutes.
Nobody approached .
Nobody called my na.
Nobody even looked at twice.
The only person who ca close was an elderly man who sat down beside , fed crumbs to a few pigeons, then got up and left twenty minutes later.
Eventually I gave up.
I stood.
Checked my phone.
Nothing.
No calls.
No ssages.
Eventually I stood to leave.
My phone vibrated.
Look beside you.
I looked.
The bench was empty.
I looked around again.
Still nothing.
Then I shifted slightly.
And saw it.
A brown envelope tucked between the bench and the armrest.
My na was written across the front in a handwriting I didn’t recognize.
ETHAN.
I picked it up.
My pulse quickened.
What the hell was this?
I scanned the area once more then I opened it.
Inside was a single photograph.
I looked at it for a long ti.
The face in the photograph was familiar in the specific way that things were familiar when you had not thought about them in years, the recognition arriving slowly rather than imdiately, having to locate itself through layers of ti.
Himari.....?
The na surfaced from sowhere I had not been in a long ti.
Himari Ishigami. Susan’s roommate. The quiet girl from freshman year who had told she didn’t care when I introduced myself and then eaten lunch across from three tis a week for a sester as though that exchange had never happened. The girl who had barely registered in my mory at the ti because I had been too busy being different kinds of distracted.
I sat on the park bench and looked at her photograph and tried to understand what she had to do with Felix or with or with whoever had left this envelope here.
Nothing ca.
My mind imdiately went to Susan.
Because Susan had ntioned Himari before.
Several tis.
I just never listened.
At the ti it sounded like bitterness.
Like another one of her attempts to bla sobody else for her problems.
So I ignored it.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I drove ho with the photograph in my jacket pocket and the question sitting in my chest without an answer.
When Raina ca back from Japan I watched her more carefully than I usually watched people.
She was distracted. Not in any dramatic way, not in a way she would notice noticing, but in the way soone was distracted when they were running a second conversation inside their head continuously. She would drift slightly in the middle of sothing and co back a beat later and pick up exactly where she had left off, as though the gap had not happened.
I had seen her tired before. I had seen her stressed. This was different and I could not na what was different about it.
Eventually I picked up my phone and called Susan.
She answered almost imdiately.
"Ethan?"
There was genuine surprise in her voice.
"What a shock."
A brief laugh followed.
"Finally co to your senses?"
"Susan."
My voice sounded more serious than I intended.
"We need to talk."
The amusent vanished.
A pause.
"About what?"
"et at the restaurant where we had our first date."
Silence.
"Three o’clock."
Then I ended the call.
By two-fifty I was already there.
Waiting.
The restaurant hadn’t changed much.
Sa tables.
Sa lighting.
Sa soft music.
The place felt smaller than I rembered.
At exactly two-fifty-five, Susan walked through the door.
She spotted imdiately.
Then approached.
"Hey."
She placed her handbag on the chair before sitting down.
"Hey."
For a mont neither of us spoke.
She adjusted the sleeve of her blouse.
Then looked at .
"So."
A faint smile.
"What could possibly be important enough for you to call ?"
The smile sharpened.
"Because the last ti we t, you made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with ."
I cleared my throat.
"I’m sorry about that."
Susan’s expression shifted slightly.
Not softer.
Just surprised.
"I need your help."
That got her attention.
I leaned forward.
Locked my fingers together.
And said the one thing I never imagined myself saying.
"I need you to tell everything you know about Himari."
Susan blinked.
Once.
Then twice.
And suddenly laughed.
Not because she found it funny.
Because she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
"Oh."
She leaned back.
"So you’re still in the dark."
"What does that an?"
"I thought maybe you’d finally figured it out."
She shook her head.
"No."
The pity in her eyes bothered more than anger would have.
"You still have no idea."
"Susan."
"No."
She pointed at .
"You listen for once."
I stayed quiet.
"You know, I used to worry about you."
Her voice lowered.
"I thought you were getting involved in sothing you didn’t understand."
I frowned.
"What are you talking about?"
"I tried to protect you."
The bitterness in her voice surprised .
"But you never listened."
She laughed again.
Short.
Humorless.
"And now look at you."
I felt irritation building.
"Susan, stop talking in riddles."
She stared at .
Then slowly stood.
Picked up her bag.
And looked down at .
"You really want to know about Himari?"
"Yes."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Then don’t ask ."
"What?"
"Ask your girlfriend."
I frowned.
"What does that an?"
Susan adjusted the strap of her handbag.
Then spoke the words that would replay in my head for the rest of the day.
"Because your girlfriend knows Himari better than anyone."
I stared at her.
Confused.
"What are you talking about?"
She only smiled sadly.
Then turned toward the exit.
"Susan—"
She stopped.
Just long enough to glance over her shoulder.
"I genuinely wish you luck, Ethan."
Then she left.
I sat in the restaurant for a long ti after she left. The other tables filled up and emptied around . The music played through its loop twice. The waiter ca to ask if I wanted anything and I said no without looking up.
Your girlfriend knows Himari better than anyone.
I turned the sentence over. Looked at it from different angles. Tried to find the interpretation that made the most sense.
My mind went back through things it had filed away.
The first text from Felix, the number I did not recognise. Raina following to the diner and saying she had been worried. The look on her face the first ti Felix’s na ca up in conversation. The sudden trip to Japan. The distraction she had co back with. The envelope in the park. The photograph.
Himari Ishigami.
Susan’s roommate.
I thought about the brief ti I had known her in college. The way she kept to herself. The way she had been described by people who noticed her at all, quiet, intense, difficult to know. The way she had looked at across the cafeteria table the few tis we had sat near each other.
I thought about the photograph.
I thought about Raina.
And then a thought arrived that I imdiately tried to dismiss.
I dismissed it.
It ca back.
I dismissed it again with the specific energy of soone who understood that entertaining certain ideas changed things permanently and could not be undone.
It ca back a third ti and this ti it brought evidence with it.
The age. The sa. The tiline. Matching. College. Maxford State. The sa campus. The sa sester. Himari disappearing from Susan’s life around the ti sothing had happened that Susan had tried to tell about and I had not listened to. Raina appearing in my professional life through a sequence of events that I had accepted one piece at a ti without stepping back to look at the full shape of it.
The way she had known his favorite flower.
The way Malik had known my address.
The way she had appeared at the coffee shop.
The way she had looked at the first ti we t in her pink house on Opalvine Court, that particular quality of looking at soone that did not match the stated context of two strangers eting for the first ti.
I sat in the restaurant with the noise of other people’s ordinary afternoons around and I felt the shape of sothing enormous assembling itself from pieces that had been scattered across the last year of my life, pieces I had picked up one at a ti and set aside without asking why they all felt like they belonged to the sa thing.
The photograph.
Himari Ishigami.
Raina Takahashi.
The sa quiet intensity. The sa look. The sa specific quality of composure that looked like stillness from the outside and was sothing else entirely from within.
Susan’s voice.
Not knows of. Not knows about.
Knows.
Knows Himari.
The way you knew yourself.
I stopped breathing for a second.
The restaurant kept going around , completely indifferent, cutlery and conversation and soone laughing too loudly at a nearby table, the whole ordinary machinery of an afternoon, and I sat in the middle of it with everything rearranging itself into the one shape it had been all along.
Raina.
Himari.
Both Japanese .....
Not connected.
Not acquaintances.
Not forr roommates or college rivals or any of the other explanations I had tried and failed to locate.
The sa person.
The sa person who had sat across from in a pink house on Opalvine Court and pretended to be eting for the first ti. The sa person who had been in my freshman year cafeteria. Who had heard my na from Susan and said I don’t care with the specific disinterest of soone deciding sothing. Who had disappeared from campus around the ti Felix had disappeared from campus.
"Oh God," I said.....
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