Tara stared at him, her golden eyes, so agonizingly different, searching his face. The PC cafe hummed around them, distant gunfire from a dozen games blending into white noise.
"Your number," she repeated, tucking a strand of ginger hair behind her ear. "You know. You look like you need help. I need to make sure you don't die in this chair."
"I don't have a phone."
"You don't have a phone." She said it flat, like she was testing the words for authenticity. "Who doesn't have a phone in this day and age?"
"I lost it." He didn't elaborate.
Tara clicked her tongue. "Right. Well, that's stupid. How am I supposed to call you?"
"You're not."
"I'm making it my business." She leaned against the booth's partition, arms crossed. The posture was casual but there was steel underneath. "Look at yourself. You're so pale, and your eyes, they're really really red. She stared at his arms. "When's the last time you ate something that wasn't out of a plastic wrapper?"
"I don't know."
"When's the last time you slept in an actual bed?"
"I don't know."
"When's the last time you talked to another human being?"
He paused. "You're talking to me now."
"That doesn't count. I'm a stranger."
"Then why are you still here?"
She shrugged, a loose, easy motion. "You look terrible, you must really be going through something, I can't stand watching people slowly kill themselves like this." She pushed off the partition, extending her hand. "Come on. Get up. We're leaving."
Hoshimi stared at her hand. Small. Pale. Calluses on the palms. A working hand.
He looked away.
"I don't want to go anywhere."
"No, you can't say that, you can't stay here, eating yourselves from the inside out. You're rotting. I can smell it from here, and I used to work in a place that smelled like a lot of bad things." She wiggled her fingers. "Come on. Up."
"You don't know me."
"That doesn't matter, you're going through something, you don't have to tell me what you're going through but you definitely need someone to take care of you." Her voice was gentle. "Please. Let me help you."
Something cracked inside him. Something small and fragile that he'd been holding together with pure stubbornness.
"Okay," he heard himself say.
He took her hand.
The night air hit him like a wave.
Unforgiving after the stale warmth of the cafe. He swayed on his feet, his body protesting the sudden movement after days, weeks? Tara's grip on his hand tightened, steadying him.
"Easy. When's the last time you stood up?"
"A while ago."
"That's what I thought." She didn't let go of his hand. Instead, she shifted her grip to his arm, supporting him with a practiced ease. "My place is about fifteen minutes from here. Think you can walk that far?"
"I can walk."
"Sure you can. Try not to collapse on me, I'm not strong enough to carry you that far."
They walked in silence for a while.
The city was different at this hour, quieter, more intimate. The neon signs reflected in puddles on the sidewalk, painting their path in fractured colors.
A few people passed them: a couple arguing in hushed voices, a businessman stumbling home, a group of teenagers laughing too loud. None of them glanced twice at the pale boy and the ginger-haired woman walking arm in arm.
Tara was the first to speak.
"So. Hoshimi. That's an unusual name."
"It's Japanese."
"Yeah, I figured. You don't look very Japanese, though."
"I'm mixed."
"Ah." She nodded, as if this explained everything. "Me too. Well, kind of. My mom was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. My dad was from Kyoto."
"My mom used to say he was a sailor. I think she just liked the romance of it."
Hoshimi didn't respond. He was focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
Tara continued, undeterred. "So why were you trying to eat yourself out? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm just making conversation. It's a long walk."
"I don't have some noble story."
"Everyone has a story."
He was silent for a long moment. Then: "My mother died."
The words came out before he could stop them. Flat. Hollow. Like he was reading from a script.
Tara's grip on his arm tightened. Just enough to let him know she'd heard.
"My condolences," she said. "Was it recent?"
"Weeks ago. Maybe four. I don't know."
"That's why you're in the cafe."
"Yea."
They just kept walking, her footsteps steady, her presence warm against his side.
The silence that fell between them was different now, heavier, but somehow less oppressive.
"My mom died too," she said eventually. "About six years ago from cancer, it was the worst day of my life.." She paused. "I still miss her. Every day. But it gets easier. Not better, really. Just... easier to carry."
Hoshimi said nothing. But he didn't pull away.
Her apartment was on the third floor of a crumbling building in the lower district.
The stairwell smelled of mildew and old cooking oil, and the light on the second-floor landing flickered in a way that suggested it had been doing so for years.
Tara didn't apologize for any of it. Just unlocked her door, the paint peeling around the edges and gestured him inside.
"It's not much," she said, flipping on a light.
The apartment was small. A single room divided by a half-wall into a living area and a kitchenette. A door on the far wall led to what seemed to be a bathroom.
The furniture was sparse but clean, a worn couch, a wooden table with two mismatched chairs, a bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and old magazines. The windows looked out on a brick wall and a fire escape, same as every other cheap apartment in the district.
The walls were painted a soft yellow, faded now but clearly chosen with care.
There were plants on the windowsill, herbs, mostly, and something with small purple flowers. A kettle sat on the stove, its enamel chipped but gleaming. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon and something else, something that made his chest ache.
"It's nice," he said.
Tara smiled. "Thanks. I try to do my best with this tiny little space." She gestured at the couch. "Sit. I'll make you something to eat. When's the last time you had a home-cooked meal?"
"Since my mom died."
She moved into the kitchenette, pulling ingredients from the small refrigerator, eggs, vegetables, some kind of leftover meat wrapped in paper. "I hope you're not vegetarian, because I'm making omurice, I learnt it from one of my Japanese friends. It's also the only thing I know how to cook that doesn't come out tasting like cardboard."
"I'll eat anything."
"Good. Because that's literally all I have."
He sat on the couch, his body sinking into the cushions. It was soft. Comfortable. The kind of couch that had been broken in by years of use, its shape molded to the bodies that had rested there.
He wondered who else had sat here.
He watched her cook. Her movements were efficient, practiced, the movements of someone who had spent years taking care of herself.
She chopped vegetables with quick, precise strokes of a knife that had seen better days. She cracked eggs into a bowl and whisked them with a fork, her wrist moving in steady circles. She hummed while she worked, some old song he didn't recognize, the melody soft and a little sad.
[Why did I even follow a stranger to their house?"
He looked away.
"What's omurice?" he asked, mostly to fill the silence.
Tara glanced over her shoulder. "You've never heard of it? I thought you were Japanese."
"I don't eat Japanese food very much."
"It's rice wrapped in an omelet. Usually with ketchup on top. It's comfort food. The kind of thing you eat when you're sad."
"I'm not sad."
"Yea totally." She turned back to the stove. "That's why you've been living in a PC cafe, eating terrible food, and you look like you haven't slept since the beginning of the universe."
"That was before I was born."
"Exactly my point."
The rice sizzled in the pan. The smell of cooking eggs filled the small apartment, warm and rich and impossibly comforting. Hoshimi's stomach growled, loud enough that Tara laughed.
"See? Your body knows what it needs."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're lying. But that's fine, there's no need to worry. I'll feed you anyway."
He didn't argue.
Just sat there on her couch, watching her move around the kitchen, and tried to remember the last time someone had cooked for him.
His throat tightened.
Tara set the plate in front of him, a mound of golden eggs draped over seasoned rice. The ketchup had been drizzled on top in a clumsy smiley face. Two dots for eyes. A curved line for a mouth. It looked like something you'd make for a child.
"It's crooked," he said.
"I mean, what did you expect? I'm not an artist." She set a fork beside the plate and sat down across from him, her own portion smaller, more modest. "Eat."
He picked up the fork. The metal was warm in his hand. He cut into the omelet, watched the egg split and the steam rise from the rice beneath. Took a bite.
It tasted like eggs and rice.
He took another bite.
Then another. His hand was shaking, he realized. He kept eating anyway, shoveling food into his mouth like he was starving, because he was starving, had been starving for so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to be full.
Tara watched him eat. She didn't say anything. Just sat there with her chin propped on her hand.
"Slow down," she said eventually. "You'll make yourself sick."
He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. "Sorry."