They stayed after closing.
Ogawa-san had already gone upstairs to the small apartment above the restaurant, and the last customer had left twenty minutes ago, so it was just the two of them, the chairs turned up onto the tables, the lights dimmed to the single bulb over the counter. Rain kept falling outside, slow and steady, tapping against the glass.
Yuki poured two cups of tea, set one in front of Hiroto, and sat down across from him without a word — as if this was simply the next task on the night's list, and she intended to see it through the way she saw through everything else.
"Okay," she said. "Tell me."
So he did.
He told her about the platform, the first morning, the girl in yellow standing dry in the middle of the rain. He told her about the driver who hadn't seen anything at all. He told her about the way the rain had slowed that first time — the drops hanging in the air like something paused mid-thought — and how it had happened again at the window while Takumi shook him by the shoulder.
He told her about the library, the puddle on the steps that wouldn't ripple. About Shirotani. The guardrail. The girl in blue this time, waving, and the old man's story about a mountain that didn't like letting people leave without saying goodbye.
And then he told her about Hokkaido — about the missing hours, about counting the sightings like a debt adding up, about the fifth time, when the rain had stopped hard enough that he could touch it, and she had spoken to him for the first time.
Every time you see me, you lose a little of what's around it.
You should go home. Before it decides you've paid enough.
He held out the back of his hand, though there was nothing to see.
"She touched me here," he said. "It still feels cold. Sometimes I forget, and then I remember, and it's like touching ice that never melts."
He stopped talking. The restaurant was very quiet. Outside, the rain kept its ordinary rhythm, unbothered by any of it.
Yuki hadn't said a single word through the whole thing. She hadn't looked away either, hadn't made the face people make when they're deciding how to let someone down gently. She had simply listened, the way she listened to everything — completely, without performing it.
"You believe me?" Hiroto asked, when the silence had gone on long enough that he needed to break it himself.
"I didn't say that."
His stomach dropped slightly.
"But I don't think you're lying," she went on. "And I don't think you're imagining it, either. You don't strike me as someone who makes things up for attention. You barely talk about yourself when I ask directly."
"So what does that leave?"
Yuki turned her cup slowly on the table, watching the tea move inside it rather than looking at him.
"It leaves the possibility that something is actually happening to you," she said. "Which is a strange thing to accept on a Wednesday night. But I've accepted stranger."
Something in the way she said it made him go still.
"What do you mean?"
For the first time since he'd met her, Yuki hesitated — really hesitated, the pause stretching out longer than any silence she usually allowed.
"I told you once that I came here two years ago," she said. "For reasons. I never told you what they were."
"You don't have to."
"I know." She looked up at him then, and her expression had changed — not softened, exactly, but opened, the way a door left slightly ajar lets you see there's a room behind it without showing you what's inside. "But maybe I will. Not tonight. It's not — it's not a short story, and it's late, and Ogawa-san will want the lights off soon."
"Okay," Hiroto said. He meant it.
She stood, gathering both their cups, and paused before heading toward the kitchen.
"For what it's worth," she said, not quite looking at him, "I don't think that girl is trying to hurt you. I think she's trying to tell you something, and doesn't have very many ways left to do it."
"How do you know that?"
Yuki's mouth curved — not quite a smile, but close to one.
"Call it a feeling," she said. "I've had a few of those myself."
She disappeared into the kitchen with the cups, and Hiroto sat alone at the table for a moment longer, listening to the rain, thinking about the word reasons, and about a room behind a door someone had only just let him see the edge of.