Chapter Text
With the rumble of the train smooth and heavy beneath her seat, Sara restlessly pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the clock. It was the fourth time she’d done it within the span of 5 minutes, and she was all too aware of that as she exasperatedly tucked the phone back into her pocket and folded her arms across her chest.
With almost cinematic timing, the train slid crisply into a tunnel, enveloping the car in darkness and prompting the fluorescent glare of the white lights lining the roof of the car to blink to life. It explained why Sara’s cellular data hadn’t been working for the past few minutes; the reception always tended to get hazy near mountains, but it did nothing to make her less frustrated when the screen flashed a glaring “no signal.”
As quickly as it had entered, the train flew out of the tunnel and made a neat curve on the tracks, flooding the car with the afternoon’s warm golden sunlight once more and prompting the overhead lights to obediently flicker out. Too drowsy to be inhibited by the sudden flash of sunlight, Sara instead blinked lazily at the sudden shift to her vision.
She’d been remarkably sleepy for the entire train ride, which was rather unlike her; for the entirety of high school, she’d prided herself on her alertness and constant attention to detail. Not a single thing got past the Samurai Woman, and both her classmates and teachers had known that all too well. She didn’t know why she’d spent the train ride fighting for consciousness, particularly when she’d boarded in the early afternoon at the peak of her energy level. The world around her felt strangely fuzzy, as though it would take only one blink for everything to crumble to dust and another blink for everything to be just as it had been before.
Perhaps it was the rhythmic motion of the train, gliding smoothly across the tracks with just enough of a rumbling hum to lull her to sleep. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that she had a brief period of respite; high school had been over for a month, it would be at least a few weeks before college started up, and everything in her life had been almost immaculately secured.
Yes, she decided as she spread her arms across the back of the sun-warmed plastic seat and tilted her head up to look at the deep green blurs of trees speeding past just outside the opposite window. That had to be it.
Absentmindedly, she pulled her phone out of her pocket again to check the time and discovered a new text from Nao; a simple “hope the train ride is going well!! lmk once ur home safe :)” Sara considered responding for a few seconds, but ultimately placed the phone back down and redirected her attention to the picturesque panorama of scenery flashing outside the train car. Any response could wait; she was certain Nao wouldn’t mind.
Sara had felt a bit guilty about leaving Nao alone at the dorms for the week, in retrospect. While she’d made the decision to go back to her hometown before fully packing everything up and moving in, Nao had been busy decorating her dorm and getting everything situated by the time Sara had departed for the train station. Nao was studying visual art 2 years ahead of Sara at the same university, and she’d been ecstatic when Sara’s acceptance letter had arrived a few months back- two old friends from Sonobeno reuniting at last, as she’d gleefully put it.
Though Nao would probably fill Sara’s notifications with frequent texts for the few days in between Sara’s departure and the arrival of her girlfriend, Reko, to the dorms, Sara knew she wouldn’t truly be as bothered as she’d appear to be. Nao would always find her ways of entertaining herself, whether they’d come in the form of 15 pictures from a cafe she discovered on the corner or a new painting style she’d spontaneously decide to attempt at 2 a.m.
It was part of why it had taken Sara so long to get home after visiting the university and giving the dorms a once-over. The chaos had started with Nao finding a cat cafe a few blocks over and excitedly dragging Sara to it, and only continued once she realized that there was an art gallery exceptionally close to the cafe. As much as Sara had tried to persuade her out of the visits, frantically pointing to the times stamped on her train ticket and arguing that they could do this in a few weeks anyway, Nao was nothing if not insistent and it was likely that not even the apocalypse would have been able to drag her away from the kittens snoozing on her lap.
Sara folded her arms behind her head and leaned back, wincing slightly as the tired muscles in her stiff back complained. She’d been sitting still for far too many hours, another reason why she’d been frantically checking the clock on her phone every few minutes. The train ride was much too long for her taste, but this train in particular was one rarely taken and the cost of a ticket was less than the cost of paying for gas and taking care of a car. The train car was empty, much to her gratitude; in the first hour of her ride there’d been a few passengers; an elderly woman, a parent and child who’d given her respectively gracious and mischievous smiles, a man with a distantly melancholy look in his eye. All of them had filtered out across the next few stops, though, leaving Sara pleasantly alone as the train twisted through the quietest rural areas imaginable.
The car oozed a sort of tiredness; it had clearly been renovated recently, patches of smooth grey paint brushed conspicuously over what had once been hastily-placed stickers or marks of graffiti. It was a little melancholy, stripped of the bits of personality and humanity it had accumulated over the years, but it hadn’t taken long for Sara to find a fresh marker signature scrawled across the smooth vinyl of the seat and smile at the quiet reminder of the simple human mischief that could never really be suppressed. There were flyers hanging off the train walls that swung precariously whenever the train came gliding to a stop at the station; job postings, someone offering their service as a pet-sitter, an advertisement for a local restaurant by one of the stops. So many little reminders of the people who’d boarded the train and left pieces of themself there before they’d gotten off and gone about their day. Even the freshest coats of paint and varnish, in all their well-meaning deception, did a poor job of pretending that the tired old train car wasn’t still laboring beneath them. A weak attempt to start anew.
Sara shifted back and forth on the seat, still dreading the half hour laying ahead of her, and finally fished around in her pocket for her phone. Disappointingly enough, the time hadn’t miraculously jumped forward by 15 minutes. Despite the discouraging setback, she persisted in dialing a familiar number and sat back as the dial tone began to drone in her ear.
Once… twice… three times. Joe usually picked up before the third ring, and Sara came close to wondering if everything was alright on the other end... then an indistinct click rang out from the speaker.
“Heyo!” Joe’s familiar voice chirped over the speaker. “Who is this? Better not be the tax collector. For the record, I am armed and dangerous.”
Sara chuckled, more for Joe’s sake than out of her own amusement. He knew her number, and he’d been answering the phone with that line for at least a year. She was hoping that if she laughed at it enough, he’d grow bored of the joke.
“Hey, Joe,” she replied fondly. “How are things going back home?”
“Oh, you know, boring,” he replied. “Got a callback for the job interview at the ice cream place, so that’s something at least.”
“They do callbacks for those?” Sara furrowed her brows. “I thought that was just the kinda place where they hire you at the interview.”
“Well, I thought so too.” There came a shifting sound from the other end. “But apparently not. Didn’t know the ice cream was so particular about who’s scooping it. You coming home soon? It’s so boring here without you, dude.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day,” Sara grinned. “I should be arriving home in twenty-five minutes or so.”
“Twenty-five minutes?” Joe exclaimed. “Jesus, Sara, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I was gonna meet you at the train station!”
“Well, shit, sorry,” Sara responded, the sincerity of her apology significantly downplayed by the laughter shaking her words.
There came no immediate reply from the other end, only the heavy thumping of feet against hardwood floor and a grunt from Joe struggling to tug on his sneakers. “...Dude, now I’m gonna have to rush! Come on, man.”
“You are so clingy,” Sara chuckled into the microphone. “You’re like a dog whose owner has been gone for two hours.”
“Yeah, except you’ve been gone for, like, three days!” Joe argued back. “Which is much longer than two hours. Gets lonely here without you.”
“Don’t you have Ryoko to keep you company!”
“No!” Joe exclaimed with feeling. “She’s been busy packing for university for the past few days, too. It’s been so boring over here. Weren’t you supposed to be home a few hours ago, anyway?”
“I was, yeah, but I missed my first ticket. Nao wanted to check out this cat cafe and an art gallery and we ended up losing track of time so I had to buy another ticket.”
“Tell Nao I’m going to fight her.”
“Tell her that yourself.”
“Don’t think I will, actually. I’m not scared of fighting Nao, but if I beat her then Reko would definitely come after me and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Yeah,” Sara replied, absentmindedly twirling a curlicue of fiery orange hair around her finger. “Better to not take your chances with Reko. Hell, she might even try to get Alice to go after you and then you’d definitely be fucked.”
“Alice wouldn’t hurt me,” Joe replied confidently. “He’s buff, yeah, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Much less punch this perfect face.”
“You never know. He might do it if Reko told him to. She’s the only person he’ll listen to without stopping to question it.”
“Aw, man, that’s true.” There came a whining creak from Joe’s end, one that made Sara wince. It had been years since the hinges of his front door had begun to rust, years since his mother had declared that they needed to get the door fixed, and nothing had ever been done about it.
“You’re leaving? Should I hang up?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Joe assured her. “I’m gonna try to balance my phone in the bike’s basket, gimme a second.”
Sara paused as there came a rustling sound, the whir of bike wheels, and then a prompt smack of impact against pavement. She sincerely hoped that the sound was worse than the damage itself.
After a brief period of silence, Joe let out a whoop of victory. “Holy shit, it didn’t break! Dude, this phone is invincible.”
“Okay, you know what, I think I’m going to hang up now. Please, for the love of god, put your phone in your pocket.”
“Wait, but-”
“See you in like fifteen minutes, Joe.”
“This is bullshi-”
Sara pressed the “end call” button and sat back, smiling fondly at the distressed mental image Joe’s voice had painted in her head. He was probably still going to leave the phone in the basket, and he’d be lucky if it wasn’t broken by the time he arrived at the train station, but at least she wouldn’t have to be held accountable for it.
She reached into her backpack as the train made another smooth turn, rummaging around for the muffin she’d bought at the cafe earlier that day to save for later. When she managed to extract it, it had notably lost its muffin shape, crushed under the weight of several textbooks, but the plastic wrap covering it had remained intact. She carefully removed the wrap and bit into it, pleasantly savoring the cranberry-orange flavor. It hadn’t been her favorite at first, but rather Ryoko’s; Ryoko had taken up baking a few years ago, immediately fallen in love with baking muffins, and ended up giving them to friends whenever possible. Though Sara was particularly partial to strawberry muffins, Ryoko’s taste in baked goods had ended up swaying her.
Sara would have to save half of the muffin for Ryoko, she decided; it was a good one, too good for her best friend to not have a bite.
Her fingers itched toward her phone for a second, debating whether or not she should call Ryoko, but she ultimately decided against it. From what Joe had said, it sounded like Ryoko was busy, and she deserved to have her quiet time.
Instead, Sara glanced out the train windows and found that the more rural scenes that had been surrounding her earlier- clusters of verdant forests, farmland stretching farther than the eye could see, even the jarring heights of the mountain the train had climbed- had begun to give way to a more suburban setting. The train tracks were still far enough from any neighborhoods to avoid too many disturbances, but the sights had begun to become familiar. She was almost home. Though it was still late afternoon, the sun was beginning to graze the horizon, its light fading into a deeper gold which painted the landscape with its resplendence.
She hoped Joe wasn’t being too irresponsible in his attempt to reach the train station on time; knowing him, he had the tendency to cut corners. At best, he would have taken a precarious shortcut through the forest and risked falling into a bush of thorns. At worst, he would have tried biking across the highway and incurred the worst type of wrath from angry commuters trying to get home.
She really hoped he hadn’t chosen the latter.
The train came to a stop; not at her station, but one a few stops ahead of hers. As the doors came gliding open, a crowd of passengers filtered in, most of whom were wearing wrinkled office attire and exhausted eyes. Sara did her best not to let the displeasure of her peace being disturbed show on her face- she merely shifted her backpack into her lap and rested her chin on it.
The train took off again, filled with the quiet hush of people who were too tired to bother filling the air with conversation. Sara was grateful for that, absentmindedly playing with one of her backpack’s zipper pulls.
It didn’t take long for the train to reach another station, for another crowd to board and for a few passengers to rise and leave. The car was crowded, with several passengers standing in the aisles, but the quiet had still managed to overcome any mild conversations being held in the hushed corners. A few children were sitting in the car, small enough to be swallowed up by their seats. Sara gazed at them for several seconds, though she wasn’t quite sure why they intrigued her so much. They looked so young, surely young enough to be accompanied by their parents. But no parents of theirs were in sight, only their long, forlorn stares as they hunched themselves into their seats.
The fluorescent white lights across the roof of the train’s car began to spark to life once more as the cool shade of the setting sun settled itself across the land. Sara blinked uncomfortably against the brightness of the lights; however, she didn’t have to suffer long, for it only took another minute for the train to pull into her station and for her to rise from her seat, slinging her backpack across her back.
As she stepped through the doors, the cooling humidity of the late summer air rushed across her face and enveloped her in the fragrant scent of the rich greenery surrounding the station. Sara smiled with relief at the fresh air greeting her- the vaguely old smell of the train car had begun to wear on her. The wood of the platform creaked beneath her feet as she stepped across it, glancing curiously from side to side-
“Hey! Hey, Sara, over here!”
Sara swiveled in the direction of the voice and was met with Joe grinning back at her, waving his arm in the air as high as he could reach it and leaning precariously against his bike. The rich colors of the sunset were illuminating his tufts of hair and glinting off of the golden jewelry dangling from his hair and his ears, as well as brightening up the patch of brown freckles dappling his nose and cheeks.
“Hey, Joe!” Sara hurried across the platform and down the short flight of stairs to the sidewalk below. As she approached her best friend, he opened his arms wide for a hug and she gladly embraced him. A second or two later, there came the unpleasant clatter of his bike crashing to the ground beside them.
“Shit.” Joe slipped out of the hug to pick his bike back up. “Well, would you look at that! Nothing’s broken here, either. I am on a roll tonight.”
Sara considered admonishing him for a second, but ultimately decided against it. “Hope I didn’t make you wait too long.”
“Don’t worry, you didn’t,” Joe reassured her. “I actually didn’t take any shortcuts this time! Rode through the main road the whole way.” He elbowed her, wearing an exceptionally pleased grin.
“Thank god. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to attend a funeral right before going to college.”
“You’d go to college right after that? Not even take a mourning period or anything? Jeez, man, I thought we were best friends.”
“We are not having this conversation. We aren’t ruining our friendship over hypotheticals just because you decided to make a responsible decision for the first time in your life.”
“Hey!” Joe furrowed his brows into a pout for a second. “Rude. Anyways, where’re we headed to? We could always stop by the ice cream place! Though, on second thought, I really don’t want to ruin my chances with getting employed there. Uh… cafe? No, wait, you went to one today already. Without me.”
“Hey, nobody stopped you from coming,” Sara argued. “You were the one who said you were allergic to the smell of books and didn’t want to get within five miles of a college campus.”
“Yeah, I did, but I forgot how boring it gets here without you.” He wrinkled his nose. “Plus I didn’t know colleges had stuff other than, like, libraries and lecture halls.”
“Maybe it’s for the best that you’re not going to college,” Sara sighed.
“Maybe so,” Joe shrugged. “But you’re gonna have to come back here sometime anyway. During breaks and maybe even after college. And when you do, I’ll be here waiting for you.” He turned to her with a wide grin, the trademark smile of his that made his cheeks dimple and was so bright that she’d never been able to resist smiling in return. Even so, his words made her chest pang in a strange way that felt bitterly foreign and painfully familiar all at the same time. What a strange pain it was.
“Anyways, make up your mind already, dude! Where are we going?”
“Uh… you wanna just go lay in the clearing by the train tracks? I’m tired, I don't really feel like going to the store today.”
Joe grinned again. “Hell yeah, man!” He swung a leg over to straddle the bike, then shifted forward to leave some room on the seat for Sara. “Alright. Hop on!”
“There is literally no room there. I am going to die.”
“Just like… wrap your legs and arms around me and hang on really tight.”
“This is a death wish.”
“Fuck yeah, it is!”
Unfortunately, Sara found no other alternatives, and with a sigh she clambered onto the bike and clung to Joe as tightly as she could. “If I fall off, I’m murdering you. That goes double if I break something.”
Joe placed his feet on the pedals and took off. “By ‘something,’ do you mean like… a bone, or your cell phone?”
“Either one works, so you better be careful.”
“Well damn, consider me warned.”
The two of them coasted across the sidewalk, the wind whipping through Sara’s hair and twirling through her ponytail. They rode deeper into the forest, straying away from the main street which the train station opened up to, and the low-hanging branches of trees began to bat at their heads as they rode. Eventually, Joe dipped off the sidewalk, and the ride became far more unstable as the bike bumped over haphazard pebbles and branches strewn across the path.
“You’re trying to make us crash at this point, aren’t you?” Sara called into the wind.
“I just wanted to spice things up a little bit,” Joe protested. “We’re almost at the clearing, anyway, I know what I’m doing.”
Sara clung a little tighter to Joe as the bike flew over a short hill, thanking whichever merciful god had decided to spare her when they landed safely and continued into the forest. Finally, the last flickering rays of sunlight beamed down upon the two of them, and they clambered off the bike to make their way into the flower-speckled clearing.
“Told you I could do it,” Joe boastfully declared as he sat down in the grass and folded his arms behind his head. “ Damn , the sky looks gorgeous tonight. Thanks for giving me a reason to come out here, I probably would’ve missed the sunset if I hadn’t.”
“No problem,” Sara grinned, sitting down in the grass and wrapping her arms around her knees. “Jeez, you’re right.” The swirling violets and navy blues of the night sky, promising stars to come, had begun to loom, but the final remnants of the sinking sun had illuminated the horizon’s clouds in all of their golden and pink glory. It was bathing the two of them in a hazy, warm light.
“God, I forgot how much I missed summer nights like these,” Joe mumbled out.
“Yeah,” Sara replied absently.
“For some reason, I really thought I’d be able to relax after high school, y’know? But things have just been getting more and more stressful. Can’t even imagine how it is for you. Hell, I don’t even have a job yet and I’m already complaining.”
“Yeah, it sure is a lot,” Sara quietly agreed. “Walking around the campus earlier today… everything looked so big, you know? Hell of a lot bigger than Sonobeno. Felt like everything was going so fast there, like everyone had their lives together and they were gonna be more than ready to leave me in the dust. And… It was scary, realizing how much time I’m gonna have to spend without you and Ryoko. Even when I was only gone for a few days, I missed you guys.”
“Aww, you missed me that much?” Joe teased, playfully nudging her in the side.
“Don’t get cocky, I missed Ryoko too.” Even so, Sara smiled fondly. “But… yeah. Life doesn’t feel the same without you, y’know? Guess this is where my homesickness strikes.”
There was a lull in the conversation as Joe mulled over her words, and as the two of them paused, the hum of chirping crickets and buzzing insects slowly, orchestrally swelled to fill the silence in between their exchanges.
“You can always call me,” Joe eventually spoke up. “If I don’t pick up, assume I’m at work. Honestly, you can probably assume I’m at work even if I do pick up. Not like I’ll have anything better to do anyway. Probably. And like I said, you’re gonna be coming back for breaks and stuff, right? We can always hang out then! Pretend it’s just like old times and nothing’s changed.”
Sara gave Joe a long, thoughtful look. There’d been something a bit deeper to her words, something that she couldn’t quite describe. The pain went beyond loneliness; it was something deep in her veins, something that wove its way between her body and the earth she sat on, a cold melancholy that she couldn’t manage to destroy no matter how hard she tried.
She didn’t know why it was there.
“Yeah,” she smiled slowly. “Just like old times.”
Joe let out an enthusiastic laugh and leaned back to lay down again, casting his gaze towards the first few stars winking into existence across the night sky.
Sara laughed too, after a few hesitant moments, craning her neck up to gaze into the endlessness above.
It was a good night, one that was too lovely to be bothered by the deep-seated worrying in her chest.
After all, it was just like old times, times that were too precious to easily waste away. Joe was beside her, the stars were twinkling brightly above, and everything was immaculately tranquil.
Too perfect to be disturbed.