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"How was that dessert place I recommended last time?"
"It was delicious!"
"And what about that hiking trail?"
"If you go up in the morning, you don't get back down until evening... It felt a little dangerous, to be honest..."
"So, how are things with your... special someone?"
"They're good... Ah, eh-eh?!"
Sonoko rattled the ice cubes in her milk tea with a clinking sound. Linking arms with Ran, she navigated the labyrinthine Shinjuku Station, her eyes seeming to glint with sly knowledge: There's nothing you can hide from me, Mouri Ran. The first crack in the spring ice is visible only to the deer who comes to drink from the same spot every single day.
"How... how can you ask that so suddenly?" Ran covered her face for a long moment before finally, half in embarrassment, raising her eyes to look at the friend who had always been by her side.
"Do I really need to spell it out?" Sonoko's voice was firm. "Before, when I'd ask you out, you'd always say cheerfully, 'Sure, where to?' But now, two or three times out of ten, you look at your phone, get that look on your face, and say, 'Tonight might be a bit difficult...'"
She mimicked Ran's tone, capturing it perfectly. "And besides, you have this air about you now... hmm, a kind of 'happy loneliness.'"
Ran repeated the phrase silently in her mind, only then remembering that the person beside her was already a seasoned expert in long-distance relationships. It was entirely possible that even the latest news about a romance could only be half-hidden, half-confessed; this inexpressible state of mind was perhaps its own form of 'happy loneliness.' She had never known she could count herself among the ranks of those who carried secrets in silence.
"There is... someone very important," she finally admitted in a soft voice.
"Really?! Oh my god! What are they like? Do I know them? Tell me, tell me!" Sonoko immediately leaned in closer, brimming with affectionate curiosity.
"Ah, well... It started about three months ago..."
Three months ago, it had been nearly half a year since she and Kudou Shinichi had officially broken up. The reason was official and beyond reproach: separated by an ocean, communication had dwindled; feelings had faded, and so they had parted ways. She had matched his increasingly cool and distant tone during their overseas calls, replying to those emails that became so brief they were mere greetings, every word tinged with estrangement. Her mother, Kisaki Eri, worried, had made a special trip to see her. As Eri looked at her daughter's noticeably thinner face, hesitating to speak, Ran had managed to pull up a strained but composed smile: "Mom, don't worry, I'm fine. Shinichi and I... we just reached the end, that's all." Eri had soothingly stroked her head, murmuring, "You can't force fate," and never mentioned that "boy from the Kudou family" she had once been so proud of again.
In her heart, Ran understood. Through wind and rain, certain pieces of information always found their way through the cracks, hinting that the separation was merely a temporary measure, a performance staged for the eyes watching from the shadows.
For the first month, the second month, she could still spare a fragment of her thoughts amidst the rhythms of daily life to think of him, to worry about him. By the third month, the fourth month, the loneliness began to gnaw at her bones, but the dangers were immense—how could she afford to make a single misstep? By the sixth month, a strange calm had settled over her. She had a premonition that she was approaching the end of a chapter in her life, hoping only that, whether he could return in the future or not, he would complete this final act flawlessly on the other side of the ocean.
It was an ordinary Tuesday. Mouri Ran was waiting for the train at Yoyogi-Uehara Station, on her way to her ikebana class. The platform wasn't crowded.
Her time with Kudou Shinichi had left her with a bad habit, a little boring game he always won. After all, he could trace a person's breakfast, grudges, and murder motives from the damp hem of their trousers. In crowded places like this, silently deducing the life trajectories of one or two strangers had once been their shared, unspoken pastime.
Ran tried to think like Shinichi:
A middle-aged man in a suit, his tie impeccably knotted, but the heels of his leather shoes showed subtle, uneven wear. She thought: Maybe he has a toddler who just learned to walk, who always tugs at his trouser legs when he leaves, so he's gotten used to walking slightly on his toes to avoid tripping? No, maybe it's more far-fetched—perhaps he's actually a corporate spy, and the wear on his heels is from a hidden microfilm cartridge he passes in a restroom stall every day.
A girl in a sailor uniform, head bowed, fingers flying across her phone screen. Texting a lover? Then why are her brows so deeply furrowed? Maybe she's not a student at all, but a young assassin trained by a mysterious organization, receiving a photo of her next target; the weight in her backpack isn't textbooks, but disassembled sniper rifle parts.
These thoughts were absurd, illogical, rising and bursting like bubbles in her mind. She turned to the next person: a tall woman with short hair, a fisherman's hat, a loose dress that hid her figure, carrying a large drawing board. An even more ridiculous idea was born. She knew she shouldn't speculate like this, but in that moment, she vaguely understood that this sudden flutter in her chest wasn't really for the stranger.
Just then, the train rushed into the station with a great roar of wind and noise, stopping steadily before her. The doors slid open, and the crowd began to move. Feeling somewhat dazed, Ran followed the flow of people into the carriage. In the gently swaying car, she gripped the cool handrail tightly, yet her fingertips felt as if they were burning.
The girl was standing not far away.
Through the gaps in the crowd, Ran observed her unobtrusively. Her stance seemed casual, yet carried a trained stability; the hands resting on the edge of the drawing board had slender, pale fingers. The girl seemed to sense her gaze, slightly turned her head, and from a safe arm's length away, gave her a faint, shallow smile.
She had spent thirteen years with Kudou Shinichi; she had spent three years with Edogawa Conan.
Her only thought was: What is she doing here?
When she got off at her destination, the girl coincidentally headed towards the opposite exit on the same platform. Jostled by the crowd, someone stumbled. A soft "Sumimasen" was uttered, and a warm hand steadied Ran's shoulder, bringing her close—almost to an embracing distance. Ran even saw her lowered eyelashes, and in that hurried glance, an expression she couldn't quite decipher—apology or gratitude? A small, folded piece of paper slipped into Ran's palm. She walked to a corner of the platform, to a pillar plastered with a faded poster, turned her back to the bustling crowd, and unfolded it. An address and a time. The ink was ordinary blue ballpoint pen, the handwriting an imitation—rounded, slightly childish. But the familiar, subtle hesitation where the strokes connected—that, in the end, couldn't deceive her.
The ikebana class was out of the question now. She stood alone on the now emptier platform, watching the next train roar in, then depart without a second glance, taking away the few remaining unfamiliar figures. Suddenly, everything was quiet, with only the wind from the passing subway trains swirling in the tunnels, blowing and blowing.
Leaning against the cool tiled wall, she couldn't help but think about what would happen next.
She would play the part of a young woman glowing with newfound friendship under the gaze of those possibly-existent, possibly-not prying eyes. She would nonchalantly wear her newly bought clothes—the knee-high socks with lace trim, the jacket made of stiffer material so it would outline her figure sharply when she walked.
They would have chance encounters in the quiet halls of an art museum, coincidentally sit next to each other in a shop fragrant with matcha, and share the sunniest spot by the window in the school library. They would act like all newly met, gradually familiarizing female companions, with just the right amount of appropriate distance and warmth, exchange Line IDs, and address each other with soft, cutesy nicknames.
Ran: [(Sent a sticker of Chiikawa hugging a rice ball)]
Mai_mai: [(Replied with a sticker of a little crow nodding frantically)]
Ran: [A new soufflé pancake place just opened near Omotesando. I heard the texture is like clouds.]
Mai_mai: [Really? Want to go check it out this weekend?]
Ran: [Sure! (^▽^)]
They began, like all young girls just establishing a friendship, to share the most trivial and safest topics on Line. Discussing whether the recently popular coral blush really suited everyone, complaining about the maze-like complex exits of Shibuya Station, sharing beautifully covered poetry books found in secondhand bookstores, or simply exchanging piles of cute but meaningless stickers. This continued until this carefully woven friendship seemed utterly unremarkable under even the most diligent scrutiny. The whole process lasted a month, as Ran had anticipated; yet, beyond her imagination, those seemingly boring conversations between them turned out to be far more vivid and interesting than she had expected.
Then, one dusk or late night confirmed to be safe, Ran appeared at that apartment.
She watched as the girl—he—turned his back to her, his fingers tracing along his hairline, behind his ears, along his jawline, meticulously searching for the seam. Shhh-click. A very slight peeling sound. The wig was removed, revealing his own ink-black, slightly sweat-dampened hair. Next, the face that belonged to her. Starting from his temple, like lifting a hazy veil, slowly, gradually rolling inward, gradually revealing his sharp, boyish brow bone, his straight, familiar nose bridge, and finally, those lips—no longer the softened lines of the girl's lips shaped by the disguise materials, but the lips she knew, Kudou Shinichi's lips.
"Back to the land of the living?" she asked, deliberately using a light tone.
He turned his head, his face still bearing faint red marks from the ripped-off false eyelashes, but eagerly took her hand and pressed it against his cheek. "This is much more comfortable."
His embrace came urgently and heavily, as if trying to reclaim all the warmth missed during these days. Ran stumbled half a step, her nose bumping against the second button of his shirt, smelling the familiar scent of laundry detergent mixed with the faint smell of makeup remover.
"Gently..." she protested, her voice muffled against his chest, but her hands honestly circled his waist.
His kiss descended. This kiss started with a hint of playfulness but quickly became torrential when she responded. Their kisses during their adolescence had always been somewhat awkward, yet now she could taste a certain heaviness weighing on his tongue. Through the entanglement of their tongues, all that longing and love was fed back to her. When they parted, both were breathless, their foreheads pressed messily against each other.
"I'm sorry, Ran... for making you wait so long," he said, his forehead resting against hers after their breathing had calmed.
She just shook her head, her fingers gently tracing his real brows and eyes, outlining that familiar contour. "Baka."
Before leaving, he put that exquisite mask back on. He took out the silicone pieces, sticking them bit by bit onto his face, obscuring the lines of his cheekbones, softening the angle of his jaw. Then the wig, the colored contact lenses, the lipstick. She watched as Kudou Shinichi disappeared piece by piece, replaced by a strange yet familiar girl.
"Can you still tell?" he asked in a female voice.
"I can," Ran said with a smile. "I'll always be able to tell."
She started dating the girl.
They went to a hidden café near Ueno Park, where tall zelkova trees outside the window were gradually turning yellow in the autumn wind. He played the part of a quiet, introverted female painter, discussing the ukiyo-e reproductions on the wall or an author she had recently been reading in that soft, clear female voice. His disguise was flawless, even the way he lifted his pinky when holding the coffee cup was perfectly mimicked. But it always reminded her of Kudou Yukiko, forcing her to hide her smile behind her own coffee cup. Under the table, hidden by the draping tablecloth, his knee lightly, almost imperceptibly, brushed against hers, the tip of his shoe touching the tip of hers.
She would laugh, her eyes curving like crescent moons, the laughter welling up from the bottom of her heart—it was real.
But the loneliness was real too. His true self was still stranded across that vast ocean, at the center of storms she couldn't reach. His ability to come to her like this was a risk, a stolen opportunity, a brief fifteen minutes of clear weather snatched during a typhoon. Every appearance of the girl felt like a dream on the verge of waking; she knew the bell would always ring. She learned to pretend it was forever within that dream. She carefully folded these memories, storing them in the paulownia wood box in her heart as meticulously as one would store a kimono, not letting them grow moldy, nor letting them shine too brightly and attract attention. She was dating a girl.
One afternoon during the June rainy season, he asked her out to Inokashira Park in Kichijoji. The rain was light, a fine, dense drizzle pattering softly on their umbrellas. The park was sparsely populated. The surface of the pond was pocked with countless shallow dimples from the raindrops, which smoothed out almost instantly, over and over.
They rented a swan boat and paddled slowly across the pond. Rain dampened the boat's edges and the hems of their clothes. She sat at the bow, he at the stern. The pedals beneath their feet creaked rhythmically. Surrounded by a haze of green, the tendrils of weeping willows drooped softly to the water's surface, raindrops clinging to the leaf tips before falling, one drop, then another, into the pond. When the boat reached the center of the pond, the rhythm of his pedaling slowed.
"Ran," he suddenly spoke, "sometimes I wonder, if this continues... will we..."
"Will we what?"
"Will we always only be able to be like this." He looked at her, his eyes holding the rain, and something else. "I mean, if... if that day never comes, if I can never..."
"Then it will always be like this. Even if we can only meet secretly in subway stations forever, even if we have to wear masks forever, even if I have to lie to everyone and say I've fallen in love with a girl, I'm willing. It's better than never seeing you again."
He seemed scalded by her words, freezing completely, his eyes instantly reddening. The rain blurred his vision, blurring the face he longed for day and night at the bow of the boat. He turned his face away, pedaling frantically, steering the boat towards a dense shade under a willow tree near the shore. Before the boat had even steadied, he suddenly stood up. The small boat rocked violently, water sloshing noisily, but he paid it no mind. Stumbling across the narrow hull, he knelt down before her, burying his face deeply into the soft fabric of her skirt.
"I'm sorry," his voice was muffled. "I'm sorry, Ran. I'm sorry."
This girl who never lied was willingly walking into an endless lie for him.
Her hand, cool from the rain, gently fell upon his head—on that soft wig. But the pressure of her fingertips felt as if it passed through the disguise, directly touching his real hair, touching the soul beneath the layers of camouflage, already worn thin with exhaustion.
"You've done well enough. Really, well enough."
The rain continued to fall, fine and dense. The swan boat rocked gently under the cover of the weeping willows, like a cradle. No one saw that on this rainy season afternoon, in this secluded corner veiled by the rain, two people held each other tightly, cradling boundless loneliness and infinite love.
"So... it's a girl?" Sonoko digested this astonishing information. So that was it—no wonder she hadn't detected any male presence before.
Ran nodded, thinking of how he had to slightly hunch his back when walking to match the reduced height after the disguise, that somewhat awkward yet diligently maintained elegant posture. He probably had to practice feminine mannerisms in front of the mirror for a long time to achieve a level that wouldn't arouse suspicion.
"She's... a very gentle, and very special person."
"No wonder..." Sonoko sounded as if she had solved some age-old riddle. "Last time, your mom, Eri-san, called me quietly to ask. She said she thought she saw you a few days ago near the Ginza Mitsukoshi department store with a very tall, short-haired girl who looked very pretty and quiet. You were talking and laughing, seemed very close. She was worried that maybe because of the breakup with that Shinichi guy, you'd taken it too hard, so..."
"Mom saw us?" Ran was a bit surprised, then felt relieved. Tokyo could feel so big, and yet so small.
"Don't worry, Eri-san was a little concerned, but seeing you in such good spirits now, she didn't say much more." Sonoko patted her hand. "As long as you're happy, that's what matters."
The announcement for the arriving train interrupted their conversation. A surge of people began to move.
Ran and Sonoko said their goodbyes at the ticket gates. Watching her lively friend's figure disappear around the corner, Ran didn't immediately head for her own platform. As usual, she walked slowly to that pillar with the faded musical poster and leaned against it, seemingly casually scanning the passing crowd, waiting for someone. After about the time it takes to smoke a cigarette, a figure descended slowly from a nearby staircase. It was a woman wearing a light grey trench coat, with thin silver-framed glasses, projecting an intellectual air. Her chestnut hair was loosely tied into a bun at the back of her head, and she held a copy of the Iwanami Bunko edition of The Pillow Book, spine facing out, the title clearly visible.
Her steps were measured, her aura serene. She walked directly to Ran's side, similarly leaning against the pillar, maintaining a distance appropriate for ordinary friends. Together, they looked at the flickering train information screen on the opposite platform, neither speaking first.
The roar of a train began to approach from within the subway tunnel. A strong gust of wind, preceding the train, rushed out, stirring the hem of her trench coat and the strands of hair on Ran's forehead.
"Did you wait long?"
"No," Ran turned her head, looking at her flawless profile. "Just the right amount of time."
The train arrived with tremendous noise and airflow, came to a stop, and the doors opened. The flow of people getting on and off surged like the tide. She naturally took the not-so-heavy canvas bag from Ran's shoulder, and like any pair of female friends traveling together, walked side-by-side with her towards the train that had just pulled in on the opposite platform.
They found a corner near the connecting area. She used her body to create a relatively separate space between the crowd and Ran, turning her back to most passengers, shielding Ran within the small shadow formed by the carriage wall and herself.
The train started, accelerated, and left the station. The light outside the window suddenly dimmed, replaced by the lights of the tunnel speeding past. The rumble of the train's operation masked all other small sounds. In this moving, sealed metal box, the world seemed momentarily suspended. Ran's shoulder lightly leaned against the cool carriage wall, while her arm, both for balance and to carve out their little world, rested on the glass next to Ran.
They were like two grains of sand drifting with the current, carried by this train bound for who-knows-where, blindly shuttling through the underground arteries of Tokyo. They passed station after station without stopping, the blurred lights and advertisements on the platforms flashing by outside the window like fleeting glimpses.
Where was this train headed? The border of Saitama? The coast of Chiba? Or was it just going to run on endlessly through these dark veins? The destination became unimportant; the name of the terminal on the route map lost its meaning. She took her hand. The loneliness was diluted; the happiness became concrete and minute. Tokyo was never short of travelers. In the eyes of others, they were just two close young women—perhaps students from a nearby vocational school, perhaps colleagues just off work.
In this city of thirteen million people, no one would notice that one girl was in love with another girl.