Nightlights

The ride back was quiet.

Not Ryoji-quiet—me quiet. I just watched Tokyo slide past through the tinted visor, neon signs smearing across glass like melting thoughts I couldn’t hold on to. I should’ve been buzzing. I’d just seen Shizuka, touched her, laughed with her. She was still her—sharp, dry, warm in that thorny way.

And yet something inside me had curled inward.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I hadn’t said a full sentence in fifteen minutes. Ryoji didn’t ask. He never did, not when he knew I was chewing glass behind my smile.

We stepped into the lobby. I started heading toward the elevator.

“Wait.”

I turned. He was at the vending machine, hands in his jacket pockets.

“You like citrus?”

“Yeah…?”

He hit a button. A can dropped with a mechanical clunk.

Then, without a word, he dropped more coins and hit it again.

The second clunk followed.

He tossed me one and nodded toward the emergency stairwell.

“Come up. I want to see the lights.”

I blinked. “What lights?”

“The traffic,” he said. “From the roof.”

I stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Come on,” he said, already pushing through the door. “You need air.”

I could’ve said no. Should’ve, maybe. I was tired. But his voice didn’t sound like an order—it sounded like an escape hatch. And I couldn’t resist.

We climbed in silence. Eight flights, maybe more—I lost count somewhere around floor six. Then, the door. Cool night air.

Tokyo spread out beneath us like a glowing circuit board, humming with too many memories.

Ryoji leaned against the concrete edge, popping open his can with a low hiss.

I stood beside him, trying not to shiver. The wind was thin up here, but honest.

He looked out, then said—flat, no cruelty in it, just fact:

“So. Was the wind cracking from beneath the door of your past worth it?”

I held the can, unopened. “That’s a bit poetic for you.”

I gave a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah. It was worth it.”

“You’re lying.”

I looked at him, surprised.

“You were smiling when she hugged you,” he said. “And you went quiet the second we left.”

I turned away. The lights blurred a little, not from distance. “She hasn’t changed.”

“You have.”

Silence again.

He didn’t push, didn’t dig.

But then he asked, softer than I expected: “Did you ever talk to your parents about it? The heartbreak?”

“No,” I said instantly. “I haven’t said anything to Dad.”

His head tilted. “Why not?”

“What would I say? ‘Hey, Dad, remember that boy you thought was too perfect to be true? Turns out you were right.’”

He was quiet again. But not absent. Just giving space.

Then: “Let it out.”

“What?”

“Let it out,” he repeated like he was unlocking something with the phrase.

I felt my chest tighten. I gripped the soda can harder. “I don’t even know where to start.”

He didn’t look at me. Just sipped his drink, watching the traffic like it was giving him a lecture.

“Start with how it happened.”

And just like that, I felt the dam in my throat crack.

But I didn’t speak yet.

I just breathed.

And tried to remember the moment it all began to end.