Faraway Dreams

I stepped back into the main lab, brushing my fingers along the stitched seams of my jeans as I walked. The punk outfit was folded neatly in a paper bag by Hiroto’s fridge, a contraband memory that still smelled faintly of food court grease and panic.

Back in my own clothes—a long-sleeve and slacks, plain and breathable—I felt like I’d reclaimed a piece of myself. The version in the mirror, not the one darting through malls in sunglasses, pretending to be someone else’s street girlfriend.

I sat down at the phone station, the chair wheels creaking just slightly under me. From the side pocket of my bag, I pulled out my little phonebook. A faded vinyl thing with ink-smudged pages and bent corners.

Flipping through it was like paging through old moods—teachers I hadn’t called since high school, classmates I barely remembered. And then—

Just two names that really meant anything.

Shizuka and Sylvie.

My thumb hovered over the first one.

Shizuka had said she’d stay in touch. She had meant it, I think. But not like this. Not from inside a secret skyscraper kitchen in Osaka with government conspiracies circling like birds overhead.

So I turned the page.

Sylvie.

My roommate. My partner in crime. My sanity.

If I needed to hear someone laugh, it was her.

I started dialing just as I caught a flicker of motion on the edge of my vision. Ryoji, emerging from the side room. He’d changed too—traded the patched-up punk look for his usual clean, dark-buttoned ensemble. Hair tousled, collar straight. Just like the first day I saw him.

I spoke before I could think.

“Oh, you’re back in your clothes…”

The line clicked.

A pause.

Then, from the receiver: ”…Natsumi?”

Sylvie’s voice burst through with the force of a thousand raised eyebrows.

“Wait—who’s back in their clothes?” she squealed, already halfway to delighted scandal.

I froze. “Syl—”

“—You were not about to gloss over that. Hold on. Backtrack. Did I just hear male footsteps? Who were you undressing with, you little hypocrite?”

“I wasn’t undressing with—!”

“Oh my God, it’s the bodyguard, isn’t it?! The one you said looked like a rainy-day magazine ad?”

Ryoji blinked across the room at me, puzzled.

I pressed a hand to my forehead. “Sylvie, I swear—”

“You swear nothing! I know that voice! That ‘oh no I was accidentally emotionally vulnerable with a hot man’ voice. It’s right between your ‘lost pointe shoes’ voice and your ‘my cramps just started during rehearsal’ voice.”

“Sylvie!”

“I’m just saying,” she continued mercilessly, “if you’re calling and someone’s redressing nearby, then either you’re in love, or you’ve reached a higher tier of Japanese hospitality.”

“Sylvie, stop—”

“Swear to me,” she cut in, voice rising with mock drama, “swear to me on your last hairpin that you haven’t seen him naked.”

I opened my mouth. Froze. Blinked.

Too slow.

“Natsumi?!”

“I—define ‘naked’?”

“YOU SAW HIM NAKED?!” she screamed, scandalized and delighted.

“No! I saw—just—his torso. That’s all. It’s not what you think.”

Sylvie gasped. “Under what mysterious and suspicious circumstances did this scandalous torso reveal itself?”

I buried my face in my hand. “We were changing.”

“TOGETHER?!”

“In a closet!”

“OH MY GOD.”

“Not like that! We were escaping surveillance! It was tactical!”

“You tactically undressed in a closet with the mysterious hot guy from noir movies?! I’ve been living with you for years and you never even showed me a collarbone!”

I hissed into the receiver. “Because you’re not my bodyguard!”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“SYLVIE.”

She was cackling now. I could practically see her kicking her feet on the bed, tangled in her pajamas, wine breath fogging the receiver.

“So,” she said between giggles, “how was the view?”

“I am not answering that.”

“Natsumi. Come on. Was it, like, tragic poetry? Or one of those Renaissance statue types that makes you reevaluate your standards?”

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s not a ‘no.’”

There was no winning.

“Sylvie—wait.” I held up a hand. “What’s that noise? Are those voices?”

There was a beat. Some shuffling. Then she cleared her throat with exaggerated poise.

“Don’t get mad,” she began in her best fake-innocent voice. “I was gonna be alone for two weeks, and I hate silence, so I may have… lightly… invited a few people over for emotional support.”

I narrowed my eyes at the receiver. “Are you throwing a party?”

“Don’t be dramatic. It’s not a party.”

“Sylvie, I can hear dance music. Is that Simone Jay?”

“Technically, it’s Netzwerk. Memories—new obsession of every DJ from Rome to Rimini. Give it a week, it’ll be echoing from every bar bathroom.”

“Is it gonna topple Dancing with an Angel?”

“Yup. Might dethrone it. And—okay, fine—a small party. But nothing crazy!”

“Wait—you’re throwing a party at our place?!”

“Just a few people! And you’re the one out there making the memories with some macho bodyguard guy!”

“No way! Who’s there?!”

The moment I asked, I regretted it.

From her end came a sudden chorus of overlapping voices—music, laughter, something that sounded like a bottle being opened, someone yelling in Italian. Definitely not a quiet evening.

Sylvie’s voice shouted over the noise. “Okay, okay—uh, Giovanni’s here, and Fede, and… maybe Chiara brought some people, I don’t know, they just materialized! It’s not my fault!”

“I can’t believe you’re throwing a party without me—”

“You called me from some guy’s place!”

“It’s not even his place!”

“Oh, is that one of those infamous Japanese love hotels?”

“No, it’s my place,” said a tiny voice over the line.

It took me a second to realize it came from Hiroto’s side of the relay—he had somehow patched himself into the call again, using the fakest innocent-kid voice possible.

He held up both hands, smug. “Gotta make sure you’re not tapped. You’re the client.”

“Who’s the kid?!” Sylvie asked, now suspicious.

Before I could answer, Hiroto leaned toward the nearby mic with the biggest, most devilish smile I had seen all day. He pressed the button and, in his squeakiest childlike English, chirped:

“I’m Ryoji-san’s future brother-in-law!”

I froze.

“But I’m not sure about the engagement anymore, now that your friend sullied Ryoji-san’s purity!”

“WHAT?” Sylvie howled.

“HIROTO!” I lunged for the speaker.

He spun away in his chair, laughing maniacally, mic still open. “They showed up at my house dressed in pair! Coordinated punk attire! Holding hands like it’s a family outing!”

“I WAS HOLDING HIS ARM TO EVADE SURVEILLANCE—”

“Which surveillance?” Sylvie yelled gleefully. “His bedroom?!”

“SYLVIE!”

“Tell him I’ll send engagement gifts. Is he registered anywhere?”

I was half-laughing, half-dying. Hiroto had curled into a spin on his chair, giggling like a gremlin let loose in a server farm, while Sylvie was throwing verbal confetti across the continent.

Then I caught a glimpse of Ryoji in the far corner of the room, quietly zipping up one of his gear bags. His back was mostly turned—but I saw it. The shake of his shoulders. The soft, unmistakable sound.

He was laughing.

Not his usual dry snort. Not one of those tired, forced half-smiles.

A real laugh. Quiet, but full.

Somehow, across a continent and a conspiracy, Sylvie still made me feel like a girl with regular problems.

And me?

I was stuck between them, red-faced, completely exposed.

This was chaos.

But for a fleeting moment…

It felt almost like home.