The last passenger was barely off the plane as Luka made her first step down the exit ramp. No, it wasn't her turn to stay aboard this time, to clean up all the papers and bags and bits of complimentary breakfast left under the seats—she'd done that on three flights in a row already—but still that twinge of guilt nagged her as she stepped into the cool air of dawn. Leaving all the other flight attendants behind—even the ones whose given names she hadn't learned yet—always felt wrong, something she'd be judged over.
So it was a relief as she made her way from the open air, into Narita Airport proper, and felt a total lack of eyes on her. No, if anything, the terminal was practically empty: Luka dragged her rolling suitcase behind her and heard the clicking of its wheels under the carpet loud as a drumline playing through her Walkman. None of the usual chorus of voices chattering over one another, none of the clattering of heels from a thousand different shoes—the air held still as a puddle pooled into the pothole of some forgotten road.
There was only an air of emptiness around, of peace to gather herself and feel free from judgment.
One of the perks of getting off on a red-eye flight, Luka supposed.
She fetched her notepad from her uniform's jacket and checked its first page. It'd been so long since she'd last visited Tokyo that she needed a refresher on where to stay—fortunately, she'd found the time on the last connection to find a payphone and call up Lily, who'd grown up in the city and still knew a few cheap spots to stay.
"Why's it gotta be 'cheap,' though?" her blonde friend had initially protested. "Your airline's paying for it, aren't they?"
"Well, they're giving me a stipend, yeah," Luka replied. "But it's a fixed amount. Anything I don't spend just goes back into my paycheck."
"Yeah, but how's that a reason for cheaping out in Tokyo?"
She shrugged. "Some of us look at this thing called 'savings,' Lily."
It wasn't one of Lily's preferred topics. And of course Luka understood why: unlike Luka, for Lily thinking up plans for anywhere beyond the next few hours felt a chore.
That difference in priorities was a big reason why they'd broken up years and years ago, Luka was well aware. That, and they both realized that toe-curling sex was just about the only thing keeping them together.
But if nothing else, raising the point got a few motel names out of Lily.
"Those are just for you, though," she emphasized after giving Luka the list. "If you want a guest…"
"I won't," Luka cut in. "Not all of us can win a girl over in 36 hours."
"Seriously? You'll be there for that long?"
"They're giving me a break, yeah. A quick one before I'm back to Nagoya." Luka paused for a cigarette drag—a luxury, never encouraged among attendants for how long they might have to go without a puff, but one she indulged in to keep the stress down.
It was funny, really. The few occasions she'd met Lily in person since their break-up, Lily had always chided her for the habit, given how "straight-laced" (Lily's words) Luka had always been in all other respects. Puffing away on the phone, she found herself thinking of how Lily would be teasing her now if she could, even play-asking for a drag.
"Look," Luka went on, "just give me the cheap spots. I don't care if I have to go past soaplands, either. I'll be there during the day anyhow."
"Fine," Lily sighed out. "But lemme give you one love hotel? Just in case?"
Of course Luka had relented, like she usually did with Lily, but at the very least she'd jotted that name down small, at the bottom of the page.
The big characters she stared at, hastily scrawled, told her now of where to sleep on her own, to unwind in a corner of the city that would at least be larger than the rest bay of an Airbus 330.
That was all her mind could focus on in the dim red of the rising sun, under the fluorescent lamps brightening empty stretches of carpet, the posters for Only Yesterday or for Basic Instinct.
All until she heard her name shouted from across the barren space.
"Luka? Oh shit, is that seriously you?"
She froze like a cat reaching an unexpected ledge. Who did she know in Tokyo? Who'd be here?
No one, she was sure.
No one except…
She turned to face the okonomiyaki stand in the airport where the shout had come from—where, standing alone under its flickering neon sign, a beaming young woman in a tight tee shirt and pristine black apron waved at her.
"Luka?" she said again, less hopeful this time.
Silently, the flight attendant crossed to the stall, the clattering of her luggage still resounding like machine gun fire in the dimly lit terminal. She reached the stand and stared at the woman behind it.
Her heart thumped in her chest loud. Loud enough to resonate in her ears, to make her feel each rush of blood down to her fingertips. Loud enough to overtake that neon buzzing overhead and even the Japanese, then English announcements fired out from the loudspeaker.
"Hey, Miku," she said. "Long time no see."
What Luka had gone through with Miku was nothing serious, she had always kept in mind.
Luka had first met Miku the last time she'd been to Tokyo, almost a year ago now. Funny how back then, on the cusp of a new decade, the lay of the whole land had felt different compared to now: on that first visit, the skyscrapers had all seemed shiny and new, though really Luka had no idea how old any of them were.
Maybe it was just the possibilities she saw in visiting someplace for the first time.
The problem was that since Luka had never been to Tokyo before, she had no clue about where to go or what to do.
Fortunately, she wound up sitting next to a friendly young woman on a bus out of the airport. When they discovered they were both headed to Tokyo Station, the stranger offered to show Luka the way herself.
Maybe Luka should have known better, but she said yes—partly to keep from getting lost, but partly because, she had to admit, the girl was pretty cute, with her bright smile and neatly tied twin tails.
And so Luka stayed in the seat beside the woman, and on the ride she learned the other woman's name was Miku, and Miku had been at the airport to see off a brother-in-law returning from a business trip, and what a weird coincidence that she'd meet someone like Luka on the way back home.
"Why?" Luka had asked.
"Why what?" Miku replied.
Something in the way the other woman had blinked, had stared at Luka, set her on edge.
"Why would you be so surprised to see someone like me?" Luka replied. "Whatever a person 'like me' is."
An impish smile crept along Miku's round face then, sly and hungry.
"It's just, it's weird to see a woman here who's fine not looking so made up," Miku said, eyes narrowing. "Or to have her nails trimmed so short."
Luka couldn't manage another word until they hit their stop.
Once they were out, they only had to find an alleyway before their lips found one another's.
"I've got two weeks until my next flight," Luka told Miku, once they were settled and off each other, at the hotel Luka had booked.
Miku kissed her cheek and snuggled up against her.
"Plenty of time," was all she said.
And it was true, because Luka had all those two weeks completely with the young woman. They were two weeks of seeing the city in its lighted up dress, its dark and dripping backways leading to another prime spot Miku new.
Two weeks of food and waiting by day, drinking and revelry by night—and the blur of drunken touch, fiery-hot skin against skin until morning light.
Most of all, they were two weeks that Luka had never for a moment forgotten, a kind of keepsake she carried with her from flight to flight, airport to airport.
Not that any of it was anything serious. It wasn't as if they were expecting to run into each other after any of that.
Miku knew from the start how Luka operated—how bouncing from place to place made her hesitant to demand total fidelity from someone.
"Not exactly a problem," Miku had replied when told of this.
"Really?" Relieved as Luka was, so easy of a reply had been hard to fully believe.
"Sure. It just means we'll make the most of this exclusive access."
The grin from Miku soothed Luka all the more, then drew her into another embrace and blissful hour of quaking. They went out for soba after, collapsing from there into thinly cushioned seats of a dark, emptied-out theater. Miku dozed as men from Hollywood stumbled and gaped as if in surprise of the flickering light, and Luka tuned out most everything but the comic score and the faint snoring of the girl at her side.
No, she thought in that moment, surely it wasn't anything serious at all.
"You sure you're fine with this spot, not a bar or something?" Miku asked.
That was an odd thing to ask, Luka thought—odd enough to snap her out of the reminiscing.
The spot Miku was talking about—the cafe tucked into a corner of Tokyo Station—was where they'd been chatting already for a good 10 minutes before getting the chance to order anything. At the other end from the entrance, the shop's lone barista had had to spend the time on lattes for the trio of high school girls before them.
"Little early for a bar, isn't it?" Luka said before sipping the iced mocha she'd waited another five minutes to get.
"I mean, not especially. I'm working a graveyard shift, and you just got back from who knows how many different time zones."
"All my flights on the last leg were domestic," Luka replied.
Miku shrugged. "Still, isn't like you're operating on a nine-to-five internal clock."
"I guess you got me there," Luka said with a laugh. "But, seriously, this is fine. I waited too long on this drink to bail out now."
The other woman gave a hum as she stirred the ice in her cup.
"Never thought of it that way," she said.
"I guess it's just me leaning into sunk-cost fallacies. Perhaps not the best habit to keep up."
"We've all got a few of those," Miku said with a smile.
Instinctively, Luka patted her purse, right where the newest pack of cigarettes lay hidden. Just as quickly she drew her hand back up to her cup.
"Sure," she said. "Guess we all do."
A silence hung over them then, impenetrable even by the bustle of passengers and families crowding through the tunnels outside the café. The world was strange in that moment: big and yet so very small, all at the same time.
And Luka was drifting back to Miku, laid bare and panting over sheets, and realizing it was entirely too much for the moment right now.
"So," Luka finally said, "what have you been up to this whole time?"
Miku scrunched her face into a sour, bemused expression.
"This and that. You know how it is."
"You weren't working at that stand before."
"Nah," Miku said with a laugh. "I started there two, three months ago."
"So, what happened with…" Luka thumped her fingers on the table, head suddenly blank of names. "Well, with that place you were at last time?"
"You don't remember where?"
There was more silence as Luka fought to keep her smile up, to not furrow her brow. She traced a finger in the table's condensation as idly as she could manage.
"Wasn't it at a laundromat?" she finally answered.
"Partial credit," Miku said. Her grin was the same as before, just as readable. "It was at a tailor shop. Over in Shinjuku."
"Right, that place," Luka replied with a laugh. "Hey, give me some credit. You couldn't have mentioned that place more than, what, twice?"
"That, and you picked me up from there," Miku said.
It struck Luka then and there: yes, she was recalling, she had been to that tailor shop. Down past the square of the station, lit up and bustling, the people hurrying out the main plaza all at once and every which-way.
Her hangover from the day before had stung harder as she walked into the crowd, and in the haze of the memory all the faces blended together like a fog of vaporous flesh. She'd crossed the street, followed the neon alleys of bars and pachinko parlors and towering floor-a-business skyscrapers, and as she passed the third convenience store she saw it: the plain, simple tailor shop. The wall-sized windowpane sat in display of a lone seamstress, a lone receptionist, both discolored and distorted under the fluorescent light.
Peering from outside in, Luka wondered if she looked like a customer, or a robber.
And she'd picked Miku up from there, walked her back to the station, to the train, where they held hands and could barely manage leaving their contact at something so trivial and public.
They left the train as it screeched to its halt at Ueno, their fingers knotted together tightly as they hurried up the station's steps, out into the sudden rainfall. The droplets kissed Luka's face as she hurried down the road, eyes straight ahead, never daring to meet Miku's.
Remembering all that, Luka could only smile dumbly across the table.
"I tend to think more about after," she managed.
"Well, aren't you a real horndog?" Miku jeered with that same impish smile of hers.
"Hey, it gets lonely on flights," Luka shot back before sipping her mocha. "I need the hot stuff to keep me company."
"So, not one passenger tried to keep you company?" Miku asked.
It was nearly enough to make Luka spit out her drink.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked after swallowing instead.
"C'mon, it's a common fantasy, isn't it? Seducing a stewardess. Someone must've made a move on you."
"A few made a move, sure. Not like anyone succeeded."
Miku took a drink from her coffee, and somehow her cup had emptied down halfway as she set it back on the table.
"So, no girls trying you out?"
"Not so common on a plane, no," Luka said back, daring to flash a snide smile of her own.
"Too open?"
"Yeah. Too open."
Luka sucked on her iced mocha again. After just another few moments she felt a cold rush of air flow up her straw and raw wet noises follow—empty. Still she rattled the ice around, though, gathering up what remained of the beverage.
"So," Miku said, breaking the silence, "I guess that means your relationship status hasn't changed?"
Luka laughed, eager for the break.
"Yeah, no one got into something long-term from plane flirting, that's for sure," she answered.
"Well, how about on the ground, then?"
"Nah," Luka said. She rattled her ice in the cup as she shook her head. "There were a few who caught my eye but… I dunno. Just didn't go so great, even at the start."
"So, they didn't take off?"
Much as Luka was tempted to scoff, seeing the smile on Miku's face melted away the groan that formed in her throat.
"Flight puns," she said. "I guess you realize I'd get those."
"I felt I came up short, not having any last time," Miku said after sticking out her tongue.
"Well, I'll let this one go," Luka said. "But, first warning, all right?"
"Fine. Noted."
The playful grin on Miku's face hadn't let up, though. Her lips seemed to be eager to show off that smile even as they wrapped around her straw.
Again Luka found herself staring—at the grin, at the traces of lipstick left behind on the plastic, the same gentle pink she remembered delicately painting her own thighs.
"Kind of a muggy morning, huh?" Luka remarked.
Miku shrugged. "A bit. Just a Tokyo summer, really."
"Yeah. Maybe the people around are adding to it. Extra body heat and all."
The grin, pink and wide, spread across Miku's face as Luka spoke—and the images bubbled up again. Because her smile reminded Luka of the way Miku grinned the last time they were together, the way Miku smiled over ice cream, at songs over the radio, at the sun breaking through a day of long rain.
"We could get out of here, then," Miku said.
The tissues crumpled in Luka's hand effortlessly, and already she could feel her fingertips kneading at them in her fist.
"I did finish my drink," Luka replied. "Did you…have anyplace in mind?"
The other woman shook her cup, the ice rattling one final time inside, and took a final slurp of what little was left around the cubes. From across the café she casually chucked it into the sizable bin near the door.
"Maybe karaoke?" she said with another flash of that irresistible grin.
Luka took a breath of air as she collected herself. Outside the karaoke room was so much clearer, somehow, so much easier on the mind.
She'd barely gotten through any songs on her end. Miku had taken more—demanded more, it seemed. Only natural, since karaoke was her idea to start with. For all the music Luka listened to, she never had much inclination to sing any of it.
But, still—Miku sang it all so well.
"You practice these or something?" Luka asked after the woman had finished another pop ballad.
"Like, in the shower, sure," she replied with a laugh. "Why? Think I'm good or something?"
"Or something, definitely," Luka answered.
Though it was "something" in the best of senses: it was downright spectacular.
Really, Luka didn't get why Miku was bouncing from small time gig to small time gig, the kind of talent she so clearly had. More than that, she didn't get what kind of drive she had behind it all, or what she wanted.
Most of all, she didn't get what Miku was doing with her of all people, on such short notice.
Sighing, Luka fumbled through her purse for her cigarettes, lighted one. After a couple quick puffs she sneaked a glance through the karaoke room's window to see Miku still there, bathed in the light purples of the UV lights, cycling through songs. The woman's hair tumbled gracefully, water-like, down her neck, framing her delicate face perfectly. Her figure, so small and trim, still curved up ever so slightly from under the tight-fitting tee shirt as she sat idling over music choices.
It was obvious she could have anyone she wanted—anyone at all.
Somehow, the cigarette between Luka's fingers had shriveled down to half its length. She only noticed, at first, because that was when Miku came out the door.
"Not even going outside for that?" she asked.
Luka shook her head.
"Nah. Nobody around to scold me, even if it was against the rules."
She motioned down at the empty hallway, the dim lights casting her hand in shadows of blue and violet under the walls encrusted with cheap plastic stars.
"Well, I appreciate you not doing it in the room." Miku stretched her arms up over her head as she leaned against the door. Still shorter than Luka, yet the slim shape she took on in that moment—the athletic figure—captured her full attention.
Miku frowned disapprovingly at her, though.
"You really should quit, though," she said.
"I get it's not healthy," Luka replied, "but, c'mon, I'm in a stressful job."
"So get a less stressful one."
Luka laughed as she shook her head. "Nah. It's a lot on my mind, but, I dunno. Gives me purpose."
"I just feel like purpose shouldn't drive you to smoke," Miku said.
Maybe there was reason in that, Luka supposed. She took another drag as she pondered the last legs she'd flown on, all the seat belts she'd had to insist on fastening, the passengers complaining about screaming infants who were bothering her just as much, the hours spent on her feet where all she could think of was getting even fifteen minutes in the rest cabin.
All that in a job she'd had to work up to, even.
She stamped out her cigarette, still no one around in the purple-bathed halls to tell her not to.
"What brought you to an airport food stall anyway?" she asked, eager to change the subject.
Miku shrugged. "Rent to pay, mostly."
"Yeah, but why'd you leave the tailor shop?"
She shrugged again. "Someone I slept with kept coming in."
A laugh, somewhere between nervous and genuinely amused, fought its way out of Luka's throat.
"Ex wouldn't leave you alone?" she said.
"Didn't say 'ex.'" Miku stretched up again, pointed to the karaoke booth's door. "So, we gonna go back in, or what?"
The first instinct Luka felt was to laugh again, to brush off the awkwardness.
But she couldn't bring herself to. Something else was in the air, then. Something buzzing between them under the plastic stars and violet lighting.
"You didn't feel that way when you saw me, though," Luka murmured—half to herself, or maybe to the hallway.
Miku blinked. "What?"
"At the airport. I wouldn't have noticed you if you hadn't called out."
"Yeah, fine, so I called out to you. What's your point?"
"Slightly different behavior than how you were with that other girl visiting the tailor shop." Luka turned to face her with a grin. "That's all."
She'd planned the words to come out just as a simple tease—a quick little spark to throw onto the crackling she felt form between them.
But what she saw in Miku after was a face turned to the floor, shoes kicking haphazardly at it. A face that radiated a blush so hard, Luka realized its presence just from the glimpse she could catch of Miku's cheeks.
Shyly, Miku brushed a strand of hair over her shoulder.
"Well, like, so what?" she muttered. "You're not like the others."
Luka blinked. "I'm not?"
"Nah. You're…" Between the stutter, the cutoff, Miku looked up.
Her cheeks were flush, and her eyes—they were positively shining.
"You're better," Miku said. "Better than anyone else on my list."
There was no checking around for anyone else, no eying the corners of the barren karaoke hall. It didn't matter that Luka knew how empty it was amid the purple lights and starry surroundings.
She pressed herself hard against Miku anyway and kissed her deeply, then and there.
They took the train back to Ueno, where Miku's new apartment was, then walked down grimy alleyways still dripping with the rain of who knew how many nights past.
The people only passed them at the station, a few blocks beyond the convenience stores and the bars and overload of fast food joints. Past there, no one—empty street after soaked empty street guided their way back.
Even so, their hands weren't on each other until Miku closed the apartment door behind them.
Her fingers, long and slender, burned into Luka, stroking her skin, gripping her tightly. Gasps and moans escaped Luka's lips as Miku's fingers ran through her hair, trailed up her thigh.
All of that was nothing compared to Miku's lips. The taste, sweet and subtly stinging, like the lingering karaoke cocktails left on her tongue. The feeling—soft, enveloping. As if Luka had begun tumbling down, quickly down through a sky of warm, perfumed mists, with her heart pounding as hard as it would throughout any real fall from the heavens.
She needed more. In the entryway, their shoes barely off, Luka pressed into Miku, lips crushing against one another, tongues glancing across in brief unions. Already sweat beaded Luka's skin. Already she buckled in place as the rush to her head left her knees weak.
"Wouldn't…" Luka gasped for air. The rush of oxygen was like a glimpse above water, at the world on the other side of a glass. "Wouldn't we be more comfortable…"
Again Luka gasped again as Miku's hand squeezed her ass.
"If you want something…" The breath was hot, billowing against Luka's ear. "…you should ask properly."
Thoughts came again: of the fiery allure of Miku's smile, the ethereal music of her voice. How, just as much as hearing moans escape those lips, Luka was content just to hear her sing, hum, even continue on whispering into her ear.
Overcome by the rush of it all, Luka swallowed hard.
"Please, let's… let's go to your bed."
She saw Miku smile that impish grin again, and the grip loosened.
"That's better," Miku said.
The apartment was a one-room mansion—so much easier to get to a bed, with it just past the entrance.
They collapsed as one onto the mattress, barely a couple meters from the door, from the world outside where people were busy living their lives.
But Luka could barely think of that. No—she could barely think at all. The taste of Miku's lips, the heat of Miku's skin were too intoxicating, too much of a narcotic. Her head spun, and the world tilted around her.
Sharing in each other's warmth, touch of skin, their own scents—it was all Luka needed. She writhed and trembled in Miku's embrace, her thoughts captivated by the softness of the teal-haired woman's body, so right against her own, how Miku's playful smiles and laughs echoed so vividly in her head.
Luka moaned it at her: "Please, babe, do me already."
The impish smile that grew, oh, how Luka could barely stand to see it.
"Not yet. Let's make this first one last."
"No, I can't…"
"You gotta build up to it," Miku cooed in her ear. The warm breath, the hum of her voice, set Luka only more on edge. "You can't just come and go on without my satisfaction."
"You… Did you get crueler?"
"Not crueler. Smarter."
Her hand trailed along Luka's thigh, teasing inward, ever inward again in circles. The trace of touch was warm, electrifying. Jolts of static ran up Luka's spine at each pass inching nearer, nearer her overheating core.
It had to hurry up. Had to come closer—she could feel wetness running down her leg, reaching the teasing finger.
"That weak already, huh?"
There were no ways Luka could answer. She struggled to keep a moan in, to deny total submission to the encroaching pleasure.
She couldn't. It escaped through her lips, a low, long note of bliss.
If the grin on Miku's face meant anything, it was that she noticed.
But she wasn't granting mercy. Her finger trailed up to just at the edge of Luka's soaked panties, and pressed in.
Already Luka was about to burst.
"Please, Miku, just…"
A finger pressed against Luka's lips.
"You want to feel good, don't you?"
The finger left Luka's mouth, and against all her wishes, she let the moan escape, low and needy.
"Yes baby, please, I need to."
The response, breathy and resonating deep in her ear, sent shivers down Luka's spine. She lay helpless and desperate, head swimming with bewitchment, enthralled by the sheer beauty of the face gazing down at her.
"Then be a good girl," Miku said, "and let me work."
And the brushing, scraping of fingers along Luka's thigh began anew, the rush of it burning into her deep inside. The heat of Miku's tongue retracing the steps of her fingers sent Luka spiraling beyond hope of recapture.
And as Miku's tongue trailed over her slit, Luka shivered, shook enough to rattle the small bed.
"So sensitive," Miku cooed. "You haven't gotten any in a while, huh?"
"That's not…"
"Or even gotten off on your own? In your hotels between flights?"
Luka hissed through her teeth. "Just… Well, maybe I…"
"I bet you can't keep it pent up," Miku said. She slid a finger along Luka's thigh, the same spot she'd leisurely trailed her tongue along. "I bet you have to get off on the plane, in the bathroom when no one's around."
"No, I don't—"
She was cut off—not by a retort, but by a sudden sting of pleasure as Miku's tongue traced along the wetness again.
Her head tilted back as she groaned out, deep, louder than she could stand.
"You want more?" Miku asked. She tugged at the panties, gentler than her tongue had touched.
"Yes," Luka hissed in response. "Please, Miku, yes."
"Tell me the truth," Miku said. Her grip had loosened on the edge of the underwear. "You got off right on the plane, didn't you?"
"I didn't, Miku, you…"
She hissed again as a flick of Miku's tongue trailed against her thigh, the grip on her underwear loosening ever so slightly.
"The truth, Luka," her tempter said. "Tell it to me."
So Luka groaned lowly, writhing in place.
"Yes," she said, "I rubbed myself, right on the plane, just in the bathroom." Another gasp escaped her lips. The sweet lilt of Miku's voice, pulsating with mingled desire and command, had her nearly tumbling over the edge.. "Fuck, I went at it so hard—I was just so horny, I couldn't stand it. That's the truth, Miku, so, please, just fuck me."
There was hesitation, Luka could sense, from Miku then: a weighing of just how valid, how acceptable the answer had been.
But the impish smile that arose—it was enough to tell Luka she'd done well.
"Good girl," Miku said, as if to seal the deal.
In reward, perhaps, Luka felt the heat of a gentle breath along her thigh, the brush of her own panties scrape against her hips and fall.
And Miku's tongue grazed along Luka, bare and soaking, and she could barely hold back the full volume of her ecstasy.
Not then, or for the rest of the night.
The muggy warmth of the early morning hit like a wet towel to the face. Even now, before the sun had risen, the air outside was so damn hot. How, Luka didn't have a damn clue.
She took a drag from her cigarette and leaned off the balcony. Odd, she thought, how the world out of Miku's apartment was louder than inside. Out here, even as sunlight threatened to creep in, shouts and chatter flew upward from the streets. Lamps along the sidewalk and the lit windows of the Korean restaurant next door buzzed like so many swarming insects.
Out she blew her cloud of smoke, and up it traveled, to a gray sky only now starting to see bits of color. She wasn't sure how much she liked seeing a sky so shrouded over. Here in Tokyo, there always seemed to be something blocking out the sky: smog, skyscrapers, a cloudy day striking. She thought of the alleyways Miku had led her down that last time, those two weeks from before, and how so many of them had their views of the sky all but covered up by crisscrossing phone lines or racks of laundry. So many planes could have been flying above, filled with anonymous travelers, but neither Luka nor Miku would have known of their existence.
The very idea left Luka perplexed. More than that, it scared her—the thought of how many people, how many possibilities flying past every second, only to disappear over the horizon forever.
And as it all stood now, Miku would slip away from Luka just as quickly and completely, just the same as the last time they'd met. And why wouldn't she? That was the way both of them wanted it. They'd had their fun and would part.
It'd be simple. Painless.
Nothing serious.
Luka frowned as she stared at her burning cigarette, watched it continue to turn to ash. As she thought of that impish smile and the rush it brought her, she doubted if "simple" was what she really wanted right now.
"Hey."
The sense of Miku being there, right next to her, caught her attention. Somehow, Luka didn't feel the surprise that should have gone with it, the realization she was no longer alone.
"Hey," Luka shot back.
The visitor—the owner of the apartment—just stood by Luka, staring off at the building across the street.
Luka chuckled when she realized how much space Miku had put between them.
"Still not much of a cuddler, huh?" Luka said.
Miku shrugged. "Not most of the time, nah."
"Guess you came out for the view, then," Luka said with a flick of her cigarette toward the high-rise down below.
"You might say that."
"Is that your way of saying I look—"
Luka interrupted herself, almost coughed as she saw Miku wasn't even looking her way for either that assumed compliment or retort.
As she flicked her cigarette again, watched the ashes tumble down, she did cough, though, if only to break the tension.
A quiet hung over them again, less a blanket of calm than a chance for the buzzing, the chirrups of human voices below to wash back over them. Nothing at all from the teal-haired woman, who stared on at the building, as if trying to see through the walls.
Luka stole glances, somehow nervous at the thought of being noticed.
She coughed again to let something else lift that wash of noise away.
"Want a hit?" she asked sarcastically, lifting her cigarette to the other woman.
Miku's eyes flicked to it as if it were a note passed to her in class. She took the cigarette up, gave a puff before returning it.
All Luka could do was hang her mouth open before she took the burning paper back between her fingers.
"You're telling me you smoke?" she said, dumbfounded.
"Sometimes." Miku shrugged. "Same as you, really."
"Okay. But you were lecturing me about it."
"Hey, 'do as I say, not as I do,' right?"
"Never figured you to sound like my dad," Luka said with a smirk.
The remark managed to finally get a response, a chuckle, out of Miku.
"You usually talk about your parents after getting laid?" she said.
"Might be why I don't get many second dates," Luka replied.
They shared in the next laugh, their two voices carrying through the early morning. If the new people crossing below heard it, they didn't bother looking up to take in its source.
Again Luka coughed in surprise as she felt the raised arm land on her shoulder, Miku's head leaning against her.
"What do you say?" Miku murmured. "Up for a round two?"
A tingle ran through Luka at that—warm, sharp, electric, different from the simple rush of tobacco. She licked her lips, her tongue wet and warm against them.
She was ready to throw the cigarette away then and there.
But, she hesitated. A hunger, an ache gnawed at her inside. She dragged back on the cigarette to see if the smoke might quell it. It did not—the pain stuck, digging deeper this time.
Miku's smile sent Luka's heart fluttering like a frightened bird in a cage. She thought of the planes overhead again, of those anonymous passengers.
She thought, too, of how she badly she didn't want Miku to become just another forgotten face in those endless crowds.
Swallowing, she held her arms in close.
"Say," Luka said, "what if, well, we kept this up?"
Miku laughed. "Isn't that what I'm saying?"
"No, not…" Luka sighed, shaking her head. "What if we kept up, well, seeing each other?"
She felt the gentle, comforting weight lift from her shoulder. Something twisted in Luka's stomach, growing worse as she heard Miku speak.
"Yeah? That's really what you want?"
Luka swallowed. "Well, yeah. I mean, wouldn't it work?"
"I thought so." There was that impish smile on Miku's lips, but darker, more distant. "Yeah. I thought this would be where you'd go."
"What?"
All Luka could do was stand there, the smoke and ashes drifting off, out from her grip forever.
"It can't work like that between us." Still Miku was smiling, even with every trace of mirth having left her voice. "You and I, we don't go that way."
"What do you mean, we don't? Just because I fly all over, that doesn't—"
"It's got nothing to do with your job, Luka," the teal-haired woman cut in. "You could stay in Tokyo full time and it wouldn't change us. Not you, not me."
Luka frowned, stuck in place. "So. What is it, then? What's so damn weird about us?"
"What's weird is we should have started this way," Miku said, turning. "Those two weeks, they—I figured out what they actually mean to me. And they should have been more. They should have meant more, and we should have acted that way about them back then, not now."
Luka knew the air hadn't changed—but a chill ran over her all the same, sharp and stinging down to her insides.
"That's it?" she said. "We change our minds now instead of before, and that ruins everything?"
"The fact that we didn't back then tells the whole story," Miku said. "We could have said we'd go together right then and there. But we didn't want that. We wanted to just go at it, hit the town once we got tired, and let that be it."
"Fine." Luka heard the quivering in her own voice, couldn't even bring herself to fight it back. "So we didn't stay together then. Miku, I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry I didn't bring that up. But why can't we fix things?"
And Miku only shook her head.
"Because it's like I said: it's too late for that, the way we are."
Luka felt her fingernails dig into her palms. "Too late for that, but we can still fuck?"
"It's never too late for sex," Miku said, still barely smiling. "And don't be so crude."
Time seemed frozen, yet the balcony seemed to lift, rise, and fall under Luka's feet. The building across the way still bustled and buzzed. The streets below still pushed along moving silhouettes in continuation of some mass-scale industrial project.
The cigarette burned down to its filter, and Luka flicked the burning cylinder away. It tumbled down a few meters before she lost sight of it, the smoke disappearing entirely after just a brief way into its fall.
She threw open the door back in and marched through it. Behind her, though, she heard a shaking of the ground as Miku shifted, turned.
"Luka, wait…"
It wasn't like how her tone of voice had been: there was pleading in it, desperation. Shaking that hit deeper than the vibrations outdoors.
Luka spun around, saw the impish and dark smile gone. Now she stared into teal eyes that gazed back with what she wanted to call regret.
And yet. In that moment, Luka found herself saying, somewhere deep inside, that Miku's expression alone wasn't enough.
Not the way they were now.
She made her way to the door anyway, didn't look back again.
"I need some goddamn air," Luka muttered.
And she was out into it, the humid dredge still lasting after the dawn, the air so much more still than on Miku's floor.
She had no clue of where to go at this hour. No, she knew she didn't lack for options: street after street she saw signs still lit up, places still open. It wouldn't have been any trouble to grab a bowl of ramen, a cocktail, a few hours of pachinko.
Except she didn't feel hungry. Restless, sure—but not in the way tossing away time and money could fix.
The streets stretched on, endless, alight in an orange-tinted dream against the haze of the new sun. In and out of residential areas Luka passed, houses taking the place of the bars and stations and convenience stores, the buildings swapping again and streets shrinking and widening like human breath.
People passed her by like living shadows. She noticed their shape, their presence. Beyond that, they could have been ghosts. They walked without sound, spoke in fleeting whispers that floated outside Luka's very realm of being. The features on their faces blended together, a smear of skin-tone palettes across space and time.
Luka sighed. How fucking badly she needed a place to sit down.
She blinked, and somehow found herself before a tiny playground: just a lone swing, a rusting metal slide. Beside it was a single tree and—thank God—a bench.
With a groan, Luka plopped onto it, lit yet another cigarette. She inhaled as if the traces of tobacco held the cure for death itself.
The day was starting, but it was still too early to expect any kids to be around here, anyone to tell Luka to put the tobacco out. She sank into her seat, surveying the park around her.
The park. The slide. The single tree.
Back home, Luka had played at a park with one tree, a slide and a set of swings. It was before the economic boom hit Japan—before the urban sprawl had swallowed up so much of the greenery. Some days Luka walked to that little park on her own. Others, her mother dropped her off before doing errands, before coming home with the cigarettes for her father that Luka always wrinkled her nose at.
One of the errand days, Luka had met another girl at the playground. There were other girls there every day. But this girl—she was so happy to play with Luka. She ran behind her because she was happy to be "it" in tag, which was all the better for how Luka preferred to be chased. The way she giggled when Luka talked to her, or how she pushed Luka first down the slide, or how she hugged Luka out of the blue as though she could tell when Luka wanted the encouragement, the simple bit of intimacy.
There were what must have been hours of all that, and still Luka could remember those laughs and that clear, high voice from the girl. If Luka thought hard, she could remember the simple motion of running and tumbling in that exact patch of ground.
But after those two hours Luka's mother came back, and picked her up, and brought her home.
She never got the girl's name. She hadn't even thought, until years later, that she could have asked.
Now, try as Luka might, she could barely remember the face of that little girl. In her head, amid all those moments, the features sat shrouded or scratched over, just like the hundreds or thousands she had passed by now in cities, airports, the aisles of a dozen planes.
A flicker of heat snapped at her fingers. She gasped and forced back a shriek—her cigarette had burned down uncomfortably far. She flicked it to the ground, snubbed it out.
She couldn't let it all fade. There had to be a way—some way—to rekindle it.
To give it a chance to catch fire in the first place.
With a sigh, she headed for a phone booth, loose change in hand.
The door opened before Luka even had the chance to knock twice, revealing a very surprised Miku.
"So you did come back," the teal-haired girl said.
Luka shrugged. "Turns out that way, yeah."
Barely a few steps into the apartment, she felt Miku's arms wrap around her from behind. The embrace was warm; the sensation washed over Luka like hot spring water, soothing and mingled with the scent of a fresh shower.
Luka walked further in, pushed Miku off her.
"Not just now," Luka said.
She heard Miku chuckle.
"What, still stuck on mad mode?"
"I am where I am, that's all."
Rustling through her purse, Luka pulled out an envelope. She felt Miku's eyes glance from the back of her head to the slip of paper.
"What? Write me a poem?" Miku teased.
It prickled Luka's skin, hearing that. Twisted her stomach all the more.
She swallowed her frustration and tossed the envelope onto the bed just past the door.
Miku peered past Luka's shoulder at it.
"Aw, come on," she said. "What is it?"
"Open it," Luka answered. "Maybe you'll find out."
So the other woman flipped open the paper, stared at the inside of it.
She stared blankly at what she saw inside.
"An itinerary?" she asked.
"Fancy way of saying it," Luka replied.
"Fine. A ticket?"
"It is," Luka said. "See where it's headed?"
"Tokyo to…" Miku struggled for a moment. "To Nagoya. Huh."
"You know where that is, right?"
"Yeah," Miku said. "I think they got good clams there."
Sighing, Luka shook her head. "That's my next stop, Miku. It's where I'll be staying the next six days."
"You're really saying what I think you're saying?"
"Exactly what you think I'm saying, yes."
The fingers, long and slender, that clutched the ticket trembled in the morning's low light, the bit of breeze from the active A/C. Miku was fixed totally on the bit of paper, starting as if it had printed on it the world's most ominous horoscope.
She seemed to mouth something, but gave up, laughed instead.
"I already told you how I feel about us, Luka," she ended up saying.
"I know," Luka replied. "And this is my answer."
"And you're expecting me to accept this?"
Luka shrugged. "It's not about what I expect. It's about where we go from here."
"How are you not listening?" Miku stood, crowding the single room as she rose. "There is no 'we', and there's no 'going' for us. You're acting like it's possible for things to get serious."
"And you're acting like it isn't."
Somehow, the expected objections, the arguing, the total lashing out from Miku—they never manifested.
Instead the woman just stood there, slack-jawed, uncertainty swimming in her teal eyes.
"There's a lot open to us, you know," Luka went on. "A whole future, really. Whatever that's supposed to be for you and me. And, I don't know, I guess I want to at least see what that might become."
"That's really what you want now?"
It wasn't anger in Miku's voice as she asked. There was more trembling, a kind of uncertainty Luka hadn't heard in her before.
"Well, yeah," Luka replied. "I mean. I like you, Miku. Even with all the people I see in a given week, I don't find someone like you often."
Miku laughed again, mirthlessly, shaking her head.
"You don't even know me."
"No," Luka said. "But, I'd like to."
Quiet crept in, then the buzz of the A/C unit, stray sirens from outside rushing to save some disaster or another. Miku's eyes still wouldn't meet Luka's.
Even so, Miku sat back onto her bed, paper still firmly in hand.
"That's all I came here to say, really," Luka said. "That's all any of this is."
She showed herself out, and couldn't even tell if Miku noticed her go.
Putting on the flight attendant's uniform was always strange to Luka. It was never quite like getting back to routine—more like donning protective gear before a spacewalk.
She sat in a packed smoking section of a café at Narita, on the other side of security and baggage claim. Already the small coffee, the egg sandwich she'd ordered from the front were long gone. There was a need now, deeper than just the regular clawing addiction, to keep drawing off her cigarette. Just the simple desire to stay occupied, really, in some way beyond playing her rock cassettes on repeat.
Or maybe it was the simple need to hold onto something.
After getting out of Miku's one-room mansion, Luka hadn't bothered making reservations elsewhere. Mainly she drifted from ramen shop to bookstore, café to arcade—anyplace that wouldn't kick her out after a couple of hours.
She dipped into another phone booth somewhere in there, when the combination of caffeine and nerves proved to be too much to handle on her own. Not surprisingly, Lily had been up that late into the evening.
"You really needed to hear my voice already?" her ex teased.
"Something like that. I guess I'm just a little stressed."
"Shit. Sucks big time, being stressed when you're supposed to be on vacation."
"Yeah, but that's just what you're dealt sometimes."
They chatted about this and that, odds and ends. How Lily had thought of calling friends out to a bar she'd heard through the grapevine was friendly, but called it off after a lack of sleep the previous night. It was a strange feeling to hear that the familiar party girl had over the years developed a degree of common sense.
"You end up meeting anyone, by the way?" Lily asked.
And Luka smiled to herself. "I may have."
"'May'? It's a yes or no question."
"So you'd think," Luka sighed.
After hanging up, Luka didn't have enough time left to haunt anywhere else, but it was still too early to show up at the terminal. She bit the bullet and headed to Narita, shed her street clothes for the tight formality of her jacket and pencil skirt.
The packed smoking room she now sat in one wasn't even from a cafe she knew as particularly good. It was just there—a place to wait, to exist.
She inhaled again. The remainder, just the filter, fizzled and coughed out its final trails of smoke. Mechanically, Luka pounded the remains into the glass ashtray in front of her.
She rummaged through her purse for the packet. As she found it, the hunk of cardboard crumpled up in her grip—entirely empty.
Still she fetched it from her purse, turning it about in her hand. The crinkling of it fascinated her on nearly a primal level.
Apparently the woman next to Luka noticed. She leaned over to her, extended another cigarette out of her own pack.
"Need a replacement?" she offered.
The brown end of the untouched filter stared Luka down like some tiny one-eyed beast. She stared back, unflinching, even tempted by its promise of company.
But Luka stood up anyway.
"Thanks. But I should get going," she said.
On her way out she took the empty pack, the one that'd seen her through all of Tokyo the past couple of days, and tossed it into an open garbage bin.
"Now boarding, group 3."
Back on the plane, the groups shuffling about, the murmurs and noises of mechanisms swimming in the air like fog.
Luka stood quietly on the far end of the passenger aisle amid it all as she waited. It never seemed right to her how she was expected to stand through this whole session. She never had anything to do for this period, and yet it was forbidden to actually sit.
She shifted her weight from one uncomfortable, flight-mandated flat to another. The waiting hadn't gotten easier as the day went on. From the cafe to the gate to the plane proper, she felt as if she were on autopilot, her muscles going through the motions on their own while her mind flitted to all the places she didn't want it to go.
"Now boarding, group 4."
The last group where Luka would have to check the seats, account for each and every passenger.
Already people were shuffling in, indistinct, unclear in face and shape. Bags shoved their way into the overhead bins as the traffic moved forward, always forward. A man Luka thought seemed a bit overweight shoved and nearly knocked over a smaller woman. They exchanged bows and shuffled to their own rows.
It was odd to think all these people had their own appointments to make in Nagoya.
Not that it kept Luka's mind from straying to Miku.
She longed for a drink, even a glass of water. Something to occupy her in that moment. The thought of a cigarette briefly occurred to her, but she batted it away.
It was all just a means of distraction, really, from a battle she didn't want to fight.
She felt gray clouds overhead as she walked down the back aisles to start checking the seat belts. They followed as she glanced from row to row—at the overweight man she saw, foreigners in Hawaiian shirts, salarymen dozing off already.
The captain came onto the loudspeaker muttering something overhead. The noise rippled through the cabin like a confused gust of wind, a god unsure of how to manage the earth below. Still Luka was moving forward: fastened belt, fastened belt, one "ma'am fasten your seat belt, please," a few times reaching out to push up the tray tables.
Halfway through coach, she was losing certainty, sinking further into the clouds. Unsure of what Nagoya would look like once they landed.
"Put your laptop away please, sir," she had to say to one of the few awake salarymen on the flight. He groaned, as if wishing to complain, but complied all the same.
She half wondered what he was typing, if perhaps it had anything to do with his job at all. If maybe it was meant for someone he cared about, to send once he landed.
On further down Luka walked, and the possibilities were growing narrower still. She didn't even try to see the faces now: there were only the shapes of the passengers in vague blobs, their seat belts in binary clamped or undone status.
Nearing the end of the coach row, she saw yet another seat belt undone—not even drawn over the miniskirt in the seat, in fact.
The routine of her job took over in that moment and she barely managed to keep from rolling her eyes. Slowly, she leaned in over the other passengers in the row.
"Ma'am, excuse me, but the pilot asked…"
She froze. The face staring back at her was smiling an impish grin.
"Sorry," Miku said. "I should have known such a cute attendant would be checking."
She flicked her tongue as she pulled out on each side of the seat belt, one by one, clicking it into place. Her teal eyes never for a second strayed from Luka's stare.
It was all Luka could do to stand back up again, smile and swallow and nod.
"Enjoy your flight," she stammered out.
"I will," Miku chirped back. "Both the journey and the destination."
A spark flew through Luka—slight, but sharp and warm. Enough, she was sure, to light some sort of fire further down the line.
Another nod, and she made her way down the rest of the aisle, trying to focus on her job, willing herself to be patient.
Because in only 50 more minutes, they'd touchdown in Nagoya. In 50 more minutes, she'd have six whole days with Miku—time enough, Luka hoped, to make up for that first missed connection, and explore what possibilities lay ahead.
A/N: A huge thank you as always to Can't Catch Rabbit for her invaluable editing and her constant support.
This piece came on suddenly to me, after watching the film Chungking Express. Those who've seen it or other Wong Kar-wai films may notice the certain influence here, which I'd be thrilled to see was communicated