I count the days out loud. It's a habit I inherited from my father, who was stationmaster here, on the local Chiba line that nobody wants anymore, and who started doing it when they diagnosed him with what they diagnosed him with, as if listing what was left gave him the illusion of controlling it. I do it for another reason: because the numbers, said out loud, become one more object in the station, like the platform clock or the timetable board. Today is forty-seven. There are forty-seven days left until this line closes and I'm reassigned to an office at the central terminal, with air conditioning and no cat.
Dango sleeps on the bench on platform two, curled into a ball of tabby fur breathing slowly. Nobody knows where he came from. He appeared four years ago, when there were still ticket inspectors and a vending machine that worked, and since then he has taken over this square meter of Japan as if he'd bought it. He doesn't talk, of course. But sometimes, when Sōta arrives with his bag of tomatoes and sits at the other end of the bench, Dango opens one eye, looks at him, and closes it again. It's his way of approving.
Sōta is the last driver assigned to this line. Thirty-eight years old, big hands, a calm that sometimes seems to me a form of sadness and sometimes a form of patience. We've been sharing a shift for three years. Three years of "good morning," of "the 5:12 train is leaving two minutes late," of "would you like an apple?" The neighborhood women bring us apples, him and me, and we leave them on the office shelf until they wrinkle, and then one of the two parties—we never discuss which—throws them out. Three years without saying anything personal to each other. Not once.
Our only channel is the lost-property notebook.
It's a hardcover notebook, faded blue, that was here before me and that will still be here when I leave, I suppose, in some archive box. Regulations require recording every found object with date, time, and description. I do it in small, precise handwriting, because that's what I'm for. And Sōta, who isn't required to touch the notebook, touches it. I've seen him. He waits for me to go to the bathroom or to attend to a traveler and then he writes his line, in that driver's handwriting of his, slanted and firm, and leaves the pen exactly where it was, aligned with the edge of the desk, so that I know it was him.
These are some entries from recent weeks.
January 14. 6:40. Platform 1, next to the drinks machine. A wool glove, small, cream-colored. Unclaimed.
January 15. 7:15. Platform 2, under the bench. An address book with three numbers written down and none crossed out. Unclaimed.
January 16. 5:50. Inside car 2, window seat. A transparent umbrella, broken at one rib. Unclaimed.
And beneath each of my entries, sometimes, his:
January 14. The glove belongs to the chestnut seller. She dropped it this morning getting on. I gave it back to her. I told her I'd found it.
January 15. The address book belongs to the high school kid. He came looking for it at 9:20. He was crying a little. I didn't ask why.
January 16. The umbrella doesn't belong to anyone. The wind left it. The wind doesn't claim things.
That's how we talk. That's how we've been talking for three years. He tells me what I can't see from my office, and I leave him in the notebook the record that I've read it, because if I didn't, how would he know I'm there?
The belt
On January 28, at exactly 5:12, when Sōta's train pulled out toward the terminal station with its eleven regular passengers, I found a man's belt on platform one. Black leather, brass buckle, large size. It was rolled up carefully, as if someone had left it there on purpose rather than dropped it. I took it to the office, logged it, and hung it on the door hook next to my coat, because there was nowhere else.
January 28. 5:20. Platform 1, next to the loudspeaker post. A man's belt, black leather, brass buckle. Unclaimed.
That afternoon, in the notebook, beneath my handwriting, his appeared:
January 28. It's not mine. But it fits me.
I laughed to myself in the office, with the heater on and my tea going cold, and then I was embarrassed that I'd laughed, and then I laughed again. I wrote: "I haven't tried it on," and crossed it out, and wrote over it: "It is logged," and crossed that out too, and in the end I wrote nothing. I left the notebook open at that page, so he'd see the scribbles. The next morning there was a new entry:
January 29. The belt is still there. I've seen that it's still there. I haven't said anything.
Nobody claimed the belt. A week went by. Two weeks went by. Three weeks went by. It became part of the office landscape, hanging on the hook, and I started looking at it when I had nothing to look at, which was almost always, because at this station, between 9:00 and 16:00, nothing happens. And Sōta started coming in more. Before, he only came in to sign the incident report; now he came in to sign the incident report and to stand by the heater for three minutes, hands in his pockets, looking at the belt, and to say:
"It's still there."
"It's still there," I'd say.
And he'd nod, as if that were relevant information, and leave.
On February 20, day twenty-eight of the countdown, I wrote in the notebook:
February 20. 16:45. Eleven regular passengers have been lost. I've counted them. They don't get on the train anymore. They've gone to the express line. Nobody has claimed them.
And he answered, that same afternoon, in more slanted handwriting than usual:
February 20. I don't know what to do when this closes either. I have a plan. It's a tomato plan.
The storm
On March 4, day sixteen, the forecast announced snow. It doesn't snow in Chiba. That's why nobody ever believes it, and that's why, when it does snow, everything stops with a kind of collective indignation. At four in the afternoon the sky turned the color of a fish belly and by five a thick, silent snowfall was falling, erasing the rails and the wires and the timetable board.
At 5:12, Sōta's train didn't leave. At 5:40, the traffic supervisor called to say service was suspended until further notice. At 6:00, the eleven regular passengers—of whom there were four that day—walked off down the road, hands in their pockets and heads down, and the station was left alone. Well. Alone with me, with Sōta, and with Dango, who got into the office and installed himself on top of the heater like a furry Buddha.
We waited eleven hours.
At first it was a little comical. He went to the waiting room, came back, said "it's cold outside," left again, came back again. I made tea. He said he wasn't hungry. At eight in the evening he said he was hungry and we ate the wrinkled apples from the shelf, all four, sitting on the office floor with our backs against the wall, and it was the first time in three years we'd eaten together.
"My father was stationmaster here," I said, because it was the only thing I could think of to say that wasn't in the notebook. "He died six years ago. In April. That's why the line closes in April, I think. As if the calendar wanted to be literary."
"I requested this line," Sōta said, and fell silent, as if he'd surprised himself.
"What?"
"Nothing. That I requested it. You have to request lines. It's a procedure."
He kept staring at the heater. He had a half-eaten apple in his hand and a drop of juice on his thumb, and I kept staring at that drop longer than anyone stares at a drop. Outside, the snow kept falling without a sound, and the whole station felt like a locked room.
At ten, the cold from the platform began seeping under the door. At eleven, the office heater went out because the kerosene tank was empty and the spare was in the cleaning closet, which was on platform two, which was twelve meters of snow away. We made the trip together, running and laughing like two idiots, and came back with the can and our hands frozen, and when the heater came back on, we both stood in front of it, very close, coats on, shivering.
"You're shivering," he said.
"So are you."
"I'm the driver. I have to set an example."
"Set an example of something else."
I don't know who moved first. I think it was him, because I'd spent three years not moving. But the truth is that one second we were standing in front of the heater and the next his mouth was on mine, warm with apple, and his hands—those big driver's hands, with marked knuckles—were holding my face as if it were a lost object he'd just recovered.
We kissed standing in the office, coats on, and the sound of zippers colliding was the only sound in the station. I took his coat off. He took mine off. Underneath I was wearing the uniform, the blue jacket with the line's emblem, and he looked me up and down with an expression I'd never seen on him, a kind of concentrated amazement, and said:
"Three years."
"Three years," I said.
"And me thinking the notebook was enough."
"It was. Until now."
He unbuttoned the uniform jacket button by button, unhurried, like someone conducting an official search, and when he reached the last one he paused a moment with his fingers at the edge of my shirt, waiting. I nodded. He pulled it off over my head and I was left in my bra, standing in my father's office, with the heater humming and snow stuck to the windows, and he put one hand on my waist and the other on the nape of my neck and kissed my neck, slowly, and I felt my knees do something I hadn't asked them to do.
"Not here," I said. "There's a sofa in the waiting room."
"It's three below zero in the waiting room."
"Then we'll bring the coats."
We brought them. We crossed the platform running and laughing again, coats in hand and the cold biting our arms, and Dango watched us from the heater with absolute indifference. The waiting-room sofa was brown vinyl, from the eighties, and it was frozen as a slab, and we lay down on it with the coats over us, one coat underneath and two on top, and it was the most uncomfortable and happiest thing I've done in my life.
He took off my bra with a clumsiness I liked, because it meant he didn't do it often, or didn't do it like this, and he kissed my breasts, first one and then the other, his mouth cold at first and warm right away, and I grabbed his hair and said things I won't repeat and that he, I'm sure, hasn't forgotten. He pulled down my uniform skirt and my tights, and when his hand reached between my legs I was already wet, and he noticed, and raised his head and looked at me, and smiled in a way that changed his face.
"All this for a belt?" he said.
"Shut up and keep going."
He kept going. He stroked me with his fingers, slowly, up and down, and then inside, and I gripped the back of the sofa with both hands and tipped my head back, and the coat slipped off my shoulders and the cold climbed up my chest and I didn't care at all. He put one finger in, two, curved, and fucked me with his hand while he kissed my neck, and when I was close he stopped.
"No," I said.
"Yes," he said. "I want to see your face when you come."
And he started again, more slowly, watching me, and I watched him too, and at some point between the cold and the heat and the sound of the snow, I came, mouth open and without a sound, because in an empty station even orgasms seem a little indecent.
Afterward he pulled me on top of him, on the sofa, and I sat on his cock with the two coats over us like a tent, and he held me by the hips and I moved slowly, because the vinyl squeaked and because we both wanted it to last. His cock was hard and hot and filled me in a way that made me close my eyes, and he watched me with wide-open eyes, as if he were learning something, and said my name, Kaori, Kaori, quietly, and I said his, Sōta, and it was the first time in three years we'd called each other by name.
When he finished he stayed still for a moment, breathing hard, and then he laughed, a short, surprised laugh, and said:
"The tomatoes."
"What?"
"That I have to replant the tomatoes. I have them next to the track. If the line closes, they're left without a track, and I don't know if a tomato can grow without a track next to it. It's silly."
"It's silly," I said, and kissed his forehead.
We fell asleep on the sofa, with the coats over us, and at four in the morning the snow had stopped and the traffic supervisor called to say the first train would leave at 5:12. Sōta got up, put on his wrinkled uniform, and before leaving he said to me:
"Don't write it in the notebook."
"I'm not going to write it."
"Write it."
And he left.
I wrote: "March 5. 4:50. A driver has been found. Claimed."
The belt, again
The following days were strange. We kept sharing a shift. We kept saying "good morning" and "the 5:12 train is leaving two minutes late." But now he came into the office and didn't stand by the heater: he sat in my father's chair, which had been empty for six years, and I let him. And sometimes, when there was no one around, he kissed the back of my hand like an old-fashioned gentleman, and sometimes he kissed my mouth against the cleaning-closet door, and once he slipped his hand under my uniform skirt while I tried to read him the incident report out loud, and I had to stop twice.
The belt was still hanging on the hook. It was no longer a lost object: it was our object. One day I took it down and put it on, to try it, over my uniform skirt, and it was enormous on me, and when Sōta came in and saw me he stopped dead in the doorway.
"It suits you," he said.
"It's enormous on me."
"It suits you."
He took it off me himself, on his knees, and put it around my wrists, not tight, asking me with his eyes, and I nodded yes, and he held me like that for a while, hands tied in front of me with his own belt, while he kissed my belly and pulled down my tights again, and the office smelled of kerosene and leather and the fresh apples the neighborhood women had brought us.
Then we hung it back on the hook. It was our secret in plain sight. Travelers came in to ask about the timetable and saw that black belt hanging next to the dispatcher's coat and didn't ask anything, because in Japan nobody asks anything, and I thought: if they only knew.
On March 25, day seven of the countdown, I wrote in the notebook:
March 25. 18:00. A line has been lost. Eleven stations, forty-seven kilometers, three years of shifts. Unclaimed.
And he answered:
March 25. Claimed.
The real countdown
The last days were a succession of small, ceremonial things. The neighborhood women brought more apples, and then a cake, and then a handmade sign that said "Thank you, local line," and they hung it on platform one, and the wind blew it down twice and they hung it back up twice. Journalists came. A man from the company came in a gray suit who measured the platform with his eyes and said the land had possibilities. The chestnut seller's son came, no longer crying, and asked if he could bring his girlfriend to see the last train, and I said yes.
On the last day, April 5, the station filled up. There were people from the neighborhood, former passengers, two former ticket inspectors, the mayor, a group of students with banners. There was a table with tea and sweets. There was a television camera. Dango hid under the bench and didn't come out all day, and I understood perfectly.
Sōta drove the last 5:12 train with his uniform pressed and his cap in his hand, and when he reached platform one and the doors opened, people applauded, and he stood still for a moment, looking at the crowded platform, and then he looked toward the office, toward the window where I was, and raised his cap a centimeter, just a centimeter, and I raised my hand.
There were speeches. The mayor spoke about the line's history, about modernization, about hard times. The man in the gray suit spoke about gratitude and the future. A little girl read a poem. I didn't cry, because I have a dry tenderness and I don't know how to do anything else, but when the last train left the platform at 5:12 with Sōta inside and half the town waving handkerchiefs, I realized I was clutching the black leather belt in my hands, as if it were a relic.
Afterward, when everyone had gone and the platform was empty and full of confetti and paper cups, Sōta walked back from the depot with his cap in his hand, and the two of us sat on the bench on platform two, where Dango was sleeping, and we didn't say anything for a long while.
"And now?" I said.
"Now the tomatoes," he said.
The car
The retired car is number two. The neighborhood bought it for a symbolic sum, with a city hall subsidy and a collection organized by the chestnut seller, and they left it on a dead track next to the station, and they turned it into a café. It opened in June. It's called "5:12," because nobody could find a better name and because I counted the days out loud for forty-seven days and in the end the habit stuck.
I work the night shift. It's the only shift there is, for now, because during the day it's run by a girl from the neighborhood who makes an awful coffee and who is very nice. Sōta grows the tomatoes on the dead-track ground, where nothing passes anymore, and serves them in the café as salad. Dango sleeps on top of the counter and charges in caresses.
Last night, when I closed to the public, Sōta was washing the cups. It was ten past one in the morning. The car smelled of coffee and old wood and freshly cut tomato, and outside the dead track shone under the moon like something that no longer serves any purpose and is fine that way.
"The belt," I said. "Nobody ever claimed it."
"Never."
"You know something? I had it hanging there for three weeks and I thought about you every morning."
"So did I."
"And I thought: if one day he comes in and puts it on, I'll die."
"And why didn't you put it on?"
"Because you're a taciturn driver who grows tomatoes and doesn't dare do anything."
He laughed, that short laugh of his, and set the cup in the drainer. Then he came over, took the cloth from my hands, and kissed me slowly, his mouth hot with coffee, and led me to the back of the car, where the green leather seats are that we didn't remove because they belonged to the line and it felt like a shame, and sat me down in one of them.
"This is closed to the public now," he said.
"It is."
"So there's no hurry."
There wasn't. He unbuttoned my white shirt from the new uniform, which has no line emblem, and opened it without taking it off, and kissed my breasts over my bra, and then slipped his hand underneath and stroked my nipples with his thumb until they went hard, and he said things to me quietly, slow things, things that had nothing to do with timetables. He took off my skirt and my panties and left them on the seat beside us, folded, because he's a tidy man, and he knelt in the aisle of the car and opened my legs and licked my cunt slowly, with a flat tongue first and then with the tip, and I gripped the armrests and tipped my head back and looked at the ceiling of the car, which still has the line's lights, and I thought: this is the only thing that hasn't closed.
He licked me until I came once, and then he stood up, unbuttoned his trousers, and sat down in the seat opposite, and said to me:
"Come here."
I went. I sat astride him, on the green leather seat, and lowered myself slowly onto his cock, and he held me by the waist and looked me in the eyes, and we moved slowly, very slowly, with the car creaking a little and the coffee machine humming in the background, and he said "like that," "slower," "like that," and I obeyed him, because I'd spent three years obeying timetables and now I was obeying a man who looked at me as if I were the last station on his line.
When we finished we stayed like that, foreheads pressed together, breathing, and he brushed my hair from my face with one finger.
"How many days have you been counting?" he said.
"I don't count anymore."
"Since when?"
"Since April 5."
"And why?"
"Because there's nothing left to end."
The lost object
There's one thing I've never told him, and that I'm going to tell him now, though I don't know how.
In the drawer of my office—the office no longer exists, but I have the drawer at home, in the closet, under the sheets—there's a clear plastic folder with a document inside. It's a line assignment request, dated twelve years ago, with the company stamp and the signature of a twenty-six-year-old driver who was requesting the shift on this local Chiba line. In the motivation section, written in that slanted, firm handwriting of his, there's a single sentence: "Because there's a person I want to see every morning."
I found it in the lost-property notebook twelve years ago, when it was still a mislaid request, and I never logged it. It's the only lost object I've kept with a known owner. I've had it in a drawer for twelve years, and he's never mentioned it, and I've never told him, and now the two of us are in a retired car at half past one in the morning and I think it's time.
"Sōta."
"Mm?"
"I have something of yours. For twelve years."
He went still. He didn't say anything. And then, very slowly, he smiled, that smile of his that changes his face, and said:
"I knew."
"How?"
"Because the request never appeared in the notebook. And you log everything."
We both laughed, in the empty car, with Dango watching us from the counter with absolute indifference, and then we went out onto the platform, because we'd left the door open and the cold was coming in, and we stood next to the dead track, looking at the stars, with the black leather belt hanging once more from the car's hook, waiting for someone to claim it.
Nobody has claimed it yet.
The platform is empty. The line is closed. And I, for the first time in forty-seven days, don't count anything out loud.