It was October. The eastern part of the city was engulfed in drizzle every morning. Trees, roofs and streets were covered with a perpetual grey vapour. On a day just like this, all my thoughts and feelings felt jumbled and strange. Finishing my paper early, I craved something hot to eat. When I stepped out of the library, I found Megumi standing under the overhang nearby. Trembling a bit, I watched her trying to dodge the large raindrops falling from the trees. Recognising me, she followed me quietly. There was a restaurant outside campus closeby. She walked like an acrobat, moving slowly while trying to keep her balance. I kept my hands in my jacket pockets to keep warm. Last week, through e-mail I found out that Hoan, an old flame of mine, had died in a road accident. She had gotten married the year before. Her husband’s face was still unknown to me, so was his name. Her death had stolen something vague from my heart. I could hardly stand my loneliness any longer.

After a long walk, we reached a high slope. All of a sudden I felt something weighing heavily on my heart. Megumi was standing under a canopy, waiting for me, eyes wide open. Curiously enough, I’d known her for more than five months. I even addressed her with her diminutive name, Megu-chan. To be honest, I didn’t even know where she lived or what she did in her free time. And I had no intention of learning much about her. Getting to know a person on the surface is fairly easy, but to understand them on a deeper level was another thing altogether. Therefore, Megumi and I seemed content enough to share out love of one thing – Chinese noodles.

By now the Wooden Spoon Restaurant appeared in front of us. Its sign was in fact a huge spoon made of wood hanging loosely over the door. It was nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. The inside of the shop was as small as the inside of a bus. Except for Megumi, me and the owner, there was nobody else in the cafe. We chose a small table close to the window. There we sat opposite each other. The tablecloth was decorated with a picture of an ice-covered river with snow drifting down. So, we were separated from each other by an icy river! She looked at me attentively. Later, she told me that the same thought had crossed her mind at that exact moment. At the counter, the Chinese owner was patiently waiting for our order while we carefully read the colourful menu.

I usually ordered a bowl of fish noodles. I watched them place a bowl with some pieces of octopus on top for Megumi. Watching her relishing the food, I felt my hunger increasing with each bite that she took. Long threads of noodle were cleverly coiled around her chopsticks while the ceramic bowl was lying in her lily-white hand. She drank the hot broth sip after sip. When she finished eating, tiny drops of sweat were still clinging to her forehead, which made her look like a little child.

He was surprised and he hurried into the kitchen. Suddenly, I did not know what to say. Outside, a group of schoolchildren had just left the tube. They looked like they had made a long journey; their clothes were untidy and their backpacks dragged heavily across the pavement.

"When I was thirteen years old, I ran away from home," Megumi told me as she stared at the kids. "After that week, I completely changed," she went on.

"So, you both just wanted to take an adventurous trip far from home. That’s all. I know your parents were probably very angry and worried, but you still had your brother beside you, though."

I was going to ask her further when the shopkeeper brought out a large bowl of noodles. In addition to a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, he also placed two small empty bowls on our table. Perhaps, he thought that we did not bring enough money with so we had to share this JY 500 bowl of noodles. I pushed the food towards Megumi. Timidly, she picked up the chopsticks and told me to eat it first. The flavour of the noodle did not appeal to me any longer because it was her face that was now attracting me passionately. Her long and straight eyebrows shaded her soft, white cheeks. Although it was only a fleeting image, it made me remember a line of leafless trees mirrored on the surface of the water in one of the man-made canals that I saw when I first set foot in Tokyo. At that moment I did not pay much attention to its scenery. Not to mince words, my mind was still focused on Hoan’s image.

But now, in this dingy, little cafe, Megumi’s eyes reminded me of my ill-fated young love. The wind was blowing violently. The dark blue curtain swung up like the wings of a frightened bird. The tablecloth with the picture of the icy river seemed to be slightly fluttering. I had the impression that everything was trying to step out of an immobile state. I was taken aback to see a few teardrops from Megumi’s eyes falling into the bowl of noodles.

"I’m so ashamed! I’ve been unable to control my emotions," she said with a forced smile, wiping away her tears with my handkerchief. I intended to console her, but words failed me. Keeping silent, I took hold of the bowl of noodle, lifted it up and drank the broth, which now tasted a bit salty due to her tears.

Our research team had one week off. It rained every morning. My flat on the 16th floor had a curious window. When it was wide open, it was difficult to close properly, unless I wanted to break the glass. The owner of the flat was a retired pensioner. The week before, the old man went to Europe to escape the humid weather. He told me to use his flat if I wanted to, but I refused because a small, narrow room was enough for me. In a larger space, I would feel more alone and isolated.

Then my need to communicate with other people abruptly disappeared. I stayed indoors for many days on end and worked very hard. I worked until midnight and got up late the next morning. Sometimes, I sat by the window where the wind swept strongly over my face. I drank my coffee cold and smoked heavily. It was raining. I felt that here, high above sea level, it rained rather differently. Thunderclouds wandered and rumbled in the sky here and there. Then a downpour spread over the city with a dark grey cold. The city below seemed to be freezing. Crows stood close to one another and cried out lamentably. It was not the rain, but their screams that made me shiver with cold. I tried to shut the window by loosening the hinge. Half of my body got wet and I trembled with the cold. Suddenly, I realised that I wanted to hear another human voice. I wanted to be warm.

"Hi! I knew you’d ring me up eventually," she said to me. "I’m writing an essay about Racine and the French ancient stage. Sometimes, I’ve asked myself if he had still been alive and lived in a small room full of modern appliances like mine, where he could see the images and hear the sounds from the world outside, but had nobody to communicate with, could he write such tragedies?" she added, chuckling. " I had hoped to go for a stroll with you in the rain. Anyway, getting some fresh air would be much better than just staying indoors," she remarked.

We made an appointment to see each other in a few minutes at the underground railway station in the Shinjuku area. What she had just said was still resounding in my ears. I looked around my room crowded with things that enabled me to pay no attention to cold or warmth, hunger or satisfaction.

In Shinjuku, the veil of rain was getting thinner and thinner. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Some public servants hurried to their offices, umbrellas in hand. Some electronics shops started to open. Their salesgirls in jeans and yellow hats were carefully displaying their devices and instruments such as digital cameras and ipods. Reflected in the glass, were lines of cars moving or stopped depending on the colour of the traffic lights. Whenever there was a red light, black umbrellas, one after another, crossed the street, creating a black band moving hurriedly from pavement to pavement. It was an image of vivid motion surrounded by blocks of high buildings. I pulled up the flaps of my coat and walked faster.

All of a sudden, Megumi touched my shoulder from behind. I looked back in surprise. After a ten-day absence, she seemed to have turned into another girl. Her hair was shorter and dyed green. Her beautiful head looked like that of a statue.

We walked past the bazaar where clothes were displayed and sold on the pavement. In bookstores, lights shone brightly. From a baker’s shop, the fragrance of cakes drew us in. What’s more, the smell of the coffee made us feel even closer for some reason. Sometimes, I had the feeling that I was walking next to Hoan instead of Megumi, but it was her blue eyes and thin lips urging me to hurry up. The hallucination lasted only a moment, but I almost felt my knees buckle under the impact of it.

The elevator led us down. By chance we got onto a westbound train. Its cars were not crowded because it wasn’t rush hour. Although the bench was fairly spacious, she chose to sit close to me. One of her hands rested on mine.

"I feel lonely," I told her. Then amid the noise of the train, I told her about my love for Hoan. It was a tumultuous and passionate relationship and it was the first time I had ever been intimate with anyone. Then two years later, we broke up. I made up my mind to leave Viet Nam for Japan to study. Before going away, Hoan told me she was getting married. I didn’t respond at all. Only after her death did I think about my total indifference.

"If we get off at this station we’ll be close to my flat," Megumi told me, pressing my hand slightly. "Do you want to see my flat? I live alone," she said in earnest. I was torn. Attaching myself to her might be happy in the short term but I thought it would be a mistake so I politely declined. From the platform, she went to the gate leading to the ground level and I waited for the opposite train. I watched her staggering gait. If only I had gone with her but I didn’t have time to change my mind because the other train was approaching.

Throughout the next month I regularly went to the university library and wrote my thesis there. Time and again, I would walk to the Wooden Spoon Restaurant. To the surprise of the shopkeeper, I was always coming alone. In the meantime, Megumi stayed at home with her mobile phone turned of. On the first days of her absence, I phoned her again and again, but there no answer. Sometimes, I caught the bus or tube or sauntered into the newly-opened plaza, but she was nowhere to be found. Maybe she was also loitering somewhere, except for the places we used to go because they might have conjured up old memories. I felt totally hopeless.

When I got home, I looked in the telephone directory and found the address of her flat in the southern part of the city and her phone number as well. I decided to go see her. On the 4th floor of her building I found her name plate on the door. I rang the bell. The door was opened and left slightly open. There she was standing motionless and staring at me attentively as usual.

We had an awkward conversation. I asked about her health and she told me that she was quite all right. During the past month, she just stayed at home, refusing to answer all phone calls or email messages. She took down a small glass and a tiny bottle of alcohol from the cupboard. We sat on the dark green wooden floor and listened to a piece of music by Janos Starker through the two loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling. Suddenly I felt as if the smell of autumn was wafting into the room. I felt the smell of old books, the fragrance of cider, and I felt hungry. Megumi stood up, went into the kitchen. I followed suit. We cooked noodles in an earthenware pot, made an omelette and boiled some green peas. With a sharp knife I sliced the cod and octopus in square-shaped pieces like red and white chessmen. Megumi placed them all in a long line on the small table. It seemed like we were going to play a game of chess rather than cook a meal. Half an hour later, when everything was ready, she tidied up the table and spread over it a large cloth with a picture of an icy river under a snowy sky. I had to cover this chilly distance.

The light filtering through small rectangular glass panes seemed to have turned our food into a charming still life. Slowly, she picked up pieces of food and sipped the cider.

"I haven’t cooked a meal for a long time before this," she told me. "I haven’t touched the food that I brought home from the supermarket. To me, a meal is a symbol of family reunion, whereas, I’m quite alone," she added.

"My brother was gay. He realised it when he was 17. During my childhood, he was my only friend. I read what he read and liked the colours he chose and recommended. To some extent, he was both my mother and sister and my ‘female’ friend. He felt like he couldn’t deal with his sexuality anymore so we made up our mind to leave home and look for a place to die together. On our way, I got sick and he cared for me like my Mum would have. That was when he told me I’d better not die, because I had so many wonderful things to look forward to. Then we returned home. Since then we gradually broke away from each other."

"At the age of nineteen, he went to the USA to study design. He always struggled with his identity and eventually he died there quite lonely. In my heart of hearts, I felt abandoned in this immense world," she concluded her sad story.

We fell silent. After that I went into the kitchen and prepared a light meal. With two spoons, we shared a potful of noodles. The food was hot and so was our breath. My hands touched her warm hands. Her eyes brimmed with tears. I hugged her and brushed my hand over her face.

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