The Passengers on the Hankyu Line

Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi Station

Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi Station serves as a fairly large junction on the Hankyu Line.

The platforms for Sannomiya-bound trains (towards Kobe) and Umeda-bound trains (towards Osaka) are situated on the east–west axis; to the south of that is the platform for what’s sometimes called the tail-end of the Imazu Line. Add to that the platform on the north side for Takarazuka-bound trains, and altogether there are four platforms. Passengers ascend to a concourse on the upper level and then descend to whichever platform they need or, if Nishi-Kita is their final destination, they simply exit through the ticket gate.

Those who head towards Umeda can also get off at Juso Station, an even larger junction than Nishi-Kita. From there, they can continue as far as Kyoto or to any of the smaller localities in between that comprise the greater metropolitan region.

All manner of people from every walk of life – solo passengers, friends, couples, families, work colleagues – traverse the concourse at a brisk pace.

But as they cross paths, the contents of each traveller’s heart are a mystery known only to themselves.

She wasn’t in any particular rush, but when the train had slid into the platform and the doors opened, Shoko was caught up in the surge of exiting passengers and deposited onto the platform.

As she was walking towards the stairs that led up to the upper concourse, someone barged into her sharply from behind.

Shoko was still wearing her party shoes with their thin heels, which made it more difficult for her to absorb the impact and keep her balance, and she tumbled to the ground. The wedding-favour bag had been dangling from her fingertips – that too was tossed to the ground, followed by the shattering sound of something breaking.

‘What do you think you’re doing?!’ Shoko cried out before she even had a chance to get up.

A glum, middled-aged man in a suit called out in a shrill voice, ‘Excuse me,’ and raced off. He must have been in quite a hurry because, rather than come back to apologize, he pressed on, hurtling into various other passengers who showered him with complaints and curses.

‘Well, I never!’

The passengers flowed their way around her – not a single person stopped to help her to her feet. They stepped on her and even kicked her. How could this be happening! On the very day of her stolen fiancé’s wedding! Just when her feelings had been soothed a little after stopping off at Obayashi Station.

Her fiancé may have been stolen but perhaps she did have it coming, taking her revenge by crashing their wedding. Though it would have seemed more fitting had the thief and her fiancé himself been the ones knocked to the ground.

Shoko slowly got to her feet, confirming that she had banged her knee quite hard and there would be a bruise forming beneath the fabric of her trousers.

‘Are you OK? That looked bad.’

Shoko stood up. Someone was holding out the wedding favour bag to her. A group of high-school girls were gathered around her, one of them clutching the bag. These girls had been in the same car as Shoko, making enough of a ruckus to disturb the peace and upset the standards of decency, which had provoked the grownups to glare at them.

‘That guy who shoved you sucks!’ The girl stuck out her tongue in the direction of the man who had raced off.

Those fine grownups who had scowled at these girls hadn’t bothered to say a word, but here were the girls themselves, checking on her and picking up the remnants of her wedding favour bag.

Which of these two groups is the kinder one? Shoko wondered with a bit of irony. She included herself in the group that found the girls noisy and annoying.

‘It seems like whatever it was is broken.’ The girl holding out the paper favour bag shook the contents a little. ‘Should we tell someone who works in the station?’

‘Thank you but it’s fine.’ Shoko smiled as she took back the bag. ‘What’s inside isn’t important enough. But I appreciate you picking it up for me.’

There was hardly anyone left on the platform.

Shoko bobbed her head in thanks at each of the girls as they went on their way, then she leaned against a railing on the platform and inspected the contents of the bag.

A box, weighing more than might at first appear, wrapped with decorative noshi paper personalized with the bride’s and the groom’s family names. Inside was a set of tumblers. The glasses featured a fanciful design that seemed fitting for that shrewd yet dreamy-eyed quiet type who had stolen her fiancé. They were tacky – not to Shoko’s taste at all.

When the groom had still been her fiancé, they used to laugh and make fun of wedding favours like these, wondering who on earth would ever pick out something like this as they flipped through the catalogue. Clearly at some point he’d had a change of heart.

Four out of the five glasses in the set were broken. There was no point in bringing home a tacky gift that was mostly in pieces.

She took them all out of the box, wrapped each one with the paper that had been used to pack the glasses, and disposed of them in the station’s glass recycling bin. She threw away the empty box and the bag in the regular trash bin.

At last, there was not a single remnant left over from that tainted wedding – from her stark white dress to their naff wedding favour, it was all gone now. She felt pleasantly refreshed, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

‘Time to go home,’ Shoko said as she started walking along the deserted platform.

She would have expected her feet to be tired from wearing high heels all day, but her step felt lighter. Maybe it was her imagination, and even if it was, best to hurry home before her feet did start to ache. It was still a long way to Ibaraki, the town where she lived.

Shoko headed for the stairs up to the concourse.

Well then, if I’ve made up my mind to break up with him, better hurry up and do it.

Having resolved her feelings of lingering attachment after eavesdropping on the chatter of Et-chan and her high-school friends, there was no longer any hesitation in Misa’s step.

Deftly weaving her way through the crowd, she headed towards the wide stairs that led up to the concourse.

Her boyfriend Katsuya had left her at Nigawa to go to the racetrack, but there probably weren’t that many races left in the day, which meant that she didn’t have much time.

She needed to retrieve her things from Katsuya’s apartment before he got home.

Katsuya lived in Rokko, which was five stations away from Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi.

To start with, there’s my toiletry kit, the kitchenware I bought and some clothing. It won’t all fit in my bag so I’ll stop at a supermarket and buy a big reusable shopping bag.

Her thoughts were distracted by a commotion.

‘Hey!’

‘What’re you doing, buddy?!’

Misa looked over her shoulder to catch sight of a glum salaryman ploughing his way through the crowd, without any regard for the people he was barging into on both sides as he raced past.

It was only because she saw him first that she managed to safely avoid him.

Wait a minute … Just as Misa was about to climb the stairs something else occurred to her. She turned around again to look for Et-chan and her friends.

Misa felt a lingering attachment to those girls, thanks to whose giddy girl-talk she was ditching her good-for-nothing boyfriend (as the old lady on the train had called him), and she didn’t want them to just disappear into the crowd.

The sound of boisterous squeals came up from behind her. And just like that, they had overtaken Misa and were gaily bounding up the stairs.

‘How many scoops are you gonna get?’

‘Definitely a triple scoop while it’s half price! I’m getting Caramel Ribbon!’

‘What about your diet?’

‘I’ll start tomorrow!’

Presumably they were talking about the ice cream shop that was located in the shopping arcade outside the station. Half price, huh? Good to know, Misa thought, but of course she’d be taking her chances if she stopped there today.

It would be a disaster if she were to run into Katsuya on his way home from the racetrack.

‘Et-chan, what are you gonna do for your boyfriend’s birthday present?’

‘I’ll stop by Muji after we get our ice cream.’

‘What’s your budget, then?’

‘Three thousand yen!’

Three times what she spent on her father – and from the previously ruled-out Muji, no less.

Misa had recently seen a report on TV about statistics for how much allowance high-school students received, and the most common amount was five thousand yen. Whatever Et-chan said about her clueless boyfriend, and whether she used that big a chunk of her allowance or had steadily saved up for his present, clearly she loved him.

I want that too.

At the top of the stairs, Misa watched as the girls turned towards the ticket gate and disappeared.

Next time, I want that for me too, to find a boyfriend I can be myself with. And it would be nice not to be scared about him snapping if I tell him something he doesn’t know.

Thanks, Et-chan.

Misa headed down the stairs towards the platform for the trains bound for Kobe.

On trains arriving at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi, the doors on the right side (relative to the direction the train has been travelling) open first, followed by the doors opposite. The door on the left serves as the boarding point for passengers, so a line will have already formed.

Kei’ichi and Gon-chan were waiting for the left-side door to open, with the pressure of other passengers building behind them. It hadn’t been their intention but, simply because they’d been standing by the door, by default they were now at the front of the line.

The doors opened and the passengers disembarked en masse. Jostled by the crowd, Kei’ichi found himself standing in a protective stance over Gon-chan.

‘You said Hanshin-Kokudo is your stop, right?’

‘Yes. And you get off here, don’t you?’

Even as he nodded, it seemed a shame to say goodbye to her here. Kei’ichi had enjoyed talking with Gon-chan on the train – she was funny, and cute.

Though they went to the same university, their campus was vast and his chances of running into her again were slim. At this point, all he knew was that they were taking the same compulsory first-year lecture course, but he was also aware that, realistically, if he were to see her out with her friends, he wouldn’t have the nerve to speak to her. He had to seize the moment.

‘Miho-chan.’ Going for broke, he called out to her using the name she’d said she preferred. Sure enough, Gon-chan looked up, eyes wide with surprise. ‘Uh, it’s just that’s what you said you hoped everyone at university would call you by. Does that bother you?’

Gon-chan – no, scrap that, Miho-chan – shook her head vigorously from side to side.

Then she said, ‘Just that you caught me off guard. But I like it – even if it makes me feel a bit self-conscious. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’

It appeared complicated for her, but in any case, it didn’t bother her. It had been worth gathering up his courage.

‘Since your commuter pass allows you to get off here and get back on for Hanshin-Kokudo, how about it? If you have time, that is. I found something that’s kind of bizarre near this station.’

‘I have time!’

Did Miho-chan take the bait out of curiosity or did she also want to put off saying goodbye? Kei’ichi hoped it was the latter.

With any luck, we could end up at a café and hopefully I’ll get her phone number, he thought to himself, matching his stride to hers as they started walking down the platform.

‘Look, over there.’

Outside the ticket gate, there was a curved, covered passage connecting the station to the shopping arcade, which stood directly opposite. Midway along the passageway, Kei’ichi stopped beside the handrail and pointed at the roof of a plain white building that was visible from that spot. Miho-chan leaned over the railing to see what he was pointing at.

‘Wow!?’

‘Kind of unexpected, right?’

On the roof of what at first glance seemed like a nondescript building, there was a bright red torii gate, just like the ones that mark the entrance to a Shinto shrine.

‘Huh … what’s a torii doing up there? Do you think they built a garden or something on the roof?’

‘But even if there’s some sort of fence you still can’t see any plants or anything. If there was a garden, don’t you think there’d be some greenery visible?’

‘Well, maybe the owner of the building is a super religious person, or maybe the land it was on used to be a shrine so when they bought it they moved the torii to the roof …? Oh, I’d really like to know!’ Miho-chan was utterly intrigued. Then she gazed up at Kei’ichi with a serious look. ‘I’ve got an idea! Maybe one day we can go investigate that building? It’s super close!’

‘… you’re bolder than I thought, Miho-chan.’

Kei’ichi had been somewhat taken aback by her suggestion and when he blurted this out, Miho-chan dropped her eyes, seeming a little embarrassed.

‘I wouldn’t dare to do it if I were on my own but if you were there with me, Kosaka-kun, I think I’d have the nerve.’

‘Oh, you’re counting on me?’

Miho-chan bowed her head, as if to apologize. But she persisted: ‘Though if you were willing, maybe we could do that some time?’

Luckily, he found her persistence amusing.

‘I’m not very relaxed with people I don’t know and don’t have much courage, so the best I could offer is just to go along with you.’

‘Yeah, so long as someone is with me, I’d definitely be up for it. That’s all I’m asking, that you come along.’

‘OK, so, one day then.’ He wondered if, when that day came, she’d really have the nerve to go through with it. ‘So, then, what would you say is the most special thing for today?’

Miho-chan leaned against the handrail to ponder.

‘I don’t know – the helicopters were amazing but the torii is pretty cool too … hmm.’ She seemed vexed by the question. ‘I can’t decide – today there might have to be two things.’

‘Well then, as a reward for upping your daily quota …’

Kei’ichi got a little tongue-tied. It was the first time he’d ever said anything like this to a girl. He willed himself not to choke.

‘Would it be OK for us to exchange phone numbers?’

It was as if he could see Miho-chan’s cheeks go up in flames. She raised her hands as if to hide them from view.

‘Oh, I hate how self-conscious I am! I’m sorry, I’m not used to talking to guys. I know this is no big deal but I get so nervous. Friends – we can just be friends, I know that’s what you mean, right? Of course we can!’

A little bit more … go for it … now is not the time to choke.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being friends. But I might like to be more than friends, instead.’

This time Miho-chan froze.

‘Uh … when you say, more than friends …’

‘That would be my special thing for today.’

‘Er, but even on a group date, nobody’s ever even asked for my number.’

‘I bet nobody can tell how clever you are on a group date. Because you’re too nervous and you hardly say anything, right?’ Kei’ichi spoke from experience.

‘Neither of us has any experience, so in that sense we’re well matched, right? So we wouldn’t be biting off more than we can chew either. It’s been clear from the start that neither of us knows a thing!’

Miho-chan, still red as an octopus, was muttering to herself under her breath, but then she bowed and said, ‘I’d like that very much.’

Kei’ichi responded with, ‘It would be my pleasure.’ It was a very polite beginning – though to what, exactly, neither of them knew.

‘Maybe we can find somewhere to sit, so we can exchange numbers.’

‘Oh! I know a place!’ Miho exclaimed. ‘There’s a food court in the shopping arcade, and my aunt says that there’s a stall where they sell delicious takoyaki.’

Kei’ichi couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

Was it cannibalism for the octopus-red Miho-chan to eat takoyaki?

‘What – is that no good? There’s self-service water too – so provided it isn’t crowded, we can sit as long as we like.’

That sounded like just the kind of detail a housewife might share, as opposed to a university student like Mihochan – and yet he sensed that it was completely in character for her too.

‘I’ve been meaning to try takoyaki, since it’s a Kansai speciality … but, uh, that isn’t very romantic for a first date, now, is it?’

‘No, it’s fine – I haven’t tried takoyaki yet either since I came to Kansai.’

Kei’ichi was already hoping that the experience of eating fried octopus with the octopus-red Miho-chan would be an unforgettable one.