“Should I take it off?”

              “Do what you want.”  He shrugged.  “I don’t think it’s bothering anyone.”

              “You don’t think I look stupid?”

              “No, it’s fine.”

              “You’re sure.”

              “Yeah, it’s fine.”  He smiled.  “You don’t look stupid.”

              “Hmm.”  I pulled the hat down over my eyes.  “I’ve never been up here.”

              “There’s usually someone sitting up here, so it’s hard to get a seat.  Pretty cool, though, right?”

              “Yeah, I guess.”  I said, staring through the glass at the front of the train.  “It’s still too dark to see.”

              He shrugged.  “So what are we doing when we get there?”

              “I don’t know.  I didn’t really have a plan.  I thought we could decide when we reached Kyobashi.”

              “We came all this way for no reason?”

              “Sort of, yeah.  I didn’t plan on doing this when we left.  I thought we would just walk to Sanjo, climb down on the bank to sit and talk until the sun rose, then eat and walk back.”

              “So why Osaka, suddenly?”

              I shrugged.  The train shuddered.  “It just came to me.  I’ve never been there at sunrise.”

              “Yes, you have.”

              “When?”

              “That time.  With Kazu and Ms. Kurokami.  We drank until sunrise, then drove back to Ikoma.  At least,” he smirked, “you drank until dawn.  I had to drive.”

              “I don’t remember that.  Are you sure?”

              “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.  You slept for two days afterwards.  Mom was worried about you.”

              I shrugged.  “If you say so.  I remember drinking, what, two years ago?  I can’t believe you’re bringing this up.  I don’t remember the sunrise.”  A man in a suit was staring at me.  His eyes were rimmed with red, and his tie hung loosely around his neck.  A blue silk noose.

              “It could get caught in the door.”

              “What could?”  He was confused.

              “A tie.  If it did, it would hang you.  Has that ever happened?”

              “Not that I know of.  People jump in front of the trains sometimes, but never hang themselves with their ties from the door.”

              “So have you seen someone jump?”
              He thought about it, lips pursed.  “No, I haven’t.  How about you?”

              “No, no.  Never seen a suicide.”

              “Ever wanted to?”

              “What do you mean?”  I knew what he meant.  I was just surprised by the question.  “Maybe.  Sometimes.”  My ears burned under my hat.  The businessman was still staring at me.  I unconsciously touched the cat-shaped ears on the top of my hat, and narrowed my eyes at him.  He was unfazed, and just kept staring.

              “What about Nipponbashi?”

              “For what?”

              “We could go there, eat breakfast.  Look at the toys.”

              “There’s not a damn thing worth eating in Nipponbashi.”  I laughed.  “Besides, if we head straight there, it’ll only be 6:30.  Nothing in Nipponbashi opens ‘til 8:30.”

              “True.”  He stared past the businessman, out the far window.  The sky had gradually grown lighter.  “Thanks to work, my schedule is completely fucked up.”

              “So is mine.”  I nodded.  “School starts soon for me though, so it should get better.”  I leaned against his shoulder.  He shifted his weight towards me.  “We don’t have a lot of time.”

              “Until what?”

              “In general.  Only a few months.”

              “Yeah, true.”

              “So?”

              “So?”  He looked at me.  “So what?”

              “So we won’t be like this forever.  We might not ever get to be here and feel this again.”

              “That’s probably not true.”

              “Maybe not.  But I won’t be twenty anymore, if we do come here again.  You won’t be working nights.  We won’t have our little house with our desk and our washing machine.  We won’t have our pool hall or that café.  We won’t have anything.  You’ll be at home, and who knows where I’ll be.  And next time I see you, we won’t be here.  So it follows that we won’t be us anymore.  We won’t be who were are now.”

              “Why do you always think like that?  We weren’t who we are now when we met.  And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I think it’s pretty normal.”

              “I don’t know.”  I shrugged.

              “You’re just gonna ruin the last few months for yourself if you keep saying that.”

              “I know.  That’s what my mom said too.”

              “So, don’t talk like that then.”  He put an arm around me.  “We’ll always have those places, so long as we both remember them and talk about them and tell others.  Besides, we’ll be back, sometime.”

              I had been nestling into him, but sitting up, I slapped his shoulder lightly with my hand.  “Ugh, what are you talking about?  Please tell me you aren’t going to say ‘we’ll always have the first train to Osaka,’ or something lame like that, right?”

              He laughed.  “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

              The train rattled, and the businessman across the aisle continued to stare drunkenly at me.  I pulled my hat over my eyes.