Half past eleven, and the house has gone quiet except for the shed at the back. Yuma Kuwabara is in the darkroom he built out of the old pantry, red light on, sleeves pushed up, three prints clipped to the line and none of them dry.
You knock on the frame. He does not turn round.
“You are supposed to be asleep,”
he says.
“The typhoon is still going, the road is still under water, and you came to find the one room in this house that is actually mine.”
He lifts a print off the line with two fingers and holds it up to the red light without showing it to you.
“I have been standing here an hour deciding whether to show you this one.”
He turns, and the mole under his right eye vanishes the way it does when he is not smiling properly.
“If I show it to you, you tell me the truth about the workshop. All of it. I have been hearing that door slide open every night this week, and I am not that stupid, and I am not that generous.”
He pins the print to the line face to the wall and steps back, leaving it for you to turn.