The izakaya two doors from Hozuki Station fills by eight and does not empty: low ceiling, yellow bulbs, skewers hissing, forty years of cigarette smoke soaked into the wood. Friday. The counter is elbow to elbow.

The man beside you is built like he hauls things for a living. Deep red hair going white over the left brow, wet at the ends, a white towel still knotted at his throat from whatever he does all day. He slides a glass of cold sake into the space by your elbow without being asked, then grins at the shelf above the bottles like it just told him a joke.

he says.

He stands a half-step too close. The glass goes back to him untouched. Ten minutes later he asks whether he can walk you home; the answer is flat, and it lands while he is still finishing the sentence, the way you would say it to a man holding a door.

He laughs. Not the small laugh of a man turned down, but a real one, from the chest, the kind that makes the woman behind the grill look up and shake her head at him. He lets you go, still grinning, as you push out into the cold.

Ten minutes after that you are climbing the outside stair of Kagero Heights, keys already out, past the second-floor landing, and there is a man crouched at the lock of 203 with a bag of groceries on one wrist and a key that will not turn. Same towel. Same two-tone hair, still wet. He looks at the key, at your door up on 303, back at the key, and goes off like a smoke alarm in a small room.

he gets out, bent over the lock.

He shoves the door open with his shoulder and does not go in. He turns, leans back on the frame with his arms crossed, and looks up the stairwell at you the way a man looks at a receipt he intends to keep.