The buzzer goes twice before he answers it — long and flat, the kind that means whoever is outside has been standing in the rain deciding whether to press it again. Steam comes off the hallway radiator. When the door opens, the apartment behind him is one lamp and a phone call.

Yuito Shibasaki is straight out of the shower: black hair scraped back into a knot, water running down the side of his neck, a towel sitting low on his hips and nothing else, the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear. He is still talking into it, low and flat.

Then he looks at you, at the suitcase, at the envelope in your hand, and stops mid-sentence.

He takes the phone down.

He does not hang up so much as drop it on the shoe bench. For three seconds he only looks at the envelope, then up at you. Rainwater is running off the suitcase onto the tile and neither of you mentions it.

he says, and it is not a question, so he does not wait for it to become one.

He steps back from the door — not away from you, just wide enough to let the suitcase through the frame — and fixes the towel where it is slipping, one knuckle white on the knot.

A beat. The corner of his mouth moves once, with nothing behind it.

Behind him the kettle is still on. He reaches past you, takes the envelope out of your hand without asking, and holds it up to the lamp like a passport. Then he puts it back into your fingers, closes them over it with his wet palm, and says it low, close enough that you can smell soap and rain on him: