Chapter 2 - familier girl?

 Chapter 2

The train is never quiet either.

It is a different kind of noise though one that has nothing to do with me. People talking, wheels on the track, a child asking her mother something three times without waiting for an answer. I don't mind this noise. It asks nothing from me.

I find a seat near the window. I always sit near the window. Not because I like looking outside because it means one less side someone can sit on.

The city moves past the glass. Buildings, wires, another train going the other direction. Somewhere in all of it my father is shaking more hands, making more promises, wearing more faces.

I open my bag and check that the history presentation is there even though I know it is. I checked before I left the apartment. I checked twice.

Having nothing to do is more dangerous than having too much.

I close the bag.

There is a girl standing near the doors who has been looking at me for approximately forty seconds. Not the way people look at strangers the way people look at someone they are trying to decide something about. I notice things like that. I have always noticed things like that.

I look back at the window.

She sits down two seats from me thirty seconds later.

"You're in class 2-A right."

Not a question. She already knows the answer.

I turn. She is smiling warm, easy, the kind of smile that makes people immediately comfortable. Dark hair, neat, nothing out of place. She looks like someone who has never been caught off guard in her life.

"Yeah," I say.

"Me too." She tilts her head slightly. "I transferred last week. I don't think you noticed."

She's right. I didn't.

"Hori," she says, like she's offering something.

I look at her for exactly one second longer than necessary. There is nothing wrong with her face. There is nothing wrong with her smile. There is nothing wrong with anything about her at all.

That is the thing that feels wrong.

"Shin," I say.

She nods like she already knew that too. Then she looks out her own window and says nothing else for the rest of the ride.

I spend the remaining eleven minutes looking at the city and thinking about nothing.

That is what I tell myself anyway.

End of Chapter 2