"The Quietness Between Us"

It was late in the evening when I first saw her at the bar on Shinjuku Street. The place was dim, the music soft enough to feel like the atmosphere itself was speaking in whispers. She sat two stools away, sipping a pale yellow drink I couldn't place. Her dark hair fell like a curtain over her shoulders, and there was something oddly deliberate in the way she stirred her drink.I ordered a beer and stared at the shelves lined with bottles, their dusty labels staring back. The bartender, an old man with a thin moustache, moved silently, like a shadow attending to forgotten spirits. It was the kind of bar you could sit in for hours, wrapped in an impenetrable layer of silence, and no one would notice.After what felt like an eternity, she turned to me, her eyes catching the dim light in a way that made her seem both real and not. "You come here often?" she asked, her voice low, almost as if she wasn't asking me at all but some invisible entity between us."Sometimes," I replied. "Not as much as I used to.""Funny," she said. "You look like someone who's been coming here for years."I wasn't sure how to respond, so I took a sip of my beer. It was warm, stale. The bar hadn't changed in years, and I was starting to think the beer hadn't either. She smiled a little, like she knew exactly what I was thinking."What's your name?" she asked, not looking at me this time, but instead staring into her drink, as if waiting for it to tell her a secret."Kazuo," I said."Kazuo," she repeated softly. "I'm Yumi."And that was it. No handshake, no exchange of pleasantries. Just the quiet naming of ourselves, as if we were both acknowledging that we existed in this small corner of Tokyo, for now.For the next hour, we sat there, not speaking much, just letting the quiet thrum of the city outside blend with the music and the low hum of conversations around us. Occasionally, Yumi would say something strange, like, "Do you ever think about the sound the stars make?" or "I wonder what the moon feels like when no one is looking." And I would nod, not because I understood, but because it felt like the right thing to do.At some point, she stood up. I thought she was leaving, but instead, she moved to the stool next to mine. Her perfume was light, almost imperceptible, but there. Like the faint memory of something sweet from childhood. She leaned in slightly, and for the first time, I noticed a thin scar running along her jawline, barely visible in the low light."Do you believe in coincidences?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper."I don't know," I said honestly. "I guess they happen sometimes."She smiled that small smile again, the one that never quite reached her eyes. "I used to think everything was a coincidence. Like how we meet people, how we end up in certain places at certain times. But now…"Her voice trailed off. Outside, a car honked in the distance, and I felt something shift, as if the world had just taken a small breath."Now, I think maybe some things are meant to happen," she finished, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass.I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the words felt too heavy in my mouth. Instead, we sat in silence again, the kind of silence that wasn't uncomfortable but deep, like an ocean neither of us was ready to dive into.When she finally left, she didn't say goodbye. She just stood up, placed a few yen on the counter, and walked out into the night. The bartender didn't seem to notice, but then again, he never really noticed anything.For days afterwards, I found myself thinking about her. Yumi, with her soft voice and the scar on her jaw. I even went back to the bar a few more times, hoping she might walk in again. But she never did.One night, about a month later, I was walking home from work when I passed by a small bookstore I'd never noticed before. In the window, among the dusty shelves and faded covers, I saw it. A thin paperback with the title The Quietness Between Us by Yumi Sato.Without thinking, I stepped inside and bought it. The cashier didn't say a word, and I left without looking at the change he handed me. At home, I sat on my bed and began to read. The first sentence struck me like a punch to the chest:Do you believe in coincidences?And in that moment, I wasn't sure if I did.