The Winter Project

41. Minoru

Minoru sat wide awake in the guest bed of Ricco's house, a place that was starting to feel quite like home as it was the only bed he had stayed in every night for more than a fortnight in almost six months. He was forcing himself to stay awake so that he could have a conversation with himself in his head in which he was trying to convince himself that he was not in love. He told himself repeatedly that it was not possible to fall in love with a woman just because she had freckles and was able to laugh at being knocked flat onto the ground. He tried to convince himself that seeing a total stranger fall asleep listening to him describe the stars was not romantic but a sign that she was probably just bored of the sound of his voice. Minoru was not a romantic person, so why all of a sudden was he so fixated on the little details that felt like they had come straight out of a timeless romance novel, too incredible to describe in only a few words? He told himself it had just been too long since he had been intimate with someone and that this was clouding his judgement.

He tried to turn his mind off, but he was awake all night until the sun rose in the morning and he heard the now familiar sounds of Ricco leaving for work. He wanted to go back to the pier and look for her, but he was unsure whether it was too soon to bombard her with his presence. Maybe he would scare her away. Maybe it really had just been too long since he had made a new friend who was female, and the fact that she was the most attractive person he had seen in years was just an additional fact that did not need to be put into the equation.

He thought of her laugh and her freckles and the specks of paint on her cheeks, and he thought that there could be no other explanation for why he was so obsessed with that image than the fact he was in love with her.

It took him three whole days before he summoned the courage to go back to her hotel and find her again. The only thing that had encouraged him was Ricco's still-existing belief in true love despite his recent heartbreak, and how Ricco constantly reminded Minoru that his time in Italy, and on the planet, was numbered and if you believe in something then you should act on it immediately. Ricco's enthusiasm at Minoru's story of meeting her had thrown him into a frenzy of excitement, and he had spent days talking about how fate had played such a huge part in all of this; in leading Minoru to Ricco and Stephanie pushing Minoru away from Japan. Minoru was skeptical and did not for a minute believe in fate, but Ricco was sure of it. He was confident that every decision made by each person so far had been pre-decided so that Minoru could meet her. Even Stephanie's obsession was designed for Minoru to meet this new woman, and Ricco even believed that Stephanie was on her own path of fate to find someone else for her.

Minoru secretly and only briefly regretted the time when he had met Ricco and decided that Ricco was the person who's perspective on life he would mirror, but he got caught up in the excitement and eventually he gave in, cautiously heading back to find her, too impatient to delay the inevitable any longer.

When he arrived at the pier, she was there just like he had imagined. This time she was wearing an oversized knitted beige jumper and black leggings or tights, he couldn't tell. Her hair was atop her head wrapped in a bun, with a few strands flying loosely around her face in the morning wind. She was more beautiful this time than the last time, and his heart hurt. He remembered this feeling from when he was eighteen years old, when he met his first love. This time it was different though. It was real, and it was in the present. It wasn't a romanticised version of a relationship that hadn't worked out; it was one that just quite possibly hadn't begun yet. The initial excitement of meeting somebody new is so often talked about as one of the most incredible feelings in the world, Minoru thought to himself, but he had only ever experienced it a few times. He knew he shouldn't get caught up in the fantasy, but he was struggling to resist. Maybe Ricco was right after all; what an incredible twist of fate to find two people from the same city living in a completely different country, both driven there by such bizarre circumstances. Could it really just be coincidence? As he walked over to her and saw her up close, he expected himself to be brought back to reality, that the image of her he had been dreaming of the past few days was an exaggeration. He was wrong. She was everything.