Like all love hotels, this one had no clock in the room, and we didn’t want to know the time. Of course we both had our phones. But they were turned off and tucked away in the mesh pockets of our bags. The bags themselves we set down against the wall farthest from the bed, because we didn’t want to have to see them, we didn’t want them to even exist. We were trying to banish time from our little world, to make it possible for us to say, what’s this time thing anyway? We’d have sex, then lie there all mellow. At some point we’d drift off into unconsciousness, beautifully, unaware who fell asleep first. After a short while one of us would wake up, then the other would wake up or be woken up. Then we’d have sex again. Since our little world had no clocks and no sun, it was hard to say for sure whether it was two days or three days or even just one.
But eventually we got hungry. We hadn’t eaten since we’d checked in, and we were starved. I didn’t think a love hotel was like a regular hotel where you could go out for a meal and come back, but we called the front desk and they said it was no problem. So we decided to head to Centre Street and find somewhere to eat. We put on the clothes that we had yanked off and left balled up on the floor.
Until we opened the door of the hotel we didn’t know if it was day or night. Neither of us had been wondering which it was. Turned out it was daytime. We could see the sun in the narrow stretch of sky visible between the buildings that rose in front of us. The sky was murky, the same exact colour as a cloud. But to us that was the only colour the sky had ever had. The sun looked the same as it did the last time we had seen it, which made us feel a twinge of nostalgia, weird as that sounds. We walked down the hill towards the Bunkamura. We passed a barber shop and could hear the “Tamori” show on the TV inside. So it had to be lunchtime. Where should we go? How about one of those, you know, lunch buffets all over Shibuya? We walked up and down Centre Street, checking out the options, and settled on a place that I’d heard about, an Indian restaurant with a ¥950 all-you-can-eat buffet. It was right near the big intersection. I had been wanting to try this place, but for someone like me with a shitty part-time job ¥950 is kind of a lot for lunch. But hey, the day was kind of an exception, and so we went on in. This could end up being like the best curry we’ve ever had, he said with a laugh. It was for sure the most curry we ever had. And even though we were both low-wage earners, we both wanted a lassi so bad that we shelled out the extra ¥250 and chugged it down.
During the days and nights I spent with him, things felt different. I wasn’t in my everyday mode, I was somewhere special. I realized this when we came down the hill to the flat area by Shibuya Station, and it was like we were walking around on the bottom of a huge empty swimming pool bathed in sunlight, although I probably felt the difference earlier, back in the hotel, and even back at the performance, when the feeling first started stirring. Now we were walking in the same Shibuya as always, but it felt like I was travelling in a foreign country. Weird. Then I began to worry that if I kept thinking how weird it was, then that special mode I was in would evaporate and everything would go back to the way it is all the time. So I made up my mind not to pay any attention to this feeling. But after a bit I began to feel I didn’t have to worry because the feeling didn’t seem to be that fragile after all, that it wouldn’t disappear so easily, and once I realized that I relaxed. I stayed in that special mode for the whole time we were together, which was a really amazing thing. I didn’t think I’d ever be so lucky again. Because after that mode switched off, the next several days were terrible. But I don’t think that cancels out the special feeling of those few days in that mode. I have never once wished they’d never happened.
Some tiny part of me kept asking, how is it that I’m feeling this way, like I’m on holiday, and what does
