The invitation arrives on my phone like a harmless thing.
It's from Yuto, which means it is not harmless at all.
Midterm party tonight. Come. Big fun. Allysa's friends there. Bring your face.
Yuto's messages are all caps and emojis. He adds a sticker of a smiling beer mug, because apparently that is humor.
I stare at the screen longer than I should. Of all the things I told myself not to do, going to a party where Allysa might be feels dangerously close to looking at the sun. But Yuto has a grin like a challenge. And sometimes you accept a challenge because it's easier than explaining why you refuse.
I type back: I'll come. Only for an hour. Inventory tomorrow.
He replies instantly: Good. Don't chicken out. Wear something decent. No ramen stains.
I smile despite myself. Ramen stains are, in my wardrobe, a constant threat.
⸻
The city has a different pulse when evening arrives. The lights have a softer confidence than morning; people loosen ties and shoulders. Tonight the university clubs have spilled into the cafés and tiny izakayas near campus. I meet Yuto in front of the station. He is already animated, a thread of laughter following him like a tail.
"You came," he says, slapping my shoulder. "You scared, bro?"
"A little," I admit.
"Good." He grins. "Then we'll look cool together. Also, I forced Sora to come. He fixed a vending machine today and needs to be recognized."
Sora appears a moment later, hair a little singed from a soldering job and eyes bright with the kind of excitement people reserve for small victories. He nods at me like we all share a secret joy in broken machines being mended.
The izakaya is cramped and warm, the kind of place with paper lanterns that make everyone look more honest. Mina and Emi and Haru sit around a low table already, cups in hand, laughing like they were born inside conversation. Allysa is more composed than loud—a steady center. When she sees us, she glances up and smiles, exactly the way she did in class: practiced, generous, polite. But there's a tiredness at the edge of it, a thin line I noticed once before and can't unsee.
"Luka, you made it," she says, voice small but clear. It sounds like the first time she offered me a lifeline in class, only softer, as if she's trying not to disturb anything fragile.
"Thanks for inviting me," I say. My Japanese is careful, the words formed as if on a clay wheel that could break if they move too fast.
She nods, and her friends look at me like they are doing a quick read of someone's cover jacket. Mina is quick to smile; Emi takes a measured interest; Haru gives me a wide, easy grin that feels like permission to be human.
We drink. We eat. Plates of yakitori and edamame arrive like small, inexpensive gifts. The conversation floats—classes, clubs, the professor's odd tendency to include obscure references. The group's laughter fills the place without needing to be loud, and I find myself relaxing because this—this ordinary ease—is a place I can learn to inhabit.
Yuto nudges me, whispering, "You're doing great. Don't say anything too philosophical tonight."
"Too late for that," Sora murmurs, already animatedly telling a story about vending machine parts that only the three of us seem to appreciate.
Allysa listens to everything with a presence I can't name. She asks questions that are small and exact, and her eyes find mine sometimes, not probing but noticing. In those moments I feel unbalanced—not nervous in the stomach way, but like a tide that has shifted just a fraction.
After a while, a friend of Haru's—someone I haven't met before—joins us. He's loud, the kind of loudiness that fills gaps by accident. He makes a joke that lands a little too heavy. Allysa smiles politely, but I see the quick constriction at her jaw.
She excuses herself and steps outside into the alley. The air nips cold, and I climb after her because leaving her alone feels like leaving a vase on an edge.
She stands with her back to the concrete wall, shoulders tensed. Her fingers hover around something small between them.
"Are you okay?" I ask, approaching carefully.
She startles like I have asked a question too intimate for the moment, then exhales. "Yes. Sorry. I just… needed a break."
She holds the cigarette like it is not supposed to be there. The lit tip glows like the tiny promise of a mistake. She takes another drag and her face softens.
"You smoke?" I ask, because sometimes the way people handle a secret says more than any word.
She laughs, but it is thin. "I shouldn't. But sometimes it keeps the edges from fraying."
"You could have come inside," I say, and then I know how it sounds—naive, concerned, the sort of worry friends offer when they have nothing else to give. "It's cold."
She shakes her head. "This is okay." She turns to me, eyes honest. "You don't have to look like you don't care."
"I don't care if you smoke," I say. The truth is small and clear: I don't judge. Not because I'm a saint, but because I have my own things that I hide. "Do you want company?"
Her shoulders drop a fraction, like a bridge letting itself settle. She turns the cigarette into the ashtray and forces a small smile. "Thanks. Sorry you had to see me like this."
"You didn't hurt me." I mean it. An honesty surprises me sometimes: I want to salvage things for other people because I know what it's like to be fragile.
She studies my face, as if reading a map. "You're kind."
"I try to be," I answer.
The cigarette burns down and she flicks the ash away. The alley smells faintly of smoke and fried food and cold. For a moment we are just two people with small vices and ordinary hurts.
We go back inside. The party resumes like nothing happened, because in public we are expected to behave as if nothing breaks. No one else seems to have noticed. Allysa's composure is returned, like a mask slid back into place. I sit and eat yakitori and listen as conversation circles around courses and assignments and songs that haven't been written yet.
The night passes with the slow thrum of normality. We share anecdotes about classes, and I offer a story about a broken laptop I repaired last week. People listen with polite interest. Allysa's friends tease her gently about her penchant for club calendars; she tosses a playful retort back, and the room fills with the buoyant sound of people looking after one another.
Before the night ends, Haru grabs a disposable camera from his bag and suggests they take a commemorative photo. They stack close—Alllysa in the middle, Mina leaning in, Emi with a mock-serious face, Haru with an outrageous grin. Yuto forces me into the frame, and Sora performs a ridiculous pose. The camera clicks, and we all laugh at how awkward some people are at being in pictures. Allysa's smile is ordinary and perfect and a little too bright; it's the kind of smile that will be pinned to people's memories.
On the walk back, the group thins out. Allysa walks beside me for a moment, her scarf fluttering like someone who knows how to carry a life without tripping on it.
"Thanks for coming tonight," she says quietly.
"No problem," I answer. The truth is I am glad I came, though I won't say that out loud.
She looks at me with something like curiosity. "You work at a computer shop, right? You fixed a laptop tonight?"
"Yes," I say. I tell her a simpler version of the story—how the screen flickered, how I replaced a loose connector, how a customer cried because the photos were saved. It is not extraordinary. It's the work I do, the thing that keeps my lights on.
"That's… impressive," she says. Her voice has warmth now. "You have a good hand for small things that matter."
My hands tingle. I look down. "It's just practice."
"It's more than that." She hesitates like she is about to say something else. Then she laughs softly and says, "You're a good person, Luka."
Those words land differently than advice or teasing. They are not extravagant, but they are honest in a way I don't often get. I want to tell her she doesn't have to praise me, that I merely survive in a way that most people expect, but the words wither on my tongue.
We part at the train platform. The cold smells of winter are gathering. Mina waves, Emi whispers something about an assignment, Haru jogs ahead to catch a late train. Allysa lingers a fraction, then steps up to the platform.
"Do you want to walk a little?" she asks suddenly, as if offering a small rebellion.
"Okay." My vocal cords protest at the sudden change, but I'm ready. Any time spent with someone who sees you, even a little, is learning.
We walk beside each other under neon signs and streetlights. Passersby blur into a watercolor of umbrellas and coats. Allysa steals glances at me like someone checking a book's spine.
"So you help your parents, right?" she asks in a voice that is not gossip but real curiosity.
"Yes. They are old. Pension can't do everything." I answer simply, because there is no shame in truth when it's small. "I work nights, so I can help."
She nods with understanding. "That must be hard."
"It is." The word is heavy, but honest. "But it's okay. They raised me. They gave me everything I have."
She is silent for a moment. Then she says, "You don't have to keep giving until you forget yourself."
Her words are like the cigarette earlier—tiny, dangerous, and oddly compassionate. I look at her. "How would I know when to stop?"
"You'll feel it. The part of you that's not just responsibility. The part of you that says, 'I need something too,'" she replies.
I chew on that. It feels foreign—like a vocabulary word I haven't used yet. I think about the photo under my pillow, about the quiet smiles of Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi, about the forms I fill and the shifts I take. I imagine a version of myself that keeps some things back for his own life.
We walk the rest of the way in companionable silence. When we reach the dormitory gates, she turns to me.
"Good night, Luka," she says.
"Good night," I reply.
She pauses for a breath, then adds, "See you in class."
I watch her disappear into the station crowd, and for the first time since I arrived in Japan, there is a small, warming ember of something that's not just duty. It is a dangerous word: want.
At home, my room seems smaller and softer. I make tea with hands that remember the taste of exhaustion and quiet hopes. Yuto mumbles asleep in his own bed, and somewhere in the dormitory a television mutters late-night shows.
I sit on my bed, the photograph of the Takahashis between my palms. I think about Allysa's cigarette in the alley, the way she let herself be small for a moment, and the way she looked at me like she expected me to understand.
I whisper a line into the night: "I'll be there. For them. For you. For myself."
Even saying it changes nothing and everything.
Outside, the city hums its constant song. Tomorrow's lectures wait. Inventory must be done. Life insists on the ordinary tasks. But tonight, I carry something else—an ember, small and fragile. I will be careful with it. I will let it grow slowly.
And in the corner of my room, taped to the wall like a quiet prophecy, the photograph smiles back at me as if it already knows.