First visitor in three years.
The knock stopped my breath. Usually, if I curl up in the corner of this curtained-dark room and stay still long enough, people give up and leave. The delivery guy. The meter reader. Two knocks, then footsteps walking away.
That night was different.
“Yu, I know you’re in there. No light on, but I can feel you.”
Midori’s voice. The woman I’d left, three years back. That voice.
“Go home.”
All that comes out of me now is a low, cracked rasp. Ever since I got back from the job, it’s been like this.
“Open up.”
”…Better if you don’t look. I’m not the same. Not my face. Not anything.”
Three years, right up against a heavy star. The job itself was simple enough — laying a single stretch of track. I never meant to get that close. But the pull was strong, and it tugged at me a little more every day, until my face had stretched long and my skin had gone the color of char before I even noticed. People in town have a name for it now: get too close to him, they say, and you’ll get pulled in too.
So the moment I got home, I packed the ring in a box and mailed it back. One less reason for Midori to come anywhere near whatever I’d become.
The door opened. I hadn’t locked it. There was nobody left to lock it against.
Midori walked straight in and flipped the light switch on the wall.
In the sudden brightness, I ducked my head on reflex. I braced for a scream. Waited for the sound of her running out.
Instead, she crouched down and studied my face, close up, for a long time. Then she said one thing.
“You’re the only one who ever called it off.”
”…But I sent the ring back.”
“Yeah. You did.”
She held her left hand up in front of my face. On her ring finger — the ring. The very one I’d packed up and mailed away three years ago.
“I took it out of the box. Put it back on. That’s all there is to it.”
I couldn’t find anything to say.
“You’ve been going around thinking you’re the one who pulls things in now, haven’t you.” Midori dropped the bag off her shoulder, straight onto the floor. “I’ve been the one getting pulled since three years ago. You think a longer face is going to make me run?”
She started undoing the bag, and asked, like it was nothing at all,
“So. What’s for dinner?”
I opened my mouth, and still nothing came out.
“So. What’s for dinner?”
She asked again.
For the first time in three years, I stood up — heading for the kitchen, still dark, to turn on the light.