Being chronically depressed has left me thin and under-developed, that's true, but it has also kept me very still and largely sweat free. This obviates the need for diurnal bathing, for which I am thankful every day.

I sweat on the bike-ride to town, though, and as if overcompensating for lack of activity, for a long and forced remission, the sweat that does come is thick and fierce and draws grim blue half-halos about the neck and armpits of my blouse. The blouse was advertised to have been wicking. I lock my bike to a rack and unstick my collar, my linen skirt, the athleisure shorts under the skirt, from my skin, though they immediately adhere back into place. Suctive noises. Friction. The sleepy, sopping sea-breeze.

I have a good breakfast at a small cafe at the northern end of town, up by the marine research center. I can only just make out the sea's knife edge and none of the shore's pale sand or the whipping breakers. The long cafe is windowed, major axis parallel to the coast, and the wall behind me is glassed edge-to-edge. This must be nice for tourists. The cafe is moderately full and most, like me, are hunched over the bar, backs to the window and the shore, nursing coffee or tea in uniform poor temper. Even here, at what feels like the edge of the world, Mondays blow. The waiter-cum-owner asks my order. One coffee, one cookie. I point at the cake stand full of them, like a child. He leaves. I wait, again childlike, small, legs dangling over the barstool's edge. The window makes me feel exposed or watched. I get my own sturdy two-tone mug full of pour-over and a napkin-wrapped oat and coconut cookie. Where the coffee slips up toward the cup's rim and grows thin it reveals a bright ferric red. It tastes a little like an apricot, which when I say it to him makes him smile a little. How easy it is, I think, to win the kindness of others. It is primo coffee, actually, maybe even a little genius, and everyone in the room is completely immune to it, including me. When I am really sad I actually lose my sense of taste, which is something some people describe only in metaphor. The cookie is fine, relatively good, even, understated and dense but sweet and soft, the fingernail clippings of coconut shedding onto the brown wastepaper napkin it came in, which I fold up carefully into fourths when finished, trapping the flakes inside.

Halfway in I impose a hiatus so the caffeine doesn't slam me. I give time for the cookie to un-hollow my midsection: make me even and cool, like a piece of sea-glass or a paperweight. The mug's subtle bi-tone colorway is also genius, I think, and I ask the owner about them. This is also when I say the thing about apricots, actually. I feel warm and social at the coffee's zenith—giving, even. The smile's appearance. His easy response and my impulse, like gathering steam, to begin a search for a way to dislike him. They are ordered in bulk from Taiwan, I learn, and seem to be painted by hand. Look at how the glaze drips are preserved in the firing: just here. I look at the mug. I turn it a variable number of degrees. He used to make pottery sort of like this, growing up in 南本州, he adds, and I can't tell if this is a simple fact or an attempt at confession. I am wary of people who try to confess immediately. But outside of me he is already talking about the weather and where he grew up, I discover, and which amuses me. He ends by saying that people think snow is bad but actually it's cute, really—I realize I am smiling—snow muffles, he explains and nothing as quiet as snow could be bad. That's why he moved, maybe. But 大風 are actually evil, he says—he doesn't miss them at all.

The owner leaves. Seats empty and refill over the course of a half-hour, though if the mood of the room changes it is not obvious. My mood starts to sour. I think about ordering another cookie. I think about whether I remember any of my dreams, or if the place I am staying has a washing machine in it. My coffee cools and, seemingly without my touching it, shrinks away as I grow higher. I've had more than I meant to, and I meant to have a lot. I am like a residual film or stain, a leftover: thin, oily, indelible. Or chalky, like soot or creosote or lime scale. I am almost sweat free, finally, from my bike-ride. I crackle when I move.

The owner returns. Have you been anywhere yet, then immediately a list: the aquarium; the cultural center; the famous 温泉. The delivery, a little hollow, makes me want to believe that conversation is sort of messy business always—that we might actually be being genuine with each other, and he's just unskilled. The alternative is depressing. Plus there are few other good cafes he adds, somewhere away from me, not just this one. A smile again. I wonder if, by oblique kindness, he is trying to kick me out, and I am simply dumb, but the cafe has not been full. I don't think I am displacing anyone. I think I am smiling again. His favorite cafe is run by a friend of his with a stunning view of the big pyramidal off-shore rock called 湯ノ島. I remember the rock from the book by 太宰—he talks about the town, the 温泉, the aquarium, even, and the big pyramidal rock. In the book he spends a chapter searching for his childhood nanny, and when he finds her he cries. The accuracy of this account is questioned. The owner seems to be searching for something to say, maybe another tourist spot or a local event of good color to recommend, or else he is unsettled by my expression and simply being polite. Am I grimacing? Unlike 小村, it seems, he appears perfectly content to show me exactly as much as my demeanor must suggest I want to know, and that he doesn't appear ready to obviously confess anything to me is attractive. If 小村 is a black hole, then he is a mirror, and May has always told me that I seem to like looking at myself: that I skitter when passing mirrors like a stick in mud. If I smiled, would he smile?

A question. I'm here because I know a graduate student, I say. Immediately I regret this. Another question. Yeah, no, I'm not. An amused look, a new inattention to other customers, a topped-up coffee. I'm the first person to come here just because someone else studies fish, he says, assuming that I mean someone from the marine research center. Nod. Nose scratch. Dusting hands on apron. There's certainly a lot of it around here, he says, fish science, you know, and also people studying undersea earthquakes, algal blooms (I have to translate this later), tidal generators, geothermal power, the diffusion of radio-nucleides, submarine volcanism, trans-oceanic telecommunications cables. I feel quite cold, probably it is the coffee. Everyone who has left the cafe since I arrived I imagine sitting in their serene office or behind the wheel of a parked truck or on a wooden bench with their head between their knees, heart pounding. All of them tachycardic and in frenzy, touched by the genius of this guy's coffee. I can't be the only one. I am not allowed to even mention it to him, I think. Again this is embarrassing. You seem to know a lot about this, I say. A response. You and me both, I say.

Another question. He waits so expectantly I am a little disappointed. I fold the napkin one more time, into eighths.

A joined row of shop stalls nearer to the coast, each full with seemingly the same merchandise as all the others, though arranged differently. In this sense they are actually different stores and each carry different wares, although the wares exist only as the distinct relation between otherwise identical sub-wares, none of which can be bought. Suddenly for a heartbeat I miss him—a disease of being close to where he had been. I freeze for minutes as if he might text me suddenly and end this, but he doesn't. Decorative 温泉-size towels, key-chains of the fuzzy head of the mascot of the region unceremoniously cleaved from his fuzzy body, endless small plastic toys and injection-molded marine animal figurines: dolphins, turtles, killer whales, tuna, bream, shrimp, giant octopodes and squid. Anime trinkets depicting local customs, charms, snacks, produce, dialect-specific phrases. Dried fish jerky and seasoned scallops and dried seaweed in waxed-paper parcels. Soup-base again with the mascot's face on the packaging. Store tenders are uniformly old and carefully dressed, layering their earth-tone clothes (vests, cargo pants, fleeces, undershirts) against an apparent cold I cannot feel. When I move my arms air meekly attempts to dry my pits by a physical process called evaporative cooling. An old woman offers me a free sliver of dried squid, and I carry it around in my pocket for half an hour, unable to bring myself to accept it. I spend another thirty minutes in a public bathroom sitting on the tile very quietly and very nauseatedly. The sun makes its arc.

****

We all sit on the cantilevered performance platform, which is about ten feet across and circular, though マリ and エミ hang their legs over the edge. It's past 9pm. I am already feeling sick again—have begun to assume a practiced immobility to tamp nausea. The astroturf covering pricks my lateral calves. I am cross legged. The nighttime security lights have had all of the red taken out of them by nineteen feet of water and leak mobile lacework onto the overhanging legs of マリ and エミ, whose underlit faces appear to change expression very fast. 野村 says very little. Hsiao-Hsien and ルカ pass a very short cigarette back and forth. 美江 occasionally looks out onto the open pool around us, crumpling her forehead and squinting before putting her head down and absently patting the astroturf. Everyone is a little drained or deflated; my own initial adrenal wave from socialization has begun its scheduled backslide. Where the trainer's little bucket of fish would normally be placed is a small patch of black residue against the turf's impossible blue, like a weeping wound or a lanced boil, and we all stay far away from it. Fish blood oxidizes quickly, says 野村, like it is a riddle. Is it a riddle? ルカ says that it's basically hopeless to remove from clothes—he's had to maintain two separate wardrobes and buy a special shampoo, which Hsiao-Hsien adds has made ルカ's hair especially soft and voluminous while doing nothing for the smell. Playful punches between them. Touching. ルカ is muscular and comical next to Hsiao-Hsien, who has occasionally over the night begun to cling to him, like an epiphyte. ルカ finally decides that the cigarette is too small to even pretend to smoke, pocketing the butt. 美江 fumbles for her canned 日本酒 behind her. I take a sip of my own. I regret it. Behind a blue backdrop, through a small channel to a smaller, private medical pool, the famous orca presumably makes slow orbits, or assumes whatever quiet position killer whales do in rest.

野村 suggests another game, like the ones at 美江's cafe earlier. He holds his tall thin canned beer delicately, as if it was sharp. Outside of the work environment 野村 looks less calm, less in control: easily convinced or bullied. Everyone has to say something that they hate about their job, he says, but also something that they're actively trying to change about their lives—he read about this prompt in a book. マリ snorts and is slapped lightly by エミ. ルカ whispers something to Hsiao-Hsien. 野村 instructs 美江 to start, who turns and says what, oh, um, hm. 野村's repetition. Light discussion about self-help books, therapies, and what I tell everyone are called 'ice-breakers' in English. Private missives between マリ and エミ. After thinking 美江 says she thinks the milk supplier for her cafe is trying to sleep with her. She hates this, but finds it interesting, still. And as for changes she would like to achieve a future in which she does not sleep with the milk supplier, who has a murine mustache and strange spoon-like ears. God willing, says ルカ. I think you should do it, says エミ.

マリ and エミ both hate Microsoft Excel and want to murder Bill Gates himself. マリ would like to write short stories while エミ would like to try and go clubbing every night for a year. Hsiao-Hsien hates ordering live biological samples and culturing plankton, and would like to never have to dredge a tide-pool ever again. ルカ hates fish and training fish and wants to forget about fish forever, and is high-fived by Hsiao-Hsien.

I don't have a job, I say. But for change, I'd like to try to be someone else, and then be that someone else pretending to be someone else again. I think this would be very interesting.

Everyone, being quite drunk by then, says hmm.

The humidity and alcohol together warm and pull beads of itchy sweat up at the back of my neck. All of us check out again, as if I had said nothing, which in fact was true, and is a comfort, and this thought together with the alcohol eases my nausea in a risky but ultimately rewarding play. I am not here. I never am here.

Right on, says エミ, finally reacting. What, says マリ. 野村 says very little. Hsiao-Hsien and ルカ have been kissing dangerously close to the fish-spot. And 美江, 美江 is undressing into her swimsuit.

Only when 美江 is already peeking over the edge, toes curled in turf, do I say that in English they are called 'killer whales,' and that it is this way for a reason. Words mean something, I want to say. There was an orca in America, even, once, that killed three people: his name was Tilikum and he weighed 12000 pounds. He ate Dawn Brancheau's arm and tore off her scalp. She died. Countless others have been mauled and nature is a cruel mistress. That's probably because he was an American whale, 美江 responds. 野村 is now failing to make eye contact, having looked away when 美江 had taken off her shirt. 美江 is very thin and has slight scoliosis. I remember thinking that everyone was posed very dramatically and very distinctly in the moment before 美江 entered a tight and graceful parabola into the saltwater pool.

****

野村 is on his back, hands over his eyes. She's okay, I say, plainly. She's out of the pool already. It's okay. You're okay. He's groaning. For a moment I become angry with him, disgusted at something in his eroteme shape. 美江 sits on the far edge of the platform twisting water out of her hair like in a sea-fable. The other four are on their stomachs, shoulders and heads projected out and above the water, dangling their arms toward the imbricate patterns of light. The arms swing with no set rhythm. I'm not sure what I've been exposed to—if it was good for me to have seen, or if I will, years later, succumb to an insidious syndrome because of it. My confusion is cut clean through only by the obvious meanness enacted on 野村 by her having done this, and how obvious it was from 野村 that this wasn't the first act of its kind. My immediate impulse is to be humbled, to desire her, even, maybe, but my impulses are rooted in the emotional equivalent of offal. Soft putrid thoughts enter me. The night wind smells like old water. My nausea is gone. Somewhere an automatic switch throws off the lights in the tank and the starred sky is suddenly immense and dominant. A great torpedonous thing glides in and out of shadow, down there.

In the end it's decided that 美江 will walk 野村 back to her cafe and then get a cab. ルカ and Hsiao-Hsien have his motorbike and will leave that way. エミ will walk to her apartment nearby, and マリ, who has a car parked a ways away, will drive me back up the mountain. Sorry about your bike, says 野村 quietly, who looks ill, using 美江 as a crutch. I can get it tomorrow, I say.

Somewhere far away a motorcycle engine hiccoughs. I stand by the gate that ルカ had opened for us just hours ago, its spikes festooned with little fiberglass seahorses. マリ and エミ stand over behind a bush, laughing, and two blue lines of smoke rise above their concealment. 美江 waves backward by lifting her arm while walking away, eventually turning a corner with 野村. The gate is painted blue, just like everything else in the sea park, and I kick at gravel.

マリ's sedan is down a side-street in a small six-car lot with a cute little gate, which lifts silently as we drive through. The interior smells very nice, though the car is clearly old. The yellowed headlights catch weakly on roadsigns. I prepare myself for conversations that never seem to surface, trying to recall facts of her life admitted in the past five hours, any points of connection or intrigue, but it's hard, and I'm tired. When マリ looks down at her phone to see the next turn the car often floats left or right, and though it should terrify me, I move closer to sleep. I feel small crystals of salt that have impregnated the fabric of my clothing, around my underarms and between my legs. I can't remember the last time I was driven home by someone at night.

I blink. マリ smiles, and fumbles for a radio button in the dark, finally pressing something that fills the car with mercilessly easy jazz. A local late night station with funny ads for love hotels and boner pills. I dislike this kind of music usually, she says, but tonight I'm sort of feeling it. She hums. I say it's nice. It is. I think about whether I know what it means just to feel it, rather than something specific. We take each in an incline of switchbacks which, presumably, snake toward my Airbnb, one after another, though she does them sloppily, and while I hope for no descending cars, for no errors at all, it feels like I could accept one coming straight on, actually, as long as it was very fast and precise.

エミ was right, says マリ, and laughs. We're at a snail's pace trying to find a dim turnoff. What, I say, and マリ tells me, now suppressing laughter, that she and エミ did three shots together just before leaving— honestly she hadn't thought it was going to take this long to drive here–had way underestimated it, actually. Please stop, I say, but then there's the turnoff, marked by a small wooden post with the house number, and we're in the small flagstone parking space tucked beside the house. The doors of the car, when left open while the engine is running, ding repeatedly, and I'm the one who turns the key to stop them. マリ reclines with her door all the way open, and I hear the chime of an engine cooling. For a long time this continues.

June, you lied tonight, says マリ. I listened to you all night and you are such a liar, lol.

I remember that in the cafe, when I had just met them all, how she had told everyone, before we had even begun to drink, that her first boyfriend had dictated the kind of socks he wanted her to wear to school every day. Black knee-high sheer socks with little ribbons. I know this about her.

The hall closet has extra blankets and a single size futon, which I smooth and set a glass of water next to while マリ is in the bathroom coughing. I close my door and wrap myself in a brocade duvet until I overheat.