SHORT STORY #01: UNTITLED

When you grow up, beneath that vast blue sky, will paper planes still carry dreams aloft?

When you grow up, on this earth, will the nameless flowers, blooming and wilting away, still whisper their stories?

These words from a Kaguyahime song penned in 1978, returned to me on a cold morning decades later. I was riding a bus heading toward the northwestern industrial zone to finalize a contract with a digital photo company. The bus windows fogged with dew, blurred by the clash of indoor warmth and the frost of the outside world. In the quiet hum of the ride, the song surfaced in my mind, vivid and unyielding.

Peering through a cleared patch of fogged glass, I saw the Sangam district emerge, a cluster of apartment buildings faded with age, their facades tracing somber lines against the steel-gray sky. Along one of those pale walls, a ribbon of blue windmills spun delicately, etched into a patterned mural. Something about those spinning shapes unlocked a quiet agreement between the present and the past, as if the forgotten echoes of memory had conspired to light up again.

In my mind’s eye, I was transported back to an old French-style balcony, its iron bars rusted and curling into floral motifs. There, miniature pinwheels danced in the breeze, their sharp-edged blades spinning in silent defiance of time. Though I had been away from home for years, the sight of those familiar rotations drew forth a hidden reel of film, an ancient scene played on the theater of my mind, frozen in its singular frame. And always, amidst those memories, there was Mien.

Mien, a wisp of a girl from my school days, hair draped long and loose, her thin shoulders visible through her crisp white shirt. She sat beside me in class, her head often nestled in the crook of her arms, escaping into sleep during tedious lessons. She was a quiet presence, barely remarkable in the swirl of adolescent chaos, and yet, etched into my memory as vividly as sunlight spilling through old windows.

Sometimes I imagine what Mien might look like now, but the vision refuses to take shape. She is frozen in time, a fragile ghost of youth, head bowed, a notebook sprawled open beneath her, the same fleeting shadow captured over and over in the recesses of my mind.

“Are you always this sleepy?” I had asked her once. Back then, the boldness of a middle-school boy seemed the most natural thing in the world. She had lifted her head lazily, pushing her hair behind her ears, her eyes wide as if daring me to explain myself.

“Do I look sleepy to you?” she countered, her pale face soft yet unyielding, the corner of her lips curving ever so slightly. She didn’t, not really, but I nodded anyway, unsure of how else to respond. My fingers twirled a pen in nervous habit, clicking it on and off, my attempt to distract myself from the awkward tension.

“What’s my name?” she asked suddenly, leaning in close, her question both playful and demanding.

“Mien,” I replied, breath caught in my chest, my mind blank save for her proximity. She leaned back with a shrug, plucked a book from her bag, and flipped it open without another word. The abruptness left me stunned, my curiosity piqued. “Mien,” the name meant sleep, but why? I never asked her then. I wish I had.

One day, word spread that someone liked Mien. I was baffled, not because she was unworthy of affection, but because I could not fathom how anyone had dared to reach her quiet world. Two boys in our class handed me a folded letter and asked me to slip it into her bag. Thus, I became the unwilling courier of secret confessions, waiting until Mien’s hair curtained her notebook before sliding the notes into her worn satchel.

For weeks, I delivered those messages without knowing their contents, and I never dared to ask if she read them. The thought of her existing beyond my limited knowledge of her unsettled me. It was a selfish sentiment, I realize now—a desperate wish to keep her a constant in my small world.

One afternoon, as my hand hovered near her bag, she caught me. Her slender fingers wrapped around my wrist in a sudden grip, startling me. Papers slipped from my grasp and landed soundlessly on the classroom floor.

“Why do you sigh like that?” she asked, her voice tinged with something between annoyance and understanding.

“I don’t sigh,” I stammered, flustered by her intensity. She released me with a small, resigned smile, her touch lingering on my skin like a quiet apology.

That winter, Mien often fell ill. Her hands grew colder, her skin paler, as if the season had stolen her warmth. Yet even in sickness, she held onto me. Her hand sought mine beneath the desk, fragile and trembling, a silent plea for connection. I never pulled away.

When she was absent for several days, I grew restless. One day, abandoning my after-school obligations, I pedaled my bike to the address scrawled in our class roster. Her home stood near the railway tracks, overlooking a river that wrapped the city in its silvery embrace. Mien greeted me alone, her voice hoarse but her smile radiant.

Inside her home, books filled every corner, their spines worn from use, and vinyl records gleamed in neat rows.

“These were my parents’ treasures,” she said, brushing her fingers over the covers. “They studied in Japan, and these are fragments of their youth. Sometimes, I think I live in their memories.”

She placed a record onto the player, and the haunting strings of Kaguyahime filled the room. We sat on the balcony, the winter chill biting at our cheeks as we gazed out at the river. The city was a distant murmur, softened by the music.

Mien loved windmills. She loved the way they danced with the wind, surrendering yet alive with motion. One day, I crafted pinwheels for her, attaching them to the iron railings of her balcony. Mien’s eyes lit up when she saw them, her laughter rippling through the air like a song.

“I’ll know you’re here when the wind spins them,” I said, my voice trembling with more than just cold.

For a brief moment, she wrapped her arms around me, her warmth melting the frost that had gathered in my chest.

Then one night, she called. Her voice carried an urgency I couldn’t ignore.

“Come see the night train with me,” she whispered.

We stood by the tracks, and she spoke endlessly, her words weaving stories and memories. When the train roared past, its light cutting through the dark, Mien’s tears fell silently. She pressed a cassette into my hand and disappeared into the night.

The next day, she was gone.

Her absence left a void, but I clung to the cassette and the memory of her windmills spinning in the breeze.

Years have passed, and life has carried me forward, but Mien lingers—a gentle specter of youth, of fleeting tenderness. Her memory is a windmill in my heart, turning ceaselessly with the rhythm of a distant train.

Perhaps tonight, I will go watch the night train...