Last smile

I believe people are liable to fall in love with someone at first sight when the situations surrounding him changed very drastically. In my case the chance came abruptly when I decided to move to Kokura, my birthplace about a year ago.

I met her in the station I always use. It is a local station so I started talking to her in a very casual way. But she didn't want to talk to me. It was just one time we had a word. It seemed she didn't like to talk to me any more so I stopped trying to get access to her, but there was a public station and I needed to use it one time in a week always on Saturdays to go to part time job at some time past 9. So I always see her around 9 o'clock every Saturday.

I knew it was in last October when I talked to her first and last time.

I found her wearing a marriage ring after that, which was also another reason I stopped talking to her. But we are forced to see one another always on Saturdays since we were using the same train at the same time. I start working at 10 and so does she. And we had several occasions to be near in the station and a train.

On the 15th of March this year I was questioned by two men - railway policemen.

They say she is upset because I am always with her in a train and a station.

This was not a criminal investigation but it was I who got upset.

I promised them not to get access to her any more intentionally from then on. I started using another train twenty minutes earlier. It lasted two or three months.

I tried using the train I used to use after three months. She was not there. Now I use the train I used to. She must have stopped using the train or changed her residence.

I didn't have any chance to ask even her name.

Her one shoe was taken off at the staircase when she was walking in front of me on the day I was questioned and she gave me the mysterious smile when I saw her in a station we always got off.

It was her 'Last smile' thinking back from later on. It turned to a cruel moment.