By Clara Chow

Every day, at 4.41pm, Keita would stand by the tracks to watch the local train from Hineno to Wakayama go by.

He was instantly noticeable, in his orange fur-trimmed parka and faded jeans, standing against the neon green of Midori-obachan's seemingly radioactive cabbage field. We are talking about early winter here, at the end of December. Just to be clear, to narrow the time period down, even though this habit of his was a year-round thing, it was only in winter that he harboured any real hope. For she had passed by once in winter, and he had seen her for that split second, as the train rumbled by, cutting its way across the farm-gridded plains sandwiched between two low mountain ranges. He had seen her pale face, like the moon, lashes outlined with red shadow, the way Heian princesses did their eyes, as though they had been crying all night over some doomed love affair with a temple page. The face by the window had risen above a white fur coat, the brook of her black hair lying like a pet cat on one shoulder. He had seen her, just once. But every day after, he had gone out to the cabbage patch to wait for the local at the same time. And each day, he searched the flashing carriages in vain.

Keita had been 18 when the train carried the woman of his dreams through the countryside, onward down the Kii Peninsula. He was now 41. In that time, he had graduated high school, refused to apply to faraway universities, taken on odd labouring jobs in the area while working in his grandfather's orange farm, because he had to keep his one-sided date. He told no one what he was doing or why, even though it was known far and wide that if you needed Keita at that particular time of the day, he would be standing there, lost in thought yet somehow rapt with attention; his hands jammed into his pockets, facing the tracks. He was not the sort of guy who would question himself too much on what his heart wanted. Lying in bed at night, arms behind his bed, as the farm dogs barked at occasional headlights and owls hooted, he could only feel a nameless ache. Who was she? Where was she going? And why had she come into his life this way?

After a while, the answers to these mysteries ceased to matter. He simply lived with her in his head all the time. This took a tremendous amount of effort, as you can imagine, and Keita started to bald prematurely from using a portion of his brain to sustain his fantasy all the time. He emitted a faint neural hum if you listened carefully, so dedicated was he to believing that he was in a relationship with the girl on the train. 

At 28, he believed he married her. Her daily absences were simply a function of her being busy at work. He imagined whole conversations with her:

– Do you like these new pants I bought?

– Very nice. Love the fabric. Seersucker always makes me feel like a kindergarten kid.

– Doesn't it? You are a very cool kindergarten kid then.

– Thanks!

– Did you know the name 'seersucker' comes from the Persian phrase shir-o-shakhar, meaning "milk and sugar" for the alternating textures?

– I did not. You know what else I like? Waffle weave. Like what they make hotel pajamas out of.

– Let's go to Muji tomorrow to buy waffle towels.

– Mm. Let's. They supposedly dry really quickly.

And so on. 

The mundanity of such conversations made him happy. It was also what hurt the most, when he sometimes stepped back and thought about the whole thing rationally. That what he wanted was so simple, but unattainable. And yet the feeling to own persisted. And he found himself carrying on.

Occasionally, when he was done with his work, he drove to the city and stood in the department stores, among high school students flipping through comics and browsing cutesy anime goods. It felt comforting, somehow.

Then one day, the feeling went away.

Standing next to the cabbage patch, more magnificent with each passing year, even as Midori-obachan grew frailer, he felt a weight lift from his soul and instantly missed it. 

So that's love, he thought. One he had tended to, grown and harvested, all by himself.

He pushed his ear buds further into his ears. It was 4.40pm. One more minute – give or take a couple for wintry delays or irregularities. A band called Back Number sang something about spring melting piled snow on broken branches. 

"What it showed me was/I just wasn't chosen."

The train went by, like clockwork: 4.41pm on the dot. A woman, her long hair recently cut short, looked out the window. She thought she saw a scarecrow, dressed in orange, silently looking up at the sky.

The cabbage patch believed itself magical.

A long time ago, a noble retainer had ridden his horse out from the Wakayama Castle gates, out into the featureless fields east and buried his treasure there. Among these was a short sword with the Tokugawa shogun's tri-hollyhock-leaved crest on its red lacquered scabbard, stolen from the ooku chambers. Later, for his crime of sneaking into the women's quarters, forbidden to all but the daimyo, the retainer had been ordered to disembowel himself. The treasure remained unclaimed. But the short sword had somehow become stained with blood. The cabbage patch could feel the tang of iron in its womb. The blood seeped into its soil. 

A woman came along, then a man. They scythed the tall, dried grass and planted cabbages. The cabbage patch forgot it has ever been anything but a cabbage patch. It put all its energy into making the vegetable leaves resplendent. Into making each cabbage bigger than a man's head, as it rolled from the executioner's sword. But a sense of its own importance lingered. It harboured a sense of being too big for its surroundings. Occasionally, it might harumph and quiver as the wind crashed like waves through the bamboo: archaeologists should dig me up. My guts belong in a museum. 

Then, one day, the boy showed up. He showed up the next day, and the next. He kept showing up at the same time every day. 

The cabbage patch read his mind. It tried to put its magic towards making the girl with a frosted moon materialise. For 500 years, it had been nothing but a cabbage patch. Now, it was his destiny to manifest the knife in its belly, and make someone's wishes come true.

The boy grew up and grew old. His daily visits sustained the cabbage patch. It became used to the fervent humanity of his desire. In its spare time, the cabbage patch talked to him. About what it imagined fabric would feel like on its skin. About its curiosity of what the world is like. The adventure of going shopping, beyond the markets and kitchens its leafy offspring had investigated.

Then, just as suddenly as he showed up, the boy-turned-man stopped coming. The cabbage patch fell into despair. Then it stopped believing in its own magic. It became just a plot of farmland. Agricultural alchemy passed from it, the way gold got left behind by water. It was hard to say who had sustained whom, but both had survived and become ordinary.

Rin had grumbled about being forced to walk the Kumano Kudo. It had been her mother and grandmother's idea. 

"Let's visit the three great shrines," said Mum, out of nowhere one afternoon. She had been sipping some sencha, while scarfing down shoyu rice crackers. Rin was convinced her mother ate way too much salt for her own good. 

And so the other women in their small family had been dragged into this pilgrimage of Shinto shrines. The idea was to make it from Nara, where they lived, down to Ise to see the grand shrine; continuing south to Kii-katsuura with its abundance of Heian-era paths and small shrines, and finally to Wakayama. 

Reluctant as she was – all her high school friends were spending winter vacation doing cool things like skiing in Hokkaido or shopping in Europe – she did the dutiful daughter thing and made the rounds of temples big and small. 

On the last night in Wakayama, before they were due to take the Kuroshio express home, Rin had a dream.

A handsome Calico cat appeared to her and said: "My name is Tama. I am the station master of Kishi, but I am dying. For a long time, I have been looking for a replacement. I believe you are it. Do you want to take the job?"

Rin thought for a moment. 

"Does it mean I will have to transform into a cat?"

Tama licked his paws. He did not take his yellow eyes off Rin's. She took it as a yes.

"Then will I have the life span of a cat?"

Again, Tama licked his paws.

The next morning, Rin took the express with her mother and grandmother to Osaka, where she kissed them goodbye, leaving them to return home to Nara by themselves. Then she got back on the train to Wakayama, before transferring to the electric railway.

Come in girl form, Tama had instructed. It looks less suspicious that way. Unaccompanied pets are not allowed by the rail company.

She was 17.

She looked out the window as her alternate life flashed by. Tomorrow, she would have a new life.

_____