Chapter 1.1
Ayame Takigawa wrote in silence.
The clatter of train tracks below her faded long ago into white noise, blending with the hush of rain tapping against the window. The train rocked gently through a washed-out landscape. City lights blurred into watercolor behind the glass.
She sat hunched down, over at her phone, her thumb hovering above the screen, very still and hesitant.
The sentence blinks back at her.
She watched the last light fall from the mountain…
Too poetic. She deleted it.
Ayame wasn't late for her deadline. Not technically. But the editor's email has lingered in her inbox for three days now, unread but not unseen. Something about "more immediacy." Something about "depth of emotion."
The train jolted slightly, pulling her out of her thoughts. She glanced across the aisle. A man in a suit dozed with his head against the window. A girl in a school uniform scrolled through the photos, smiling to herself. Everyone had somewhere to head. Everyone had someone waiting for them.
Ayame slipped her phone into her bag and leaned her head against the cold glass.
Today, she had no one to wait for her.
---
Her apartment greeted her with its usual hush. Not the warm kind. The kind that wrapped itself around you when you didn't speak for too long, she turned off the lock, kicked off her shoes but set them up beside the wall, and dropped her keys into the bowl by the door.
A stack of proof copies sat on the table, untouched. The cover art showed a woman standing alone at the edge of a cliff, her coat whipping up in the wind.
Ayame walked past them and opened the fridge. Empty. Staring at a long gaze as her lips pucker before she shut the door.
She settles for tea.
The kettle rumbled low as it heated. The click when it shut off echoed, a bit louder than it should have. She poured the water as she sat down on the couch with a blanket over her knees, and staring at her laptop's screen. A white page waited.
She didn't type.
Instead, she glanced at the window beside her. It faces another apartment building, no view, just grey. But sometimes, in the space between the rails of the balcony, something moved.
And tonight, something did.
A cat.
White. Still. It stood on the railing, facing the opposite apartment like a statue. Its fur almost shimmered in the dark, clean as snow beneath the moonlight. Its eyes —
She leaned closer, her hand lay on the glass.
They were blue. Not sky blue. Not the ocean. Colder. Deeper.
Glacier.
She blinked. It was no longer there.
Her tea had gotten cold.
---
She visited her parents every other Sunday, out of habit more than she wanted. The house was all the same every time—neat, quiet, filled with the smell of lemon polish, and the soft tick of a wall clock that never stopped its hand.
Her mother greeted her by the door with a smile without a sign that quite reached her eyes.
"You cut your hair again," Mayumi mumbled.
Ayame tucked a loose strand behind her ear. "Just a trim."
She entered the house, taking her shoes off. As her mother, Mayumi left before her headed towards the kitchen. Her father, Haruki, didn't look up from the television as his eyes flickered slightly, staring at his side.
She stared briefly at the back of Haruki's head as she walked past her father, while Haruki's gaze was fidgeting as her step echoed behind him.
Ayame sat at the other empty couch where his father was not seated. His father didn't glance at her direction while she inspected his face. Haruki's face was cold and solemn as his brows furrowed by her slight presence.
They sat in the living room, small talk hovering in the air like steam that never settled.
Ayame felt a throb of her chest as she held her phone out, silently tapping on the screen as she opened her social media page.
Her brother Ren crashed twenty minutes later, sneakers loud against the floor, hoodie too big, grin too wide.
"Ayame-neesan!" He flopped beside her on the couch and threw an arm around her. "Still writing tragedies?"
She smirked. "Someone has to keep you grounded."
"You keep writing sad girls on mountaintops and I'll keep writing bios. We all have a role."
It was the only time she laughed that day.
---
Work, if it could be called that, was remote. Her editor calls twice a week. They spoke about themes, deadlines, changes in the market. Ayame answered in monosyllables, half-listening. The book she'd written didn't belong to her anymore—it belonged to schedules, to readers, to formats and pitches.
She hadn't written to herself in years.
But sometimes, late at night, when the tea had gone cold and the trains stopped running, she opened a notebook instead of a laptop.
And wrote it without caring if it made sense.
A path beneath the snow.
Eyes that freeze and burn.
A sound like a memory breaking.
A bell.
She doesn't know where it came from. But the images kept returning.
---
Noa Serizawa always knew when to show up.
She knocked once and entered without waiting for a response. Ayame didn't mind. Noa was her best friend. She had the keys. And she brought food. The sound of locks ticked as the door opened.
While she remained seated, a silhouette of Noa appeared from the door. It was about a few moments before Noa said,
"You look like a ghost," Setting down a steaming takeout. "Are you eating?"
"I'm drinking," Ayame said, lifting a mug of half-warm tea.
Noa stared at her. "That's not what eating means."
They sat across from each other, the plastic containers between them were a feast neither had the energy to cook. Noa chatted about work—her job at a small local production company, the ridiculous things her boss said, her coworkers' drama.
Amidst her sentence she briefly stopped staring at Ayame who hunched down at her phone, barely responding as her eyes dropped than usual.
"You need a break," Noa said at last. "Let's go somewhere, far."
Ayame sighed, "You know, I don't have time for that."
"You don't even use your time properly. That's different. Plus you can ask for a leave at work after your deadline."
Ayame picked her rice. "I'm not the getaway type."
"Hiking trip," Noa said, eyes gleaming. "Weekend. Mountains. Fresh air. No Wi-Fi."
Ayame hesitated.
Noa nudged her feet. "Yuuta's coming."
Ayame gave her a flat look. "And?"
"And he still likes me. Which means I need a buffer. Please?"
"Remind me what Yuuta did again?"
"He's doing research out in the field now—something with climate and soil samples, I don't know. He hikes to work half the time anyway. He'd make sure we don't die."
Ayame sighed. "I'll think about it."
But a part of her—the quiet part she didn't write to anymore—already said yes.
---
She walked home from the convenience store two nights later. It had rained again. She clicks her tongue as she hurriedly opens the umbrella. It was completely transparent as the raindrops pattered at the surface trailing down the end of her running down the ground. The streets glistened with leftover water, mirroring the overhead cables and dim signs.
She passed an alleyway and stopped… There it was again.
The cat.
White, still. Watching her. Its eyes caught the streetlight and shimmered. For a second, the world dropped away. No cars. No people. No rain. As if the world slowed down for a moment as her eyes slowly blinked.
A soft hint of bell rang along her ears as the white cat circles along the pole, eyes fixed at her. Just her. And the sound of something distant.
Not thunder. Not traffic. But a bell.
Ayame blinked once more. The cat was gone.
But it's pawprints remained in the water, fading.
---
That night, she opened the email from her editor and stared at the blinking cursor. She didn't reply. She closed the lid of her laptop and reached instead for a pen—black ink, thick paper, quiet space.
She didn't write anything poetic.
Just words that felt like breath.
"I feel like I've been waiting for something I can't name."
The wind rattled faintly against the window. She paused, eyes flicking to the corner of the glass, almost expecting to see white fur or glacier eyes watching.
But there was only her reflection.
And outside, the faint echo of a bell…
End of Chapter 1.1 — The Window with No Light