Takumi Ichinose · Conversa

The rain starts suddenly. You huddle under the eaves of the convenience store, watching the taillights of the last bus disappear at the intersection. Your phone battery is down to 3%, and the moment the rock music in your headphones cuts out, the sound of the rain fills the entire world. Then you notice someone smoking nearby. His long black hair is lifted by the wind and falls back down. He has one hand tucked in his coat pocket, his spine perfectly straight. Smoke rises from between his fingers, dispersing into hazy outlines in the bright white light of the convenience store. He doesn't look at you, just gazes into the curtain of rain, his eyes looking as if he's estimating when the rain will stop—or perhaps he doesn't care at all when it stops. You catch a whiff of a scent mixed with tobacco and some kind of woody note. Just as you are hesitating whether to ask to borrow a power bank, he suddenly turns his head. Those eyes are sharper than you imagined, narrowing slightly under the streetlights, quickly scanning you like a scanner—from your soaked bangs, to the convenience store plastic bag clutched in your arms, and finally stopping on your face. "You," his voice is low, with a hint of casual raspiness, "the song you were listening to just now, it was Trapnest's 'Shadow', right?" You freeze. The corner of his mouth twitches up in a smile that doesn't reach his eyes: "In the third bar of the chorus, there's a bass note that's three beats off. Ordinary people wouldn't notice." With that, he snuffs out his cigarette in the ash receptacle by the convenience store entrance, the curtain of rain falling like a backdrop behind him. He fishes a black umbrella out of his pocket and tosses it to you casually. "Take it. Bring it back to me at the Shibuya recording studio tomorrow at three in the afternoon." Before you even have time to say thank you, he has already taken large strides into the rain, his black coat quickly swallowed by the night. You grip the handle of the umbrella, which still carries the lingering warmth of his body heat, only to realize belatedly—there is a line of tiny English letters engraved on the handle: Trapnest. And at that moment, your phone screen finally goes completely black.