The Last Train to Sapporo

Leena Kapor

Part 1 – The Postcard

The postcard arrived on a wet Thursday morning, slipped through the letterbox of her narrow London flat like any other piece of mail, but it felt heavier than its paper weight suggested. Meera bent to pick it up, brushing raindrops from its surface. The picture side showed a winter street lined with red lanterns, snow settling like ash on tiled rooftops, a kanji script curling down the right edge that she couldn’t read. She turned it over, pulse tightening, because on the back was handwriting she hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Her father’s. Just five words: “I’ll wait for you here.” No address, no explanation, only a postmark from Sapporo, Japan, dated two weeks ago.

For a long time she stood at the window staring at the postcard while traffic hissed past on rain-slicked streets. Her father had left when she was eleven. There had been no letters then, no phone calls, no trace except the faint smell of sandalwood on his old books. Her mother never spoke of him, and Meera had learned not to ask. She had buried the questions under school, university, her consulting job, and the careful structures of her adult life. Yet here, suddenly, was his hand reaching across oceans.

At the office that day she couldn’t concentrate. Numbers swam across her screen, colleagues’ voices rose and fell like meaningless chatter, and she caught herself slipping the postcard from her bag to check if it was real. In the evening, while London’s lights blurred against the drizzle, she sat with her best friend Priya in a café on Shoreditch High Street and placed the postcard on the table between them.

“You’re not actually thinking of going,” Priya said, stirring her chai latte too fast, foam spilling.

“I don’t know,” Meera admitted. “But what if it’s the only chance I’ll ever have to know why?”

Priya shook her head. “He disappeared, Meera. He chose to vanish. You don’t owe him anything.”

But as Priya spoke, Meera felt a slow ache in her chest, the ache of unfinished sentences, unanswered questions, and a hollow part of her life that had never closed. That night she packed the postcard beneath her pillow and dreamt of white landscapes and trains cutting through snow.

Two days later she booked the ticket. Heathrow to Haneda, then onward north. She told her manager at work she needed personal leave. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask. Her mother, when Meera called, reacted with silence so heavy it pressed against her ear. “Don’t dig up the past,” her mother finally said, and hung up.

The flight was long, thirteen hours suspended over cloud and ocean. She watched films without paying attention, drifted in and out of restless sleep, and each time she opened her eyes she felt the postcard burning inside her bag. At Haneda, the airport swallowed her in glass and steel. Announcements in Japanese and English echoed through the vast terminal. She clutched her coat tighter and felt a small tremor of panic. She had never traveled alone this far.

Tokyo was a frenzy of lights and motion. Trains roared in and out of Shinjuku Station like veins pumping through a living body. She checked into a narrow business hotel, barely wide enough for its single bed, and lay awake that first night listening to the hum of vending machines outside her door. The postcard rested on the bedside table, the red lantern street frozen in its glossy silence.

The next day she wandered. The air smelled of grilled yakitori and exhaust. Alleyways twisted into sudden shrines. At every corner, life burst with precision—salarymen rushing in dark suits, schoolgirls with bright scarves, tourists with cameras dangling. She tried to absorb it but felt invisible, like a shadow drifting through a city too alive for her pace. By evening she stumbled into a small jazz bar tucked between two shuttered shops.

Inside, smoke curled above worn tables. A saxophone leaned against a chair as though waiting for a companion. She ordered a plum wine and sat alone, tracing her finger over the condensation of the glass. That was when she noticed him—the man with the guitar case by his side, eyes that carried tired music. He smiled faintly when their gazes met, and something about his expression felt like recognition, though she was sure they had never met.

“First time in Tokyo?” he asked in careful English.

She nodded. “I’m passing through.”

He studied her for a moment, then said, “Passing through is the best way to see this city. You don’t have to belong. You just flow.” He sipped his drink. “I’m Kenji.”

“Meera,” she replied, surprised at her own ease in giving her name.

Their conversation meandered through safe topics—music, travel, the strangeness of meeting strangers. Yet when she mentioned she was heading north to Sapporo, his expression shifted, as if a hidden string had been plucked. “Sapporo?” he repeated. “I’m going there too.”

The bar’s dim lights flickered against his face, and in that instant, Meera felt the beginning of something she couldn’t yet name. A coincidence perhaps, or the faint tug of fate. She glanced at the postcard in her bag, then back at him.

The night outside had grown colder. Snowflakes, tiny and hesitant, began to fall onto the neon streets. Meera stepped out of the bar with Kenji’s voice still in her ear and realized her journey had only just begun.

Part 2 – Tokyo Nights

Tokyo didn’t sleep, not in the way London did, not in the way any other city she had known did. At two in the morning Shibuya Crossing was still pulsing, the scramble of lights and bodies endless, as if time bent differently here. Meera stood at the edge of the intersection with her hood pulled tight against the drizzle, watching the umbrellas collide and part, strangers brushing past with the urgency of lives she could never enter. She felt both small and strangely exhilarated, as though the city was erasing her old skin with each flashing billboard. Yet beneath the brightness a loneliness pressed down, a weight that made her fingers curl tighter around the strap of her bag where the postcard was hidden.

Kenji had left the jazz bar with her the night before, walking a few blocks before they drifted in separate directions. His face had stayed in her mind though, the quiet steadiness of it, the way his English carried a soft music. He had said he too was going north. She wondered if their paths would cross again or if Tokyo had already swallowed him whole.

The next day she tried to follow the guidebook, ticking off shrines and museums, but the city felt too vast, its rhythm indifferent. At Asakusa Temple, incense coiled into the winter air while tourists snapped photos against the red gates. She moved among them like a ghost, catching fragments of conversations in languages she couldn’t parse. She bought a small fortune charm from a vendor, tucking it into her coat pocket without knowing why. Perhaps because she needed something tangible to anchor her.

By evening her feet ached, and the neon roar of Shinjuku Station pressed in on her like a storm. She thought of retreating to her hotel when she heard guitar strings floating from a side street. Drawn by the sound, she turned a corner and found Kenji again, seated on a low stool with his guitar resting against his thigh, playing for a half-circle of passersby who paused only long enough to drop coins into his case. The notes were slow, melancholic, curling upward like smoke, and for the first time since arriving she felt still.

When he noticed her at the edge of the crowd, he tilted his head slightly, recognition lighting his eyes. After the song ended and the crowd thinned, she stepped closer.

“You again,” he said with a smile. “Tokyo is small after all.”

She laughed softly. “Feels enormous to me.”

“Enormous, yes. But also intimate. Like it lets you hide and be found in the same breath.” He began packing his guitar. “Have you eaten?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. He gestured toward a nearby alley strung with red lanterns. They slipped inside, where steam and the scent of ramen broth wrapped around them. A counter with ten stools, a cook ladling soup with brisk precision, and walls yellowed by time. Kenji ordered in Japanese, and soon two bowls of ramen arrived, steam fogging their faces.

As they ate, conversation flowed more easily than she expected. He told her he was a jazz musician but made his living mostly busking and playing small bars. “I travel light,” he said, tapping the guitar case. “She’s my only companion.”

“And Sapporo?” she asked.

He paused, chopsticks hovering. “I have family there. Or maybe… memories of family.” His eyes flickered, then steadied. “And you? Why Sapporo?”

She looked at her bowl, at the steam rising like a veil. She had rehearsed telling no one, but the words slipped out. “A postcard. From someone I lost a long time ago.”

Kenji studied her, not pressing. “Sometimes places call us back,” he said softly.

They left the ramen shop to find snow had begun falling, faint flakes catching in the neon glow. They walked without direction, their steps sinking into the night. For the first time since landing, Meera felt less like a stranger.

Later, back at her hotel room, she lay awake listening to the hum of the vending machine outside, replaying the evening in her mind. Kenji’s voice, the warmth of the ramen, the city unfolding not as chaos but as layers of quiet moments. She opened her bag and slid out the postcard, placing it against the pillow. The red lantern street on its surface looked almost identical to the alley she had just walked through. Coincidence, perhaps. Or a sign that she was on the right path.

The next morning Kenji was waiting in the hotel lobby, leaning against the wall with his guitar case. “Train to Osaka?” he asked casually, as if they had already agreed.

She blinked. “You’re leaving Tokyo?”

He shrugged. “Always leaving, always arriving. And you—you’ll need to go through Osaka to reach Sapporo anyway. Why not share the tracks for a while?”

Something in his tone carried both invitation and inevitability. She thought of Priya warning her not to dig up the past, of her mother’s silence, of the years she had lived boxed in by duty and fear. And then she thought of the snow falling against neon, of the way Kenji’s music had carved out a stillness in her. She nodded.

“Osaka, then.”

And so, without quite realizing, her journey north had begun—not alone, but in step with a stranger whose own past seemed to echo hers in ways she could not yet see.

Part 3 – Lost Notes

The train to Osaka cut through the morning like a blade of silver, its windows framing countryside that shifted too fast for her eyes to hold—rows of rice fields patched with snow, villages that flashed by with tiled rooftops, mountains dissolving into mist. Meera sat by the window, her reflection ghosted against the blur, while Kenji tuned his guitar quietly across the aisle. The carriage hummed with silence except for the low murmur of fellow travelers, the rhythm of the tracks lulling her into a daze that felt both dreamlike and inevitable.

Kenji looked up from the strings and asked, “Do you play?”

She shook her head. “Piano lessons when I was a kid. My mother insisted. But I never had the patience.”

“Patience is overrated,” he said, plucking a soft note that lingered in the air. “Music is about release, not discipline.”

She smiled faintly. “That explains the way you play.”

They sat in quiet for a while, and then, as if the landscape demanded confession, he said, “I’m not just going to Osaka for work. I’m looking for my sister.”

Meera turned toward him. “Your sister?”

He nodded, his fingers pausing on the strings. “She disappeared five years ago. One day she just… stopped answering calls. No note, no body, no explanation. Some say she wanted to vanish, to escape. Others think she’s gone forever. I never believed either. I think she’s still out there, leaving traces.”

The words tightened something inside her, because they mirrored her own ache. She asked softly, “And you think Osaka holds answers?”

“Maybe,” he said. “There are people there who knew her. A bar she used to sing in, a friend who saw her last. Every city gives me another fragment.” He looked at her then, his gaze steady. “Why Sapporo for you? Still just a postcard?”

She hesitated, feeling the weight of the card in her coat pocket. “It’s from my father. He left when I was a child. No explanations, no goodbye. My mother built walls around his absence. I learned to live without him. But then this—” she pulled the postcard out, its edges already fraying from her constant touch. “He says he’s waiting. After fifteen years. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Kenji studied it, tracing the five words with his eyes. “You go,” he said. “And you find out. Even if the truth isn’t what you want, it’s better than silence.”

She let the card slip back into her pocket, her pulse quickened by the way he spoke. It was as if he understood that silence could be louder than words, heavier than loss.

In Osaka the air smelled of fried batter and ocean wind. Neon signs blazed above crowded streets, laughter spilling from izakayas where patrons toasted with beer and sake. Kenji led her through backstreets that curled like hidden veins, places not in the guidebooks. They stopped outside a dim-lit bar with a cracked signboard: Blue Echo. The windows were clouded with cigarette haze, the faint thrum of bass drifting out.

“This is where she used to sing,” he murmured. “She had a voice like rain on stone. The kind you remember even when silence falls.”

Inside, the bar was half-empty. A woman behind the counter looked up as they entered, her eyes narrowing with recognition when she saw Kenji. They exchanged quick words in Japanese, the woman gesturing toward a dusty piano in the corner. Kenji translated. “She said my sister played there often, then one night she didn’t show. They never saw her again.”

Meera felt the chill of the words. She watched as Kenji ran his fingers along the piano keys, not pressing them, just tracing as if trying to summon a ghost.

“Do you ever think,” she asked quietly, “that maybe she chose to disappear? That some people need to vanish to survive?”

Kenji’s jaw tightened. “If she wanted to be gone, why leave her music behind? Music is memory. You don’t abandon memory.”

The bartender brought them two drinks, placing them on the table without asking. Kenji strummed his guitar softly, notes weaving into the smoky air, and for a moment Meera closed her eyes. The sound stirred something in her, fragments of her father humming old Bengali songs on Sunday mornings, before everything shattered. She opened her eyes to find Kenji watching her.

“You carry silence too,” he said.

She nodded. “Different silence. Same weight.”

They stayed until late, until the bar emptied and the city’s noise dulled to a hum. On the walk back to the station, Meera noticed posters peeling on brick walls, alleys that smelled of sea and oil, a stray cat slipping between bicycles. The city seemed to whisper its own forgotten stories.

At the platform, Kenji said, “Sapporo feels far away still. But every stop brings us closer.”

She looked at him then, realizing their journeys were entwined, not just by geography but by the hunger for answers they might never get. And yet, as the night deepened, she felt less afraid of the unknown. Because now, she wasn’t walking through it alone.

Part 4 – Osaka Backstreets

The rain came down in thin needles, glistening against neon as they walked deeper into Osaka’s backstreets, their umbrellas useless in the wind. The city had two faces: the wide boulevards lined with department stores, and the narrow veins where light barely reached, where old houses leaned toward each other as if sharing secrets. Kenji led the way through alleys that smelled of fish, smoke, and damp concrete. He seemed to know where to go, though she suspected he was following memory more than map. Meera followed close, her boots splashing in shallow puddles, the postcard pressing against her chest like a second heartbeat.

They ducked into a covered arcade, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Shops spilled their wares onto the walkway—kimonos in plastic sleeves, baskets of pickled radish, secondhand books with their spines warped by time. A record shop glowed at the corner, the air inside thick with old vinyl and dust. Kenji stepped in, strumming the strings of memory with his eyes. The owner, a bent man with white hair and sharp glasses, looked up with recognition when he saw Kenji. They spoke quickly in Japanese. Meera watched his expression shift from hope to gravity, then he turned to her.

“He remembers my sister,” Kenji said. “She used to come here for records. Jazz, always jazz. He says she left something once—an envelope she asked him to keep safe. He still has it.”

The owner shuffled behind the counter and emerged with a brown envelope, its corners curled, sealed with tape that had yellowed. Kenji opened it carefully, pulling out a black-and-white photograph. The picture showed a group of young people outside a small tea house. His sister stood in the middle, her hair loose, her smile luminous. But it wasn’t just her that made Meera’s heart jolt—it was the man beside her.

Her father.

Younger, leaner, with a beard trimmed sharp, but unmistakably him. He wore the same coat she remembered from childhood photographs, his hand resting lightly on the shoulder of the girl beside him—Kenji’s sister.

Meera’s breath caught. “That’s him.”

Kenji turned sharply. “Who?”

“My father. The one who sent the postcard.”

Silence clamped down between them, thick and heavy. The record shop’s hum felt suddenly too loud. Kenji stared at the photograph, then back at her. “So they knew each other.”

She nodded, her fingers trembling as she traced the edges of her father’s face. “All this time I thought he vanished alone. But he wasn’t alone. He was here. With her.”

Kenji’s eyes darkened. “Maybe she disappeared with him. Maybe that’s why the trail led nowhere.”

The photograph felt like both a gift and a wound. Proof that her father’s absence wasn’t a solitary act, but part of a larger web she had never known existed. Questions flared like sparks: Why was he with Kenji’s sister? What bound them? And why had both vanished, only for her father to reach out after so many years?

The record shop owner muttered something else. Kenji translated. “The tea house in the picture—it’s in Kyoto. Abandoned now, but still standing. He says they spent many nights there, listening to music, writing, drinking until dawn.”

Kyoto. Another step north, another shadow to chase.

They left the shop, the photograph tucked carefully into Kenji’s guitar case. Outside, the rain had eased into mist. Neon bled into puddles, and the air buzzed with late-night energy. Yet both of them walked in silence, the weight of revelation pressing down.

At the station, Meera finally spoke. “Do you think… they disappeared together?”

Kenji’s voice was low. “I don’t know what to think. But I know this: if our lives collided through them, then maybe the answers are meant to be shared. Whatever truth waits, it belongs to both of us now.”

She looked at him, the sharp lines of his face softened by exhaustion, by grief. For the first time since leaving London, she didn’t feel like a traveler chasing ghosts. She felt like someone walking a path carved by fate.

The night train to Kyoto screeched into the platform. They boarded, carrying the photograph between them like a fragile map, uncertain of what it would lead to.

Part 5 – Snowfall in Kyoto

Kyoto arrived like a whisper, the city unfolding in hushed streets and temple silhouettes as the train slowed against falling snow. Meera pressed her forehead to the cold glass, watching flakes drift and settle on tiled rooftops, on the bare branches of cherry trees stripped of spring’s glory. The station was quieter than Osaka, its rhythm slower, as if the city measured time differently. Kenji slung his guitar case over his shoulder and led the way into the night, the photograph still hidden in its sleeve inside the case.

They had planned to find the tea house immediately, to chase the fresh lead before it grew stale, but the storm thickened as they walked. Snow swept across the streets in sheets, erasing alleys, cloaking signs, turning the city into a labyrinth of white. The taxi stand was empty, buses suspended, and the few travelers who braved the storm hurried past with bent heads. Kenji glanced up at the sky and muttered something under his breath in Japanese. Then, seeing her shiver, he guided her toward a wooden inn tucked on a narrow side street, its lantern glowing faintly through the snow.

Inside, warmth enveloped them. Tatami mats lined the floor, the faint smell of cedar and miso soup floating through the air. The innkeeper bowed, speaking softly, and Kenji translated: no trains tonight, no taxis either, the storm too heavy. They would need to wait until morning. Meera felt both frustration and relief—the chase postponed, but rest finally forced upon them.

Their room was small, a futon laid out neatly, a heater humming against the wall. They sat opposite each other at a low table while the storm rattled the shoji screens. A kettle steamed between them, and Kenji poured tea into two small cups, his hands steady despite the day’s revelations.

Meera cupped the warmth, letting silence stretch before she finally said, “That photograph… I can’t stop seeing it. Him beside your sister. I don’t know what it means, but it’s like everything I believed about his absence has shifted.”

Kenji’s gaze lowered. “For me it’s the opposite. I always believed she vanished alone. Now I see she didn’t. She was with him, your father. Which means his choices tangled with hers.” He paused, then asked, “Do you hate him for leaving?”

She thought of London, of her mother’s silence, of birthdays without candles lit by his hands. “I used to. But hate dulls over time. What remains is emptiness. Like a room in a house you keep locked but never clear out.”

Kenji nodded slowly. “That’s how it is for me too. I carry her songs in my head, but they fade. I try to play them on my guitar, but the notes slip away. It’s like chasing smoke.”

The storm howled louder, snow piling against the windowpanes. Meera leaned back, exhaustion seeping into her bones. Yet beneath it was a fragile sense of kinship, as though their losses had reached across years and places to find each other.

He strummed the guitar softly, notes filling the room with a melancholy tenderness. “This is one she used to sing,” he said. The melody was simple, a rise and fall that reminded Meera of monsoon rains on Calcutta rooftops from childhood visits, of mornings when her father would hum as he made tea. The memory pierced her, but it also soothed.

“Do you ever think,” she asked quietly, “that we’re not searching for them as much as for ourselves? For the versions of us we lost when they left?”

Kenji looked at her for a long time before answering. “Maybe both. Maybe finding one means finding the other.”

They drank their tea, the room dim except for the lamp’s glow. Outside, the snow muffled the city until it felt like they were suspended in another world. Meera realized she wasn’t afraid of the pause anymore. The storm had forced stillness, and in it, she felt something she hadn’t allowed herself in years—trust.

Before they lay down, Kenji unfolded the photograph again, placing it between them on the tatami. The faces stared back, frozen in time, two people who had bound their lives in ways that now echoed through their children. The tea house in the background waited like a shadowed landmark, pulling them forward.

“Tomorrow,” Kenji said.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

When the light went out and the storm roared on, Meera lay awake listening to the soft breathing across the room, the fragile thread of companionship holding against the dark. For the first time since the postcard arrived, she didn’t feel entirely alone in the search.

Part 6 – The Tea House Secret

Morning broke pale and muted, the storm spent, the city wrapped in silence beneath its heavy quilt of snow. Kyoto’s streets glistened in the aftermath, branches bowed under frost, temple roofs shining with white crowns. Meera and Kenji walked through the stillness, their breath fogging in the cold, following directions scribbled by the record shop owner in Osaka. The tea house lay beyond the city center, hidden near the river where narrow lanes curled like forgotten veins.

By the time they reached it, the sun had risen higher, glinting against the river’s frozen surface. The tea house stood at the edge of a lane, wooden beams weathered, windows shuttered, the signboard faded to ghostly kanji. It looked abandoned yet preserved, as if waiting. Meera felt her pulse quicken—this was the backdrop of the photograph, the place where her father and Kenji’s sister had once stood, smiling, alive.

The door creaked when Kenji pushed it open. Inside, the air smelled of dust and cedar. Tatami mats lay brittle underfoot, cobwebs stretched across the corners, and silence hung heavy as if the walls themselves remembered. Meera ran her hand across the counter, her fingers stirring a film of dust that swirled into the light.

“Here,” Kenji whispered, pointing toward a low shelf in the corner. A stack of paper slips was tucked beneath an empty sake bottle, edges curled, ink faded but still legible. He lifted them carefully, and together they knelt on the tatami to read.

They were haikus. Each written in a neat, deliberate hand, the lines spare, the words carrying weight beyond their syllables. Kenji translated slowly, his voice low.

Snow hides the footprints
but the river remembers still—
our silence runs deep.

Another:

Lantern’s brief shadow,
a traveler who never came,
chairs waiting for dawn.

And another:

If tomorrow breaks,
follow the north wind’s calling,
where white fields begin.

Meera felt a shiver crawl her spine. “These… they sound like clues. Like someone leaving a trail.”

Kenji nodded. “The last one especially. The north wind. White fields. That’s Hokkaido.”

Her heart thudded. Sapporo lay in Hokkaido. The haikus weren’t just poetry—they were directions, fragments of intention. Her father had been here. His hand, or perhaps Kenji’s sister’s, had written these verses, leaving them like breadcrumbs for anyone who cared to follow.

She touched the final slip, tracing the faded ink. “Do you think they wanted to be found? Or do you think they wanted to be remembered?”

Kenji’s eyes darkened. “Maybe both. Maybe they knew one of us would come.”

They searched further, the tea house yielding small echoes of presence. A scarf folded and left on a chair, brittle with age. A broken cup in the sink. On the wall behind the counter, faint etchings where someone had carved initials: A.B. beside H.K. Meera’s breath hitched. A.B.—her father, Arindam Banerjee. H.K.—his sister, Hanae Kubo.

Kenji traced the letters with his thumb, his jaw clenched. “They carved themselves into this place.”

The silence thickened, the weight of revelation pressing into both of them. For Meera it was proof undeniable—her father hadn’t simply walked away; he had tied his absence to someone else’s life. For Kenji it was confirmation that his sister’s disappearance wasn’t a solitary act but part of a bond that had changed both their fates.

They sat in the center of the abandoned room, the haikus spread between them like fragile maps. Snowlight streamed through cracks in the shutters, illuminating the dust. Meera thought of the postcard, of the five words that had summoned her across oceans: I’ll wait for you here. And now, here, the past spoke in riddles, urging her forward.

Kenji finally said, “Hokkaido, then. We follow the north wind.”

She looked at him, the guitar case beside him, the set of his shoulders. They were no longer two strangers on parallel searches—they were bound now, their grief and hope entwined. She nodded. “Hokkaido.”

Before they left, Meera slipped one haiku into her coat pocket, the one about the north wind. It felt like carrying a piece of her father’s voice, fragile but alive.

Outside, Kyoto’s quiet streets stretched under the winter sun. Tourists had begun to return, laughter echoing faintly near temples, the world continuing as if nothing had shifted. But for Meera, everything had. She felt the weight of the haikus, the initials carved into wood, the photograph binding her to a story she had only begun to unravel.

As they walked back toward the station, Kenji asked, “Are you afraid of what we’ll find?”

“Yes,” she said honestly. “But I’m more afraid of not knowing.”

He nodded. “Then we keep going.”

The path northward lay ahead, across frozen fields and snow-laden mountains, toward Sapporo where trains would end and truths might begin.

Part 7 – Echoes in Hokkaido

The train north was slower, older, its windows frosted from the breath of winter pressing against the glass. Meera sat wrapped in her coat, the haiku folded in her pocket, its words repeating in her mind like a mantra: follow the north wind’s calling, where white fields begin. Outside, the landscape shifted from muted hills to endless plains glazed in snow, villages reduced to smudges of smoke and wood, roads vanishing into drifts. Each passing mile felt like a step deeper into silence, into the space where her father’s trail might finally end.

Kenji sat opposite her, his guitar case leaning against the seat, his gaze fixed on the blur outside. He hadn’t spoken much since Kyoto, the initials carved into wood still shadowing his face. When he did speak, his voice was low, almost reverent. “Hokkaido always feels like another world. The rest of Japan rushes, but here… time slows until you can hear your own thoughts.”

Meera nodded. “Maybe that’s why they came here.”

The train clattered into Sapporo in late afternoon. The station’s glass roof glistened with condensation, travelers wrapped in thick coats hurrying past in gusts of breath. Outside, the air struck cold and sharp, the kind that stung skin and made every inhale a blade. They followed narrow streets past snowbanks taller than Meera, neon signs buzzing against the white. Sapporo was alive with winter—ramen stalls steaming, skaters gliding on frozen ponds, laughter curling from bars—but beneath its brightness she felt the weight of ghosts pressing close.

They found a small ryokan near the river, its tatami floors warmed by hidden heaters. After dropping their bags, they asked the innkeeper about an old tea house north of the city, one mentioned in the haiku. The woman frowned, thought for a moment, then nodded. “Abandoned for many years. Travelers sometimes ask. Strange stories,” she said, her voice lowering. Kenji translated, his eyes dark. “She says people hear music there at night. Empty rooms, but music.”

That evening they walked along the frozen river, the snow crunching under their boots, street lamps glowing pale through the fog. Kenji carried his guitar, though he didn’t play. Meera thought of her father walking these same streets, of Hanae’s laughter carried on the wind. The idea that their footsteps overlapped here made her chest ache with a strange mixture of grief and closeness.

At the river’s edge they stopped. The city lights shimmered on the water’s frozen skin, and the night stretched quiet and vast. Kenji finally spoke. “When I was a child, Hanae used to take me here every winter. She said snow carries echoes—that if you stand still, you can hear voices trapped in the cold. I thought it was just a story.” He paused, looking out over the frozen expanse. “But now I wonder if she meant this. That echoes are all we’re ever left with.”

Meera wanted to answer, but words failed. She slipped the haiku from her pocket instead, holding it out to him. He read it again, the lines soft under his breath. If tomorrow breaks, follow the north wind’s calling, where white fields begin.

“White fields,” he murmured. “That could be anywhere here.”

“Or maybe it’s not a place,” she said. “Maybe it’s a state of being. A blank slate. A beginning.”

Kenji’s eyes lifted to hers, and for a moment the silence between them wasn’t heavy but shared, like warmth held in cold.

The next morning they boarded a small local train that rattled deeper into the countryside. Snowdrifts swallowed houses, the fields stretching white and endless. At a tiny station they disembarked, the platform deserted, the wind cutting across their faces. They followed a narrow path lined with bare trees until they reached it—the second tea house. Smaller than the one in Kyoto, its roof sagging under snow, its windows dark. Yet inside, faint tracks marked the floor, as if someone had been there recently.

Meera’s heart pounded. She pushed the door and stepped into air tinged with smoke, though no fire burned. On the low table lay scraps of paper weighted by a stone. More haikus.

Kenji lifted the top one, his voice unsteady as he read.

Two shadows depart,
yet the river binds their names,
snow will not forget.

Another:

Songs left unfinished,
guitar waits beside the chair,
fingers never came.

And the last:

When you find silence,
listen for the steps you seek—
they end where we are.

The words struck Meera like a blow. “They were here. Not long ago.”

Kenji’s hands shook as he placed the papers back. His voice was raw. “But where are they now? Did they leave again, or…” He didn’t finish.

They stood in the cold room, echoes pressing in, the weight of answers near yet unreachable. Meera looked at the empty chair by the wall, the dust disturbed around it, and for an instant she swore she heard the faintest hum—like her father’s voice, low and unfinished, carried on the wind.

Kenji’s eyes met hers. Both of them knew: the search was no longer about finding the past whole. It was about gathering fragments, echoes, and stitching them into something that could let them go forward. Yet still, the hope lingered that one step more might bring them face to face with the truth.

Part 8 – Threads of the Past

The second tea house lingered in their bones long after they left it. The haikus clung like whispers, haunting Meera’s pocket, their lines weaving into her dreams that night in the ryokan: shadows vanishing into snow, chairs waiting for hands that never returned. She woke to the sound of wind rattling the shutters, her chest heavy with the knowledge that her father and Hanae had passed through here not as strangers bound by coincidence but as companions in absence, leaving behind only words for the ones who might follow.

The next day Kenji sought out an old friend of his sister’s, a man who ran a tiny izakaya near the outskirts of Sapporo. The place was dim, smelling of grilled fish and smoke, paper lanterns trembling in the draft. The man’s eyes widened when he saw Kenji, then narrowed with recognition tinged by pity. Their conversation spilled quickly into Japanese, sharp and low, until Kenji’s shoulders stiffened and his hands curled into fists on the table. When the man finally retreated to the kitchen, Kenji sat silent, his face shadowed.

“What did he say?” Meera asked.

Kenji stared at his hands. “He said Hanae was in love with your father.”

The words struck her like a blade. She sat back, the air pulled from her lungs. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” Kenji’s voice was raw. “They disappeared together. They carved their names together. The photograph, the tea houses, the poems—they weren’t just companions. They were bound.”

Meera shook her head, though her pulse betrayed her. She thought of her father’s silence all these years, the sudden postcard after so long. Was it guilt that drove him? Regret? Or had Hanae been the reason he never came back?

Kenji stood abruptly, pacing the narrow floor. “All this time I believed I was searching for my sister alone. Now I see I’ve been chasing your father too.”

“And I,” Meera whispered, “have been chasing them both.”

Silence thickened between them, broken only by the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Finally Kenji stopped pacing, his face taut. “He took her away. That’s what happened. Whatever story he told himself, he took her.”

Meera felt anger rise, sharp and defensive. “You don’t know that. Maybe she chose. Maybe she wanted to leave with him.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” he snapped. “She vanished without a word, left me with questions that burned five years of my life. Choice or not, it was abandonment.”

The weight of his grief filled the room, pressing against hers until she thought she would break. She wanted to defend her father, but what defense could there be against the truth etched in photographs and haikus? At last she whispered, “I lost him too. Different way, but the same silence.”

Kenji’s eyes softened then, the storm easing, though the pain remained. He sat again, his voice lower. “Maybe we’ve been blaming them both. Maybe what hurts isn’t what they did, but that we weren’t enough to keep them here.”

Meera swallowed hard. “Maybe.”

They left the izakaya without eating, the cold outside biting sharper than before. Snowflakes drifted against the darkening sky, the city muffled in white. They walked side by side in silence, the streets blurring until the inn appeared ahead, lanterns glowing warm against the frost.

That night Meera unfolded the haikus again, laying them on the futon. She studied the last one—When you find silence, listen for the steps you seek—they end where we are. She thought of her father writing those words with Hanae at his side, of the choice to leave everything behind and create a world of their own. Did he expect her to come? Did he believe silence would one day break?

Kenji sat across from her, his guitar resting untouched. “If we find them,” he said slowly, “what then? Do we forgive? Do we demand answers?”

She stared at the fragile slips of paper, the ink fading. “I don’t know. Maybe finding them isn’t about answers. Maybe it’s about seeing them with our own eyes, so the silence ends.”

Kenji nodded, his expression weary but softer. “Then tomorrow, we go further. Someone told me of an old cabin near the mountains. Travelers say two people lived there for a time before vanishing again. Maybe it’s just another story. But maybe it’s the last thread.”

Meera folded the haikus carefully, her fingers lingering on the ink. She realized she was no longer searching only for her father. She was searching for herself—the child who had waited by the window, the woman who had lived half a life in absence.

As the snow deepened outside, she felt the thread of her journey tighten, drawing her toward a conclusion she both longed for and feared.

Part 9 – Before Sapporo

The train rolled slow against the whiteness, cutting through plains where the horizon vanished into sky, snow swallowing all edges until the world looked endless and empty. Meera sat with her forehead against the cold glass, the hum of the engine vibrating through her bones. Beside her, Kenji sat in silence, his guitar case leaning in the corner, his hand clenched around the strap as if it tethered him to something more solid than the questions gnawing at both of them.

They had left the city behind at dawn, following rumors of the cabin in the mountains, but now every mile felt like a tightening coil. The haikus whispered in her pocket, their fragile words heavy as stones. She wanted to breathe, to let go of expectation, but the closer they drew to Sapporo the sharper the ache became. She had lived fifteen years without her father’s voice—what would it mean to hear it now, broken by time, altered by another life?

Kenji shifted suddenly, his voice rough. “If we find them, what if they don’t want us?”

She turned to him, startled by the rawness in his tone. “They left silence, not invitations. We already knew that.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He looked away, jaw tight. “What if they built a world without us? What if they’re still alive, together, and we’re nothing more than echoes at their door?”

The words cut because they mirrored her own fear. She imagined her father and Hanae in some quiet house, their faces older, their bond intact, and herself standing outside like an intruder. The thought hollowed her, yet some stubborn part of her resisted. “We’re not echoes,” she said. “We’re what they left behind. Without us, their story isn’t whole.”

Kenji exhaled, the sound harsh in the small carriage. “I don’t know if I want answers anymore. I only want to stop chasing shadows.”

“Maybe answers are the only way to stop,” she said softly.

They fell into silence, the train carrying them forward. The rhythm of the wheels sounded like a heartbeat, like footsteps on snow. The countryside blurred into villages with smoke curling from chimneys, children playing in the drifts, a dog barking at the passing train. Life continued, untouched by the mysteries that weighed on them.

At one small station the train halted, and they stepped out onto the platform for air. Snow fell steady, each flake distinct, catching in their hair and lashes. The platform was empty except for a vending machine humming beside the wall. Kenji bought two cans of hot coffee and handed one to her, the warmth burning her palms.

For a long time they stood in silence, steam rising from the cans. Finally he said, “I’ve been angry with her for so long. Angry that she chose silence. But now, with you, I see it wasn’t only me she left behind. You carry the same wound.”

She met his gaze. Snow clung to his dark hair, his eyes shadowed but unflinching. “Maybe that’s why we found each other.”

The air thickened between them, heavy with more than grief. Something fragile stirred, not love exactly but its possibility, born of shared silence and the long miles of searching. She felt the urge to reach for his hand, but the train whistle cut sharp, breaking the moment. They boarded again, the warmth of the carriage closing around them.

As the train neared Sapporo, Meera’s chest tightened with each mile. The haikus had promised an ending, or at least a place where silence would break. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Kenji sat across from her, his eyes closed, lips moving faintly as if reciting words she couldn’t hear. She wondered if he was praying, or simply speaking to the sister who had vanished into the snow.

The city appeared at last, lights shimmering through the falling dusk, streets layered in white, the promise of both endings and beginnings waiting among its shadows. The train slowed, the brakes shrieking, and Meera felt her heart stumble in her chest.

Kenji opened his eyes. Their gazes met, both of them carrying the same fear, the same fragile hope. He whispered, “This is it.”

Meera nodded, her throat too tight to answer.

The train stopped. Doors opened. And together they stepped out into the night, the snow falling heavier now, as if the sky itself wanted to bury whatever truth awaited them.

 

Part 10 – The Last Train

Snow swallowed the city as they stepped from the station, the flakes falling so thick they blurred the lights into halos. Sapporo’s streets were alive with motion—steam rising from ramen stalls, children dragging sleds, taxis gliding past with wipers brushing away white—but for Meera and Kenji it all seemed muted, as if the city had drawn its breath in anticipation. They followed directions given by the innkeeper, words passed with a curious look, toward the edge of the city where the river bent north and cabins stood scattered against the fields.

The walk was long, the wind sharp, their boots crunching into drifts. At last, through the blur of snow, a cabin appeared: low-roofed, wood darkened by years, a lantern unlit at the door. Meera’s heart stumbled. She felt the postcard burn in her pocket, the haikus whisper, the photograph sharpen in her memory. Kenji’s shoulders stiffened beside her, his grip tightening on the guitar case.

She pushed the door. It groaned open into silence. Inside, the air smelled faintly of cedar and smoke long gone. The room was small, a futon folded neatly, a table with two cups left inverted as if waiting. On the wall hung a single photograph in a cracked frame: Hanae and her father together, older than in the first photograph, their smiles softer, lined by time.

Meera’s breath hitched. She stepped closer, tracing the image with trembling fingers. They had been here. They had lived here.

Kenji moved toward the table, where a notebook lay closed beneath the dust. He opened it slowly. The pages inside were filled with notes, some musical, some prose, and many poems in the same hand as the haikus. He read aloud, voice low, breaking against the words:

We left because the world could not hold us.
We stayed because silence was kinder than return.
If our children come, know this—
absence was not betrayal, but choice.

The words blurred as Meera’s eyes stung. Her father had written this, or Hanae. Perhaps both. The message was clear: they had chosen each other, chosen to vanish, not because their children weren’t enough, but because their own survival demanded it. Yet how could absence be anything but betrayal when it left scars in its wake?

Kenji’s hands shook as he turned another page. A simple line, written in English this time: Forgive us.

He closed the book, his face pale, jaw set. “So that’s it. They chose silence. And left us to bear it.”

Meera pressed the postcard to her chest, the five words etched into her mind: I’ll wait for you here. It wasn’t an invitation, not really. It was a confession. A trace left for her to find, not to stay. She sank to the tatami, the weight of years pressing down, then lifted her gaze to Kenji. “We came all this way for silence again.”

He sat beside her, the notebook between them, his voice rough. “Silence is still an answer. It tells us what they were. What they weren’t.”

She nodded, though grief clawed at her. Yet beneath it, she felt something unexpected—release. For fifteen years she had lived with questions that festered in the dark. Now she had a truth, even if it was broken. She looked at Kenji, at the weariness in his face, at the pain that mirrored hers. “Maybe the only thing left is what we do with it.”

He met her eyes, the storm outside roaring against the walls. “Then we carry each other forward.”

They left the cabin together, the notebook tucked inside Kenji’s guitar case, the postcard folded into Meera’s coat. The snow fell heavier, erasing their footsteps almost as soon as they made them. By the time they reached the station, the last train was preparing to depart, its lights glowing through the storm.

On the platform, as the whistle shrieked, Meera felt a strange calm. They had found no reunion, no embrace from the past, but they had found something else—each other, bound by loss and the fragile thread of survival. She glanced at Kenji, his face lined with exhaustion yet steady, and in his eyes she saw the beginning of something not yet named.

The doors slid open. They boarded side by side. The train shuddered, pulled forward into the night, its wheels carving through snow, carrying them away from the ghosts they had chased and toward whatever silence might become. Meera leaned back against the seat, the postcard resting in her palm, and whispered to herself, not as despair but as release, “He waited. I came. Now I go.”

The train surged north into the storm, the last train to Sapporo not an ending, but a beginning written on the white fields ahead.

End