Page 5 of Up All Night
Chapter 3
“Hi.”
I rubbed my eyes as I rolled over, seemingly awake. Hard to tell back then since I was going on my fourth day ofmehsleep. While my neighbor had toned it down a bit, my brain was still doing that thing where it didn’t want to let me sleep. And once I did, the rest of the household woke up to get ready for work and college classes, and guess what my other wall bordered? The kitchen.
Two messages from two different men greeted me. The aforementioned salutation, and another one. A much longer one.
“Hello! I have to say you are a beautiful specimen of the Japanese race…”
Because nothing said “Good morning, Cyndi!” like being the target of some white guy’s misdirected Asian fetishism. Next.
Mr.Hi.
That’s all he said. No introduction, no asking how I was, how I liked Japan… a simple hello, accompanied with a shot of the right side of his face and the nameHadrian.I had never heard of it before.
His profile wasn’t much help either. A lot of emoticons and the simple declaration that Mr. Mysterious Hadrian was out to enjoy life to the fullest.
He was cute, I had to give him that.
Only the one picture gave me anything to go by. Nice bone structure, shadowy dark hair, a hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth, but not one that insinuated he was an ass for the sake of it. I couldn’t pinpoint his ethnicity either from this lack of information. Not that it mattered, but when you’re traveling around a huge international hub like Tokyo, you’ll always be curious.
I was intrigued enough to sayHelloback.
Nothing. Eh, he sent his initial message hours ago, right after I went to bed. He probably thought I was ignoring him. It was time to get up and go about my day anyway.
Lunch (remember, I like to sleep late,) shower, get dressed and decide where I wanted to go work for the day. Thoughts of Ikebukuro lingered in my head. It’s one of my favorite neighborhoods in Tokyo, partially because there’s so much amazing shopping, but mostly because there are many late-night cafes for this night owl to write in.
It also wasn’t too far away by subway. As soon as I sat down on the bench, I opened my phone case and saw an alert from Hadrian.
“How are you?”
Wow. He actually messaged me back. Is it sad that I wasn’t expecting that at all? Also, I now had to face the fact that I was apparently doing this. For real.
Nah. I always had the right to ghost him or never agree to anything but a friendly chat…
“Fine, thanks.How are you?”
His answer was immediate.
“Good.”
My day in Ikebukuro pulled my brain in two directions. When I was stationed in the present, my thoughts were clouded with ongoing story ideas and finding a Christmas present for a friend. When I sat down and looked at my phone, however, I only had thoughts for my mysterious match.
Hadrian was a handsome man, or at least the one picture of his face led me to believe that. He was also a man of few words, which may have been a good thing for a guy who would probably end up a one-night stand. Oh, right, when was he going to make a move? Because I had been led to believe that this whole app dating thing basically amounted to “I think you’re good looking / I also think you’re good looking / Wanna get coffee and or fuck?”
I had no hopes for romance. Hell, my main concern wasn’t that he would benice.It was that any potential date I got out of this thing wouldn’t go down in flames because the guy turned out to be a misogynistic douchewaffle who thought taking me out meant I owed him my pussy.
I mean, I wasready to go,but I still had safety standards!
First thing I did when I settled down in a café overlooking Ikebukuro Station was respond again.“What are you doing in Japan?”
If you’ve never traveled abroad, or at least never to Japan, then you may wonder why I led with that. Well, dear friends, it has nothing to do with any weirdness relating to me and everything to do with being nosy. We ex-pats in Japan, regardless of where we hail from, always wonder why the hell other foreigners are there. To be frank, Hadrian didn’t come across as a guy the local English schools were falling over themselves to hire. There are so few job prospects for foreigners even in Tokyo that it’s always the first thing we ask each other. “Yo, man, how did you get a sweet gig here? Is it even sweet? Tell me your life story because I am so homesick, bro.”
He didn’t respond right away. In fact, it took him long enough to respond that I was deep in my work by the time I saw the blue light flashing on my phone.
“I work in restaurant. I live here seven years.”
The thing that made me curiouswasn’this imperfect English, but the fact that he had been here for seven years already and had nothing to do with teaching. That in itself was fascinating… because where I come from, everyone who works in Japan is staying for maybe one, two years tops and is either an English teacher or a translator for some big corporation.
