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older woman? No, she decided, that can’t be it. When I’m beside her, I want to touch her. That’s a bit different from a yearning.
    Sumire sighed, gazed up at the ceiling for a while, and lit her cigarette. It’s pretty strange if you think about it, she thought. Here I am, in love for the first time in my life, at age twenty-two. And the other person just
happens
to be a woman.
    T he restaurant Miu had made a reservation at was a ten-minute walk from the Omote Sando subway station. The kind of restaurant that’s hard for first-timers to find, certainly not a place where you just casually drop in for a meal. Even the restaurant’s name was hard to remember unless you heard it a couple of times. At the entrance Sumire told them Miu’s name and was escorted to a small, private dining room on the second floor. Miu was already there, sipping an iced Perrier, deep in conversation with the waiter concerning the menu.
    Over a navy-blue polo shirt Miu had on a cotton sweater of the same color, and she wore a thin, plain silver hairpin. Her pants were white slim-fit jeans. On a corner of the table rested a pair of bright blue sunglasses, and on the chair next to her was a squash racquet and a Missoni designer sports bag. It looked like she was on her way home after a couple of noontime games of squash. Miu’s cheeks were still flushed a faint pink. Sumire imagined her in the shower at the gym, scrubbing her body with an exotic-smelling bar of soap.
    As Sumire entered the room, dressed in her usual herringbone jacket and khaki pants, her hair all messed up like some orphan’s, Miu looked up from the menu and gave her a dazzling smile. “You told me the other day that you can eat anything, right? I hope you don’t mind if I go ahead and order for us.”
    Of course not, Sumire replied.
    M iu ordered the same thing for both of them. The entrée was a light grilled fish with a touch of green sauce with mushrooms. The slices of fish were done to perfection—browned in an almost artistic way that you knew was just right
.
Pumpkin gnocchi and a delicate endive salad rounded out the meal. For dessert they had the crème brûlée, which only Sumire ate. Miu didn’t touch it. Finally, they had espresso. Sumire observed that Miu took great care about what she ate. Miu’s neck was as slender as the stalk of a plant, her body without an ounce of detectable fat. She didn’t seem to have to diet. Even so, it would appear she was superstrict about food. Like some Spartan holed up in a mountain fortress.
    As they ate they chatted about nothing in particular. Miu wanted to know more about Sumire’s background, and she obliged, answering the questions as honestly as she could. She told Miu about her father, her mother, the schools she attended (all of which she’d loathed), the prizes she won in a composition contest—a bicycle and a set of encyclopedias—how she came to quit college, the way she spent her days now. Not a particularly thrilling life. Even so, Miu listened, enthralled, as if listening to the enchanting customs of a far-off land.
    Sumire wanted to know so much more about Miu. But Miu hesitated to talk about herself. “That’s not important,” she deferred with a bright smile. “I’d rather hear more about
you.
”
    By the time they finished eating, Sumire still hadn’t learned much. About the only thing she found out was this: that Miu’s father had donated a lot of money to the small town in the north part of Korea where he had been born, and had built several public buildings for the townspeople—to which they’d responded by erecting a bronze statue of him in the town square.
    “It’s a small town deep in the mountains,” Miu explained. “The winter’s awful, and just looking at the place makes you shiver. The mountains are craggy and reddish, full of bent trees. Once when I was little my father took me there. When they unveiled the statue. All these relatives came up, crying and hugging me. I