She was sat quietly across from him, draped in white.

The restaurant was bustling, covered in red balloons and half-lit under the glow of the lamps.

It was a calendar-marked day – within the confines of one second, she would be able to start over.

She watched as his eyes strayed for the first time, toward the bar at the other end of the room. Men were shouting and pouring: one cup of sake, then another. Some chanted songs, phrases she knew she recognized but couldn’t identify. She was a stranger here, anyway.

She parted her lips to speak, now that his eyes no longer bore into hers. This would be her moment, she knew. Her tongue curled around the words, poised and prepared, but before she could utter a sound, someone had brought the food to their table. His eyes returned, now pinned to the bowl of ozōni in front of him. As he picked up his porcelain spoon, she heard herself sigh.

The bartender shouted a number from behind the divider, eyes trained on the clock. Soon there would be bells, one-hundred-and-eight bells, to be exact, ringing throughout the streets of Tokyo. A bell for each human sin, is what the Buddhist temple down the street had told her.

She sipped again and hoped one-hundred-and-eight would be enough.  

The family next to her was  laughing. Two girls were writing postcards, embroidered with uneven hearts and swirls. Their mother didn’t seem to mind.

She stole another glance at him from across the table. Halfway through the soup, she saw. Halfway would have to do. She pushed her chair back – louder than she’d intended – and stepped through the commotion, stepped outside. The wind cut at her skin.

Somewhere a band was playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony. She heard a perfect fifth interval, and then a cascade of downward scales. She fumbled for something in her pocket as the trombones sounded. She drew out a cigarette and a match. Her fingers shook as she attempted to light the tip.

Here was the coda. Now for the third movement, her mind hummed, as the cigarette flame finally obeyed.  

She felt more than saw him come outside; he stood a respectable distance away from her. From within the restaurant she heard the countdown begin as the violins swelled.

Ten, they shouted. 十

She inhaled through her cigarette and turned to him. His eyes were darker than she remembered.

Nine, 九

B flat major, she said, and from the sudden way he turned to look at her, she almost thought she was wrong.

Eight, 八

His lip curled upward and her heart shuddered in her chest. Goosebumps, from the wind.

Seven, 七

He spoke and his voice was hoarse and strained with old age. Although, she supposed, so was hers.

“The Germans introduced this piece to us, you know.”

Six, 六

His words were bullets. And why had he chosen to speak in English?

“I know.”

The sentence sounded submissive even to her ears.

Five, 五

The fourth movement had already started and she had missed it. He hummed along with the main theme.

Four, 四

“I kept the letters you sent me. I wouldn’t have survived without them.”

He was mocking her. She was going to cry.

Three, 三

Even the violins were angry. At some point she had dropped her cigarette on the ground. His eyes were turning, darker.

Two, 二

“It was fifty years ago,” she managed to mutter. Before she could react he had an arm around her. The flutes trembled.

One, 一

Her cheeks were wet as the cheers from inside the restaurant reached their climax. So, apparently, did the violins. They retreated into a quieter, military-style scherzo. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the Buddhist bells.

If he felt her shoulders shaking up and down, he said nothing.

I should have come earlier.

She almost said it.

I thought you were dead.

He must’ve been able to read her mind, she surmised, because he looked at her then – finally – and said, “It was chaotic after the war.”

Her throat was dry. He was making excuses for her. After fifty years.

“All you had was my first name.”

She cried into his jacket. She thought for a moment it had started to snow but it was silver confetti.

As the strings slowed and the staccato rhythm stretched, he put both arms around her. And then, in an almost inaudible whisper: “I was on the enemy side.”

After this, she could breathe. The words came pouring out, desperate and unplanned as she met his eyes. They had called me back to America, she said. And I didn’t hear back from you, and the ring was lost somewhere in the aftermath of the explosion. And so many people had died, Takeshi, and the city was smoking.

The city was smoking.

As she spoke he too had begun to cry. He held her now.

He held her, she thought, as if he were trying to make up for the years he had missed. They had missed, she corrected herself.

Beethoven had not yet finished, but he took her hand, the same hand that had written him the letters in red and black ink and had saved him from losing himself on the battlefield. They turned now and walked away from the restaurant’s open door, and the glasses clinking, and the ode to joy. For the first time in years she did not think about the soldiers, or the amputations, or that final, piercing bomb.

She smiled. Japan had survived, and so too would they.