The Ferry to Miyajima

Yuna had exactly two days.

The train ticket stub tucked inside Tom's book gave her one piece of information: a route to Hiroshima, dated two days from the morning she'd found it. It wasn't much. It wasn't even close to enough, really. But it was something, and after a full day of telling herself this was a ridiculous idea, she found herself on a Shinkansen heading west anyway, the book sitting in her bag like a small, strange responsibility she hadn't asked for.

"This is completely unreasonable," she said to herself, quietly, somewhere around Osaka. "You don't even know where in Hiroshima. Or what time. Or if he's even still there."

She kept going anyway.

By the time she arrived at Hiroshima Station, it was already mid-morning. She had no real plan beyond the vague logic that most travelers passing through Hiroshima eventually made their way to Miyajima — the small island famous for its floating red gate, standing in the sea at high tide. If Tom really was "wandering," as he'd said on the bus, that felt like the most likely place to wander toward.

It wasn't much of a plan. But it was the only one she had.

She bought a ferry ticket and started walking toward the platform for Miyajimaguchi.

The ferry ride itself took only about ten minutes, but Yuna spent every single one of them scanning the small crowd on board, feeling slightly ridiculous for doing so.

He wasn't there. Of course he wasn't. There was no reason to expect him to be on this exact ferry, at this exact time, out of the dozens that ran back and forth every single day.

Still, when the boat rounded a small headland and the famous torii gate came into view — enormous, bright red, standing directly in the shallow water as though the sea itself had simply grown around it — she found herself reaching automatically for her camera anyway, old habits taking over even in the middle of everything else.

It really was beautiful. She could understand, immediately, why so many travelers ended up here.

The ferry docked a few minutes later, and passengers began filing off toward the island, deer wandering freely along the waterfront path, completely unbothered by the crowds of tourists taking photos.

Yuna walked slowly along the shoreline path, scanning faces, feeling more and more foolish with every step, telling herself she'd give it thirty minutes before admitting this whole plan had been exactly as unreasonable as it sounded out loud.

She'd made it almost to twenty-five minutes when she saw him.

Or rather, she saw the back of him, already boarding a different ferry, already pulling away from the opposite pier, already impossibly far across the water.

"Tom!"

Her voice came out louder than she'd expected, loud enough that several nearby tourists turned to look. The boy on the departing ferry — tall, unmistakable backpack, the same easy posture she remembered from the bus — didn't turn around at all, too far away already, the engine noise and the wind carrying her voice somewhere else entirely.

She ran the last stretch toward the pier anyway, uselessly, arriving just in time to watch the ferry pull further away, already turning toward open water, already too far for any reasonable shout to reach.

For a long moment, she just stood there, breathing hard, watching the boat shrink smaller against the horizon.

Of course. Of course this was how it would go. Two days, one vague clue, and she'd managed to arrive at exactly the wrong pier, at exactly the wrong moment, close enough to see him and not nearly close enough to actually reach him.

She almost laughed, standing alone on the dock, the absurdity of the whole situation finally catching up with her.

"Missed him," she said out loud, to nobody in particular, echoing words she hadn't even realized she was thinking until she said them.

The ferry continued shrinking into the distance, carrying Tom somewhere she couldn't follow, at least not today.

She sat on a bench near the pier for a while, the book still in her bag, feeling considerably less confident about this entire plan than she had that morning on the train.

Eventually, a ferry staff member noticed her sitting there for so long and asked, kindly, if she was waiting for something.

"Not exactly," Yuna admitted. Then, on impulse, she pulled out the book. "This is going to sound strange. But if an Australian guy, tall, big backpack, ever asks about a lost book at this terminal — could you hold onto a note for him?"

The staff member looked mildly amused, but nodded anyway, handing her a small notepad from behind the counter.

Yuna thought for a moment, then wrote quickly: Your book found you a travel companion for two days. Currently somewhere in Japan, probably still lost. If you want it back — or just want to know how a stranger's book ended up on a two-day detour — find me: @yuna.frames. — Y.

She tucked the note inside the front cover, right where he'd find it, and handed the whole thing over to the ferry staff member, along with a brief, slightly embarrassed explanation of the situation.

"People leave notes here sometimes," the staff member said, smiling, filing it away behind the counter without further questions. "You'd be surprised how often this actually works."

Yuna wasn't sure she believed that. But she boarded the return ferry anyway, already wondering, somewhere underneath the disappointment, what might happen next.