Red paint chips that had flaked off the wooden structure speckled the ground around the torii’s two stout legs. A lady led an elderly woman, hunched like a question mark, along the gravel path. Neither woman looked at him as they passed through the torii. He’d never seen anyone drink from one of the bamboo ladles resting on the mossy stone water trough, nor had he witnessed devotees tie prayers onto the hemlock branch, littered with the paper invocations like clothespins on a line. Many mysteries occurred when he wasn’t watching. What are you supposed to talk about on a first date? Should he kiss or shake hands when they say goodnight? She approached from the direction of the village. The sun, ready to plunge behind the mountain, painted her white dress a luminescent orange. He groaned with a mixture of joy and misery. Yasuko’s parents flanked her. She introduced them using her textbook English, and said that they were going to ride the train to the cinema in the next village and would he accompany them?
