The train runs through the rainy dusk. The sun never came out and the day is ending itself early under the blank command of grey skies, heavy and endless across the glistening city. Warm dampness steams the windows. In rain-dark jackets, suits, tailored coats, sweatshirts not enough to ward off the early spring chill, passengers press and sway together. A young woman sits beside me, very small, muffled in a black trench coat. She is crying. I meet the eyes of the man wearily holding the overhead bar. What should we do? He watches as I pull out tissues from my bag. The woman snatches them. She is shuddering with sobs. A slim orange cell phone lies blankly on her knees. It is oblivious as she checks it, a desperate habit, a calming ritual. She whispers a pained thanks.

She asks if I have time. If we could we get off the train and talk? This is so unusual. Train rides are flatly anonymous and defined by juxtaposed proximity and psychic isolation.

At the next station she introduces herself as Saori. We walk through the pedestrian tunnels and up the stairs to an exit. In the cold rain the street is nearly deserted and we go into a small café on the corner. Sitting along the wall, we wait for our coffees. Her eyes are puffy from crying and her anguish is palpable. “I want to kill myself.”

Our coffees are placed gently on our table and the waiter retreats. I repeat back to Saori, “Kill yourself?” She is so abrupt I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “I'm so sorry. I have to talk to someone. When you gave me the tissues, it was a sign. My boyfriend who is married just told me to never talk to him again.” She began crying again. I touched her hand.

She was from a rural prefecture where she had known her boyfriend for years, though they weren’t dating then. He had married another woman and moved to Tokyo quite suddenly. Saori had been devastated even though they didn’t really have a relationship. “It was just something we knew. Then he called me one day. It was a shock. He would come back to see his parents and make some time to see me.” There was no work in her town and the one relationship she cared about was in Tokyo so she moved here a year ago. She worked part-time in an office, not really making enough to survive in Tokyo, so her parents were sending her some money every month. She’d tried to start at a junior college but she’d never been good in school. She quit after the first few months.

I asked how he felt about her. “He always just says, ‘I like you.’ That’s all. But I feel trapped.” Her anguish consumed her. The loneliness she anticipated was thick ahead of her and she felt like a failure. “I don’t know why I came here. I am not doing anything. My dream is destroyed.”

Talking to a stranger was better than her friends because there was no shame. I felt helpless. “Please don’t kill yourself.”

We exchanged phone numbers as we parted at the station. The next day she texted me:

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