A soft glow rose from the table, accompanied by the muted vibration of an incoming call.

The man's arm reached out without hesitation, seizing the light.

"Hey, it's been a while, hasn't it? —No, don't worry about it. Go on."

I sighed at him as he answered so casually and began his conversation, then looked away. In the dim half-light, all boundaries had seemed ambiguous, equal—yet that graceless glow illuminating his ear made me acutely aware of the lines that separated one thing from another. The boundary between the hardwood table and the long, sturdy arm resting carelessly upon it. The boundary between his arm and the bar's gentle darkness. And myself, supposedly enveloped in that same darkness, yet somehow unable to blend into it at all.

Then there was the three-dimensional line—or perhaps a convergence of planes—that clearly divided him from me. I'd heard it said that, in quantum physics—or perhaps Eastern philosophy—everything in this world flows in unbroken continuity, that all things are one. When friends had filled my head with this notion, I'd felt I understood it intuitively.

But watching his half-illuminated face in that digital glow, my certainty dissipated like unreliable mist.

A burst of uninhibited laughter erupted from the bar counter, rolling toward us like a wave. The noise must have drowned out whoever was on the other end of his call. His expression turned visibly sour.

It's not as though he was having any conversation of substance.

My thought, it seemed, was transparent even in the darkness. With angular fingers, he tapped irritably at the back of his device, then ended his shallow call without ceremony.

Silence fell.

The dim bar remained filled with a symphony of sounds, yet here, in this small territory ruled by digital light, there existed a silence so profound it made my heart ache.

He had been staring at the glow of his device, but now he lifted his gaze and turned both eyes toward me. He wasn't what anyone would call good-natured—troublesome, contrary, an immature child who mocked others without compunction. A pitiful man who didn't even know what brought him joy. And yet, when I said I wanted to see him, he came without protest, offering his time as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Sometimes I sensed something like a fragment of tenderness in the way he touched me. When had that sensation, which I'd once found merely tiresome, begun to linger on my skin longer than any rough caress?

Shaking off the images that flickered through my mind, I drained half my beer and set the glass down perhaps too firmly. The hardness of the wood transmitted through the glass into my palm, and a smile crept unbidden across my face. It was only three months ago, after all, that he'd told me the name of this wood, wearing the expression of someone sharing a treasured secret.

I filled my lungs slowly and raised my head. As if in response, he shifted forward from his chair, peering intently into my eyes. The color of his irises, illuminated by that faint light, burned into my memory with unexpected vividness. We'd exchanged glances countless times before, yet in that moment, it felt as though our eyes were truly meeting for the first time.

Ah, that's right—his eyes are hazel.

By tomorrow, I'll probably have forgotten again.

I've decided to move my life forward.

Whether the words I was about to speak would be a farewell or a confession of love... even now, at this late moment, I couldn't say.