The days were hot, and the nights no longer had the power to cool down the dusty air.

「『みんな同じ、みんな違う。』そんな兵理屈を古いポッドで聞くながら彼女は夜をわたりました。」

She walked past the stalls of the night market, not even giving it a single second of a glance.

She had a goal. One which was of much greater importance than some rusty objects of bygone days. She had come to visit an old friend. Though that word had become somewhat inappropriate to describe their relationship at some point. Still, there she was, in a faraway country, far from home, to see an old friend.

While walking through the countryside, the night had begun to turn into day. She hadn't counted the hours of her march, having always loved these kinds of things, moving, walking, running, speeding away from all unpleasant things and thoughts.

When she reached town, the stale, heated air awaiting her almost felt like a punch to the guts. She had difficulty breathing and felt quite reluctant to traverse this wall of fire. But in she had to go if she wanted to accomplish her goal, and she had come way too far to turn back now.

While the stale air had not become any lighter, she unwittingly realised that humans could even get used to things like this and, naturally, to many others.

The town became brighter with the rising of the sun, and life began to bustle.

[おい、姉ちゃん！これを買ってみ？まだ焼きたてばかり！]

A vendor called to her, shoving something resembling food in her way.

Hiding her disgust but less her annoyance, she readjusted her earphones and hit the play button. An old song, one she had loved deeply, began to play. Her feet began to move to the beat, and her steps began to synchronise with the rhythm.

♫

Being on foreign ground, her natural first stop was to visit the local guides. Having had regular exchanges with that old friend over the last few years, she could more or less pinpoint her whereabouts. But that had only gone as far as locating the postal service her friend had been using. Naturally, she could have asked that friend of hers to give her a more detailed description of her abode. However, the building complexes' absence of addresses wasn't the only issue.

♫

They all looked the same, grey, worn-out, dusty high-rise building complexes connected with each other. They had begun to form a giant city of their own, a massive colourless wall rising high against the sky as if challenging the heavens. And they refused outsiders.

Or at least, that was how it seemed to her. She had long grown past the age to worry about trivial matters such as open discrimination or hidden refusal of otherness.

They were all the same; they all were different.

They had all become the same.

And with the passing of the years, an air of indifference had begun to form around her. It had made life much easier. She had become much more indifferent to life.

♫

She soon found what she was looking for. The purpose of guides was to be found by outsiders, after all, so they usually erected fancy, eye-catching hide-outs to hide from the sun, of course, in easily accessible locations. All it had taken was to ask a fellow indifferent passer-by, and as soon as she had approached the walled complex, a ridiculously colourful construct of tents and carpets had met her eye.

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「よ！ お蝶ちゃん、ご命はなんとなり！」

A friendly-looking middle-aged man called out to her from a precipice, the former roof of a single-family home in front of the monstrosity of modern housing, now the ground on which the merry local guides had erected their abode.

The matter had been swiftly dealt with: the person she was looking for, no matter who it was she was looking for, as long as they were alive, men or women all frequented the local market at least once a day, even those holed up inside that giant mansion fortress.

What's the point of holing up in there if you have to leave frequently anyway?

What even is the point? Who was it that was first charmed by this illusion of isolation amidst modern society or of any other? Of course, if they're not self-sufficient, there is no isolation, just the illusion of it. But for some, the thought alone might have been enough.

So, instead of venturing inside the belly of the beast, she headed for the nearest market, taking up her lookout close to the entrance nearest the mansion.

♫

They had been good friends growing up together. They had done everything together, gone everywhere together and even grown to resemble each other, being called as undistinguishable as twins by those around them. But life had led them to grow apart. What once was one had become two, and by now, neither really minded that part anymore.

That's just what growing up is all about: to separate yourself from the mould, to become one, though maybe not whole. And by now, she wasn't all too sure anymore about their past relationship. After all, no one is really with someone else all the time, or maybe everyone is truly alone all the time, even if they're with someone else. And while speech patterns, fleeting opinions and even habits tend to grow alike, no one is really ever like someone else.

We're all different.

Or are we all the same?

It had been her that had ended their close-knit relationship. She had moved overseas for some great opportunity or something. She couldn't even remember clearly anymore. Though, she felt like that hadn't been the reason. The reason had been something she could only admit now, now that she had become indifferent to most things in life.

The truth was, they hadn't really been all that close-knitted, not at all sewn together by the hip, as outsiders liked to say. They had been living completely different lives in completely different worlds with completely different incidents shaping and forming their minds. They had been passing by each other. And it had been that friction that had clouded everyone's judgement about their relationship, even their own.

As she sat on an upturned wooden crate, staring into the distant past, she suddenly craved a smoke. Having almost depleted her stash, she usually felt quite reluctant to waste away her treasury. But now would be an appropriate situation for a smoke. It was, after all, the beginning of a new chapter in her life, the beginning of a great adventure.

She brought out her tin box and that rusty old, yet barely used lighter of hers. After all, you couldn't light a fire with it, so its uses had been greatly limited.

As she sat there, smoking and perusing the state of nothingness, a man approached her, a young man, seemingly her age. He had flowing curly hair and a face pleasant to look at, though she wasn't quite sure whether he was to be described as handsome or good-looking. She had never been good at stuff like that. Her aesthetic sensor seemed to always have been one of a kind, though the first thing that had come to her mind was 'pretty'. He had the air of a real-life beauty. His brown hair with a taint of black and his much too alive-looking eyes, carrying the hint of a smile, stood in stark contrast to the dusty grey world around them. He was lean, though his leanness created the illusion of someone ready to jump high into the air, never to come down again, never to walk on this scored earth again if only he had wings.

"Ah! Don't tell me!" he shouted theatrically while coming closer, one hand held across his face in fake disbelief: "Is that actually tobacco?"

Turning over another wooden crate in one smooth motion, he sat down next to her, taking his head in his hands and peeking at her while doing his best to appear pitiful.

"You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette to spare for an old man?" he said comically. However, rather than using his charm, his pleading felt quite natural, as if he simply was that kind of man, direct in his approach and most likely the sociable type, her natural enemy.

Without saying anything, without even batting an eye, she held up her tin box and lighter and passed them to him.

She might've considered this her treasure, her precious and usually felt reluctant to even touch it herself, still less inclined to let someone else touch it.

But this man wasn't just anyone.

So they sat there, two strangers in foreign lands sharing an intimate moment of peace amidst the bustling of life.

♫