A Mountain Made of Water

At sunrise, Mount Fuji appeared above Lake Kawaguchi with a brightness that made Leah forget the cold. The snow held a delicate pink, and below it the mountain's reflection extended into water so still that a floating cherry petal seemed almost an intrusion. Blossoms hung over the shore, pale against the darker branches. She had arrived in Japan for her cousin's wedding, then given herself three extra days here. After a week of photographs in which she had smiled on command, she wanted to see something without being asked to stand beside it.

The man on the lakeside bench had apparently found the opposite difficulty. Every time Leah glanced his way, he was drawing the same view again. He would study the water, make a few marks in a small notebook, and turn the page. The movement was precise, almost impatient. Beside him lay a pencil case and a pair of gloves he seemed to have forgotten. He had drawn enough mountains to fill a modest exhibition before the first warmth reached her face.

She had seen him at the little hotel the previous evening, trying to explain to its owner why he needed a binder clip at that hour. Leah had supplied one from the packet she carried for work. As a stage manager, she could leave a theater behind more easily than its useful objects. He had thanked her with a smile that she remembered rather clearly when she found him here.

Now he lifted the notebook in greeting. The clip held a thick section of pages together. She asked whether it had helped, and he moved his bag to offer her half the bench. His name was Daichi. He was thirty-nine, lived in Yokohama, worked as an accountant, and was attempting something for which accounting had left him poorly prepared. He said this with such cheerful seriousness that Leah sat down to investigate.

His drawings were small and simple: the mountain, the far shore, its reflection. Yet on each page something was missing or displaced. The peak seemed to dissolve halfway down the lake. In another, it had acquired a crooked waist. Leah wondered whether he was trying to capture the water precisely or had chosen a particularly unforgiving subject for a first attempt. He admitted that the drawings were supposed to be imperfect in a very particular order.

“You'll have to let me finish,” he said. “At the moment, it looks as though something terrible has happened to Fuji.”

The pleasure of his company lay partly in how little he asked her to explain. When she told him about the wedding, he wanted to know whether she had enjoyed it, rather than when it would be her turn. She had enjoyed it enormously. At thirty-seven, she liked weddings better now that she no longer treated them as assessments of her own progress. She liked less the quiet journey afterward, when everyone paired off at the station and she became responsible for all her own luggage again.

Daichi understood the distinction. He had been single for a year, and had discovered that he was quite content traveling alone until he encountered something he wanted to point out to another person. He gestured toward the mountain. Leah followed his hand, but became briefly distracted by the ink stain along his thumb and the care with which he held the little book. She wondered what it would feel like to have that attention turned fully toward her.

A breeze touched the lake. The reflected snow broke into pale horizontal lines, and Daichi bent quickly over his drawing. Leah held the loose pages still for him. Their hands occupied the same small space, adjusting instinctively around each other, and when his knuckle brushed hers he looked up. His expression changed just enough to tell her she had not imagined the attraction. He finished the line more slowly than before.

They left the bench to walk along the shore while his pencil hand recovered. Nearby, a silver-haired man with amber eyes and a cobalt-blue scarf stood beneath the blossoms, fastening his camera case. Beyond him, other early visitors were beginning to gather. Daichi and Leah kept to the path, passing trees whose branches framed different portions of the mountain. The air smelled faintly of damp earth. Here and there, the lake lapped against the edge with a sound too small to travel far.

She told him about the play she had just taken on tour, which contained a door that refused to open at the most important moment. He wanted the entire story, including how the actor had recovered. Leah found herself recreating the scene, giving the door a far more dignified role than it deserved. Daichi's laughter came suddenly and without restraint. It made her want to tell him things she usually kept for people she had known for years.

At a quiet stretch, he asked her to hold the notebook while he removed the clip. The mystery became clear when he pressed the pages together and released them beneath his thumb. The drawings flickered. Fuji's reflection rippled, dissolved, and slowly returned to its whole shape. It was a little film made from paper, rough at the edges and unexpectedly lovely.

He was making it for his father, who had shown him how to make flipbooks when he was a child. His father had recently retired and announced that he intended to spend his newfound leisure becoming unbearably good at drawing. Daichi planned to offer some competition. He had tried the lake because he could never explain, afterward, how its reflection had moved. A photograph kept the wrong part still.

Leah asked to see it again. This time he stood behind her shoulder and turned the pages while she held the spine. She could feel the warmth of him through their coats, close enough that his quiet explanation reached her before the lake sounds did. When the mountain reassembled, she did not immediately step away. Daichi stayed beside her, his hand still supporting the book, and the pause became an invitation neither needed to disguise.

She turned toward him, and Daichi's gaze rested on her mouth. “Come closer,” Leah said. He did, slowly enough for her to feel every inch of the distance disappear. She lifted her face to his, and he kissed her while her fingers tightened around his hand. When they parted, he was smiling in a way that made her forget the sentence she had intended to say.

Instead, she asked him to spend the rest of the morning with her. They could walk as far as they liked, then decide what came next. He put the notebook safely in his bag, but kept the binder clip out and offered it back. Leah closed his fingers around it. He would need it for the next attempt, she said, and she intended to see that one too.

They took a photograph together before leaving, the ordinary kind, with the mountain behind them and Leah's arm around his waist. For once she did not prepare her smile. It arrived when he drew her nearer, just before the shutter clicked.