Kyoto in the Rain

The first time, she was standing in a moss garden on the western edge of the city, utterly still, as if she had grown there. Aaron photographed the moss and accidentally caught her in the corner of the frame.

The second time, she was at Fushimi Inari, climbing through the endless red gates with a paper map. The third, at a tiny tea house in Gion. The fourth, on the Philosopher's Path, where she caught him photographing her and raised one eyebrow.

On the fifth day it poured. He ducked into the covered gate of a small temple in the north of the city and found her already there, shaking out a clear umbrella.

'Are you following me?' she asked, in faintly amused English.

'I think the city is,' he said.

Her name was Haruka. She was an illustrator from Osaka, spending a week drawing gardens for a book. He showed her the photograph from the moss garden, with her blurred at its edge, and she laughed and said it was the best picture of her anyone had ever taken.

They walked through the wet streets for hours, sharing her umbrella, stopping for noodles in a steamy shop with four stools. At a crossing in Pontocho, under strings of glowing lanterns, she reached up and brushed rain from his hair, and he kissed her.

Her guesthouse had paper screens, a futon and a garden that dripped all night. He listened to the rain on the roof and to her breathing beside him and did not take a single photograph.

Some things, he decided, were better remembered.