"When I will be gone, I will miss you, perhaps" she said.
They were sitting on plastic chairs on the roof of an empty old industrial building and looked towards the horizon, towards Paris. It did not glow as much as it did in the postcards. It was a milder glow. A sleepy one. It was too late at night for tourists. Too late for the lights designed to attract them to stay on. The sun would soon return and make this past few hours into their first "white night".
She smoked her second cigarette. He stared at the sky.
"you will miss me 'perhaps' ?", he said, adjusting the pitch of the last word to resemble her softer, more feminine diction. "How snobbish of you to say something like that. Maybe, perhaps?" He looked at her, or rather at her back, as she had turned away and seemed to be more interested in the nearby buildings. "Will you base your decision on what I will do in the next 24 hours? Or what will happen to you once you get back to Japan?"
"How long have you been here?"
"Soon longer than anywhere else."
"See, that's why."