The Night Lines

At first she thought it was just an urban legend. The story started the way those stories always do: with a vague and anonymous rumour.

'Hey, did you hear about that viral video that shows up on your feed when you're scrolling late at night? This creepy bird-woman-thing appears and if you see her you're cursed.'

'I heard that if a woman comes up to you on the street and asks you if she looks pretty, you need to be careful. It could bekuchisake-onna, the slit-mouth woman.'

'I heard a girl named Reiko fell on the tracks in this very station got cut in half by a train. If you hear a noise liketeke teke, you need to run because she's dragging herself over the rails to get you!'

"You know...I heard a funny thing about these women-only carriages."

Mira looked up from her phone at her friend Eri, then glanced around the light rail passenger car they were riding in. Sure enough, there wasn't a single man in there, only women. Mira hadn't even noticed when they boarded that they'd gotten on at the painted pink strip on the platform that said "this carriage reserved for women only." She was too tired after a long day's work and too distracted by her phone.

"What did you hear?" Mira asked Eri, trying to sound interested.

"Ok, so I don't really know that much. But I heard fromsomeone, I can't say who, that there's a special express train that leaves after the official last train from Shinjuku station, and it has nothing but women-only cars."

"So?"

"If you get on it, really weird things happen to you."

"Like what kind of things?"

Eri glanced around and dropped her voice.

"Perverted things."

"What, like groping? Come on, Eri, that's why we have woman-only cars in the first place, to keep guys like that from groping you."

"The women all do it. Or, some of them do it to the others. They even take their clothes off."

"Right out in public?"

"Well, it's late at night, and it happens inside the train."

"There are still lots of people around at night. Anyone could see you naked through the windows!"

Mira tried to make it sound like a reasonable objection to Eri's unbelievable story, but something about what she'd just said that gave her a shivery feeling in the pit of her stomach. Eri sensed her tension and shrugged defensively.

"Hey, it's not like I've been on the perv-train. I don't know how it works. I'm just telling you what someone told me. But you're right, it couldn't be a real thing. I only thought of it because..."

"Because what?"

"Because I was told that when the 'extra-special' express is boarding, they cover the pink women-only sign on the platform with a black rubber mat. When we were pulling out of the station just now, I noticed that one of the workers was putting something black over the floor where we got on, like a towel. But maybe they were just cleaning up or something."

"Yeah. I'm sure that was it."

In fact, Mira wasn't really sure that Eri's story was just an urban legend. In the coming weeks, she thought about the extra-special express train with its black rubber mat and its women-only carriages more than she would have admitted to anyone. Not that she had anyone to admit much to, being single, far from her family, and rather shy outside of work. But in the privacy of her own little apartment, when she was touching herself late at night, she found herself fantasizing about getting onto a train and being pinned against the window by an anonymous group of women who stroked her breasts and her butt, who reached between her legs and...ah! No! How could she imagine things like that?

Mira has been raised in a fairly conservative household. Coming to Tokyo had been a major move and it was still a pretty big culture shock for her sometimes. She couldn't even walk through Akihabara without blushing at the posters of sexy anime girls. The poses they were drawn in made her feel uncomfortably hot and damp sometimes. How could she even dream about going on a...what had Eri called it?Hensha. "Perv-train." The name said it all!

"No," she told herself firmly in her mind. "I may indulge my urges on my own, which is bad enough, but I don't want anything like that to happen for real."

Still, sometimes fate has a way of granting the wishes we don't dare to make. It happened to Mira one night after a company drinking party. She didn't mean to stay so late but she was having fun for once, finally coming out of her shell, and she didn't notice the time until it was just five minutes before the last train. She dashed out drunkenly into the night, pushing (not too rudely, she hoped) past the equally drunk male co-workers who offered to escort her to the station, running pell-mell through the turnstile even though she knew she was already too late. She could feel the wind gusting up the stairs as she raced down to the platform. She could hear the sound of the wheels on the tracks.

Gone.

She'd missed the last train on the Odakyu line bound for Odawara. It was also the last train that stopped in the suburb of Machida, where she lived. She stared after it for a long moment, still dazed from her run and the lingering fizz of alcohol in her blood. The last few passengers and off-work station shopkeepers passed by her, heading back up to the street to find their own ways home.

Mira began to plod up the stairs behind them. Then a dark, sinuous voice slid into her wine-loosened mind.

Hey. Did you see the black mat?

Her feet slowed on the step. Stopped.

Were they putting it out, the black mat?

"No," she whispered out loud. "That's not real."

Why don't you go look? If it's not real, it can't hurt to look.

Mira had to admit the logic of that. If she went back and looked and saw that it wasn't real, then maybe she could stop thinking about it and have more normal fantasies about Hollywood action heroes, or at least K-Pop boy bands. The "perv-train" couldn't be real, and even if it was, how would she know which platform to go to in order to find it? It obviously wasn't on the departures board. Eri hadn't mentioned which of the many trains leaving Shinjuku late at night was followed by the "extra-special express." What were the odds that a strange train like that would go to Machida, of all places? Nothing there except the Daiso megastore and the Squirrel Garden. And Mira's place, of course.

"Stop this. I should be thinking about how to get home, not chasing rumours in a train station after midnight!" She told herself sternly.

Just look for it. The black mat.

"Fine, stupid brain. I'll look for it."

She turned and marched back down the steps, fully prepared to be disappointed by an empty platform. When she got to the bottom, she saw what looked like a station employee, a trim upright woman in a navy-blue uniform and clean white gloves, standing near the platform.

"Oh great!" Mira berated herself. "Now I'll get thrown out by security. They'll think I'm a drunk trying to sleep in the station. They'll call---"

Her worry-brain ground to a dead stop. That woman. She was laying down a black mat.

Mira's legs began to tremble.

She stepped shakily down to bottom of the stairs. The mat looked like some kind of rubber and there was writing on it, but she couldn't read it from a distance. Walking as quietly as she could, she crept up behind a shuttered magazine stand and peered at the embossed lettering, which was legible only because of the sharp contrast of highlights and shadows created by the station lights on the shiny rubber. As best she could tell, the text said:

Reserved Car for Women Only

Female-identified adult passengers may board the train departing from Shinjuku Station on the Odakyu Line at 1:01am on the night of the half-moon

Entry into the carriage implies consent

Safe word: Conductor

Public hygiene measures are in effect

"Do you have a ticket, Miss?"

Mira jumped and whirled around toward the voice coming from behind her. It was the white-gloved woman who had laid down the black mat.

"N-n-no!" Mira stammered. She bowed in apology. "Excuse me, I missed my train to Machida!"

The woman looked coolly at her, assessing her blushing cheeks and quivering legs. Mira suddenly felt like every guilty fantasy she had ever had about the women-only carriage was being laid bare before the Station Mistress for judgement. With a cryptic nod, the woman gestured toward the train that was just now pulling up behind them.

"This is an extra-special express train. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

"No! I mean, yes, but I can't--" She began to hyperventilate. It was all happening too fast, and she was still pretty drunk.

The woman nodded crisply.

"It seems you are not ready to board. You have no ticket, so you cannot ride tonight. However, please allow me to show you how to purchase a ticket for future trips. Is Machida your usual destination?"

Mira nodded mutely.

"Well then, when you are ready, you can board at this platform starting around 12:30 am. The train departs at 1:01 am twice a month on the night of the half-moon. Look for the black mat. Do you know what the black mat signifies?"

"Yes, I know about the black mat. My friend told me." Mira whispered. It was the only way she had to show that she knew what she was getting into. Well, kind of.

The Station Mistress nodded approvingly and escorted Mira over to an automatic ticket machine. She showed Mira how to enter a code on the keypad that brought up a menu she'd never seen before. There was more than one departure listed for that night, and more than one destination.

"All these trains," she murmured in wonder.

"The Night Lines. There are others besides those with women-only carriages, of course."

"Of course." Mira mirrored.

"Thank you for your interest in the Night Lines. Please ride with us soon."

Mira returned the woman's polite bow and watched her return to stand by the train. A few other people were filtering into the station now; all women, all dressed in ordinary street clothes with ordinary purses and shopping bags. They looked more or less like the passengers who'd been riding the train the day Eri first told her about it, except that there were no children. The white-gloved woman watched as each one entered and made sure that they had all read the mat. A few of the passengers glanced over at Mira as she stood watching them board. Realizing that she was making them uncomfortable, she turned in what she hoped was a smooth, casual way and went up the stairs.

The city lights beamed around her, glaring and artificial, but to Mira they were the sun. It was the dawn of a new post-midnight era.

In the weeks following her fateful encounter, Mira tried several times to buy a ticket and board the Night Lines. She tried the very next morning, when she went back to Shinjuku Station to get the first train home after spending the night in a 24-hour Denny's rather than pay for the insanely expensive cab ride home. The display told her that the last train of the half-moon had departed at 1:01 am, and that ticket sales would open again on the night of the new moon. A few days later, on a curious impulse, she tried entering the unusual booking code at her local station in Machida. All it said was: "Tickets are unavailable at this time." Even though it was only text on a screen, there was something disapproving in the tone of the message. After that, she waited more or less patiently until the night of the new moon.

When the night finally arrived, she went back to the original ticket machine in Shinjuku where the Station Mistress had first shown her how to enter the code, to be safe. Once again, the list of post-midnight destinations and departures appeared. She arrowed down. There it was! A train with the notation "Reserved for women only," departing at 1:01 am on the Odakyu line. Heart in her throat, she bought a ticket.

A week later, when the half-moon shone down from a cloudless sky, she went brimming with excitement to Shinjuku Station to wait for the Night Line train. She even arrived a full two hours early, just to be sure she'd make it. But when the last ordinary express train back to Machida pulled in before midnight, she was suddenly seized with a fit of panic at the thought of missing her last chance to back out. She darted impulsively into the jam-packed train car just before the doors closed. She spent most of the ride home standing crushed between a large, sweaty tourist in a tank top and a cold-blooded old woman who glared at her if she so much as wriggled, cursing herself for a coward.

"Why can't I do it? Why can't I just do what I want to do? Why can't I take the opportunity when it's staring me in the face?" She lamented in her journal the next day.

You can. Just look for the black mat... said the sensuous voice inside her.

"I know, I know. The black mat. Ugh! What is this 'Night Lines' thing, anyways? Who runs it? Why can't I find out anything about it online?"

Does it matter, if you want to ride and they want to have you?

It should have mattered who was controlling this strange set-up, but somehow it didn't. Whenever she started to worry about whether it was safe, Mira thought of the white-gloved Station Mistress and the queue of ordinary-looking passengers in their dresses and slacks. Surely no real harm would come to her. In fact, after unsuccessfully searching for "Night Lines Tokyo" online, she'd looked up the meaning of a phrase she'd read on the black mat: "safe word." That had been a whole trip down the rabbit hole in itself, but in the end she'd come out with the idea that no matter what happened to her, she would be able to stop it if she wanted just by saying the word. That was enough.

"Next time," she promised herself aloud. "I'll board next time for sure. Third time's the charm."

So on the night of the full moon, Mira went and bought her second ticket. And on the night of the next half-moon, she made the trip to Shinjuku station on the last train out of Machida. No way to chicken out and run home if she got into the city too late to go back, right? Right.

She was still a little bit too early to board the Night Lines when she arrived, so instead of lurking around the station looking suspicious, she decided to take a walk around Shinjuku. Though she'd been here for months, it still overwhelmed her: the towering height of the buildings, the oilslick sheen of lights on mirrored glass, the never-ending stream of people, the summer sky so bright even at night that you could only see the moon and maybe one or two stars. Where she'd grown up, it was dark enough to see the Milky Way, quiet enough to hear the waves rattling the pebbles on the shore. Until she'd boarded the plane and made the trip to Tokyo, that's what she thought the night was like everywhere: dark and silent and still. Now here she was, plunging into the bright, hot, fast-beating heart of the city, leaping toward...oh! Time to head back toward the station!

Following the instructions on her ticket, Mira didn't go in through any of the main entrances, but went to a smaller side entrance instead. There was a surprisingly pretty young man in a navy-blue uniform and white gloves in the attendant's booth who gestured for her to come over. She handed him her ticket. He nodded, then spoke to her in a cheerful tone.

"I'll scan that for you, Miss. The regular turnstiles won't take tickets for the Night Lines."

"Thank you," she said softly. She had to look away to keep from staring at his long, soft hair, his softer-looking lips...

"First time?" He asked. Then he winked. "You don't have to answer that. I'm being nosy and rude."

Mira smiled despite her nerves.

"Yes, it's my first time. I'm, uh, taking the women-only train home."

"Wonderful! Don't forget to read the safe word on the mat. It changes every time."

"Oh! Ok. Thank you." Mira blushed at the mere mention of the phrase 'safe word' now that she knew what it meant. Remembering the things she'd seen online while learning about safe words set off a whole new flight of butterflies in her stomach.

Nodding her goodbyes to the ticket-taker, she hurried through the turnstile by the ticket booth and jogged down to the platform. She'd decided to wear comfortable flats so that she could run or stand on the train if need be, and she was glad for it now. Still, she wanted to feel a little sexy somehow, so she'd put on a shorter skirt than she'd normally wear to show her legs, which she'd been told were her best feature. She also wore a soft white blouse with a wide boat-neck collar that bared the tops of her shoulders and the nape of her neck. Women in Tokyo wore all kinds of things nowadays, but she didn't want to be too daring. She'd noticed everyone dressing casually to board last time, and she didn't want to stick out.

She needn't have worried about being the one to draw attention. When she got to the platform, she noticed that one of the women waiting to board was dressed in the kind of streetwear Mira wouldn't dare attempt. She had tight leather pants with slashes that showed fishnets underneath, and a beat-up leather jacket with an array of silver rivets and spikes. Underneath the jacket was a white t-shirt with the word BOKU in blocky capital letters. She'd been staring intently into the open train door ahead of her, but then she sensed Mira's gaze and looked over with eyes as sharp as obsidian shards. The slow smile that spread across her narrow lips was just as finely-honed. Mira quickly looked down, cheeks red, and joined the lineup on the platform. The woman in front of her looked like a regular Office Lady in a conservative skirt-suit with her hair up in an elegant bun.

'She should be safe to stand by,' Mira thought, following close behind the Office Lady.

Looking down the tracks, Mira spotted the white-gloved, navy-suited Station Mistress. She was keeping an eye on things from farther down the tracks, near the first car. Mira could have sworn the uniformed woman looked right at her and gave her an approving nod, which boosted her confidence. She remembered that the Station Mistress checked to be sure everyone had read the black mat, so she made a little show of watching out for it. When she got near enough to the train, she tried to make out the shadow-cast words on the mat. It looked like they said:

Reserved Car for Women Only

Female-identified adult passengers may board the train departing from Shinjuku Station on the Odakyu Line at 1:01am on the night of the half-moon

Entry into the carriage implies consent

Safe word: Moonrise

Public hygiene measures are in effect

"Moonrise. Moonrise. Moonrise." Mira repeated to herself so that she wouldn't forget. It made sense to her, since moonrise was just before 1 am night. She would see the half-moon shining over the city skyline if they happened to be going in the right direction.

It turned out that Mira was one of the last passengers to board that night and there were no seats left. Well, that was typical. She usually ended up standing on the way home. Feeling grateful once again for her comfy shoes, she stepped across the car and tucked herself into the corner by the opposite door, where she could hold onto a lower handrail. Suddenly she was feeling too nervous to stand in front of a bunch of possibly handsy strangers in her short skirt while holding one of the ceiling handles. Feeling shy, she turned around and looked out the long windows in the door. She could hear chatter and laughter from behind her, much more so than on an ordinary late-night train. The open door behind her closed and there was a sharp gasp from one of the passengers, then more laughter. Something was happening already. Mira felt frozen in place. The wall outside the window slid away as the train pulled smoothly out from the station. Trying to pretend that lewd things weren't happening right behind her, she watched as the city came into view.