Noemi Arlen & Lucan Sato

Lucan, you asked why I kept the label from that cardboard box. It is currently in the drawer with the spare buttons and batteries that may or may not work. You would probably have found it eventually. The label says “later,” in my handwriting, with the last two letters running downhill. It was meant to identify things I did not need immediately after moving. Instead, it contained my favourite mug, the charger for my laptop and almost every object I would spend the first evening looking for.

You were not supposed to help me move. We had known each other for six months, having begun with a WaBanja conversation about the least useful item in my profile photograph: a chair I had bought because I liked it, despite having nowhere to put it. You asked where the chair lived. I said in the way. When I mentioned the move, you offered to carry things. I declined because I did not want a relationship to turn into a practical arrangement before I understood what it was.

Then the friend who was helping me had to leave earlier than planned. There were four boxes downstairs and a chair that seemed determined to prove everybody right. I called you. You arrived without saying that I should have accepted the offer in the first place. I appreciated this enormously. I also noticed that you asked where things belonged instead of making efficient decisions I would have to reverse after you left. We disagreed only about whether the chair could fit through the doorway at that angle. Neither of us emerged particularly wise.

The flat felt wrong when everything was inside. I had expected relief and found myself close to tears over a lamp. You did not know that the old place had been the first home I had chosen entirely for myself. I had described the move as sensible, affordable and convenient. All of that was true. None of it explained why I stood in the new kitchen feeling as though I had misplaced a version of myself. You asked whether you should stay. I said I did not know.

You said you could sit in the other room while I worked it out. That gave me enough room to say what I wanted: company without an obligation to become cheerful. We found two bowls, bought something simple to eat and sat on the floor because the table still needed assembling. I talked about the old window and the neighbour who always watered my plants too enthusiastically. You listened, then admitted that you had kept a key from a place you had left years earlier. It opened nothing. You had not decided that this made it useless.

Later, when my laptop was nearly out of battery, we opened the badly labelled box. You held up the charger as though you had discovered evidence. Beneath it was the mug, wrapped in a scarf, and a notebook I had forgotten owning. We laughed so hard that the evening changed shape. The new flat was still unfamiliar, but it had acquired one memory that belonged to us. You went home when you said you would. I liked knowing that a good evening did not need to be extended until one of us regretted it.

The picture with our foreheads together was taken months after that. My hair would not stay out of my face, and your pale blue shirt kept catching on my watch. We look calmer than we felt while being instructed where to stand. What I remember is you asking, quietly, whether I wanted a break from the photographs. You had not become somebody who could guess everything I needed. You had become somebody who thought to ask. That is why I kept the label. It reminds me of the evening I learned I could invite you into a difficult day without first making it presentable.