After a while, she leaves me alone, staring off at people around the place, as if she's watching fish swim by at an aquarium. I manage to read three chapters or so of I Am A Cat during this time. After which, I order another cappuccino. Then we eat an early dinner at a Denny's where I order an extra helping and give her my spoon. The whole time, I am overly aware that no one else can see her. To others, I would be sitting alone and speaking to myself if I talk to her - so I say nothing. She tells me she knows where I can stay. She tells me that the flow of time is changing, that she sees the buds on the trees though it's December, that spring is merging with winter and things are converging, like rivers that deposit into the same lake. But these changes are only something I can notice, as far as she could tell. There may be others, she says but she can't be certain. She concludes that this is not good news, that the flow of things shouldn't warp like that, or life will be severely affected. Something hideous and detrimental will occur. I ask why it's changing and distorting but she doesn't know. I ask if she knows about the Collective and the System. She says she has a vague feeling but all she knows is that there is an order to things and that this "lake" everything flows towards will become polluted.

We finish and I pay the bill, total of 1300 yen. Not too much, but not as little as a rice bowl at a gyudon franchise. We walk for five minutes and reach a side street which is unbelievably hidden, looking more like an alleyway than a street. It juts out from the main road at a forty five degree angle swerving behind a large heavy looking office building. If she hadn't brought me here, I might have just wandered past, without ever noticing. Both sides of the small stocky buildings press in together on us. They seem to push in closer and closer, as if we are in an Indiana Jones movie, setting off a trap in the tomb of a pharaoh king. There's a drug store further down the road, a Yoshinoya, an internet cafe and an izakaya bar.

She walks up to an inconspicuous building with an inconspicuous sign. It doesn't say much: only the word Saudade sits above the doorway – the word for nostalgia and longing for someone or something absent in Portugese, an entirely fitting concept. I can pick up a hint of neon pink and purple tubes in the windows but they are tinted black.

"It's safe here for tonight," she says. A man in a grey suit passes by behind us.

"Is this place what I think it is?"

"Oh come on, this can't be so bad, Mr. Maeda." She laughs. Her laugh chills me to the core.

"I mean I can say you don't really exist, but to me you do, so this is kind of-"

"Would you want them to find you then?" She pulls on my arm and opens the door. "There's no other place. This really isn't so out of the ordinary," she stops inside, in the lobby bathed in a dim purple ambient light, like we are in a sci-fi amusement park ride. The front of a glowing machine with a digital display, pictures of each room and pink font greets us. "There are tons of weird arrangements these days," she makes me push the button for 204, which appears to be a stylish modern room in red, "school girls working as prostitutes, paid off by some stressed out old geezer, so they can buy their cell phones, clothes and make up; foreign tourists looking to experiment and find a cheap place to stay; underaged couples sneaking in after school without their families knowing; maybe a businessman who hadn't booked prior reservations – it's not uncommon at all, don't tell me you've never been in one?"

The keycard deposits in my hand and we make our way to the second floor. She walks in front of me like a child lit up with excitement. I tell her it's inappropriate that she has ever been in one in the first place as a seventeen year old. "I haven't been in one, I just happen to know some things," she says, "I just expected you to." I admit I don't remember if I had but I probably haven't.

The room turns out to be quite spacious, furnished in minimalist design, washed with muted orange lighting that's hidden behind frames and along the walls. There is a large high tech flatscreen TV on one wall and on the other, above a queen sized bed, spreads a glittering mockery of "Starry Night". It twinkles as if made out of actual stars. I wonder how Van Gogh would feel about his painting being a part of the interior decoration for a love hotel in an alleyway. Just like the Mona Lisa being a part of advertisements and mocked in memes. The bed under his painting is well-made, clean, pillows plumped and soft. In the back, a bathroom is separated by a thin curtain of frosted glass. The glass has no design and barely does the job of concealing its user, not that it had ever been meant to. There's a tub with jacuzzi settings and shelves stocked full of toiletries and supplies. One row has boxes of condoms in different sizes – and flavours. There are even perfume and cologne samples. Everything looks pristine and sterile. The air still contains a trace of flowery perfume. Yet, without a doubt, it is all a false impression: there had been many clandestine nights shared here amongst lovers and strangers that are quite the opposite of clean and tranquil.

She picks up the remote and examines what seems to be an impressive array of buttons and knobs. Once she's found the right one the lights come on, growing in brightness and intensity. But there's a limit as to how far they go. It still is a dim room, designed to set a romantic mood. "Look there are even themes for the lights." She presses something and the lights begin to change colours. "What music do you want to listen to?" She waves the remote control in good cheer as if we are about to watch a movie. I tell her it's up to her and set down my backpack. She might have chosen a random button and mood music comes on, drifting from a discreet source. It sounds quiet and otherworldly, ambient jazz, a little ominous like watching a noir film, maybe it's Bohren & Der Club of Gore.

"Oh interesting," she muses, not quite paying attention to the music, "but my favourite part about a love hotel has got to be the fridge." She smiles the smile of a real estate agent presenting features of a house to their client. She opens the fridge and crouches down next to it. Her skirt splays out on her knees. "They've got everything. Coca Cola, Pocari Sweat, Fanta Orange, Calpis, Kirin Milk Tea, Itoen Green Tea, Chu-Hi, Asahi and Sapporo beer – hey, do you want something?"

I shake my head, no. "I'm on a budget. This was already expensive enough."

"Are you just going to dehydrate for the rest of the evening?"

"Water is free right? I'll have water."

She rolls her eyes and pulls out a bottle of water, throwing it at me. It cuts through the ambient jazz. A rock skipping over water.

"Sometimes I wonder what the fridge might say."

"The fridge?"

"Yes, if it was alive. What if everything were alive? Or what if nothing is actually real and everything's simply metaphor and symbol for something else. Like messages hidden away behind the scenes. Like I'm here to tell you something about yourself, or something about the world. And you're here to tell me something about myself, or my past, if I have one."

"Too many questions left unanswered."

She shrugs. "It's fun to guess. Like if I were to guess what this fridge wants to say. It will probably say it's tired of living life as a fridge every day, keeping other people's food fresh, watching couples have sex. It's saying why it can't have its own food, maybe go plant a few things in a plot of land and gather them when it's ripe, maybe watch the sunset or something. And maybe have sex for itself, with another fridge."

"You're nuts."

She laughs. "It wouldn't be fun if I'm sane." She stands up. "I'm going to take a bath first."

"Ghosts need to bathe?"

"Concepts do." She shrugs and starts to undress. She unties her neckerchief and tosses it on the bed.

"Can you undress in the bathroom?"

"There's no room in there."

"Well then."

"Do you have extra clothes?"

"Ghosts need clothes huh?"

"Now that I seem to exist and don't know how to un-exist, I think I might yes. Unless you're okay with me being naked."

I run my fingers through my hair in what might be exasperation. "I have a t-shirt you can use."

I dig around for the t-shirt and in the process, take out my books and set it on the bedside counter. I leave the contract in the bag for later. I pass her the shirt and take off my shoes and lay down on the bed, closing my eyes. "You go on ahead. Tell me when you're all done."

"Righto."