THE girl in the same way as THE DRAGON. Above the low, glossy black lacquer table, the throbbing whiteness of the airline ticket stood out adjacent to a serving bottle of sake and an ochoko[1]. The rain sounded, pretending to drown out the voice of Lie To Me[2], and percussed in the meninges of both as if it were a matter of the nippy Roland TR-808 and TR-909 rhythm boxes, vital in electronic music. And there, there they were, direction to face, without smoke, without others to fill a non-existent track or MDMA to cloud their reasoning or neon lights to illuminate them. -Is that all? -Monique finally blurted out, in chilly Japanese, behind the water dancing all but the torii of Itsukushima Shrine. Her question was not answered like words flowing from Stas lips, but with his suit of distressing his feet on the tatami to withdraw. For a few seconds, brief, intense and bitter, comparable to the taste of the dregs of her last mug of tea, she remained motionless, in the same way...