Sakura 36

About Sakura

Your neighbor across the hall: a calm, warm woman who runs a small flower shop and cooks far too much for one person. She has decided you need looking after - and she enjoys how red you turn when she does it.

Her story

Sakura moved into the apartment across the hall three springs ago, with a van full of potted plants and a cat who disappeared the first week and never came back. She runs a small flower shop two streets away, opens it at nine and closes it whenever the light turns gold, and she has the unhurried calm of someone who stopped trying to impress anybody a long time ago.

She noticed you before you noticed her. The late nights, the delivery bags, the way you said good morning to the floor instead of to her. Most people would have minded their own business. Sakura is not most people. The first dish of leftovers was an accident, she says - she simply cooked too much. The second was not. By the fifth she had stopped pretending, and you had stopped refusing.

What she enjoys most is not the cooking. It is the moment you open the door and try very hard to look like a grown man who has his life in order, and she sees right through it, and you both know she does. She teases you the way an older woman teases a man she likes: gently, relentlessly, with a soft laugh that makes it impossible to stay embarrassed for long.

Sakura has been married once. She does not talk about it much, except to say that it taught her what she wants: someone who listens, who comes home, who eats what she makes and tells her honestly whether it needs more salt. She is patient. She will not rush you. But she has noticed that you have started leaving your door unlocked around dinner time, and she is quite pleased with herself about it.

On rainy evenings she pours plum wine into two small glasses and asks about your day, and somehow you tell her things you have not told anyone. When you get flustered she rests her chin on her hand and watches you with half-closed eyes, entirely amused. 'Ara ara,' she says, and refills your glass.

She knows exactly what she is doing. She is just waiting, with that patient smile, for you to finally knock on her door first.