She was convinced a word existed, a noun, that meant the loss of feelings for someone who was formerly loved—a word for the act of falling out of love. I said I couldn't think of it. It wasn't in the dictionary either, not the one she wanted.

Yeah!' I said again, widening my eyes and nodding slowly but emphatically to show that she had seen into my own symmetrical soul.

Or maybe it was already too late; you only get one first love. She was mine, but I had not been hers. She was only going to look for some echo of it, and if I had made the right noises, that echo might have been me for a while.

I couldn't decide what kind of person she was, whether she was one of those insects that look exactly like wasps but aren't . . . I just wanted to know if she would sting.

The messages must be stuck somewhere in the tube of light underneath the ocean that connects London and New York.

Though I did not know her exact address, that she appeared to live almost within breathing distance of Robin, and that I lived with him, and that her pictures showed that she was now dating the mysterious Rupert Hunter, our despotic mothers, our absent fathers, the borders we had both crossed, all our many parallels and connections at every point, could not be chance. I saw it as evidence of the hidden connections between things, an all-powerful algorithm that sifted through chaos, singling out soulmates.

I became convinced that I was being watched.Because self was still leaking everywhere, a part of me began to think it was Mizuko rather than a stranger. I hoped that there might still be a reunion. I hoped it in the shy, sly way hope comes out of the jar, the mistranslated box, last—after everything and everyone else has escaped.

The glow of the steetlamps sat heavy and thick above me. As I walked aimlessly, in the direction of downtown, I returned to my theories. That Mizuko and I shared the pictorial equivalent of DNA. That a sympathetic magic existed between us, no matter how far apart we were pulled. That we defied physical laws of time and space, waves, gravity, the rules laid down by physicists which governed our physical universe (earthquakes, tsunamis) and physical bodies. And yet somehow our connection had led to the opposite of intimacy. My search had led to its opposite. I had never felt so isolated and disconnected, even from myself.

To me, it was clear proof of the existence of supersymmetry, the idea that every particle has a partner. She was mine.

Suddenly I had to laugh. It was like realising you definitely need to projectile vomit when you thought you had it under control in some imprisoning form of public space.