Our couple belongs in neither category of lovers. In fact, they aren't even lovers. They'd seen each other at the front of the line, both of them alone. As the onslaught of couples engulfed them, their individual neurotic thoughts built up fantasies of the other that grew more imaginative the longer they spent in the same fortuitous space. The man thought the woman must have been waiting for something to happen, perhaps broken-heartedly returning to an old romantic haunt. The woman had thought the man must have been a musician or writer or academic, judging by his thick glasses, unshaven jaw, and unkempt hair. One had taken after the other, and slowly in their movements and body language, they became a unit without even once speaking.

Several coincidences seize our couple. One is the fact that they are wearing eerily similar shades of olive. Secondly, it amazes them that in the middle of this veritable avalanche of hand-holding pairs, they not only share inhabit the same place in line, but are both, in fact, alone. He is a truck driver who makes detours to cities to indulge his unabashed love of gambling for giant stuffed animals and other tourist escapes. His collection at home includes a giant-headed panda, a giant porpoise, a giant monkey coming out of a giant banana, a giant Pochacco with a coffee stain on its butt, and his proudest accomplishment, a giant Tanuki dressed in green suspenders, worth 50,000 yen on online auctions. She is an artist who had a traumatizing childhood experience on this exact Ferris wheel (thrown against the glass wall by a hysterical stepbrother). Tonight she returns, at twenty-six, to conquer this fear.

The couples around them are astonishingly diverse in age, size, height, subculture, race, and sweater color. Their sweaters are bright orange, electric blue, sea foam green, magenta, periwinkle, cobalt, tan, beige, white, charcoal, all muted by the carnival effulgence. Preps follow punks follow salarymen and housewives follow adolescents with balloons strapped to their backpacks. Grandpas and grannies chat up the trannies and the rock musicians. Flurries of foreign tourists pose in pictures with gothic lolitas and cosplayers, the autumn wind rustling their cloth umbrellas.

Finally, the truck driver decides to break the silence.

Did you see the jellyfish swimming under the water?

Yes, I did. I've lived here all my life and not once have I noticed them.

Now that the moment is finally occurring, the artist feels sudden distance, even resentment, for she had imagined the voice of the truck-driver to be quiet and musical, yet the voice that speaks is gruff, awkward. He could not possibly be the lead vocalist of his band. Perhaps he is a writer? Or a pianist?

So you live here in Yokohama?

Yes, I live in an artist's loft.

Come here a lot?

No. In fact, this is the first time since I was six years old.

He nods, rubbing his chin. She appreciates his attentiveness, and the lazy way he synchronized his breaths with her.

What are you going up this Ferris wheel for?

That's a bit personal.

This is my first time in Yokohama, and up at the top, they said you can see anything. Stars, ship, skyscrapers. The whole of Minato Mirai.

Even the jellyfish?

Maybe the jellyfish.

So far, their assumptions about each other have matched their impressions. When he asks her to go on the ride with him, she doesn't hesitate. How long has it been since she's talked eye-to-eye with a stranger? Some nights, she'd ride the train to Tokyo and walk around Shibuya or Roppongi in her loafers and brown satchel, making up stories about the people walking on the street. There are so many people in Tokyo. What are their names? Who are they? What are they doing there?

She reveals to him her favorite hobby. Together, they make up stories about the couples in front of them, behind them, all around until the end of the line.

A well-dressed couple wearing matching bowler hats is actually a team of high-end swindlers specializing in department store robbery and counterfeit cash.

A beautiful woman with long wavy hair and a backpack is trying to break up with her mulleted boyfriend, or reveal to him the news that she had been pregnant and aborted the baby without telling him.

A young man with hair dyed blonde has just met and lost his virginity to his first lover, who is ten years older than him and has yet to explain that she isn't interested.

An older couple is trying to grieve the loss of their daughter in a car accident, revisiting the Ferris wheel to remember her.

The couple in front of them is trying to save their relationship–things are delicate between them, as evidenced by the odd way he touches her, tentatively, as if she might electrocute him.

The new intimacy of the capsule is thrilling to the truck driver, but something is wrong with the artist. The truck driver is struck by sudden nervousness, when he sees the terror rising slowly in the artist, her eyes filming as if coated in milk.

Oh god. Why did I do this? I can't. Oh my god, I can't.

You can't what? What's wrong?

I can't be in this Ferris wheel. I thought I was going to be okay, but this, I can't.

At that moment, the lever is pulled and they are rising at a stagnant pace. She is sobbing now, quivering, curling up now like a roly-poly or a drying leaf, leaning into herself.

Seeing her like this, he surmises that she is remembering her previous relationship and the Ferris wheel only dilates her broken heart. The only thing he can do–hold her, even if the impropriety is uncharacteristic of him.

He wraps one arm around her and, feeling no resistance or protest, rests his head at the nape of her neck.

It'll be okay. You're okay.

She remembers her older stepbrother, who died the year before, and she is feeling stupid for coming back here. He had only pushed her into the wall, where for a moment she thought her six-year-old body was falling, crashing into the air, and she had cried and he had cried and they were both such stupid children that when they got off the Ferris wheel they tripped over each other's shoelaces. Afterwards, her father bought them popsicles and both of them sucked until they could drive the fury away, until their fury was a sweet coconut taste that dissolved on their tongues like magic.

Remembering that taste, she is seized by a violent hunger. Without warning, she dives her face onto the truck driver. A kiss, and she hasn't kissed anyone for seven months, but this kiss isn't so much a kiss than a total feasting of a new, unexplored mouth. At some point the truck driver, reeling from both shock and happiness, pulls her back and tries to speak, but she cups his mouth with her hand and they are suspended, above everything, above Yokohama and thousands of other couples waiting in line, the harbor, the ship, the reflection of the Cosmo Clock 21 spinning, oddly fast, and finally the vertigo has left her. They breathe in synchrony, and begin the slow descent.