Lucy Fly and Teiji's romantic relationship

Lucy Fly and Teiji’s romantic relationship is formed in the tension between intense physical closeness and Lucy’s uncertainty about what that closeness means to Teiji. Their first meeting becomes, in her memory, an almost wordless passage from seeing him through rain to being photographed and sharing his bed; later, she recalls their intimacy as comfort, while also fearing that his affections have shifted. The relationship matters not only as a private attachment but as a powerful element in Lucy’s recollection of the past and in the false account she gives about Lily’s death.

Encounter and the Beginning of Intimacy

Lucy first sees Teiji outside the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku on a rainy night, photographing a puddle while people stream past with umbrellas. She remembers his wet hair and face, delicate fingers, and transparent brown eyes, and imagines him as made of water and ice. When she steps into the puddle’s reflection, he photographs her feet and then her face. Lucy reads her entrance into his photograph as an intimate invitation: she believes he has captured her inside his camera, and that sex is the obvious next step.

Her recollection leaves much of their first conversation uncertain. She cannot remember whether they spoke or how they decided where to go; she thinks they may have walked together in silence from the neon towers to Teiji’s apartment in Shin-Okubo. There, he takes a photograph of her naked on the bed. Lucy says that being seen through the camera felt kinder than being looked at with the naked eye. The scene establishes an early pattern in their relationship: she gives intense meaning to being observed and photographed, while the account offers little evidence of what Teiji himself intended by the act.

Their first sexual encounter follows. Teiji closes his eyes, and Lucy imagines that her image remains framed beneath his eyelids. She climbs onto him and rocks him until, in her imagery, his ice melts into water. Afterwards, she stays above him as their breathing slows, surprised by how easily the encounter happened and by the feeling of joy it leaves behind. Her account makes physical intimacy vivid, but does not turn it into certainty about the relationship’s future.

Companionship, Sachi, and Possessiveness

Lucy remembers a happier period when she and Teiji slept together like spoons. In that memory, his thin arms circle her and rock her to sleep. Earthquakes, thunderstorms, and typhoons—once shared sources of pleasure—become part of the comfort she reaches for when she is alone and unable to sleep. During her later questioning, imagining Teiji behind her briefly soothes her; the remembered relationship supplies a refuge even as she faces the possibility of arrest.

Sachi remains an early source of insecurity. Teiji tells Lucy that his relationship with Sachi has ended, that he is not trying to find her, and that meeting Lucy has meant he no longer thinks about Sachi. Lucy finds this difficult to believe because she expects that she herself will never stop thinking about Sachi. His reassurance therefore does not erase the comparison: it shows the difference between his claim to have moved on and Lucy’s conviction that the past remains present.

At a later jazz-club date, Lucy’s desire becomes openly possessive. In a dark corner, she and Teiji kiss and have sex on the floor; gin spills across his face, and she licks it away. She believes Sachi is finally gone and wants others to know that Teiji belongs to her. The scene sets Lucy’s sense of security against her need to claim it: the darkness allows their encounter to remain unnoticed, while she privately wishes the world could witness it.

The Remark That Changes Her Confidence

After the club, Lucy tells Teiji about her first sexual experience. She means the disclosure as a return of confidence after thinking about Sachi and the secrets she believes she took from her. She also assumes, based on earlier occasions, that Teiji will fall asleep and not hear her. Instead, he stays awake beside her and watches her. In the morning he calls her a bit strange, a remark Lucy cannot settle into either a harmless compliment or a definite insult; she is uncertain whether he spoke English or Japanese and remembers his expression as nervous, perhaps afraid.

Lucy has been called strange since childhood, but this time the word carries a specific threat. She realizes from Teiji’s expression that he may not feel as close to her as she had thought, and she anticipates losing him. She does not ask what he means or argue against the judgment. Instead, she closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep. The moment exposes a divide in their intimacy: Lucy has offered a personal story in the hope of creating reciprocity, but Teiji’s response leaves her unable to ask directly what has changed.

Much later, Lucy says she did not go to Teiji’s apartment the following night. She was afraid he might not be there or might tell her to leave because she was behaving strangely. She made plans to travel to Sado Island and intended to see him again afterwards, hoping to repair the damage she believed she had caused. Her account links withdrawal not to a settled ending but to anticipation of rejection: she stays away because she fears what an encounter might confirm.

Memory, Confession, and Aftermath

The relationship survives in Lucy’s recollections even when she cannot reconstruct events with confidence. During police questioning, she says that the night in question is a blur and that she must recover it bit by bit before she can explain what happened. In the same setting, she imagines Teiji taking her hand and stroking her fingers like cool water; the imagined touch leads her back to their first meeting in Shinjuku. Memory offers tenderness, but it does not resolve the gaps in her account.

Lucy later gives the police a detailed story in which jealousy of Lily and obsessive love for Teiji motivate a murder. She describes her belief that Teiji no longer wanted her, her rage at Lily, and stockings used as a weapon. She then recognizes that she did not kill Lily: she invented the confession. Still, she treats the attachment as part of her moral responsibility, reasoning that she introduced Lily to Teiji and had encouraged Lily not to return to Britain. Her declaration that she is neither entirely guilty nor entirely innocent distinguishes the false murder story from the real consequences she assigns to her own choices.

Lucy is ultimately released without charges. The case against her is circumstantial, and the police have found no fingerprints or DNA from her on Lily’s body. This outcome does not settle the emotional questions that structure her memories of Teiji: whether his assurances displaced his former attachment, whether his intimacy meant what Lucy believed it meant, or when his closeness began to fail. In the narrative, their relationship is both a remembered source of comfort and the object of a possessiveness that makes Lucy’s invented confession feel, to her, entangled with a less clear sense of guilt.