Koi No Yokan

Lyrics

[Intro]


[Verse 1]
The shoji screen slid open, a whisper of paper on wood.
Late autumn followed you in.
A charcoal grey scarf, damp with a Kyoto mist I couldn't see.
You sat at the table by the window.
We were the only two here.
Our eyes met over the steam rising from my cup.
Not a spark.
Just a question mark hanging in the warm air.

[Chorus]
This isn't love at first sight.
This is not the lightning bolt, not the fire.
This is the quiet hum of a machine starting in another room.
It is the knowledge that a future love is inevitable.
Koi no yokan.
The calm, unsettling certainty...
I will love you.

[Verse 2]
I watched your hands cradle the warm ceramic.
I watched you look out at the rain-streaked glass.
You weren't looking for company.
You were just... there.
And the entire frantic world, the neon of Shibuya I left behind, it all fell away.
There was only this room, this moment.
The soft scent of hojicha tea.
The beginning of a story I already knew.

[Chorus]
This isn't love at first sight.
This is not the lightning bolt, not the fire.
This is the quiet hum of a machine starting in another room.
It is the knowledge that a future love is inevitable.
Koi no yokan.
The calm, unsettling certainty...
I will love you.

[Bridge]
They have a word for the sudden blaze, *hitomebore*.
A flash of feeling, immediate and bright.
But this is deeper, quieter.
It’s the seed, not the bloom.
It’s reading the first line of a book
and knowing you will grieve its ending.
It’s not a feeling.
It is a map of a place I have not yet been.

[Outro]
You stood, and bowed slightly to the empty room.
The door slid shut.
And I was left with your unfinished tea.
And this premonition.
This echo from the future.