Lunch hour started three minutes ago. Barely noon and the Deck Cafe is getting full.

Groups of attendants working at the Universal Studios Japan theme park huddle together between tables trying to find a seat amongst the two hundred available. Japanese girls cup their mouths and giggle, waddling and amused with anything that gives reason for meekness. Piled servings of noodles release a smell of seaweed and soy sauce curling through the air, and Elizabeth’s nose twitches at the redolence. She's been sitting alone since ten that morning, studying and trying to give birth to an essay for her online course in 20th century literature, searching the argument that will claim her conclusion to the rhetorical limits of communication.

She yawns every five minutes and scans the cafeteria to see who walks in. Co-workers she's never introduced herself to sit punching messages on their mobile phones, black bangs covering half their face. Intermittent thunders of high-pitched laughter cackle up and morph with the looming hum of vending machines at the end of the wall. Giggling snickers shake from all parts of the room, behind Elizabeth’s seat, like lurking teases for a good time — background music to real-life Japan, unlike the postcard websites she looked at before accepting the job. Men walk in more sedate with gloomy expressions and dismal voices. Elizabeth stares, waiting for nothing. As each person catches her staring she looks away, exhales and dives down to her course book. Another round of laughter shoots up and she wonders why she can't do the same, frequently laugh with high-pitch enthusiasm. She’s never been one to giggle.

Elizabeth buries her mind and tries to focus on the discussion topic: limits of communication.

A girl sitting behind Elizabeth, two tables away, startles her with a hysterical screech. She and her friend run around the tables as though they have a sudden urge to play tag with wasabi paste. They do things like that once and a while. Elizabeth looks over her shoulder and notices their eyes crease and theirs shoulders shudder as they quizzically keep close together, staring in bewilderment at nothing next to them. Then Elizabeth notices a black mark in the air flying between them. A black bee, and Elizabeth straightens her spine. Somehow, it's found its way into the building, buzzed down the beige hallways and past the offices directly to the Deck Cafeteria. Might’ve been the smell of onions and fried pork that lured him; now he's searching for taste, wondering where it is. Or perhaps — Elizabeth sat bemused watching the skittish girls — the bee is panicking. Where are the leaves?

It swirls in circles around various tables, around various groups of vocal thunder, and everyone inside the cafeteria soon becomes the awed audience to this principal performer curving somersaults in the air.

More people enter the cafe, more tray holders stand confused, more lunch boxes remain unopened. The hullabaloo has caused arms to swipe the air, heads to duck, feet to scurry. No one can catch him. He's too fast and too tiny. It seems pathetic to Elizabeth that such a creature could terrify those who considered themselves civilized. One could look away. One could go about his business. One short girl dressed in an elf uniform with a green apple cone hat — Ozgo Merry GoRound — crawls under a table laughing and covering her smile, holding chopsticks to defend her fear. Rainbow painted faces — Atmosphere Sesame Street — stand from their seats and swarm with rueful expressions. All the while, the black bee flies faster, spinning quick cursive messages through the air, unfortunately, without anyone comprehending what he is trying to communicate.

Elizabeth sits still. She is indifferent to the whole affair. She watches everyone overreact. It is simply a bee. The more you startle yourself the more it will be startled. Wouldn’t you be frightened if a creature a thousand times your size started screaming and waving its limbs?

The black bee flies around the entire cafeteria, exhaustively, making acquaintances with everyone in the room, and comes to where Elizabeth sits. She is in the center of an oblong table, in the center of the cafeteria, with no one else around her. Not out of spite, but ‘nihongo’ hardly sit with ‘gaijin’. That’s just the way it is. The bee flies circles over Elizabeth’s head, hovering there as though he wants to make sure she won't swat him. He flies over her course book and lands in front of her index finger. He must be enervated after all the energy, the flailing arms. Elizabeth doesn't flinch and she didn’t blink. She sits still, looking directly at the black bee in the same manner she looked at page two hundred and sixty-three of her literature book. The bee is situated precisely at the top of the page.

Elizabeth and the bee do not move in each other’s company. It is as though they speak without saying anything at all, some sort of telepathic means. Everyone in the cafe stares curiously. Is the ‘gaijin’ girl stunned with fear - ‘poor thing! Is the bee planning a strategy to sting her nose, a target dead center? Is he telling her his name? Contact details? Is the bee surprisingly educated in rhetorical devices?

Elizabeth wants to help, give the bee directions to the exit door so that he can escape this lunatic boredom of a cafeteria. The trees are but only thirty paces away. That’s what she feels. She lowers her chin close to his swinging antennae, and stares at the black bee. Fuzzy black hairs off his hunched back. He seems so gentle, completely alone. No one can understand him. He's probably not one to laugh with high-pitched volume either.

The cafeteria sighs, partly perturbed that the ordeal is not over. The lunch hour is ticking away. A few girls snicker at nothing, their hands cupping their mouths. Seconds pass in succumbed silence, attention draws to the epicenter of the room.

Lifting her gaze to the fluorescent bulbs above her, Elizabeth leans back. The black bee flies up towards the light. He calmly hovers above her head for a few seconds before flying towards the door. Not one single cursive somersault for good-bye, but a straight line towards the exit.

As Elizabeth feels she has done good, pleased and satisfied, a stout man stands up and swats the bee with a paper napkin. The bee falls in one single vertical line. Everyone’s head bows, following the bee as it lands on the glossy mopped floor, his segmented legs punching the air, helpless.

Elizabeth stares, benumbed. The bee’s legs fold and unfold, extend and retract trying to crawl his way out of the room, above the invisible mountainous air. A faint applause fans around the cafeteria, a relief that everything is near being settled. The perpetrator stands up and presses the napkin over the black mark again, but the bee keeps waving his legs, certainly saying something that no one can hear. The man presses again, harder this time.

Elizabeth watches with the exact indifference she's been feeling all morning, thinking about rhetoric. What can she say to the black bee now as he lay dying?

Everyone leans in closer, checking to see if the bee had any movement left, anything left to say. Remote stillness. The man pinches the black mark on the ground and balls it up in his paper napkin like a ping pong ball, throws him in the trash can near the entrance, beside the exit sign.

Whispering conversations and scores of laughter continue as before. Elizabeth grabs her pen and digs the end against her cheek. Thinks for a second before she writes:

The limits of communication: pathetic absurdity!

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