Chapter 6

KAO’S KIDS WERE EVEN CUTER than I remembered. And that’s saying something: Whenever I’d look at those photos we took on my way to work, I’d start grinning like a goofy idiot. I still hadn’t given much serious thought to whether I wanted kids of my own, but maybe it was about time me and my fiancé had a heart-to-heart about that. We weren’t getting any younger, after all. I’d found myself having a lot of these sorts of thoughts lately, which were making the reality of my imminent marriage set in.

After taking the packed elevator down a few floors and stepping into the familiar marketing department office, I spotted the colleague I’d been planning to talk to first thing that morning. Ever since we’d transitioned from assigned work desks to a more open seating arrangement, it had become a lot harder to tell who was and wasn’t at work on any particular day. Thankfully, I’d found the woman I was searching for immediately, which boded well for me.

“Morning, Kii-chan,” I said.

“Oh, Arinaga-san!” she replied. “Good morning!”

“I took a look at the proposal you submitted yesterday. Super well put together. Also, just plain fun to read.”

“Wait, you really mean it?! Oh, thank you so much!”

“Of course I mean it, silly. Why would I lie about that? Anyway, mind if I sit down?”

I pulled out only a few necessary things from my bag and set them on the desk, then stowed the bag in a locker. I also hung up my jacket (which was not leather, by the way). On my way back, I just so happened to spot my future hubby walking right in front of me. Now that we were officially an item, I’d gotten out of the habit of being overtly flirty with him at work, so I simply patted him lightly on the back and said good morning.

Today, I needed to keep my head down even more than usual and finish my work as quickly as I could—especially since I’d already been asked to stay late. Normally, being told I’d be working overtime the moment I walked in the door would instantly kill my motivation, but that sort of laziness wasn’t going to fly today. Tomorrow and the next day, I needed to leave on time, no matter what.

I sat back down at my desk and powered on my computer. I drafted responses to inquiries from other departments and our retail partners to clear out my inbox, and took care to make sure they didn’t sound like stock responses even though I was working from templates. I attended meetings and prepared the documents requested of me at lightning speed. Before I knew it, it was already lunchtime.

Since I knew Kii-chan liked to eat out every day, I asked if she wanted to head to a nearby udon shop with me. I ended up ordering a large oyakodon. On days like this, when I needed to be able to run at full power for ten-plus hours straight, I didn’t have time to worry about counting calories or carbs. I was in rare form—and it seemed Kii-chan picked up on this.

“Do you have something going on today, Arinaga-san?” she asked from the seat across from me.

“No, not today,” I said. “But tomorrow and the next day, yes. Which is why I want to get as much done today as I possibly can.”

For a woman only three or four years my junior, this alone was enough context to jump to the obvious conclusion.

“Ooh, I know!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got a Christmas date!”

This frivolous phrase felt somewhat out of place at a long-standing, traditional Japanese restaurant like this, but our waiter paid it no mind as they delivered two plates of pickled vegetables to our table. They had a delicious contrast of purples and yellows.

“I guess you could say that,” I replied once the waiter had left.

“Hey, that’s wonderful! Not that I’m surprised. Er, sorry—that came out wrong.”

“You’re ‘not surprised’?”

“Well, I just meant it doesn’t surprise me that a woman as accomplished as you would have someone to spend the holiday with! But for two days straight, huh? Both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? That’s quite a long date!”

“No, no—I’m only spending tomorrow with my partner. The day after I’m meeting up with a good friend for dinner.”

“Right, that makes sense. Christmas Eve is the more important holiday, after all.”

Karin had said the same thing. But me, personally, I didn’t really see much of a difference in importance between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, or even between friends and romantic partners. But my bearded accomplice insisted it would be much easier to pass off a dinner date on the 25th as a casual get-together compared to the 24th. Ultimately, I’d begrudgingly agreed.

Still, regardless of which day it landed on or what your relationship with the person was, I couldn’t see how sharing a Christmas dinner alone with a member of the opposite sex could be seen as anything but a special occasion. For better or for worse.

Apparently, Kii-chan’s Christmas plans were to have a girls’ night with some of her friends from college. To be honest, I wished that was what I was doing on the 25th as well, but alas. I lamented internally as my oyakodon and her kitsune udon arrived.

It was Karin who came up with the idea of going out for a Christmas dinner with Hibiki. He tried to play it off like it was Kao’s fault for giving him the coupon catalog, but it wasn’t her decision to hand it over to me! Thanks for being so dedicated to the operation, partner!

Still, I couldn’t help but think planning something on Christmas was a little too on the nose. When I expressed this, he assured me up and down that the average person doesn’t consider Christmas Day nearly as romantic as Christmas Eve.

“But it’s still Christmas, isn’t it?” I’d asked. “Can’t we just do it another day?”

“If the goal is to put you two in situations where he might finally confess his feelings,” Karin explained, “then doing things together that you’ve never done before seems like a good way to get there.”

We were having this conversation with our voices hushed, at a diner we’d stopped at on the way back from Kao’s place that day.

“I mean, you’re probably right, but still…” I conceded.

“Also—and I know this is probably going to be an uncomfortable topic—but I’ve been thinking about where this operation is going lately, and I have some thoughts.”

“I mean, all our conversations have been pretty uncomfortable lately, so go ahead and shoot. I’m pretty desensitized at this point.”

Karin took a deep breath, then asked, “Well, how willing would you say you are to put yourself in, shall we say, ‘risky’ situations with our friend Hibiki?”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” I said. “What are you really trying to say?”

“I’m asking if you’re mentally prepared for the possibility he might try to make a move on you physically, assuming you actually succeed at creating a sufficiently romantic atmosphere between the two of you. Like, are you okay to potentially engage in a little bit of flirty touching with him, with or without the use of alcohol to make things easier?”

I was this close to losing my cool and screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of the restaurant, but I somehow managed to hold it together.

“Hell no! Are you kidding me?!” I hissed at him in the most angry whisper I could muster.

“Yeah, I figured,” said Karin. “Just thought I might as well bring it up. The more I think about it, the harder it is to believe he’d ever confess to you without you doing something pretty bold to elicit it.”

“I mean, how ‘bold’ are we talking? Holding hands would be one thing—which I still wouldn’t want to do—but if he tried to kiss me or something? I think I’d literally just disintegrate right then and there.”

“Very mature adult conversation we’re having right now, isn’t it?”

“I mean, if I was okay with that, for the sake of argument—could you imagine me letting that happen, then waiting until he confessed to me to turn around and say, ‘Actually, sorry! I have a boyfriend, and we just got engaged!’? There’s no way!”

Karin turned his gaze down toward his mug of black coffee for a moment.

“I think it’s totally possible for adults to get a little caught up in the moment and only realize they’re making a mistake right before it happens,” he said. “Probably also plenty of folks out there who don’t even notice until it’s already too late, if I had to guess.”

As I looked into his vacant eyes, I got an uneasy feeling in my chest.

“Wait,” I said. “You haven’t cheated on your wife or anything, have you?”

“…It was before we were officially married. But even still.”

He went on to tell me the whole story of how it happened and made sure to insist on several occasions that I keep this all to myself. When he revealed the name of the lady in question, though, it was such a scandalous drama bomb that I could have literally jumped out of my seat and shrieked at the top of my lungs—but I somehow held it together. Only after he was all done talking did I offer a very noncommittal response.

“M-man, that’s, uh… Damn. That’s something, all right.”

I didn’t care that this was several years ago—what the hell was this idiot thinking?! This, from the guy who’d said we “know each other too well” by now to have any juicy secrets left! Meanwhile, he’d been hiding straight-up adultery from us this whole time!

Why had he chosen to tell me this, I wondered, after all these years? Maybe because we were both mature enough now to be able to talk about these things like adults, without immediately burning bridges over a single judgment error, no matter how ­major. Or maybe he was just trying to help me feel mentally prepared to play the villain in this operation, in his own weird way. And I did appreciate him thinking about all this stuff on my behalf, don’t get me wrong—but still.

He’d set up this whole “dinner date” thing by himself, actually. He’d reached out to Hibiki and concocted a whole story about how he’d made reservations for two at this fancy restaurant, but wasn’t going to be able to make it, and asked if Hibiki might be interested in going himself—preferably with a lady friend, because he’d told the restaurant it was a special occasion, and they’d assured him they’d include some cute cakes or whatever as a freebie. I knew Karin well enough to know he could sell a story like this as totally believable. And of course, he’d also mentioned that the coupons had to be used before the end of the year, and because the place had a huge waitlist, there was no chance of changing the reservation before they expired.

“What is this, some sort of prank call?” Hibiki had asked with a laugh. “Didn’t I just tell you I was single the other day?”

“Doesn’t have to be a romantic lady friend, you know,” said Karin, in the same casual tone of voice he’d rehearsed several times in advance. “Hell, you could even take Chizuru.”

“Why her?” Hibiki had replied—without missing a beat, ­according to Karin.

“I dunno—could be fun to do as a bit, right? Personally, I’d pay good money to watch you two go on a cute little Christmas date.”

“Okay, so what you’re saying is you just wanna be able to tease us about it mercilessly until the day you die.”

If asked, I’d have fairly confidently guessed Hibiki would turn this proposal down completely. And yet, whether a testament to Karin’s persuasion skills or Hibiki simply having literally nothing better to do, he ultimately agreed to take me on this so-called “Christmas date” without too much trouble at all. He’d sent me a LINE message shortly after this phone call that read: Sounds like we’re gonna be roleplaying as the Komagomes for a day, lol. Komagome was Karin’s last name; Hibiki’s was Narahara.

Since the actual Komagomes would be out of town together in Kansai over the holiday, they were planning to have their Christmas Eve dinner date in that part of the country. And Karin—so help me God—if you ever betray your poor wife like that again, I swear I’ll murder you with my own two hands.

Unsated by my oyakodon alone, I acquired a bar of sweet milk chocolate for myself, to make sure I had enough brain power to push through my afternoon workload—which I ultimately didn’t end up finishing until around 11 p.m. But thanks to my efforts, I was able leave work after only thirty minutes of overtime the next day, which allowed me to enjoy a nice meal at a fancy Italian restaurant with my partner. And in case anyone was wondering, yes, cake was included too.

When the date changed to midnight that night, I said aloud, “There—now we can technically say we spent both days of Christmas together!” And yet, for whatever reason, my heart hurt. Maybe I was saying this more to convince myself than him.

When I woke up the next day on Christmas morning, I went about my usual business. I didn’t start getting ready for that evening until the cold winter sun began to set.

We were only eighteen then. I’d worn a leather jacket to school, with a guitar slung over my shoulder. The guitar was a gift from by brother, who was ten years older. Hibiki cut a pretty clean appearance back then; I rarely saw him lugging his gear around campus like I did.

The first time I laid eyes on him was at the music club’s welcome party for new members. I remembered thinking he looked like the type of guy who’d go to karaoke and shout out cringey breakup songs at the top of his lungs, along with all of his similar-looking, cookie-cutter guy friends. And I didn’t mean that in a bad way, it was just my honest first impression. Though he’d later laugh when I told him this, stating he “wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or not.”

We’d exchanged basic introductions at the welcome party, and I did spot him in some of my larger lecture hall classes a few times a week, so we were vaguely aware of one another. You made a lot of these sorts of acquaintances in college; I hung out with a ton of kids back then who I hardly ever stayed in touch with today. Hibiki had a whole lot of guy friends he almost never brought up nowadays as well.

Then, one random day, we both happened to show up to the classroom a little bit earlier than either of our respective friend groups did. We made eye contact, and for the first time, we exchanged a little more information about ourselves than just our names. According to Hibiki, his first thought upon seeing me with a leather jacket and a Gretsch guitar case was that I looked like “the dictionary definition of a rebellious subculture girl.” Which was fine by me. But he probably meant it as an insult.

When I made it to the hotel lobby we’d agreed to meet at for our dinner date, Hibiki was already there. The moment he spotted me, he let out an exaggerated wolf whistle as he admired my outfit—an all-green affair I’d coordinated in accordance with the dress code.

“Damn,” he said. “Didn’t even recognize you at first. Not sure I’ve ever seen you dress like that before.”

“You have,” I said. “Karin’s wedding, remember?”

“Wait, really? I could’ve sworn you wore a leather jacket to that.”

“Of course not, you idiot,” I said, nudging him in the elbow of the arm he’d draped his jacket over. This was a deliberate move on my part, spurred on by Karin’s encouragement to treat him a little bit differently than usual. To my surprise, though, this little nudge alone sent a jolt of numbness through my own arm like a static shock. It was probably just a mental thing, ultimately: I’d decided I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility of something happening between us for the sake of tonight’s operation, and now his body suddenly felt like some foreign, unfamiliar object to me in a way it never had before. Something cold and rigid, not warm and friendly.

In all honesty—though I of course had zero intention of revealing this to Hibiki, and was planning to do everything I possibly could to ensure things didn’t come to this—I actually had taken certain measures this evening, which I most definitely wouldn’t have if I wasn’t mentally prepared for the slight possibility something might happen. I’d even gone home from work rather than straight to the hotel for expressly that purpose, though I tried to excuse this behavior to myself while I was getting ready. Proper grooming is just a part of good female etiquette and preparedness—even if the other party never gets to see it.

Meanwhile, Karin had told me he was so “antsy” about how things would go tonight that he’d decided to just “focus on work” to distract himself from thinking about it. I knew he probably wasn’t working on a damn thing, though—he just wasn’t that sort of guy.

“Maybe it just seemed that way to you because I was wearing one in spirit,” I continued. “Like I always do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Hibiki. “You’re a badass—we get it.”

Neither of us took the lead as we walked toward the elevator, like one of us was escorting the other. Nor did we link arms like a couple. Sure enough for Christmas evening, all of the others riding up with us were paired as well, which created a rather intimate-feeling atmosphere. Most likely, we were the only two people on the elevator that weren’t actually a couple.

I’d done some independent research on the restaurant’s homepage before heading over and came to the conclusion that the free meal vouchers were actually a pretty incredible value. So incredible, in fact, that I felt a little bad using them for an operation I might not even successfully pull off.

We arrived on the top floor and gave our coats and bags to the concierge. We were then led to a dimly lit private room with a huge window that had an incredible view of the downtown nightscape. After our conversation the other day, I couldn’t help but feel like Karin had gone out of his way to request a table like this for us. It was all a part of his master plan, no doubt—that sly devil.

Two bearded waiters in bow ties pulled out our chairs for us. I shot Hibiki a quick glance, then sat in the seat at the head of the table. We were roleplaying as husband and wife today, after all—it would only raise suspicions for us to act weird about it.

After explaining the courses of the day, they handed us a leather-bound drink menu, then left us alone. Drinks were not included in the meal voucher, so we’d have to pay for those ourselves.

“Go ahead, Mrs. Komagome,” said Hibiki. “Order whatever you’d like.”

“You’re having way too much fun with this,” I said. “I ought to tell the real Mrs. Komagome you said that, so she can slap us both.”

“Why would she ever do that? That wouldn’t benefit anybody. Heck, we could even order a bottle to give them as a gift.”

This was just a hunch, but judging from the way Hibiki talked about her, I got the sense he didn’t know a thing about Karin’s little cheating scandal.

In any event, we decided to kick the evening off with a toast, so we ordered two glasses of champagne. It wasn’t cheap, by any means, but it was a special occasion, so who cares. Mr. Accountant here certainly didn’t seem all that concerned about the price tag.

After giving the waiter our order, he quickly brought out our champagne. We promptly clinked our glasses together. Hibiki actually looked like a proper gentleman for once as he took a sip—but it looked so uncanny to me I almost couldn’t help but laugh. Naturally, he noticed me staring at him and gave a predictably flustered “What?!” right on cue.

He’d come straight from work today, apparently, and was wearing a dark navy suit with a brown necktie. It was a pretty plain color scheme, but that was in line with his usual style.

The first amuse-bouche they brought to the table formed a striking contrast of leafy greens and bright red cranberries on a white platter. Christmas colors.

“Apparently, it’s not even Christmas anymore,” said Hibiki.

“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno, but I heard someone at work today saying it’s only technically Christmas until the sun goes down.”

“Oh, huh… That would explain why everyone tries to get all their more important plans out of the way on the 24th, I guess.”

“Yeah, did you have any ‘more important’ plans last night?”

And there it was—the first “What the hell is this guy trying to say?” comment of the evening. But realistically, he was probably just probing to see if I had a special someone in my life right now. Naturally, I’d foreseen this query and prepared an answer in advance.

“Went out for dinner with one of my younger coworkers, but that’s about it,” I said. “How ’bout you?”

“I was working my damn butt off,” he complained, “because Karin demanded I make myself free for tonight.”

“Well, glad you could make it. Sounds like all of us are pretty swamped this time of year.”

“Been doing this gig for eight years, so I’m used to it by now. Oh yeah, I was gonna ask—what kind of job are you transferring to with this upcoming promotion?”

“Oh, did I not explain that part? It’s a media marketing position. Gonna find out just how much it sucks to work with celebrities on endorsements. Yay.”

“I hear it varies by talent agency. The ones who are signed to LDH are all super polite and respectful, I hear.”

“Yeah, they’re like the jocks of the entertainment industry, apparently.”

Obviously, most people only knew their public-facing personas, though, not who they really were as people. There were always scandals coming out about these teen boy band hunks who sing sappy romantic love songs, where they’d get caught cheating on their secret girlfriends or whatever. Maybe their companies just took great care to control their public image. Kind of like how Hibiki always tried to present himself as this slick, classy businessman type, when actually he still had a bit of a cute and charming childish side to him.

Following the amuse-bouche was a course of hors d’oeuvres, which were even more colorful. After the waiter introduced each component of the dish to us, I knew exactly what Hibiki’s first move would be. He flicked his fork across his plate like a swordsman in training and swiftly scooped up a bite of the marinated scallops and bell peppers, which he then ferried straight into his mouth.

Hibiki was not a fan of sour or acidic foods. He claimed he was “mostly indifferent” to them, but the way his cheeks winced as he hesitated before each bite told a much different story. I knew this about him, and so I always made sure to watch his expressions like a hawk whenever he was served something sour. I’d told him a thousand times he didn’t need to eat something he didn’t like—he could just leave it on his plate, or give it to someone who did—but he always forced himself to choke it down no matter what.

I, on the other hand, had no issue foisting my least favorite foods onto others.

“Here,” I said. “You can have my carrots.”

“You should at least try them,” said Hibiki. “You might be surprised.”

“Nah. It’d be a waste if I took a bite and then had to leave the rest.”

I slid my plate over to his, and he grabbed his unused spoon to carefully carve out the orange bits from the terrine. There was just something about the smell of carrots—maybe it was the carotene—that I just couldn’t handle. When I’d mentioned this on the road trip, Kao said, “Wow, you and my four year old have something in common, then.” If I ever had the chance to eat at her place again, I’d be sure to commiserate with the little squirt about it. I was just overly sensitive to smells—that’s all.

Since we were getting a multi-course meal at a fancy French restaurant, it only felt right to order to some French white wine after our champagne. Hibiki told the waiter he’d have the same as me.

“Y’know, I’ve known this about you ever since college,” I said, “but you have a pretty high alcohol tolerance, don’t you? Even on the trip, you didn’t seem to get drunk at all.”

“Oh, I get drunk, all right,” Hibiki said. “Just not to the point I start slurring my words and can’t remember anything the next morning—like you do.”

“Hey, I already apologized for that! Wait—so you’ve never blacked out even once?”

“Nope. I’ve heard that once you let yourself get to that point, it’s pretty easy to become an alcoholic. I always try to know my limits and only drink until I’m like 90 percent of the way there, maximum.”

“Kinda like stopping yourself from eating before you start feeling stuffed?”

“Sort of, yeah. I’m pretty terrified of getting to the point where I don’t even know what sort of horrible blunders I might make. I don’t have the courage to make a complete fool of myself like you do.”

“Aw, put a sock in it! Well, I’ll buy you a cab if I have to tonight, so feel free to drink to your heart’s content!”

“Uh… Thanks, I guess?”

As he tilted his glass back, I could tell he found this offer a bit dubious, coming from me. After all, it was always me who’d been the hopeless drunk that needed tending to ever since we met. Like Kao, I always went as hard as I possibly could on any real night out. But today, I would be using that experience to my advantage. I should just think of it as one very, very long training arc leading up to this exact moment.

After we finished our hors d’oeuvres and our plates were taken away, there was a lull in the conversation. Generally, I wasn’t the sort of person who minded silence one bit—I actually found it quite comfortable, in good company. But today, I had some questions I wanted to ask Hibiki, so I needed to make the best use of my time. These were not things I wanted to know for the sake of the operation, though, just as his friend.

“So hey,” I started. “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time, career-wise? Like, what kind of room is there for you to move up in the world, as an accountant?”

“Well, there are a lot of different options, obviously,” said Hibiki. “Could just keep working my way up the ladder at an auditing firm, could quit and try to become a corporate executive, could go into private consulting… Lot of folks go try to find a more lucrative position overseas too.”

“Yeah, but what about you?”

“Haven’t made any concrete goals as of yet. Just trying to focus on the work right in front of me, keep gathering more and more experience and skills, and hopefully find a better work-life ­balance, if I can.”

“Fair enough. Slow and steady wins the race, right?”

“Nah. I’m just living life one day at a time.”

“Yeah, okay, cool guy.”

He flashed me a sardonic smirk. Now it was time to hit him with my real question.

“All right, then let me ask you this,” I continued. “What would you say your biggest dream is right now? Doesn’t matter if it’s work-related or not.”

“Oh, we’re talking dreams now, huh? Okay…”

As Hibiki folded his arms and thought this over, we were served our bowls of soup—a navy bean potage. I went ahead and took a spoonful while my companion was busy ruminating, and was immediately hit by a surprising spectrum of flavors steeped within the thick, creamy broth. I made sure to savor it as long as I could, letting the taste linger on my tongue a while before swallowing.

Several spoonfuls later, Hibiki still hadn’t touched his; he was still thinking about the dreams question. Was it really that hard for him to come up with anything? Not that I minded him taking some time to formulate a more thoughtful response, as I was hoping for a genuine answer here.

I’d been wanting to ask him this ever since the road trip, actually. When he’d referred to me getting transferred as a “good something,” it made me wonder what possible “good somethings” were lying in store for him somewhere down the line.

More than anything, I guess I just wanted to know what it was he was looking forward to in life, given that he’d clearly decided not to actively pursue his feelings for me. Did he foresee something special happening in his future that would make it all worth it in the end, even if it meant having to bottle up his emotions in the present? Because if the only reason he was doing it was because he thought it was a necessary sacrifice to maintain balance in our friend group, it would be all the excuse I needed to destroy that notion once and for all.

And I was fully prepared to do just that today. I wasn’t even thinking about whether I’d have to show some skin, or get touchy-feely, or even kiss him in order to make that happen. The only thing I was steeling my resolve for tonight was to shatter any delusions Hibiki might have that he was doing me, or any of us, a favor by lying to himself about how he felt. If something needed to happen in order for me to achieve that goal, so be it.

“Y’know, I’m not sure I really have a dream,” Hibiki finally said.

I just kind of looked at him for a moment, waiting for him to elaborate.

“I mean, I’m really trying to think here, as you can see,” he said. “But while I’ve definitely had little short-term goals from time to time throughout my life, I don’t feel like I’ve ever had any major ‘dreams,’ per se. Not even back when I was a kid.”

“People like that exist?!” I exclaimed. I wasn’t even being performative here—I found this genuinely baffling. “Weren’t you aiming to be an accountant all the way back in our freshman year, though? I always thought that was your dream.”

“Nah. That was just a goal I set for myself because it felt like the right next step for me, to get from Point A to Point B in life.”

“Okay, then what’s the next goal you’ve set for yourself?”

“To finish my quarterly reports on time.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve gotta have something more long-term than that.”

“Long-term? I mean, I guess I can think about it… Why don’t you tell me your answer in the meantime? Assuming you’ve got a dream of your own right now.”

I’d been anticipating this rebuttal too, though it wasn’t the sort of question I needed to prepare an answer for in advance. Which was exactly why I was so aghast that he couldn’t seem to come up with anything at all.

“Oh, you bet I do,” I said. “Don’t think there’s ever been a period in my life when I didn’t have a dream I was working toward.”

“Wow. Gotta give you props for that, I guess,” he praised—though the applauding that followed felt a bit sarcastic. “Ooh, wait, I know—why don’t you start by telling me the first dream you had that you could remember, then end by revealing your current one? Obviously, I’m sure I know what some of your college-era dreams were, but I’m curious to hear how they’ve changed over time.”

“You really want me to embarrass myself that bad, huh? I mean, I guess I don’t mind, but still…”

It wasn’t that I found any of my childhood dreams particularly embarrassing, in and of themselves. But the act of recounting them one by one to a friend who was no doubt going to tease me for them did make me feel a bit shy. But if this was what I needed to do in order to accomplish my objective today, I’d just have to grin and bear it.

“My earliest dream, huh… Well, I don’t actually remember this one myself, but according to my parents…” I began. Hibiki put his first spoonful of soup in his mouth as he listened. “Apparently, I wouldn’t shut up about wanting to be a tatami mat when I grew up.”

Somehow, he managed to repress the urge to spit out his soup at this, instead forcing himself to swallow hard to avoid a major table manners faux pas. He did, however, hang his head, staring downward for several seconds as he recollected himself.

“And here I was expecting something cute,” he managed, once he was finally able to open his mouth again. “Like you wanted to be a fairy-tale princess or something.”

“How is that not cute?” I demanded. “Apparently, I loved rolling around on our house’s tatami floors so much, I told them that was what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Gotta love how kids’ minds work. Didn’t wanna live in a house with tatami mats, or be a tatami mat maker, no sir—you wanted to be one.”

“I mean, I couldn’t have been more than like, three, so I was barely sentient. But anyway, after my tatami phase was over…”

“I love how you say that like it’s something every kid goes through.”

“Isn’t it? But yeah, once my brain had actually developed, from about the end of kindergarten to the first couple years of elementary school, I really wanted to be an animal caretaker at the zoo.”

My parents would take me all the time; the red pandas were my favorite.

“Then in late elementary school, I wanted to be a hairstylist. And you wanna know why? I’m guessing you’re probably thinking it’s because I though the lady who cut my hair at my local hair salon back then was really cool or something, right?”

“I mean, I was kind of thinking that. But what was the actual reason?”

“Because I just loved the smell of hair salons. So much so that I wanted to live in one, but I knew there was no place to sleep there, so I’d just have to learn how to cut hair.”

“And then lo and behold, you went on to work in the cosmetics industry.”

“Yep. Though I definitely didn’t think to bring that up in my interview—it wasn’t like I was that serious about it back then. It’s just a funny little anecdote.”

I thought back on the day I went in for my first interview with my current employer of seven years, when I was still fresh out of college. Who would have thought I’d meet my future husband there just a few years later? Definitely not me, since I was still madly in love with my then-boyfriend when I first got hired. And then we broke up immediately after that… Ah, memories. I still remembered bawling my eyes out to Hibiki about it.

“Then, once I entered junior high, I started getting really into music, thanks to my older brother’s influence,” I continued. “Decided I either wanted to be in a rock band, or at least work at Tower Records. I think that was my main dream from that point on, all the way through my second year of high school—and you know the rest. If you’d asked me at any point between then and our junior year of college, I probably would’ve told you I wanted to be Sasaki Ryosuke.”

He was the lead singer for a flood of circle, my favorite band of all time.

“Right, I remember that,” said Hibiki. “I was so baffled by it; you didn’t want to just meet him, or be like him, no sir—you wanted to be him. But I guess that tracks with you wanting to be a tatami mat.”

“What can I say? I’m nothing if not consistent.”

“Consistently immature, maybe.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

I watched him take a sip of golden white wine through grinning lips as he deliberately averted his gaze.

“Well, obviously, once I started seriously thinking about my future, I realized how ridiculous it was to want to become another existing human being, so I changed course. Around the same time, I started getting really into experimenting with making my own potpourris and perfumes and stuff using everyday ingredients. And I’d always wanted to make a living doing something I loved, if at all possible—so when I got the job offer to work at my current company, it was basically a dream come true.”

Even though there was still plenty of things in my life that frustrated me on a day-to-day basis, I couldn’t help but feel thankful for where I’d ended up. Especially since I made good enough money to afford to drink fine wine like this every now and then.

“What about that period of time you didn’t live in Tokyo?” asked Hibiki.

“Oh, yeah—those three years were kinda rough,” I admitted. “I was struggling so hard to get accustomed to my new life that I kinda dissociated. My only dream was to buy some property and build a house in Hawaii.”

“Yeah, I could see that. Especially living up there in the snow.”

This was in my early twenties, when my job transferred me way up north. I didn’t have a single friend or acquaintance living anywhere near me. The only reason I survived was because I could still call or play games with my friends online, and they’d occasionally take the bullet train up to see me. I still remembered going to see some nearby tourist attraction I’d never been to before with Hibiki when he came to visit.

It was almost immediately after I moved back to Tokyo at twenty-six that I realized he might have the hots for me. All of a sudden, the nonchalant air he’d always given off seemed to a carry a new scent—almost like the slightest hint of pear. I didn’t tell Karin about this at the time; I figured he’d treat me like I was crazy. It was hard to convince other people of something based on little more than a hunch.

“Honestly, I’d still love to have a vacation home in Hawaii,” I said. “But ever since coming back to Tokyo, my biggest dream has been to become president of my own company. As in, establish my own brand and build it into a success story from the ground up. Obviously, I know that’s easier said than done, but I’ve been learning a lot for that purpose over the years and making connections little by little.”

“Yeah, I remember you talking about that.”

“Really? Not sure I remember telling you.”

“There was this time about a year or so ago when you got really drunk and started insisting you were gonna invent some new ‘pheromone-based soap,’ just for me, that would help make me ‘irresistible to all the ladies,’ or something along those lines.”

All right—just go ahead and kill me now. I do think I did that. But obviously, I wasn’t going to just come right out and apologize, no matter how cringe it was.

“G-guess someone must’ve ripped the page out of my common sense encyclopedia about not sticking your nose into your friends’ love lives unprompted…”

“Nah. You probably just spilled booze all over it.”

Just then, our waiter came by to collect our soup dishes and bring out the seafood course. Flounder poêle, apparently. I asked what “poêle” meant and was told it was a form of butter braising using a covered pan, not too dissimilar from pot-roasting. We both ordered another glass of white wine, choosing something different this time from the last; the wines were always delicious at places like this, but they definitely weren’t too generous with the pours.

“Okay, I think my turn is over now,” I said. “You come up with a dream yet, big guy?”

After carefully cutting off a bite of the tender white-meat fish and marveling at how delicious it was, Hibiki finally answered my question—albeit in an obtuse way.

“Honestly, after listening to everything you said, I feel like I’ve realized I’m just not the type of guy who lives his life with some big dream he wants to achieve. Like, there’s no major aspiration or anything I’m working toward.”

“People like that exist?!” I exclaimed for the second time, gawking at him. But Hibiki just nodded with an unaffected look on his face.

“If anything, I feel like it’s people like you, who do dream of all these big things they want to achieve, that are the minority. I mean, look at the six of us who went on the road trip, for example. Other than you and Mai-san, I feel like everyone else is more like me in that regard.”

“Yeah, Mai’s definitely a go-getter for sure…”

From what I’d heard, ever since she was a kid she made sure everybody around her knew she wanted to work for a candy company when she grew up. And she’d put together a meticulous, step-by-step plan as to how she was going to get there. I wasn’t even comfortable putting her in the same category as me; she was way more scrupulous.

“And then there’s Hanao, who’s just focusing on enjoying life as it comes, I think,” said Hibiki. “Wouldn’t really say Karin or Taiga-san strike me as the ‘listen to me gush about this dream I’m really passionate about’ type either, but I guess I’ve never really asked them about that sort of thing, to be fair.”

“What about you, Hibiki?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“How would you describe your own way of living?”

This seemed like a fairly natural next question to ask in my opinion—and yet, for whatever reason, Hibiki let out a snort of laughter as if to say, “Why would you even ask such a stupid question? Isn’t it obvious?” It was very unlike him. It almost felt like how an impudent teenager would scoff at a slow-witted adult who “just didn’t get it.”

The scent of pear was lingering in the air yet again, and I caught a whiff—though not through my nose. It was almost as if it was wafting directly into my brain.

“I’m living because I’ve got things worth living for,” said Hibiki.

The next moment, the pear was gone without a trace. Scents were transient, after all; like people, they were always moving and flowing, never staying in one place for long. But just because it was gone didn’t mean it hadn’t existed.

Just like that dreamy scent of nostalgia.

“Okay, but I’m asking what those things are,” I clarified.

“I think the biggest one is feeling like other people need me. It would make things harder for them if I were to just up and disappear one day. I guess you could argue that’s just an ordinary adult sense of responsibility, but when I think about my family or my workplace having to go on without me, it’s a pretty sobering thought. Or, God forbid, Karin bawling his eyes out over me and all the tears running into his beard.”

“Okay, sorry, but I think I’d kinda pay money to see that.”

I could accept this answer—but did his feelings for me enter into that equation? That whiff I caught a moment ago seemed to suggest they might, but it was a little too hazy to say for sure. If he really liked me so much that he felt I was one of those “things worth living for,” logic would dictate he’d have confessed those feelings by now and tried to “lock me down.” So why hadn’t he?

The only explanation I could think of at the moment was he was too afraid of rejection. If confessing might risk severing our relationship altogether, he’d rather just keep it to himself to ensure I’d always stay a part of his life in some capacity. Yet even so—and maybe it was all the shojo and shonen manga I’d read growing up that made me think this—if he really liked me that much, why hadn’t he said so sooner?

This was not to say that I was yearning for some alternate timeline where he and I had gotten together years ago and things had played out differently. Sure, there might have been a possibility of something happening, but I found that hypothetical far less compelling than the reality I was actually living, in which I’d already found someone I wanted to marry and grow old with. I’d take that over a mere “what-if” scenario any day. And we were still friends, weren’t we?

So why had he scoffed like he thought I couldn’t possibly understand how he felt? That honestly hurt me more than anything.

When we paid the bill, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the taste of the cheap shochu highballs he and I used to drink together back in college, for some reason.

After retrieving our coats and being walked to the door by our waiter, we left the fancy restaurant behind. As we took the escalator down alongside another young couple, the dazzling Christmas lights strung up throughout the whole hotel were so overwhelming it was kind of hard to form any sort of impression of them. Eventually, we made it back to the ground floor, about two hours after we’d first arrived. We stopped in front of the giant tree in the lobby and looked at one another.

“So what’ll it be now, Mrs. Komagome?” asked Hibiki.

“Well, it is Christmas, and we are fake-married,” I said. “Might as well go a little longer, I say. Plus, I took tomorrow morning off.”

“Well, aren’t you prepared. I’ve gotta go in at my normal time, sadly.”

“Okay, we’ve gotta make sure you get at least three hours of sleep, then.”

“Easy there, kiddo. We’re not in college anymore.”

Neither Karin nor I had considered the possibility of him being too busy to hang out after dinner, so I decided to lay on the peer pressure a bit—which worked, thankfully.

“Okay, fine—I can stay out a little longer,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “But where do you wanna go? I know a few spots around here, but it’s prime bar time right now, so they’ll probably be pretty crowded.”

“Yeah, good point,” I said. “Hmmm…”

I’d insisted to Karin that I was good at pretending to brainstorm.

“Oh, wait!” I exclaimed. “I think I might know a good little hole in the wall we could go to, actually.”

“Yeah? Cool, where is it?” asked Hibiki.

“Probably about fifteen minutes from here by cab. Usually, there’s this guy named Narahara Hibiki who lives there, but I’m pretty sure he’s out right now.”

“Okay, I really need you to stop treating my place like your personal private event space,” he said with an unamused smirk. “But whatever, I’m down for that. I don’t have any alcohol or snacks at home though, so we should probably swing by a mini-mart on the way.”

Normally, we would have just taken the train (assuming they were still running), but I hit him with the nonsensical argument that “since it was Christmas,” we should just hire a taxi. My main concern was the train line we’d have to take to his place would go right by my workplace as well. If I were to get caught red-handed going home with him by one of my coworkers, I’d be in deep shit—though maybe Hibiki surmised as much, which would explain why he went along with the idea so easily.

During the taxi ride, I made the suggestion that we should see if Karin was off work and wanted to join in the fun remotely. Hibiki was under the assumption he was still away in Kansai on a business trip, but in reality, he was already back in Tokyo by now—I was only making this suggestion as a smokescreen to not give away my ulterior motives for paying a visit to Hibiki’s place tonight. Karin and I had already agreed he wouldn’t pick up the phone if we called and would later just say he was out at dinner with a client or something.

Once we arrived at our destination, I psyched myself up for the main event. If only our little husband-and-wife roleplay at the restaurant had been enough to get him in the mood to confess, but alas. I didn’t have any delusions that it would be that easy. I wasn’t some twenty-year-old, self-absorbed college girl who expected men to grovel on their hands and knees for me at the drop of a hat—anymore, at least.

Hibiki paid our cab fare using the screen on the back of the passenger seat before I even had the chance to protest.

“You can pay on the way back,” he said jokingly.

“Yeah, okay, cool guy,” I said, almost reflexively.

We stocked up at the convenience store by buying some whiskey, oolong tea, and ice to fill Hibiki’s pathetically empty fridge, which he claimed only had a two-liter of sparkling water in it right now. I also went ahead and grabbed some chocolate and some cheese-coated fish strips for myself, while Hibiki threw some peanuts, gin, and cheap wine into the basket as well. I footed the bill this time around, as a sort of facility use fee for renting out his place—though I made sure to tell him it would only be a one-time payment.

And so, at last, we arrived at Hibiki’s surprisingly spacious bachelor pad.

He’d moved here before I was living in Tokyo and had been here about five years now. But when he first invited me over to the place, I genuinely couldn’t believe he wasn’t sharing it with a roommate. Maybe he’d had a girlfriend who was basically living there with him for a while—I couldn’t say. But regardless, it was way too massive for one man living all by himself. And he agreed with me on that, apparently. It was also way too nice on the inside for a single guy’s house, at least compared to other guys’ apartments I’d visited. I knew Karin would probably get on my case for ogling it so much.

The spacious entryway opened up even more into a living area with a classy rug over dark hardwood floors, a high-quality sofa, a nice wooden coffee table, and almost exclusively indirect lighting. The bedroom, which was only separated from the living area by a sliding door, was much the same. Since the office was on the opposite side of the apartment, along with the bathroom, he argued he’d made a point of keeping the bedroom as laid-back and cozy as the main living space as a sort of “work-life” balance thing, but… Well, with all due respect to Hibiki, there was a time Mai and I were here drinking while he was out of the house, and we’d both agreed he clearly intended for this to be the “dedicated sex room” for whenever he happened to bring a girl home with him. Sorry, Hibiki. No offense.

“You want me to hang your coat up for you?” he asked as I took my shoes off in the entryway. “Or you could just throw it on the ground again like last time, if that’s more your thing.”

“Oh, don’t worry—I’m not too picky about that,” I said. “Here, thanks.”

Not wanting to be too much of a lookie-loo in someone else’s home, I went ahead and took a seat on the sofa. It really was a nice couch: good texture, not too hard, not too soft. But as soon as I let my butt sink into the cushions, I noticed a new photo hanging on the wall. I flexed my legs to stand back up to get a better look. It was pinned to the corkboard hanging over the low bookshelf across the room. It was the only photo on it, amid a bunch of random sticky notes.

It was a picture Mai had taken, of the six of us on our recent road trip.

“Oh, wow—you actually made a print of this?” I asked.

“Yeah!” he shouted back. “Got a new printer recently that’s got photo printing capabilities, so I figured I’d give it a shot.”

“Nice…”

I averted my eyes to resist the urge to cry, then went back to sit on the sofa. Not long after, Hibiki came out of the kitchen with two glasses full of ice and a bottle of chilled sparkling water. He’d taken off his jacket and necktie and loosened up his collar a bit. I’d never paid any attention to his collarbones before, but now that I’d noticed they were on full display, I was struggling to figure out where to look instead.

We mixed some highballs for ourselves, then dialed Karin’s cell—just as we planned, he didn’t pick up. I’d actually sent him a quick update via LINE while we were in the cab, and it had immediately changed from Sent to Read. That was good enough for me.

In the end, we gave up on trying to get ahold of him and decided to clink our glasses together to have a toast with just the two of us. We’d already had four glasses of wine each at the restaurant, but obviously this wasn’t nearly enough to get either of us drunk. The night was still young, so I asked if Hibiki had anything we could do to kill the time while we drank. Normally, I would’ve been down to just boot up a multiplayer FPS game or something, but I knew I’d probably get so invested in it that I’d forget to even drink. And since tonight’s operation did kind of hinge on the use of alcohol to some extent, I couldn’t afford to let that happen.

Having surrendered the sofa to me as the guest, Hibiki sat down on the ottoman diagonally across from me. But then a few seconds later, he got this look on his face as if he’d just had a great idea and stood up again. He walked over to a corner of the living room and grabbed a long rectangular black box, which he brought back and set on the coffee table. It was about the size of the foldable wooden shogi board we had at my parents’ house—maybe a little bigger.

“You ever played backgammon before?” he asked, opening it from the side without a hinge to reveal a whole army of round black and white pieces and two dice.

“I remember trying to play the version that came installed on our family computer as a kid,” I said. “And then immediately closed out of it because I didn’t know the rules.”

“Well, I promise it’s super simple for grown adults, so it should be a pretty good time killer, I think.”

“Huh. Didn’t know you were a fan of board games.”

“I’m not, really. You’d know if I was. This was just a gift from a coworker who totally misunderstood when I told them I was a big fan of games. I’ve never actually played a match, though. I’ve only read up on the rules.”

Suddenly, I was feeling a lot more interested. If it was really as simple as he claimed, there was no risk of me getting too emotionally invested in it. I agreed to be his opponent for his first ever backgammon game, then took a swig of my highball. I could taste the sting of it in my nose—sharp and sweet.

After arranging the pieces on the game board, Hibiki gave me a quick and concise rundown of the rules. The more I listened to him explain it, the more I couldn’t help but wonder why this game wasn’t more popular despite being so well-known; it was almost too simple. Basically, you just rolled the dice and tried to move your pieces toward to the goal area before your opponent did. Whoever got all of their pieces there first was the winner—but if an opponent’s piece landed in the same spot as yours, your piece got sent all the way back to the starting position, and vice versa. It was so easy to play, even while intoxicated, that I considered whether it had been designed to be a drinking game from the start.

“Damn,” I said. “Drinking whiskey while playing backgammon with an old chum on Christmas night? Are we in an old Western painting or something?”

“I think we need to wait another ten years or so before we can legally call each other ‘old chums,’ but maybe that’s just me,” Hibiki joked as he rolled the dice to determine if he’d go first. When it was my turn to do the same, I prayed I’d still remember this moment in ten years’ time. But then I accidentally threw the dice so hard that they rolled onto the floor.

And so it was that we started moving our pieces across the board one by one, while listening to the medley of Christmas music Hibiki had put on in the background as a joke. During the first few turns of the game, I honestly had no clue what the right kind of strategy was for a game like this, so I just focused on moving as many of my pieces as far forward as I possibly could. Hibiki seemed to have the same idea, which led to us only “blocking” and “hitting” each other (to use the standard backgammon terminology) by pure coincidence every now and then. Eventually, I started to realize this wasn’t just a game of luck decided purely by who got the better dice rolls. Sure, luck did decide how far you could advance, but choosing which pieces to move, and setting up hits and blocks, mattered more on a turn-by-turn basis.

Also, despite its simple rules, it was actually a pretty thought-intensive game once you started getting into it. Matches ran pretty long, apparently. After a while, we both went totally silent and just started focusing on the game. We glared down at the game board with rapt attention as the ice crackled in our glasses every now and then. We were both much too consumed by it to engage in casual chitchat! This was no mere time-killer. I should have seen this ­arduous war of attrition coming, knowing who my opponent was. The thought of throwing the match just to get it over faster did cross my mind for a split second—but no, that was preposterous. While I was obviously just a beginner, it seemed to me the dominant strategy was to set up the board so your opponent couldn’t advance their last remaining piece forward even one space.

At one point, when it was my turn, Hibiki grabbed both of our glasses (which now contained nothing but melted ice) and headed into the kitchen. I could hear him rinsing them out and putting new ice cubes into each. The sound of him opening the fridge door and the sweet pop of an aluminum can cracking open were like music to my ears. As he brought the new drinks out for us, I could smell the scent of gin wafting up from the transparent liquid. He knew I was the type who liked to change up what I was drinking as the night went on.

“Thanks,” I said. “Also, can we just take a moment to appreciate how this game isn’t actually simple at all?”

“Yeah, it’s got my head spinning over here too,” said Hibiki.

Hibiki cradled his glass of gin and soda as well, and we both took sips between turns—though the alcohol surely wasn’t going to help us think any better. The current song playing over the speakers was John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas.”

In the end, after a grueling forty-minute back-and-forth, it was me who lost the battle. And not because I thought it polite to let the host win, or because I was too distracted thinking about the next steps for the operation. No, I just lost, plain and simple. I wasn’t the type to just laugh off a loss like this either, so I admitted defeat and hung my head in disgraced frustration. Hibiki laughed at me, as was his right.

“I’ll beat you next time when we’re sober!” I asserted. “Just you wait!”

“Wow, blaming it on the alcohol and vowing revenge as you run with your tail between your legs,” said Hibiki. “You’re like a small-time cartoon villain who never learns.”

This rubbed salt in the wound, so I reached and shoved him in the shoulder, the only part of him I could reach from where I was sitting. He didn’t even budge, though, so I went to shove him again—and this time, he grabbed me by the wrist.

“Easy there, kid,” he said, then let go of my arm. “You’re gonna make me spill. We don’t wanna have another incident like when Mai spit wine all over the Game of Life.”

He closed up the backgammon board, then got up to put it back.

Left alone there on the couch, I just kind of stared blankly down at my wrist, where the feeling of his touch still lingered.

That was the first time he’d ever grabbed me like that. And yet, judging from the way he reacted and his facial expression, he wasn’t feeling the same tingling sensation right now that I was—not even a little bit. That was all on my end. I couldn’t see any hint of tension, or discomposure, or exhilaration in his body language whatsoever.

In other words, assuming he viewed physical contact the same way I did, he wasn’t even thinking about the possibility that something could happen between us. He’d apparently already convinced himself the odds of that were approximately zero, so obviously he thought nothing of a little wrist grab like that. Now, that wasn’t to say he didn’t still have feelings for me, or wish something might happen, it just meant he had no expectations in that regard and refused to act on such desires. Which, to be fair, was pretty much the only “socially correct” option he had available to him, after we’d known each other for over a decade and been so close for so long. We’d touched fingers plenty of times before, or thrown our arms around each other’s backs, or even fallen asleep on the floor at parties next to one another, and thought nothing of it.

Because we were friends, and that’s all there was to it.

After pouring a little whiskey over the remaining ice in my glass and throwing it back, I decided to make myself something stronger this time. No mixer—I wasn’t about to get drunk off these watered-down cocktails. And more importantly: I wouldn’t be able to make him think I was drunk. I was going about this all wrong.

“I think you should probably have a couple glasses of water first,” said Hibiki.

“You always know the right thing to say, don’t you?” I replied. “Have you considered that maybe sometimes I want to make the wrong choices?”

If anything, him always having such good judgment when it came to only saying the “right thing” was probably why he’d never opened up to me about his feelings at all.

I was reminded of what Karin had said during our first strategy meeting—about how, if Hibiki were the type of guy who’d try to make a move on me while I was dead drunk, he’d cut all ties with the guy himself. But he was probably just blowing smoke.

Don’t worry about that, Hibiki. Let’s just make a little mistake together tonight.

Seeing as I was now drinking straight liquor on the rocks, Hibiki walked over to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of what was undoubtedly the cheapest wine either of us had drunk today by far. He came back into the living room and cracked some sort of joke about how all his dishes were hand-me-downs, “even cheaper than the wine.”

I needed an in. Something that would give me an excuse to touch him or vice versa without it being weird or uncalled for.

Having mentally exhausted ourselves playing backgammon, we decided to play a game that required far less brainpower this time, inspired by our recent road trip. I’d played this one with Mai before as well: You each planned out a sort of dream vacation for yourselves—choosing a destination, what time of year you’d go, how you’d get there, what sorts of stuff you’d do, et cetera—then shared your answers with one another once you were done. There was no winner or loser, you just kind of compared and contrasted, and enjoyed the novelties and quirks of the other person’s way of thinking.

“I’m gonna go this upcoming spring,” I said. “I always have more motivation when things feel right around the corner.”

“Who are you taking?” asked Hibiki. “Same six from last time?”

“Nah, let’s just keep it to the two of us. I feel like if you try to plan a trip with that many people, you’ve gotta be at least on Mai’s level, or it’ll be a total disaster.”

Thinking about a hypothetical vacation with Hibiki reminded me of that day he came to visit me when I lived up north and we went sightseeing. Even back then, I had a feeling his excuse about visiting relatives who lived up there was a lie.

The Christmas medley playing on the TV had now given way to some late-night programming in another language. But that was just fine: Random foreign words I could only understand half the time were the perfect background music for doing work on my phone.

We’d also changed seats. While I was away using the bathroom, he’d moved to the sofa, claiming it was the “homeowner’s turn to use the comfy seat,” but I’d just gone ahead and sat right beside him anyhow, which he chuckled at. It was my first time sitting side by side with him on the sofa; I hadn’t realized it was spacious enough for two until now.

Even though it was just a game, and a ploy to give me an in, I actually put a fair bit of thought into planning my little vacation. Obviously, I knew the idea of going on a spring getaway with just me and Hibiki would probably only ever be a fantasy, but the idea of going with my best friend to visit their hometown did appeal to me. It wasn’t all that far from here, and yet I hadn’t been to that area since my parents took me there as a little kid. I decided to do some basic research on what the local specialties and sightseeing spots were. As we both fiddled around on our phones in silence for a while, the sound of ice crackling in our cups almost felt like the sound of putting sticky notes in travel magazines.

Okay, done. It’s not on Mai’s level, but pretty good for a beginner, I’d say.

On day one, we’d meet up first thing in the morning, then take an hour-ish train ride to our destination, where we’d drop off our luggage either in a coin locker or at our hotel. There was a shrine I wanted to visit, with a thick bamboo forest surrounding it that I could get lost in like a little girl wandering through a fantasy world. After having our fill of that, we’d return to the station for an early lunch—a whitebait bowl sounded good to me. Then, once our bellies were full, we’d take the train along the coastline. There was an album we both knew that dedicated one song to each station on that line, which we could listen to together on our iPhones as we rode.

We could go see the giant Buddha statue, as cliché as that was—though Hibiki would probably make a quip about how he’d been seeing it ever since he was a kid, so it wasn’t anything special to him. If we were particularly inspired by a song on the album, we could be adventurous and hop off at that station—maybe take a little walk down onto the beach. It’d probably still be pretty cold that time of year, but I bet we could have a super deep and meaningful heart-to-heart while gazing out at the ocean. As evening fell, we’d make our way back toward the hotel and look around in all the little local curiosity shops, even though we had no intention of buying anything. Maybe we’d pick up a local treat of some sort, like those melon buns from last time, then worry if we’d still have room for dinner afterward. Then we’d agree to keep things light and go eat little appetizers while we drink at a local izakaya. We’d head back to the hotel plastered drunk, check in, and then maybe head back out for a bit more shopping before returning to play a round of backgammon in Hibiki’s room. This time, I knew I’d win for sure—I couldn’t wait.

“Chizuru?” said Hibiki.

“Hm?” I said.

“You okay?”

It was only after he said this that I realized there were tears streaming down my cheeks—so endlessly that they were dripping down from my chin onto my plaid skirt. And here I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to cry today. And yet, painting this little fantasy in my head—one that I knew might very well become totally impossible after what I did here tonight—had made me so emotional I just couldn’t help it. My weak tear ducts had betrayed me again.

“Oh, shoot, sorry…” I said. “Guess all the reminiscing mixed with alcohol made me a little emotional. I’m good though, I swear.”

“If you say so…” said Hibiki. “What do you mean by reminiscing, though?”

For a moment, he looked confused—but then his eyes ­widened in shock.

“What’s that face for?” I asked.

“Hey, don’t talk about my face when you’re the one bawling her eyes out,” said Hibiki. “And I was just thinking that maybe you and I might have picked the same destination, that’s all.”

With a knowing smile on his face, Hibiki handed me his smartphone. As I slid to unlock the screen, another two teardrops dripped onto it.

Hibiki’s hunch was slightly off.

We had, in fact, picked different destinations.

I’d chosen his hometown. He’d chosen mine.

“It’s close enough that even if it was a busy time of year for me at work, I’d probably have time to eat breakfast and still make it to work on time the following day,” he explained. “Plus, I’ve only ever been there on business, so I figured it’d be a good excuse to actually check out the area for once. Didn’t know it was famous for spaghetti napolitan. I’ve always wanted to spend more time there, since it was also kinda the stomping grounds of a lot of my favorite bands as a teenager. And I figured, since I’m not a very good trip planner myself, I might as well bring someone along who can give me the grand tour for free, y’know?”

As he flashed me his usual sardonic smirk, I could tell he wasn’t saying any of this because he had a master plan, or ulterior motives in mind, but purely out of affection for me. Whether that was just as a friend, or as the girl he liked, I could tell there was nothing remotely malicious behind these sentiments. I was the only villain here.

And I was just fine with that.

I decided to use this as my in, even if I had to be a bit forceful about it.

“Wow, you just can’t get enough of me, can you?!” I teased, leaning over.

Was I being too hasty here? No, this was fine; he’d already made me cry, after all. I was fully justified in launching a counterattack. To be honest, I didn’t want him to give me any more warm and fuzzy feelings tonight—I knew it would just dull my resolve to keep having fun like this.

I pushed him on the back shoulder, even though I knew it was a bit uncalled for, then raised my voice to sound extra annoying as I downed the rest of my glass. My throat burned—but that wasn’t nearly as important as making him think I was totally hammered. My plan this whole time had been to make him think the alcohol had really started to hit me while playing the vacation planning game, and this last drink put me over the edge.

If there was one word of advice I could give to my past self, or any younger kids out there who might be listening, it would be this: Sometimes, grown-ups will lie about how drunk they are as a means to achieve their own selfish ends. It’s a devastatingly unfair technique that only experienced adults can pull off—don’t be fooled by it.

“Well, guess what?” I asked. “I was planning on making you my tour guide too.”

The best way to fake being drunk off your ass was to pretend to have sudden, drastic emotional swings—so after giggling at this and handing him my phone to look through, I promptly furrowed my brow and set about making my lips tremble.

“God, Hibiki… You’re always like this, I swear…” I said, almost whimpering.

I knew I wasn’t a very good actor, so I really had needed to wait until there was just enough alcohol in my system to pull this charade off, but not too much. The tears I’d shed a moment ago were an unintended side effect of that—but at least I wasn’t bawling my eyes out this time like I apparently had a few months back. No, this time I had full control over my body, thankfully, and I would definitely remember all of this tomorrow morning.

“What are you even talking about?” asked Hibiki. “I’m always like what?”

“Oh, come on! Like you don’t know!” I said. “I mean, just the other day, you were… Wait. What was I talking about?”

“That’s what I want to know. You’re not being very articulate, my friend.”

“Nah, I’m fine. What was I saying again? Uhhh… Oh yeah!”

I sat up straight, stretching out my back like a drunk person who was clearly trying to convince their friends they weren’t actually drunk at all. Then I started randomly touching my neck all over. Both of these behaviors were apparently habits of mine—things I was very liable to do whenever I got totally wasted, according to my fiancé and Karin. Though I’d been completely unaware of this until they told me.

And I had one other trick up my sleeve too.

“Did you know Karin told me my boobs are too small the other day?” I asked.

“Bullshit,” said Hibiki. “Karin would never say something like that.”

Wow, he has so much faith. Hibiki just laughed at my claim as though they were the nonsensical ravings of a drunk, then gulped down the remaining little bit of wine in his glass. I assumed this was because he wanted to pour himself another—but just as he was about to stand up, I grabbed him by the broadcloth fabric of his dress shirt and yanked him back down.

“Hey, don’t leave!” I demanded. “Listen to me!”

“Oh, great… She’s getting touchy-feely again,” he said.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘again’?”

“You love hanging off of me when you get drunk. You just don’t remember.”

“Seriously?! Oh god, my bad!”

“It’s fine. Now, what were you about to say?”

“Oh yeah, uhhh…”

Still clinging to the sleeve of his shirt, I took another swig of whiskey. My glass was almost empty now as well.

“What was it, again…” I mumbled.

Pulling the shirt closer to me along with its wearer, I placed Hibiki’s right arm on my lap and then started tracing the contours of his middle finger with my own. Then I circled back around it and started walking my index and middle fingers up from his wrist to his elbows, like a pair of legs climbing up a set of stairs. This was, apparently, another common drunk habit of mine that I’d been totally unaware of, but which was corroborated by multiple eyewitness accounts. Even I didn’t know what the point of such a gesture was—but I knew I’d probably done it to Hibiki countless times over the years, especially judging from the unamused look on his face as he just let it happen.

“Oh, right!” I said. “He said I ‘look like the sort of girl who’d wear a leather jacket’! Can you believe that?!”

“So?” said Hibiki. “Aren’t you the one who says you’re always ‘wearing one in spirit’?”

“Yeah, because I am!” I gave a silly grin for a moment, then suddenly got serious again. “Anyway, my point is he totally meant it as an insult. It was just his way of saying I’ve got no curves and a manly face, apparently.”

“So what you’re saying is you’d be super popular at an all-girls high school.”

“Mine was co-ed, but I did get chocolates on Valentine’s Day a few times, yeah.”

“Oh yeah? And just how many poor girls’ hearts did you break, huh?”

“Ha! Please. Like you’re one to talk, Mr. Girl-of-the-Week!”

“Wow! Excuse you!”

I found it amusing how he was still trying to have a proper conversation with me even though he thought I was totally drunk. You’d think, after having been through this song and dance with me so often, he’d just brush me off at this point.

As he laughed incredulously at my last comment, I boldly reached out with my right hand and combed back the right half of his middle-parted bangs.

“Okay, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Y’know, I gotta admit…” I said. “You’ve gotten pretty darn handsome yourself over the past few years, Hibiki.”

“What are you, my mom?”

“Nah. Just appreciating my friend’s good looks, that’s all.”

I actually sort of meant this too—even if I’d obviously never say it to his face under normal circumstances. Hell, even under the influence, I had to finish off with an exaggerated nod and then immediately avert my eyes to stave off the embarrassment.

If I were on the receiving end of something like this, I knew I’d probably either get super flustered, or take it as a joke and burst out laughing. But Hibiki didn’t look fazed in the slightest, nor did he make any attempt to pull his face away from my hand.

“Okay, you don’t have to be so close,” he finally said. “You’re making my eyes twitch.”

“Awww, c’mon…” I said. “No need to be shy…”

Once I started teasingly running my fingers up and down his sides, however, he scrunched up his face as though I was actually starting to annoy him a little bit, and gently grabbed my wrists to put a stop to my tickle torture. At this point, I honestly felt like he could have easily wrapped his arms around my back and gotten away with it, no problem.

But he didn’t. He hadn’t. Which meant we were still us. Wow, great sentence, Chizuru. I could feel my vocabulary starting to slip in real time.

Whenever I drank, I liked to imagine myself walking around, carrying a giant wine glass, as a representation of my alcohol tolerance. The more I drank, the more this hypothetical glass filled up with pure alcohol, and if and when it finally overflowed, it meant I was about to puke, or black out. Right now, I was right on the edge, with only about three milliliters of room left to spare in that glass. Which meant I had to be very careful, because I couldn’t just put the glass down now—I had to keep on walking, and carrying it with me, even though the slightest misstep or change in direction might make me spill it all over at this point. Either that, or I’d just trip and fall flat on my face. That was how I visualized my own drunkenness.

And tonight, I needed to settle things before it got to that point.

But how could I possibly get Hibiki to admit that he liked me? I was already embarrassing myself pretty bad over here!

“Gotta admit, I’m pretty jealous,” I said. “I’ve never really liked my own face, and I definitely don’t think the years have been as kind to me in that regard as they have to you.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m much of a Casanova myself, personally,” said Hibiki while he poured a bit more whiskey in his wine glass as though he still had plenty of gas left in the tank. When I reached out to try to steal it from him, he juked me and set it on the floor on the opposite side of the couch where I couldn’t reach.

“Well, what do you think about my face, then?” I asked.

“Your face?” said Hibiki.

I splayed my hands like a flower under my chin and flashed him the most cutesy expression I could muster. Which actually helped, because I knew I would probably die of embarrassment if I’d tried to ask him this question with a straight face. Hell, maybe that smug, triumphant grin Mai always did was just a ploy to cover up her own shyness too, now that I thought about it. Perhaps I’d just gotten a tiny glimpse into how one of my good friends’ brains worked after more than ten years of knowing her.

To be clear, the reason I was asking him how he felt about my face wasn’t because I was fishing for compliments to reassure me Karin’s assessment was wrong—I wasn’t that insecure. But I figured I might as well ask, just to be safe! Because you never know; maybe Hibiki actually agreed with him in that regard!

The TV was now showing some special on the Alps or the Himalayas or something, and let me tell you, holding this exaggerated expression for so long while my whole face was being illuminated by the bright white glow of the TV was not among my favorite things in the world. At this point, I didn’t even care if Hibiki called me a big fat uggo—I just wanted him to hurry up and get it over with. I knew he was just going to say something snarky to cover up how he really felt regardless.

“You’ve always had a nice face, Chizuru,” he finally said.

“Pardon?” I squeaked, at least two octaves higher than my normal voice. It was so high-pitched it actually made Hibiki flinch a little bit. He reached down to grab his glass from the floor and take another swig. After clearing his mouth, he lifted his free hand and casually pointed his finger in the general direction of my face.

“But now I’d say your looks finally match your age,” he said. “Honestly, you look a lot more attractive now than you did when we first met, if you ask me.”

“Hibiki…”

Had he just let it slip? His whole facade? That easily? I mean, he was literally calling me attractive to my face. How else was I supposed to interpret that?

“Are you confessing to me right now?” I blurted out.

Hibiki very nearly spit out his drink at this, but managed to somehow disperse that potential energy by leaning forward to hold it in. Then, with his eyes still closed, he took two deep breaths through his nose as if trying to steady himself, before he finally gulped down the liquid in his mouth and set his glass safely on the floor. Then he turned to me, lowered his head, and clapped his hands together.

“Hell no!” he finally said. “Are you kidding me?!”

He burst out laughing—and for once, his smile lacked any hint of sarcasm or cynicism. He almost never smiled wholeheartedly like this, like he really meant it. And while normally I would have said this rare “true” smile was one of his most attractive features, right now I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted by it.

“Pretty sure I’ve told you this before, but I’ve always had a bit of a complex about my face looking too ‘wimpy’ compared to other guys,” he explained. “So I’ve always been a little bit jealous of you in that regard, since you’ve got some really strong, confident features, regardless of your gender. And all I was trying to say just now was that I think you’ve reached the point where your age matches those features in a flattering way.”

A moment later, like an aftershock of the earthquake of laughter he’d let out a moment ago, Hibiki snickered through his nose.

“Man,” he said. “I haven’t heard anyone talk about ‘confessing to someone’ in a romantic sense since I was in high school, I think.”

It was only then that I had the harrowing realization I might have tried to do something like this to him before while intoxicated. But I knew it was far too late to apologize for that now—especially because, when I was this intoxicated and annoyed, my body moved faster than my mouth could spin together a string of words.

To be honest, I didn’t even know what I was trying to do here. All I knew was I was failing miserably. But since I wasn’t ready to give up just yet, I rose to my feet and turned my whole body to face Hibiki. Then, I put one knee on the sofa and placed my left hand on the back of his neck as he looked up at me in blank disbelief.

“You and your mixed messages, I swear…”

This would be my last (deliberate) attempt at making a move that night.

I wasn’t sure exactly what caused it, but I assumed that when I tried to lean my body forward to hang over him, my knee must have given out from under me. And once I lost my balance, that was that—my inner wine glass had officially spilled over. Though whether it was due to that misunderstanding just now, or my sudden flare of anger at him laughing at me a moment ago, I couldn’t say. But now all that spilled alcohol was seeping its way into other parts of my brain that weren’t normally meant to handle that much liquor, and trickling down into my limbs as I tried to move them.

No longer able to support my own weight, my entire body pitched forward and fell right on top of Hibiki. Thankfully, I was able to partially catch myself by bracing one hand against the sofa, so our heads didn’t conk together or anything, at least—but we definitely still ended up in a highly compromising position. And now my brain was short-circuiting.

I knew that when I woke up the next morning, I would still remember everything I said and did after this. But I also knew that when I told Karin about what happened tomorrow, I’d need to preface it by making him swear he fully acknowledged that my actions from this point onward were not made in sound mind or judgment.

I did not immediately move to pull myself off of him.

“God, Hibiki…” I mumbled. “Why do you have to be like this…”

I could feel a gentle warmth grip my shoulders. He was probably trying to help me up. But then all of a sudden, my nose found a question that needed answering—so I ignored his help and instead leaned my face in even closer, right into the nape of his neck.

“You smell really good…” I mumbled. “What is that?”

“Probably just my hair product,” he replied.

No, it wasn’t that—it was something much deeper. A fragrance I knew I’d be able to smell even if I stopped breathing entirely—a bittersweet scent that seemed to speak directly to a more primal part of my brain, hidden beneath the alcohol and adrenaline.

Then, without a moment’s hesitation, a veritable torrent of tears began to pour out from my addled, malfunctioning head. The current ran straight from my eyes down to my lips, carrying the salty taste of my most vulnerable inner emotions in their course.

“I’m sorry, Hibiki…” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

In retrospect, I knew I was acting like a child. I knew I was almost thirty years old. But it was a lot easier to say these things in hindsight than in the moment.

“I know we’re just friends,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Hibiki relaxed his grip on my shoulders. I could hear the sound of his hands falling limply back down onto the sofa. I didn’t know how he’d interpreted this last line of mine—one that could potentially ruin the entire operation. I figured he probably didn’t read into it quite that much, but his next words seemed to shoot right through this lone show of weakness on my part, and dash any remaining hopes I might have had.

“It’s fine. Like you said: We’re friends. No need to overthink it.”

It was at this point I completely lost all control of my emotions. Only after my face was completely disheveled and my makeup had run all the way down to my chin was I finally able to sit back on the couch like normal, drink the glass of water Hibiki had brought for me, and blow my nose on some tissues. Even after this, the tears just kept on coming, so at Hibiki’s insistence, I lay flat on the sofa and just focused on taking deep breaths as I apologized profusely for ruining the night over and over every few seconds. He assured me it was fine, promised to check on me and wake me up in the morning, and told me I should just try to get some rest. I nodded. I didn’t think I had it in me to go home right now, and even if I did, something told me it would probably just make Hibiki think even less of me, leaving after all that like nothing had happened.

Eventually, after a lot of slow, measured breathing, I finally managed to calm down. It seemed Hibiki had noticed this too, as in my half-conscious stupor, I could hear him moving around the house and taking care of some chores now that he was confident I’d be okay without him. I could hear him taking out the garbage and washing the dishes. Then, a little while later, blow-drying his hair and brushing his teeth.

At some point, I felt a heavy blanket being draped over my body, and I nodded when asked if it was warm enough. I’d even built up enough energy reserves at this point to hold up my hand and make an “OK” sign with my fingers, which got a little laugh.

As the lights went off in the living room, and I felt myself begin to drift into a deep slumber, the last thing I heard before falling asleep was not the “good night” I expected, but the sound of soft humming—to the tune of a song about the moon.