Chapter 7

“AGAIN, THIS SITUATION was entirely a result of my own lack of moral accountability, and I deeply apologize to all of our shareholders for betraying their trust in me.”

“Okay, this isn’t a press conference,” I said.

Chizuru showed up to our year-end remote debrief meeting in a suit (probably because she hadn’t had time to change after getting home from work) and proceeded to outline her failures to me in great detail, while also requesting a temporary moratorium on the operation as a whole. I had to agree: Just one look at her face and I could tell no one was going to be confessing to her anytime soon in this state, let alone Hibiki.

Apparently, mucking up her attempt to be a bit more physical and assertive with Hibiki had hit her pretty hard. It tanked her motivation, and she also claimed her nausea and cold feet had come back with a vengeance. She kept apologizing to me over and over, and talking about what a horrible person she was—there was even one point at which she let slip that she “didn’t want Hibiki to hate her.” That she was actually at a point where she thought this was a real concern took me aback. The only advice I could give her, despite the fact her time limit was drawing nearer and nearer, was to just try to put those thoughts out of my mind until the new year was over and to take it easy for now.

Part of the reason for that was because I was starting to give up as well, in light of the fact that Hibiki still refused to say anything to her, even when she resorted to such drastic measures. But whether the operation would continue or not was up to her, ultimately. For now, I just had to stand by and wait for its mastermind to recover.

So when Mai-tan put together a little last-minute New Year’s party for the group, Chizuru decided to sit that one out. Being the unmatched organizer she was, Mai-tan promised she would hold a separate girls’ night to include Chizuru later, so no one had to feel left out. That would have been the end of it, except Hibiki’s schedule also didn’t happen to line up for the New Year’s party, so we were forced to plan a separate guys’ night as well.

At first, it seemed like the plan was to pick a venue that would be easy for Hanao to get home from, but then she revealed in our group LINE chat that she’d be “Staying at Mai’s place!” for the night, so we ended up picking a yakiniku joint downtown. It was a fairly famous restaurant, which was a bit of an unusual pick by Mai-tan’s standards.

And so, on the second Saturday of January, I arrived at the agreed-upon establishment, gave my name, and was ushered to a private tatami room in the back. Upon opening the sliding screen door, I could see the other three were already sitting around the fancy low table. They turned at the sound and gave me a jokey little bow.

“Happy New Year, everybody,” I said, and started taking off my jacket as everyone wished me the same. After hanging it on the wall, I sat down in the open spot next to Taiga-san and across from Mai-tan. It was a sunken kotatsu-style table with room to hang your legs underneath.

“We decided to go with the full-course meal,” said Mai-tan.

Then, as if right on cue, our waitress opened the screen door to ask if we were ready to begin with our first course yet, and handed us the all-you-can-drink menu that came along with our meal. I ordered a lemon sour, and the other three went with beer.

“You got gout or something, Karin-chan?” one of them teased.

“Nah, nothing like that,” I said. “It’s just that I drank nothing but beer on New Year’s when I was celebrating at home with the wife, so I think I’m good on it for a while.”

Never would I have imagined, back when I first met these guys, that we would still be drinking together like this until we were old enough that the topic of gout could come up completely unironically.

Along with our drinks came our first food item: a platter of various kimchi, which the waitress proceeded to portion out to each of us on our fancy little serving plates. After an initial toast, we all dug in. I loved the sour taste of pickled vegetables.

“Too bad Hibiki and Chizuru couldn’t make it,” I said, suddenly reminded of the former’s distaste for this exact sort of dish. I figured the others would simply nod in agreement at this—but for some reason, Mai-tan and Hanao exchanged a meaningful look at one another as though they had something to say about this. I glanced back and forth between them, confused, until eventually Hanao said, “You tell him,” and Mai-tan let out a sigh of resignation.

“The truth is,” she said, setting her chopsticks down, “there’s a reason for that, Karin-kun. And I’m sorry for not being upfront with you about this from the start.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Hanao, who’d already downed more than half of her beer.

Meanwhile, I had no idea what in the hell they could possibly be talking about. And Taiga-san seemed too invested in eating his pickled cucumber to care.

“As you’ll recall, it was me who chose the venue for this evening.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Thanks for your services as always, Mai-tan.”

“Don’t mention it. But anyway—while obviously I couldn’t have anticipated Chizuru getting sick,” Mai-tan began, referring to the fake illness Chizuru had come up with to get out of coming tonight, “the truth is, we were kind of planning the whole event from the start in a way that would make sure neither she nor Hibiki-kun could make it.”

“Well, damn. I guess a good organizer like you would be able to pull something like that off, wouldn’t you… But why, though?”

“I’ll get to that in a moment, but since we planned this together in secret without you, I just wanted to start off by apologizing for deceiving you, first and foremost.”

As she bowed her head in apology, I couldn’t help but give a little bow myself.

“Um, so what was the purpose of this whole thing, then?” I asked.

“I’ll explain that now, but feel free to start eating while I do!” said Mai-tan.

As soon as she was done apologizing, Mai regained her usual air of smugness and started pushily urging me to try the food as though she’d cooked it herself. I obliged. As I chewed my first bite of kimchi, Hanao called the waitress over and ordered a highball.

“Well, to fully explain it, I’d have to go all the way back to our senior year of college, actually,” said Mai-tan. “But for now, let’s just flash back real quick to last year. Remember how you and I started talking about the road trip, and then I reached out to everyone?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And thank you for your services there again, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it—that whole vacation was a blast. But see, we actually had a secret objective we were trying to achieve on that trip that we never told you about.”

“We as in us,” said Hanao, raising her hand. Apparently, the two of them had been in cahoots somehow—and it had something to do with me?

If this were a novel or a manga, you’d probably call something like this a plot twist. And indeed, if this were one of the books my company put out, I’d be all for it. But in real life, I wasn’t so sure how I felt about it. Usually, these things came with pros and cons.

“The truth is, we’ve been trying to hook Chizuru and Hibiki-kun up with each other for a long time now,” said Mai-tan. “Since way before the road trip, actually.”

“…You don’t say,” I murmured. To think that there was another group working toward the same objective as us, and for even longer… And yet, even so, “Guess that doesn’t surprise me too much. I mean, they were literally talking about not having anyone to marry and whatnot throughout that whole vacation, so.”

“Exactly! And the main reason we didn’t mention this to you was because we knew you still play video games and stuff with them—we didn’t wanna risk there being any potential leaks.”

“Probably a good call. I get pretty loose-lipped when I’m drunk.”

“Yeah, right,” said Hanao. “Like hell you do.”

This little comeback seemed to clear the apologetic tension in the air completely. Still, I found it pretty amusing to think these two had been conducting their own version of Operation Heartbreak unbeknownst to us—though obviously, with a different end goal in mind. Though I’d soon learn just how naive I was for thinking it was just some harmless little attempt at playing cupid on their part.

Hanao’s highball arrived.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “I do remember Chizuru mentioning that you two gave her a hard time about him when you were in your hotel room. But did you do anything else aside from that? Obviously, I remember you joking that she should just marry him—but was the cringe video compilation part of that plan too?”

“That was all Mai’s doing,” said Hanao. “Freaking showboater.”

“Yeah, Kao really chewed me out for that,” said Mai-tan. “Said it was ‘friendly fire’ for me to embarrass everyone else in the process.”

“Me, all I did was try to keep her engaged with conversation in the baths long enough for her to get lightheaded, and then made sure to mix her drinks with way more alcohol than everyone else’s.”

I dropped my next bite of daikon kimchi on the table. And it wasn’t just for show.

“Honestly, I was pretty surprised at just how smoothly the whole thing went,” Hanao continued. “Even the part where Hibiki went on a little walk with her up to the roof because he was worried about her being too drunk was all part of the plan.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Is nothing off-limits to you people?”

I retrieved my fallen piece of daikon and put it in my mouth, then used my wet towel to wipe the remaining spill off the table. I couldn’t help but laugh: Considering how aggressive Hanao had been, our own operation sounded almost adorably innocent by comparison. While I generally tried to keep thoughts like this to myself, I couldn’t help but shudder at how relentless girls could be among themselves at times.

“Wait,” I said. “But how do you two know they went up to the roof to get some fresh air? Weren’t you both in the hot springs at the time?”

Hanao tilted her highball back with the rim to her lips and raised her pointer finger to indicate the person sitting directly beside me.

“Taiga-san…” I said.

“They dragged me into it, I swear,” he said.

Good god, they even hired their own spy. I gave the two of them a very disapproving look as Taiga-san let out an awkward chuckle. Come to think of it, he’d made a comment trying to recommend Chizuru as a candidate to Hibiki too at one point, hadn’t he?

“But in the end, it seems like there wasn’t any significant change in their relationship,” said Hanao. “By the end of the trip, they were still right where they’d started: just friends.”

“So? Nothing wrong with a little vacation with friends,” I said.

“Yes, but it wasn’t supposed to be that sort of trip. Also, I wanted to apologize to you a little bit myself, for doubting and manipulating you without any explanation. Which is why tonight, all the food and drinks are on me—it’s the least I can do to apologize.”

As if the waitress had heard this declaration from Hanao, the screen door opened right on cue, and our second course arrived: a large platter of thinly sliced raw meat, arranged in a lovely spiral pattern. As I admired it, I racked my brain to try to figure out what Hanao could possibly be referring to in regard to her “manipulating” me. Also, I had no intention of letting her pay the entire bill. I was an adult. I had money.

“Honestly, I never would’ve expected that you’d play so perfectly into our plan, Karin-chan,” said Hanao. “It’s enough to make even someone like me feel kinda bad.”

“Are you talking about how you made me deliver that contract in person?” I asked.

“No, I meant the date night meal voucher. See, I kinda had a hunch you were up to something ever since you approached Mai with the idea of going on a road trip together, which only grew stronger after I heard you explicitly passed on going up to the roof with them because it was ‘too cold out’ that night. So, I figured that if I gave that coupon catalog to you, you’d probably give it to either Hibiki or Chizu-nee—and I was right on the money.”

“Uh, Mai-tan? Your friend is scaring me.”

It was rare for me to get goosebumps, especially from my own friends, but this coming from the same woman who’d played the stressed-out mom card and given me the excuse that she and her husband “didn’t go to fancy restaurants anymore” because of how hard it was to wrangle the kids? Hell, I’d bought that hook, line, and sinker! Mai-tan seemed to agree with me, at least, judging by the way she firmly nodded her head.

“Incidentally, I heard the gist of what happened on Christmas from Hibiki when I called him after that to ask a few questions about year-end taxes,” Hanao explained.

I’d told her the story we’d cooked up over the phone prior to this—about how I’d made reservations for me and my wife to go, but we weren’t ultimately able to make it, so we gifted them to Chizuru and Hibiki instead. I figured it was probably best to come clean about that to her, as the person who’d initially gifted me the coupon book, so that she didn’t find out from someone else later—but I definitely wouldn’t have expected her to pursue Hibiki for more details so soon.

“If only something would have happened between them on Christmas, that would have been the end of it, but alas,” said Hanao. “Seems like nothing did, so here we are, finally resorting to headhunting you, Karin-chan. After all, we’re clearly working toward the same objective, so why don’t we team up?”

“I see… So that’s what this is all about…” I said.

“Our goal here is to help make Chizu-nee and Hibiki get together. Isn’t that basically what you’re doing too? Also, I know he’s been trying to act oblivious this whole time, but Taiga-niki is totally in on this too. He was keeping us updated on every little thing that was happening in the guys’ room while we were at the hotel. And also leaking all of the details to us about what an amateur you are at masterminding this sort of thing.”

“Taiga-san…” I said, shaking my head—as my older friend simply looked at me like a deer in the headlights and shrugged.

Now I didn’t know what the hell to do.

If I did come clean about our own operation here, and agree to collaborate with them, it might open up quite a few new possibilities that could benefit us too. Having someone as assertive and relentless as Hanao on our side could definitely prove useful, and an excellent planner like Mai-tan would probably come up with a slew of ideas I’d never even think of. Even Taiga-san might be a good asset, for how unsuspecting he was.

And yet, the fact of the matter was we were working toward fairly different objectives. They wanted Chizuru to get together with Hibiki, while we were trying to break his heart. These goals seemed directly at odds with one another.

That said, it could be argued that, although our final destinations were different, we were both traveling down the same road to get there. It was entirely possible we could make fairly good traveling companions, at least up until the point where Hibiki confessed—so long as I didn’t reveal our true objective, of course. Not to mention, we were operating on a fairly tight deadline, and Chizuru’s morale was at an all-time low. And I probably didn’t have what it took to turn things around all by myself.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “why are you guys so intent on hooking them up with each other now, after all this time? Judging from how you asked about their respective relationship statuses on the trip, I assume you couldn’t have known they were both single going into it, so it seems a little weird you’d plan this all out in advance.”

I was partly just asking this to buy time, but I also did feel like I deserved a bit more information from them before I decided whether or not I’d accept or reject their proposal. Though the fact that I was keeping my own cards so close to my chest in spite of this was a testament to what a shrewd, cynical adult I’d become.

“I’ll answer that,” said Mai-tan, raising her hand. “So, in Chizuru’s case, I knew from one of our girls’ night video chats about a year ago that she had a boyfriend at the time. However—and this isn’t just me speaking, Kao agreed with me on this too—knowing Chizuru, I figured the likelihood of them still being together at this point was pretty slim.”

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s ever had a relationship that lasted longer than six months, max,” said Hanao, chiming in. “Not even back in college.”

This was very true. I wasn’t sure if it was just that she couldn’t manage to find a guy who had the same cartoonish passion for lovey-dovey romance that she did, or what—but I couldn’t think of a single relationship of hers that had lasted more than three months, even. That was probably why she hadn’t said anything about this one until the engagement was already sealed. In other words, if this guy had lasted a full year with her and ended up popping the question, I assumed that most likely meant they were a pretty good fit for one another.

“So basically, we’d agreed that, if she happened to have gotten herself another boyfriend in the meantime, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it,” said Mai. “But for all intents and purposes, the plan was to try to get her and Hibiki together around when she’d just gotten out of a previous relationship. Though in actuality, we weren’t planning to actually start working toward anything until January of this year—the whole road trip thing forced us to move our plans up a bit.”

“As for Hibiki,” said Hanao, “the fact that he didn’t happen to be in a serious relationship right now was just pure luck, honestly. Taiga-niki’s been keeping us posted in that regard by checking in with him every now and then.”

Taiga-san nodded in agreement. Hanao had mentioned he’d stayed in contact with her and messaged her anytime he saw her art in public. Something told me those messages probably contained updates on Hibiki’s relationship status too.

“Why this January specifically, though?” I asked.

“Because Chizuru’s gonna be turning thirty, remember?”

Right—her birthday was January 22nd, and this would be the year she finally joined the rest of us, who were already in our thirties.

“I’m sure you already know this about her, Karin-chan, but that girl loves to act like she’s the main character in a romance manga sometimes. Which brings us back to what Mai was saying about how this all started back during our senior year of college—so I’ll hand it back over to her, while I go order myself a refill.”

“Wow, I see how it is!” said Mai-tan. “Well, get me another beer while you’re at it! Anyway, sorry about all this, Karin-kun—you see, Kao and I have been saying that the two of them should just hurry up and date each other ever since college. We really thought they’d be a great match for one another, given her proclivity for breaking up with people so quickly, and the fact that he’s probably the one guy who actually understands how she ticks. And after telling her this over and over, and her shrugging us off every time, there finally came a point in our senior year that she relented and made a promise to us.”

As a guy who enjoyed clichéd love stories as much as she did, I could already see where this was going, so I braced myself for impact.

“She said,” Mai went on, “that if she got to age thirty, and neither of them were married yet, she’d think about it. As in, she’d finally give him a chance.”

“God, that is so like her!” I exclaimed, face-palming.

And yet, while I couldn’t help but chuckle at the notion that anyone would ever drop a cheesy, tired line like that in real life, I also felt a sudden chill run through me at just how morbidly ironic this timing was, given the fact that Chizuru almost certainly didn’t remember saying this herself. That, as well as a sudden hunch that Hibiki might even have made a similar vow to himself—something I dearly hoped I was wrong about. I shuddered as I flagged down the waitress Hanao had called over and ordered a drink cut with hot water.

I would not have thought that Mai-tan and Hanao’s scheme was so elaborate that it stemmed all the way back to college.

Beside me, Taiga-san mumbled, “Wow, how romantic…” He was, perhaps, the single least convincing grown-up out of all of us.

It was crazy to think that, had certain things happened just a year sooner or later, Chizuru and Hibiki might be living in a very different reality than the one we were stuck in. The flow of time could be so very cruel sometimes.

“And what about you, Karin-chan?” asked Hanao. “Why are you finally trying to set them up with each other now, of all times?”

This was a totally fair question. But since we were working toward completely different aims—almost like enemies in this regard—I wasn’t sure how to respond. My goal was to break Hibiki’s heart beyond recognition; it simply wasn’t compatible with theirs in any respect. Having said that, would working together to coax Hibiki into confessing his feelings still be the most optimal strategy here, given the time constraints?

Mai-tan apparently picked up on my hesitation, as she cut in to clarify.

“Just so you know, we’re not trying to force them to get married right this instant or whatever!” she explained, waving her hands back and forth in front of her face. “We just think it would be a waste for the two of them to not at least try going out with each other at least once before they die, y’know? I know Chizuru probably considers him too much of a friend for it to not feel a little weird right now, but she also did say during the trip that she feels more comfortable with him than anyone else—so if she could just get over that hump, I feel like she might genuinely be more happy with him than any other guy.”

“Not to mention, they’d be over thirty years old,” said Hanao. “It’s not like they wouldn’t be mature enough to just go back to being friends if things didn’t work out. Right, Karin-chan?”

“R-right…” I said, nodding by pure reflex.

“My thoughts are more or less the same as Mai’s. I can appreciate that they’ve known each other too long for it not to feel a little weird at this point, but I love the idea of them as a couple so much that I just don’t care. And I feel like it would be silly to let a little embarrassment or pride or whatever get in the way of choosing what is probably the single best option available to be happy for the rest of your life. I don’t want them to regret not having given it a shot, you know? Anyway, I think that about sums it up—you can go ahead and give your take now, Taiga-niki.”

“I think more than anything, it’d be nice for Hibiki—who’s always been so thoughtful and considerate of others—to have a safe, reassuring place he could go home to where he feels totally comfortable.”

“I mean, same here,” I said, blurting out the first words that popped into my head as I struggled to keep my heart from overruling my brain. As an adult, I should know better than to go running my mouth like this when my mind still wasn’t made up. And yet, this did help me realize I’d been operating under a pretty big misunderstanding: namely, that my friends and I were not actually in opposition to each other on this subject whatsoever.

Yes, they wanted the two of them to get together, and yes I was trying to break Hibiki’s heart so he could move on—but the underlying motives behind these two goals were exactly the same. We simply cared a lot about the two of them, wanted them both to be happy and to live without any regrets. That was all there was to it. The feelings were so pure and honest that I felt embarrassed for ever thinking I was being deceitful.

I thought back on everything Chizuru said the day we first hatched the operation.

If she wanted to be mad at me for this, so be it. I knew it was a betrayal of sorts.

Obviously, there were certain things I wasn’t at liberty to reveal, so I’d have to abridge things a bit. And probably make a few redactions so as not to create any awkwardness between the two of them that they’d need to address things down the line.

“So, uh… The thing is…”

I proceeded to explain that Chizuru did in fact have a boyfriend to whom she’d recently gotten engaged. But I told them the reason she hadn’t told anyone yet was due to her fiancé asking her to keep things under wraps for now, due to his own complicated family situation—the only reason I knew was because I’d happened to bump into them together in public. I also told them that the whole road trip thing, the dinner date, et cetera were all my idea: As someone who was all but certain Hibiki had a massive crush on Chizuru, I wanted to try to give him an opportunity to express his feelings before it was too late, so that he wouldn’t have to keep them bottled up inside for the rest of his life.

The three of them looked pretty surprised to hear all of this at first, but that initial shock soon gave way to introspection. I figured they were probably tracing back through their memories for any evidence they’d overlooked that might have hinted at this.

“Dang… So she’s already engaged, huh…” said Mai. “And it’s only Hibiki-kun who’s got a one-sided crush… That definitely throws a wrench in things…”

“I know… I was so convinced they were secretly in love with each other, but just didn’t realize it,” said Hanao. “Okay, be totally honest with me, Karin-chan: Do you get the sense this engagement will actually go through? And are you positive about Hibiki having a one-sided crush on her?”

“In terms of the engagement, all I can say is that this definitely feels a lot more serious than any of her previous relationships,” I said. “As for Hibiki, obviously I can’t read his mind, but I’d say I’m about 99 percent certain. And I don’t think he’s in denial either.”

“And I take it he has no idea that Chizu-nee’s gotten engaged?”

“If he did, I guarantee he would have brought it up by now.”

“So let me get this straight—and to be clear, I’m not trying to criticize you here—but do I understand correctly that what you’re effectively trying to do here is force Hibiki to confess his feelings to Chizu-nee, knowing full well she won’t be able to accept them, so that he can come to terms with that rejection and move on?”

“Correct.”

It definitely did sound pretty bad when you summed it up succinctly like this. Hanao followed this up with a disapproving click of her tongue—though I assumed it wasn’t aimed at me, or meant to imply any guilt on my part about all of this.

“Well, if your intuition is correct,” she said, “then I’m even more confused as to what the hell Hibiki’s deal is. You mean to tell me he’s been allowing the girl he’s in love with to keep spending the night there, all this time, without even once trying to make a move on her? He’s just giving her a free place to crash when she’s plastered drunk, purely out of the goodness of his heart?”

“Guessing you mean the time he teased her about on the road trip,” I said.

“Well, there’s that too—but apparently, they were drinking at his place on Christmas after their dinner date too, and she started getting all touchy-feely with him—and he just put her to bed! He even laughed while telling me this, as though it was just a funny little anecdote!”

I’d heard this story from both of them as well. Hibiki had gone out of his way to omit and gloss over Chizuru’s most embarrassing blunders, while Chizuru described, in great detail, just how disgraceful and pathetic her behavior had been.

“Yeah, to be totally honest,” I said, “I’m starting to think that, if he couldn’t say anything to her in a situation like that, this might be a lost cause altogether.”

Not a single one of us had finished eating our raw meat sashimi, yet our next dish had already been delivered: stewed beef tongue. Naturally, none of us made any move to dig in to that either.

“Remind me again,” Mai requested, “when was the last time Hibiki-kun had a girlfriend?”

“As far as I know, his last serious relationship was around five, maybe even six years ago.” I looked to Taiga-san to confirm this, and he nodded twice.

“And you think he’s been secretly crushing on Chizuru ever since?”

“Quite possibly.”

“Man, I’m worried about that guy. Obviously, I want him to be able to tell her how he feels so he doesn’t have to live in regret or whatever, but just imagine having the girl you’ve been in love with for years turn around and get married the moment you tell her how you feel. Especially a girl with a dating history like Chizuru’s.”

“Yeah, which is why I think it’d be best to just rip the bandage off ASAP. Don’t get me wrong—I think it would be great if you guys’ plan to try to hook them up with each other could work too, but given that Chizuru already has a serious partner, I think it’s probably best that we just focus on letting Hibiki air out his feelings for the time being.”

“Mrrrrrrmgh…”

This grumbling came from Hanao. She’d been awfully quiet ever since her little rant, leaning back and gazing up at the ceiling with her hands braced behind her back—so this sudden groan of annoyance felt like a siren going off out of nowhere. Not that I couldn’t relate to how she was probably feeling; I had no idea what to do about Hibiki either, honestly. If he were a more passionate and assertive guy, we could probably just wait until Chizuru made the wedding announcement, and that would probably put him into crisis mode so hard it would make him confess. But knowing how thoughtful and considerate he was of others, like Taiga-san said, there was simply no way he’d ever be selfish enough to try to crash a good friend’s wedding, no matter how deeply he was in love with her.

“As I said earlier, the only reason I’m telling you three this now is because I’m kind of at a loss on how to move forward by myself, and I figure it might help if we could put our heads together on this,” I said. “But as you can imagine, it’s very important you all keep this information to yourselves for the time being, and—”

“Hey, can I say something?” Hanao interjected, apparently ready to rejoin the conversation. Her arms were folded, and her eyes were closed as she tilted her head to one side. Then she blinked a couple of times as she turned to me and said: “So, I want to be very clear that what I’m about to say isn’t a joke or a bit or anything, and I really don’t want anyone to laugh or think less of me for suggesting it—so can you all agree to just keep an open mind and hear me out?”

“Uh, that’s quite the foreboding disclaimer… But sure, I guess.”

“So, it sounds like we more or less know how we all feel about this situation, aside from Hibiki not ever explicitly admitting to having feelings for her…”

I leaned forward and listened with rapt attention. Knowing how aggressively straightforward Hanao could be, it was entirely possible she was about to put forward an option I’d never even considered.

“Well, if everyone but Chizu-nee wants the two of them together,” she said, “then wouldn’t the quickest and easiest solution be to just change her mind about that?”

“I mean, maybe if she wasn’t literally already engaged,” I said.

“So what? I mean, heck, even if they already filed the paperwork, you can rescind that for a pretty small fee.”

The mere notion of this felt extremely disrespectful to Chizuru’s autonomy—and I probably would have said as much, had she not prefaced it with that long-winded disclaimer. Mai-tan’s eyes went wide as saucers, and Taiga-san rubbed his chin between his fingers as he waited for Hanao to elaborate.

“I mean, if Hibiki’s maintained his silence for this long already, I think we can safely say he’s not gonna change his convictions now,” she said. “But an engagement’s basically just a flimsy little contract you can easily tear up. So if you wanna talk about which one of them is more likely to fold, I think the answer’s obvious. And you all want to see the two of them live happily ever after together, right? And we know Hibiki does too, obviously.”

I’d been good friends with Hanao for over ten years now, just like Chizuru and Hibiki, so I knew she wasn’t merely trying to beat us in an argument here. Whenever she got this emphatic, it was because she was literally trying to crack the very foundations of our common sense and make us reconsider everything we thought we knew.

“I know that’s how I feel, anyway,” she went on. “Why the hell should I suddenly give a damn about some surprise fiancé I’ve never even met?”

I wanted to rebuke this outright—but I was struggling to scrounge together a comeback that had anywhere near the same level of conviction as the argument she was making, or at least one that didn’t come across as trite.

“He’s the man that she chose,” I said. “And we need to respect that.”

This was the very best I could manage.

“You sure she’s not just settling?” asked Hanao. “How do you know she’s not just going along with it because she’s worried about getting older, so she said yes to the first halfway decent guy who proposed? Or maybe just one who makes a ton of money. Or maybe he’s just really hot. And honestly? Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have any problem with her choosing to marry a guy for any one of those reasons—except that I know Hibiki’s feelings for her are more genuine than that. And I want the two of them to be happy, together. Period. End of story. So tell me, Karin-chan…”

I could see her next question coming from a mile away—yet this didn’t make me dread it any less. Kind of like those mornings when you wake up just a minute or two before your alarm went off.

“Don’t you feel the same?” she asked.

“Mai-tan, could you please talk some sense into her?” I deflected.

Unlike in our business interactions, I knew that Hanao and I were on equal footing right now—and yet, being put in the position where I was forced to choose between siding with her and Chizuru, I couldn’t help but turn to our group’s most reliable voice of reason. But to my surprise, her usual smug expression was nowhere to be found—and in its place was what looked like the face of a woman crushed by guilt.

“Well…” she began. “I definitely don’t think an engagement is something you can just write off as utterly inconsequential like Kao apparently does.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Finally, some common sense.”

“But I’m sorry, Karin-kun…” she said, staring me straight in the eye without lowering her head even a bit. “As much as I’d like to give Chizuru’s fiancé the benefit of the doubt here, in my heart of hearts, I just can’t imagine anyone who could ever possibly care more about her and treat her better than Hibiki-kun would.”

It was a strange thing, wasn’t it—how saying you couldn’t possibly imagine something only made your brain try that much harder to imagine it.

“I mean, the guy’s clearly been head over heels for her for years,” said Mai-tan. “So, yeah… I’m really sorry, but I just don’t think I can back you up on this.”

“I mean, no need to apologize…” I said.

It wasn’t like any of this was her fault, after all. If anything, I wasn’t even concerned with that right now. My mind was too preoccupied imagining things I’d tried hard to keep myself from envisioning for a very long time now. It was like I’d kept my deepest fantasies locked up tight inside a treasure chest, unbeknownst even to me, until two mischievous little girls came along and dug it up, throwing it open for all to see.

I saw a vision of my two best friends living together in a happy home, maybe even with a couple of kids after a while—who I’d come to visit bearing little toys and treats every now and again. I could see myself ruffling their hair, marveling at just how big they’d gotten since I saw them last.

“And what about you, Taiga-san?” I asked.

“I’m not one to just blindly go along with things,” he said. He’d always been the type to couch his opinion in roundabout language, and today was no different. “I’d rather be on the side of humanity that doesn’t make their decisions based purely on how socially acceptable they are, like me and everyone else here today.”

Great. I no longer had anywhere to run—or maybe that was unfair to say. At the end of the day, it was still my choice, and my choice alone whether I chose fight or flight. And after searching my own feelings, and considering the input of everyone else around me, I realized how I truly felt about it, deep down. I wasn’t going to blame this decision on peer pressure, or any outside influence: I was making this decision of my own free will.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Then let’s try to press her on that, just to make sure she’s not making the wrong decision. But we’re only doing this once, you hear me?”

Here we were, four grown adults all making a pact about how we were going to interfere in our friend’s love life. How ridiculous was that? Especially given how certain I’d been, back in the day, that I was going to grow up to be a mature, upstanding adult.

By the time I finally got around to my stewed beef tongue, it was already cold, and probably no longer in the state the restaurant staff intended for it to be eaten—but it was still pretty tasty regardless.

From there, we started spitballing ideas together. By the time our main dish of marbled beef was done cooking on the teppan stove in the center of the table, we’d already hatched an entire plan—spearheaded by our very own Mai-tan—to try to shake Chizuru’s emotions and make her reassess her upcoming marriage.

“Well, Kao…let’s just hope your little girls don’t grow up to be horrible people like us,” said Mai-tan. It seemed there was still some amount of guilt weighing on her mind that she couldn’t clear away—like the last few pieces of beef on her plate.

“What, are you kidding?” said Hanao. “Nah, you’ve gotta learn to be at least as bad as I am if you wanna survive in this rough-and-tumble world.”

As the rest of us either laughed or nodded at this brutal approach to parenting, Hanao’s expression suddenly turned grave. She lowered her voice and added, “I don’t really care if they’re good or bad, honestly. All that matters in my book is that they have strong convictions and are willing to fight for whatever it is they desire.”

Say what you will about Hanao, but no one could deny that she truly and genuinely cared about her friends.

On the morning of the operation proper, as we outfitted ourselves with a Bluetooth directional mic and wireless earbuds so we could give each other updates in real time, I suddenly found myself having the very weird thought that we were maybe enjoying ourselves just a little too much here, like a group of kids running around, playing with walkie-talkies.

“Don’t look at me,” said Hanao. “This was Taiga-niki’s idea.”

“Oh, for crying out loud…” I muttered.

“What?” said Taiga-san. “It works, doesn’t it?”

He really was the single least convincing grown-up out of all of us.