Chapter 9

DESPITE A FEW MINOR MISHAPS—and an ice-cold glare of disdain from Mai-tan, who’d previously defended me as “too much of an upstanding guy and a devoted husband to cheat”—the operation was progressing quite smoothly, all things considered.

During our New Year’s get-together, while turning our pricey cuts of marbled beef on the grill, we’d discussed what the best way to shake Chizuru’s convictions might be.

“See, I feel like Chizu-nee’s so set in her ways that she refuses to even acknowledge the possibility of her and Hibiki being more than friends,” said Kao. “So I don’t think being aggressive or putting her on the spot about it is going to work; she’ll just shut us out. We’re gonna have to take things slowly and gradually, I imagine.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s like one of those bosses that won’t take any damage until you painstakingly get rid of all her annoying summons.”

“Sorry, I only play Pokémon, so I don’t get the reference.”

“She’s like a Pokémon that can’t be one-hit KO’d.”

“Gotcha. Anyway, so yeah, I think we’re gonna have to set the stage really carefully in advance for this to work. We need to lay the foundation for her to reexamine all of her thoughts and feelings about her relationship with Hibiki, brick by brick. We’ll lure her slowly into our trap, then once she’s snared, we go in for the kill.”

Perhaps this was only the case in my own friend group, but I found it mildly unsettling how women would sometimes use hunting terminology in matters of romance.

I had to wonder if this whole thing was even possible. Trying to manipulate the heart of an independent, free-thinking adult like this just seemed a bit too far-fetched to me. But when I voiced this concern to the group, shortly after getting in touch with Hibiki to let him know it was his job to make the restaurant reservations, I was assured it would be just fine: “She’s even more simple-minded than you are, Karin-chan.” To be quite honest, I really wasn’t sure how to take that.

Sitting in the café meeting room we’d been using as our base of operations ever since this morning, I drank down the last few drops of my black coffee. Across the table from me was the tambourine Hanao had bought for Chizuru as a present, which Mai-tan had just brought back here to drop off. Since their mics had been off during lunch, I didn’t know what exactly Hanao had told her, but considering she’d been all smiles all day to everyone but me, whom she wouldn’t even make eye contact with, I could certainly hazard a guess—and it would probably take a fair bit of time to regain her respect.

As I listened to Chizuru’s and Taiga-san’s conversation via my wireless earbuds, I thought about what to do next. Not in terms of salvaging my reputation with Mai-tan, but regarding Chizuru and Hibiki. Whether the plan today went well or not, I’d have to probably swoop in and give some after-care to everybody either way. Especially to Chizuru, if things didn’t go as planned: My collaboration with Mai-tan and the others was effectively betraying her, in a way. I’d owe her an explanation.

That wasn’t to say I thought I was doing the right thing here. In all honestly, my usual preference probably would have been to just sit back and not get involved. I mean, we lived in a society where one in three marriages ended in divorce; if things turned out poorly, it was entirely possibly that Chizuru could be single again in two or three years, and still in her early thirties, with more than enough time to start a new life with Hibiki. Or, hell—with their rapport, the two of them could probably make it work even if they didn’t get together until their forties or fifties. The only reason I’d decided to take action, rather than bank on the likelihood of them still ending up together somewhere down the line, was because I didn’t want to have to see Hibiki wait around for her that long, or for Chizuru to have to go through that kind of heartbreak. This operation today was a product of our entire group’s genuine desire to see the two of them find happiness, together or not.

And yes, if someone were to suggest that we were doing this in large part for own satisfaction, I wouldn’t deny it. I didn’t think any of the four of us taking part in this operation had any delusions that it wasn’t.

The problem now was that I was starting to lose sight of how I could possibly find any sort of satisfaction in any of this. After all, it wasn’t as if I had some sick desire to see Hibiki confess only to get his heart broken, or for Chizuru’s marriage to fail. And yet, now that I’d signed myself up for this, there was also a part of me who’d already written those things off as “unfortunate necessities” for the sake of seeing this through to the end.

I listened through my earbuds as Taiga-san vaguely alluded to what this operation was actually about. It had been Hanao’s idea to “leak” this information to Chizuru well in advance so she’d have some time to mentally “cushion” herself from the inevitable blow of what we were trying to do here. Eventually, I could hear them bring this conversation to a close as they headed to the register to settle up.

I pressed the call button on the table to summon a waitress, then ordered an iced café au lait.