Chapter 13

AFTER HEARING CHIZURU tell Mai about her engagement, I took out my earbuds as a show of courtesy. Glancing down at my phone, I saw I had a new LINE message from Hibiki asking where I was. I ignored it for a moment and instead opened the group chat between the four of us who’d put together the operation today.

I typed out: One day, we all really need to apologize to Chizuru for this.

Almost immediately, I got read receipts from two of the other three—though in the end, nobody ever replied.

Both operations were now officially over. All that was left for us to do now was to come to terms with our own failure. I wasn’t sure how Mai-tan and the others were going to take things, but it seemed like Operation Heartbreak’s mastermind had chosen to blow everything up herself rather than risk letting our military secrets fall into enemy hands. Meanwhile, I’d been outed as a double agent, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to be tried by a kangaroo court and executed for high treason.

While I wasn’t actually prepared to die for this betrayal, I did think she totally had a right to slap me in the face once or twice, so I invited her over to my house for one final debriefing-slash-postmortem. Thinking Chizuru might blow a gasket on me, I deliberately chose a day when my wife wouldn’t be home—but when she arrived, she was actually surprisingly calm and composed. As she apologized uncharacteristically for the intrusion and stepped up into the foyer, I belatedly realized that this was the first time I’d ever had her over to the new place we’d moved into after getting married.

“I’d like to formally apologize for changing the plan without consulting you first,” she said—lowering her head to me right after I finished setting the table with two glasses and some light snacks. And here I’d been expecting a beatdown, not an apology.

“You’re all good,” I said. “I mean, it was your operation to begin with.”

Honestly, I kind of wished she’d blown up at me, as that would probably make it easier for me to find closure on this whole thing. But that was selfish of me.

“So how are things?” I asked.

“With Hibiki, you mean? Seems to be doing just fine. At least on the surface, he’s been acting the same as always.”

“Not just talking about him—what about you?”

As Chizuru took a sip of her barley shochu cut with water, her eyes darted up toward the ceiling for a moment.

“Mmm… Less than ideal,” she answered. “But I don’t think there was really a right answer here, so I’m just trying to come to terms with it in the ways that I can.”

This wasn’t like her. It sounded almost like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone. And even a cursory reading between the lines made it clear she still had plenty of regrets about the way things went down.

“Also, I feel like I kinda owe it to everybody to put the past behind us and just focus on thinking positively as we move toward the wedding,” she explained. “I mean, things are only gonna start getting busier from here on out, so I’d better get my act together.”

“Yeah, it definitely creeps up on you,” I agreed. “One night, you’ll go to bed feeling like you’ve still got plenty of time left to prepare, and the next thing you know, you’ll wake up and it’s your wedding day. And we took things pretty slow, since we got married way back in our mid-twenties, so I assume you’ll wanna zoom through the process a lot faster.”

“I’d like to say we’re trying not to do that, but you’re probably right.”

From where I was sitting, her smile looked to be the same as usual.

Obviously, I didn’t know how she felt deep down. But whether she was faking it or not, there’d soon come a day when she’d have to make that her default expression—and smile like she truly meant it all the time, even on days when she didn’t. This was just a simple fact of life, however, not exclusive to adults. It was something everyone had to do, at one point or another, in order go on living in this world.

As we slowly nursed our drinks, we talked about potential wedding venues and how weirdly expensive the ceremony alone could be.

In the middle of the conversation, while making herself another drink, Chizuru suddenly said, “Oh yeah, that reminds me!” in such a perfectly measured tone of voice that I could tell that this wasn’t a spontaneous realization. She must have practiced bringing this up at least a dozen times in her head.

“So I was thinking it might be nice for everyone to meet my fiancé at some point before the wedding,” she said. “Maybe go out to dinner or something.”

“Who’s everyone?” I asked.

“You and the others.”

The mature adult thing to do here would have been to smile and say I’d be happy to—but instead, I tensed up and struggled to maintain eye contact with her. But I figured I could just blame that part on the alcohol.

“I think maybe I’m gonna have to bow out on behalf of the guys, at least,” I said. “If the other girls want to meet him, though, maybe just make it a girl friends thing.”

“But—”

“Put yourself in my shoes, Chizuru. Would you want to be in that position, after what we just did?” I gave her a very unamused look.

She gave a sheepish grin and grumbled out a little. “Okay, fair enough—thanks.” Not sure what she was thanking me for, though.

I’d invited her over so we could have a postmortem, and yet we didn’t end up talking about that day very much at all. I learned that she’d told Hibiki about her engagement, and about his happy reaction via LINE message while waiting at the café. And I heard more about who’d bought her what, and all that, during the little after-party we threw immediately afterward. Otherwise, I was presenting as though I didn’t know every minute detail of how things went down. I could confess to her later that I’d been listening in on all of her dates (aside from the one with Hibiki) once things had calmed down.

Chizuru expressed to me a desire to have Hanao draw a welcome board illustration for her wedding, assuming she had the time. And I was quick to let her know exactly how much a company like mine typically pays a professional illustrator for a piece like that. We engaged in all manner of boring adult conversations throughout the course of the evening. There was only a single time when Chizuru brought up Hibiki of her own volition. Just once, while resting her head on her palms, her cheeks flushed slightly red.

“You know, we talked about parallel worlds at one point,” she said. “Me and Hibiki.”

“You mean, like, the multiverse and stuff?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

She let out a sigh, then munched on some of the peanuts I’d bought for tonight.

“I know things didn’t play out so well in this timeline,” she said, “but I wonder if there’s a world out there where everything worked out perfectly, you know?”

“…Nah, pretty sure he’d be a snarky little punk in any universe,” I dismissed.

“Yeah, probably so,” Chizuru agreed, chuckling. I wasn’t sure if she’d taken this as a joke, or as me trying to make her feel better, but we drifted to another topic from there.

In truth, it was closer to a wish than either of those things: a wish that there was no other possible hand but the one we’d been dealt. Being jealous of some alternate versions of ourselves, who magically happened to get a perfect storybook ending without even trying? It just wasn’t productive. All we had was this now. We had to live with our choices, in this reality, with all the struggles and suffering that came along with them.

Since she didn’t seem to be too distraught or on the verge of tears, I invited her to come with me to a local bar in the neighborhood. We laughed to ourselves about how we hadn’t gone out for drinks together this late at night since college (though the drinks we ordered were a whole lot pricier than what we would’ve been able to afford back then). We made a toast to the operation’s failure and to ourselves, who had no other choice but to go on living in this world and this timeline.

And so time passed. With no tasks left to complete, all the rest of us could really do was look ahead to Chizuru’s wedding date, whenever that would be, and steel ourselves to celebrate with her as best we could, despite some complicated emotions.

I figured everything would be swift and straightforward from here on out.

And indeed, the next few months flew by in the blink of an eye—not just because we were all in our thirties, but because we all had jobs and families of our own, with little room for friends or hobbies in between our other life obligations. We barely had time to even think about Chizuru’s wedding anymore before it started creeping up on us.

Around the time that the last few cherry blossom petals fell from their trees, Chizuru finally reached out to ask if it was okay to send me a wedding invite. The topic came up during one of our usual gaming sessions (Hibiki was there too), and she revealed that the date had already been set way back in February.

I thanked and congratulated her again over the phone. There were still a lot of questions I had for her, deep down, but none of them were really okay for me to ask at this point, so I kept my mouth shut. The operation was already over, after all. Any emotions I had about this other than wishing her a life of happiness were unnecessary.

The dinner with her fiancé would be taking place as planned, and she did indeed use the out I’d given her to have a female-friends-only get-together. Mai-tan and Hanao alone would be going to a fancy Japanese restaurant downtown to meet the two of them this upcoming weekend.

On the night of, I couldn’t help but feel a little antsy about things, despite the fact that I hadn’t even gone. And there was another part of me that felt bad for making the two other girls go all by themselves. If my wife had been home, I could have at least gone drinking with her or done something to get my mind off of things. But alas, she was out with friends and wouldn’t be home until late into the night.

After eating dinner out at a nearby ramen chain restaurant, I headed home and tried to spend the evening reading through a proof copy I’d been given of a new book by an up-and-coming novelist who was about to make their print debut with my company—alas, I just wasn’t in a reading sort of mood.

Shortly after 10 p.m., I pulled a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open. Surely, Chizuru and the others had finished up at the restaurant—the real question was if they’d go out for more drinks at a second venue. There was a good chance that Hanao would head home before the rest of them, given her kids.

As I sat in the living room idly watching random TV shows and wondering how things might be going, one of my two smartphones that were lying on the coffee table lit up all of a sudden. It was a call on my personal phone.

I turned off the TV and answered it, then said the first words that came to mind.

“Wow, can’t remember the last time I got a call from you,” I said.

“Ha ha, hey, Karin-chan… Sorry for calling you up outta the blue.”

Judging from the mild slur in her speech, she sounded rather intoxicated, at least by Hanao’s standards—which was pretty rare. I could hear the sound of cars driving past in the background. It seemed like she was standing outside somewhere.

“Is there a problem?” I asked. “Did something come up?”

“Nah, not exactly,” said Hanao. “I just wanted someone to vent to. Also, I just realized—we haven’t talked since January, have we? Long time no chat.”

“No kidding. What do you mean by ‘vent,’ though? Also, are you outside right now?”

“Yeah, I try not to do too much shit-talking at home where the kids can hear me. Don’t wanna set a bad example.”

Probably a good idea, I thought to myself. Yet as much as I respected this parenting policy, the implication she had some pretty major grievances to air made me feel a bit nervous.

“Everyone else is already in ‘Oh, I’m so happy for you!’ mode,” she said. “So you’re kind of the only one left I can vent to, Karin-chan—sorry.”

“You make it sound like I’m not happy for her,” I said.

“I mean, I dunno how you’re presenting yourself on the surface, but I’m pretty sure the Karin-chan I know and love wouldn’t be all that pleased about this current state of affairs. Not deep down, anyway.”

The me that she “knew and loved,” eh…

Was I really that transparent? I mean, I knew my reputation as an “upstanding guy and a devoted husband” had long since been rescinded at this point, but I didn’t realize she could read me like a book.

“But anyway,” she went on, “I think this is the second-most pissed off I’ve ever been at that girl, in all the years that I’ve known her.”

“I thought you two made up, though,” I said.

“Well, she set me off again. I literally can’t believe her. I’m disgusted.”

“Just what in the hell happened?”

Had Chizuru rebuked Hanao for her “underhanded way of getting ahead in life” or whatever, like she had back in college? That was pretty much the only thing I could think of—though when Hanao went on to preface it by saying, “And you can tell any of the others I said this too—including her—I don’t even care,” I realized this was no joke or game to her.

“You know her dating history, Karin-chan,” she said. “So you know what sorts of guys she typically goes for, right? I’m sure you’ve met at least a few.”

“Yeah, back in college,” I said. “One of ’em I was even pretty good friends with.”

“Well, lemme tell ya, it wasn’t obvious to me from the picture she sent of him, but as far as I’m aware, she’s never gone for a guy like this before… Oops, hold on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sorry, I was just crossing the street on a Don’t Walk signal… Anyway, I’m saying he’s the only guy she’s ever dated who looks like you-know-who.”

Now it was my turn to pause in the middle of the conversation. But unlike her, I didn’t have an excuse, because I was sitting on the couch in the comfort of my own home.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know what she meant. I knew exactly who she meant by “you-know-who.” Unlike her, I’d noticed it from the moment I laid eyes on his picture.

Obviously, it wasn’t an exact 1:1. And I didn’t know what the guy was like. But seeing that photo of them standing side by side like that was enough to make me wonder just how much that general appearance entered into her decision. And I could see why that might rub Hanao the wrong way. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it either.

“God, I was so fucking pissed the whole night, I just let Mai do all the talking while I fake-smiled and downed one drink after another,” she continued. “Started complaining like a little kid about my cushy job at one point too. They probably thought I was one of those pretentious ‘artiste’ types who doesn’t know how good they’ve got it.”

“I mean, aren’t you?” I said.

“Excuse me?! You wanna say that again, Mr. Cheat-On-My-Wife?!”

This was a fair-play comeback. I had no rebuttal for this.

“Sorry, that was too far,” she said. “It’s not like that, Karin-chan.”

“Not like what?” I said.

“So, hey—I’m almost to the station. Your wife home today?”

“Not at the moment. She’s out right now.”

“Then maybe I should just drunkenly swing by your place real quick. Whaddya say?”

“Go home and go to bed.”

I could hear the sounds of laughter and trains zooming by on the other end of the line. I knew she was only joking, so I chuckled along with her—but then all of a sudden, Hanao stopped laughing and let out a mousy little, “Sorry about this.”

“But don’t worry,” she said. “This’ll be the last time I let it get to me like this. I promise I’ll be normal at the wedding. Thanks for hearing me out, Karin-chan.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Least I can do.”

If this venting had come from a place of actual resentment for Chizuru, I probably wouldn’t have been willing to lend her an ear. But I knew the truth: Hanao was genuinely happy for Chizuru. It’s just that we were both Hibiki’s friends too, and those feelings were hard to reconcile. I knew her mousy little apology wasn’t directed at me, really—but I’d accept it on the true recipient’s behalf.

“Oh yeah—the other three went on to keep drinking elsewhere, by the way,” she said. “But I figured they didn’t need a messed-up, spiteful mom like me dragging them down, so I went home early.”

“You’re not messed-up,” I said.

“You’re too kind. Anyway, thanks again. Have a good rest of your night.”

I wished her the same and told her to be careful on her way home before hanging up. Now alone again in the silence of my living room, I turned the TV back on to keep my ears occupied. I wasn’t really in the mood for talk shows or the news, so I opened the Netflix app and just put on the first Hollywood film that caught my eye.

After finishing my beer, I took the empty can and walked back over to the kitchen. Grabbing a rectangular bottle of whiskey my wife had bought a few days prior, I made myself a highball on the rocks and took a sip. It had quite the kick to it—though maybe that was in part due to the words Hanao had left me to reflect on.

It probably wasn’t just her either. Surely, everyone who’d been a part of this felt like they’d messed up here somehow—including me and Chizuru. But that was simply a result of us having reached out our hands for a desired result we didn’t end up getting. It was only natural that a failure to achieve that objective would bring with it the feeling that we must have messed up somehow, or made the wrong choice somewhere along the way. Which was why we all just had to force ourselves to try to swallow this pill now.

But what about you, Hibiki?

By all accounts, he seemed genuinely happy for her. And if Chizuru was getting to marry a man she genuinely loved, the best thing we could do as her friends was to wish her well—and the same was true for Hibiki. And as long as he felt like this was the best possible outcome for everybody, there was nothing more to say.

But at least for me, that was still a pretty big if.

Way back in the day, we’d never been ones to make plans in advance.

We were just guy friends, after all—it wasn’t like he was my girlfriend. And so we would just call each other up, and if neither of us were busy, we’d go hang out somewhere. Or maybe we’d bump into each other on campus and decide on a whim to drop everything and go get drinks together somewhere.

Obviously, now that we were both adults, each with our own set of responsibilities, this approach didn’t fly anymore. Sometimes, even when we did make plans to hang out, something would still come up, and we’d have no choice but to reschedule.

So I knew what I was about to do was extremely selfish of me—and most definitely not what a mature adult would do in this situation. This sudden flash of common sense was enough to give me pause, and make my fingers hesitate for just a moment.

But the next thing I knew—or before I even knew it, rather—I’d changed out of my sweats, grabbed my keys, phone, and wallet, slipped on my shoes, and transferred at the right station to hop off the train in Hibiki’s neck of the woods. I’d even gone ahead and swung by a nearby convenience store to buy some booze and snacks I could use as a pretext, which were now dangling from my hand in a cheap plastic bag.

I’d run out of the house of my own free will. And now here I was, standing outside Hibiki’s apartment building, getting ready to call him out. I knew that if I’d gotten in touch with him beforehand, I might have chickened out—and this way, if he wasn’t home, I could just chalk it up to bad luck. That would be my excuse to stand down and force myself to accept that it simply wasn’t meant to be. I had a plan all laid out—and yet, here I was, getting cold feet at the last second anyway.

But I knew I couldn’t just keep standing here in the entryway, obstructing the building’s residents from getting in or out—so I took a soft, deep breath, then forced myself to press the call button for Hibiki’s room number.

I could hear the doorbell chime, but there came no response. When I realized that, I actually felt a slight sense of relief, a sharp pang of guilt, and enough shame to make me hang my head—which was probably why I didn’t notice him at first.

“Karin?” came a voice.

“Whoa!” I shouted.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Standing there in my miserable shadow was the very friend I’d come here to see. He’d come right as the doorbell’s final echo faded away, wearing a bulky jacket and carrying a 7-Eleven bag in one hand, just like me.

“Man, how the hell do you have such good timing?” I asked.

“I could feel your beard hairs vibrating from a mile away,” Hibiki replied.

“How dare you. Don’t ever feel that again.”

He’d been out drinking with a senior colleague all night, apparently, and was only getting back just now. He didn’t even ask me if I wanted to come inside—we just kind of naturally moved through the automatic doors together like it was totally expected. He didn’t look the slightest bit annoyed by me showing up unannounced, and I didn’t look remotely apologetic for being there either.

He was probably the one friend with whom I could say that, as soon as we met up, it was like we were right back in college all over again. Granted, I felt that way with Chizuru too, on some level—but certainly not to this degree.

We got on the elevator and took it to a much higher floor than the one he used to live on back then. It had been a long time since I last visited his apartment. We kicked off our shoes without much ceremony, then set our bags on the living room coffee table. I took a seat on the large rectangular ottoman.

“You’re more than welcome to sit on the couch, you know,” said the host as he brought out two glasses with ice, a half-empty bottle of gin, and some soda water.

“Nah,” I said. “I can’t take the good seat after barging in on you like this.”

He ultimately helped himself to the sofa with a somewhat apologetic look on his face.

“Well, one of our friends certainly doesn’t have a problem doing so.”

As he flashed his trademark sardonic smirk, I pulled out a bag of buttered peanuts and two craft highballs I’d found at the convenience store. I set the snacks and one of the drinks in front of him. He graciously accepted this offering and got up to go put the soda water back in the fridge for now. He was just courteous like that.

Normally, I would have just drunk straight out of the can, but since he’d gone to the trouble of putting ice in a glass for me, I went ahead and poured the highball into that.

“All right—cheers,” I said.

“Cheers,” said Hibiki.

We clinked our glasses together lightly, then each took a swig. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met up with an old friend from college after entering the workforce and been sober the whole day.

“So you said you were out drinking with a colleague?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Hibiki. “Other than that, pretty typical day. Went to the gym in the morning, got tempura at a local joint, then went to see a movie afterward before getting invited out for drinks.”

“Sounds like a pretty ideal day off to me.”

“There were some freshly picked wild vegetables in the tempura too, so that was a highlight. Feels like spring’s finally here to stay. Anyway, how was your day?”

“Well, definitely not as poetically elegant as that, that’s for sure. By the time I woke up, my wife had already left the house, so I just got up and did a little work, then chilled out for the rest of the day. No real highlights on my end. Well, except…”

Unfortunately, this was where the feeling of being back in our college days again ended for me—because I knew the real college-aged version of me wouldn’t have felt the need to concoct a pointless lie like the one I was about to feed him.

“I got a call from Hanao a little while ago, actually,” I said. “Just about work stuff, mainly, but apparently tonight was the night the girls went out for dinner with Chizuru’s fiancé. Made me wanna come over here and have a little guys’ night of our own.”

“Ah, so that’s why you came crawling to my doorstep,” said Hibiki. “Is this work stuff under NDA, or are you allowed to tell me about it?”

“Nah, it’s fine. She just drunkenly called me up after the dinner was over and asked my opinion on some artbook proposal my company made to her, that’s all.”

“Sounds like maybe she got a little lonely after having to leave the party early.”

“Think she was just bored on her way home, honestly.”

Hibiki reached into the bag of buttered peanuts, which I’d opened wide for sharing, and grabbed a couple to munch on. There were times like this between us where the conversation just died for a while. Neither of us expected our hangouts to be a constant stream of one joke or surprise after another.

“Come to think of it,” said Hibiki, “the movie I went to go see was based on a book your company publishes, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “How was it?”

“Well, I haven’t read the original book, so I can’t really say how good of an adaptation it was, but I’d say I was pretty split on it. There were definitely some parts that I liked, and others I felt like they could’ve done way better.”

I’d seen the film he was talking about in a pre-release press showing. Frankly, it was hilarious to me how much kinder and more metered Hibiki had been to the film in this brief review than those of us on the original book’s production team. We hated that thing.

“Only realized your company was involved after seeing its name in the end credits,” said Hibiki. “I was like, yeah, this seems like something that’d be up his alley.”

“I actually volunteered myself to spearhead the book’s marketing team.”

“See, I knew it.”

Hibiki knew my taste in media all too well. He could pinpoint exactly what types of books I’d like in the same way I could guess which female celebrity or idol would be his type out of a given lineup.

“What can I say? I just love clichéd, overly sappy melodramas,” I said.

For example, I was a sucker for any stories about dysfunctional families slowly coming to understand each other, or ­boy-meets-girl type romances about a summer to remember, or even underdog sports stories about a ragtag team of misfits setting aside their differences as they competed to be number one in all of Japan. And I was sure that I’d recommended Hibiki books or films in all of those genres before. No wonder he knew my tastes so well.

I just loved stories like that. Simple stories that, despite having their fair share of drama, always ended in a way that put a smile on your face and made you want to gush about them with your friends and family as soon as you finished.

“Sorry, Hibiki,” I said. “I lied.”

“About what?” asked Hibiki, his brow furrowing at this sudden admission. “What, you mean you don’t actually like clichéd, sappy stuff after all?”

“No, I do. From the bottom of my heart, I do.”

I’d never once lied to Hibiki about what kinds of media I liked. Nor would I.

“I lied about the phone call from Hanao,” I said. “Not that it happened. And not about the artbook either—that should pan out, assuming all goes well.”

“Cool, glad to hear it,” said Hibiki. “But then, what did you lie about?”

“Well…”

I’d lied to him many times over the past several months: about the purpose of the road trip, about why I was offering him my Christmas dinner reservations, and everything to do with getting him on board for Mai-tan’s birthday operation.

But none of those were the lie I was talking about right now.

“About why I came here,” I said. “It didn’t have anything to do with Hanao—it was just me being selfish and impulsive. I wanted a chance to talk to you, heart-to-heart, man-to-man, at least once. But then when you showed up while I was standing there in the entryway, unsure if I even should’ve rung the doorbell, I got flustered and scrambled to come up with some sort of lie about why I was here. But in reality, it’s just that I wanted to talk to you, and I didn’t have the time to come up with any better excuse. So here goes—hope you’re ready for an embarrassingly sappy little speech from the clichéd-melodrama-lover himself.”

It was probably the most disjointed declaration of intent I could have possibly made—and yet despite his obvious perplexity, Hibiki still gave me the floor to speak.

“What’s this all about?” he asked.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I asked in return.

Any casual outside observer could have probably looked at the situation and said I should’ve just been upfront with him like this from the start.

“Are you okay with things ending like this, between you and Chizuru?” I clarified.

But as for me, I’d only come to this conclusion after countless twists and turns, and really beating myself up over what the right thing was to do here. But in my opinion, that long, arduous, seemingly pointless emotional journey was a necessary detour to arrive at where I was now, when I finally had the resolve to properly convey what I wanted to say and how I felt. So in that sense, Operation Heartbreak hadn’t been for nothing—even though it still wasn’t something any proper adult should’ve taken part in.

Hibiki was quiet for a few seconds, then took a drink of his highball before letting out a short little chuckle of resignation. The corners of his lips curled up ever so slightly, and he gave two tiny nods before looking me straight in the eye.

I wondered what had gone through his mind just then. Maybe he’d flashed back to the end of last year, to a scene at that fancy restaurant I’d invited the two of them to under dubious circumstances.

He folded his hands together and lowered his gaze, staring down into the placid liquid in his glass. Then, for a short while, he did nothing other than blink and breathe. The atmosphere was so tense and quiet, for a moment I caught myself thinking it felt like maybe he was about to confess his feelings to me—as ridiculous as that sounded.

I was prepared to wait as long as it took. Even if I had to sit here all night for him to give me an answer. And yet, the moment I lifted my glass to take a drink of my highball, he suddenly opened his mouth—almost as if he’d been waiting for me to give him an opening to catch me off guard. The words that came out, however, were nothing like any of the possible answers I’d been envisioning in my head.

“You’ve been working in sales for a long time, haven’t you, Karin?” he asked.

Now it was my turn to be perplexed.

“Huh? I mean, yeah,” I said. “Though I’ve worn some other hats too, like training seminars for our bookstore clients and whatnot.”

“Do you have an actual objective you’re working toward?” asked Hibiki. “That makes you want to stay in the publishing business? A dream you want to achieve?”

I didn’t know what he was getting at, but he didn’t seem to just be messing with me. I figured I’d answer the question honestly.

“Well, for me, it’s always been about wanting to help give the books I genuinely love that extra push they need to be bestsellers,” I said. “Always thinking about that.”

“And that’s your end goal?” asked Hibiki.

“Nah, I wouldn’t call it a goal, per se. I mean, we’re gonna keep pumping out books regardless, as long as our company’s still in the black. But other than that, I dunno… I guess I’d like to make more money, so maybe working my way up to becoming an executive someday.”

“I see.”

Hibiki nodded for some reason, then took a sip of his drink.

“Do you remember back on the road trip,” he went on, changing the subject, “when you said your wife scolded you once for wasting your whole day off running around playing some open world game?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Happened once more after that too.”

We both shared a quick chuckle.

“There’s an awful lot to those open world games, isn’t there?” Hibiki mused. “Like, you can just focus on the main quest, sure—but if you wanna do all the side content and see everything there is to see, it almost feels like you could keep playing forever.”

“I’m mostly just in it for the story, so I don’t generally get that invested, but there are definitely speedrunners out there who know so much about how a single game ticks that they could probably qualify for a college degree in it. Hell, they’re still finding game-breaking bugs in stuff that came out over twenty years ago.”

I could yap about this sort of thing with him for hours. But I didn’t see what any of it had to do with the question I’d asked. And then before I knew it, Hibiki changed the subject yet again.

“Speaking of the road trip,” he said, “I think I also mentioned that I haven’t really been playing guitar all that much since graduation.”

“Yeah, you did,” I said.

“There’s actually a reason for that. You see, back in college, I asked myself once: At what point do I get to officially call myself a great guitarist? If it pays the bills? If I can get hired as a studio musician? If I can play any song I want to? If I can shred the fastest heavy metal licks? So on and so forth—you get the idea.”

I was about to lose my patience here, so I was glad he finally seemed to be getting to the point.

“What I ultimately concluded,” he said, “was that it all boiled down to one thing: At what point would I be satisfied with myself, and the things I’d achieved?”

Suddenly, all the other sounds in the apartment seemed to silence themselves out of respect for Hibiki’s next words, and the music playing in the background faded away.

“And I realized,” he said, “I’m already satisfied with where I’m at.”

In the silence that followed, I finally figured it out.

This was Hibiki’s confession. These seemingly random anecdotes were his way of confessing how he felt—albeit in his own suitably cynical, roundabout manner.

It felt weird to finally have confirmation at last. To be honest, there was a tiny part of me that had still been carrying the slightest seed of doubt as to whether we were all just completely wrong about how he felt and were jumping the gun by trying to set him up with Chizuru.

“So what you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you prefer the relationship you have with her now to any other possibility.”

“Yeah,” said Hibiki. “I guess I do.”

“You’d better not just be saying that out of consideration for us, because you don’t want our group dynamic to change. Because we’re not worried about that.”

This was a concern I’d been harboring for a long time. But Hibiki simply shook his head and vanquished it in an instant.

“Not to be rude to you guys,” he said, “but it’s really nothing commendable like that. My reasons are a lot more selfish.”

Then, the slightest of smiles crept its way onto his face, as though he’d just remembered something mildly amusing.

“You know, I think it all started back in our junior year,” he said. “Ever since then, I’ve been the one she comes crying to anytime she gets her heart broken.”

“Guess that explains why she’s never come to me about that sort of thing,” I said, reflecting. “I only ever hear about it after the fact. Though I can definitely imagine her bawling her eyes out over stuff like that.”

“You’re not wrong. That is pretty much the long and short of it.”

Even though I’d never witnessed it myself, knowing Chizuru, it wasn’t exactly difficult to picture the scene in my head.

She probably would call Hibiki up and ask if he wanted to get drinks or something, despite obviously having something else on her mind. Then, within five minutes of her showing up to his place or the bar, she’d start tearing up in the middle of a totally unrelated conversation, before finally spilling the beans and hitting him with the full rundown of whatever fight or betrayal or rejection led to her heart being broken this time. She probably wouldn’t just badmouth the guy completely either: I figured she’d probably fit in more than a few comments acknowledging his good traits and how she really wished things could have worked out. And Hibiki would just sit there, listening to all of it in silence.

“According to her,” he said, “she just finds me easier to talk to than her other friends, who’ll apparently chime in way too much when she tries to talk about that sort of thing. They’ll give their own takes, whether critical or sympathetic. She says she appreciates them caring enough about her to want to badmouth the guy on her behalf, but that it just makes her want to break down and cry even more when it happens.”

Knowing their rapport, it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine why she felt more comfortable being open and vulnerable with Hibiki.

“Okay,” I said. “But what does that have to do with your relationship?”

“You know, she told me something once,” he said. “Around the same time as her first breakup after moving back to Tokyo.”

None of the things he’d been telling me about Chizuru so far were remotely surprising. There’d yet to be a single revelation here that I couldn’t have possibly imagined on my own, or that she couldn’t have just told me herself. It was enough to make me wonder why we’d gone to all the trouble of planning some long, convoluted operation just for the ultimate answer to be this anticlimactic. It was enough to make me resent both myself and her, just a little bit.

“She said,” Hibiki went on, “as long as she has me, she can feel safe in the knowledge that, no matter how many guys break her heart, I’ll always be there for her.”

This, however, left my mouth hanging wide open.

“Jesus Christ…” I said. “That girl is literally the devil.”

“Nah, c’mon. I think that’s a little too far,” said Hibiki. “Pretty sure she doesn’t even remember saying it. Only stuck out to me because it was the first time anyone had ever told me something like that.”

He took a casual sip of his drink, as if to emphasize just how little he claimed it fazed him, before continuing.

“You might already know this, Karin,” he said, “but she only ever lets herself cry around her closest friends. She’d never, ever make herself vulnerable like that in front of a family member or lover—with them, she always puts up a tough front, no matter what.”

“Yeah, she told me that for the first time last year,” I said. “Sounded a little counterintuitive to me, personally, but to each their own, I guess.”

“Well, what that also means is that if she and I were to make a hypothetical family together, she’d lose the one person she could actually let herself be vulnerable around.”

He said this with a straight face, as though the thought didn’t sadden him one bit.

To be honest, I was baffled by this. Even if it meant that technically, my initial read on the situation was right, in a certain sense.

The reason that Hibiki had maintained his silence and kept his feelings hidden for so very long was indeed a result of that balanced, cynical-yet-considerate personality of his, and his tendency to put everyone else’s wants and needs above his own.

I just never would have imagined he’d take it to this extreme.

“Honestly, it’s not the sort of thing I would’ve ever felt the need to talk about,” he said. “Just thought maybe a little added context in that regard might help you understand where I’m coming from.”

As I sat there grimacing in discomfort, he flashed me a wry smirk. This told me all I needed to know about his intent: He was never going to cave and tell Chizuru how he truly felt, under any circumstances. But even by Hibiki’s standards, this was far too self-effacing.

“I thought you said your reasons were selfish,” I said. “That all sounds pretty damn selfless to me.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. Let me ask you something, Karin,” he said, calling me by name—but not in a patronizing way, by any means. “You know ‘Honey Moon Song’?”

As a matter of fact, I did. And I’d been asked this same question not too long ago.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the one you and Chizuru did a cover of together, right?”

“Right,” said Hibiki. “Well, there’s a part in the chorus that goes ‘Just you wait—I’ll come steal you away, from the place that’s stifling you,’ if you remember.”

I did remember, in fact—I’d gone back and searched up the original via my subscription streaming service after Chizuru brought it up. I could even hear the melody in my head as Hibiki recited the words.

“Every single time I hear those lyrics, I think of her,” said Hibiki. “When it comes to things like love and romance, or a happy family, I don’t care if she gets those things from someone other than me. I just want to be a place for her where she doesn’t feel stifled. Somewhere safe, where she feels like she can actually breathe. And I don’t say that for her benefit either: That’s what I want, selfishly, for myself.”

“Okay, you guys seriously need to—”

But I couldn’t bring myself to finish that sentence.

I couldn’t just keep clinging to an alternate interpretation of those same lyrics forever—not to mention one that was predicated on an end goal that the man himself was telling me he wasn’t even shooting for. And at the same time, it felt like I now had no choice but to accept that the relationship they had was the only one they would ever have—and that no matter how much they might have been perfect for one another, the harsh reality was that it hadn’t played out that way. Which was a hard pill to swallow.

I took a generous swig of my highball. He and I had definitely drunk an awful lot of far worse, far cheaper alcohol than this over the years.

“Goddammit, Hibiki…” I said, letting out an exaggerated sigh. “If you wanna talk about ‘stealing her away,’ you could at least commit to the bit. Won’t catch me complaining if you decide to crash the wedding and run off with the bride, for the record.”

“What, just bust through the doors right at the last minute and shout ‘I object!’ or whatever?” said Hibiki. “That does sound pretty fun, honestly—but nah, I think I’ll pass.”

“Yeah, that’s not really your style.”

“But I’m sure you’d just love that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Melodrama? Look at you, running in here trying to convince your friend it’s not too late to express his feelings… Feel like modern audiences don’t really go for that sort of thing like they used to, though—I hope you don’t let your personal bias get in the way of your marketing work.”

“Nah, trust me—I’m very careful about that sort of thing, because I know my tastes are super old-fashioned.”

In that moment, as I looked at him wearing the same wry grin as he always did, I finally felt like I was ready to throw my hands up and admit defeat.

“You’re sure you won’t regret this?” I asked.

“She’s my best friend,” asserted Hibiki. “How could I not be happy for her on her wedding day?”

“God… You’ve just always gotta be a cool guy about these things, don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t say it’s intentional or anything, but I’ll take the compliment, thanks.”

“Just shut up and drink, dumbass,” I said jokingly, before lifting my glass for a toast.

Hibiki chuckled and obliged as he clinked his own glass lightly against mine.

“So when did you first realize it?” I asked. “That you had feelings for her, I mean.”

“Probably that time I took the train up to go visit her by myself,” he said. “Back when she was still living up north.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right… Well, I don’t wanna give you too much advice, but unless you’re trying to make it obvious to her, I’d suggest you get yourself a girlfriend for the sake of plausible deniability. I mean, hell, even Mai-tan and the others sounded pretty concerned about you being single for so long.”

“It’s like I told you, man—I just don’t meet girls anywhere nowadays, unless you count the occasional new hire at my agency’s reception desk. And I don’t think I’d want to date a coworker or colleague, anyway. Too messy. Plus, it just wouldn’t feel right wasting someone’s time like that when I know I’ll always be thinking of someone else deep down.”

I made a quip about how this would have sounded a lot more convincing coming from a guy who hadn’t gone through girls one after another like they were disposable back in college, a comment to which he naturally returned fire with an equally snarky comeback. As we laughed, I could feel the oppressive, heavy atmosphere of our previous conversation clear away in no time at all. It had been a moment I knew I’d probably look back on, sometime down the line, and maybe even smell that dreamy scent of nostalgia Chizuru always talked about.

Once I downed the rest of my highball, I asked Hibiki to make me a gin and soda. After reminiscing for a while about our favorite Chizuru memories throughout the years, my glass eventually ran dry again, and I realized I still needed to clean the bathtub before my wife got home like I’d promised. So I let Hibiki know that duty called and apologized again for dropping in on him—a courtesy I would never have dreamed of giving him back when we were in college.

We promised to schedule an online gaming session sometime in the near future, and I took the elevator back down to the first floor. On my way back to the station, I felt a drop fall on my head from a dark rain cloud that had most definitely not been there when I left the house. When I opened my palm and held it up toward the sky, I felt another drop.

The moment that raindrop hit my skin, I could feel Hibiki’s words echo through me like a ripple on a placid pond:

“I’ll always be thinking of someone else deep down.”

But I just clenched my fists and tucked that feeling away inside my chest.