Chapter 1

IT’S TIME TO GO for the headshot.

That single phrase dredged up a latent memory from a deep, murky corner of my mind—of a night from many years prior that should have been utterly forgettable.

I couldn’t begin to give an exact date. It was always the same place. Always the same faces. Always the same rotation of empty chip bags and beer cans littered around the table, along with maybe a single remaining slice of pizza no one was brave enough to claim for themselves. And it wasn’t just the table in a state of disarray: Our more easily intoxicated friends would often pass out right there in Hibiki’s apartment, sprawling themselves out over his bed and sofa with no hesitation whatsoever. He always claimed he didn’t mind this at all, but I knew that, deep down, it had to annoy him at least a little bit.

On this particular night, I’d been working the late shift at my old part-time izakaya gig, so I didn’t get to Hibiki’s place until well after midnight. It was our preferred hangout spot at the time, where our whole friend group would congregate after work or head to after the bars closed for one last round of drinks.

The door was unlocked when I got there, so it swung right open—and immediately I was hit by a familiar smell. It wasn’t a fragrance unique to Hibiki’s place in particular, mind you, just a strange mixture of alcohol breath, fabric softener, and junk food—it came to represent “what a college party smells like” in my mind, and was a scent I almost never encountered again after entering the workforce.

Maybe this was that “dreamy scent” Chizuru mentioned.

I stepped into the roughly 150-square-foot living area, and I could see Hibiki at his computer desk watching a bootleg video of a live band performance with the volume low. Chizuru was lying on his bed with her limbs splayed out like a rag doll, apparently so plastered she passed out wearing her signature leather jacket. But she was comfortable being vulnerable around him like that—we all knew there was no risk of anything happening between the two of them.

“Hey, Karin,” said Hibiki. “Drinks are in the fridge. Feel free to grab whatever.”

“Will do,” I said. “Thanks, man.”

I headed into the kitchen, took a beer from the refrigerator, and hunkered down on the living room floor to crack it open. Before I even had a chance to ask, Hibiki got up from his chair and threw some leftover pizza in the microwave for me. Then, while waiting for it to reheat, he walked over and laid a blanket over Chizuru’s legs as she rolled around restlessly on his bed.

“Mai-san and Taiga-san were here until just a little while ago,” he said. “Had to bail early because they’ve both got classes first thing tomorrow. And Chizuru here apparently only got two hours of sleep last night trying to finish some homework assignment, so she tapped out pretty quick, as you can see.”

He gave me the quick rundown on what had happened that night so far, and I gave him the most amusing highlights from my shift at work in between bites of reheated pizza. Then, once our obligatory daily small talk was over and I was finished with my unhealthy late night snack, we got down to business, booting up some zombie shooter game he’d bought on sale. (I’ve forgotten the name by this point—it wasn’t Resident Evil or anything.)

Keeping the volume on the TV as low as possible, we loaded into our ongoing co-op campaign and started blasting our way through a dilapidated building crawling with undead assailants—and peppered, of course, with plenty of devious jump scares that got us every single time. Looking back, it was probably a yelp from one of those that woke Chizuru up.

“Oh, hey,” said a groggy voice from behind me. “Didn’t know you guys were having a little gamer date tonight. Should I give you two some privacy?”

I looked back over my shoulder to see Chizuru sitting up on the bed, combing her fingers through her disheveled, dark brown hair.

“Wow, good one,” I said, quickly turning back to the game. “How long’d it take you to come up with that little zinger?”

“Yeah, please don’t tell his girlfriend,” Hibiki teased, playing along with the bit. “She’d eat me alive.”

I ignored this little quip and continued blowing holes through the zombies slowly hobbling toward us.

“Man, if I were one of those zombies,” said Chizuru, “you guys would never make it past me so easily. I’d eat your brains so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of her joining forces with the horde of zombies who were dropping like flies before us.

“Too bad I’d blow your head off before you even got close,” I said.

“Nah, I’d sneak up from behind and bite your neck first.”

“Wow, rude. And here I was, planning to look you in the eyes while feeling really conflicted for a long, dramatic moment before ultimately pulling the trigger.”

“Sorry, too late. I’ve already moved on to gouging Hibiki’s eyes out. Better think fast about how to make a cure.”

Hibiki didn’t even chuckle at Chizuru’s hypothetical. Instead, he simply responded with his own personal take like this was some sort of open debate. “Honestly? If that ever happened to me, I’d probably do my best to keep it a secret from everyone else around me, then slowly pick them off one by one. Meanwhile, I feel like Chizuru would just jump out in front of everybody like a haunted house attraction and immediately get gunned down.”

His flat, analytical tone did not mesh whatsoever with the sheer absurdity of the subject matter—which was kind of hilarious in its own stupid way.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” interjected Chizuru. “How come you get to stay rational after you turn and pull off a whole conniving scheme, but I’m just some mindless zombie?”

“It’s not a matter of rationality,” said Hibiki. “More of a personality thing, I’d say.”

“Oh yeah? Well, good luck with that, because the moment you start acting funny, me and Karin are gonna team up and go for the headshot!”

“Team up? For a single headshot? What, are you gonna point the gun at me while he pulls the trigger? Can’t you do anything without his help?”

“…Y’know what?! Just shut up!”

After chuckling at Chizuru’s childish outburst, I heard my phone buzz on the floor beside me. It was our good friend Hanao, checking in to see if the rest of us were still hanging out. She’d apparently just left a little drinking party with her clubmates.

We all had another round of drinks after she arrived. It was almost crazy, looking back on it, to think of how much higher my tolerance and stamina were back then compared to now—although, more than anything, it was just that I was brave and brazen enough to sacrifice tomorrow for a good time today. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one either: We all seemed to share this fleeting sentiment. We should live it up while we could, because it might be the only chance we got.

“Man, it sucks to think that, once we all get real jobs and enter the workforce, we won’t be able to hang out until some ungodly hour of the night like this anymore,” I said. “Really gonna miss making bad life choices like this every other day.”

Straining my eyes as the first beams of morning light began to stream in through the curtains, I found myself trembling internally, fearing a future I knew would surely come to pass but at that moment could hardly begin to fathom. All I knew was everything would eventually change, whether I wanted it to or not.

Never would I have imagined, back then, that we’d be having a similar conversation a full decade down the line—or that our worst life choices were still ahead of us.

“You ever get a hit of that dreamy scent of nostalgia whenever you think back on our college days, or is it just me?”

“A ‘dreamy scent of nostalgia,’ huh… That sure sounds romantic. You should work in marketing—I’d totally buy a candle with that on the label.”

“No, stupid—I’m not talking about a literal smell. It’s more like this weird sort of dopamine rush feeling you get in your brain… Ooh, nice one!”

After eliminating the final remaining enemy, the battle was officially over. I let Chizuru know I needed to take five for a bathroom break, then muted my mic, set my controller down, and took off my headphones.

Stepping out of my small-but-well-equipped gaming room, I realized I was still wearing my necktie. I’d gotten home so late that I hadn’t had time to take it off before our plans. I made a quick detour into the bedroom to change clothes, then headed for the bathroom to do my business. I grabbed a beer from the kitchen on my way back to the warfront.

I put my headphones back on and unmuted myself. Chizuru welcomed me back. We quickly joined the waiting room, got paired with another group of players, and were dropped back into a stunningly gorgeous battlefield that somehow felt even more high-res than real life—the perfect setting for an all-out gunfight.

By talking via headset, we were able to more effectively communicate about oncoming threats, what cover was safe, what weapons we were carrying, and so on. It also let us grill each other a little bit whenever someone screwed up—though Chizuru could actually take her criticism a bit too far sometimes, at which point I’d actually start getting a little pissed off. But I knew she felt the same way whenever I gave her flak for her own mistakes, so at least it was a level playing field. We both felt very comfortable as online teammates by this point.

Getting to have full-blown, all-night gaming sessions like this was definitely one of the biggest perks of being in a marriage where both partners went on business trips nearly every other week. I said a silent prayer of commiseration for my wife, who was probably out at some wine-and-dine event with her client. Meanwhile, I was home alone playing video games and cracking open a cold one.

“Wait, Karin,” said Chizuru. “Are you drinking right now?”

It seemed she’d heard me taking a few glugs as we dropped in via parachute.

“Hey, I worked hard today,” I said. “I deserve a little relaxation time.”

“This is no time to relax, you idiot. We’re at war, remember?”

We landed on the battlefield and quickly set about our usual recon routine, keeping an eye out for the enemy while gathering up nearby weapons and items.

After playing two more rounds, it was Chizuru’s turn to call for a brief time-out. I took the opportunity to pull out my phone and idly scroll through the latest stories on a news site I subscribed to, while sipping away at my beer.

I was alerted to my companion’s return by the sound of a can cracking open coming through my headphones. She informed me that her drink of choice tonight was a lemon sour, apparently, even though I hadn’t asked.

We both picked up our controllers again, but before we dropped into our next match, she had one other tiny tidbit of news to share with me.

“So, I’m getting married, actually,” she said.

“And you’re telling me this now?!” I exclaimed. “Well, damn, that’s awesome. Congrats.”

Despite my bewilderment, I reflexively offered the expected felicitations.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said.

“Man… So, you’re finally getting hitched, huh…”

It was kind of a surreal thought to me—but as I let it sink in, I realized I was glad she’d dropped this bomb on me so suddenly, without warning. It at least let me congratulate my good friend on a major life milestone without getting too sidetracked by the multitude of conflicting emotions that would have clawed their way to the surface if I had a chance to think about it. Because now that I’d had time to process it, I couldn’t stop thinking about another friend of ours, who wasn’t here on voice chat with us right now.

I needed to shake these thoughts from my brain—I’d heard drastic swings of emotion like this could lead to an untimely death. They were always saying so in movies and whatnot, so surely it had to be true. I tried to stay focused on the action happening on-screen, doing my best to maintain composure and make casual conversation.

“Remind me again—is this your first marriage or your second?” I asked.

“First, you idiot!” Chizuru shouted. “You can’t even remember that much about me?!”

“It was a joke, chill. So, who’s the lucky fella?”

“This guy at work. One rung below me.”

“Is this like a shotgun wedding, then? Fact you haven’t mentioned him before makes me wonder.”

“I mean, I don’t generally keep people super up to date on my love life, or feel the need to let everyone know each time I start dating someone new… But no, we’ve been dating for about a year now.”

“Fair enough. Not like I went out of my way to ask either.”

We were, for the record, still trying to focus on winning the round. This conversation was happening in tandem with our usual game-related chat.

“You gonna have a wedding, then?” I asked.

“Planning to,” she said. “But we’re only in the engagement phase right now. Probably won’t actually file our registration and have the wedding for another year or so.”

“Gotcha… Well, as long as you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. I’d ask you to send me an invite, but I know your fiancé probably wants a say in the guest list too, which I get.”

I was choosing my words very carefully, while also trying my best to sound as casual and nonchalant as possible—which naturally took a toll on my focus. This led to a series of small but fatal missteps that the other team was quick to capitalize on. Ultimately, I didn’t spot an enemy sniper until just before they shot me.

“Are you kidding? Of course I’m gonna invite you,” said Chizuru, just as I was resolving myself to do better next round. But then: “Although, there is something I wanted to talk to you about, on a semi-related note…”

I had a very bad feeling about where she was going with this. Something told me she didn’t just want my advice on how to build a wedding budget, or something innocent like that. We’d been friends long enough for me to know her next words were going to be very bad news for me indeed. It felt like I was suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun—and not in-game this time.

“It’s about Hibiki,” she said.

I was not, of course, mentally equipped to survive being shot at in two different realities at once. So naturally, I got sniped right off the bat again—at which point I set my controller down. I took another drink of my beer to help calm my nerves, making sure to sip extra loudly so she’d think my delayed response was simply because my mouth was full, not because I was woefully unsure how to respond.

“Hibiki?” I said after clearing my throat. “What about him?”

I tried my very, very best to play dumb and hope she didn’t pick up on it. I felt less like a soldier on the front lines now and more like a spy trying to contort my body to weave through an impossible maze of infrared lasers.

“Well, the thing is, like… Okay, I know you might think this makes me sound kinda crazy, but I’m just gonna come right out and say it. So, basically…” She paused for a moment. I could hear the hesitation in her voice. “…I’m pretty sure he’s in love with me.”

“Did he say something to make you think that?” I asked.

“I mean, no… But I can just tell. After all this time? Come on, now.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant this purely in reference to them having been friends for nearly eleven years now, or if she was implying she’d actually known he had feelings for her that entire time.

“Like, am I wrong?” she asked.

It seemed she’d also set her controller down by this point. If she were just kidding around, that would have been one thing—but she seemed to be approaching this subject with a fair bit of sincerity, so I didn’t feel like it was my place to lie to her. I swallowed hard and told her straight.

“…He’s never come right out and admitted it to me, or anything like that,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure there’s something there, yeah.”

“Right?”

I could hear her let out a long breath on the other line—though it wasn’t a sigh of exasperation or anything like that. Chizuru wasn’t that rude.

“So why did you want to talk to me about that?” I asked.

“Because I really don’t want him to see me in a wedding gown if that’s the case,” she said.

This response inspired two very different, conflicting emotions inside of me. Half of me wanted to say she was being totally ridiculous—both of them were supposed to be grown adults, and they were surely mature enough to navigate this situation without being weird about it. Meanwhile, the other half of me wasn’t sure I even wanted to see her get married off to some guy I didn’t know. And to be completely honest, it was the latter emotion I felt more strongly than the former. I had some nerve trying to tell myself I could act more like a thirty-year-old about this than either of them could. It wasn’t like I was some paragon of maturity who could set aside my own emotions and force a smile in a situation like this.

“But I’m guessing you also feel like you can’t just not invite him, right?” I said.

“Heck no,” said Chizuru. “If I don’t invite him, then I feel like I can’t invite any of my friends… But I also know my fiancé doesn’t want it to just be a low-key wedding with only us and our families—and I wouldn’t want that either, really—so that’s a no-go.”

“Well, you never know. Maybe he’d turn the invitation down anyway, and then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“So, what—you think I should just go up to him and say, ‘Hey, male best friend who’s had a crush on me for years! Wanna come watch me tie the knot with some other guy?’ Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over great.”

“Oh, come on. That’s not what I—”

I started to protest, but then stopped myself. After a few moments of silence, Chizuru followed up with a short but sincere, “Sorry.” Maybe we really were both starting to grow up a little bit after all.

“Well, what are you going to do, then?” I asked.

The first idea that came to my mind was for her to book a venue somewhere far away, during a part of the year Hibiki would be swamped with work. It wouldn’t be realistic for him to get time off to travel. But knowing the sort of guy he was, and how much he valued his close friends, I figured he’d probably drop everything and find a way to show up even if it was on the other side of the world. And that still wouldn’t address the main issue of his secret feelings for her. If just picking the right date and location was enough to worm her way out of this situation, she probably wouldn’t be coming to me for advice.

Chizuru let out a deep sigh, more telling than words could ever be.

“I’m thinking of finding a way to wring a confession out of him.”

This sentence would have made sense to me if she were a police investigator interrogating a murder suspect. But in the context of a romantic confession, it felt like a very strange turn of phrase—even if I knew, more or less, what she was trying to say.

“Sorry, what do you mean by that, exactly?” I couldn’t help but ask anyway—a bit of a bad habit of mine, but I wasn’t a big fan of ambiguity.

“Basically, I just wanna give us both an out,” she said. “So that neither of us have to go through that whole awkward scenario in the first place. If I can get him to openly admit how he feels about me, that gives me the perfect excuse not to invite him, right? Which is why I wanna find a way to make him confess to me somehow, so that I can turn him down once and for all. But obviously, since he’s maintained his silence for this long already, I feel like it’s going to be pretty hard to force him to make a move… And that’s where you come in, ideally. Think you’d be willing to help me out with this?”

“What are you, some sort of supervillain? That has to be the most diabolical scheme I’ve ever heard,” I said. “Isn’t there a cleaner way to handle this? One that feels, I don’t know…a bit less evil?”

“No, you don’t understand—I want it to be evil.”

I didn’t like throwing around clichéd words like “determination” or “resolve” in contexts like this, a casual conversation between friends. But those were definitely the sorts of emotions I was hearing in her voice.

“It needs to be a scheme so cruel and heartless that if any of our other friends find out about it, or learn why Hibiki isn’t coming to the wedding, they’ll think I was totally out of line and place 100 percent of the blame on me. And I mean, they’d be right—how messed up is it that I’m trying to force a good friend to admit he has a crush on me just so I can break his heart?”

It seemed she’d been stressing herself out about this for quite a while now, judging from the shakiness in her voice.

“Is there no scenario where you could just ask him straight-up? Like, ‘Hey, sorry if this sounds weird, but…you don’t have a thing for me, do you?’ or whatever?”

“I don’t think that’d work. He’d never admit it if it felt like I was calling him out.”

“Yeah, probably not, huh…”

I could already picture him laughing it off with some cynical, self-deprecating joke. He was the type of guy who avoided sincerity like the plague when it came to things like this. It was no wonder Chizuru was pulling her hair out trying to brainstorm a way to make him crack.

“You’re right,” I said. “If you really want to face him head-on about this, I think the only way he’ll ever be upfront with you is if you let him be the one to broach the subject.”

If it were just a matter of thinking of some way to not invite him to the wedding, I could probably come up with a dozen other possible solutions. But part of the reason I couldn’t bring myself to more strongly condemn Chizuru’s idea was because I, too, had known for years there was a difference of emotion between the two of them—and I hadn’t done anything about it either. So, I couldn’t really criticize her for wanting to finally draw the line and settle things so both of them could go on with their lives. Hell, I wanted that for them too—more than anything.

And I knew that, since he’d been harboring these feelings for so many years, they probably wouldn’t naturally fade away just because she got married either. I didn’t want to have to watch my good friend continue to act like there was nothing there for the rest of his life, while secretly still being obsessed with her as “the one that got away” or whatever. Ideally, I wanted to see them talk things out and find some common ground so Hibiki could move on—eventually, at least. The last thing I wanted was a future in which all of us had to keep pretending we didn’t know how he really felt for as long as we were friends.

Even so, I still wasn’t sure I wanted to take part in a scheme like this.

But her next words sealed the deal for me.

“Yeah, no,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

“About what?” I asked.

“It’s time to go for the headshot.”

There were probably a million gaming sessions between us where someone had said that turn of phrase—but for whatever reason, it was that one particular night that came rushing back to me in vivid detail.

“Wow,” I said. “Now, that was a deep cut. Good throwback line—ten out of ten.”

“Sorry? What are you talking about?”

“Wait, you mean it wasn’t even intentional?! Fine, whatever… Don’t worry about it, then. Just had a random flashback, that’s all. Anyway, we should probably get together and try to hash out a more specific plan of action.”

“Ugh, thank you so much,” said Chizuru. “I really owe you one.”

“But you’ve gotta promise you won’t have another breakdown and start crying and spewing profanities at me just because you don’t know what to do.”

She immediately hung up on me.

I tried calling her back, but to no avail. Then, a little while later, she sent me a LINE message that read only: “Let me know what dates work for you re: that strategy meeting we discussed.”

Wow, way to be an adult about this. Not that I had any room to talk, I guess, after teasing her for being a crybaby when I knew she was self-conscious about it.

There was this famous quote by some author I was taught back in college—people are incapable of exerting any real influence over another human being, or being influenced by other human beings in turn. Now that I had more than thirty years of life experience under my belt, I could look back on those “words of wisdom” and say with certainty that they were a load of bull.

The three of us had absolutely influenced each other’s lives in the time we’d been friends. Even just speaking in terms of the more superficial stuff, neither Chizuru nor I had been gamers growing up—we’d only gotten into the hobby because of Hibiki. And no, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if some scholar wanted to chime in to argue how that “wasn’t what the author meant” by that quote originally. Who cares, honestly?

The same could be said for the café we were meeting up at today. Chizuru chose this location, but it was me who had first popularized it as a hangout spot for our friend group (we were all broke and looking for jobs, fresh out of college, and it was cheaper and less busy than any of the other local chains).

It was Saturday, a week after she’d first requested my assistance. I was on my way to the café in question, and I’d just gotten off the train at a station I almost never stopped at anymore. Walking in the door, I noted it didn’t reek of cigarette smoke like it used to. I went up to the clerk at the front and gave her my name. The short-statured girl—probably a college student working here part time—was polite enough and led me to the private meeting room we’d booked out back.

After a light knock on the door, the clerk swung it open without even waiting for a response. I was greeted by the sight of the back of Chizuru’s head. She was sitting in the chair right by the door, talking by herself while facing the cream-colored wall in front of her. She turned around, and we greeted each other with a little wave before I took my seat in the empty chair opposite her. I set my bag down by my side and perused the menu set out before me.

“Yeah, I get it,” she said. “Trust me, it’s a lot easier if you go into it with a mindset where you understand a lot of stuff won’t feel intuitive and you’re open to change. And I have complete faith in your ability to adapt, Kuraya—you’re one of the fastest learners I know. Obviously, you’re bound to make some mistakes starting out—but hey, we’ve all been there, right?”

The corners of her lips curled into a little grin. It sounded like she was offering words of encouragement to whoever it was she was talking to on the phone.

I noticed there was already a drink in front of her on the table, so I took this opportunity to quietly excuse myself from the room, flagging down a young male waiter passing by to order a coffee float for myself. By the time I reentered the room, Chizuru was already off the phone and stowing her wireless earbuds away in their little carrying case. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t seen her wearing a business suit like this since we were still in our mid-twenties.

“Whoa, she’s not wearing a leather jacket!” I exclaimed, half teasing, half genuinely taken aback. “Who are you, and what have you done with Chizuru?!”

She flashed me an amused smirk.

“I did tell you I had a client meeting before this, didn’t I?” she asked.

“Wow. This, from the woman who once told me she was gonna wear a leather jacket to her own funeral. Now I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“I’m wearing one in spirit, don’t worry.”

“Heck, weren’t you wearing one the last time I saw you? One of those double rider jackets, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, and you were rocking that weird new beard of yours.” Chizuru grimaced. “Was kinda hoping you’d have grown out of that phase in the last six months, but here we are.”

I stroked it between my fingers—my new pride and joy, kept carefully groomed since I first started growing it about a year ago.

“You wouldn’t believe what a difference one of these babies makes when you work in sales and marketing,” I said. “Suddenly, everyone seems to remember who I am now. They keep calling me ‘That Guy with the Beard.’ It’s great.”

“Wow, and it’s even inflated your ego too.” Chizuru’s grimace deepened. “Double yikes.”

“Okay, now you’re just being rude.”

We hadn’t seen each other in half a year, and yet our rapport hadn’t changed one bit since college. And although we were good enough friends who could always pick up where we left off, we did make sure to schedule at least one online gaming session every month, if not more. Sometimes, Hibiki would play with us too—other times, I’d be the one who had to sit out. And still other times, it would just be us guys.

“My beard’s not that bad, is it?” I asked.

“Wait, did I actually hurt your feelings?! Ha!” Chizuru said smugly. “Nah, it’s not that bad. But you are a bit on the burlier side already, so when you add a beard I feel like some people might find you a little too rugged and intimidating. But if they’re teasing you about it by giving you little nicknames and stuff, it’s probably fine. I mean, you’ve already got a wife—who cares if other women find it kinda unattractive?”

As I received this brutally honest take from my friend, there was a knock on the door, and the male waiter came in to deliver my coffee float. He set it down on the table along with a spoon, a straw, and some napkins.

“Wow, look at you, trying to act cute with your cute little drink,” mocked Chizuru, much to my chagrin. “Sorry. Not gonna raise your score with me, bub.”

I wanted to protest that I was doing nothing of the sort while the waiter was still around, so he’d know this was an utterly baseless accusation. But I also didn’t want him to feel like he’d gotten dragged into an argument by some annoying old geezer. I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to leave the room.

“Come on, you know I’ve always had a sweet tooth,” I finally said. “Just like you’ve always had a thing for that weird guaraná drink.”

“Hey, I’ve gotta order it when I have the chance.” Chizuru shrugged. “Not many places sell it around here—unless I want to go to a freaking churrascaria, I guess.”

“I remember Hibiki used to give you shit for liking that stuff.”

“Yeah, he’d always say it tastes like cough syrup with a little sweetener.”

She furrowed her brow and took a sip of her guaraná through the straw. It was plain to see that bringing up Hibiki had caused an instant change in her mood. I went ahead and scooped up a spoonful of ice cream from my own drink.

“So, have you seen that guy at all recently?” I asked. “He and I went out for drinks a while back, but that was probably close to two months ago now.”

“Yeah, I spent the night at his house a couple weeks ago.”

This answer was so beyond the pale I couldn’t even bring myself to act shocked.

“Dude,” I said. “Come on.”

“Look, I know what you’re about to say, all right?” Chizuru asserted.

Why the hell had she sounded so distraught over the phone, then? Why had I been so worried about her that I dropped everything to come out here and talk about this today? Was now really the time to be pulling stunts like this? I gave her the most disapproving glare I could possibly muster, and she vehemently shook her head.

“I know it sounds bad!” she admitted. “But at least give me a chance to explain. And just to be perfectly clear, nothing happened, okay?”

“Yeah, no shit,” I said. “If you told me you cheated on the fiancé I found out about a week ago, I think this conversation would have already been over by now. So, what happened—did you two go to some late-night concert together or something?”

The two of them had been in a band together during our college days, after all, and they talked about going to concerts together ever since. Meanwhile, I couldn’t play any instruments, and I wasn’t interested in seeing a band live, even if I liked a few of their songs. I’d never really tagged along with them outside of a couple big music festivals.

“No, I was out drinking with some coworkers in his neighborhood. I got pretty wasted and missed the last train,” she explained. “So I decided to shoot him a text, and he said I could crash at his place if I wanted to. I mean, he’s got plenty of space.”

“You are literally the worst person I know,” I said. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to imagine what kinds of thoughts would be running through Hibiki’s head after getting a text from her like that. “You’re gonna lead him on and then come crying to me about how he’s in love with you and you’re not sure what to do? Give me a break.”

Chizuru’s face immediately flushed beet-red at this very reasonable callout. Then, like a grade schooler throwing a tantrum, she grabbed her crinkled straw wrapper and tried to throw it at me—but she didn’t ball it up first, so it just twirled pathetically back onto the tabletop like a sad paper airplane.

However, to her credit, she did follow this up with a frank admission of guilt, so maybe she’d grown up more than I gave her credit for.

“Sorry. I know it’s bad,” she admitted. “But! But hear me out!”

“That was one too many ‘but’s,” I said.

“Oh, come on. Don’t act like my mom.”

“Well, clearly you need some parental guidance—you thought it was okay to get plastered drunk and pass out at the house of a guy who likes you.”

“Aw, shut up! Ugh… And what really sucks about it is that if he had taken that opportunity to make a move on me, I could’ve just settled this right then and there, but nooo… He just had to be such a gentleman, making sure I drank plenty of water, giving me a disposable toothbrush, setting up a nice comfy bed for me on the sofa…”

“I mean, I would hope so. If he were the type of guy who’d try something while you were totally intoxicated, then hell, I’d cut all ties with him myself.”

“God, he even made me breakfast the next morning.”

“Well… At least we know he doesn’t mind you staying the night at his place, I guess. Might be something we could incorporate into the plan, if need be.”

Even if it probably wasn’t all that necessary, I pulled out my phone and opened my Memos app to make a note of this—on my personal device, not my company phone, obviously. If my employer were to find out about this ridiculous scheme of ours, they’d probably start to question my sanity. After all, trying to force a confession out of your good friend just so you can break his heart was not something a mentally sound adult would do.

“Speaking of which,” I said, “I had another thought, after mulling it over a bit for the past week or so.”

“Mhm?” hummed Chizuru, actively participating in the conversation even when she had a straw in her mouth.

“Do adults even ‘confess’ their feelings to each other in the first place? I kinda feel like that’s something only teenagers do.”

Her eyes went wide as she quickly gulped down her sip of guaraná.

“What?!” she exclaimed, dumbfounded. “But then, how do people even start dating?!”

She sounded like a character straight out of some educational PSA for kids.

“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’ve been together with my wife for more than a decade now, so hell if I know. But I definitely feel like I haven’t heard anyone talk about ‘confessing’ to someone else since we were still in school.”

“You’re kidding!” said Chizuru. “How does everyone do it, then?!”

Chizuru definitely still had a much more childish side to her than I did—though I didn’t mean that in an entirely bad way. She definitely let her emotions get the better of her and would break down and cry sometimes. And she had trouble filtering her language when she really got into it with someone. But at the same time, she also didn’t seem remotely fazed by the idea of confessing love to someone—a concept that felt so cloyingly youthful to me at this point that I couldn’t help but cringe a little bit at the mere notion.

“Well, how did you and your fiancé start dating, then?” I asked.

“Huh?” she said. “He just confessed to me like normal. Said he had a crush on me and asked me to be his girlfriend. Then a little while back, he took me out to this really fancy restaurant, got down on one knee, and proposed.”

“Oh my god… That would totally work on you, wouldn’t it?”

“Why do I feel like you’re being condescending right now?!”

“Nah, I just know what makes you tick, that’s all.”

It was definitely a little basic, admittedly, but I had to give props to her fiancé where they were due; understanding your partner’s love language and putting in the effort to give them what they need in that regard was definitely important in a relationship.

“Well, maybe you two are an exception to the rule, then,” I said. “But I think that ordinary people—and I really don’t like using the word ‘ordinary’ in this context, but—”

“Appreciate the disclaimer,” Chizuru chimed in. “Always good to be accepting of diversity.”

“It’s not about that… But anyway, I think if you polled a totally random selection of couples our age, you’d probably find that most of them just kind of naturally started spending time with one another. No pomp and circumstance. And then, after a while, they’d decided to call themselves a couple. I sincerely doubt many people went out of their way to formally confess their feelings and say, ‘Hey, will you go out with me?’ I think most people wait until their relationship’s naturally progressed to a certain point before they feel the need to address those feelings out loud.”

“And you don’t think Hibiki feels like we’re at that point yet?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. You two aren’t, like…intimate, you know?”

As I sat there struggling to figure out how to convey what I was trying to say, I casually intertwined my fingers in front of me—but Chizuru apparently took this gesture to mean something far more suggestive than I intended.

“Ew, gross!” she shouted. “I think I’d rather die!”

I hadn’t been referring to sexual intimacy, but whatever. That could certainly fall under the umbrella of the sort of relationship I was trying to describe, so it was fine.

“Look, my point is that most people our age in romantic relationships probably just let things progress to that point naturally, without feeling the need to put a title on it right away, or professing their love to one another, you know? That’s all.”

“And what makes you the authority on that, huh?” asked Chizuru. “I mean, you’ve only been with one woman for the vast majority of your adult life.”

“Trust me, people love to talk to me about their significant others. And I’m pretty sure it’s because I’ve been in a stable relationship for so long. So I’d say I have a pretty good frame of reference, actually.”

Chizuru responded to this with an exaggerated snap of her fingers. Back in our college days, she also came to me to gush about every new boyfriend she got—I had a feeling she of all people would know I wasn’t bluffing here.

“Dang, so people really don’t confess to each other anymore?” she asked. “Man, that feels so crazy to me.”

“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’re the crazy one here,” I said with a teasing chuckle. “How’d you even get the idea in your head for this whole ‘confession’ strategy, anyhow?”

“Hey, I’m dead serious about this!”

“I know. But you also did know how Hibiki felt about you for a long time and just let him wallow in it anyway. What changed?”

“I mean, it’s true—I did just kinda let this happen. I definitely take the blame for that; I know I’m the bad guy here. As for what changed, well… Obviously, my engagement was the real kicker, but I’d say there were a few other straws that broke the camel’s back.”

The buttons on the cuffs of her jacket clacked softly against the tabletop.

“For one thing, there’s the fact that he hasn’t shown any real interest in dating anyone for the past several years now, which I feel bad about. And for another—you know that graduation concert we put on back when he and I were still in a band together? Pretty sure you came to that one too, but maybe you don’t remember… Anyway, there was this song we played called ‘Honey Moon Song’ by a flood of circle—you know that one?”

Well, that came out of left field.

I figured maybe she was about to launch into some long anecdote about how the two of them almost became a thing back then, but apparently not.

“‘Honey Moon Song’…?” I racked my brain, trying to conjure up any surviving memories of them up there on that tiny little stage with their other two bandmates. For some reason, I always envisioned Chizuru in her old leather jacket in recollections like this, even when I knew it was the middle of summer at the time, so she definitely wouldn’t have been wearing it. “No, I don’t think so. I remember a flood of circle, though.”

She’d even forced me to accompany her to one of their concerts back in college.

“Don’t think anyone who was friends with you in college could forget how much you gushed about them back then,” I said. “But yeah, can’t say I remember the song.”

“It’s like, ‘This right heeere is our Honey Moooon Song, shout it aaall the waaay to the moooon’!”

Even when she was keeping her voice down, her singing chops were still pretty damn good. Which made sense, since she still did vocals for the small-time hobby band she and her music friends had put together.

“Okay, yeah,” I said. “I think I’ve heard that one before.”

“Well, the next lyric after that is: ‘Just you wait—I’ll come steal you away, from the one shackling you.’”

This time, she just stated the lyrics. And yet, I could vividly picture her singing them, guitar in hand. Or maybe that was a totally different song, who knows.

“So the other day, my fiancé and I were talking about what songs we want to have on the playlist at our reception,” she said. “It’s a little soon for that, I know, but you know how couples love doing that sort of thing. And he actually suggested that song, believe it or not. So of course, I couldn’t help but think back to our graduation concert—and for some reason, I started feeling a little weird and uncomfortable about it all of a sudden. Then, later that night, I went and listened to that song again, alone in my room, and it was like the chorus sounded completely different all of a sudden. Even though I’ve probably listened to it hundreds, even thousands of times over the years.”

She looked me straight in the eyes.

“I’d always heard it as this super liberating song about how someone was going to come and set me free from some horrible life or toxic relationship or something… But now, I want to be that liberator—and set Hibiki free from me, you know?”

“I am so glad we booked a private room for this,” I said. “Wouldn’t want the other customers thinking it was me who was making you tear up like this right now…”

“Enough with the crybaby jokes already! Ugh… I swear, you guys haven’t changed one bit since we were in college…”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a handkerchief, then dabbed the corners of her eyes while being careful not to smear her makeup. Back in college, she hadn’t paid much mind to those sorts of things. I’d seen her with long black streaks of eyeliner running down her cheeks more times than I could count.

“Man,” I said. “At this rate, I feel like you’re probably going to be the one crying at the ceremony and reception, not your father.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” Chizuru said dismissively. “I don’t let myself cry around my parents or my significant other. I just force my­self not to.”

“Wait, really? Huh… First I’m hearing of this.”

While I still had no intention to stop teasing her, knowing I was one of the few people she allowed herself to cry in front of did make me feel pretty special. Though I’d never say that to her face.

“Anyway, yeah,” continued Chizuru. “I guess my thought process was that, by giving Hibiki a chance to put his feelings out in the open, we’d both finally be able to move on.”

“And I’m guessing you probably wouldn’t wanna go the opposite route, where you’re just super cold to him until he eventually loses interest, right?”

“Yeah, no. I’m pretty sure all that would do is cause a ton of drama and headaches for our mutual friends. Plus—and again, I know this might make me sound crazy—I’m pretty sure there’s probably nothing I can realistically do to make him stop liking me at this point. Heck, even if this little plan of ours succeeds, I’m pretty sure he still won’t hate me—he’ll probably just give me some space, is all.”

I nodded in agreement. Her assertion really didn’t sound crazy to me.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I agreed. “Once that guy decides he likes you, I feel like you’d probably have to burn down his house or murder his whole family or something to make him change his mind.”

This was a joke, obviously—but I didn’t think it was that much of an exaggeration. This tendency of his didn’t only apply to Chizuru either: Hibiki was just as much of a diehard neutralist when it came to interacting with other people. I was pretty sure I’d never seen him harbor or express a negative feeling toward anyone he personally knew.

I still remembered the time in college when our friend group somehow got on the topic of “Who’s the person you’ve hated most in your entire life?” Everyone else was bickering and laughing as they shared horror stories about terrible classmates or co­workers from their respective pasts… And then when it came to be Hibiki’s turn, he mulled the question over for a good, long while…before giving the name of some famous serial killer. Naturally, we all gave him a ton of shit for this ridiculous answer—but he just laughed it off and said, “What can I say? I’m a pacifist! Sorry.”

“Granted, I do know there is a chance he might hate me after this,” said Chizuru.

“Yeah, I mean, I sure would if it were me in his shoes.”

“Appreciate the honesty,” she said with a nod.

I’d been about 33 percent joshing there, but it seemed that hadn’t gotten across.

“And that’s part of the reason I’m planning to actually talk things out with him afterward,” she explained. “It’s just getting him to admit it in the first place that’s going to be a real pain in the ass no matter what—hence why I’m asking for your help.”

“It’s a pretty big ask,” I said. “But I mean, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? Even if he doesn’t come right out and say ‘Hey, I’m love with you,’ you could still kinda goad him into asking you out. Then just turn him down and let him know you’re getting married. Boom—Operation Heartbreak accomplished.”

“Okay, don’t call it that. You’re having way too much fun.”

Chizuru picked up her bottle of guaraná to refill her now empty glass, but before she did, she tilted the bottle toward me with a suggestive grin—an offer I politely refused. I really wasn’t the biggest fan of sweetened cough syrup, myself.

“Well, I guess for starters we could create a situation where he’d actually feel comfortable opening up about his feelings. Like, say it was you—when would you feel safe confessing to someone?”

“Uh…” said Chizuru. “When they do something that makes me realize, ‘Wow, I really like them’?”

Half-performatively, I flicked a balled-up straw wrapper at her in a show of disapproval. With furrowed brow, I glared at my friend sitting across the table from me—someone who apparently learned everything she knew about love from shojo manga.

“I should have expected no less from the mastermind of Operation Heartbreak,” I said in a disgruntled voice.

“Why do I feel like you’re poking fun at me?” said Chizuru. “Like, am I wrong?”

“I’m talking about specific situations here, all right? Like, in what sort of scenario would you think, ‘If I confess my feelings right here and now, it’ll work for sure’?”

“Oh, I see—that’s what you mean.”

It did not escape my notice that Chizuru’s cheeks were growing more and more flushed red, and she attempted to play it cool by sipping away at her drink. We didn’t have infinite time here, so I decided to ignore it.

“I feel like the only times in my life when I’ve been the one doing the confessing, I went into it with a pretty do-or-die attitude,” she said. “I’d call ’em out somewhere, tell ’em how I felt, and if it didn’t work out, that was that. Didn’t stress too hard about it.”

“What, like you’d tell them to meet you behind the gym after school or whatever? Pretty clichéd trope in this day and age, but I’ve always been a fan.”

“Okay, I feel like that was another subtle dig at me, but I’ll let it slide and instead throw the same question back at you: What’s your ideal confession-giving scenario, big guy?”

“Honestly, I don’t have much experience with that sort of thing either… I mean, I was the one who popped the question, but it was my wife who asked me out to begin with, and who suggested we move in together.”

“Dang. Maybe we’re not cut out for a plot like this after all.”

Regardless of whether we were cut out for it or not, I was confident we were both more than capable of improvising a solution here. Even if we weren’t the most mature grown-ups in the world, we had made it this far into adulthood as successful cogs in the corporate machine; adapting was what we did best.

To kick things off, we tried spitballing as many ideas as we could about how to create the most optimal atmosphere for a confession between two long-term friends. I couldn’t help but feel like this was probably the exact same sort of thing romance manga artists did with their editors when trying to come up with a new series—whether shojo or shonen.

“How ’bout at a swimming pool at night?” I asked. “Not that I’ve ever been.”

“Maybe a dark, members-only bar with really good mood lighting?” suggested Chizuru. “Not that I’d know what that’s like.”

All jokes aside—just from looking at the situation pragmatically, the two of us quickly arrived at the same conclusion.

“We’re not gonna be able to pull this off, are we?” I muttered, just as Chizuru finished writing “Ferris wheel” in her notepad.

“Agreed,” she said, putting her pencil down. “I feel like Hibiki would instantly be able to clock anything we came up with. The jig would be up immediately. There’s just no way he and I would ever end up in any of these scenarios organically.”

“Maybe we need to bring in a third party. Though I guess you probably want to limit how many people know you’re getting married for the time being.”

“Yeah, no. We were kinda planning to let everyone know at the same time, so my fiancé’s been keeping mum on the subject too. And there’s no way to be sure the news won’t reach Hibiki’s ears once word gets out. Not that I don’t trust our friends, obviously.”

It was extremely like her to tack on a little disclaimer like that. She probably felt super bad for implying any of our friends might let it slip, even though none of them were around to hear her say it.

“Well, I’m glad you have enough faith in me, at least,” I said.

“It’s not that,” she responded immediately. “I just decided that if it was you he heard it from, I wouldn’t mind so much.”

For someone who was normally so quick to blush up a storm over even the most innocuous of sappy sentiments, it was amazing she was able to say that with a straight face. But such was the duality of Chizuru, I supposed—for better or worse.

She just had this way of speaking that felt so viscerally believable in the moment, you couldn’t help but take her at her word. Her blunt phrasing, the intensity in her voice, her use of slang, the sudden emotional outbursts… It all came together to give her this uncanny ability to win people over with her words. And yet she’d readily admitted to me—on several occasions—that most of the time she was just talking completely out of her ass, and that she completely forgets what she’d been saying not even five minutes later. She was extremely upfront with people, and always stayed true to herself—but in a stupid sort of way. I guess you could argue it was a form of charisma.

Whenever I asked myself what it was about Chizuru that had struck such a chord with Hibiki, I always suspected that it was this aspect of her personality that had an awful lot to do with it. Why? Because it was exactly the sort of earnest ingenuity he lacked, as the more cynical type who was always careful and calculating with his words. Ideally, this was the sort of thing we’d want to exploit as part of Operation Heartbreak. Unfortunately, since it wasn’t something Chizuru did intentionally—and indeed, that unintentionality was a big part of its charm—it might be pretty difficult to effectively weaponize.

“Well, I think we should still get the others on board, even if you want to keep quiet about the wedding stuff for now,” I proposed. “But we should start by figuring out a schedule and itinerary that works for all of us. I’ll get in touch with Hibiki, and you and I can hash out the details based on his availability.”

“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” Chizuru said, relieved. “Guess we probably won’t see each other in person again until we actually put Operation Heartbreak into effect, huh?”

I assumed she must have already started feeling pretty nervous about this whole thing, or she probably wouldn’t be using the joke name I’d come up with for it unironically.

“Should be perfect weather for that double rider jacket, y’know,” I mused.

“I bet all the girls at your company talk shit about your beard behind your back,” she retorted.

And just like that, we were back to bullying each other like children.

On the way back to the station, we decided to swing by a nearby izakaya for some more casual catching up over a couple of drinks. The place was a bit plain and ordinary for my liking—and yes, I truly didn’t like describing things as “ordinary,” but that was really the only word I could think of to describe it.

We sipped away at our ordinary drinks in our ordinary glasses while Chizuru regaled me with an endless slew of reasons why she felt her new fiancé was such a great catch. And while I’d obviously never met the guy, I did my best to use these anecdotes to construct a positive impression of him in my head. The last thing I wanted was to meet him on their wedding day and think, Damn, she picked this guy over Hibiki?

As I listened to her go on and on about all his good traits, I had an idle realization: For as many times as she’d come to me to gush about some new guy she met over the years, I’d never once heard her talk about having her own heart broken.