Tooshiro Senda had decided he was fine.
This decision happened at 11:42 p.m., while he sat on the floor of his apartment in Nakano with his laptop open, one knee pulled to his chest, and a convenience store pudding in his hand that he did not remember buying. He had been staring at the same paragraph of Chapter Ten for twenty minutes. The paragraph was losing.
He had seen Fumiko with coworkers. That was normal. She had coworkers because she was an adult with a job, not a wandering forest spirit who existed only when he delivered packages to Apartment 305. She had dinner plans. She had a public life. She had a polished Shinjuku version of herself who walked beside people in suits and knew when to bow and how to talk in meeting rooms without mentioning abandoned gods.
Of course she did. That was fine. Completely fine. He stabbed the spoon into the pudding with more force than pudding deserved. So fine. A normal amount of fine. The kind of fine people write medical papers about.
His phone sat beside the laptop, quiet, but that was also fine.
Fumiko had said she was going to a team dinner. People did not text during team dinners unless they were bored, trapped, or trying to escape through social betrayal. He had wished her luck. She had probably placed her phone in her bag and entered a normal office gathering with normal people who wore normal shoes and had never once slipped their own fantasy novel into a customer’s delivery.
He looked at the document again.
Quintin stared from the page, frozen mid-conversation because his author had become distracted by a woman holding an office tote and walking beside a man who looked like he knew which restaurants took reservations.
Tooshiro closed the laptop, “Not tonight.”
His room answered with the soft hum of the air conditioner and the distant sound of someone’s washing machine entering what sounded like its final battle.
The phone buzzed. He grabbed it so fast the spoon fell into the pudding cup.
Nana: Mom says you didn’t answer her message.
Tooshiro stared, then slowly put the phone back down. He picked up the pudding cup and looked at the spoon sticking upright in the middle of it like a grave marker.
“This is fine,” he told himself.
He did not sleep well.
The next morning was worse because nothing happened. Not a crisis, a rainstorm, or even a customer screaming about a missing rice cooker. Instead, Route 17 rolled forward with the boring cruelty of routine. Boxes came in. Boxes went out. The scanner beeped. People answered doors. People did not answer doors. Tanaka was not home again, which meant Tanaka had either achieved enlightenment beyond physical addresses or was doing this on purpose.
Daiki noticed by 9:10, “You’re weird today.”
Tooshiro scanned a package, “I’m weird every day.”
“True. But today you’re quiet weird.”
“Maybe I’ve matured.”
Daiki looked at him over the top of a stack of parcels, “That would be sudden and unwelcome.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re thinking.”
“People can do both.”
“You can’t.”
Tooshiro gave him a flat look.
Daiki grinned, but not as sharply as usual. His teasing had layers. Most were annoying. Some were worse because they were close to kind.
“Something happen with Door 305?” Daiki probed.
“No…”
“You said no like someone stepping around a puddle.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means yes, but in wet shoes?”
“That means even less.”
Daiki lifted a box and set it onto the cart, “Did she hate the book?”
“No.”
“Did she like the book?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look like a man who found a love letter addressed to someone with better hair?”
Tooshiro paused.
Daiki’s grin faded into interest, “Oh.”
“There is no ‘oh’.”
“There is absolutely an ‘oh’.”
“I saw her with coworkers.”
Daiki waited.
“That’s it,” Tooshiro said.
“Really? That’s it?”
“It is this time.”
“Hmmm. Was there another man maybe?”
Tooshiro picked up another package, “There are men in offices, just as there are women.”
“So yes.”
“A coworker.”
“A handsome coworker?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“He was wearing a suit.”
“Did he look good in it?”
“It was too dark to tell.”
“It was Shinjuku. There are lights everywhere.”
Tooshiro scanned the label too aggressively and the scanner gave an offended beep “He seemed… normal.”
Daiki’s eyebrows lifted, “Ah. The worst kind of man.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“I didn’t say jealous.”
“You were about to.”
“I was savoring it.”
“I’m not.”
“Sure.”
“It meant nothing.”
“Probably.”
Tooshiro looked at him.
Daiki shrugged. “What? It probably did mean nothing. People have coworkers. My wife has a coworker named Kanda who sends polite messages with too many exclamation marks. I have not challenged him to a duel in three years.”
“That is mature.”
“It’s exhausting.”
Tooshiro sighed and placed another box on the cart, “I know it’s normal.”
“Knowing things does not stop men from being stupid. It only makes the stupidity more embarrassing.”
“Thank you for the support.”
“You’re welcome. That will be eight hundred yen.”
By the end of his shift, Tooshiro had successfully acted normal for almost no one. He apologized to a mailbox after bumping into it. He handed one customer the scanner before the package. He told another customer “good night” at 2:30 in the afternoon. At the depot, he nearly left without returning his handheld device, which made Daiki lean against the charging rack with the patient smile of a man who had been given free entertainment.
“Normal day?” Daiki asked.
“Normal day,” Tooshiro said.
“You are holding your scanner.”
“I know that.”
“Your bike is outside.”
“I also know that.”
“You need to put the scanner back.”
“I was just testing you.”
“You failed.”
Tooshiro placed the scanner on the charging rack and left before Daiki could continue documenting his decline.
By the time he reached home, the sky had turned the color of wet concrete, though no rain had fallen yet. His apartment was too quiet. His fridge contained rice, pickles, one lonely egg, and a bottle of barley tea. Technically, that was food. Emotionally, it was a threat.
He checked his phone, but no message from Fumiko. He opened their thread anyway. Their last exchange still sat there.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: It can be.
Senda Tooshiro: If they staple receipts in the middle, escape.
No reply after that. Which was normal.
Team dinner. Haruto. Mizuki. Office people. Yakitori. Beer. Conversation. The kind of thing Tooshiro knew existed, but had mostly observed from the outside, like aquariums and luxury apartments.
He set the phone down. Then picked it up again before setting it down with intention a final time, “I need dinner,” he sighed.
The local supermarket sat about eight minutes away on foot, wedged between a small drugstore and a dry cleaner whose owner watered the same two plants every morning with the seriousness of temple duty. It was not one of the huge shiny stores with wide aisles and imported cheese displays. This was a neighborhood supermarket, practical and cramped, with fluorescent lighting, vegetable displays near the entrance, and a discount sticker schedule that several elderly women treated as a competitive sport.
Tooshiro arrived at 8:12 p.m., which was dangerous timing. Late enough for prepared food discounts. Early enough that other people still had hope of nabbing them. It often made him think of a silly anime he enjoyed when he was younger called ‘Ben-tou!’, where people would literally brawl for the best deals on late night food.
The moment he stepped through the automatic doors, the cool air hit him and the store jingle began its cheerful little loop from somewhere above the registers. It sounded like a song written by a committee to prevent despair near the cabbage.
He grabbed a basket. Buy vegetables. Buy something adult. Do not buy only discounted fried food and call it character research.
He walked past the produce section, picked up a bag of spinach, looked at it, remembered spinach needed to be cooked or at least dealt with, and put it back. Progress could wait.
He moved to the prepared food aisle. There it was, the battlefield.
Rows of plastic containers sat under bright lights. Grilled fish. Potato croquettes. Fried chicken. Simmered vegetables. Rice bowls. Yakisoba. A few sad salads trying their best. A store employee in an apron moved down the aisle with a roll of discount stickers, and the atmosphere shifted.
People noticed, but no one rushed. That would have been undignified.
Instead, shoppers drifted closer with fake casualness. An old woman pretended to examine pickled daikon while tracking the employee’s hand. A salaryman held a bottle of tea and stared at the karaage like he was reading its future. A university student circled once, slow and predatory.
Tooshiro respected the system.
He reached for a karaage bento with a thirty percent sticker.Another hand reached at the same time. Their fingers touched the lid. Both froze.
Tooshiro looked up and Fumiko Yamaguchi looked back.
For a second, neither of them spoke. The supermarket jingle continued overhead, far too cheerful for the emotional damage it was witnessing.
Fumiko was not dressed like the finance worker from Shinjuku. She wore a soft off-white cardigan over a dark green top, with loose beige pants and flat shoes. Her hair was down but tucked behind one ear, her makeup light or absent. A tote bag hung from her shoulder, and her basket contained milk, yogurt, a pack of mushrooms, two curry roux boxes, and one chocolate pudding.
One pudding. Tooshiro noticed because his own basket contained one pudding. The same brand. This felt intimate in a way society had not prepared him for.
“Yamaguchi-san,” he said.
“Senda-san,” she said.
They both still had one hand on the karaage bento. A woman behind them cleared her throat.
Tooshiro let go first with the speed of a man releasing stolen treasure, “Sorry. You take it.”
“No, it’s fine. You reached first.”
“I think we reached at the same time.”
“Then you were closer.”
“You had better angle.”
“That is not a real standard.”
“It is in delivery.”
“In finance, shared claims require negotiation.”
“Then I surrender.”
“That is also not negotiation.”
The old woman near the pickled daikon looked at them with interest. Tooshiro became aware that they were having a debate over discounted fried chicken in public. Fumiko seemed to realize it at the same time. Her cheeks warmed slightly, and she lifted the bento from the shelf.
“We could split it,” she suggested.
Tooshiro’s brain seemed to short-circuit.
The old woman’s eyebrows rose with the subtle joy of a woman receiving unexpected entertainment.
“Split it?” Tooshiro repeated.
“If you want. There’s a small park nearby, right? Unless you already had dinner plans.”
Dinner plans?! He almost laughed. His dinner plan had been this plastic container and shame, “No plans,” he tried to say casually.
“Then we can split it. It would be wasteful to start a supermarket incident over karaage.”
“Right. Avoiding an incident is best for the people.”
“Public safety is an important issue.”
“Quite important indeed.”
The old woman picked up a different bento and walked away slowly, probably disappointed that no further romance crime had occurred.
They continued shopping together by accident, which was different from deciding to shop together. That distinction mattered for about twelve seconds. Fumiko picked up rice balls. Tooshiro picked up bottled tea. She asked if he liked cabbage salad. He said he respected cabbage but did not seek it out. She stared at him for that. He added a salad to the basket out of shame.
At the register, they split the cost with the seriousness of people finalizing a business merger. Fumiko insisted on paying for the pudding because she had chosen the split plan. Tooshiro argued that pudding was not part of karaage negotiations. The cashier watched them with a polite expression that had clearly seen worse.
Outside, the air smelled like wet pavement even though the rain still had not committed. The small park sat behind the supermarket, barely large enough to deserve the name, with two benches, a vending machine, a drinking fountain, and a set of swings that looked like they had heard many adult problems after midnight.
They chose the bench under a streetlamp to see clearly. For a few minutes, they focused on the practical work of dividing dinner. Fumiko opened the bento. Tooshiro broke apart the wooden chopsticks. She arranged the karaage evenly. He tried to give her the better pieces, which she noticed immediately.
“Don’t do that,” she instructed.
“Do what?”
“Give me the larger pieces.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being random.”
“You are bad at random.”
“How can someone be bad at random?”
“You made all the best pieces face my direction.”
“That could happen naturally.”
“It did not.”
He looked down at the bento. She was right. He had made a tiny fried chicken offering without realizing, “Oh… then let’s redistribute.”
“Thank you,”she said as she moved one piece back toward him with the calm authority of a person correcting financial misconduct and the two began to eat.
The karaage was still warm, crispy at the edges, and salty enough to make the bottled tea necessary. It was not fancy. It was not romantic in any planned way. They were sitting on a bench near a vending machine, sharing a discount bento under a streetlamp while a crow eyed them from a nearby tree like it was considering tax collection.
Still, Tooshiro felt his chest loosen for the first time all day.
Fumiko took a small bite and looked at the plastic container, “This is better than I thought it would be.”
“Late supermarket food has power.”
“Dangerous power.”
“I’ve built half my adult life on it.”
“That explains some things.”
He looked at her, “Some?”
She smiled into her tea, “I’m being polite.”
“There it is. Finance cruelty.”
“Delivery exaggeration.”
“Writerly, maybe.”
She glanced at him, “Ah. Writerly.”
He froze for half a second, then forced himself to chew like a normal person, but she did not press.
The quiet settled again, but it was not the easy café quiet from when they first met outside of work conditions. This one had something tucked inside it thanks to the Shinjuku street, Haruto, and her answer. He delivers to my apartment sometimes. The polite bow. The professional distance. All of it sat between them in the plastic glow of the vending machine.
Fumiko spoke first, “About yesterday.”
Tooshiro almost dropped his chopsticks. He saved them badly, which somehow made it worse. One chopstick slipped between his fingers, bounced off his knee, and landed on the bench.
He stared at it, Fumiko stared at it, and the crow stared too.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You dropped your chopstick.”
“That was unrelated.”
“It happened exactly when I said ‘about yesterday’ though.”
“Coincidence.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“I’m very normal.”
“That’s a sentence never said by normal people.”
He picked up the chopstick and immediately realized he could not use it now. Fumiko reached into her shopping bag and produced another wrapped pair from the supermarket.
Tooshiro looked at them.
“You have backup chopsticks?”
“I planned dinner like an adult.”
“That was a direct attack.”
“It was a gentle observation.”
He accepted them, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He broke the new chopsticks apart, buying time as they split unevenly.
Fumiko looked at them, “That somehow tracks.”
“Please don’t assign symbolism to my chopsticks.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“Maybe a little.”
He sighed, but the corner of his mouth lifted. It was easier to breathe when they were like this. Still awkward, but familiar now. Weirdly familiar, considering how new it was.
Fumiko set her chopsticks down on the bento lid, “I didn’t like how I introduced you.”
He paused his chewing and looked at her.
She kept her eyes on the food, “Or didn’t introduce you. I said you deliver to my apartment sometimes. It was true, but it felt…”
“Normal,” he said.
“No.”
“It was.”
“No,” she said again, quieter. “It was… smaller than what I meant.”
Tooshiro looked at the nearby vending machine, gathering his thoughts. The rows of drinks glowed red, blue, and green. Hot coffee. Cold tea. Sparkling water. A canned corn soup that he always considered and never trusted.
“It was your coworkers,” he said, “You don’t have to explain anything.”
“I know.”
“And I am technically your delivery guy.”
“You’re also the person I talked to for two hours at Café Hidamari. More than acquaintances, that's for sure.”
“It was just about the book though.”
“Yes. About the book,” her voice turned dry, “And pudding, office receipts, divine abandonment, writing, my childhood moon kingdom, and your sister’s threats.”
He winced, “I forgot the moon kingdom was classified.”
“It remains classified!”
“Too late. It’s in the archives.”
“Destroy the archives!”
“I’ll ask Shin Kaidou. He likes destroying monarchies,” Tooshiro quipped. That made Fumiko laugh, quick and soft, as some of the tightness left her shoulders.
Then she looked at him again, “You acted strange earlier though.”
“I did not.”
“Senda-san.”
“I acted normal.”
“You looked at canned tomatoes for almost a full minute.”
He turned slowly, “How long were you in the store?”
“Long enough.”
“You saw that?”
“Yes.”
“I was thinking.”
“About tomatoes?”
“About dinner.”
“You put them back.”
“The dinner idea was rejected.”
Her mouth twitched, “You also picked up spinach, looked betrayed by it, and returned it.”
“Spinach asks a lot.”
“It does not.”
“It wilts judgmentally.”
“You are deflecting.”
“I am doing it well.”
“You are not.”
He leaned back against the bench and covered his face with one hand, “I saw you with people from work. That’s all.”
“Haruto-san.”
He did not like how quickly the name arrived in the air. Mature people did not react to names. Names were normal. Names were labels society used so people did not have to point.
His face reacted anyway and Fumiko noticed, “He’s my senior,” she informed.
“I figured that was the case.”
“It was just a team dinner.”
“You said that.”
“It really was.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He lowered his hand and looked at her. She seemed genuinely worried now. Not guilty. Not defensive. Worried that he had misunderstood something she had not known how to say.
That made him feel worse, “I know,” he said, and this time he meant it, “I’m not upset. I don’t have a reason to be upset.”
“That’s not the same as not being upset.”
“Well… finance is terrifying.”
“That’s not finance. That’s just language.”
“Still terrifying.”
She waited as Tooshiro looked down at the bento, now half empty, “It was just weird. Seeing you there. In that world.”
“My office world?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not that special.”
“To you, maybe.”
“To anyone.”
He shook his head, “You looked like you belonged.”
“I was walking to an izakaya with coworkers.”
“Still.”
“What does that mean?”
He tried to find a way to say it without sounding pathetic, “You looked like someone with a real adult life.”
Fumiko frowned, “You have a real adult life.”
“I carried a box of cat litter up four floors today and apologized to a mailbox.”
“Why did you apologize to a mailbox?”
“It was in the way.”
“The mailbox was surely stationary.”
“That’s what made it worse.”
She looked like she wanted to laugh and argue at the same time, “Senda-san, your life is not less real, or of less worth because your job has stairs.”
“That sounds like something a nice person says.”
“Do I seem nice?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then this is one of those times.”
He let out a small breath, “He seemed… um, polished.”
“Haruto-san?”
“Yeah.”
“He is.”
“See?”
“That doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“What do I think it means?”
She looked at him for a long moment, “That polished is the same as close.”
That shut him up.
A train passed somewhere beyond the buildings, the sound low and distant. The park lights flickered once. The crow decided they had nothing worth stealing and flew away, which felt judgmental.
Fumiko picked up her tea and held it with both hands, “At work, Haruto-san is kind. Reliable. Yes he can dress nice and have a certain charm for some. But he also notices when people are overloaded and need help. So I respect him. A lot.”
Tooshiro nodded, “That’s good.”
“It is.”
“Good.”
“It doesn’t change what I said at the café.”
He looked at her while her eyes were on the tea bottle, and not him, “I don’t talk about fantasy there. I wouldn’t talk about The Kingslayer King. Or anything that makes me feel like I’m showing who I really am too much. Yesterday, at dinner, someone mentioned a popular movie adaptation and I almost said something, but… I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I could already hear myself becoming an office anecdote.”
“That fantasy girl from finance?” she smiled, but it was small, “Something like that anyways… Someone to be talked about rather than taken seriously if that makes sense.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “I think I can understand that… but that sucks.”
“It’s not all that tragic.”
“I didn’t say tragic. I said it sucks. Not being able to be yourself.”
She blinked, then laughed under her breath, “I guess that might be more accurate.”
“I am pretty well known for my precision.”
“You apologized to a mailbox.”
“It deserved the closure.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling again.
They finished the karaage slowly. The salad remained mostly untouched between them, accepted by both as a symbolic purchase rather than food. Fumiko ate one forkful, made a face she tried to hide, and placed it back down.
Tooshiro pointed, “See!”
“It’s bitter.”
“It’s cabbage!”
“Cabbage can be bitter.”
“You bought it in the end.”
“And you looked ashamed!”
“I was ashamed!”
“But I was supporting your growth.”
“My growth tastes like wet paper.”
She covered her mouth as she laughed, and this time the sound was open enough that an elderly man walking past the park glanced over, smiled faintly, and continued on. Fumiko noticed and lowered her hand, embarrassed. Tooshiro pretended not to see.
It was becoming one of his favorite things. Not the embarrassment itself. The fact that she had these little unguarded moments and tried to gather them back afterward, like papers scattered by wind. He wanted to tell her she did not have to, but he didn't, because he had already used up his bravery by discussing cabbage.
Fumiko reached into her bag and pulled out the chocolate pudding, “I bought this.”
“I noticed.”
“You noticed?”
“We bought the same one.”
He pulled his pudding from his own bag. They both looked at the matching cups.
Fumiko’s eyes narrowed, “This feels like evidence.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Shared taste?”
“Possibly poor nutrition.”
“That too.”
They did not have spoons. This realization arrived with heavy silence.
Fumiko checked her bag. Tooshiro checked his. Nothing. The supermarket cashier had given chopsticks but no spoons.
Tooshiro looked toward the supermarket, “I can go back.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, I’ll get spoons.”
“We can save them.”
“Pudding this good should not be put off.”
“That sounds like a personal philosophy.”
“It is.”
He stood, then immediately sat back down because his phone started buzzing.
Daiki. Of course… The timing was so exact it felt scripted by someone with no respect for dessert.
Tooshiro answered, “What do you want?”
“Wow,” Daiki said through the phone, “A loving greeting.”
“I’m busy.”
“Oho.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“I know your oho-s.”
“They do have their own range.”
“What do you need?”
Daiki’s voice shifted, still casual but edged with actual need “Tanabe called. Kudo left his route pouch in Van Three and I’m already home with my kid in the bath. You live closer to the depot. Can you swing by and drop it in the night box? He needs it for early shift.”
Tooshiro closed his eyes. The depot was not far by bike, but it was enough. Fifteen minutes there. Maybe twenty back. The park bench, the pudding, Fumiko sitting beside him in soft evening light, all of it began slipping into the adult machine of obligations.
“Now?” Tooshiro asked.
“Unfortunately. If Kudo shows up at five-thirty without his route pouch, Tanabe will make the face.”
“That face should be illegal.”
“It is not, which is why society is failing.”
Tooshiro looked at Fumiko. She watched him with mild curiosity and something else, maybe resignation. Like she had already guessed what was happening because most adults recognized interruption by tone alone.
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll do it.”
“You’re a hero.”
“I’m not.”
“You are to Kudo, and Kudo has low standards.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. Are you with someone?”
“No.”
Fumiko raised an eyebrow as Tooshiro turned slightly away, “No one relevant to this call.”
Daiki went silent. Then, with terrible softness, he said, “Door 305?”
Tooshiro hung up. He sat there for one second, holding the phone.
Fumiko’s eyebrow remained raised, “No one relevant?”
“I panicked.”
“I see.”
“That was my coworker.”
“Daiki-san?”
“You remember his name?”
“You mentioned him.”
“He would be too powerful if he knew that.”
“What happened?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, “I need to go to the depot. Someone left a route pouch in a van.”
“A route pouch?”
“Keys, slips, little things that become big things for us sometimes.”
“Do you have to go now?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you should.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
The words were simple. She meant them. Probably. That did not make them less disappointing in the sense of this moment ending.
They began cleaning up, folding the plastic bag around the empty bento, placing the untouched salad back into Tooshiro’s bag because apparently he had become its legal guardian. The puddings remained unopened.
Fumiko picked hers up, “Next time, spoons first.”
He looked at her, “Next time?”
She glanced away, “If there is a next time.”
“There… should be.”
Her cheeks warmed slightly, but she did not retreat from it, “Then spoons first.”
“Agreed.”
They stood near the park entrance, both holding supermarket bags like the world’s least glamorous date props. Not a date. Still not a date. The word hovered nearby wearing a fake mustache, but neither of them acknowledged it.
Fumiko adjusted her tote, “Thank you for splitting dinner.”
“Thank you for preventing the karaage incident.”
“It would have been embarrassing for both of us.”
“Mostly me.”
“Yes,” she said, “Mostly you.”
He laughed, then his phone buzzed again.
Daiki: Did you die?
Tooshiro typed one-handed.
Tooshiro: Not yet.
Daiki: Fast please. My son is trying to drink bathwater.
Tooshiro stared at the message, then showed it to Fumiko without thinking.
She read it and made a small sound that was almost a laugh and almost concern, “Is he okay?”
“Daiki or the child?”
“Both?”
“One is debatable.”
“That poor family.”
“They chose him.”
“Did they?”
“His wife did. The child had no choice in the matter.”
Fumiko laughed again, then looked down the street toward her apartment direction, “Go save the route pouch.”
“Right.”
“And maybe the bathwater situation.”
“That’s beyond my rank.”
He started to step away, then stopped, “Yamaguchi-san.”
“Yes?”
He had no plan for what to say. That was becoming a theme for him. He wanted to tell her he had not meant to act strange. He wanted to tell her seeing her at work had made him feel like he was standing outside a window. He wanted to ask if she had enjoyed the dinner. He did not want to ask that at all.
What came out was, “The pudding thing doesn’t expire until next week.”
She looked at him, then smiled, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
“Very practical.”
“I’m known for that.”
“You apologized to a mailbox.”
“I’m going now.”
“Good luck, Senda-san.”
“Good night, Yamaguchi-san.”
He jogged toward his apartment building first to grab his bike, supermarket bag knocking against his leg, the cursed salad inside whispering of failed self-improvement. Behind him, Fumiko remained near the park entrance for a moment, watching him go.
Her phone buzzed before she reached the corner.
Senda Tooshiro: I forgot to say I wasn’t upset.
She stopped under the streetlamp.
Another message appeared.
Senda Tooshiro: I mean I was weird, but not upset. There is a difference according to no professional source.
Fumiko smiled down at the screen.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: You were very weird.
Senda Tooshiro: Thank you for your honesty.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: I wasn’t upset either btw
She hesitated before sending more.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: But I didn’t like making you feel like you were only my delivery worker.
The typing bubble appeared almost immediately. Stopped. Appeared again. Stopped and then finally:
Senda Tooshiro: Technically, I AM your delivery worker.
Fumiko rolled her eyes.
Senda Tooshiro: But thank you.
A moment later:
Senda Tooshiro: Also, I’m glad I’m not only that.
The street around her seemed to soften at the edges. A bicycle passed. Somewhere nearby, a train crossed the tracks. The supermarket doors opened and closed behind her, releasing a bright little burst of jingle into the evening. Fumiko typed carefully.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: No. You’re not only that. :)
She stared at the message for a second after sending it, then placed the phone against her chest like an idiot. The realization made her lower it immediately. Absolutely not. We are not doing that in public.
She walked home with her pudding in one bag, curry roux in another, and a warmth under her ribs that had nothing to do with the humid night air.
Across Nakano, Tooshiro pedaled toward the depot with too much speed and not enough dignity. The supermarket bag bounced in his bike basket. The salad survived each bump with grim determination. His phone sat in his pocket, heavy with the message he had already reread twice at red lights even though rereading while biking was dangerous and probably how romance protagonists met trucks in darker genres.
You’re not only that. :)
:)
He reached the Nekonoha Express depot out of breath and found the route pouch exactly where Daiki said it would be, inside Van Three, under the passenger seat, because Kudo apparently believed important objects enjoyed hiding. Tooshiro dropped it into the night box, took a photo as proof, and sent it to Daiki.
Daiki: You are beautiful.
Tooshiro: Tell your wife that.
Daiki: She knows. She married me for my judgment.
Tooshiro: Nah, she married you despite it.
Daiki: Fair Enough.
Tooshiro put the phone away and leaned against the bike for a moment. The depot lot was quiet at night. No carts rolling. No drivers shouting. No scanners beeping like impatient birds. The vans sat in neat rows, white shapes under orange security lights, sleeping until morning when the city would fill them with everyone else’s lives again.
His bag rustled in the bike basket and he looked down at the salad, “You and I both know this isn’t happening tonight.”
The salad offered no defense. He laughed and started the ride home. By the time he returned to his apartment, it was nearly ten. He put the salad in the fridge, where it joined the lonely egg and immediately made the place look more responsible than it deserved. Then he set the pudding on the low table and stared at it.
No spoon. He had forgotten to get one. After everything! He stood there in silence for three seconds, then laughed so hard he had to sit down.
His phone buzzed again.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: I hope you remembered spoons.
Tooshiro looked at the pudding. Then at the kitchen drawer, where there were chopsticks, one fork, and no clean spoons. He typed back.
Senda Tooshiro: Of course.
He paused then deleted it.
Senda Tooshiro: No...
Her reply came fast.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: I knew it.
Senda Tooshiro: This is not my finest hour.
Yamaguchi Fumiko: Save it for next time.
There it was again. Next time.
Tooshiro sat on the floor with his back against the futon and stared at those words until the screen dimmed. He tapped it awake. Next time.
Outside, Nakano hummed through the walls. Somewhere upstairs, the revenge chair dragged across the floor again. Down the street, a motorbike passed. His laptop waited on the table, still closed, but for once it did not feel like a judge. It felt like something waiting patiently. He opened it.
Chapter Ten appeared. Quintin was still mid-conversation, stalled by his author’s complicated feelings and poor grocery planning. Tooshiro read the last line he had written and placed his fingers on the keyboard.
For a moment, he thought about Haruto in his suit, about Fumiko in the public world, about the way she said polished was not the same as close. He thought about her separating karaage with financial precision. He thought about matching pudding cups with no spoons, which felt like the kind of detail he would reject in fiction for being too cute unless it happened to him first.
Then he wrote. Not much. Only a few paragraphs. But the words appeared on the page.
Across town, Fumiko sat at her own small dining table, curry ingredients still untouched in the kitchen, pudding safely in the refrigerator because she did own spoons but had decided not to use one. Not tonight. It felt strangely important to wait.
Her phone rested beside her notebook.
She opened the notebook to a blank page and wrote at the top:
The Kingslayer King, Questions for Shin Kaidou.
Under it, she wrote:
Does Selena trust Quintin, or does she only want to?
She looked at the question. Then added another beneath it.
Why does Senda-san understand the story so well?
She tapped the pen once against the paper. Twice. Then closed the notebook before the third question could form.
In her apartment, the refrigerator hummed. Outside her window, the city moved. She leaned back in her chair and pressed her hands over her face. This is precarious.
Then, only a second later, she smiled.
28Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7bX2aq4fYS
and then Add to home screen.