A loud ringing sound made him squeeze his eyes shut. Hirosue pulled his blanket over his head, but the bothersome noise did not stop. Finally, he reluctantly got up and searched for the source of the sound. He grabbed the alarm clock sitting on the table. He fiddled with it, not knowing how to turn it off, until the sound stopped by itself.

The room was unfamiliar to him. With the clock in hand, he took in his surroundings. Matsuoka was curled up in a blanket at the foot of the sofa he had been sleeping on just earlier. He wondered what the man was doing there, and remembered that he had visited Matsuoka last night and they had eaten cake and drunk wine. His memories of them eating cake together grew hazy partway through, and near the end, they were a complete blur.

He peered at the clock and saw it was six in the morning. The first trains were already running.

“Matsuoka,” he called, but there was no response. No matter how many times he repeated the man’s name, it was no use. He remembered back when he had still been dating Matsuoka when he was Yoko Eto. Hirosue used to give him a wake-up call every morning because he had trouble getting up.

“Matsuoka, wake up.”

When Hirosue gave his shoulder a shake, Matsuoka’s eyelids finally fluttered and opened a crack.

“Oh… morning.”

“I’m going home now.”

Matsuoka rubbed his eyes with both hands like a child and looked at the wall clock.

“Oh, six o’clock,” he said. “That should give you enough time to go home and change, right?”

When Matsuoka set the alarm clock, it seemed he had calculated the time it would take for Hirosue to go back to his apartment. Matsuoka was considerate even in the details.

“Sorry about yesterday. Looks like I got a little drunk,” Hirosue apologized.

Matsuoka’s face relaxed into a sleepy grin. “Don’t worry about it. I had fun.”

“Fun?”

Matsuoka gave a big yawn and propped himself up.

“My first night of being thirty was such a whirlwind of happenings. Getting an e-mail out of the blue, rushing home, eating cake… all that.”

Matsuoka chuckled as if to remember something. “You were talking in your sleep, Hirosue.”

“Huh? What was I saying?”

“I’m not telling. It was pretty funny.” Matsuoka hunched his shoulders and grinned mischievously. His face overlapped with Yoko Eto’s smile, and Hirosue felt his heart skip a beat. Matsuoka bore barely any resemblance to Yoko Eto now; his hair and clothes were completely different from hers. But in unexpected moments like these, her image came fleetingly to the surface.

“Now I’m curious,” Hirosue insisted. “Tell me.”

“It wasn’t much. We’ll just say it’s mine to keep to myself and enjoy.”

“Oh, come on. That makes me want to know even more.” Hirosue was desperate, but Matsuoka only smiled smugly.

“If you don’t go home soon, you won’t have time to change.”

Hirosue somewhat grudgingly took his coat from Matsuoka at his urging. It wasn’t wrinkled at all. Perhaps Matsuoka had put it on a hanger for him.

“Thanks for yesterday,” Matsuoka said. “We should go out to eat sometime.”

Matsuoka saw him to the door. Hirosue’s shoelaces were loose, so he bent over at the doorway to tie them.

“This happened before, didn’t it? Except in opposite positions,” he heard a voice say above his head.

“Really?”

“When I still used to crossdress, remember I spent the night in your apartment on your birthday? That’s what this reminded me of.”

Hirosue recalled those bittersweet memories. He had been in love with Yoko Eto, Matsuoka’s crossdressed form―so uncontrollably in love that he had spent the whole night holding her in his arms. Perhaps the situations were the same, but his feelings were different―completely different, even though it was with the same person. In fact, Hirosue didn’t feel happy at all about his current situation.

“See you, then.” Hirosue dipped his head slightly and exited the apartment. The freezing air sliced his cheek. As soon as the door closed behind him, his mindset changed. No lingering feeling about being at Matsuoka’s place trailed him. He began to think about things like whether he would have time to go home and shower.

“Hirosue, wait a second!” He heard a voice call above him just as he left the building. He looked up to see Matsuoka leaning over the railing of the pa.s.sage on the fifth floor.

“I’m coming down. Wait there for a second.”

Hirosue stopped, wondering what could be the matter. Matsuoka came bursting out of the building not even a minute later.

“I’m glad I caught you. I found this left behind in the apartment. It’s yours, isn’t it?”

Matsuoka was offering him a small brown paper bag. Hirosue remembered leaving it in his coat pocket. It must have fallen out at some point.

“You can have it.”

“Huh?” Matsuoka tilted his head.

“Actually, never mind. I’ll take it.” The paper bag came back into Hirosue’s hands. But even if he took it home, he knew he would have no use for this kind of thing. Hirosue offered the paper bag to Matsuoka again. Matsuoka looked confused to have something he had returned pushed right back at him.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“It’s a cell phone strap. You can have it, if you want.”

“Cell phone strap?”

“I didn’t know what kind you’d like. And it’s cheap. If you don’t like it, you can throw it away.”

Matsuoka’s face practically glowed.

“What?” he exclaimed. “You bought this for me?”

“It’s really not much.”

Wow, oh, geez, Matsuoka continued to gush under his breath as he carefully stroked the brown paper bag.

“Can I open it?”

“Um… sure.”

The strap made a light clinking sound as it dropped from the overturned bag into Matsuoka’s hand. What had looked decently tasteful at night now looked even more flimsy in the revealing rays of the morning sunlight.

“Hey, it looks slick,” Matsuoka remarked. “I love this kind of design.”

Matsuoka looked happy, but to Hirosue, it seemed like the man was just acting like it to be polite. He couldn’t stand being there any longer.

“I’ll be going, then.”

“Thanks, Hirosue. See you.”

Hirosue kept walking without turning back once. Every time he remembered Matsuoka’s overjoyed face, he was p.r.i.c.ked from all sides with regret and guilt. I should have gotten a proper present, he thought. I shouldn’t have given him such a poor excuse for a gift.

In the train, he sat down across from an office worker who was either commuting to work or heading home after working all night. The man’s half-open mouth reminded him of Matsuoka pointing out that he had been talking in his sleep. Matsuoka must have been awake if he had heard him talking. He felt quite embarra.s.sed at the thought that Matsuoka had seen him drunk and pa.s.sed out.

That night, he had begged Yoko Eto to stay against her will, and had held her in his arms for the whole night. He had been so happy to have that slender and beautiful body close to him, he’d felt like he was dreaming, and he had ended up not catching a wink of sleep that night. Perhaps Matsuoka had felt the same way he did.

His chest suddenly tightened when he remembered those happy days. Yoko Eto and Matsuoka were the same person, but there was simply no way he could convince himself that the Matsuoka, with his goatee, who was a man no matter how you looked at him, was the same person as the woman whom he had worshipped like a G.o.ddess. Perhaps it wasn’t that he wasn’t convinced―perhaps he didn’t want to be convinced.

He didn’t hate Matsuoka as a man. He could also tell that Matsuoka cared for him devotedly and deeply. Hirosue didn’t deny that sometimes he found it at once pitiful and endearing. But nowhere could he find the same sort of pa.s.sion towards Matsuoka which he had harboured towards Yoko Eto.

Hirosue’s vague resistance towards Matsuoka remained, yet if he was invited, he still went out to eat with Matsuoka. He didn’t want to use a lie as an excuse to refuse, and besides, he didn’t have to be conscious about his and Matsuoka’s positions as long they didn’t talk about work.

Hirosue began actively looking for a job, and on weekdays he took a few hours off work to be interviewed by a number of companies he had set his eyes on. The head clerk accepted his irregular work schedule without complaint when Hirosue explained truthfully what he intended to do. Instead, Hirosue went to work on weekends to make up for time taken off during the week. As a result, more often than not, he had to turn down Matsuoka’s invitations.

Despite his efforts, each and every interview he attended resulted in rejection. His lack of qualifications and his age―being in his mid-thirties―seemed to be the biggest obstacles. ‘If only you were in your twenties’―he didn’t know how many times he had heard those words tumble from the lips of his interviewer.

That day during work, he got a call from a company he had been interviewed for. Hirosue was a firm believer of separating his work from his private life, and he never sent personal e-mails or made private phone calls during work hours. But the situation he was in didn’t afford him that option anymore. Hirosue grabbed his cell phone and hastily ran out into the hallway. ―The news was one of rejection. The call hit him the hardest, especially since he had been quite confident about his interview. After that, he found it hard to focus on his work at all.

Hirosue returned to his apartment, still feeling depressed, and found that a letter had come in the mail. A pretty stamp with the Chinese character for “celebration” was pasted on the envelope. The mailer was Shimizu, a childhood friend from primary school, and the letter was a wedding invitation. Hirosue remembered when he had gone back to his hometown for the new year, Shimizu had told him that he had proposed to his girlfriend.

There was a written message inside. ‘I’m getting married. How about you?’ it read. Last new year, he had met up with Shimizu and told him about Yoko Eto. She was a beautiful woman, almost too good for a man like him, he had said, and had confessed that he was thinking of asking her to marry him.

“Lucky you,” Shimizu had said enviously, who didn’t have a girlfriend at the time. One year later, here he was in this state, and his childhood friend was now set to get married. How ironic it was.

The following evening after receiving the invitation from his childhood friend, Hirosue got a call from his older brother in the country. His baby shower gift, which had been out of stock for a while due to its popularity, had finally arrived. His brother had called to thank him as well as to catch up. Eventually the topic of Hirosue’s childhood friend came up in their conversation.

“Say, remember Shimizu, that boy you used to be close with? I heard he’s getting married, huh?”

“Yeah. I got an invitation.” Hirosue talked to his brother in the phone while walking to his apartment from the bus stop.

“I remember you saying last new year that you had a girl you wanted to marry.”

“I told you, she broke up with me.” It was a topic that was insensitively brought up again and again, even though he didn’t want to discuss it. He was starting to get sick of it.

“Aren’t you dating anyone right now?” his brother asked.

“No,” Hirosue said shortly. He couldn’t be bothered to give a proper answer. “It’s not that simple finding someone new.” His brother apparently picked up on his irritable mood.

“What’re you so p.i.s.sed off about?” he grumbled, then suddenly said, “Hey, are you sure you aren’t setting your standards too high?”

“I’m not.”

“But you said your ex-girlfriend was pretty, right? As they say, it takes three days to tire of a beauty.1 If the girl has a great personality, who cares if her looks are so-so?”

“She was pretty, but I didn’t fall in love with her for her looks.”

She was beautiful, but that wasn’t all. She was temperamental, like a cat, but gentle; she had her own firm opinions, and she wasn’t afraid to speak up when she had to―she had that strict side about her, too.

The memory of her smile overlapped with Matsuoka’s face, causing a guilty jolt in Hirosue’s stomach. That day, he had unexpectedly seen the vestige of Yoko Eto in Matsuoka’s smile. Perhaps it was wrong to call it a vestige; Yoko Eto and Matsuoka were, after all, the same person.

A doubtful question flitted across his heart. He had not fallen in love solely with Yoko Eto’s looks. Her doll-like beauty hadn’t been the only thing he was attracted to. But if it wasn’t her face―if he had been drawn to her heart―then why wasn’t he able to see Matsuoka, who was essentially Yoko, romantically? ―Hirosue arrived at the same place he had arrived at dozens of times when he asked himself this question. It was because Matsuoka was a man.

“Do you plan to be alone forever?”

His brothers’s voice dragged Hirosue out of his thoughts and into the present.

“Not really, but…”

“If you’re going to get married, I suggest you do it soon. I don’t want to sound like our old man, but if you have kids past forty, you’ll hit retirement before they reach age of majority.”

He was being told precisely what he was dreading to hear.

“…I know that.”

“But personally, I think staying single is a choice, too. As long as you have a solid living foundation and you’ve got money saved up for retirement.”

At the last minute of the conversation, he was met with a heavy figurative blow to the stomach. Hirosue hung up the phone with his mood none the lighter. It was painful to be told to build a solid living right after getting a layoff notice.

Hirosue’s mood remained in the gutters even after he arrived back at his apartment. He had just picked up his wallet, intending to go out to buy some liquor, when he got an e-mail from Matsuoka. Matsuoka’s work had finished early, and he was wondering if Hirosue would like to go out for dinner. Hirosue figured that being alone would only fill his head with unneeded worries. Since he felt like drinking, anyway, he answered that he would go.

When Hirosue arrived at their meeting spot at the station, Matsuoka was already there. He was standing off in a corner of the ticket stands, staring intently at his cell phone. Dangling from his silver phone was the cheap cell phone strap that Hirosue had given to him. Just the sight of it made him feel guilty.

That day, on Matsuoka’s request, they went to a quieter restaurant instead of their usualizakaya. It was a little pricier, but the tables were neatly sectioned off, and the chatter wasn’t as clamorous.

“Did you have a bad day today?”

Hirosue, who had been distractedly prodding his jijim, lifted his head. Perhaps Matsuoka had noticed that his responses sounded absent-minded.

“Not really.”

“Alright. I was just wondering. You seem kind of down.”

“I’m fine,” he said, but his mood didn’t get any lighter. The earlier conversation with his brother lingered stubbornly in his head. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to get married; he just didn’t have someone that kind of person in his life.

“Say, you’re going to work on your days off a lot lately, aren’t you?”

Hirosue’s weekends were consumed by work to make up for the time taken off on weekdays for his job search. All the interviews he had shuffled his schedule around for had ended in miserable defeat. Labour without rewards only increased his exhaustion. He fell into a spiral of self-loathing with every refusal. I’m not good enough. In the end, I’m just not good enough.

“It’s just really busy since we have to manage on a staff shortage,” he said, using an offhand excuse since he couldn’t bring himself to say the truth.

“Then maybe it’s not a good time to say this, but… are you free next Sat.u.r.day and Sunday?”

After his most recent refusal from the company for which he’d had the highest hopes, Hirosue had gotten sick of sending in CVs and attending interviews, and had stopped his job search altogether. As such, he had following weekend off like he usually did.

“Is there something going on?”

“I was wondering if you’d want to go to the hot springs,” Matsuoka said, glancing up at him furtively.

“Hot springs?” Hirosue tilted his head.

“There’s this hot spring resort I’ve been wanting to go to. It’s about a three-hour drive from here. We can stay the night and relax, or if you’d rather not, we can just make it a day trip. Oh, and I’ll drive.”

The hot springs sounded like an attractive idea. Hirosue liked large baths to begin with. He wanted to relax and forget, even for a short time, about the difficulty of finding employment and the pressure from his older brother. One thing that nagged him was that it would be with Matsuoka. If they were staying the night, did that mean he hadthose kinds of expectations? But he was also willing to go on a day trip, so perhaps he had no ulterior motives.

As Hirosue continued to contemplate, Matsuoka hesitantly spoke up.

“…If it bothers you to be with me, we can go to the baths at different times,” he said.

If Matsuoka was seeking consent for something as innocent as bathing together, it was unlikely that he was expecting s.e.x, or anything of that sort.

Hirosue’s fears that Matsuoka would try to make advances on him turned out to be needless worries after all. Once that nugget of uncertainty was removed, a mini-trip to the hot springs seemed like a good change of scene.

“A trip wouldn’t hurt once in a while, I guess.”

“Really?” Matsuoka looked attentively at him, his face like a child’s the day before a school field trip. “So, do you want to make it a day trip or a weekend trip?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Can I make it a weekend trip?”

“Sure.”

“Awesome,” Matsuoka murmured, making a triumphant fist with this right hand. “See, I actually have my eye on a few hot spring inns. All of them come with really luxurious dinners. I want the dinner, so a weekend trip it is. I’ll take care of the reservations and all that.”

It seemed like he had been doing all sorts of research on the Internet. “My first choice has an outdoor bath,” Matsuoka chattered excitedly. “My second choice comes with Tajima beef shabu-shabu, and the room is huge. Man, I don’t know which one to pick.”

Hirosue found himself struggling to keep up with Matsuoka’s high spirits. He was excited to go to the hot springs, but not as much as Matsuoka.

He honestly wondered what the man could be so happy about. Was it because he was going on an outing with Hirosue? What could he possibly enjoy about being in the company of a man who was dull, clumsy at conversation, and couldn’t even find a new job?

Hirosue figured Matsuoka was popular among the girls. He had also heard that Matsuoka’s former lover was a woman. For him, it probably didn’t have to be a man―so why had he chosen him? What was so good about a pathetic, boring man like him?

I’m not all that you think I am, Hirosue muttered quietly in his heart.

Koishikawa Laboratory only had four administrative staff including the head clerk. They usually had five personnel, but one member had taken an extended sick leave, so essentially they had to manage the same amount of work with one less person. Just when they entered March, one of the administrative girls was hospitalized with a broken hip from s...o...b..arding. The loss. .h.i.t them hard, as they were barely managing with four people. To make things worse, another administrative staff requested sick leave two days after that. He had been diagnosed with early-stage cancer, and he had been told that he had a high chance of complete recovery if he had an operation early. His hospital stay including the surgery would be three weeks, which happened to overlap with the end of the fiscal year. Two people leaving at this time of year meant dire circ.u.mstances. “Critical hit” was an understatement―the department was practically a sunken ship. But since this worker’s matter was one of life and death, even the head clerk hadn’t been able to tell him to hold off his operation until April.

Hirosue had no time to be job searching anymore. It was almost the end of the fiscal year, yet they still had mountains of work to do. The head clerk was also waging a desperate battle with the doc.u.ments, but the work was barely getting done. Consecutive shifts past midnight did not diminish their workload; in fact, it kept on increasing. Just when they thought they had reached the end of their rope, divine help came in the form of a temporary staff from headquarters who would fill in for a limited time until the end of the fiscal year. It was Hayama.

Hayama had been sent to Koishikawa Laboratory last year, as well, as a pinch hitter. Since the temp would be filling in for two people, Human Resources had apparently done some thinking for once and sent over someone who was experienced.

Although there were no feelings left between them, Hayama was still someone Hirosue had once dated. If they were to work together, they would be spending long periods of time in each other’s company. This was different from running into each other on the street and having a short chat. Hirosue worried that things would be awkward, but it was a needless concern. Hayama herself did not seem to be conscious of Hirosue in that way at all. He had been the only one endlessly brooding over it. Seeing as how she had found someone new soon after breaking up, perhaps women were simply more decisive in cutting loose and moving on.

It was the second day of Hayama’s a.s.signment to the lab. The head clerk had left at six in the evening, citing an errand, and Hirosue and Hayama stayed behind in the office. I think I can manage to leave at nine today, Hirosue was thinking to himself, when suddenly Hayama gave a shout from the desk beside him.

“Ugh, I can’t take this anymore!”

Hirosue whipped around in surprise.

“Oh… sorry.” Hayama blushed and ducked her head. “I keep making wrong word conversions. And I’m barely getting any work done.”

Hirosue himself was also weary of the sheer amount of doc.u.ments and menial tasks, but given the situation, it couldn’t be helped, so he had simply resigned himself to it. But Hayama couldn’t be blamed for thinking “why me” or for feeling she had gotten the short end of the stick, since she had suddenly been shipped over from headquarters.

Hirosue looked at his watch. It was a little past seven in the evening.

“Ms. Hayama, you can go home for today. I don’t think it’ll take me that long to handle the rest by myself.”

Nine o’clock might stretch to ten o’clock, but it wasn’t much of a difference.

“No, no, don’t mind me.”

“But…”

Hayama smiled slightly. “You’re the same as ever, Hirosue, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean, same as ever?”

“How you are.”

He didn’t know what she meant, but they smiled when their eyes met. They both ended up staying until eight-thirty to finish the remaining work together, and took the taxi into the city. They had decided to grab something to eat before going home.

Hayama knew an Italian restaurant that was open late, so they went there. Hirosue preferred lighter j.a.panese fare over Western food, but the pasta here was seasoned with zesty garlic and was very delicious.

“Back at headquarters, we administration people usually finish at six o’clock as long as things aren’t busy,” Hayama said. “I had plans for cooking cla.s.ses on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but just when I was in my last month of work, they suddenly sent me over here. I thought I could take it easy, so I was disappointed. Not to mention how insanely busy it’s been since I came over here.” Hayama sighed glumly.

“I’m really sorry you have to go through this, Ms. Hayama.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. But have you noticed? Maybe it’s because of the state we’re in, but don’t you think the head clerk has actually started doing his job?”

A chuckle escaped Hirosue’s lips. Come to think of it, she was right. It was still a problem, though, that he had to be cornered into doing his work.

Their drinks flowed freely when they vented about work like this. Talking with Hayama made him feel a sort of slight nervousness that came from interacting with a woman, but also an odd camaraderie that came from suffering the same ordeal.

“Say, you and Matsuoka go out to eat a lot, don’t you?” Hayama asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Hirosue kept his answer short, shying away from the topic.

“Maybe Matsuoka wants to feel comforted by you, too.”

“Comforted?”

He hadn’t been expecting that word to come out of Hayama’s mouth.

“You’re comforting to have around, Hirosue.”

“…It doesn’t feel that way for me.”

“I really think you are.”

Their desserts were brought, and a smile spread across Hayama’s face as soon as she saw the them daintily arranged on the plate. Hirosue and Hayama had ordered different sets, so their desserts were also different. Hirosue saw Hayama glance at his dessert.

“Want it?” he said, offering her the plate.

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” Hayama shook her head hurriedly.

“I don’t like sweets that much, so. Here.” He placed the plate close to Hayama.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, her face slightly bowed. Her blush had spread to her neck. It was cute.

“I feel like such a pig.” Still leaving the remnants of a blush on her cheeks, Hayama extended her spoon to the dessert that Hirosue had given her. As soon as she took a bite, a look of bliss crossed her face. She took three more bites in a row before suddenly looking up.

“Speaking of Matsuoka, have you heard from him about his girlfriend?”

Hirosue swallowed. “Is he dating someone?”

“It seems like it. I always used to ask him if he had a girlfriend, and he’d just worm his way out of the topic. But a little while ago, I saw him fiddling with his new cell phone strap looking really happy, so I asked him who he got it from. He said he got it from the person he loves.”

The tension left Hirosue’s shoulders. He had thought perhaps Matsuoka had feelings for someone other than himself, but a little bit of thinking would have made him realize he was wrong. There was no way a man like Matsuoka, who channelled his feelings so devotedly towards him, would look at someone else like that.

“He said he’d always loved that person. But he wouldn’t tell me what kind of girl she is. Mako said… oh, you know the girl who came camping with us last summer? Apparently Matsuoka told her that he couldn’t date her because he has one-sided feelings for someone else. Come to think of it, it was the same for me, too. You told me you couldn’t forget about the person you used to date.”

“I’m sorry,” Hirosue blurted.

“I wasn’t blaming you,” Hayama added. “Those things can’t be helped. When you can’t forget about someone, it’s not a matter of logic. But I’m glad things are going well for Matsuoka. How about you, Hirosue?”

“Me?”

“You told me you ‘got back together but not really’ when we talked at the department store.”

He didn’t know how to express his current situation. If he were to choose a phrase that fit―

“I feel like I’m in a one-sided love and I’m never going to be requited.”

“What do you mean?” Hayama c.o.c.ked her head.

“It’s true that she’s the person I used to love, but I feel like she somehow isn’t. The impression I had of her before is so strong, I keep feeling like something’s off. Even when we’re together, I just feel like the sparks have… fizzled. I mean in the romantic sense.”

“I don’t really get what you’re trying to say.”

“I can’t really explain it well, either,” Hirosue said sheepishly.

“But she’s the same girl, right? The girl you used to love?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Then what do you find wrong about it, Hirosue?”

“I don’t know.”

He did know. He knew. Matsuoka had a great personality, and he was nice. But he was a man. It wasn’t working out because Matsuoka was a man. Hayama thought for a little, then slowly opened her mouth.

“Hirosue, I’m wondering if maybe you had really lofty ideals for that girl.”

“Ideals?”

“If she’s the same person but she feels different to you, and nothing has changed about her, that means the way you see her has changed, Hirosue.”

The way he saw her. His ideals for the beautiful woman. Hirosue was aware that he was once in love with Yoko Eto to the point of obsession. He wasn’t attracted to her appearance, but her beauty was also part of who she was.

He had wanted her to love him back―that was all he had thought of. And Matsuoka, whose heart was the same as hers, did love him. Hirosue was in the very situation he had wished so hard for in the past, yet he found himself hesitant to step forward. He stood rooted to the spot before an insurmountable wall, which was the fact that Matsuoka was a man.

If Matsuoka had not changed at all apart from his appearance, then perhaps he was the one who had changed.

After they finished their meal, he and Hayama walked to the station together, where they parted ways. As he was b.u.mped along on the train, he thought about Matsuoka. It wasn’t like he hated him. He liked the man, enough to wish that they could be friends long into the future.

The hanging handles on the train swayed back and forth in unison. Was it wrong for him not to be able to love Matsuoka? Was it wrong want to steer his changing feelings into those of friendship and not love? Was it wrong justify what he was doing? That was all Hirosue thought about on the way home, so much so that when he saw Matsuoka in front of his apartment door, he was stunned. He thought perhaps he was seeing an illusion from thinking about him too much.

“Sorry for coming at such a late hour,” Matsuoka said with a stiff smile under the dim lights in the pa.s.sage. “My work finished late. I was in the area, anyway, so I thought I’d just drop by.” The real Matsuoka spoke. Hirosue let out a short breath and drew up to the man standing near the door.

“You should have e-mailed me if you were here.”

As Hirosue was drawing his key out of his bag, the man’s spoke behind him.

“Was there something inconvenient about me coming?”

He detected something sharp in his words. This surprised him all the more because Matsuoka wasn’t the type to throw covert verbal daggers like this.

“There’s nothing inconvenient. I was just saying if you’d e-mailed me, I could have come home a little earlier.”

Matsuoka looked down. He looked angry, at least in Hirosue’s eyes. Hirosue felt bewildered.

“I finished work late today, so I was having dinner with Ms. Hayama,” he said, while opening the door. “Want to come in and have a cup of tea? You must’ve been cold out here.”

“―I know.” When Matsuoka lifted his face, his expression was back to his usual one. “I got an e-mail from Hayama saying you guys were having dinner.”

“Is that so?”

“She said you guys vented about work and stuff.”

“Oh. It’s really busy right now, so I think Ms. Hayama was stressed out as well.”

Matsuoka stepped inside the apartment after Hirosue. When Hirosue poured some coffee and came back, a few sheets of colour copies had appeared on the kotatsu table.

“What’s this?”

“I printed out a few sheets from the website of the inn we’ll be staying at on Sat.u.r.day. I remembered you said you didn’t really go on the Internet much.”

“It’s true. Thanks for taking the trouble.”

Hirosue flipped through the printed sheets in order. The ambiance was nice, and the baths looked s.p.a.cious. Most importantly, there was an outdoor bath.

“Is it really that hard at work?” Matsuoka asked. “I know Hayama went to support you guys, but…”

Hirosue continued looking through the sheets as he answered.

“Two people took sick leave at the same time. We were already stretched thin doing the work of four people with three, so…”

“You don’t really complain to me, do you, Hirosue?”

Hirosue looked up, feeling something accusatory in the man’s words.

“I think it would be tiring to listen to me complain.”

“But you’ll talk to Hayama about it, right?”

The man’s gaze was steely. And there was something about his tone that nagged him. Matsuoka was acting strange today. Hirosue had a feeling from the beginning that the man was angry, but he had no idea what Matsuoka was so irritated about.

“We just have a lot of common topics to talk about, since we do the same job.”

“I’m sorry.”

A sudden apology. One minute the man seemed angry, and the next minute, he was suddenly apologizing. Hirosue couldn’t make any sense of it.

“Why are you apologizing?” Hirosue asked, baffled.

“I think I’m gonna go home after all.” Matsuoka grabbed his bag and coat and practically fled out of Hirosue’s apartment. Hirosue stared in bewilderment at the cup of coffee that Matsuoka had left behind, still warm and not even half finished. He had no idea what Matsuoka had come for. He had brought information about the inn, but was that really all he had come to do?

Hirosue got an e-mail about thirty minutes after Matsuoka had left.

‘I’m sorry for coming over out of the blue today,’ it said.

From the e-mail, Hirosue couldn’t sense any residue of Matsuoka’s strange att.i.tude earlier.

‘I didn’t really mind,’ Hirosue wrote back, but he received no more e-mails from Matsuoka for the rest of the night.