Episode 6: Reunion
“…Huh? Reina?”
My feet stopped of their own accord, and I turned around.
Standing there was a woman in a dark navy suit, with a tall, slender build. Sharp, almond-shaped eyes, a high nose bridge, smoky-toned lips. Glossy black hair, long, and striking features that drew the eye.
“…Saeko?”
“Ah! I knew it was you. I caught your profile as we passed and had a feeling.”
The woman, Kirishima Saeko, let the corner of her mouth lift and narrowed her eyes warmly.
An easy, reassuring smile. The kind that made people feel safe.
People born with a face like that must have an easier time of it, I thought, vaguely.
“Reina, it’s been ages. Since graduation?”
“I think we had drinks once with the seminar group in our first year working.”
“Oh, did we? Well, whatever. Hey, are you free now? Come with me for a bit.”
Yuno’s face crossed my mind, just briefly.
“Ah, I’m kind of…”
“Just one drink. Oh look, that place over there looks good.”
Half-dragged by the arm, I found myself stepping into a nearby izakaya before I’d quite decided to.
＊＊＊
Kirishima Saeko and I had been in the same business management seminar at university.
Saeko was the type who talked to everyone without distinction, and she’d breezed over to me just as easily, cheerfully, even when I was sitting alone in the seminar.
She told me she liked women one night at a seminar drinking party when she was thoroughly drunk. She’d leaned in and murmured it confidentially, without a trace of embarrassment, that she’d dated all kinds of women — at university, at bars, everywhere.
“Two bottles, and edamame.”
We settled onto adjacent counter seats and Saeko placed the order with practiced ease.
The moment she slipped off her coat, a faint trail of smoky, slightly sweet perfume drifted past my nose.
I picked up my phone and sent Yuno a LINE message: Going for drinks, back late tonight.
If I didn’t say anything, she might lay the table for dinner and sit there quietly waiting for me. When that image crossed my mind, something pricked faintly at the back of my chest. Just barely. Just the smallest bit.
“What, a partner?”
Saeko glanced sideways at me, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her bag. She put one between her lips with a practiced hand and raised a lighter to it.
“No. A housemate.”
“A housemate? I genuinely cannot picture you living with anyone.”
“It’s a temporary thing, until she finds a new place.”
As the smoke drifted lazily over, I found my own hand reaching out before I thought about it. I pulled a cigarette from my bag, put it to my lips, lit it.
Drawing the smoke deep into my chest, I felt whatever had been wound tight inside me loosen just a little.
We poured beer into each other’s glasses and clinked them lightly together.
“Cheers.”
The cold bitterness of the beer slid cleanly down my throat.
The first drink after work really is something else.
“Better let someone know I’m out.”
Saeko picked up her phone and made a call.
“A girlfriend?”
“Mm, something like that. Pretty recent though.”
“Still cycling through them as fast as ever?”
“Ahaha, way to put it. Can’t exactly deny it, though.”
Saeko laughed her easy laugh, turned her face away from me, and exhaled the cigarette smoke slowly.
Then she picked up a piece of edamame, and turned back as if she’d just remembered something.
“How’s work? You’re running a company now, right?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“That’s incredible, Reina. You were always a head above everyone else back in seminar.”
“Was I? I think I was just… out of place.”
“Ah — yeah. That’s fair actually.”
Saeko nodded along enthusiastically and burst out laughing, then took a pull of her beer.
I’d said it as self-deprecation, and she’d agreed wholeheartedly, but strangely it didn’t bother me. Maybe it was Saeko’s lightness.
“Lately though, things haven’t been going well. My pressure’s driving staff to quit one after another, the handover backlog is making the whole office tense, and on top of that the funding fell through…”
I let out a small sigh, and then found my mouth opening on its own.
Perhaps the cigarette and the alcohol were doing their work — my tongue was looser than I’d noticed.
Saeko gave a short, quiet “hm,” then spoke with the air of someone who’d just had a thought.
“Hey, can I transfer to your company?”
“…Excuse me?”
The words slipped out.
“I haven’t been enjoying my current job much lately. It’s stable, sure, but the company’s old, they won’t take on anything new, and I’m starting to feel like I can’t breathe.”
“…I’d be grateful, but I don’t think I can match your current salary.”
From what she’d told me when we ran into each other, Saeko was doing combined marketing and sales at a major corporation. She was at a department head level, and drawing a decent income.
“Don’t worry about that. We can grow the company together, and then you can raise my salary later. Deal?”
Saeko exhaled her cigarette smoke slowly and gave a small smile.
Soft eyes, I thought. She’d had the same eyes back when she came and talked to me in seminar, when I was sitting alone.
With eyes that gentle, it’s no wonder women fall for her.
The thought surfaced, briefly.
“…Then I’ll be waiting. For you to actually transfer over.”
I’d finished my third drink — a ginger highball — before answering, quietly, with that.
After that we got absorbed in talking business, and by the time I noticed, my fifth glass was empty.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d drunk at this pace.
The clock had passed ten at night.
I gathered my things and stood up.
“I should head back.”
“Already? Come on, one more round.”
“What are you saying. Some of us have work tomorrow.”
“Still such a straight arrow. Fine, suit yourself. I’ll just find a bar.”
The bar Saeko meant was almost certainly a lesbian bar.
She’d go find another “someone” there for the night. I thought about what it must be like to be Saeko’s girlfriend, and a wry smile escaped me.
We stepped out of the izakaya, said see you with a wave, and went our separate ways.
The cold air outside was pleasant against cheeks flushed with alcohol. I’d drunk more than I’d meant to.
I made my way home, feet a little unsteady.
＊＊＊
When I got back, the apartment was dark.
Yuno was sitting curled up small on the sofa in the oversized pajamas I’d lent her, tapping quietly at her phone. The soft glow of the screen was the only light, blurring faintly in the dark.
“Oh, welcome home, big sis.”
“You could at least turn a light on.”
“Mm, I don’t know. Just felt like it.”
I clicked the light on.
I hung my coat over a chair, took out the tea from the fridge and had a sip.
Yuno stood up quietly, picked up my coat without a word, brought her face close to it, and began to sniff.
“…What are you doing?”
I looked at her, puzzled.
“The person you were drinking with tonight. Was it a woman?”
Yuno tilted her head and asked, after a small pause as though she was considering it. Her eyes looked, somehow, lightless.
“Yes.”
At my answer, Yuno murmured “I see” quietly and looked back down at the coat.
And then said nothing more.
“Does that matter?”
“…No. It’s nothing.”
Yuno shook her head with a small flutter, and smiled.
The same guileless smile as always.
But that expression from a moment ago stayed, somehow, lodged in a corner of my mind.