Episode Fifty-Two: Don’t You Want Sushi?
What cut through the silence, the two of us frozen there staring at each other, was a voice I also knew well.
“Aozawa-san, you shouldn’t run in the hallway. It’s dangerous.”
Startled, I turned toward the direction I hadn’t noticed, blocked from view by Yui-san. The man in the navy suit was the president of the company I work for.
“S-sorry, I’m so sorry…”
I scrambled to apologize, and steadied myself where I’d nearly toppled, my weight still leaning against Yui-san.
I’d been in a fog of confusion this whole time. Why is Yui-san here, at my company, with the president? What’s going on?
“President Ichinose, are you alright? I’m terribly sorry about my employee.”
“Eh… president…!?”
What did he just say? President Ichinose…!? The sound escaped me before I could stop it, and Yui-san looked down at me and laughed, soft.
Same as back then. Those black eyes, that glossy long hair. But she’d grown up, just slightly, since then, and her beauty had somehow only sharpened further with it.
“It’s fine, please don’t worry about it. Kanata, are you okay? Not hurt?”
At that voice, unchanged from back then, gentle as ever, I found myself nodding, small, without thinking. At that, the president’s eyes went wide, startled.
“Eh? President Ichinose, you know Aozawa-san?”
“We’re senior and junior from university. I never imagined I’d run into her somewhere like this.”
Saying that, Yui-san reached out and touched my hand, still frozen in shock. My heart lurched, startled. While I stood there, dumbstruck, Yui-san smoothly plucked the phone right out of my hand.
“Ah.”
“Kanata, good thing you’re not hurt, but walking while looking at your phone is dangerous. You need to actually watch where you’re going.”
Saying that, Yui-san’s thumb glided smoothly across the screen of the phone she’d taken.
“Eh, wai— wait, Yui-san, what are you doing…”
I remembered — I’d just been in the middle of sending Mitsuya-san a message, and the screen had still been open.
After Yui-san did something on my phone, an instant later, a ringtone sounded from the chest pocket of her jacket, and cut off again just as quickly.
A beat late, I realized — she’d apparently called herself, from my phone.
Right — my number. I’d changed it, since back then. As careful and thorough as ever, Yui-san really doesn’t miss a beat, even now.
“There.”
Handing my phone back to me, Yui-san looked into my still-shaken eyes and smiled, bright.
“…I’ll see you later, then.”
Still clutching my phone tight to my chest, dazed, she gave my head a single pat, then turned back to the president and said, “Shall we?”
Later — what did that even mean? Without giving me a chance to ask, the two of them walked off easily, leaving me behind, and my heart kept pounding, wild, like something broken.
*
Then, remembering myself, I hurried to the entrance, apologized to Mitsuya-san for being late, and headed to our usual set-meal place.
Because of what had just happened, I couldn’t taste a single bite of the fried horse mackerel set I’d ordered. Honestly, I barely remember what Mitsuya-san and I even talked about over lunch.
That’s how shaken I was by the sudden reunion — even back at my desk in the afternoon, I couldn’t focus on work at all, my mind stuck entirely on Yui-san.
And president, of all things. Yui-san’s only twenty-five. I never expected she’d already become a company president, this fast, no matter how you looked at it.
I want to know. What Yui-san’s been doing, all this time. Once the curiosity took hold, I couldn’t stop it.
Mitsuya-san was out for a meeting all afternoon, so it was just me at my desk. Glancing around, careful, I quietly opened a browser on my computer.
Up until now, I’d deliberately avoided looking up what Yui-san was doing. So I wouldn’t want to see her. So I wouldn’t feel lonely. That had been the one and only way I knew to protect myself.
But now, having run into her again like this, I couldn’t stop my fingers from searching.
Ichinose Yui — I typed it into the search engine and hit enter. The answer I’d wanted came back immediately.
“Ichinose Grand Hotel Co., Ltd. …Representative Director, Ichinose Yui…”
The instant I saw that company name, a half-forgotten memory came flashing back. That summer, the hotel where we’d watched the fireworks together. It really had been there, written at the entrance — “Ichinose Grand Hotel.”
The Ichinose Group has always had a number of subsidiary companies. The current president of Ichinose Holdings, the pure holding company at the top, is Yui-san’s father.
And Yui-san, apparently, had been appointed president of one of the subsidiaries under it.
But even so, why was she meeting with my company’s president…? Doesn’t seem like a business negotiation. If it were, protocol would say we should’ve gone to her. There’d be no reason for Yui-san to bother coming to our company herself.
We’re an IT company, and there’s never been any dealing with the Ichinose Group before. I can’t find a single connection to the hotel business Yui-san runs.
I let out a sigh, completely unable to make sense of what was going on, when my phone suddenly buzzed, and I straightened up sharp. A message floated up on the screen.
“I’ll be waiting at the entrance at six.”
The instant I saw that message, my heart, once again, easily picked up its pace, and wouldn’t slow back down.
This past four years, there hasn’t been a single day I forgot about Yui-san. I’ve wanted to see her this whole time. Wanted to see her so badly it hurt. And yet, right now, some part of me wants to run away.
Because — what if she’s already married? What do I do?
I regretted, painfully, not having had the composure earlier to even check whether she was wearing a ring.
What does Yui-san intend to talk to me about, meeting like this? My feelings churned into a tangled mess, and I couldn’t even bring myself to reply to the message — and mercilessly, time slipped past, and before I knew it, quitting time had arrived.
＊＊＊
“Thank you for your hard work…”
I said the parting greeting in a voice on the verge of vanishing entirely, held my ID up to the time-clock terminal, and left the office. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding the whole time I was in the elevator, the whole way from the entrance to the exit, restless.
She said she’d be waiting, but is Yui-san actually going to be there?
Nervous, gripping the strap of my bag tight, I stepped outside, and my heart clenched, sharp.
Sure enough, not a dream. There she was, in a suit, apparently waiting for me, raising a hand and smiling. At her chest, glinting, that same single-diamond necklace as back then.
“Kanata, good work today.”
What do I do? I’m staring. We’d lived together a whole year, so I should have built up at least some resistance to this person’s extraordinary beauty… but apparently whatever resistance I’d had disappeared somewhere over these past four years.
Yui-san really is beautiful. Genuinely, overwhelmingly. I don’t know anyone as beautiful as Yui-san.
My heart raced, and I could feel my face heating up — not wanting her to notice, I turned my face away, and started walking, as if fleeing.
“Huh, Kanata, where are you going? Don’t ignore me.”
She said it, chasing after me from behind. I don’t want her to see my flushed face. The only way to manage that is to keep moving forward.
“Where — home, obviously. My station’s this way…”
“Don’t say that, how about dinner together? We finally ran into each other after all this time.”
Falling into step beside me, she peered calmly into my face. If I go to dinner with her, there’s no avoiding an update on how we’ve each been.
I want to talk more. But I’m scared. Scared that if I hear from Yui-san’s own mouth that she’s married, I might actually cry.
Would Yui-san laugh, if she knew — that even now, four years later, I still love her?
Not knowing how to answer, my gaze wandering, Yui-san pressed further, taking my hand for good measure.
“Don’t you want sushi? I actually already made a reservation.”
Eh, sushi? My feet came to a dead stop before I could help it, and I thought, ah, I’ve done it now. Yui-san smiled, bright, at how easily I’d been lured in by food, and gently pulled my hand along.
“Eat whatever you want, as much as you want, until you’re full. So let’s go. Okay?”
*
Silently letting myself be led along by Yui-san’s hand wasn’t only because of my weakness for good food.
It was because the left hand pulling mine along carried no hard, unmistakable feel of a ring.
And so, from the very bottom of my heart, relief washing through me — I found myself, without meaning to, accepting the hand pulling mine along.