At the Year-End Party He Thanked Me for Doing His Paperwork, So I Took the Microphone novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: One Room in Kamakura

Setsuko Tsukishiro's house in Kamakura was older than the hotel company.

It was a long low wooden house behind a mossy wall, on a lane that ran down to the sea.

The garden was all black pines.

Through the gate Chiaki could hear the waves.

Setsuko met them at the door herself in a dark blue kimono, and looked at the two of them standing on her step.

"You came in one car," she said. "Good."

Dinner was New Year's Eve soba at a low table by the garden doors.

A housekeeper brought the bowls and vanished.

Setsuko ate her noodles in silence for a few minutes.

Then she put her chopsticks down across her bowl.

"October," she said.

"The twenty-third and the twenty-ninth," Chiaki said. "Rounds twenty-seven and twenty-eight. Suite 1507 at the Grand. It's a meeting suite. There's no bed in it, only a table for twelve."

"Who was there?"

"Six juniors from Hanamori. Your procurement head. Two of your lawyers. Him." Chiaki nodded at Kaname. "And a lot of gyoza."

"Who ordered the gyoza?"

"I did," said Kaname.

Setsuko looked at her grandson for a long moment.

"Did you touch her, in October?"

"I didn't smile at her in October," he said.

It was such a strange answer that Chiaki turned to look at him.

He was eating his soba. His face told her nothing.

Setsuko studied him a little longer, then picked her chopsticks up again.

"I met my husband twice before our wedding," she said. "The second time, he fell asleep. I married him anyway. Fifty-one years." She slurped a noodle. "I can tell when a man is lying at my table. Neither of you is."

She was wrong.

They were lying to her about everything except October.

Chiaki looked down at her bowl so Setsuko wouldn't see it on her face.

The room Setsuko had made up was at the end of the house, over the garden.

It was six tatami mats with one low lamp and a scroll of a single crane in the alcove.

Two futons, laid side by side, so close they touched.

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