Chapter 6: Christmas Eve

Chiaki wore the dress she had bought for that table.

She had seen the booking in Ryota's calendar in November, on the laptop he'd left open on the kitchen counter.

Christmas Eve, eight o'clock, the Tsukishiro Grand, 39th floor, two people.

She had gone to Shinjuku the next Saturday and bought a dark red silk dress she couldn't afford.

It still had the tag on when Haruka's husband carried it up the stairs in a garbage bag.

"You're sure?" Haruka said, zipping her into it in the bathroom. "You don't have to sit next to them."

"I'm not sitting next to them. I'm sitting next to my fiancé. They happen to be there."

"That's the most you thing you've ever said."

Kaname was waiting in the lobby at a quarter to eight, in a navy suit, holding nothing.

He looked at the dress for a second too long.

"What?" Chiaki said.

"Nothing. You negotiated in grey."

"I'm not negotiating tonight."

"Aren't you?"

He offered her his arm, and she took it.

The restaurant on the 39th floor is all glass on three sides. On Christmas Eve, the whole of Tokyo glitters under it.

Every table was a couple.

Theirs was by the window.

The table next to it, a metre away, was set for two, and already occupied.

Ryota stood up when he saw them.

"Chii! What a coincidence."

"Saeki-san," Chiaki said.

Reina didn't stand. She lifted her water glass a centimetre.

"You could have moved them," Chiaki said to Kaname under her breath, as the waiter pulled out her chair.

"I don't move a guest's reservation." He sat down across from her. "I moved ours next to it."

She looked at him.

"You said she'd see you there," he said. "So she will."

The first course was something small and beautiful with crab. Chiaki didn't taste it.

Ryota talked loudly the whole time.

He talked about his new department, his new budget, and the trip to Kyoto he was taking Reina on for New Year.

Every so often he glanced over to make sure Chiaki was listening.