At the Year-End Party He Thanked Me for Doing His Paperwork, So I Took the Microphone novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Seven Terms

Kaname proposes a fake engagement to kill the rumor, Chiaki writes the seven terms herself on a hotel notepad, he signs without changing a word, and his grandmother sits down at their table and asks to see the ring.

By seven the post had sixty thousand reposts.

By eight somebody had found Chiaki's LinkedIn photo and put it next to the cropped one.

By nine her phone had rung forty times, and she had answered none of them.

At ten past nine it rang with a number she knew from the back of a business card.

"Hayase-san," Kaname Tsukishiro said. "Have you eaten?"

"That's your first question?"

"It's the one I can do something about. The lounge on the second floor of the Grand. Eleven o'clock. There's a side entrance on the Sakurada-dori side. Nobody will photograph you there."

He hung up before she could say no.

Haruka lent Chiaki a sweater and jeans and drove her herself.

Her son sat in the back seat and explained stegosaurus plates to Chiaki the whole way.

"Call me," Haruka said at the curb. "If he's horrible, call me, and I'll come up and be horrible back."

The lounge at the Tsukishiro Grand was all dark wood and low chairs and tall windows over Toranomon.

He was at a corner table with a pot of tea and a plate of Hanamori yuzu monaka.

Three of them.

He saw Chiaki look at the plate.

"They're for you," he said.

"There's a bite out of one."

"That one's mine."

She sat down.

A waiter brought a second cup without being asked.

Tsukishiro ordered her the breakfast set without asking either, and she let him, because she was starving.

"I'll be honest with you," he said, once the waiter was gone.

"Are you ever anything else?"

"No. It's very unpopular." He took off his glasses and cleaned them on a napkin. "My board met by phone at seven this morning. Our head of PR wants the offer withdrawn."

There it was.

Chiaki had known it was coming since the taxi, and it still hit her in the stomach.

"Of course," she said. "It's fine. I understand."

"I said no."

She looked up.

"I'm not withdrawing anything. But the photo isn't going away on its own. If we do nothing, it walks into every meeting you ever have at Tsukishiro, half a step ahead of you."

"Thank you, I'd worked that out."

"So I have a proposal."

He put his glasses back on.

"Be engaged to me."

Chiaki laughed out loud. A woman two tables away turned to look.

He waited until she had finished.

"A fiancée isn't a scandal," he said. "She's a story with a happy ending. We announce it, we announce your hire with your record attached, and the photo becomes a picture of an engaged couple at a party. Nobody reposts that."

"You've lost your mind."

"It helps me too. My grandmother has had a matchmaker sending me photographs since November. Eleven so far. One of them was a cellist."

"What's wrong with a cellist?"

"Nothing. I'd just rather be engaged to someone who frightens me."

She stared at him.

He looked back, perfectly serious, and ate the rest of his monaka.

The awful thing was that it was a good deal.

Chiaki could see every side of it.

It killed the photo, and it gave her a reason to be in his building.

It turned Ryota's "she's unstable" into "she's marrying the client".

And it put her in another man's story.

"I write the terms," she said.

"I assumed you would."

He slid a cream hotel notepad with the Tsukishiro crest across the table.

He even had a pen ready.

She wrote fast.

When she was done she turned it around and pushed it back to him.

"Read it out," she said. "I want to hear you agree to it."

He read it in the same flat voice he used for penalty clauses.

"One. This ends on March thirty-first."

"End of the fiscal year. Clean."

"Two. In public, we're engaged. In private, we're colleagues."

"Correct."

"Three. No ring I didn't choose."

"Reasonable."

"Four. No sleeping together."

He didn't even pause on it. Chiaki was a little offended.

"Five. You never vouch for my work. My work speaks or it doesn't."

He looked at her over the glasses.

"That one will be difficult. Your work is the reason I'm here."

"Then you'll have to stay quiet and let people find out."

"Six. Either of us can end this with one sentence."

"Seven," Chiaki said, before he could.

He read it anyway.

"Seven. Nobody falls in love."

"Any objections?"

He took the pen, signed under her list, and turned it so she could sign beside him.

He hadn't changed a word. He hadn't even crossed out the fourth one for a joke.

"I'd like to keep the original," he said, and folded it once, and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. "You can photograph it."

She photographed it.

"You didn't negotiate," she said.

"I negotiated with you for twelve rounds. I know when to stop."

Chiaki almost smiled at him.

Then a cane tapped twice on the floor next to their table.

A very small old woman in a grey suit was standing there.

She had white hair in a low bun, sharp dark eyes, and a black lacquered cane she clearly didn't need.

Tsukishiro went straight-backed in his chair.

"Grandmother."

She pulled out the third chair herself and sat down.

"I'm told my grandson is engaged," she said, and held out her small hand to Chiaki, palm up. "Show me the ring."

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