Answer: Chapter 4

How many years had it been since he had sprinted in a suit? Mashiba’s brow was beaded with sweat by the time he burst into the office, and the familiar faces of his coworkers all turned to regard him in surprise.

“No way, Mashiba’s actually late for once?”

“Yeah, had some stuff.” He answered his neighbor’s quip with a wincing smile before turning to review the day’s schedule on the white board. In the morning I need to get confirmation on those estimates—oh, and I need to hand in that report, and this afternoon…

The afternoon schedule read in bold print, ‘client meetings,’ and Mashiba instantly felt the blood drain from his face. He thrust his hand into his briefcase and fumbled hastily through its contents, but there was no trace of the papers he had brought home with him yesterday.

Shit. I must have forgotten them.

He was scheduled to visit a client that day, and those papers were material for his presentation; without them, the appointment was pointless.

Grimacing at his own thoughtlessness, he considered phoning Hatano at home, but he didn’t need his watch to tell him that Hatano had almost certainly left for work by now. His only options were to ask the planning office to put together another copy, or to make the two-hour round trip to retrieve the papers from Hatano’s apartment.

It’s already ten o’clock…

The meeting was first thing in the afternoon, though perhaps if he contacted them now to explain that there would be a slight delay, he could return in time. His bland face showed nothing of the frantic whirring of his brain as he weighed his options for resolving this disaster of a situation.

The telephone on his desk chose that supremely hectic moment to ring, and Mashiba snatched the receiver irritably.

“Hello, can I speak to Mr. Mashiba from the fourth division?” It was from reception.

“Yes, this is he.”

“There’s a gentleman named Mr. Hatano here, he has something for you.”

“What?!” Never in a thousand years would he have expected to hear those words. “I’ll be right there!” he said, hanging up the phone.

Mashiba, a man known for his stoicism and his cool composure, raced in a flurry of motion from the room, and in his wake came an anonymous mumble, “Well, there’s the second weird thing I’ve seen today.”

Nobody replied aloud, but every man and woman present silently professed their earnest agreement.

Hatano was indeed in the lobby, standing there with the envelope in hand, and when he caught sight of Mashiba dashing towards him he gave a quick wave.

“Here you go, you forgot this.”

“Hatano, why are—what about work?”

“I just took the morning off,” he replied casually.

“Thank you so much, I’m so sorry you had to take off work for this.”

Mashiba riffled urgently through the envelope’s contents, and found the complete documents for the day’s meeting inside. His shoulders heaved in a big sigh of relief, and Hatano furrowed his brow.

“It’s not a big deal for me, but these are papers for a presentation, aren’t they? Sorry, I looked at them a little. I’m an outsider anyway so I figured it’d be okay. How could you forget them?” he teased, chuckling. He was dressed in straight-leg jeans and a cotton shirt, the sort of ensemble rarely seen in this business district.

“Um, yeah, it’s fine.”

Hatano’s ungelled hair swept soft and sleek around his face, making him look even younger. A passing glance could take him for a student.

“I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Hatano graced him with a warm, guileless smile and Mashiba’s heart leapt wildly in his breast, throwing him into a private panic. He caught himself abnormally conscious of his own fingers as he reached out to take the envelope, and he wondered what this feeling could be, this honey-sweetness that he had never felt before, not even in the old days with Ikawa.

“Well, I’ve got to get going.”

“Right, um, take care. And, uh,” he bowed his head, “really, thank you.”

“Forget about it.” Hatano gave him another easy smile, clear and bright as the morning sky, and for a second Mashiba was captivated, his own lips curving up at the corners of their own accord. The glances they exchanged attested that the intimate mood of the morning had been no misperception, and he looked away a little bashfully.

As soon as he averted his eyes, however, he noticed the figure of a very obnoxious man across the room, and Mashiba twisted his handsome features into a scowl.

“Is something wrong?” Hatano asked, startled by the sudden transformation.

“No, it’s nothing.”

Ikawa was clearly moving towards them, cutting a slim, graceful figure in his suit, and Mashiba fixed him in a glare, unable to relax the sour pinch of his face.

“Mashiba, what—” Hatano made to press him further, but a breezy voice interrupted him.

“So this is where you’ve been, Takaaki.”

Ikawa waltzed up to the two of them, a smile playing on his lips. Taking Ikawa’s arrival as his cue, Hatano excused himself and turned to leave, only to find Ikawa barring his passage. His curious gaze shifted back and forth between this flashy stranger, genial expression laced with a dangerous venom, and Mashiba, still scowling as he clicked his tongue.

“The hell do you want?” snapped Mashiba.

“This a friend of yours? Come on, introduce us!” Ikawa continued, as if Mashiba had never spoken. “Nice to meet you,” he directed to Hatano with a smirk.

Hatano, for his part, appeared to be perfectly aware of the brazen gaze Ikawa cast down his nose at him. He darted a glance up to Mashiba as if to gauge his opinion, but Mashiba only maintained his stiff silence, unable to offer an answer to the question in Hatano’s eyes.

Ikawa was studying Hatano with an air of appraisal, likely having already recognized that Hatano was the reason Mashiba had his ‘hands full,’ as Mashiba had taunted him a few days ago. Surely he wouldn’t do anything foolish here in the office, but for a man who could be cunning enough when jockeying for position, Mashiba knew painfully well how brash and thoughtless Ikawa could be.

What the hell is he thinking…

Ikawa had played off their encounter as a coincidence, but Mashiba did not doubt for a second that he had seen Mashiba rush by and deliberately followed him to the lobby. Though they worked on the same floor they sat in different departments, and it was unsettling to think that Ikawa was monitoring his movements.

Yesterday’s spat had bruised Ikawa’s petty ego, which was why the man was hounding him like this, even after he had dumped Mashiba himself. It was enough to give him the chills. He was desperate to at least not involve Hatano in all this unpleasantness any further, not after he’d already dragged the other man into a tangled mess of a relationship in the aftermath of his wretched breakup. That had been purely Mashiba’s own selfishness; Hatano bore none of the blame.

He was not so naïve as to think that everything he had forced upon Hatano would be forgiven, but those thin fingers had held him so gently the night before, and Mashiba had found himself hoping that they could redefine their relationship from the beginning. In fact, he had requested Hatano meet him again that night with the intention of apologizing for his cruelty and, if Hatano would have it, to entreat him for the right to be a part of his life. Now, the sight of Ikawa before him made him feel small and petty for dreaming up so convenient a scenario, and he could do nothing but gnash his teeth behind bitter-tasting lips.

Hatano must have found Mashiba’s behavior peculiar, but any confusion he felt was hidden behind his quiet smile and social pleasantries. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my name is Hatano. Unfortunately I don’t have any business cards on me at the moment.”

He accepted the proffered card from Ikawa and his eyes paused briefly on the full name printed there, but looked up again as if he thought nothing of it.

He knows…

Feeling a curdling chill in his gut, Mashiba cast a sidelong glance at the petite man beside him but his profile was inscrutable. What was he thinking, confronted with the man who shared his name, who had been the catalyst for Mashiba’s violent assault?

“So he’s the guy,” Hatano whispered at a volume audible only to Mashiba, with something like pity in his eyes. The utter lack of reproach in his tone was the greatest reproach of all, but Mashiba only nodded his head slightly in affirmation. He had brought this upon himself.

Ikawa, unaware of Mashiba’s internal hesitation, inspected Hatano from head to toe in insolent appraisal, and let out a snort of laughter. “Excuse me, but what exactly is your profession?”

“Ikawa!” Mashiba barked in protest. Hatano’s brow wrinkled in a frown at the graceless question, and his eyes narrowed.

“I’m a preschool teacher,” he said, his steady reply a rebuke to Mashiba’s outburst.

“Oh, a preschool teacher? Hm, not surprising.”

It was unclear what exactly was ‘not surprising’ about it, but there was no mistaking the disdainful ring to Ikawa’s chuckle. He was the kind of man who measured success with brand names, and he accepted no values or lifestyles apart from his own. Mashiba had a clear picture of which rung of the social ladder Ikawa had assigned to Hatano, and his scowl deepened in disgust. Ikawa had probably contrasted himself, an employee at a corporation recognized across the country, with Hatano and his unglamorous occupation, and dismissed him out of hand. Mashiba himself was no less guilty of this kind of unconscious discrimination, and watching the cheap ugliness of it play out in front of him left him feeling sick.

“Hatano, if you don’t hurry you’ll be late for the afternoon.” Mashiba interposed himself between the two men, as if to shield Hatano from Ikawa’s needling glare.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Hatano agreed lightly, his calm unruffled. His gaze was direct, cool and clear as water, and Mashiba found his composure in the face of such disrespect all the more attractive.

However, even good-natured Hatano must have felt piqued by this display of animosity from a total stranger. A hint of challenge gleamed in his eyes, and when he spoke it was in a purr heavy with a suggestive allure that Mashiba himself had never heard from him before.

“Okay, I’ll see you again… later.”

That alone was enough to blanch Ikawa’s cheeks, and Mashiba’s inward surprise mixed with dry amusement. Ikawa was a gorgeous man and his tongue was vicious but Hatano, far from shying away, had thumbed his nose right back, and Mashiba felt the knot in his chest unwind.

“Yeah, later,” he replied with a coy tease in his voice that Ikawa could not have failed to notice—indeed, Mashiba was counting on it as he relaxed his face into a broad smile. Hatano seemed to have understood the game Mashiba was playing, and his eyes, again soft and placid, creased wryly as if to say, you’re helpless.

“Hold on a second,” Ikawa hissed when Hatano made for the exit, seizing his arm in plain sight of those around them.

“Hey!” Mashiba said in warning, but Ikawa didn’t even spare him a glance.

“So when’d you start shacking up with Takaaki?” he asked, a crude sneer on his face. Even at a whisper, it was far too explicit a question to be posed in an office lobby surrounded by passersby, and Mashiba went rigid in horror.

“How’s that any of your business?” Hatano returned matter-of-factly, without missing a beat. “Let go of me.”

He spoke quietly but firmly, and it seemed to rob Ikawa of some of his thunder.

“‘Business?’” he echoed with pointed lewdness.

“That’s enough, Ikawa!” Mashiba growled, but if he heard him Ikawa did not acknowledge it. His fingers still wrapped around Hatano’s arm, he continued,

“Oh, it’s very much my business. We have such a long history together, of course I’m curious about his,” indicating Mashiba with his chin, “new man.”

His shameless cheek left Mashiba speechless for a few seconds before he made to lunge for him.

“You—You piece of…!”

“Mashiba!” Hatano snapped, his sharp tone freezing him in his tracks. He turned to Ikawa, heaving a thoroughly disgusted sigh. “Ikawa, was it?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you’ve got with Mashiba,” he said flatly, his voice as level as ever, “but I don’t see a single reason why I should owe you any answers.”

The force in Hatano’s unclouded eyes when he had seemed so docile a moment ago appeared to unnerve Ikawa, whose only response was a low groan in the back of his throat.

“So, can I leave now? Preschool teachers don’t have time to stick around taking crap from jerks trying to start drama in a workplace,” Hatano said plainly, and Ikawa turned a shade paler at the scathing words.

“Wait a fucking second,” he stormed closer, flinging off all pretense of restraint, “are you talking about me?”

“Who the hell else would I be talking about?” Hatano threw back, growing quite belligerent himself.

“Hey, Hatano!” Mashiba cut in, alarmed by Hatano’s blunt retorts, and received a peevish glare for his trouble.

“What?”

The details of their conversation may not have been audible, but the hostile mood around the three of them had begun to attract attention, and this seemed to have dawned on Hatano as well. He glanced testily around for a moment before pinching his lips together, as if it galled him to hold his tongue.

“You can’t start arguing too.”

“Sorry.”

Mashiba placed his hand soothingly on Hatano’s thin shoulder, and the familiar body heat warmed his palm. Hatano recomposed himself at this physical contact, and after letting out a short breath he managed a smile.

It was a trifling exchange but Ikawa sensed in it a wall that kept him firmly out, and his features hardened in a baleful glower, his shapely lips now thin and bloodless. Mashiba caught a glimpse of his warped expression and felt himself chilled to the core. He abhorred himself, for having ever been the lover of such a shallow man.

Am I a fucking idiot?

Incapable of a proper breakup, he had bullied Hatano into all this for his own selfish designs, and to top it off he couldn’t even get these pathetic theatrics occurring in his own office under control. Determined to get Hatano out of there if nothing else, Mashiba had just opened his mouth to speak when a stern reprimand lashed them from behind.

“What are you doing here, Mashiba? And Ikawa!” The new voice shattered their aggressive three-way deadlock. “You’ve got everybody staring at you! Get back to your desks. Mashiba, you’re meeting with K Corporation at two, are you ready?”

“Mr. Kamata!”

Ikawa grimaced at finding himself the object of that cold, piercing gaze, while Mashiba felt a complicated kind of relief.

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ll get ready immediately.”

Most likely an employee passing by had seen them quarreling and reported it to Kamata. He was a man in his forties but he was taller even than Mashiba, and he possessed his own distinctive aura of intimidation that sprang not only from his rank and title, but also in large part from his tall stature and the almost robotic austerity of his features.

“You’re going to be eating lunch over there so plan accordingly.… Huh?”

Ikawa had never been comfortable dealing with Kamata, a man who relied on no connections and thus afforded no one special treatment, and he seemed intent on beating a hasty retreat. Clicking his tongue and casting one final look of loathing in Hatano’s direction, he was poised to turn on his heel when Kamata’s exclamation of surprise caught his ear.

“Hey, is that you, Hatano?”

Kamata’s default expression had always been harsh, even callous, but now the severe lines of his face were slowly relaxing, and his monotone voice was pitched high in joy.

“Hatano, it is you! So you’ve been doing all right!”

Hatano, on the other hand, was soft and matter-of-fact as he returned the greeting, “Yes, it’s been a while.” His smile was tight, almost strained.

Ikawa was gaping wide-eyed alongside a bewildered Mashiba. It was the first time either of them had ever seen such an expression on Kamata’s face. The number of people at the company who had witnessed such a private expression, much less a smile, could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

“You… know each other?”

If Hatano was an acquaintance of Kamata’s, why hadn’t he made any indication of recognizing the name of Mashiba’s workplace?

“How do you two know each other? I had no idea,” Kamata said, glancing back and forth between the two of them. Mashiba was unprepared to answer his own question and he stalled, floundering for a response. It was Hatano who came to his rescue.

“We met at a bar one night, just by chance,” he said smoothly, and Mashiba blinked at the easy calm in Hatano’s voice, confusion mounting. “You could say we’re drinking buddies.”

Hatano?

They had practically never discussed personal matters, but the Hatano that he had come to know in the past half year was a man of surprising candor, easygoing and without affectation. His cutting remarks to Ikawa had been a show of pluck that had taken Mashiba aback, but he had not found it out of character.

No, he thought in blank disbelief, it was this Hatano before him now with his fluent lies who seemed a stranger.

“Sir, how do you know Hatano?” asked Ikawa directly, apparently interested enough in the situation to probe.

“Oh, right, of course. Neither of you would know. Hatano was working here until five years ago. I guess he left right around when you two started. He did some damn good work, might have been your boss if he’d stayed.”

“Huh?!” Ikawa spluttered, speechless.

“Kamata, you’re exaggerating,” Hatano deflected, flashing that same strained smile, but every single employee at the company knew that Kamata was not the kind of man to dole out empty flattery. He had told the truth, plain and simple.

Ikawa had gone pale, reeling in mute shock at the true identity of the lowly preschool teacher. Mashiba himself was reeling for a different reason.

“It really has been a long time. Egi and I always talk about you. The last time must have been the second anniversary of Yuuko’s death, right?”

“I apologize for not keeping in touch. I heard that you were kind enough to visit her grave recently.”

Kamata alluded to strangers whose names meant nothing to Mashiba, and Hatano was serene and quiet in his replies. Mashiba could only listen, feeling a world away from their conversation. There was no room for him here to put in a word.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way Hatano had deliberately wiped all expression from his face at the sound of the name ‘Yuuko,’ but he couldn’t exactly grill him about it now. His thoughts restlessly circled the words, ‘second anniversary of her death,’ though the reason escaped him. Most of the six months of their acquaintance had been devoted to sex, and it would be a bald lie to say that they knew each other. He had only himself to blame, considering everything that had happened. Of course he would have no idea that Hatano had once worked at S Commercial, or that he knew Kamata; why would he?

Mashiba’s intuition was certain of this much: the reason Hatano had left this company must have had something to do with the woman named Yuuko.

“Egi misses you too, you know. You should go see him sometimes,” Kamata was saying, fond affection in his gaze and voice as he wrapped an arm around Hatano’s slight shoulders. The gesture could be nothing but innocent, but Mashiba’s vision swam with an ugly jolt that he realized was jealousy.

“Yes, I’ll try.… But I should really get going now. I’m sorry for disrupting your work.”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to keep you. Take care—and I mean it, don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” Hatano promised with a dip of his head, and he turned to Mashiba with a smile and an unreadable look in his eyes. “I’ll get out of your hair then.”

“Ye-Yeah.”

Hatano’s gaze was indeed directed at him, and yet his eyes were the mysterious color of a man looking far, far away.

“I was supposed to be giving you two a warning! Anyway, get back to your desks.”

An inexplicable sense of loss swooped the ground out from under him, and if not for the sound of Kamata’s unusually embarrassed voice, he might have taken Hatano into his arms right then and there.

“You didn’t even know?” Ikawa jeered, but his odious ridicule fell on deaf ears. To Mashiba, Ikawa had simply ceased to hold any meaning, and the sound of his spitting vitriol registered only as background static. It seemed to have dawned on Ikawa that Mashiba had excised his very existence from his mind, and he stalked away without a word.

But even his departure went unnoticed. Mashiba stood paralyzed as Hatano’s slender back bobbed, step by step, away from him. He did not look back.

And yet that morning, when Mashiba had held that body in his arms, he had been so sure that he had grasped on to something—

Hatano, what the hell…?

Finally he had resolved to sit down and be sincere with him, but now it felt as if everything had been thrown off balance, as if it were all too late, and for a long moment Mashiba could not tear himself away from the lobby doors.

* * *

Mashiba passed the remainder of the workday with a half-hearted listlessness. He was drained of the drive that had propelled him through the morning, and when the hands of the clock released him from his duties, he was ready to haul himself home.

Kamata had managed to carry them through the afternoon’s presentation; alone, Mashiba had little confidence in his ability to have closed the deal. Not that he, still a greenhorn in reality, was allowed any such discretion, but he should have at least made himself useful in a supporting role. Mashiba’s actual contributions, however, had ranged from nearly leaving the office without the materials Hatano had been kind enough to deliver, to making statements that directly contradicted his own data.

“Wherever your head was, it wasn’t in there.”

The front doors of their client’s office were still swinging shut behind them when Kamata delivered his brusque criticism. Though the words chilled him, Mashiba was amazed to find the greater part of his concern occupied not with chagrin at the day’s dismal performance, but with curiosity about Kamata’s relationship with Hatano.

“I’m very sorry.”

“Is something on your mind? I always told you to keep your private life out of the office.”

He bore the stern, blunt reprimand in silence, head bowed and his lips a tight, pale line, until Kamata gave a short sigh.

“Well, what’s done is done. You have any plans after this?”

His promise to Hatano sprang to mind, but after a second he shook his head slowly. “No, nothing.”

If he saw Hatano now, in this state of mind, he had no idea what he might blurt out. He felt volatile, unstable, and he couldn’t trust himself not to turn that to violence.

Kamata gave his brooding subordinate a moment before extending his invitation.

“If you’ve got the time, how about a drink?”

“Huh?”

He knew Kamata didn’t mean to treat him to a beer as consolation for bungling the presentation. The man had never been the type for tepid pats on the back for ‘doing your best.’ Mashiba knew very well that at times like this, Kamata offered little comfort and little reproach, only cleaning up his subordinate’s mess in stoic silence.

“I had no idea you and Hatano knew each other.… Could you tell me about what he’s been up to?”

There it was again: that hint of a smile so unfamiliar to Mashiba, and the jealousy that he had swallowed earlier burned suddenly in his gut like acid. Still, Kamata knew something of Hatano that he did not, and he ached to know.…

“Sure, I don’t mind.” His salesman’s smile fit him like an old glove. “I didn’t have any plans, anyway.”

“Welcome!”

Kamata had settled on a small but cozy bar whose faded indigo entrance curtain bore the name ‘Idaten,’ the Buddhist deity of the kitchen. The pair ducked past the flaps of the curtain, and Kamata addressed the young, bearded owner of the bar, “Drinks and a little food, whatever you’ve got.”

“Do you come here often?” Mashiba asked.

“Yeah, heard about it from a friend of mine. The simmered dishes here are something special.”

A long-haired young man, probably a part-timer, delivered appetizers and chilled sake to their table, and for several minutes they picked at it around innocuous small talk.

“By the way,” finally Mashiba broached the subject point-blank, leading his boss onto the topic. Both of them had clearly been waiting for this moment. “You were asking about Hatano, but I don’t actually know him that well.”

“Oh, really,” Kamata returned in a monotone, furrowing his brow pensively. “You’re years apart, and your personalities are totally different. How are you two friends?” he asked, being well acquainted with the natures of both men in question.

Mashiba steeled himself. “We met by chance about half a year ago,” he answered smoothly. “I was drunk and fell down in the middle of the street, and Hatano took care of me.”

None of it was a lie, so he had no cause to hesitate. He would be hard put should Kamata probe further, but the other man showed no inclination to pry.

“I thanked him, and since then we started meeting up to grab drinks once in a while.… So the only thing he’s been up to that I could tell you about is making kids’ costumes for a dance performance.”

His deliberate attempt at humor seemed to have the desired effect: the tension in Kamata’s expression relaxed, if only slightly.

“Well, that’s enough. As long as he’s doing all right for himself. So, he really did become a preschool teacher. Someone told me he had, but…” Kamata trailed off in a murmur, and when he drained his cup of sake, Mashiba immediately refilled it.

“But um, that was quite a surprise today.” He was wary of his own desperate impatience, and he took special care to maintain a calm, level tone of voice. “I never knew Hatano used to work at S Commercial, or that you knew each other.”

Kamata withdrew his cup, offering only a word of thanks for the refill before lapsing once more into silence. The implied question hovered in the air between them, unanswered.

Next to appear was a plate of salted mackerel and Kamata began to nibble at it, chopsticks plucking away morsel after morsel of fish while his face remained clouded with uncharacteristic indecision. Mashiba wondered if perhaps his approach had been too direct, but Kamata was a closemouthed man either way. He made a formidable opponent, and to extract any significant information from him at all would be a feat.

Better this than trying some cheap trick and making him suspicious.

Kamata’s persistent silence left sick butterflies in Mashiba’s stomach, though he couldn’t say if the nervous flutter was his eagerness to know about Hatano, or in fact some kind of premonition. It was the first time he had sensed something amiss about Hatano, and if he let this opportunity slip away, he feared he would never discover the truth of it. He was attracted to him, to Hatano, whose aloof air he had failed to disturb no matter how he had abused and degraded him, and Mashiba had only just realized these feelings—or possibly, had only now ceased to turn a blind eye to them. Whichever it was, he could no longer ignore his very pressing and very personal interest in Hatano. Stronger still, however, was the nebulous dread that came with the memory of Hatano’s face, gone pale for a heartbeat at the sound of the name ‘Yuuko.’

There was no denying that he had become a coward; he could not bring himself to ask Hatano directly, did not think he could bear to be faced with that clouded smile Hatano had shown Kamata. It was laughably self-serving of him, but precisely because he was aware of the barbarity he had dealt Hatano in the past, he wanted to shed whatever light he could on the matter before facing the other man.

“This isn’t… really something for me to say, but…”

Kamata was no man to fall prey to leading questions, thus the direct approach, but it was not until the wet glass lip of a fourth bottle of sake gleamed between them that Mashiba’s efforts bore fruit.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Mashiba said, and a sudden smile creased Kamata’s sober face, as if he had recognized the token apology for what it was. Mashiba’s chopsticks dipped into the deep-fried flounder and he deliberately refused to look the other’s way, as if to warn Kamata that he could expect no retreat.

“You must have heard a little of our conversation back there.”

He was feigning a calmer man’s composure, but the thrill of anticipation seized his body, and underneath the table his knees shook for an instant before he tensed his muscles and stilled them.

“Yes, something about the second anniversary of Yuuko’s death?”

Kamata fell silent once more at this, and Mashiba said nothing to prompt him. The flounder was a tasteless lump on his tongue, and he forced it down with a swig of cold sake.

“Yuuko, she’s…” Kamata sighed wearily, gaze downcast, and lowered his cup. When he spoke, it was in a soft and wrenching voice. “She’s Hatano’s deceased wife.”

Mashiba’s heart lurched to a stop. Deceased?

“And Egi was a year below me in high school. He’s Yuuko’s father.”

His mind was wiped blank, still reeling from shock, but something in the story didn’t add up. “Um, wait, wait a minute—how old was Yuuko?”

“She passed away five years ago, and she was… twenty-eight, I think, at the time.”

“But, you said you knew Egi in high school?”

Kamata was currently in his early forties, placing him at thirty-seven or thirty-eight at the time of her death, and Egi, who had been a year below him in school, would have been even younger.

“She was his adopted daughter. They were more like brother and sister, actually. I don’t know the details myself, but it seemed like there were some… circumstances.”

The slight lowering of his voice belied Kamata’s professed ignorance; he knew, but Mashiba had no inclination to nose about in Egi’s private affairs.

“I see.”

Whatever the case, a man did not adopt a daughter only ten years his junior without substantial reason. Decorum, however, forbade an inquiry, and Mashiba said nothing—in fact, it was the least of his concerns. He had the sinking feeling that he needed to stop listening now, before Kamata could say another word, and his back went ramrod straight.

“She was like a little sister to me, too. Sweet girl. That’s why I introduced Hatano.”

But Kamata continued in his slow staccato, speaking as if from a great distance, and the man’s peaceful expression filled Mashiba with helpless misery. He had led the conversation here himself; he could scarcely put a stop to it now. His knees shook harder.

“He’d been going through some tough times back then, too. His father died right when he left for college… think his mother passed around two years later.”

This was the first he was hearing of Hatano’s past, and the bands that had closed around his chest tightened. His breath came hard and shallow.

“They were both people who had this dream of family… and Egi and I never got married, so we didn’t have that kind of ‘home’ to share with them.”

Mashiba’s heartbeat hammered furiously, beating a feverish drumbeat against his ribcage, and sweat trickled down in steady rivulets to moisten his collar. He thought nothing at all; there was only the concise procession of facts, falling from Kamata’s lips and sinking leaden into his mind like stones to the bottom of a lake.

“That’s why the two of them always seemed a little lonely. But Yuuko, she was such a sweet girl, and Hatano was a good man. I was really happy for them when they announced they were getting married, I thought that now, they’d both get what they always wanted.”

Kamata’s voice had thickened slightly, as if something had caught in his throat; with his gaze glued to his lap Mashiba could not be sure, but he could guess that the man’s shrewd eyes were rimmed with tears. He tasted bile rising on the back of his tongue, and his tremulous fingers fumbled shortly with a cigarette. The far end smoldered red in his hand, and when he exhaled the smoke stung his eyes.

“Wh-Why,” he began, sighing smoke, and the cracked voice that rasped from his throat could have been a stranger’s, “did Yuuko pass away?”

There was no answer.

“Kamata?”

“Taking one of these,” he said, and drew a cigarette from Mashiba’s pack before Mashiba could admit or deny him. He drew the smoke deeply into his lungs and answered slowly, quietly, “She was in an accident.”

The emptiness in Kamata’s voice made the hairs along Mashiba’s spine stand on end, and there was no hiding the the shivering of his shoulders.

“Had their new baby in her arms when it happened. Driver who hit them had fallen asleep at the wheel.”

The course of the day had loosened the neat, slicked-back arrangement of Kamata’s hair, and while this ought to have made him appear younger, the grimace of remembered pain that twisted his features aged him decades. An aching in Mashiba’s eyelids reminded him that he was staring, that his eyes were fixed wide open, but he could not blink.

He had brushed his bare hands against another man’s wounds, and he was sorry for it.

What have I…

But keener than his regret—

“Hatano was with me at the time, we were on a business trip. He was real excited, they’d just bought a new condo. He was smiling, talking about how she and the baby were looking after the house while he was gone. And there, very next day…”

—was the acute realization of exactly how selfish were the emotions he was imposing upon Hatano.

“Then, Hatano wasn’t…?”

The unfinished sentence dangled in a heavy silence. A sudden urge to scream clawed madly up his throat, and Mashiba crushed it with the heel of his palm. Kamata tossed back another cup of sake, and recounted the agony of his memories in a hoarse, quavering voice.

“He couldn’t make it to her in time. Egi saw her off alone.”

Mashiba’s throat was working beneath his hand, swallowing repeatedly around a searing pain that had nothing to do with alcohol.

What have I done?

More sake had accompanied each interlude in the conversation, and Kamata appeared to be quite drunk. Mashiba suspected that even all these years later, the man could not move past his grief at Yuuko’s death.

Could Hatano?, Mashiba wondered, and his throat gave an alarming gurgle. Kamata had given him just the facts, without embellishment; if anything, the man seemed to be deliberately smothering any sentimentality towards Hatano or Yuuko. Even so, Mashiba could picture the couple all too vividly: a young man and woman, dealt such mean luck in their own families and yearning bitterly for happiness; and then finding each other, taking each other by the hand, only to be wrested brutally apart. He could picture the poignant tragedy of it, the sorrow.

And the contrition, to have been the one left behind.

Was that limpid, steadfast look in Hatano’s eyes something tempered within him, born the moment he had lost her for good? Mashiba sensed intuitively that this was not far from the truth.

Hatano was a man once dead; it had taken him as surely as it had taken Yuuko.

“He was just a shell of himself after that,” Kamata continued, bearing out Mashiba’s hunch. “I don’t mean problems concentrating at work, he stopped sleeping… even went for counseling at one point, it got so bad.”

Kamata was no longer addressing his audience; he seemed to be immersed in his own memories. The breath to beg him to stop flew to the tip of Mashiba’s tongue but he shuddered and bore the sickening rush; he had to listen.

“He quit his job three months after her funeral, and he moped for a while… but I’ll tell you something, Mashiba: a man’s still got to eat. Cruel thing, isn’t it?” Kamata said, and the comment was not aimed at him, but it rang like a personal indictment in Mashiba’s ears.

He had misunderstood the nature of Hatano’s strength. Hatano was not invulnerable, nor was he simply tough and flexible. Old wounds had cut him so deeply that other scrapes and scratches had become easy to bear. Perhaps they no longer even registered as pain.

His throat constricted, wringing another croak out of him, and his vision blurred with the effort of stifling a mounting urge to vomit. Kamata’s face swam out of focus, and it took Mashiba’s desperate concentration to follow the sound of the other man’s voice.

“He’d finally got that family he’d always wanted… then he lost it all in a year, and he was falling apart with no one to help him. Not me, not Egi, we couldn’t do a damn thing.… Next thing we knew, he’d picked himself back up, all on his own.”

“His own?” Mashiba’s chest was heaving now, but he couldn’t conceal his surprise.

“Showed up at my door shrunk thin as a stick, saying he’d decided to be a preschool teacher. Couldn’t have been easy for him, but he said he’s going to take good care of those kids, said he’d do it for the one he lost.”

Kamata gulped in a breath, and one hand rose to cover his face.

“Said it, it was the third time he’d had to see someone go, and… he was used to it now—”

Mashiba slapped his palm over his mouth and leapt to his feet.

“Ex-Excuse me,” he blurted out, or tried to; he wasn’t sure whether the sounds he made were intelligible. The discourtesy of abandoning his boss in the middle of their drinks didn’t even cross his mind. Something foul had collected like dregs in the pit of his belly, and he thought only of expelling it from his body.

He hurtled into the restroom, and no sooner had he flung the lid from the toilet than he was regurgitating the contents of his stomach.

What…

Again and again he retched over the toilet bowl, and his abdominal muscles spasmed with each heave. Tears sprang to his eyes, mucus dribbled from his nose, and every last one of his pores exuded a film of sweat that clung clammy to his skin.

What have I done…

Hatano—a gentle man who carried with him such profound, crippling pain and yet had endured, had risen above it. And what had he done to that man? What had he forced upon him? He had been wrapped around the little finger of a piddling idiot like Ikawa, and fancied himself heartbroken; he could not stop weeping for the shame that burned within him now.

Doing things gently feels so much better, Hatano had whispered once quietly in his arms, and the weight of those words crushed him. How many battles had Hatano braved, with only that small, helpless back for a shield?

“—tano!”

He wanted to die that very instant. Could his death serve as some semblance of an apology to Hatano if he were to perish now, in this agony? The very breaths he drew as he crouched on the bathroom floor were unforgivable. The likes of himself should never have laid a hand upon Hatano. What had he ever truly seen of the other man, that he should have looked down at him with contempt? That same contempt raked across him now, and he bowed in humiliation. His distress must have appeared to those clear, earnest, beautiful eyes as little more than a child’s tantrum, and his body curled in on itself in guilty, racking pain.

“Hatano!”

He was an utter fool. His idiocy knew no bounds. Now, now at last, shameless a wish as it was, he realized that he never wanted to let him go. This was nothing vague or tentative; he was madly, irresistibly attracted to him. The revelation came and passed like a knife inside of him, and in its wake the certainty that he must not see Hatano again.

He would never be able to give Hatano the kind of happiness or stability that he wished for.

He could love him, but he could not become his family.

No.

He needed only to strangle this wailing of his heart, and then someone could appear to give Hatano a family again.

Not him, but some kind-hearted woman.

No, no—no!

The mere suggestion of Hatano making love to a woman lit a blistering fury inside him. Mashiba was painfully aware of his own hopeless romanticism and jealous disposition, but he could only scoff at himself for presuming that he had any right to direct those at Hatano.

And then he imagined the infinite softness of Hatano’s smile, and he hunched over in a little ball on the floor, unable to think, the sound of his own broken sobbing reverberating around him.

Hatano would probably accept him as he was—had, perhaps, already done so, long ago. But despite this, or precisely because of it, he should not take advantage of him, a man whose great kindness sprang from such great loneliness. He should not embroil him in a fickle infatuation that might one day fade away.

He wished fiercely to snuff out the sordid hoping of his heart (if I could only…)—but he could not.

In the grip of cutting pain, he knew with perfect clarity that he loved Hatano.

Until Kamata grew worried and came to call for him through the door, Mashiba could do nothing else but weep at his own foolishness.