Once we were through with most of our meal, we topped it off with some coffee and dessert. Saitou seemed to be the sort who favored luxuries like booze and sweets and coffee, making sure to treat herself to dessert and drinks every day. Afterward, she invited me to join her for more drinks. It didn’t matter to me either way, so I went along with her. The restaurant bill came out to an even number, so it was easily split.
We shared another toast at a bar near the restaurant. We raised our glasses casually to one another as we sat at the counter, I with a gin rickey cocktail and Saitou with a Caol Ila. As the alcohol seeped through our insides, Saitou brought up a topic more personal than she had ventured back at the restaurant.
“So, what did you usually do with your time back then?”
“Nothing, really. If anything, I guess I did a lot of running.”
“Guess you were pretty athletic.”
“I mean, it’s not like I was into any actual sports. I just ran because I didn’t have anything else to do.”
Though I truly had no interest in the answer, I returned the question.
“I guess I listened to a lot of music,” she said.
“Oh, is that why you got the radio job?”
“I guess so. I do have a lot of fun now when they invite me to help choose the music they’re putting on. It’s fun, or rather, fulfilling. Guess that sounds a little self-important.”
“I think it’s cool that you can say stuff like that.”
“It really isn’t all that cool though. There’s a lot that goes into it.”
Well, of course there was a lot that went into it. There was a lot that went into everything in life, but I responded with the appropriate, “Well, even if it’s tough sometimes, it’s nice that you have fun with it.”
So that was it. In a way, Saitou had managed to reach a future that she had painted with her own hands. I wondered if the reason it seemed that her own wind had not yet passed her by was because of her own eclectic desires as a person or simply because she was right in the middle of the storm.
“Do you enjoy your work, Suzuki-kun?”
I had never once assigned a value to how enjoyable my work was.
“I guess I get a sense of accomplishment from how weirdly busy it gets. There’s a lot that could be improved, though.”
“Guess it’s like that everywhere.”
“It’s true, but you still gotta keep on living.”
Obviously, this was painful, but it was also inevitable.
“You’re right, that’s true.”
She nodded deeply, smiling at me, as though my half-hearted responses actually meant something to her. People sometimes feel that they understand others better when they realize that they share a circumstance with someone else. I supposed she must have started to feel some affinity for me, noting some similarities between my transformation and her own journey from high school to her current self. This was clearly a misconception, but given that everyone in this world looks the same in some ways from the outside, it was inevitable that someone might draw this sort of comparison.
What was inside of me couldn’t be empathized with. But of course, there was no real harm in having a work colleague who felt positively toward me, so I perked up the corners of my mouth and nodded, saying, “Guess so.”
Using this conversation as a launching point, we continued to volley quips back and forth, as though we actually shared common ground as rather prickly people in high school who had learned and softened over time—as Saitou seemed to assume. Suddenly, she said, “I really was bored a lot back then.”
“Back then? You mean, when we were younger?”
“Yeah. Still, I don’t really hate my old self when I think about her.”
That was when I realized it. When we were first reunited, I had been a bit stunned at her transformation, but there was nothing that shocking about it. She’d undergone an infectiously commonplace transformation. She had changed, yes. Saitou had become an adult who looked back fondly on the past. Her transformation had only stood out to me because the outward changes had been so marked.
Of course, that made it even more mysterious to me that she still looked like her wind hadn’t passed her by. Though she was intoxicated, the light in her eyes was one that people like me, simply whiling the rest of their lives away, did not possess.
Still, that was none of my business. I had no interest in knowing how her life would progress.
These days, I no longer hesitated to slurp down the time that I would have cherished so much back then, consuming it bit by bit as though separating out a braid of hair strand by strand.
We continued nodding back and forth at our routine conversation, until we realized we had already blown past midnight and it was now approaching 1 a.m. I watched Saitou take a wobbling step as she stood to use the restroom, having drank quite a bit, and took the opportunity to settle the bill. Saitou, lover of luxury, was probably not quite ready to go back home, but I figured it was about time to call it a night.
I told her this when she returned, bleary-eyed. She didn’t seem to disapprove but started to ask about paying me back. I told her that it would be a hassle to try and take money from her, instead suggesting that she treat me next time, if we happened to do this again. She agreed.