Typically, it was Saitou who selected our date spots. It would probably be unnatural if she did it every single time, so I’d at least offer some semblance of an opinion, but she never took it into account. Of course, to maintain a stress-free relationship, it was important not to blithely accept everything, so I sometimes intentionally picked little squabbles during our conversations. Other than that, there was no reason for us to have any particularly noteworthy fights, and even now, it didn’t seem that there were any big conflicts brewing on the horizon. In that respect, the sort of distance Saitou had when it came to romance probably helped. She wasn’t after the sort of persistently passionate romance where she had to see me constantly or affirm our feelings for each other every single day. What she wanted was a relationship that was little different from friendship, with occasional dramatic, fiery moments. As far as I was concerned, this was exceedingly easy to deal with.
It took me far longer to comprehend Saitou’s relationship with her work than her relationship with romance. Previously, we’d had a conversation along these lines:
“When you talk about radio, people imagine a lot of late nights, but actually, most of the work gets done during the day. I’m currently in charge of an afternoon program, so my schedule is pretty standard, but there’s always the possibility of reorganization. Do you listen to the radio, Kaya-kun?”
“I always have it on when I’m at home. And I listen to your show on demand.”
I listened to it so I could keep up with the conversation when the topic came up. Her eyes widened as though this surprised her.
“Really? Sorry, I’m just so surprised!”
“That I listen to the radio?”
“No, that you’re actually interested in my work. You never talk about you own job, so I figured you didn’t care about other people’s either.”
She was right. I didn’t care about any of it. Until that conversation, it hadn’t occurred to me that Saitou was arrogant enough to believe that people who take interest in their own careers must also be interested in others’ work. Still, Saitou’s arrogance wouldn’t cause me any inconvenience, and I was thankful to get the chance to reaffirm that her work was her pride and joy, knowledge which helped our relationship run more smoothly.
Given how much value she placed on her work, she was probably in the blustering prime of her life right now. I envied her life, if that wind of hers didn’t leave her until she was so old that she could no longer work the way she did now.
Before I knew it, it had been about half a year since Saitou and I had started dating. Like most working adults, both of our work hours were usually from morning until night, so we were only able to see each other in the evenings when our professional and personal affairs didn’t take priority, or on the rare occasion that both our days off aligned.
Saitou had seemingly been pretty swamped at work lately, but today, she appeared almost performatively free of fatigue, the light in her eyes threatening to scald me with its intensity.
“Hey there! I’m starving!”
“Hey. What do you wanna eat?”
“I’ll let you decide today.”
Saitou was wearing casual autumn wear while I was in a suit, though she hadn’t had the day off. She seemed to have finished up her work by early evening and had headed home to wait for me to get off. On days like this, if we hadn’t already decided on somewhere to go, we would meet up at a drugstore near her place.
Today was no different.
“This isn’t really my wheelhouse, but I’m fine with anything but curry. I already had curry for lunch.”
“Gotcha. How about the usual, then?”
By now, I had spent enough time with her to understand where she was referring to. “The usual” was an izakaya that was popular with area locals. It was independently owned, and there were only a few employees on staff. We had been there frequently enough that I now recognized most of them, and Saitou, who often went there on her own, was treated as a regular.
“Oh, you brought the boyfriend with you today!”
I gave the appropriate smile and nod as a female employee who always seemed to be there greeted us in a gratingly chipper voice. We parted the noren curtains and stepped inside. Saitou seemed to enjoy talking with the staff here, much preferring a place where everybody knew her name to some strange place where she’d just be treated as part of the scenery. That said, she was fully aware that not everyone shared her preferences, so if I had been opposed to this the first time she brought me here, we would have never come here together again.
We were seated side by side at the counter. Saitou asked the waiter about today’s special and ordered that, along with drinks and some menu items we’d ordered before. I was about to ask her if anything noteworthy had happened today as a conversation starter, as I usually did, when Saitou spoke up first.
“I know this is kind of out of the blue, but I wanted to talk to you about something!”
“Hm, what’s that?”
I knew without looking at her that Saitou’s eyes were shining. It was rare for her to get this fired up at the start of a conversation. Usually, she’d start off by talking about the news or something that had happened that day, something like that to feel out the vibe. She must have had some particularly good news to share.
We clinked our beer steins together, then Saitou quickly turned to the topic that she wanted to address.
“A while back, we were talking about whether we were still in touch with people from high school, right?”
“Yeah, I told you that I hadn’t been in touch with anyone for a while, and you said that you really weren’t either.”
“Right, right, but there are still one or two people who I hear from now and then, and today I got a text from one of them for the first time in ages and gave them a call. We decided to go get lunch together soon!”
“Huh.”
Just as I was starting to note how unlike her this was, wondering if this was something that she absolutely needed to talk to me about, the waiter approached and placed our appetizers on the counter.
“Oh, thank you! Right, so, there was a girl in our class named Aizawa Shihori. Do you remember her?”
“Aizawa…?”
As I thought about what to say, the waiter started elaborating on all the appetizers.
“I have some recollection of her, but I don’t think I ever talked to her much. Oh, this one’s really good.”
“Oh, it is! Anyway, you say that, but were there any of our classmates that you really did talk to?”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“Shiori-chan did remember you, though.”
I stopped moving my chopsticks and took a sip of my highball.
“You talked about me?”
“Oh, sorry, should I not have…?”
“No, that’s not it. I’m just surprised that I was even worth bringing up.”
I had plenty of guesses about what people thought about me back then.
“She was surprised to hear that I’d gotten back in touch with you and that we were dating now. She asked me what you were like these days. I told her you were a good guy.”
I was sure she wanted me to be embarrassed by this.
“Little embarrassing for a former classmate to have to hear that.”
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that. Anyway, Shihori-chan got married. Her surname is Imai now. But yeah, we’re gonna get lunch!”
“Mm.”
“You wanna come too?”
It was an innocent question, or, rather, an arrogantly ignorant one—Saitou was assuming that just because she had overcome the barriers between her and our classmates, there was no reason that others couldn’t do the same.
“I’m sure my being there would just make things awkward for her. You go ahead.”
“I mean, I figured it’d be fine since we’re all adults now, but I see what you mean. She did say that you could come if you wanted, though.”