“Um, excuse me… Are you Dr. Shiraishi?”
Suzui whirled around at the unexpected greeting. An elegant-looking woman in her midsixties stood before him. She was rather fashionable, wearing a scarf and tinted glasses. Her dog was on a green leather leash. Perhaps they were on a walk.
Suzui didn’t recognize her. Initially, he assumed he’d overheard this woman’s conversation with someone else. Then Suzui noticed she was looking at Jin, who stood beside him.
“Huh?” Jin stared at her, taken aback.
Suzui and Jin were returning from the headquarters of a major drugstore chain after delivering a presentation on new frozen goods.
Once Jin returned to work after his wife’s funeral, the new section chief, Mutsumi, suggested he go out on location instead of solely being an in-office aide.
“I’m sure he has plenty of experience from his prior workplace, so it will be great to take him along,” she’d told Suzui, and he’d agreed. Jin always seemed capable, but he was held in check by Chief Sato. It was a shame that Jin’s passivity held him back and deprived the sales team of a good employee.
Thus, in the new regime, Suzui and Jin took many trips out for meetings and presentations as a team, and Suzui was grateful for it. Having an older man like Jin along gave clients a feeling they were being treated with respect and care. Jin’s calm, reserved outlines of products attracted senior management to meetings—people who had never attended before.
The little dog circling around the older woman’s ankles yapped at Suzui and Jin. “Oh, stop,” she scolded quietly before resuming her examination of Jin.
“I knew it!” she exclaimed, patting her palms together with delight. “It’s been so many years. Goodness, I was worried for ages after you suddenly quit, wondering where you went. How have you been? I just moved to this area, and I never expected to see you here.”
“Umm…”
Jin looked perplexed. His very uncertain reaction caused the excited woman to turn skeptical. She tilted her head in a gesture of confusion.
“Um…are you Dr. Shiraishi?”
“No…”
“Oh…”
Doubt became evident on the woman’s face. She’d started to avert her eyes in awkward embarrassment when the dog at her feet erupted into barking.
“Growf!” it growled. “Grau! Grau! Grau-grau-grau!”
Jin gave the old woman an apologetic bow and walked away as she scolded her dog. “Hey! Chiko! Stop that, Chiko!”
Suzui wanted to hurry after Jin, who was removing himself from the situation, but he also felt uncomfortable about ignoring the woman. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “Chiko’s usually so well-behaved, but she’s all worked up about something. I’m sorry to have startled you.”
“Er, it’s all right,” Suzui reassured her. He wondered if Jin was afraid of dogs. “I’m sorry about that. He’s a coworker of mine—do you know him from his old job?”
Maybe Jin had pretended he didn’t recognize her. He didn’t speak about anything before his time at the company. Suzui assumed he’d been in senior management at a large firm and that he chose not to discuss his experiences for a reason.
Once the woman reined in her dog and got it to sit, she replied, “Yes. At least, I thought so, but maybe I was wrong. Do excuse me.”
“Was he the president of a company?”
“Pardon? No, a doctor,” she said, a bit surprised. “A well-respected practitioner in my area, but the office closed down at some point. It was very disappointing.”
The dog was no longer barking, but it wasn’t entirely calm, either. It growled lightly, issuing muffled grunts and glaring in Jin’s direction.