I opened the door and crossed the threshold. My bedroom was shockingly spacious. The thirteen-square-meter room felt so huge, I thought I could fit just about anything in there. What was once the size of my entire run-down apartment was now my very own room. I felt like I was dreaming when I opened the closet. I didn’t own nearly enough clothes to fill the space.
“You have so little stuff, I thought they’d forgotten to unpack something. Is everything here?”
There was no need to involve a moving company, so I had sent my stuff by mail. Two cardboard boxes of my mom’s stuff and one tote bag—that was everything.
“I ordered a futon online. I guess it’s not here yet?”
“I’m glad you weren’t planning to sleep on the floor. No, it hasn’t arrived.”
“Okay.”
“‘Okay’? Where are you gonna sleep tonight if it doesn’t show up?”
“Well, a night on the floor won’t kill me.”
“That doesn’t sound right to me.”
There was one thing in the room that didn’t originally belong to me.
“What is...?” I began.
“Call it a housewarming gift. I thought you might not have bought one yet. I assumed you wouldn’t want a big one, so it’s compact.”
A small Buddhist altar sat in my room. After my mother’s funeral, I’d received a mortuary tablet, but I’d placed it on a shelf instead. My run-down apartment hadn’t contained the space for an altar.
“I appreciate it.”
When I thanked him sincerely, the joy was plain to see on his face, stretching all the way to his eyes.
Still, I couldn’t reply with a smile of my own.
He led me down the corridor and opened the door. “This is the living room.”
It was thirty-two square meters. I’d seen the house plan, but it wasn’t until I saw this place in person that I realized how much space we had. You could fit two of my old apartments in the living room alone. It was quite a bit smaller than the one in his family home, so Nishikawa might have found it oppressive. I made a mental note to not leave my stuff in shared rooms for his sake.
But then something else caught my eye.
“What’s this...?” I asked without thinking. I heard an embarrassed semi-restrained laugh from behind my back.
“Hey, at least it’s not a grand piano.”
“What?”
“What?”
When I turned to him in exasperation, his amusement shifted to confusion. I had gotten used to us thinking on entirely different scales, but I couldn’t comprehend this situation.
“I’d like to know why there’s a piano here at all.”
“I refused the grand piano my parents were trying to buy me, so the upright piano was a compromise. That’s what I was trying to say.”
“I guess a grand piano would fit...”
“Yeah. That’s why my parents and my sister wanted to order the same model we have at home. But I knew you would hate that, so I talked them out of it.”
“Are you planning to stay here after you graduate?”
“No, this is just for college. I’ll go back to my parents’ place after that.”
Why buy a piano for a place you’d only stay four years in— No, never mind. I wouldn’t understand people who bought their son a condo next to his college anyway.
“Your work regulations and future contracts are all in that cabinet. Just in case.”
“Yeah, sure...”
I sighed and sat on the sofa that was big enough to host a giant. I sank into the cushions about three times deeper than I was expecting and caught myself gasping. Pretending I was fine, I pointed at the sofa across from me.
“Sit.”
“Hmm? What’s up?”
Hanging his suit jacket on the back of a chair, he obediently sat where I wanted him to. My employer would do most things I told him to, but he kept whatever went on in his head a secret.
I was genuinely happy about the altar, but that didn’t erase what happened.
“I don’t get you at all,” I said.
“We’ve got plenty of time to fix that.”
“Why hire anyone at all? You seem to have plenty of friends as it is.”
In truth, he had more than enough friends. A ridiculous number of people approached him both before and after the entrance ceremony, and I had to endure their gazes when all I wanted to do was run away.
Perhaps I was kicking a hornet’s nest. Perhaps they’d swarm around my head any second now. It wasn’t until that moment I realized my comment had sounded so angry, but since I couldn’t take it back now, I turned to face him head-on.
He didn’t seem to consider elaborating. Instead, we locked eyes.
“I had my reasons,” he replied. “You just don’t need to know them.”
“Not this again...”
“You can’t uncook an egg. Even if you realize you were better off not knowing, you can’t go back to being ignorant. I could tell you, but I’m not sure if you really want that, Sacchan.”
I didn’t pull away. I resisted, staring right back at him.
He was wearing his usual smile when the soft light suddenly became sharper, turning it into a smile that felt cold. This must have been the first time I’d ever seen that expression on his face, but it reminded me of the serious expression he’d had when we first spoke at the Nishikawa residence.
“If I don’t know anything, how can I—” I began, just for him to cut me off.
“What’s the issue? You’ll keep getting paid as promised, and when we graduate, you’re done. I won’t ask you to work at one of our companies. You’re not losing anything, are you?”
I wasn’t losing anything. I only stood to gain. But what did he gain by spending time with me? I already knew this didn’t involve a scam or blackmail or extortion.
So what was the point of this?
“I want you to tell me one thing,” I said.
I wondered if this would be rude to ask. Still, I wanted to know more. I couldn’t shake the idea that his actions were masking his true feelings.
“Yeees?” His voice was casual and lighthearted. I got right to it.
“On the day of the funeral, was it you who moved my trash bags back to my door?”
For just a moment, his expression went slack, and then his beautiful face instantly lit up with a teasing, bold smile.
“How did you know?”
“Why?”