“I suppose so, yeah.”
“It’s good that you’ve gotten over the hump now.”
“I guess so,” Ijichi said, but he sounded unsure. He was unusually free of obligations at the moment and was reluctantly trying to let her know that he had come to visit her in part because he didn’t have anything to do. Just then, however, the fates conspired in Ijichi’s favor in a way he could never have expected.
“Well,” Ieiri said, “in that case, are you free tonight?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have time tonight?”
“Wha … ?”
“Or would you rather I perform an otolaryngological evaluation?”
“Oh, no … I’m free, I’m free, I’m free!”
“I heard you the first time.”
Ijichi’s brain paused to process Ieiri’s invitation. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was certainly unexpected. Don’t get any weird ideas, he cautioned himself, but he couldn’t stop from feeling rather buoyant.
Whether Ieiri had noticed his excitement was unclear. She recrossed her legs with utter composure. “Good, you’re free,” she said. “You should take time to go out for drinks sometimes. I thought I’d invite you.”
“Um, you want to go drinking?!”
“Nothing that would upset your stomach. Although your stomach itself doesn’t appear to be the problem. But a change of pace can be good for you.”
“R-right. Yes, I can do that.”
“Great. Let’s say six o’clock in Asakusabashi. I’ll tell you the name of the place later.”
“Sure, got it!”
Ijichi’s spine straightened even more as he answered, as if this were a job interview. Ieiri smiled faintly upon seeing his posture change. She began reorganizing medical records, a clear signal of her desire to get back to work. Ijichi didn’t want to interfere, so he stood up, bowed deeply, and left.
“Well, then …” he said to himself once he had left the office.
Nothing terribly momentous had happened, but Ijichi felt a sudden rush of motivation. Now that he had plans, he couldn’t work overtime. He didn’t have any work, but just in case something came up, Ijichi raced back to his desk and began putting his affairs in order.
“This is the place, isn’t it?”
It was 5:45. Ijichi had walked ten minutes from the Asakusabashi subway station, down a street just beginning to come alive with neon lights and salarymen coming from work, and found the designated establishment. The restaurant was called Small Bird Box, which didn’t exactly inspire an appetite in someone involved with curses.
“Hmm …”
Ijichi wouldn’t say the establishment he was staring at looked very appealing, either. Strung outside were red paper lanterns and a beer sign, and the entrance was a sliding door. A faint sense of excitement had been mounting in him on the journey there, but now he felt it ever so slightly receding.
“I thought we were going to have a quiet dinner alone, but …”
A faint image arose in the back of his head. Come to think of it, he had hardly ever seen Ieiri without her white coat. Ieiri was always fiddling with medication or dead bodies, and he had almost never seen her not in work mode.
As if to start his stalling engine, Ijichi took a deep breath. Then he did it again—twice, three times—replacing the air in his lungs. Having shored up his resolve, he pulled open the sliding door to the restaurant.
“Woo-hoo! You’re late, Ijichi!”
Without stepping inside, Ijichi reclosed the door: tunk! Then he wiped his glasses with his sleeve.
Something was very wrong. Instead of Ieiri in something other than her white work coat, he had been greeted by a blond guy in sunglasses drinking melon soda from a massive mug—a guy who looked suspiciously like Gojo. Had Ijichi’s eyes been cursed? Was he under attack by a brainwashing technique?
Certainly he couldn’t have seen what he thought he saw.
Ieiri had invited him out. He most definitely had not come to drink with Gojo. Besides, Gojo didn’t drink alcohol, so he wouldn’t be in a drinking establishment like this. Perhaps exhaustion and overexcitement had caused Ijichi to hallucinate. Yeah, that must be it. The diligent assistant manager took another deep breath and, with great trepidation, once again opened the door.
“What gives?” the blond guy asked, looking unmistakably like Gojo.
Ijichi made a sour face as he squinted. “What are you doing, Gojo?!”
“I’m doin’ nonalcoholic bondage play at a drinkin’ establishment, and I ain’t goin’ home until I’m good and hammered!”
“Then you’ll never go home.”
“Well, bondage isn’t any fun if you’re not strapped in tight! Ijichi, are you the type who can’t be satisfied until you reach high levels of kink?”
“I don’t usually play those kinds of games.”
“Get in here, Ijichi,” a new voice said. “Gojo and I have already started.”
“Oh … hi, Ieiri.”
Ieiri was sitting diagonally across from Gojo at the four-person table, and she had just drained a large mug of beer.
Ijichi was beginning to comprehend the situation. Tonight’s drinking session was for three. He felt something inside himself, that part of him prone to believing in dreams too good to be true, crumble with a great tumult.
This was reality. The scene before him now was much less dreamy than Ieiri inviting him, and him alone, for a drink at six o’clock. He bowed in greeting and hid his disappointment as he sat in the seat they indicated next to Gojo.
“Let’s get you a first drink,” Ieri said.
She summoned the server and ordered a beer for Ijichi and a highball for herself. Ijichi decided not to speculate about how many drinks she’d downed before he arrived.
The spread in front of Gojo included a melon soda, french fries, and chicken fingers, the kinds of food a small boy might order if his parents dragged him into a drinking establishment.
“All right, cheers!” Gojo said.
There was a moment of chaos as they toasted with melon soda, beer, and a highball. Then Ieiri opened a menu printed on worn Japanese paper and ordered more food. “Abalone boiled in soy sauce, chunks of raw tuna, and offal stew. Ijichi, any sides for you?”
“Um … potato salad.”
“Chunky or smooth?”
“Smooth.”
After swiftly completing the order, Ieiri drank from her glass with an elegant gesture. Her highball rapidly disappeared, along with the edamame and kinpira appetizers already on the table. She was guzzling her drink the way a student guzzles cold cider in the summer sun.
Her pallor was also surprising. She seemed paler than usual, so even though she had probably already finished at least one drink, she didn’t look drunk or flushed. Her natural elegance combined with her capacity to drink heavily made her seem incredibly cool in Ijichi’s eyes.
Meanwhile, Gojo definitely wasn’t drunk, because he wasn’t drinking alcohol.
“Hey, Ijichi?” Gojo said. “Did you know that Steven Spielberg was the first one to put cucumber in potato salad?”
“Oh, really? I’ve never heard that before.”
“Yeah, cuz it isn’t true,” Gojo said.
“Okay …”
A conversation with a drunk would have made more sense than conversation with Gojo. That was the case whenever Gojo and Ijichi tangled, but it was even worse now. Gojo seemed to be drunk without having consumed a drop of alcohol—drunk on the atmosphere, on the convivial attitude of the crowd of daily drinkers and salarymen on their way home from work. He was acting like a bigger drinker than Ieiri.