## Chapter 251 — Eighteen Months Matsuda’s message arrived on Thomas’s third day back at work. **Are you free after five? I have an answer. No vegetables are involved.** Thomas read it between a request for a certificate the university did not issue and an email whose three attachments contradicted one another about the same deadline. Outside the office windows, February light had begun thinning before the working day ended. A narrow strip of old snow remained beneath the hedge where the sun did not reach. He replied that he was free and asked whether the east entrance of Sendai Station had acquired symbolic importance. **Somewhere quieter. The coffee shop below the west pedestrian deck. I have already checked that it contains chairs.** The clarification sounded like Matsuda. So did the implication that the previous conversation had been affected by insufficient seating, crowded corridors and the physical custody of bean-paste sweets. Thomas put the phone face down beside the postcard he had brought from Tasmania that morning. It showed orange granite, blue water and the long curve of a beach from a height neither he nor Isha had climbed. The image was attractive enough to conceal every practical detail of reaching a similar view. Matsuda had requested proof of summer and objected when their first photograph contained long sleeves. The postcard included sunlight, bare forearms and no people available to undermine the claim. Sugiyama returned from the printer carrying the missing page of a student’s application. “You look as though the attachment has confessed.” “It has not. A friend has made a decision.” “Good or bad?” Thomas considered the question. “He has not told me yet.” Sugiyama placed the page beside the correct file and accepted that the expression on Thomas’s face contained anticipation rather than knowledge. She had learned when not to turn his private life into reception work. The office resumed around them: keyboard sounds, a heater clicking against the cold near the windows and Mori explaining to a caller that *urgent* did not make another department open after closing time. By five, the contradictory attachments had been reduced to one question sent to the issuing office. Thomas left before an answer could return and become evidence that he should remain. Mori glanced at the postcard when he put on his coat. “You carried that all day without posting it.” “I am giving it to someone directly.” “Then it is a small picture rather than a postcard.” Thomas looked at the blank address lines. “The distinction may affect postage more than purpose.” Mori had already returned to her screen. “Go home before you improve that sentence.” Thomas left with the postcard inside his notebook, protected from the weather by more paper than its journey required. --- The coffee shop occupied a deep room beneath the pedestrian deck, separated from the station’s movement by thick glass and music quiet enough to disappear beneath conversation. Its tables were small, dark and arranged for people who expected to keep their coats near them. The evening crowd had not yet filled it. Matsuda sat near the back with a coffee untouched before him. His dark hair was carefully arranged, though one section above his right ear had begun to resist the decision. A folded document envelope lay beside his phone. Thomas removed his coat and sat opposite. “You appear to have brought paperwork.” “I thought you would find that reassuring.” “It depends upon whether the paperwork contains the answer or merely confirms that an answer was requested.” Matsuda pushed the menu toward him. “Order before becoming institutional.” Thomas chose coffee and a slice of plain baked cheesecake because the display contained one and because dinner remained far enough away to survive it. When the server left, he placed the Tasmania postcard on the table. Matsuda picked it up by the edges. The photograph showed Wineglass Bay under a summer sky, the granite headlands bright with orange lichen and the water holding several different blues without appearing edited. “This is more convincing,” he said. “No one is wearing a waterproof coat.” “The photographer may have omitted everyone suffering from wind.” “Then the evidence has been selected.” Matsuda turned it over. Thomas had written only that the island contained more kinds of summer than expected and that the wildlife had declined to validate their itinerary. The blank address lines received a longer inspection than the message. “You have also failed to address it.” Thomas had carried the card from Hobart to Sendai, then from 202 to the university and across the city in his notebook. Stamps would have added ceremony without improving delivery. “I knew where you would be.” Matsuda placed the postcard beside the envelope, where Tasmania and the transfer documents occupied nearly the same amount of table. “That argument threatens several postal systems.” He adjusted one corner until both sat parallel. “I accepted the Tokyo position,” he said. Thomas had expected the answer and still felt the small physical change that followed it. Matsuda’s life would not alter that evening. He would leave the coffee shop, return to the same apartment and remain close enough for an unplanned meal. The sentence nevertheless placed an end date inside routines that had only recently begun to feel current. “Do you want congratulations?” Thomas asked. “I am not certain. Probably, but not at the volume used for promotions.” Matsuda picked up his coffee and discovered it had cooled while he waited. “I want to go. That became clearer after the offer stopped requiring me to be grateful instead of informed.” Thomas looked toward the document envelope. “They answered the questions?” “Eventually. My manager first answered different questions more enthusiastically.” Matsuda opened the envelope and removed two copied pages, keeping them turned toward himself rather than presenting Thomas with work. “The transfer begins after Golden Week, not at the start of April. Eighteen months is written as eighteen months from the reporting date. Any extension requires a new offer and my agreement.” He tapped the second page. The company would pay the move and provide a furnished apartment within a stated limit. The return wording no longer said *likely broader responsibility*. It named the next internal grade and specified that Matsuda would return to the Sendai office with responsibility for coordinating the local side of the projects he would join in Tokyo. The exact work remained difficult to imagine from outside Matsuda’s employer, but the promise now contained a place, a grade and a function that could later be shown missing. “They agreed to all of that?” Thomas asked. “Not immediately. My manager said written details reduced flexibility. I said the uncertainty reduced my willingness to move.” Matsuda’s satisfaction appeared briefly before caution returned. “The later start helped them as well. Someone here needs to finish the current work and prepare the handover. Once that became useful to the company, it stopped being evidence that I lacked ambition.” Thomas’s coffee arrived with the cheesecake. The server placed a small fork beside the plate and withdrew without disturbing the papers. Thomas waited until Matsuda had returned them to the envelope. “What changed your answer?” he asked. “The return clause.” Matsuda looked through the window, where commuters crossed the deck above street level. “And the starting date. April made it feel as though I had been told to exchange my life for an opportunity before I could examine either. May is only a month later, but it gives me time to leave properly.” Thomas cut the end from the cheesecake. It was dense, lightly browned and less sweet than the station basement versions they had considered at New Year. “Leaving properly sounds expensive in meals.” “I have already decided that you may cook once.” “Once?” “You are not feeding me for eighteen months in advance.” Matsuda had prepared the restriction before the meeting. “There may be an ordinary dinner. It may include food you have made before. No dish should represent distance, return, friendship, Tokyo, Sendai or the responsible use of rail transport.” Thomas ate the first bite before responding. “Those conditions remove several ingredients conceptually but leave the kitchen functional.” “They remove speeches made through sauce.” “I have not made a speech through sauce.” Matsuda regarded him over his glasses. Thomas remembered the birthday meal, the housewarming lunch and several private dishes Matsuda had never seen. He revised the claim. “Not deliberately.” The coffee shop filled gradually around them. Two office workers took the table near the window and began comparing managers in lowered voices. A university-age couple shared one dessert while each pretended to have ordered it for the other. The room contained departures, returns and decisions with no obligation to recognise Matsuda’s among them. Thomas asked what his family had said. “My father examined the housing allowance and found one clause he disliked. My sister made a spreadsheet before I had agreed to move. My mother asked whether I wanted the work after the company answered everything else.” Matsuda rubbed one thumb along the coffee cup. “I said yes. It was the first time I could answer without also defending the terms.” Thomas asked when Kanno had learned. The two of them belonged to the same wider circle, but Matsuda had chosen separate conversations rather than a group announcement. “I told her yesterday. She asked whether the return was in writing, then apologised because she had intended to ask how I felt first.” “That sounds like Kanno trying to resist being correct too early.” Matsuda’s mouth moved at one corner. “She failed, but the attempt was visible.” Thomas smiled. Kanno had probably understood the offer’s weakness before Matsuda finished describing its prestige, exactly as he had predicted on New Year’s Eve. Matsuda drank the cold coffee anyway. “You may tell Isha now.” Thomas set down his fork. “Thank you.” “I am aware that she knows something exists.” “She knows you asked for privacy. She has not asked what the subject was.” Matsuda’s expression showed surprise, then mild embarrassment at having expected otherwise. “You tell each other most things.” “Yes. This was yours.” “I appreciate that.” Matsuda adjusted the envelope again, though it was already square to the table. “The decision no longer needs protection. I would rather she hear it from you than discover that Kanno has begun discussing Tokyo train times.” Thomas suspected Kanno had already opened the relevant timetable. “Do you want the four of us to meet before you go?” “Yes, but not only once, and not only at the end.” Matsuda paused, apparently dissatisfied with the sentence’s resemblance to a declaration. “There are three months. We can continue behaving normally for most of them.” “An unusually ambitious plan.” “I may also need help deciding what belongs in the company apartment.” Thomas began to ask about dimensions. Matsuda raised one hand. “Help from a friend. Not a housing assessment.” “I can perform both functions within one visit.” “That is what concerns me.” The cheesecake had become a safer subject. Thomas finished half before asking whether Matsuda intended to keep his current apartment. He did not. The cost made sentiment impractical, and his lease renewal fell close enough to the move that ending it was simpler. Some furniture would go into storage; books and several boxes could remain at his parents’ house; the carefully selected objects that made a temporary room tolerable would go to Tokyo. “I do not yet know which objects those are,” Matsuda said. “Apparently I have lived in the apartment for six years without identifying its essential parts.” Thomas considered the problem with appropriate seriousness. “Your glasses should probably travel.” “I had included them.” The section of hair above Matsuda’s right ear had now separated fully from the arrangement imposed upon it. Thomas indicated the evidence. “The hair arrangement may require local equipment.” Matsuda touched the section above his ear that had already escaped. “Tokyo has mirrors.” “Then continuity is likely.” Matsuda liked his apartment. Thomas had never visited it, a fact that now acquired a deadline. He knew Matsuda’s face at hospital beds, restaurant tables, station corridors and inside 202, but not the rooms from which Matsuda sent messages or returned after their meals. “I should come before you pack it,” Thomas said. Matsuda nodded. “That was one reason I mentioned the apartment.” They moved from practical questions to Tokyo itself. Matsuda knew the city through work visits and short stays, crowded trains and office buildings that had never needed to feel like home. He expected the first months to contain mistakes too minor for anyone to remember and expensive enough for him to resent. The company apartment would probably be in a district chosen by rail access rather than pleasure. His parents had already calculated the fastest route from Sendai, while his sister had calculated a cheaper one and labelled both according to whether their mother was carrying luggage. Thomas knew Tokyo from another body and another life: commuter lines, neighbourhood shops, office towers, summer heat held between buildings and the relief of streets that became residential several turns beyond a major station. Those memories remained his, unlike the supplied university years attached to the current face. He could offer knowledge without deciding that Matsuda’s Tokyo would resemble his own. “When you know the district, I can tell you what questions to ask,” Thomas said. “Supermarket, late trains, noise, whether the useful station exit closes before the last service. I may not know what has changed.” “You speak as though the city was a former employer.” “It imposed procedures and kept more of my time than agreed.” Matsuda accepted the description. “Will you visit?” “Yes.” The answer came before logistics. Thomas added that Matsuda should first acquire a chair, bedding and enough confidence in the route from the station that guests did not become a rescue operation. “I will provide written access instructions.” “Isha may reject any route that does not include landmarks visible above other people.” Matsuda looked from Thomas to the photograph of the peninsula. “She navigated Tasmania.” “She had contour lines. Tokyo occasionally hides the horizon as policy.” Matsuda looked again at the postcard. “How difficult was the walk?” Thomas gave him the concise account: two nights on the circuit, a long climb, brief rain, wet granite and a slip on the descent. He described Isha catching his pack before the lower shelf without converting the incident into a heroic rescue. Matsuda listened past the understatement. “You could have been badly hurt.” “Yes.” Thomas touched the place on his hip where the bruise had faded to a yellow trace. “I was not. Isha scraped her palm and bruised one knee. She regarded my attempts to treat both as excessive.” Matsuda waited long enough that the question did not need repeating. Thomas cut another piece of cheesecake and concentrated briefly upon the crust. “The medical supplies were used correctly,” he said. “Some attention exceeded clinical necessity.” “Then Australia preserved established behaviour.” The conversation did not remain on danger. Thomas showed three photographs: the ridge, a wombat and the image from Wineglass Bay where Isha had pulled him closer before the shutter. Matsuda examined the last one longest. “You look more tired than in the proof-of-summer photograph.” “We had finished the circuit.” “You look happier as well.” Thomas returned the phone to the table. “Yes.” Matsuda accepted the answer as complete. They remained until the evening crowd made the small table valuable to people waiting near the entrance. Matsuda paid for his coffee. Thomas paid for his own food after refusing the argument that decision announcements carried hospitality obligations. Outside, station light and signs had replaced the last natural colour in the sky. At the pedestrian deck, people divided toward trains, buses, shops and streets. Matsuda stopped before the route to his platform. “I have not decided whether to announce the transfer at work as good news,” he said. “You accepted it. That does not oblige you to enjoy every consequence in public.” Matsuda looked down through the glass toward taxis moving beneath them. “My manager has already used the phrase *excellent development*.” “You may allow him the excitement he generated.” “That is useful. Slightly hostile, but useful.” Thomas put his hands into his coat pockets. The cold reached the deck more easily than the street below. “Are you pleased?” “Yes.” Matsuda answered after only a brief pause. “Also sad. Mostly busy. I think that is enough for the first week.” Thomas nodded. Matsuda held up the postcard. “I will place this somewhere the company apartment cannot make respectable.” “The summer evidence should help.” “It may be the only object in the room with an uninterrupted horizon.” They separated without promising constant messages, monthly visits or unchanged friendship. Matsuda took the station route. Thomas walked east beneath the winter lights, carrying no decision and already thinking about a dinner he had been forbidden to make significant. --- Isha was stretching on the living-room floor when Thomas returned. She had changed from her climbing-centre uniform into soft trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. One heel rested on the edge of the sofa while she folded forward over the extended leg, pale hair secured high enough to keep it from the carpet. The television was off. A half-finished mug of tea stood beyond reach of any movement likely to overturn it. Thomas removed his coat and shoes. Isha looked toward his empty hands. “The postcard was accepted?” “Yes. Matsuda classified it as improved evidence of summer.” “He remains wrong about long sleeves.” She changed legs without hurrying. “Did he make his decision?” Thomas crossed the room and sat on the floor beside her. “He accepted the Tokyo transfer. He said I may tell you.” Isha’s movement paused at the end of the stretch. “When does he leave?” “After Golden Week. The company agreed to eighteen months in writing, a defined role when he returns, the next grade and no automatic extension. They will pay for the move and provide an apartment.” She straightened and reached for the tea. “Then he made them offer the position they had described.” “Approximately. The description is now enforceable enough to disappoint him in specific ways.” Isha drank, considering this. “Is he glad?” “Yes. Sad as well. Busy.” “That sounds like Matsuda.” Thomas leaned back against the sofa. Isha lowered her extended leg across his thighs, and he rested one hand around her ankle. “He invited me to his apartment before he packs,” Thomas said. “I have never been there.” “Then go before the rooms become boxes.” “I intend to.” Isha studied him over the rim of the mug. “You are sad.” “Yes.” She set the tea aside and shifted closer. Her foot left his lap; one arm settled behind his shoulders instead. Thomas leaned into her. After a while, she asked, “Will we visit Tokyo?” “He asked. I said yes.” “Good. I have seen airports, Hobart and a museum containing Antarctica. Tokyo should now be manageable.” Thomas looked up at her. “Those experiences do not create a recognised sequence of difficulty.” “They create confidence.” “Tokyo may attempt to correct it.” Isha’s laugh moved through his shoulder. “You lived there.” “In a previous life, some years ago. The city may have changed its methods.” “Then we will allow Matsuda to learn the current hazards first.” The plan required no date yet. Matsuda had no confirmed address, work schedule or knowledge of which weekends would survive the new role. They opened the shared calendar only to record what was known. Thomas entered the reporting date in May. The square already contained one of Isha’s climbing shifts and a reminder to renew a household document whose meaning neither currently remembered. He added **Matsuda—Tokyo transfer begins** without marking the event as celebration or warning. Isha added a dinner in the final week of April, subject to Matsuda’s schedule. Thomas looked at the title she had entered. **Ordinary dinner. Do not feed him for eighteen months.** “That note is unnecessarily restrictive.” “It records the agreed conditions.” “Matsuda prohibited conceptual speeches through sauce. He did not prohibit adequate portions.” Isha saved the event before Thomas could edit it. “You may appeal nearer the date.” The calendar closed with the note intact.