## Chapter 263 — The Customer Who Returned

The booking appeared in the schedule as forty-five minutes without a route.

Isha found it between a school group and the evening beginner session, marked in Ishikawa’s compact handwriting:

**Fujita Haruna — quiet equipment appointment. No climbing target. Ask before each change.**

The final instruction had been underlined once.

Isha read it while the centre was still recovering from the school group. Rental shoes occupied two open crates beside the desk. Chalk marked a white trail across the dark floor where one child had removed both hands from the bag before deciding where to put them. Yoshida counted harnesses at the return bench and rejected one whose buckle webbing had twisted through itself.

“Is this the woman from the email?” Isha asked.

Ishikawa closed the incident log she had been checking. “She came once in March with three people from work. Introductory rope session. She left before the safety briefing finished.”

“What happened?”

“She became frightened.”

Isha waited for the details Ishikawa had deliberately not supplied.

The manager looked toward the front windows. Late-afternoon light caught the upper panels of the climbing walls but left the entry area in softer shadow. Most of the children had gone. One parent was still negotiating with a water bottle and a coat sleeve near the shoe racks.

“Her friends encouraged her,” Ishikawa said. “The instructor encouraged her. A customer nearby encouraged her. No one said anything cruel. She still had four people telling her what she could do after she had stopped wanting to do it.”

Yoshida placed the twisted harness in the inspection box. “She emailed last week and asked whether she could come back when it was quiet. She wants to enter, put on a harness and take it off again.”

“No rope?” Isha asked.

“No rope,” Ishikawa said. “No wall unless she asks. No attempt to make the next booking easier by adding one more step today.”

The instruction was clear. Its difficulty lay in how little it allowed the employee to improve.

Isha looked again at the schedule. “Why me?”

Ishikawa’s first answer showed in the movement of her eyes toward Isha’s fading bruise.

The violet beneath Isha’s left eye had softened into yellow at one edge but remained visible against her fair skin. Customers had noticed it through the shift. One teenage boy had asked whether she had fallen while climbing. Isha had told him it came from another sport and prevented Yoshida from explaining that Isha had moved willingly into a padded fist.

“You do not look as though fear is contagious,” Ishikawa said. “That may help. It may also make you the wrong person if you turn calmness into expectation.”

“I will not.”

“I know you intend not to.” Ishikawa tapped the underlined sentence. “Ask before each change.”

The distinction irritated Isha by being necessary.

She returned the schedule to the desk and helped clear the last children’s equipment. The work took fourteen minutes. Harnesses went to the drying rail or the inspection crate. Rental shoes returned to paired hooks. Yoshida cleaned chalk from the floor with a wide mop whose handle had acquired tape in three colours and no surviving original grip.

By the time Fujita arrived, the centre had become unusually spacious.

She stood beyond the entry gate without opening it.

Isha recognised her from the booking notes only by elimination. Fujita was in her mid-thirties, shorter than Isha by nearly thirty centimetres and dressed for an appointment rather than exercise: loose navy trousers, a grey cardigan and clean trainers. A canvas shoulder bag remained held tightly beneath one arm. Her dark hair had been tied low, then adjusted enough times that several strands had come free around her face.

Her gaze passed over the reception desk, the shoe racks and the lower wall. It stopped when a climber landed on the bouldering mat across the room.

The landing was controlled. The mat still answered with a broad, compressed impact.

Fujita’s fingers tightened around the bag strap.

Isha approached only as far as the inside of the gate.

“Fujita-san?”

“Yes.”

“I am Albrecht Isha. Ishikawa explained the appointment to me. We can stay here, enter the reception area or leave. You do not need to decide the whole visit now.”

Fujita looked up.

People often looked longer when first meeting Isha. Height, pale hair and the uncommon clarity of her green eyes collected attention before manners redirected it. Today Fujita’s gaze moved instead to the bruise beneath Isha’s eye.

“You were injured,” she said.

“Lightly. It does not affect my work.”

Fujita’s gaze stayed on the fading colour as if deciding whether the centre itself had supplied it.

“Here?”

“No. At another kind of training.”

Fujita nodded as if this reduced one unknown without improving the room itself.

The entry gate remained closed between them. Isha did not reach for it.

After several breaths, Fujita said, “I thought I could come inside if there were fewer people.”

“There are eleven customers now. The school group has left. The evening group will begin in about an hour.”

“That is still eleven.”

“Yes.”

Isha could have added that most were experienced, that none had reason to watch her, that the rope area was farther from the entrance than it appeared. Each fact might be reassuring. Each would also argue against the number Fujita had just named.

They stood with the gate between them while one of the auto-belay devices retracted overhead. The line whispered upward through its housing, then stopped with a small mechanical knock.

Fujita’s shoulders rose.

“I did not remember that sound,” she said.

“Do you want to leave?”

“No.” The answer came quickly enough to belong to the fear as much as to Fujita. She loosened one hand from the bag, pressed her palm against her thigh and tried again. “Not yet.”

Isha remained where she was.

At the desk, Ishikawa worked through an order form without looking toward them. Yoshida carried the mop into the equipment room. Both women had made themselves available by refusing to become an audience.

Fujita looked through the gate once more. “Can you open it?”

“Yes.”

Isha opened the gate and stepped aside.

Fujita did not cross immediately. The narrow opening contained no physical obstacle. Her body treated it as a decision large enough to require preparation.

When she entered, she stopped beside the reception desk, less than two metres from where she had stood outside.

Isha closed the gate only after asking.

The latch clicked.

Fujita flinched, then looked back at it. “I knew it would do that.”

Isha did not tell her that knowing and hearing were different. Fujita already possessed the evidence.

“Where is the harness?” she asked.

“The rental rack is behind the desk. We can bring one here. You do not need to go farther into the centre.”

“I would like to sit first.”

Isha indicated two benches near the shoe racks and let Fujita choose the one facing away from the highest wall. She sat at the far end, bag still beneath one arm. Isha took the opposite end only after asking whether she wanted company there.

For several minutes they watched the part of the centre Fujita had not selected.

The entrance mat held damp marks from outdoor shoes. A stack of waiver forms leaned inside a clear holder. The wall behind reception displayed photographs from youth competitions, equipment notices and a poster explaining how to check an auto-belay connection. None required conversation.

Fujita’s breathing slowed until the next landing sounded from the bouldering area.

“This is stupid,” she said.

Isha turned her head. “What is?”

“I am sitting beside shoes. Nothing is happening.” Fujita looked down at her own hands. “Last time I had already paid. Everyone had changed clothes. My section leader organised it because we needed something fun after the end of the quarter. I was the only one who could not begin.”

Isha remembered groups in the other world who had called danger training after enough skilled people agreed to survive it. She remembered Earth customers whose friends treated shared admission as shared desire.

“Did you want to climb before you came?” she asked.

“I said yes.”

“That was not my question.”

Fujita looked at her, surprised enough that the tightness around her mouth changed shape.

“I did not know,” she said. “Everyone else wanted to. I thought I would know after I arrived.”

A staff member crossed the far mat carrying a coiled rope. Fujita watched until the rope disappeared behind the desk.

“My friend said I was safe,” she continued. “The instructor said I could stop. Then they kept explaining why I should try one step. I knew they were being kind. It made leaving worse.”

Isha felt the first impulse to separate intention from effect and discarded it. Fujita had already done so herself.

“Do you want the harness brought here?” she asked.

Fujita did not answer immediately. The booking had been made for that purpose. The purpose had not become an obligation merely because she had crossed the gate.

“Yes,” she said at last. “But do not put it on me.”

“I will bring it and place it on the bench.”

Isha rose, collected a medium rental harness and returned without carrying more than requested. She chose one with contrasting leg-loop webbing and a single waist buckle, easier to understand by sight than the lighter models with hidden adjustments.

She placed it between them.

Fujita stared at the harness as though it had arrived with greater complexity than memory. Her fingers remained upon the bag strap.

“This is the same kind?”

“Probably. The centre uses several models. This is simpler to adjust.”

“Why are there so many loops?”

Isha named only the parts Fujita touched. Waist belt. Leg loops. Belay loop. Gear loops that staff would not use for a beginner session. She did not explain loading directions, tie-in points or the ways incorrect use could injure someone. The appointment did not require a safety lecture for an activity Fujita had not chosen.

Fujita picked up one leg loop, turned it over and put it down.

“Last time someone held it open for me,” she said.

“Do you want me to do that now?”

“No.”

They waited.

A child entered with her mother, collected rental shoes and moved toward the beginner wall. The girl looked once at Isha, perhaps at the bruise, then became more interested in whether the smallest shoes came in red. Fujita watched them pass.

“She is not afraid,” Fujita said.

“I do not know.”

The girl had begun pulling at one blue shoe while her mother completed the rental form, her confidence already occupied by a more immediate objection.

“She came in.”

“Yes.”

The girl objected loudly to the available colour and sat on the floor while her mother negotiated. Whatever fear she possessed had not selected the gate.

Fujita touched the waist belt.

“Can I take off my cardigan?”

“Yes.”

She removed it and folded it into her bag. Beneath it she wore a plain white shirt, slightly creased where the bag had pressed against her. The action changed nothing about the equipment and appeared to cost her more effort than crossing the gate.

“Can you show me how a person steps into it without putting it on me?”

Isha set the harness on the floor and demonstrated with her own feet beside it rather than stepping inside. She indicated the waist opening and leg loops, then moved away.

Fujita stood.

She placed one foot inside the correct opening and withdrew it immediately.

The harness remained on the floor.

“I thought the straps were moving,” she said.

“They moved because your shoe touched them.”

“I know.”

Isha held still.

Fujita tried again. One foot entered, then the other. She stood within the loose harness without lifting it.

Her breathing had become high and shallow. Isha could see the pulse at the side of her throat and the effort required to keep both feet where they were.

“Do you want to step out?”

“No.” Fujita closed her eyes, opened them and looked at the waist belt around her shoes. “I want you to lift it. Only to my knees.”

Isha unfolded from the bench but did not enter Fujita’s reach until the next permission was clear.

“May I stand in front of you?”

“Yes.”

Isha moved slowly enough that every action remained visible. She took the waist belt in both hands and lifted until the leg loops reached Fujita’s knees. The webbing brushed the loose navy trousers.

Fujita caught the bench with one hand.

Isha stopped.

“Remove it,” Fujita said.

Isha lowered the harness at once.

Fujita stepped free before it had fully settled and sat hard upon the bench. Her face had lost colour. Isha moved the harness half a metre away and asked whether she wanted water.

“No. I want—” Fujita stopped and pressed both palms against her thighs. “I want a minute.”

Isha gave her one without counting it where she could see.

The centre continued. Rope moved through a belay device. Someone laughed near the training boards. The child who had wanted red shoes crossed the entry area in blue ones and appeared to have survived the compromise.

Fujita’s breathing slowed.

“I did less than last time,” she said.

“What did you do last time?”

“They put the harness on. I let them attach the rope. I stood near the wall for perhaps ten minutes.”

The account sounded greater by the centre’s usual measures and contained less of Fujita herself than the loose straps now resting on the floor.

“Did you choose each part?”

Fujita looked toward the harness on the floor.

“No.”

Isha understood why the comparison was false. She also understood that saying so might become another person explaining Fujita’s own experience to her.

“The booking says no climbing target,” she said instead. “It does not say how high the harness must go.”

Fujita looked at the schedule desk, though the booking could not be read from the bench. “I asked to put it on.”

“Yes.”

“I did not.”

“No.”

The two answers remained in the air without correction.

Fujita picked up her cardigan but did not put it on. Her fingers worked once along the folded edge.

“Can we try again?” she asked.

Isha’s body had already prepared to move. She kept it seated.

“What do you want to be different?”

Fujita considered the question. “I want to lift it myself.”

Isha returned the harness to the floor and stepped back.

Fujita entered it again. Her first foot caught beneath one strap; she withdrew, separated the loops with both hands and tried a third time. When both feet were inside, she bent and lifted the waist belt.

The motion was awkward because the bag remained against her hip.

“Can you hold this?” she asked.

Isha took the canvas bag.

Without it, Fujita brought the harness past her knees. The leg loops tightened against her trousers as the waist belt reached mid-thigh. She stopped there, eyes fixed upon the buckle.

No one encouraged her.

Ishikawa answered a telephone call at the desk in a voice low enough not to enter the appointment. Yoshida returned from the equipment room, saw Fujita standing in the half-raised harness and took a longer route toward the bouldering area.

Fujita pulled again.

The waist belt reached her hips. One leg loop had twisted. The belt itself sat too low and remained completely loose.

She was wearing the harness badly.

She was wearing it.

Isha kept the bag against her own side and did not offer to correct anything.

Fujita looked at her. “Is it wrong?”

“Yes.”

The blunt answer startled a breath that might have become laughter under different conditions.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Nothing is attached, and you are standing on the floor. It cannot hold you safely in this position.”

Fujita looked down. “Can you tell me one thing?”

“The waist belt must be above your hip bones.”

She pulled it higher. The twisted leg loop tightened uncomfortably and stopped her movement.

“Something is caught.”

“The right leg loop is twisted.”

Fujita reached for it, turned the webbing in the wrong direction and stopped. Her hands began to shake.

“Do you want me to show you with my hand, correct it for you or remove the harness?” Isha asked.

“Correct it.”

Isha lowered herself beside the caught webbing, keeping both hands visible and away from Fujita until she had named the contact.

“May I touch the strap at your right thigh?”

“Yes.”

Isha crouched. The position placed her face near Fujita’s hip and made the difference in their size less visually useful. She took only the webbing, turned it flat and withdrew both hands.

Fujita pulled the belt higher until it rested correctly above the hips.

“Now?”

“The position is correct. It is not tightened.”

Fujita pressed two fingers beneath the waist belt, testing the unfamiliar gap for herself.

“Can you tighten it?”

“May I touch the buckle and waist belt?”

“Yes.”

Isha stood and took the loose end of the webbing. She drew it through the buckle in one steady movement, stopping before the belt became firm.

“Tell me when.”

Fujita watched Isha’s hands. “More.”

Isha tightened another centimetre.

“More.”

The belt settled against Fujita’s waist. Isha could feel the exact point at which the harness would become secure. She did not assume that secure was the requested destination.

“Stop.”

Isha stopped.

The belt remained slightly too loose for climbing and close enough that Fujita could feel its intended shape. Her breathing shortened again, but she did not reach for the buckle.

“Is this on?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She looked down at the belt encircling her waist, then along both leg loops as if the answer might differ by angle.

“Correctly?”

“The leg loops are flat. The waist belt is in the correct place. It would need to be tighter before any rope was attached.”

Fujita’s hand closed over the loose end of the webbing but did not pull it.

“No rope.”

“No rope.”

Fujita stood in the entry area wearing an unconnected harness over ordinary trousers. She had no helmet, climbing shoes or chalk. The nearest wall remained several metres away and belonged to other customers.

Nothing visible happened for almost three minutes.

Isha held the canvas bag. Fujita held neither the bench nor the harness. Her eyes moved through the room and returned several times to the closed entry gate.

A small line appeared between her brows.

“I thought it would feel like being trapped,” she said.

“Does it?”

Fujita took one careful breath before answering, her ribs meeting the belt she had chosen to leave in place.

“Yes.” She swallowed. “Less than last time. More than I wanted.”

“Do you want it removed?”

“Not yet.”

Isha waited.

The bruise beneath her own eye pulled faintly when she blinked. Her body wanted movement after standing still through a full shift—something with weight, balance or a clear physical answer. She could have crossed the distance to the wall in three strides. She could have climbed any beginner route in the time Fujita used to breathe once carefully through the belt around her waist.

None of that gave her authority over the next minute.

Fujita looked at the child in the blue shoes, now clipped to a low rope with her mother beside her. The girl climbed two holds, demanded to come down and was lowered immediately. She landed, announced that the wall was taller from the wall and began removing her shoes.

Fujita watched the entire sequence.

“Can I touch the rope?” she asked.

Isha did not answer at once.

The booking note said no rope. Fujita had made the request herself, but the request might belong to the same urge that had made her declare the failed first attempt stupid.

“Do you want to change today’s plan?” Isha asked.

Fujita looked toward her. “I only want to touch it.”

“We can bring an unattached rope here. You do not need to hold it while wearing the harness.”

The options made her expression tighten.

“No,” she said. “That is another thing.”

“Yes.”

“I think I am trying to prove this was worth booking.”

Isha held out the canvas bag. Fujita took it, gripping the strap with one hand.

“Then I do not want the rope,” she said.

“All right.”

“I want this off.”

Isha asked before touching the buckle, loosened the belt and let Fujita lower the harness herself. One leg loop caught at the knee. Fujita freed it without assistance and stepped out.

The harness lay upon the floor again.

Fujita put on her cardigan. Her hands still shook slightly at the buttons, so she left it open.

“That was twenty minutes,” she said after looking at the clock.

“Twenty-six since you entered.”

The unused portion of the appointment seemed to trouble her more than the completed part.

“I booked forty-five.”

“You may leave now.”

Fujita looked almost offended. “You are not going to tell me I should sit until the time is finished?”

“No.”

“What if I regret leaving?”

“You can regret it outside.”

The answer escaped before Isha had examined whether it was kind.

Fujita stared at her.

Then she laughed.

It was not a large or relieved laugh. It arrived once, unexpectedly, and made her press a hand against the open cardigan as if something there had shifted.

“Yes,” she said. “I can.”

Isha returned the harness to the bench instead of the rack. The appointment remained active until Fujita had passed through the gate and chosen what happened beyond it.

At reception, Ishikawa looked up from the telephone log.

“Would you like the remaining fee credited toward another equipment appointment?” she asked.

Fujita’s attention moved between her and Isha. “Do I have to book the same thing?”

“No. You can book another quiet appointment, a normal beginner session or nothing.”

“Would the quiet appointment say that I failed this one?”

Ishikawa’s expression changed by very little. “The staff note will say you entered, put on the harness without attachment and ended the appointment when you chose.”

Fujita looked down at the canvas bag now resting normally against her hip.

“Can it say I do not want encouragement?”

“Yes.” Ishikawa opened the customer record. “Do you want that instruction attached to any future booking?”

“Please.”

She did not choose another date. Ishikawa applied the credit and gave her a printed receipt with six months before it expired. Fujita folded it once and placed it inside the bag.

At the gate, she turned back toward Isha.

“The bruise,” she said. “Did you go back after you got it?”

“I finished the class.”

Fujita’s mouth tightened. Isha saw the comparison forming and corrected the answer before it became instruction.

“I wanted to finish,” she said. “That is why it was right for me.”

Fujita studied her for a moment, then nodded.

She opened the gate herself. The latch clicked behind her, and this time she did not look back at it.

---

Ishikawa waited until Fujita had left the building before asking for the account.

Isha placed the harness on the return rail rather than directly back on the rental rack. It had not been loaded or damaged, but issued equipment still received the same quick visual check as every other return.

Yoshida joined them with the mop handle balanced against one shoulder.

“She wore it?” she asked.

“Yes. Loose. No attachment.”

Yoshida’s gaze moved once toward the empty beginner wall, checking an absence rather than searching for an achievement.

“Wall?”

“No.”

Yoshida nodded and continued toward the storage cupboard, apparently satisfied with an outcome containing none of the centre’s advertised activity.

Ishikawa opened the booking record. “Tell me the sequence.”

Isha described the gate, the bench, the first attempt to raise the harness, the request to remove it, the second attempt and each point at which Fujita had given permission for contact. She included the request to touch a rope and Fujita’s decision that it belonged to proving the appointment worthwhile.

“You asked whether she wanted to change the plan,” Ishikawa said.

“Yes.”

“That was appropriate.”

The praise did not settle Isha’s remaining dissatisfaction.

“I wanted to suggest the low wall,” she said. “Several times.”

“I assumed you would.”

Ishikawa’s fingers remained above the keyboard. The admission required no reassurance from her.

“I did not.”

“I know. I was here.” Ishikawa entered one sentence into the record and turned the screen enough for Isha to read it.

**Customer completed stated equipment-only visit. No rope or climbing attempted. Staff to avoid unsolicited encouragement and confirm consent before each equipment change.**

The note was accurate. It also looked incomplete beside forty-five reserved minutes and the attention the appointment had required.

“There is no record of the first failed attempt,” Isha said.

“Because it was part of the completed visit.”

Isha read the sentence again.

At the far end of the centre, the evening beginner group had begun arriving. Shoes came from the rental wall. Harnesses opened and closed. One man announced that he had climbed outdoors ten years earlier and therefore remembered the equipment, then attempted to step through a gear loop.

Yoshida intercepted him before the loop accepted responsibility.

Ishikawa closed Fujita’s record. “You can take the evening group after the briefing.”

Isha looked toward the waiting customers. Several were already studying the walls with the mixture of interest and apprehension the centre expected from beginners. There would be instructions, visible progress and routes whose end could be reached.

“Did I help her?” Isha asked.

Ishikawa considered the question long enough not to reward it automatically.

“She asked for conditions. We provided them. She used them.” The manager collected the next group’s forms. “Ask her if she returns.”

It was not an answer Isha could carry as proof.

She joined Yoshida at the harness bench.

The man with the outdoor experience had now placed both legs through the waist opening and was attempting to identify why the equipment appeared too short.

Isha took another harness from the rack.

“May I stop you?” she asked.

He looked down at himself, then at the correctly arranged harness in her hands.

“Yes,” he said. “Please.”

Isha waited until he stepped free before showing him where the first choice had gone wrong.

---

Fujita returned eleven days later.

Her name appeared in the schedule beneath another quiet block, booked online without a telephone call.

The note attached to it read:

**No encouragement. Harness only unless customer requests otherwise.**

No route had been selected.