## Chapter 272 — The Arm He Could Not Raise Thomas discovered the limit at eight forty-three on Friday morning, when the revised arrival guides refused to come down from the top shelf. The box was not heavy. It had been placed above the reception cupboard because the lower shelves were full, and Thomas had lifted it there himself before the holiday. He reached with his right arm, felt the bruise tighten beneath his shirt and continued until the shoulder stopped with a sharp pull near the collarbone. His hand remained several centimetres below the cardboard. Sugiyama came through the office door carrying two coffees and watched him consider a second attempt. “Do you need that box, or are you checking whether the shelf has moved?” “The guides.” Thomas lowered his arm before dignity became another form of strain. “I can reach them with the other hand if I move the step.” Sugiyama put both coffees on her desk, took the small office step from beside the filing cabinet and brought the box down herself. She did not hand it to him. She set it on the consultation table, opened the flaps and removed one bundle. “The step requires two hands when you climb it,” she said. “Mori-san wrote that in the note.” Thomas had seen the note. It was attached to the shared task list beneath his name: **No lifting, overhead reaching, guide boxes, archive cartons or carrying deliveries until Monday review.** Mori had not included an argument because the list was not a negotiation. She arrived a few minutes later, shook rain from her umbrella in the entrance tray and saw the open box on the consultation table. Her attention moved to Sugiyama, then to Thomas’s right arm hanging too carefully beside him. Mori looked at the open box. “You tried the shelf.” Thomas said he had identified that it remained outside the current range. She removed her coat and answered, “Your work today is below shoulder height.” The statement covered the box, the coat rack and several less obvious ambitions. Thomas accepted it and carried the bundle of guides to reception with his left hand. The office settled into its Friday shape. Endo was elsewhere for most of the morning. Mori reviewed a set of scholarship notices in the inner room. Sugiyama answered two emails from students who had attached photographs too blurred to prove what they believed they proved. Thomas took reception, where the chair supported his shoulder better than standing and most useful objects already lived within reach. At nine twenty, a newly arrived exchange student entered wearing a university orientation badge over a shirt she had slept in. Her name was Elif Kaya. The arrival list placed her in the international residence from the previous evening, though the damp airline tag tied around one wrist suggested that the journey had not ended cleanly. She carried her passport, residence card, phone and a transparent folder. Everything else remained with the airline. “My suitcase is coming today,” she said in English. “Maybe today. They changed it from morning to before nine tonight.” The delivery window overlapped the residence orientation and the campus account session. Elif had been told that someone must sign for the suitcase. The residence desk said staff could not accept personal baggage after seven. The airline call centre had offered to deliver it to the university instead, but had not identified a building or person willing to receive an unattended case. Thomas invited her to the consultation table. The problem had already accumulated three organisations, each correct inside its own boundary. He asked what she needed from the suitcase before evening. Clothing, a laptop charger, toiletries and the printed laboratory introduction letter were inside. Her medication and immigration documents had travelled in her hand luggage, following advice she had resented until the suitcase failed to arrive. “The laboratory letter can be printed again if you have the file,” Thomas said. “The charger may be replaceable for a day. The suitcase itself needs a location where the courier can find you or an authorised recipient.” Elif opened the airline tracking page. The delivery address field contained the residence building but no room number. A note in Japanese instructed the driver to telephone before arrival. Her Japanese number had not yet activated properly, so calls went to voicemail she could not access. Thomas began with the part the university could alter. Sugiyama called the residence desk while he helped Elif activate the new number through the provider’s English support page. The first attempt failed because the account used her surname without Turkish characters and the contract email displayed it with them. The second reached a verification screen that required the original temporary PIN from a paper in her transparent folder. Elif found it between the residence rules and an emergency map she had folded into quarters. The number activated. A test call rang on the table. Sugiyama returned from the residence desk. “They can accept the suitcase before seven if the driver gives Elif-san’s name and room number. After seven, security will not sign. The airline must narrow the time or call her directly.” Thomas wrote the room number and a short Japanese instruction beneath the address on the tracking page. Elif copied it into the courier note. The airline chat then warned that edits made after dispatch might not reach the driver. The phone call took longer. Thomas explained the residence deadline, passed the line to Elif for identity confirmation and received a delivery promise that still contained the word *approximately*. The courier would call thirty minutes before arrival. If the call came during orientation, Elif could step out and return to the residence by taxi; the session staff would give her the missed account instructions in writing. The solution cost her a taxi fare and part of an orientation session. It did not make the airline more precise. Elif looked relieved anyway. “My charger is also in the bag,” she said after the call. Her phone displayed thirty-one per cent battery. The office kept a small drawer of loan adapters and charging cables for arrival problems. The drawer was at reception height. The power banks were not. They sat in a labelled plastic box on the same upper shelf as the guides. Thomas looked towards it. Sugiyama, still standing beside the consultation table, followed his gaze. She took the office step without comment. Elif watched her retrieve the box and then looked at Thomas’s shoulder. “Did you injure it?” “On holiday.” He signed out one power bank and a compatible cable. “It should be temporary.” She accepted the equipment with both hands. The word *holiday* appeared to conflict with the stiffness of his movements, but her own day contained enough unresolved logistics that she let the question pass. By ten fifteen, she had a charged phone, a reprinted laboratory letter and a route back to the residence. Thomas gave her the office number for any failed delivery before five. Sugiyama added the residence security number for later, then watched Elif leave with the power bank in her folder and the airline tag still around her wrist. Thomas returned the sign-out sheet to the drawer. Mori had come to the reception opening during the final call. “The case needed your language and judgement,” she said. “The power bank did not.” Thomas adjusted the edge of the paper until it aligned with the drawer. “I allowed Sugiyama-san to retrieve it.” “After looking at the shelf as though disapproval might lower it.” She returned to the inner office before he could improve the record. --- Kanno arrived at flat 202 shortly after two carrying a paper shopping bag, her work laptop and a square blue sewing tin decorated with faded white flowers. She had left her office early after a client moved a proof review to Monday and her manager remembered three hours of accumulated time that had become inconvenient to the payroll system. The laptop remained with her because the client might remember the review again before evening. The sewing tin had belonged to her mother and contained more colours of thread than Kanno expected to use in one lifetime. Isha let her in and took the damp umbrella. The black dress lay across the dining table inside out, its skirt falling over one chair. In daylight the damage looked smaller than it had in the hotel room. A section of the right side seam had stretched, several stitches had broken near the hip and the hem carried a pale abraded line where sand and paving had worked against the fabric. The lining remained intact. Kanno put her laptop on Thomas’s side of the table and examined the seam before removing her coat. “This is repairable,” she said. “The mark at the hem will stay lighter unless a cleaner can persuade it otherwise. I can close the seam. I cannot promise it will survive another international incident.” Isha brought tea in the Hoi An cups. Kanno received the lower stable one. Isha’s rocked when it touched the table and stopped against the folded paper that had remained beneath it since breakfast. Kanno turned the dress towards the window. She could sew a straight seam, reattach a lining and replace a button. Anything involving reshaping, invisible alterations or fabric that cost more than her monthly utility bills went to a professional. The dress required patience rather than specialist reconstruction. She selected black thread, found a needle fine enough for the fabric and began unpicking the tightened stitches around the damaged section. Isha sat opposite her with one leg folded beneath the chair. The bruises on her knuckles had faded, but they were still visible when she held the fabric flat. Kanno had received the short account in the shared chat: two drunk men had harassed Thomas and Isha in a bar, followed them outside, attacked them and been detained after police attended. Thomas had a bruised shoulder. Isha had bruises and a damaged sandal. No charges or travel restrictions affected them. The message had been useful. It had also left the dress unexplained. “Which part did this?” Kanno asked. “The first man’s shirt or belt, when I lifted him.” The needle stopped above the cloth. Kanno looked up. Isha’s expression did not change to make the answer easier. “You lifted him.” “Twice, in different ways.” Isha adjusted the damaged seam beneath Kanno’s hand. “The second time carried more of his weight.” Kanno set the needle into the pin cushion rather than continue while distracted. “Your message said there was a fight.” “There was. One of them struck Thomas, and the other pulled him by the shirt before I stopped him.” Kanno’s eyes moved from the damaged seam to Isha’s hand. “What does ‘stopped’ mean?” Isha thought about the amount of detail Kanno had asked for. “I kicked one in the thigh, struck the other below the ribs and threw both of them. They continued several times. I held them when I could.” Kanno picked up the needle again. She missed the eye on the first attempt to rethread it, though the thread had not changed. “Both of them followed you after the bartender removed them.” Her voice had flattened. “Then one hit Thomas, and the police looked at you and decided the men’s account was impossible.” “They believed the men followed us. They did not believe I caused all their injuries.” Kanno pulled the thread through too sharply. The first new stitch puckered the seam. She muttered, cut it out and began again with less force. Isha did not tell her to calm down. She held the fabric while Kanno found the old stitch line and followed it. The work required the dress to become only material for a time. Needle entered from the lining side, caught a narrow section of outer fabric and returned. The broken section closed gradually. Kanno kept the stitches small enough that they disappeared when Isha let the seam relax. After several minutes, Kanno said, “I am glad you could stop them.” The next stitch passed cleanly through the black fabric. “I dislike that I am glad.” Isha looked towards the rain-dark balcony. “Thomas said something similar.” Kanno tied off the repaired section and pressed the seam between her fingers. She left Thomas’s part of the account where Isha had placed it. “Try it on before I reinforce the lining,” she said. Isha took the dress into the bedroom. Kanno opened her laptop while she waited. Three messages had arrived from the client who had moved the proof review to Monday. The first confirmed Monday. The second asked whether one page could be checked today. The third attached six pages. Kanno read them without visible surprise and replied that she had left the office under approved time in lieu and would review the six pages by ten on Monday. She closed the laptop before the client could reinterpret this as an invitation to negotiate Friday evening. Isha returned in the dress, and it changed in the same way when worn. On the table it had been a length of black fabric with a damaged seam. On Isha it followed her height, narrow waist and the long line from hip to calf, simple enough that the result appeared accidental until she moved. Her pale hair was tied high to keep it away from Kanno’s pins. The fading bruise near her ribs showed only where the sleeveless cut exposed its upper edge. Kanno looked first at the repaired side and asked Isha to turn slowly. The seam lay flat until she reached the point where the fabric had been pulled off grain. A faint ripple remained near the hip. It was visible only because Kanno knew where to find it. “Sit down, then stand. After that, lift both arms.” Isha used the empty chair, rose and reached overhead. The dress moved freely. The repaired stitches held. Kanno crouched beside the hem and marked the abraded section with two pins, then stood far enough back to assess the full line. Isha glanced at her reflection in the balcony glass. The black dress returned the hotel room, the bar and the packed sand in separate pieces. None held long enough to alter her face. “I still like it,” she said. Kanno gathered the loosened fabric at the hem. “Then we repair what we can see and leave the rest alone.” She knelt again and returned to the hem. --- At the university office, Thomas’s shoulder became more troublesome after lunch. Stillness had stiffened it. When he stood to collect a document from the printer, the first movement pulled across the top of his chest. He paused beside the machine until the pain returned to its earlier level. Sugiyama noticed because she was waiting for the same printer. She took his pages from the output tray and handed them to his left side. Sugiyama collected her own pages, found that the printer had duplicated the final sheet and placed the extra in the recycling tray. “You should have taken another day. Being able to finish the work is not the only condition for being here, but Mori-san has already had this discussion, so I will not make a worse version.” Thomas accepted the pages she handed him and did not defend the decision again. The afternoon brought fewer students. Elif called at two thirty to say the courier had narrowed the delivery to between four and six. She would attend the first hour of orientation, leave when called and collect the written instructions afterwards. Thomas recorded the outcome in the arrival note. The case did not need another solution. At three, Mori asked whether he intended to attend judo that evening. Thomas said he intended to observe. Mori studied him over the edge of the scholarship notice and made him specify that he meant from outside the mat. “Nakamura-san knows about the shoulder?” “I messaged her.” Mori accepted this and returned to the notice. Thomas remained beside her desk for a moment, waiting for the next restriction. None came. He left on time. The rain had eased to fine mist by the time he reached the athletics building. His judogi remained at home. He wore office clothes and carried no sports bag, which made the familiar route towards the dojo feel incomplete. Nakamura had already begun laying out the beginner pairs. She saw Thomas at the entrance, looked at his empty hands and pointed towards the bench along the wall. Nakamura pointed to the bench. “You may sit there. Do not demonstrate anything. Whatever you planned before arriving is less useful than what your shoulder did when you bowed.” Thomas stopped removing his watch. “I had not planned to demonstrate.” Nakamura sent the class into the warm-up, and Thomas sat against the wall. Tanabe worked with a newer beginner whose belt had been tied correctly in one direction and creatively in the other. They practised moving grips at walking pace. Tanabe’s broad steps changed whenever his partner stared at them, making the learner follow the wrong information until Nakamura corrected his gaze upward. From the bench, Thomas could see the sweep more clearly than he ever had while attempting it. The moving foot became available only after the shoulder and sleeve had already committed the body elsewhere. Recognition arrived without the urgency of performing it. His own right hand tightened against his thigh. The body wanted to rehearse the grip. The shoulder objected before he lifted the arm. Thomas let the hand relax while an intermediate pair entered groundwork across the room. The impact of each controlled fall travelled through the tatami into the bench. He felt his own shoulder prepare for the landing despite remaining seated. Nakamura passed near him while watching another pair. “If observing makes you brace every time someone falls, you are still using the injury.” Thomas lowered the shoulder. He had not noticed the tension until she named it. Nakamura continued along the mat without waiting for an answer. The class spent the final twenty minutes on breakfalls and simple entries. Tanabe’s newer partner found one correct step, lost it on the next attempt and continued. Thomas watched the mistake return without wanting to rescue it. When the class ended, Tanabe came to the bench carrying both ends of his loosened belt. “You have discovered a difficult technique,” he said. “Attending without being thrown.” “The lack of participation improved my defence.” Tanabe nodded towards Thomas’s shoulder. “Keep practising that version until it stops hurting.” The changing room filled. Thomas remained outside it, already dressed for the journey home. Nakamura told him not to return to the mat until he could raise both arms, support himself from the floor and perform a breakfall without guarding the shoulder. She did not set a date. Thomas agreed before the list became longer. --- Kanno reinforced the lining while Isha remained in the dress. The work could have been done on the table, but pinning it while worn showed how the lining shifted against her hip. Kanno sat on the floor beside her with the sewing tin open and her laptop chiming once every few minutes from the dining table. She ignored the first two notifications. On the third, Isha looked towards the screen. Isha looked towards the chiming laptop. “Work?” “A client discovering sequence. They moved the review, then remembered the pages one at a time.” Kanno tied a knot beneath the lining and left the next notification unanswered. “Monday will still contain them. For now I am choosing to resent the sound accurately.” Kanno finished the reinforcement and moved to the hem. The pale abrasion could not be sewn away. She cleaned loose fibres, secured one section where the edge had begun to separate and left the colour difference visible. A professional cleaner might reduce it. An aggressive treatment might make the fabric shiny or uneven. “I would leave this,” she said. “It is low enough that no one will see it unless they are already inspecting your calves.” “People inspect higher first.” Kanno looked up at her and then laughed, the first time the afternoon had permitted it. She packed the needle away and asked Isha to walk the length of the LDK. Isha crossed from the kitchen to the balcony and back. The skirt moved cleanly. The side seam held through the turn. At the table, Kanno’s phone displayed a message from Matsuda asking whether the dress repair had become emergency tailoring. She had told him where she was after he sent a photograph of a supermarket curry that appeared to contain one cube of potato and no hope. Kanno photographed the repaired seam rather than Isha wearing the dress and sent it to the shared chat. **Repair complete. Fabric survived.** Matsuda replied: **Good. Thomas?** Isha read the message over Kanno’s shoulder. “He asked about Thomas before the dress.” “He has priorities. They become visible when he is worried.” Kanno placed the phone facedown. “How much did Thomas see before you reached him?” Isha stood near the balcony with one hand resting at the repaired seam. “The second man hit him once. The first grabbed him twice. Thomas called the police and warned me when one came from behind.” “He was not helpless.” “No.” The answer came before Kanno could mistake the injuries for the whole event. “He stood between me and the first man in the bar. He told them to leave. Outside, he kept moving towards people and light. When I fought, he watched the other man and called for help.” Kanno kept her eyes lowered to the sewing tin for several seconds, then closed it. “Thank you for telling me.” Isha crossed the room and sat beside her. Their shoulders touched. Kanno remained there until the phone chimed again beneath her hand. This time the message came from Thomas. **Leaving judo. Observed only. Home in thirty minutes.** Kanno turned the phone so Isha could read it. “He does not expect praise,” Isha said, studying the message. “That is why it may be useful.” She sent a single approving stamp from Kanno’s phone before Kanno could choose a less dangerous response. --- Thomas reached flat 202 at seven twenty with his shoulder aching and no training clothes to wash. Kanno’s shoes remained in the genkan. He could hear her laptop keyboard from the LDK and Isha moving near the bedroom. The flat smelled of tea, rain-damp coats and the takeaway containers Kanno had apparently ordered when the repair lasted beyond her planned visit. He removed his jacket with his left arm first. The right sleeve caught near the bruised shoulder. Before he could work it free, Isha came from the hall wearing the repaired black dress. Thomas stopped with one arm still inside his coat. The dress carried the same line he remembered from the final evening in Da Nang. It also stood in their entry hall beneath the familiar ceiling light, its hem clean above Isha’s bare feet and its repaired side almost impossible to find. Her hair was tied back. The bruises remained faintly visible where the cut exposed the upper edge of her ribs. Isha took the trapped sleeve and eased it over Thomas’s wrist. “You are home.” “Yes.” His gaze returned to the dress. Kanno appeared behind her with the sewing tin under one arm. “That pause needs classification. Repair problem or girlfriend problem?” Thomas considered the seam, the woman wearing it and the memory that had arrived between them. “The repair is difficult to see.” Kanno accepted the answer as professionally useful. Isha’s eyes stayed on him a moment longer. Thomas reached towards the repaired side with his right hand. Pain stopped the arm below Isha’s waist. She caught his wrist, lowered it gently and placed his left hand against the seam instead. The fabric lay smooth beneath his fingers. A slight firmness marked the reinforced stitches. The pale abrasion at the hem survived near his knee, visible only when Isha turned. “Kanno says a cleaner might reduce the mark,” Isha said. “I am leaving it.” Thomas traced the seam once with his thumb. “It held when you moved?” “I sat, stood, raised my arms and walked. Kanno refused a throwing test.” “Correctly.” From the dining table, Kanno said that both of them had lost permission to propose tests. They ate takeaway at the table because Kanno’s proof review had returned through six separate messages and Thomas’s shoulder made cooking an unnecessary argument. The food came from a neighbourhood Chinese restaurant they had used twice before: fried rice, vegetables, dumplings and a tofu dish Kanno had ordered too spicy, then continued eating out of principle. Thomas described Elif’s delayed suitcase and the power bank shelf. He did not omit his attempt to reach the guides because Sugiyama had already made the event sound foolish enough that concealment offered no improvement. Isha listened while cooling Kanno’s water glass against the side of the cold bottle. Isha listened to the account and asked only what happened after the first attempt. “Sugiyama retrieved both boxes,” Thomas said. She gave him the approving stamp in person: two fingers pressed briefly to the inside of his wrist. Kanno looked between them until Isha explained, “He did not repeat the error.” Thomas ate another dumpling. “The standard has become attainable.” The conversation moved to Kanno’s client, who had now remembered two more pages and sent one apology containing no revised expectation. Kanno would review them Monday during paid hours. She said this plainly while typing a final response beneath the table, then turned her phone off. After dinner, she packed the sewing tin and the laptop. Isha changed out of the dress before walking her to the door, folding it over one arm rather than returning it immediately to the wardrobe. Thomas stood from the table to help with Kanno’s coat. His right arm rose by habit and stopped halfway. Kanno took the coat from him herself. “I can dress without international support.” Thomas held the collar open with his left hand instead. Kanno put it on, accepted the umbrella from Isha and stepped into the corridor. At the lift, she looked back towards the black fabric over Isha’s arm. “Wear it somewhere boring next.” Isha considered the instruction and proposed dinner. Kanno narrowed it to dinner with people who remained seated. The lift arrived. Kanno entered before either of them could narrow the category further. Back inside, Isha carried the dress to the bedroom. Thomas followed and watched her place it on a padded hanger. The wardrobe rail sat above his current reach. Isha lifted the hanger and set it between the plum dress and a dark jacket. Thomas looked at the repaired seam once before she closed the door. “Somewhere boring,” he said. Isha turned the key-shaped wardrobe handle back into place. “You may choose the restaurant.”