## Chapter 290 — The Goldfish That Did Nothing

The packet of origami paper remained unopened beside the fruit bowl on Sunday morning.

Its goldfish pattern caught the light whenever Thomas moved through the kitchen: orange bodies, white bubbles and thin blue lines printed across squares too flat to resemble anything except unused material. Isha had placed the packet there after Tanabata and left it overnight without deciding whether delay counted as thought or avoidance.

Thomas made coffee with the small ceramic cone he had bought after describing the one from Kameido. The method required more attention than the machine and less than a serious meal. He rinsed the paper filter, weighed the grounds by habit rather than display and poured in slow circles while the apartment filled with a bitter, warm smell.

Isha sat at the table with toast, a boiled egg and a section of grapefruit. She had tied her hair away from the healing tattoo, though the three lines lay well below it on the inner arm. A few dry edges remained. The skin still felt new when the fabric of her top moved across it.

Thomas brought both cups to the table. Isha waited until he had eaten half his toast before asking, “What were your parents like?”

His hand paused over the butter dish.

She had not used the name from the life before Thomas. The choice was deliberate, and he heard it without needing to turn it into gratitude aloud.

“My mother was organised in ways she claimed were temporary,” he said after a moment. “There was a paper calendar beside the refrigerator. Every square was too small for what she wrote in it, so appointments travelled into the margins and then into the next month.”

The Leicester kitchen came back more readily through objects than faces. A narrow table beneath the window. A kettle that clicked off too loudly. Shopping lists held to the refrigerator by a magnet advertising a plumber no one remembered hiring. His mother standing in the doorway with a cardigan folded over one arm, asking whether he intended to miss the train or merely wished to make the possibility exciting.

“What did your mother call you?” Isha asked.

“Dan, usually. The full name when she thought I was ill, had forgotten something or was explaining too quickly.” Thomas tore another piece from the toast. “I remember the difference in her voice better than I remember her face.”

Isha lowered her gaze to the coffee. She could imagine being measured by a name spoken from another room, the longer form used because concern needed him to stop moving.

“What did she do?”

“I don’t trust the job clearly enough to state it as fact. There was a school office, I think. Or perhaps she volunteered there after working somewhere else.” Thomas frowned at the memory instead of forcing it into order. “I remember children’s drawings brought home because no one had collected them. That may have been one year rather than her whole life.”

Thomas let the uncertainty stand. The children’s drawings were clear; the employment history around them was not.

His father returned through different fragments. A garage shelf full of screws in reused jars. Reading instructions only after an object resisted the first repair. A radio left on for football commentary even when no one listened closely. Hands with small cuts around the nails, holding a plug or hinge while Thomas was told to pass the correct screwdriver rather than the nearest one.

“He called me son more often than my name,” Thomas said. “Sometimes mate, usually when he was about to ask for help with something he could have done alone.”

“That sounds like Rowan.”

“Less patient with wood. More patient with electrical faults.” Thomas smiled into the coffee. “I may have combined several memories there. My father in that life and Rowan both believed repair should begin by finding out what the object had been trying to do before it failed.”

Isha ate a piece of grapefruit and let the bitterness clear her mouth. In one life Thomas had passed screwdrivers beside a garage shelf; in the next he had held timber while Rowan corrected a hinge. Both memories sat easily in the same hands.

“Do you remember their names?” she asked.

Thomas looked towards the balcony rather than at her. Morning sun had reached only the outer rail; the river path below remained in shade.

“Less reliably than I expected. I rarely used them. They were Mum and Dad in my head, and other people’s names when someone called the house. I can almost reach both first names, but every attempt brings another name beside them and I no longer know whether it came from a colleague, an aunt or a television programme.”

His thumb moved against the cup handle. The failure hurt too plainly for shame to improve it.

“The surname was Mercer,” he continued. “That part is certain because it was mine. I think both were alive when I died. I remember planning a Christmas visit and assuming there would be another chance if work made that one inconvenient.”

The toast broke between his fingers. Crumbs fell onto the plate.

“I did not visit often enough.”

Isha reached across the table and laid her hand over his. He had no defence that could improve the last visit that had or had not happened.

“I hope someone told them kindly,” he said.

“So do I.”

They stayed with the parents for a while after that. Thomas remembered his mother posting parcels whose contents exceeded the declared reason for sending them. His father preferred short phone calls and long emails containing photographs of repairs. Both complained about the cost of Japan while telling other people, with unearned authority, that Daniel’s Japanese had become excellent.

The faces remained blurred. Their habits held.

Isha asked about friends after Thomas refilled the coffee. They returned more slowly, thinned by distance, work and the quiet confidence that important people could be contacted later.

“There was someone from university who moved west and kept sending photographs of a small dog standing on inappropriate furniture,” he said. “I remember the dog better than the owner, which feels disloyal. A friend from school called every few months and began each conversation as though we had stopped speaking only the previous evening. In Tokyo, several colleagues crossed into friendship without anyone announcing it.”

One woman left canned coffee on his desk after meetings with a regional client whose anger travelled farther than its evidence. A man in procurement knew where to find cheap curry near the office and lied about football results whenever Thomas missed a match. Two former colleagues had invited him to weddings; he attended one and sent money with an apology to the other.

“Do you remember their names?” Isha asked.

“Some. I don’t trust the order around them. A name can survive after I have lost which person carried it.” Thomas turned the cup between his hands. “I would rather tell you that someone brought coffee than give the act to the wrong dead or living person.”

A desk remained, along with a can cold from a vending machine and a person deciding he should not finish a bad meeting alone.

Isha looked at Thomas across the breakfast table. He had described Daniel’s life for years through institutions, technology and disappointment. The people had appeared mainly as categories—parents, friends, colleagues—because categories could be carried across worlds without reopening every departure.

“Were you lonely?” she asked.

“Yes, although not continuously.” He answered without dramatizing the admission. “There were people to drink with, people who would answer messages and people who cared. Convenience made it possible to live alone without feeling the missing parts every hour. Work filled the evenings it damaged. Then I would have a good weekend with someone and wonder why we had waited three months.”

“Was there anyone waiting for you at the flat?”

Thomas understood the question’s full shape. Isha had never treated his unremembered romantic history as territory she needed to conquer. She wanted to know whether someone had lost a partner near Shin-Kiba and whether their grief remained outside every account he had carried.

“No one shared the flat. I don’t remember a partner at the end.” He gave the next part time to remain accurate. “There may have been dates. There may have been a kiss or a brief relationship earlier. Memory is not clear enough for me to deny any of that. I know I did not love anyone as I love you. When you asked me in the other world, that was the answer I could give then and it is still the answer now.”

Isha’s grip around his fingers changed, warm and certain. She asked nothing more about dates or an unnamed partner.

“I wanted Kanno to understand that,” she said. “I told her there may have been someone in a smaller sense, but no one we can honestly name.”

Thomas looked down at their hands. He did not want the missing record turned into a romance arranged by fate, with Daniel lonely only because Isha had not yet entered his world.

“Good. I was not waiting for you before you existed in my life. I was living badly in some ways and adequately in others. Then I died.”

Isha traced one knuckle with her thumb. Leicester, the narrow kitchen, the dog on furniture and a can of coffee remained between them when she asked whether he wanted to search for the names that morning.

Thomas looked towards the closed office door. The computer could find electoral rolls, professional profiles, memorial notices, company pages and strangers with the right surname. It could also attach the wrong family to his grief within seconds.

“Not today,” he said. “Today I want to remember them as people I knew, not results we have to verify.”

Isha accepted that. She finished the grapefruit, collected their plates and carried them to the kitchen while Thomas remained seated with the coffee.

When she returned, she picked up the origami packet.

“I will make the useless thing now.”

Thomas looked at the printed goldfish. “The wish survived breakfast.”

“It did not require the breakfast.”

“That is promising.”

---

The packet contained twenty-four squares and no instructions.

Kanno had anticipated this. At eight forty-three she sent a link to a page titled **SIMPLE ORIGAMI GOLDFISH FOR BEGINNERS**, followed by a second message.

**Beginner is a claim made by the page. I accept no liability.**

Isha opened the diagram on Thomas’s tablet and placed one orange square on the dining table. The printed pattern contained six small goldfish, two bubbles and a section of blue weed that would be divided among whatever object the folds produced.

The first instruction asked for a diagonal valley fold.

Isha brought opposite corners together, checked the alignment and pressed the crease with one fingernail from the centre outward. The paper responded cleanly. The second fold did the same. By the fourth step she had produced a compact triangle whose edges agreed so completely that Thomas suspected the instruction had underestimated its user.

The fifth diagram introduced a squash fold.

Isha read the arrow twice. “The line enters here, then the paper opens in a direction not shown from this angle.”

Thomas decided the model had rotated between images. Isha pointed out that the diagram did not announce this and that the small curved arrow could just as easily instruct her to turn the flap.

He enlarged the page. The low-resolution arrow became a larger low-resolution arrow and gained no moral clarity.

He fetched another square and began his own fish. Childhood memory supplied boats, paper aeroplanes and a folded fortune teller whose purpose had been to assign insulting futures to classmates. It supplied nothing aquatic beyond the confidence that every crease looked obvious after someone else completed it.

Isha opened the pocket in the paper and pressed it flat. One corner slipped less than a millimetre. She corrected it before completing the fold.

Thomas’s version slipped farther. He left it.

Isha glanced at his uneven triangle. “You are building error into the fish.”

Thomas described it as preserved material flexibility. When she noted that he had simply failed to align the corners, he accepted that misalignment was one form of the same principle.

The paper between them made the defence less serious than it deserved. Isha returned to her model, following the next pair of arrows until the future tail narrowed into a layered point.

Step nine required an inside reverse fold.

The instruction showed a dashed line, an open model and then a tail that had apparently accepted a new relationship with space. Isha unfolded the previous step, inspected the paper’s internal layers and tried to reproduce the transition through structure rather than faith.

The crease she had sharpened earlier resisted reversal. She pressed more firmly.

The paper tore at the point where two folds met.

The sound was small. Isha stopped with the damaged fish between both hands.

A white line opened through the printed weed. It did not destroy the model. It made the tail impossible to close cleanly.

Thomas waited.

Isha laid the paper flat and studied the tear as though it might explain whether the error belonged to the diagram, the material or her insistence that every previous fold remain exact.

“I made the crease too strong,” she said.

“Yes.” Thomas kept his tone neutral. “Paper remembers pressure more aggressively than cloth.”

“I know that now.”

She reached towards the unused packet, then stopped. Discarding the first attempt would be efficient. It would also make the exercise resemble every other skill she had acquired by correcting failure until the result became competent.

Isha picked up the torn model again.

“What happens if the tail remains open?” Isha asked.

Thomas thought it might look injured. She reminded him that it was paper; he observed that this had not protected it from her judgement. Her eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mouth moved. She folded the damaged tail as far as it would go and set the model beside the tablet. It resembled a fish struck by a door. One printed goldfish had been divided cleanly between the body and the torn fin.

Thomas’s first attempt reached the same step without tearing because his earlier creases had been less decisive. The price appeared elsewhere. One side of the body sat higher than the other, and the tail turned slightly towards the table.

He held it up.

Isha considered the object. “It looks as though it is listening behind itself.”

“That may be useful in dangerous water.”

“It has no water.”

“Then the preparation is excessive.”

They placed both fish side by side. The damaged one was precise until the tail. The second had survived through accumulated imprecision and appeared mildly concerned by the result.

Isha took another square.

This time she did not press each crease to its absolute limit. She aligned the corners, ran the pad of her finger over the fold and left enough softness for the paper to change direction later. At the reverse fold, she opened the layers before asking them to turn. The tail settled into place.

The final steps required shaping the head and folding two small fins outward. The printed pattern had not been designed around the model. A blue bubble appeared on one eye. Half a goldfish crossed the lower fin. The weed ran diagonally through the body and ended at nothing.

Isha held the finished piece between her fingertips.

It was recognisably a goldfish. One fin sat slightly lower. The tail opened wider on the right. Neither fault threatened anything.

“What does it do?” she asked.

Thomas considered the finished fish. It could not stand, had not been designed to float and carried no message.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell. It may communicate that the maker had paper.”

Isha turned it once between her fingertips and set it on the table. The fish lay on one side, its tail lifted a few millimetres above the wood.

The air conditioner changed speed. The tail moved.

Isha watched it settle again.

She folded a fourth fish without opening the instructions. The new one took less time and contained a deliberate asymmetry at the head because the print looked better when the left edge remained wider. Thomas made another beside her and produced a body so narrow that it resembled a fish after a serious administrative reduction.

They did not keep score.

Near noon, five paper fish occupied the dining table. Isha’s torn first attempt remained among them. Thomas brought thread from the sewing box and offered to hang one near the balcony.

“Then it becomes decoration,” Isha said.

“It may already be decoration.”

She looked at the five uneven bodies spread across the wood. “Perhaps.”

The thread went back into the box.

She photographed the group and sent the image to Kanno.

The reply came while Thomas was washing the coffee cone.

**The narrow one appears to have been through budget review.**

Thomas read the message over Isha’s shoulder. “She identified it correctly.”

A second message followed.

**Keep the torn one. It has character. This is not professional repair advice.**

Isha picked up the first fish. The open tail had begun to spread where the fibres were broken. She placed it on the bookshelf near the unfiltered photograph of the three of them, far enough from the edge that the air conditioner would not knock it down.

The other fish stayed on the table through lunch.

None became useful.

---

On Tuesday afternoon, Shibata sent Isha a message while she was checking a child’s rental shoes at the climbing centre.

**Possible pairing received. Come twenty minutes before Wednesday class. Information only until you decide.**

She read it once and returned to the shoes. The child had selected one correct size and one shoe two sizes smaller because both carried the same colour mark. Isha replaced the smaller one, checked the fastenings and sent him back to his mother with a pair his feet could use.

Only during her break did she answer Shibata.

**I will be there.**

Thomas was cutting spring onions when she told him that evening. He put down the knife before reacting, a habit he had learned after several conversations in which holding a blade had made concern look more dramatic than intended.

“Do you want me to come?” he asked.

“No. He is showing me the proposal at my gym.”

Thomas nodded and resumed cutting. “Then tell me afterwards if you want to.”

Isha touched the back of his neck as she passed behind him. Thomas resumed cutting, and dinner continued.

By Wednesday the tattooed skin had closed and the last flakes had come away. Nagase’s aftercare guidance allowed a return to exercise if the area remained clean, dry and free from rubbing or increasing redness. Isha wore a clean sleeveless rashguard that left the black lines uncovered and arrived at Shibata’s gym before the previous class had finished putting away pads.

Arai sat near the wall wrapping one wrist. Her eyes moved to the tattoo when Isha removed her overshirt, then to the office door.

“He found someone?” she asked.

“A possible pairing.”

Arai tightened the wrap with her teeth and hand. “Then read the injuries section before the exciting parts.”

“I will.”

The timer sounded from the mat. Arai stood and went to help stack the remaining shields. She did not ask for the opponent’s name before Isha knew whether the match belonged to her.

Shibata waited in the narrow office with a candidate sheet, a new rules summary and a tablet turned face down. The fan moved warm air across shelves of tape and old event programmes.

The first event named on Isha’s form had passed without a suitable opponent. Shibata had reported that in one short message and changed nothing in training. The current proposal belonged to a late-August card run under the same novice structure, with a fresh medical declaration and a new date.

“This is not booked,” he said when Isha sat. “Both coaches have reviewed the initial information. You decide whether I tell the organiser to proceed.”

He turned the candidate sheet towards her.

**Morita Ayaka. Twenty-eight. 174 centimetres. Current training weight 75.6 kilograms.**

The competition record was short. No amateur MMA bouts. One novice kickboxing match, lost by decision. Two local no-gi grappling entries, one win and two losses across the brackets. School judo through high school, followed by a long break. Eighteen months at her current mixed gym.

The experience note beneath it stated that Morita usually trained left lead, preferred clinch pressure and had no current injury or planned weight cut. Her coach had declared the same proposed category Isha had entered.

“She is not a beginner at sport,” Isha said.

“No. She is a beginner at putting all of it together under this ruleset.” Shibata tapped Isha’s own candidate copy beside the sheet. “As are you, for different reasons.”

Isha read the medical and withdrawal sections before moving to the footage note. Arai’s advice had been sound even when no injury was listed. Morita’s coach confirmed a prior ankle sprain from the previous year, fully returned to training, and no current restriction. The event doctor would still perform the required check.

“What has she been told about me?” Isha asked.

Shibata gave her the same bounded summary he had sent the other coach: no modern competition, the dates of her judo and mixed training, substantial practical fighting experience without verifiable records, an unusually athletic physical profile and no intended weight cut. He had made clear that she was not an ordinary first-time fighter. Morita had accepted the proposal on that basis.

Isha turned to the footage line. “Did she see anything of me?”

“No. You declined promotional use, and we have no competition footage to exchange.” Shibata explained that he had described what he had seen, while Morita’s coach supplied two clips because her record sat across several sports and did not show how she combined them.

Shibata unlocked the tablet and placed it between them.

The first clip came from Morita’s kickboxing bout. She wore red protective gear and stood southpaw, right hand measuring in front of her. The recording was fixed from outside the ring. It showed one complete round rather than a collection of successful moments.

Morita’s opponent moved faster at long range and scored first with straight punches. Morita adjusted by shortening the distance behind a right jab and left body kick. She absorbed several strikes cleanly, became less tidy when pressed and remained composed. Near the end she caught a kick, released it under the rules and returned immediately to stance instead of admiring the interruption.

The second clip came from a controlled mixed round at her gym. Morita drove a partner to the padded wall, joined her hands low and made the other woman carry weight while working towards a trip. Her head position was modern and persistent. When the partner turned free, Morita did not chase with a dangerous grip. She reset, struck on the break and returned to pressure.

Later in the clip, she was taken down and spent too long flat beneath half guard. She did not panic. She framed, recovered one knee and used the wall to stand after her partner gave the agreed space.

Shibata stopped the video.

“She likes making people carry her,” Isha said.

“Yes. Her kickboxing is more established than her ground work. Her judo returns in the clinch, but the long break matters. She is physically strong, left-sided and accustomed to competition procedure. She is also still learning the cage and legal transitions.”

Isha looked again at the still frame. Morita’s face was turned partly away, attention on the hand position at the wall. She appeared neither careless nor selected for defeat.

“Why does her coach believe this is fair?”

“Weight and size are close. She has more verified sport experience and has already performed under officials. You have broader fighting judgement, faster adaptation and a body I have described honestly. She has structures you have not learned, and you have answers she may not expect.” Shibata folded his arms. “If I could predict the result from these papers, I would refuse the match. I cannot.”

The office fan turned towards the shelves and sent one loose rules page moving against its clip.

Isha asked about the event doctor, protective equipment, the proposed rounds and the organiser’s stopping authority. The answers matched the earlier packet in substance. Two short novice rounds. Required equipment supplied or approved in advance. Officials able to stop for poor defence, injury or a difference that made continuation irresponsible. Both coaches retained the right to withdraw their fighter before the event and to stop the bout from the corner.

“No additional hard sparring merely because there is a date,” Shibata said. “No weight reduction. Your tattoo remains out of contact until the skin is fully settled. If the organiser confirms, we prepare for Morita’s style while continuing ordinary training. We do not build you into a different person in eighteen days.”

Eighteen days.

The number made Isha sit straighter. She pictured approved gloves, a marked floor and Morita across from her while a timer both had agreed to hear. Excitement came cleanly. Morita had signed a form, listened to her coach’s description and chosen the same bounded risk.

Isha read the candidate sheet once more.

“Does she want this opponent, or only a match?”

Shibata answered after considering the wording. “Her coach says the organiser mentioned one other candidate near the lower edge of the category. They declined before it became a firm proposal because the size difference was wrong. Morita reviewed your summary and chose to proceed if you agree.”

Isha looked once more at Morita’s listed weight, then placed the sheet flat on the desk.

“Tell them I accept the proposal.”

Shibata did not congratulate her. He marked the coach-review box, entered the date and wrote a short message to the organiser while she remained there. The reply would still require final medical and administrative confirmation. Until then, Morita Ayaka was a proposed opponent with a name, a left stance and a decision of her own.

From the mat, Arai called that warm-up had begun.

Shibata turned the tablet face down and opened the office door. Isha stepped out, tied her hair back and joined the line.