## Chapter 297 — A Tokyo Life Now The knife had crossed from Sendai and failed in Tokyo. Matsuda held it above a tomato in the narrow kitchen of his company flat, turning the blade so the light from the ceiling caught a series of small bright scars along the edge. The tomato remained whole on the cutting board. Behind him, three frying pans stood vertically in a rack designed for two, their handles disagreeing over the only clear section of wall. “I packed a good knife,” he said. “The flat supplied a sharpening device. I used it once.” Thomas took the knife when offered and ran one thumb beside the edge without touching it. The steel had been ground into a rough alternating bevel, sharp in several short places and almost rounded between them. It would cut if forced. The tomato’s skin had already demonstrated why force would be a poor beginning. “The device removed metal,” Thomas said. Matsuda replied that this was the advertised function, which made Thomas turn the blade once more beneath the light. “It performed the function without preserving the knife.” Matsuda pushed his glasses higher. “You have begun sounding pleased.” “I am interested. Those are different conditions.” Isha stood at the entrance to the kitchen, tall enough that the upper cupboard seemed placed for her rather than Matsuda. The bruise from Morita’s body kick had faded to a pale yellow shadow beneath her shirt. Thirteen days had removed the swelling from her lip and most of the stiffness from her ribs; Shibata had allowed full training again after a quiet week and the bruising’s steady retreat. She looked from the knife to the pans and then to the single induction ring. Isha asked why there were three. Matsuda indicated each object as though presenting evidence at a meeting: one supplied with the flat, one donated by a colleague who distrusted the first, and one recovered from outside the rubbish room beneath a note saying it was clean. “The third is the best one.” Isha looked at the single induction ring. “You can heat only one.” “That has not changed despite ownership.” The flat was almost exactly as Matsuda’s photographs had promised and less temporary in the details the photographs had omitted. A small sofa faced a television on a low furnished cabinet. The folding chair had been moved beside the balcony door because it fitted nowhere else when opened. His old mug stood upside down on a drying cloth. The plant from Sendai had grown two new leaves and occupied the brightest legal position inside the glass, behind a printed notice warning residents not to place pots on the balcony floor or rail. Three photographs were fixed to the refrigerator with company-branded magnets. One showed the last dinner in flat 202 before the move, with Kanno looking towards someone outside the frame. Another showed Matsuda in front of the Shinagawa building on his first weekend, one hand raised against sunlight. The third was the Tasmania photograph Thomas and Isha had sent from Coles Bay: tired faces, wind-disordered hair and the bright water behind them. A local supermarket card lay beside the entry tray. So did a dry-cleaning receipt, two unopened utility notices and a paper bag from a coffee shop close enough that Matsuda had not needed to keep the address. Thomas placed the knife on the board. “It can be repaired.” “I have a booking next Thursday.” Matsuda opened a drawer and produced a printed claim ticket from a sharpening shop. “I knew what you would do if I showed it to you.” Thomas read the ticket. The shop would inspect the edge before accepting the work and had refused to promise that every scar could be removed without shortening the blade. It was a better answer than he had prepared. “You arranged this before inviting us.” “I invited you for my company. The knife was evidence of hardship, not a request.” Matsuda put the tomato back into the refrigerator. Dinner waited elsewhere. He had chosen a small yakitori restaurant beneath the tracks, made the booking and sent Thomas a map whose route contained no optional improvements. The hotel was less than fifteen minutes away on foot under Matsuda’s interpretation and twenty-two under the time Isha had measured after they left their bags there. Thomas looked once more around the room before they went. The sofa was too short for Isha, the counter barely accepted one cutting board and a work shirt hung from the top of the bathroom door because the supplied wardrobe rail had begun bending under winter clothes. Matsuda’s decisions occupied the gaps. His plant had the window. The old mug had the drying cloth. Photographs covered the company logo on the refrigerator. He locked the door and checked it once. “Only once?” Thomas asked. “The second check occurs downstairs, when returning would be irritating.” They reached the lift before Matsuda touched his pocket and went back to confirm that he had his phone. Isha looked at Thomas. “The arrangement remains incomplete.” --- The restaurant knew Matsuda well enough to bring three cold towels and ask whether his guests ate chicken skin, liver and cartilage. He answered for himself and left the others to answer separately. The woman taking the order called him Matsuda-san without checking the reservation screen again. They sat at a narrow table against the wall. Trains passed above at intervals, setting the glasses trembling slightly before sound reached the room. Skewers arrived in pairs or threes: thigh with spring onion, crisp skin, meatballs glazed with tare, shishitō and mushrooms. Matsuda had ordered rice and soup early because he had learned that Thomas would treat a sequence of small plates as a problem requiring completion criteria. “I have eaten without you for several months,” Matsuda said when Thomas noticed the rice. “Some procedures have developed independently.” Thomas accepted the bowl. “The evidence is persuasive.” Isha lifted a piece of grilled cartilage and examined it before biting. The texture made her pause, then take the second piece. Matsuda watched with interest. The records said they had eaten together before the accident; none of them used that as permission to tell Isha what she had once liked. “How is the fight?” he asked instead. “Not the result. The part afterward.” Isha touched one hand to the side where the bruise had been. “The colour has nearly gone. Shibata heard that Morita has also returned to training. We will review the recording next week.” Matsuda asked whether she wanted another bout. Isha placed the empty skewer on the shared plate before answering. “I wanted that opponent and that bout. I have not decided about another.” The server approached with the next dish, and Matsuda shifted his glass out of her way. A plate of grilled aubergine arrived with grated ginger. Matsuda divided it badly, leaving one large piece and two smaller ones. Isha took the largest before Thomas could redistribute it. “How is Tokyo?” she asked Matsuda. The question was broad enough that he spent several mouthfuls finding the portion he wanted to answer. His work was busy, the office colder than necessary and the first train he tried each morning too crowded because he had chosen the entrance nearest his flat rather than the carriage nearest his destination. By June he had learned where to stand. By July he had stopped checking the route home before leaving the building. “The flat is still a company flat,” he said. “If I leave the company, the home ends with the job. That makes buying shelves feel excessive.” Isha pointed out that he had bought three pans. Matsuda corrected the record at once: the rubbish-room pan had been inherited and therefore possessed no contractual significance. Matsuda smiled before continuing. He had found a dry cleaner who returned shirts when promised, a supermarket that discounted fish later than the one near the station and the yakitori restaurant because a colleague brought him after a difficult week. He had joined no club, acquired no new close friend and still sent photographs of household failures to Sendai when the flat became too quiet. “Do you want to return?” Thomas asked. “The written return role remains good. I made sure it existed before accepting.” Matsuda turned his glass through the wet ring beneath it. “I also no longer think of every Tokyo habit as practice for leaving. Both facts are inconvenient.” Thomas had expected a cleaner answer because Matsuda’s transfer had been negotiated around clean terms: eighteen months, housing, grade, return role, no automatic extension. The conditions protected a decision. They did not decide what eighteen months would do to the person living them. Isha asked whether the company had discussed extending the transfer. Matsuda said no. The project still had more than a year to run. One senior manager used language such as *future flexibility*, but the written agreement remained unchanged and Matsuda had become skilled at answering enthusiasm with the document he had signed. Isha said the response sounded like Thomas. Matsuda took the final piece of aubergine and disagreed. It sounded like survival around managers; Thomas would have used more words. The restaurant filled around them. A group of four office workers took the table near the entrance and immediately began negotiating who would remove a bag from the spare chair. The woman at the grill called an order back to the kitchen. Another train crossed above, briefly turning the wall into a low vibration against Thomas’s shoulder. He had known evenings like this before: a narrow Tokyo restaurant after work, someone insisting the second place was better than the first, the small relief of food arriving before conversation required another useful answer. The recognition came through the room’s proportions and vanished before he could attach it to a particular colleague. Matsuda noticed Thomas looking upward. “The first week, I thought the trains would keep me awake. Now I notice when service stops.” Thomas lowered his gaze. “I used to live with rail noise.” Matsuda did not ask which city or year. He had learned that fragments recovered after the accident sometimes arrived without a history Thomas could explain. “Then you chose the hotel badly,” Matsuda said. “The line is closer there.” Thomas observed that the map had contained no acoustic warning. Matsuda considered the hotel name sufficient information for independent research. The exchange moved on. By the time they left, Matsuda had paid despite Thomas’s attempt to divide the bill. He defended the decision through host status, advance planning and the fact that Thomas’s birthday trip had begun two days before the birthday only because work made Tuesday inconvenient. Outside, warm September air remained between the buildings. The pavement under the tracks smelled faintly of rain that had fallen before they arrived. Matsuda walked them to the hotel even though his flat lay in the other direction, then rejected Thomas’s observation that this increased his route by presenting it as post-dinner exercise. At the entrance, he looked towards Isha. “Tomorrow begins at nine thirty. That is a humane Sunday time.” Isha agreed. Thomas asked what they were doing. “You have received the location requirement. Further detail would only invite preparation.” Matsuda adjusted his glasses. “Wear shoes suitable for walking and do not bring a knife.” He left before Thomas could ask which category of walking required the final instruction. --- On Sunday morning, the woman in the coffee shop put Matsuda’s drink on the counter before he reached the till. She asked whether he wanted the hot drink today. Matsuda confirmed it and added two guests. She looked past him towards Thomas and Isha, then added two menus in English to the tray. Matsuda thanked her in Japanese and ordered a cheese toast he claimed had prevented several poor Sunday decisions. Thomas chose coffee and a boiled-egg sandwich. Isha examined the display long enough to select a sweet bean and butter roll, then added another when the first appeared too small for the distance Matsuda had implied. The shop occupied the ground floor of an office building near the station. Its tables were narrow, the morning light reflected from glass across the road and a radio played quietly behind the counter. Matsuda sat where he could see the entrance without turning. His work bag was absent, and the difference changed his posture more than casual clothes did. The woman brought his toast after serving two customers. “Your friends are from Sendai?” “For the weekend,” Matsuda said. She welcomed them, asked whether the September heat had followed them south and returned to the counter before the conversation became an introduction. Matsuda had ordered enough Sundays in the same place to become recognisable. Thomas spread mustard across the egg sandwich. “You have a usual order.” “I have three. She selected the weather version.” Isha bit through the bean-and-butter roll. “You said this life was temporary.” “I said the flat belongs to the company.” Matsuda lifted his coffee. “The woman does not.” They left after breakfast and walked towards the water. Matsuda’s chosen route passed service entrances, apartment towers and a small shrine fitted between a parking area and the side wall of an office. He did not stop at each landmark or supply dates. He pointed out the supermarket with the late discounts, the coin laundry used when his building’s machine was occupied and a pedestrian crossing whose green phase was too short if someone began from the wrong side. Thomas had expected to recognise Tokyo through scale, density and sound. Instead he kept recognising Matsuda’s adjustments. The office worker who had once leaned into supplied university photographs at the last second now knew which gate saved six minutes, where a lunch queue moved quickly and which canal path received wind after sunset. They reached a broad boardwalk beside a canal. Warehouses across the water had been converted into offices, galleries and restaurants while retaining loading doors too large for their current use. A monorail train passed above the farther road, visible through gaps between buildings. The water carried fractured reflections from balconies and white sky. Matsuda led them to a bench in partial shade. “This is where I come when the flat feels too much like a room assigned by human resources.” Isha rested one forearm along the rail. “Does it stop?” “No. The room remains assigned. I return less irritated.” Thomas bought three bottles of water from a vending machine near the corner. When he came back, Matsuda and Isha were standing beside a public map, arguing about whether a route marked as twelve minutes assumed that pedestrians obeyed the scenic curve. “The map shows distance, not intent,” Isha said. Matsuda pointed to the word *recommended*. “That is intent,” she replied. Matsuda looked at Thomas for support. Thomas gave each of them a bottle and declined authority over cartographic motive. The next hour belonged mainly to walking. Matsuda showed them a converted warehouse containing a small design shop and an exhibition of furniture made from reclaimed timber. Isha tested a chair whose back looked structurally inadequate and found that the maker had hidden a steel brace beneath the wood. Thomas read a display about the former loading district until Matsuda told him the building would remain available if he stopped at the end of the current panel. They ate lunch from a bakery and sat near the canal again. Isha had chosen a long sandwich with roast chicken and vegetables. Matsuda carried a curry bread and one custard bun he denied buying for later. Thomas had a ham roll and the second coffee of the day. A boat passed slowly below, its wake lifting wrappers caught among the steps. Matsuda broke the curry bread in half and offered the larger part to Isha. She accepted without performing reluctance. “Did you miss this while you were in Sendai?” she asked. “I did not know this part yet.” Matsuda watched the boat move beneath the bridge. “I missed some things before I found them. Crowded trains were not among them.” Isha considered the answer. “You had wanted Tokyo before the offer.” “I wanted the grade and the work. Tokyo was attached.” Isha asked what was attached now. Matsuda looked down at the remaining bread. “A coffee shop, a bad crossing and a sharpening appointment. I am not prepared to make a larger statement before lunch.” Isha let him eat. Thomas listened to them discuss the single induction ring. Isha believed three pans remained excessive even if one had been free. Matsuda argued that different depths altered what could be cooked in sequence. Neither asked Thomas to judge. By the time the conversation reached storage, Isha had proposed hanging one pan from a rail, and Matsuda had explained the lease clause against adding fixtures. The directness between them had grown while Thomas was elsewhere: first through group dinners and Matsuda’s move, then through photographs and messages after Tokyo. It was not the same friendship either had with Thomas. Matsuda asked Isha questions he expected her to answer exactly. Isha treated his complaints as practical structures rather than invitations to reassurance. On the return walk, Thomas slowed at a home-goods shop when a window display showed whetstones. Matsuda took him by the elbow, reminded him of the booking and continued moving. Thomas claimed to be observing the printed price. Matsuda retained his grip until the display passed. Isha walked on Thomas’s other side and made no attempt to help him escape. --- Sunday dinner used one pan. Matsuda had planned a simple chicken-and-egg rice bowl because it required little counter space and could survive the knife’s current condition if the chicken was cut with kitchen shears. He had bought the shears himself in June after discovering that the flat’s supplied pair had been used on packaging adhesive until the blades no longer closed. Thomas sat on the folding chair near the balcony and received the task of washing rice. Isha sliced spring onion with a small serrated knife Matsuda kept for bread. Matsuda stood at the induction ring, measured stock and soy by eye, and rejected Thomas’s offer to check the balance before the chicken went in. “You are a guest,” Matsuda said. “Guests may identify fire.” When Thomas pointed out that the induction display already performed that task, Matsuda declared his responsibility complete. The meal did not require rescue. Matsuda added too much onion at once and the temperature fell, extending dinner by several minutes. The egg set more firmly at the edges than the centre. He divided the pan across three bowls and placed the softest portion in Isha’s because she had won a fight recently and he considered that relevant to protein distribution. Isha ate the first mouthful and told him the stock was good. Matsuda looked towards Thomas before catching himself. “You may agree,” he said. Thomas tasted it. The seasoning was a little strong for the rice and well suited to the amount of egg. “It is good.” Matsuda sat on the sofa. Thomas took the folding chair, and Isha folded herself onto a floor cushion near the low table because the sofa shortened her legs awkwardly. The television stayed off. Evening collected against the balcony glass, turning the room into a reflection of three people eating around company furniture. After dinner, Matsuda showed them the photographs he had not sent. Most were practical: a leaking pipe under an office sink, the first pan smoking after oil reached the wrong temperature, a train display during a delay and the plant losing one leaf before growing two. There were also several city views taken from places he had walked alone. He rarely centred the landmark. People at crossings, delivery bicycles and apartment laundry occupied more of the frame. One photograph showed the canal bench from that afternoon under winter-grey light. Another caught the coffee-shop window after rain, with Matsuda reflected faintly beside the menu. Isha noticed that he was taking more photographs. Matsuda attributed the change to Kanno, whose criticism had been that every early image proved only that an object existed. He moved to the next photograph, a row of umbrellas drying outside a restaurant. “She said the city contained people even when I was avoiding photographing them.” Thomas recognised the criticism as Kanno’s and not as an instruction she would expect him to repeat. Matsuda had used it anyway. The next image showed two colleagues from behind, walking beneath one umbrella after a meeting. Matsuda had not sent it because neither had agreed to appear in the group thread. Their faces were invisible, but he kept the photograph for himself. At nine, Thomas and Isha left for the hotel. Matsuda had work Monday and intended to wake at six. At the door he handed Thomas the damaged knife in its cardboard sleeve. “Why am I carrying this?” Thomas asked. “You wanted to inspect the price of stones. You may inspect the damage under better light. It returns tomorrow evening. Do not repair it.” Thomas held the sleeve. “This is an unusual test of character.” “It is an enforceable request.” Isha took the knife from Thomas and placed it in her bag. “I will preserve the boundary.” Matsuda looked satisfied. Thomas did not. The hotel room faced a rail line and the upper floors of several office buildings. Trains passed below in steady intervals, quieter through sealed glass than they had been above the restaurant. Isha set the knife on the desk beside the blank Monday schedule. Thomas showered first. When he returned, Isha sat cross-legged on the bed with her hair loose and the event recording open on her phone. She had watched only the first thirty seconds. Morita’s jab reached her guard, the body kick landed and the camera remained too far away to show what Isha had felt in the movement. Thomas said he thought Shibata had told her to wait until next week. Isha pointed to the date on the screen. He checked and found that she was right. Isha closed the recording instead of continuing. “I do not want Morita in tomorrow.” Thomas sat beside her. Monday remained a blank rectangle on the printed schedule. They had carried no list of addresses, no saved search results and no old report. His phone could produce all three within minutes. “Do you still want the day empty?” he asked. “I left it for you.” Isha leaned back against the headboard. “Empty was not the purpose.” Thomas looked towards the window. The reflection showed the bed, Isha’s pale hair and the knife he had been forbidden to fix. Beyond it, another train entered the station district and disappeared between buildings. “I want to begin in Kameido,” he said. “I do not want to search for the flat before we go. I may not remember the right exit.” “We can use the station map to leave. We will not use your name.” He nodded. After a while he added, “If Kameido feels like nothing, I may still want to see Shin-Kiba.” Isha put one hand over his where it rested on the bed. “Then we can.” They left the Monday schedule blank. --- Kameido Station had acquired gates Thomas did not remember and retained a smell he could not have named beforehand. It came from warm concrete, coffee, bakery sugar and the faint iron scent carried from the tracks whenever a train departed. None belonged only to Kameido. Together they made him stop beyond the ticket gates while commuters moved around his left shoulder. Isha waited beside a column rather than asking which way. She wore a loose white shirt and dark trousers, her hair tied low for the September heat. No trace of the bout showed in her movement now. The black lines on her upper arm appeared when the sleeve shifted. Thomas studied the station signs. North and east both seemed plausible. One route led towards the larger shopping streets and the shrine district. Another opened into roads where apartments gathered behind commercial fronts. He remembered walking home beneath buildings close enough to hide the weather until he reached an intersection. He did not remember which side of the station had supplied that intersection. “We can choose incorrectly,” Isha said. Thomas worried that the wrong exit might contaminate the memory. She looked towards the station signs. “It is already incomplete.” Thomas chose east because the word produced less resistance than north. Outside, the morning had become bright and humid. Bicycles filled marked spaces beside the pavement. Delivery workers moved crates into a convenience store. Above the shops, balconies carried laundry, plastic planters and air-conditioning units whose drainage hoses descended in irregular lines. Thomas walked slowly for the first block. A pharmacy occupied a corner where he expected nothing. A narrow lane behind it felt familiar until it opened towards a school wall he did not recognise. He turned once, then again, following neither a remembered route nor a complete plan. Isha kept pace. She looked at entrances, bicycle parking and the distance between buildings as though the missing flat might be inferred through the way Thomas’s attention moved. She asked no question until they reached a small residential street where potted plants occupied every piece of private ground between door and pavement. “Was your building like these?” “Possibly newer than that one. Less new than the one beside it.” Thomas looked upward. Several balconies faced another building across a gap narrow enough that no direct sky reached the lower floors. “The balcony faced a wall and windows. I judged rain from reflected light.” Isha followed his gaze. “Could it have been here?” “It could have been several thousand places in Tokyo.” They continued. A small shrine stood behind a stone marker and two vending machines, its grounds deep enough to hold shade despite the buildings around it. Thomas remembered shrines on routes he had used and could not place this one among them. He bought canned coffee from the machine because the blue label looked like one he had chosen before work. The first mouthful was sweeter than memory. Isha accepted the can when he offered it. Her expression altered before she swallowed. When she asked whether he had chosen it regularly, Thomas explained that the alternative was sometimes arriving without coffee. She reminded him of the cone at home; he admitted that he had not always woken in time to use it. Isha gave the can back. “Your first life also negotiated mornings poorly.” No other name entered the morning. The canned coffee, the unfinished reports and the remembered impatience at crossings already belonged inside Thomas, beside the way he still checked a weather forecast only after deciding which coat he preferred. They reached a shopping street before noon. Some shutters were down; others displayed fruit, prepared food, household goods and bicycles. Thomas recognised the arrangement more than any shop. He had bought dinner in streets like this, sometimes choosing food by discount sticker and sometimes walking farther because going home immediately would make the evening too long. At a small stationery shop, he stopped before a display of paper calendars. His mother’s calendar had hung beside a refrigerator in Leicester, not Tokyo. The association crossed cities without asking permission. Isha looked at the calendars, then at him. “My mother wrote beyond the squares,” Thomas said. “I told you.” Isha remembered. He looked again at the display. “I used a phone calendar here and still wrote work deadlines on paper. I think there was one above the desk. Perhaps a company calendar.” They entered the shop and bought nothing. Thomas examined pens he did not need. Isha studied decorative papers printed with autumn grasses. The owner greeted them, returned to packing an online order and gave their silence no special meaning. At midday they ate at a small curry shop near the station. Thomas chose a seat facing the window and discovered only after sitting that he used to prefer the wall. Isha ordered a hotter curry than he did and found it less demanding than advertised. “Do you remember eating here?” she asked. “No. The shop may not have existed.” Thomas looked at the counter, where laminated menus had faded differently according to distance from the window. “I ate food like this. That is not the same memory.” Isha tore a piece of cutlet with her spoon. “Do you want the flat to exist?” The question reached him more sharply than the coffee had. “I know a flat existed. I paid rent, complained about storage and kept work shirts in a wardrobe. I do not know whether I want this city to return it to me.” Thomas watched a cyclist stop at the crossing outside. “If we found the building, someone else would live there. The room would have become evidence before it became mine again.” Isha ate while he considered the rest. She did not ask whether that meant they should stop. “I am glad we came,” he said. “I also don’t feel closer to an address.” “Then do not look for one.” Thomas finished the curry. When they left, he put his phone away before the map could become a search. They walked west of the station afterward, following a broader road until Thomas recognised a bicycle route through the pressure of traffic on one side and a canal glimpsed between buildings. He might have cycled there on clear mornings. He might have used another road that resembled it. When he closed his eyes at a crossing, the remembered handlebars aligned with nothing visible. Isha touched the back of his arm when the signal changed. They crossed with everyone else. Near two, Thomas asked whether she minded continuing to Shin-Kiba. “I am here for the day you choose,” she said. “I would like to see where your work was.” He heard the careful limit. She had not said where he died. They returned to the station. --- The route towards Shin-Kiba felt shorter than Thomas remembered and contained one transfer he may have performed differently. His body anticipated the side from which a train would arrive twice and was wrong once. He remembered standing in particular parts of platforms because the stairs at the destination favoured them, then found new barriers and signs where memory expected open space. Isha followed without asking him to prove familiarity through speed. At Shin-Kiba, the city opened. Roads widened around warehouses, office buildings, elevated tracks and planted strips struggling against late-summer heat. Trucks waited at signals with engines idling. The air carried warm asphalt, canal water and the exhaust of vehicles beginning or ending routes. Thomas stood outside the station and knew the category of the place before he knew any object within it. He had left work into air like this. He had also left into winter dark, spring rain and evenings when the sun remained on warehouse roofs after the offices below had become fluorescent. Isha looked towards the roads. “Which direction?” Thomas searched memory and found the final night trying to answer first: rain on his face, wet road, white light and the report waiting on an office computer. He moved past it towards mornings. A convenience store. A canal crossed on foot. Trucks turning where pedestrians waited behind a rail. “That way, perhaps.” He pointed south-east and disliked the uncertainty in his own hand. “The office was near Shin-Kiba, not necessarily closest to this exit.” They walked. The first canal bridge produced no recognition. The second had the wrong rail and a view that struck him through shape rather than certainty. Office workers crossed towards the station in small groups. A man in a white shirt carried a convenience-store bag and drank from a bottle before reaching the shade. Thomas slowed beside a service road. Rain would have changed every surface. At night, headlights from the turning lane would cross the pedestrian edge. A foreign office worker could collapse there, be struck there or die somewhere beyond the next intersection. The road offered too many plausible endings. Isha stood close enough that their arms touched. She did not take his hand until Thomas turned his palm towards hers. Thomas said he could search the report now. Isha agreed. He could also search the company name if he remembered part of it correctly; her fingers closed around his before she asked whether he did. Thomas looked at the office buildings. Logos had changed. Some companies had probably moved. The unfinished report remained more vivid than the department name printed above it. “No.” A truck turned through the intersection. Its tyres crossed a repaired section of asphalt with a sound too dry to belong to the last night. Thomas took out his phone and opened the map. He used it only to find the station again. The search bar stayed empty. “I don’t want to choose a road and call it the place where I died.” Isha looked once along the traffic lane, then turned with him. “Then we go back.” They retraced the route. At the first bridge, Thomas stopped to look along the canal. Warehouses stood on both sides, their loading areas partly hidden by fences and parked vehicles. He remembered complaining about freight traffic while using its assumptions in forecasts. He remembered cheap curry with someone from procurement, a canned coffee left on his desk after a bad meeting and the final report he had believed could still be finished the next morning. The memories came without names. He let them. Before reaching the station, Isha bought two bottles of water. She opened Thomas’s and handed it to him before drinking from her own. Isha asked whether he would have brought her there. Thomas looked around the broad road, the station structure and the warehouse roofs. “Probably not first.” When she asked where he would have begun, he chose Kameido, perhaps at a restaurant better than the one he had usually used—somewhere he could pretend the selection had been deliberate. Isha drank. “You select more deliberately now.” “I cook better now.” “That was not the question.” Thomas considered the station and the route behind them. “I think I would have wanted you to see where I lived before where I worked.” “You did.” They entered the station before the answer required improvement. --- Matsuda chose Chinese food on Monday evening because Thomas and Isha had spent the day in Kōtō and, according to him, failed to eat anything that justified the distance. They met near the hotel after he finished work. His tie had been folded into a pocket and the upper button of his shirt was open. He looked tired in a way that belonged to meetings rather than distress. As they walked, Matsuda asked what they had seen. Thomas named Kameido and Shin-Kiba. Matsuda turned his head at the second place. “You used the blank day for residential streets and logistics districts.” Thomas confirmed it. Matsuda asked whether Isha had agreed to this use of Tokyo; she said she had wanted to see both. “Then I withdraw the complaint,” he said. “I retain concern about sightseeing standards.” The restaurant served large plates intended for sharing. Matsuda ordered mapo tofu, greens with garlic, dumplings, fried rice and a cold chicken dish after asking Isha how much chilli she wanted. Her knee rested against Thomas’s beneath the table while they gave Matsuda the pieces of the day that required no explanation. They described a shrine, canned coffee, curry and the broad roads near the station. Matsuda found the route eccentric and did not ask them to make it less so. “I work closer to crowds,” Matsuda said. “When I leave the office late, there are still restaurants and people. Shin-Kiba would make me feel that the work had consumed the whole district.” Thomas looked at the red oil shining across the tofu. “The roads make that easy to believe.” Matsuda lifted his eyes, but the server arrived with dumplings before he formed a question. Thomas moved the plate towards him, and the conversation turned to whether the flat’s sharpening appointment would return the knife shorter. After dinner, Matsuda gave Thomas a small paper bag. “It is not your birthday for another three hours,” Thomas said. “I have work tomorrow. Administrative convenience has moved the gift.” Inside was a simple wooden frame containing a photograph from Sunday afternoon. Matsuda had printed it at a convenience store before work. The three of them stood beside the canal, captured through a timer balanced on the bench. Isha occupied the centre because the framing required it. Thomas looked towards Matsuda rather than the lens. Matsuda had entered half a step late, one shoulder leaning into the photograph as if he had reached it just before the shutter. “You preserved your usual error,” Thomas said. “The first photograph was correctly timed and looked unnatural.” Isha took the frame and examined the image. “This one is better.” Matsuda’s satisfaction appeared briefly before he reached for tea. “Kanno said photographs should prove more than objects exist. I have supplied evidence that I also exist badly at the edge.” Thomas returned the frame to the bag. The picture had arrived after a day spent among places whose people might never be found. Matsuda reached for another dumpling and asked whether the hotel had supplied a refrigerator. They stayed until the restaurant began resetting empty tables for closing. Outside, Matsuda reclaimed the damaged knife from Isha’s bag and checked the cardboard sleeve as though Thomas might have repaired it through contact. Matsuda repeated that the knife would return on Thursday. Thomas objected that the date had already been established, but the defence failed when Matsuda mentioned the whetstones inspected through glass. Thomas had purchased none. Matsuda called that the reason trust remained provisional. Matsuda went home with the knife and his work shirt creased across the back. Thomas and Isha walked the final blocks to the hotel carrying the framed photograph between folded clothes in Thomas’s bag. At midnight, Isha woke him to say happy birthday. Thomas opened one eye. “You remained awake for administrative precision.” “I slept. The phone woke me.” “That is delegated precision.” Isha kissed him before he could classify it further. He was twenty-four in Earth records and too tired to perform any other arithmetic usefully. Isha drew his arm across her waist and returned to sleep. --- Matsuda met them for breakfast at seven fifteen wearing his work clothes and carrying a convenience-store envelope. The hotel restaurant had not yet filled. Morning light reached the buffet through tall windows, and the rail lines below were already moving commuters into the city. Matsuda placed the envelope beside Thomas’s coffee and said Kanno had instructed him to deliver it on the correct date. Inside was a birthday card printed on heavy cream stock. The front showed a black line drawing of a vending machine whose illuminated panels had been left as bare paper. Kanno had bought it at the print fair after deciding the miniature book was too small to become a birthday present. Her message occupied the inside in narrow handwriting. **Twenty-four. Do not turn the whole day into an itinerary review. Use one hour badly. — Emi** Below it, she had added: **The card stock is honestly translucent.** Thomas held it towards the window. Matsuda watched the reverse image appear through the paper. Matsuda read the first line upside down and said Kanno had underestimated Thomas’s ability to review an itinerary. Isha agreed. Thomas closed the card before the criticism acquired supporting evidence. Messages gathered on Thomas’s phone while they ate. Mori wrote that birthday leave did not create permission to check the residence notice. Sugiyama sent a photograph of the office plant and claimed it had noticed his absence. Saitō’s message instructed him to eat one thing he had not cooked. Kanno sent no second message because the card had already done the work. The building group produced several short congratulations and one photograph of Mugi occupying the corridor outside 202 as if waiting for a meeting. Thomas answered after finishing the eggs. He did not improve each response into a separate conversation. Matsuda had to leave by eight. He stood outside the hotel with his work bag over one shoulder and complained that the reservation returned Thomas to Sendai before Tokyo had established whether his birthday required a second dinner. Thomas pointed out that Matsuda had already supplied two dinners. Matsuda objected that neither had occurred on the date; breakfast, despite taking place correctly, did not satisfy the category. Isha took Thomas’s phone and held it out. “Photograph.” Matsuda set his bag down and moved beside them. The first timer image caught him looking at an approaching taxi. On the second, Thomas blinked. The third kept all three faces and placed a delivery bicycle directly behind Matsuda’s shoulder. Matsuda examined it. “Acceptable.” “You are partly obscured by a refrigerated box,” Thomas said. “That proves Tokyo contains work.” He picked up his bag, bowed more formally than the friendship required and then embraced Thomas with one arm because the bag prevented the second. Isha received both arms and had to bend slightly so Matsuda’s glasses did not strike her shoulder. “Come again before eighteen months ends,” he said. “I may own a fourth pan by then.” Isha released him. “I will not permit it.” Matsuda left towards the station with the quick, slightly forward walk Thomas remembered from Sendai. He joined the morning flow, adjusted once around a group with luggage and disappeared beneath the sign for his usual gate. Thomas and Isha remained outside the hotel after he had gone. Their return train left in the afternoon. The room was theirs until eleven. “What do you want to do badly?” Isha asked. Thomas looked at Kanno’s card. “Nothing large.” “Then choose poorly at a small scale.” They checked out and left their bags with the hotel. Instead of visiting another major place, they walked with no route through the streets behind the station until they found a small park between office buildings. A playground occupied one end. At the other, three stone benches faced a planting bed where late-summer flowers had survived the heat unevenly. Thomas bought two iced coffees from a convenience store and selected a packaged sponge cake because the label called it a birthday size despite containing one portion. Isha bought a second cake after observing the first. They sat beneath a tree whose shade moved before the breeze reached them. Thomas opened the card again. The vending machine’s lights appeared brighter where the cream stock showed the white sky behind it. “Monday?” Isha asked. The question contained Kameido, the station, the empty search bar and the road they had refused to name. “I am glad we went.” Thomas tore the sponge cake in half and gave her the larger piece from habit. Isha returned part of it until the portions became less unequal. “I don’t want to search today.” “We are not searching.” “I know.” He ate. The cake was soft, over-sweet and improved by the cold coffee. “I may want to later. The company first, perhaps. Not the death report.” Isha looked across the playground, where a child pushed an empty swing while another arranged fallen leaves on the seat. “Later can remain later.” Thomas put Kanno’s card back in its envelope. They stayed until the shade left the bench, then collected their bags. At Shinagawa Station, the departure board placed Sendai among several cities reached through another Tokyo platform. Thomas knew the route from journeys made after waking in Sendai: Tasmania, Da Nang and now a birthday visit. Before they entered the gates, Isha stopped beside a plain wall and held up the phone. “One more,” she said. “Matsuda is at work.” “This is not his photograph.” Thomas stood beside her. Isha set the timer, leaned the phone against their suitcase handle and returned before the count ended. In the first image, both looked towards the screen with the careful attention of people checking a form. She deleted it. On the second attempt, Thomas said something about the suitcase falling. Isha turned towards him at the moment the shutter released. The phone stayed upright. She kept that one.