## Chapter 364 — The Other Date On Monday morning, Thomas discovered that asking colleagues to attend a wedding was easier once there was a date and harder once he could see the room. Mori was at the printer when he found her, waiting for a student-support letter whose second page had apparently decided to arrive before the first. Sugiyama sat at her desk with a headset around her neck and three open windows on her monitor. Thomas had intended to ask them separately. The office reduced that plan to something more ordinary by putting all three of them within four metres of the same malfunctioning machine. The first page emerged. Mori took it, checked the corner and looked at Thomas. “You have been standing there with no document for nearly a minute.” “I wanted to ask you something.” Sugiyama glanced over openly. Thomas had rehearsed the wording on the train and found it no better here. “Isha and I are getting married on Saturday, 30 October. Small ceremony and lunch. We would like you there, if you can come.” Mori’s attention left the printer completely. For a moment she looked almost suspicious, as though Thomas had concealed a second meeting inside an ordinary workday. Then her expression softened. “The ceremony?” she asked. Thomas said yes. Mori collected the second page when it arrived and checked that its heading matched the first. “Then yes. I will check nothing for you that day.” “That was not going to be your role.” “Good. You are learning.” Sugiyama was still looking at him. Thomas turned towards her before he could make the invitation feel like an accidental consequence of proximity. “You too. I should have asked you without a printer involved.” “That would have been more dignified.” She took the headset from around her neck and set it beside the keyboard. “Thirty October?” Thomas nodded. Sugiyama checked her phone calendar, although the speed of the movement suggested she already knew whether the Saturday was free. “I can come.” She looked up again. “Do you mean the same small wedding Kanno is attending?” “Yes.” Thomas understood what she was asking. “We are not filling seats. We want you there.” Sugiyama’s mouth tightened once before becoming a smile. “Then I will come.” A student appeared at the edge of the office carrying a residence-card copy and an expression of prepared confusion. The wedding stopped being the room’s main problem. Mori took the student first; Sugiyama reopened the window she had been using; Thomas returned to an email about a date that belonged to somebody else’s field. By lunch, two more names in the notebook had answers. Isha’s invitation took longer because Ishikawa was working. Monday at the climbing centre contained a school group, two private beginner bookings and a delivery of rental harnesses that had to be counted before the afternoon staff could put them into circulation. Isha kept the engagement ring in its case with her bag and spent most of the day moving between the wall and the desk. She did not ask Ishikawa while either of them was supervising a customer. Near the end of the shift, the floor finally emptied enough for the route setters’ music to become audible from the far side of the building. Ishikawa was comparing the new harness serial numbers against the delivery sheet when Isha stopped beside the counter. “I have a non-work question.” Ishikawa kept one finger on the line she was checking. “That is already unusual.” “Our wedding is 30 October. We want you at the ceremony.” The finger stayed where it was while Ishikawa looked up. “The ceremony itself?” “Yes.” The surprise lasted longer than it had on Mori. Isha waited. “I had assumed you would keep that very small,” Ishikawa said. “We are.” That changed the expression more than an explanation would have. Ishikawa looked down at the rota pinned beneath the delivery sheet, then back at Isha. “I need to move one Saturday responsibility, but I can do that with four weeks’ notice. Yes. I would like to come.” “Good.” Ishikawa returned to the delivery sheet, then paused before finding her line again. “Send me the time when you have it. Not through the staff rota.” “I will.” Isha went to finish the harness count. She put the engagement ring back on after changing at the end of the shift. At home that evening, Thomas added the three acceptances beneath the earlier four. The ceremony now held nine people if nobody else was added: Thomas and Isha, Kanno, Matsuda, Saitō, Miyake, Ishikawa, Mori and Sugiyama. He read the list once. “Does anyone look missing?” Isha stood behind his chair with the engagement ring back on and one hand resting on his shoulder. She read from Kanno to Sugiyama, then again from the bottom upward. “No.” Thomas closed the notebook. He had expected satisfaction to arrive as completion. Instead the list simply stopped asking for another name. They left it alone. --- The promises went less well on Monday evening. The restaurant had asked only for a rough ceremony length, and Thomas had written **our words** in the notebook often enough that the phrase had begun to look suspiciously easy. They agreed on one rule before beginning: first drafts stayed private. They were allowed to be bad. Thomas opened a blank document on his laptop. Isha used paper. For six minutes, the only sound in the LDK was the refrigerator and the faint movement of Thomas’s keyboard. Isha wrote one line, crossed out half of it, turned the paper over and started again. Thomas produced a paragraph whose first sentence contained two commas and the word *whatever* in a position that made him dislike himself. Isha looked over from the other side of the table. “You are writing conditions.” “You cannot see my screen.” “I can see your face.” “That is an unreliable document.” She returned to her page. Thomas deleted the sentence. The old living-bough promises sat too close to the task to ignore and too far from their current lives to copy. They had been younger, living under another sky, surrounded by people who understood the rite without explanation. The words for 30 October belonged in a small restaurant room in Sendai, with Saitō in an easy chair and Matsuda trying not to look moved before lunch. After another ten minutes, Isha put down the pen. “I know what I do not want.” Thomas turned the laptop slightly away from himself. “That is currently more than I know.” “I do not want to tell our history. They know enough of us already.” She touched the page with one finger. “And I do not want to promise that nothing bad will happen. We cannot promise that.” Thomas looked at the paragraph he had been reducing. “I have managed to promise almost nothing with eighty-three words.” “That is impressive.” He laughed, closed the document without saving the visible mess under anything more dignified than **vows-draft-1**, and reached for her paper. Isha put her palm over it. “No.” “I was only moving it away from the tea.” “You were also reading upside down.” Thomas withdrew his hand, and they did not solve the promises that night. What survived was smaller: each would speak directly to the other, neither would recreate the old rite, and the final words would remain private until the ceremony unless one of them needed help with language or structure. Thomas wrote those three constraints in the notebook instead of copying either draft. Isha folded her page twice and put it inside the cover. “Better?” she asked. “No.” Thomas shut the laptop. “But now I know what is bad.” “That is progress.” He looked at her. “Kanno has infected you.” Isha took both tea cups to the kitchen and declined to defend herself. --- The second bout arrived the following evening in the least dramatic way possible: Shibata waited until Isha had finished training and asked her to come into the office for five minutes. Her session had been ordinary technical MMA. Arai had spent one round making Isha work from the wall and another interrupting her entries with a jab that never carried enough force to become hard sparring. Mizuno had caught her in a front headlock twice and lost it once. Isha finished warm, slightly bruised along one forearm and pleased with the hour. She removed her gloves, washed her hands and went into Shibata’s office while the next class began outside. The engagement ring was still in its case inside her bag. Shibata had one sheet of paper on the desk and no video open. “There is an amateur card in Sendai on Saturday, 11 December,” he said. “The same organiser who handled your first bout asked whether you are available.” Isha sat down. The date landed cleanly: six weeks after the wedding, far enough that the ceremony and the fight would not consume the same week. “Do they have an opponent?” “A proposed one.” Shibata turned the sheet towards her. “Naruse Kana. Twenty-seven. One hundred seventy-six centimetres. Around seventy-six kilograms in ordinary training. Two novice MMA bouts, one decision win and one decision loss. Boxing background, then no-gi and mixed training. Orthodox. No planned weight cut.” The sheet held no flattering language. It listed the same kind of verifiable facts Isha’s first opponent profile had carried: training, competition history, approximate weight and declared injuries. Nothing on the page made Naruse look selected to be beaten. “Has she agreed?” Isha asked. “Her coach agreed to the proposal in principle after seeing your first bout and current summary. Naruse has not signed final consent; neither have you.” Shibata leaned back. “If you say yes tonight, I send your interest. That still means we review footage, medical forms and the actual match conditions before either side is committed.” Isha read the two bout results again. “What rules?” “Same novice structure as before unless the organiser changes the card. We verify it in writing. No cut. No extra hard rounds this week because a date appeared on paper.” She looked up. Shibata’s expression did not invite courage. He had offered her a date because she had once said she might want another bout later, not because her body had become available again. Isha looked back at Naruse’s name. The first time, part of the appeal had been the unknown form of the event itself. A referee, gloves, a boundary, another woman whose decisions continued after Isha’s first answer. Morita had supplied that uncertainty generously. The second bout would not repeat it. Isha now knew what a horn sounded like from inside the enclosure. She knew the first round could belong to the other woman and still remain useful. She knew a tap ended the problem immediately because both people had agreed that it did. What she did not know was Naruse. She looked back at the sheet for another few seconds. “I want to see the footage,” she said. “If the match still looks appropriate after we both review it, I want the date.” Shibata nodded once and pulled the sheet back towards himself. “That is a yes to being considered, not a yes to any version of the bout.” “Yes.” “I will tell them.” He did not congratulate her. Isha preferred that. When she returned to the staff area, Arai was drinking water beside the lockers. She looked at Isha’s face, then at Shibata’s office door. “Fight?” “Possibly. Eleven December.” Arai swallowed. “Opponent?” “Naruse Kana.” Arai’s eyebrows rose slightly, which told Isha the name was not entirely unknown to her. “You know her?” “Only footage. She boxed before she started grappling. Good hands when people let her set her feet.” Arai screwed the bottle cap back on. “Ask Shibata for the long round, not the highlight clip.” Isha told her she was going to. Arai nodded, put the bottle down and went back to the mat. Isha put the engagement ring on after changing and took the train home with 11 December occupying a new, contained place in her mind. Thomas was folding laundry in the LDK when she arrived. One of the wedding garment bags remained shut in his office; the flexible-room bag remained equally shut. He did not ask about training until she had changed shoes and put her bag away. “Shibata offered another bout,” Isha said. Thomas stopped with one of his shirts half folded. “Offered as in a date, or offered as in you are fighting?” “Eleven December. Proposed opponent. Naruse Kana. Two novice bouts. Boxing and grappling. I told him I want to review it and, if the match is suitable, I want the date.” Thomas finished folding the shirt before answering. “Do you want another bout?” “Yes.” The answer came without the earlier qualification about being healthy enough. Thomas heard that too. “Then I hope Naruse looks like a good match.” Isha came around the table and kissed him. “That was easier than the promises.” “Almost everything has been easier than the promises.” She looked at the laundry pile. “Not fitted sheets.” Thomas considered the object in question and conceded the comparison. --- The legal marriage became a calendar problem on Wednesday. It had never been a mystery in principle. Their ceremony would be 30 October. The ceremony would be the day they thought of as their wedding. The legal filing could sit before or after it if that made the machinery easier. What they had not done was ask the machinery what it required from two foreign nationals with British passports and, in Isha’s case, Icelandic nationality as well. Thomas began with Sendai instead of trusting Daniel’s memory of municipal procedure after fifteen years and one death. The city guidance was useful: foreign-national marriages could require different supporting documents depending on nationality and circumstances, so they should consult the ward office’s family-register/resident section before filing. A marriage notification needed two adult witnesses. Sendai would accept the notification outside staffed hours through the duty room, with the papers checked later, and recommended advance review. “That means the ward office is not actually closed to marriage,” Thomas said. Isha sat beside him at the dining table, reading the translated notes he had made rather than the Japanese page itself. “You sound disappointed.” “I had hoped for one simple external constraint.” “You found several smaller ones.” “Yes.” For their British documentation, the route was clearer. Each British national needed a marital-status affirmation or affidavit proving freedom to marry. The application began online, but the declaration itself had to be made at the British Embassy in Tokyo. Appointments were offered on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and had to be booked at least seven days after the application so the documents could be checked first. They had submitted their separate applications on Tuesday night after confirming that the document requirements could be met. They had done it before deciding the filing date because they would need the papers either way. The booking screen now offered the first useful choice. Two appointments close enough to make one Tokyo trip were available on Wednesday, 13 October. After those, the next pair Thomas could place together without one of them spending most of a day waiting for the other was Tuesday, 16 November. Isha read the dates twice. “So those are the real choices.” “Not legally.” Thomas turned the laptop towards her. “We could take the October appointments and still file after the ceremony. We could file at night or on a weekend once the papers are ready. But if we are going to Tokyo on the thirteenth, the practical reason for waiting disappears.” Isha shifted the calendar closer and compared the November work blocks with the embassy day. “And if we move the embassy visit to November?” “Then the first weekday we can both go to the ward office during staffed hours, with time to correct any problem they find, is Thursday the eighteenth.” He had checked their calendars before saying it. Isha’s November rota filled the surrounding weekdays, including a beginner course she had agreed to cover. Thomas had two student-orientation commitments he could move only by making the same problem somebody else’s. They could force an earlier hour into existence. Neither wanted legal marriage to begin with one of them watching the clock between obligations. Thomas wrote the two sequences on paper: **13 Oct — Tokyo / embassy** **15 Oct — ward office, if pre-check clears** **30 Oct — ceremony** And beneath it: **30 Oct — ceremony** **16 Nov — Tokyo / embassy** **18 Nov — ward office, if pre-check clears** The first made them legally married fifteen days before the wedding they would actually celebrate. The second left them legally unmarried for nineteen days afterward. Isha rested her chin on one hand. “That is better.” Thomas looked at her. “Which part?” “The distance. If it were the twenty-ninth or the first, I would dislike pretending the difference mattered.” She tapped the October list, then the November one. “These are actually different choices.” Thomas leaned back. The October route had one ugly feature the paper did not show. The next expected correspondence opening was Saturday, 16 October. If the thirty-cycle estimate held, they would file on Friday, sleep, and put Thomas on the floor beside a timer the following morning for whatever the passage allowed. Thomas added **16 Oct — passage?** beneath the first sequence. Isha looked at it. “That is crowded.” “Yes.” Thomas left the pen beside the first sequence. The calendar made the problem look larger than the actual passage procedure, but it also put three different kinds of commitment into sixteen days. “The November one puts the ward office three weeks before the fight.” “If the fight is confirmed.” Isha took the pen from him and drew a short line between 18 November and 11 December. “It will also be during the part Shibata will care about more. Tokyo on Tuesday. Work. Ward office Thursday. Training around it. It is possible.” “October is possible too,” he said. “We would have the embassy documents on Wednesday. The ward office said they can check the draft and supporting documents before we submit. Friday the fifteenth is clear for you, and I can take the afternoon without moving anything onto Sugiyama.” Isha looked at him. “You already checked that.” “Yes.” “Of course.” He ignored the tone. “The passage is the next morning, but we already keep that morning empty around the expected window. It does not create another trip.” The two sequences stayed between them for a while. They had once married under a living bough. Here the paper listed an embassy, a ward office, a ceremony, a passage and a possible December fight. Isha traced the October sequence once with her finger. “If we do it before, do you think the ceremony will feel false?” “No.” Thomas answered before qualification could improve it into something weaker. “Do you?” “No.” He waited. Isha was still looking at the two lists. “The November option annoys me,” she said at last. “Not because we would be unmarried after the ceremony. I know what day the wedding is. It annoys me because we would move a necessary thing into November only to protect October from being busy, then put it into the middle of another thing I chose.” “The bout.” “Yes. And your work does not stop because our wedding happened.” She pushed the October list slightly closer to him. “The thirteenth is one Tokyo day. The fifteenth is one office visit. Then it is done.” Thomas looked at **16 Oct — passage?** again. “Done except for potentially losing consciousness the next morning.” “That is a separate administrative tradition.” He laughed despite himself. Isha’s expression remained serious beneath it. “Do you want before?” Thomas took the question as she had asked it. Efficiency, clerks and schedules sat outside it. He wanted to know whether he could be legally married to her on 15 October and still stand in the restaurant two weeks later to make promises in front of the people they had chosen. “Yes,” he said. “I do.” Isha’s mouth shifted. “That phrase is badly placed.” “It was not intentional.” “I know.” She leaned across the table and kissed him anyway. When they separated, Thomas reopened the embassy booking page and took the two Wednesday appointments before someone else could make the decision theoretical again. The confirmations arrived one after the other. He saved them to the shared calendar, then phoned the ward office the following morning to ask for the document pre-check appropriate to their case rather than trusting a generic checklist. The staff member did not promise acceptance in advance. She told him what to bring, asked him to bring both of Isha’s passports for the review, and recommended that the marriage notification itself be completed except for any part they were specifically told to leave blank. Two adult witnesses would need to sign it. If the embassy papers were in order and the advance review found no problem, they could submit during staffed hours on Friday, 15 October. Thomas wrote none of the clerk’s polite cautions into the wedding notebook. They belonged to a different task. On Thursday evening, Isha stood in front of the refrigerator calendar with the black pen. The square for Saturday, 30 October already contained **Wedding**. Fifteen days before it, Friday the fifteenth was still empty. She wrote **marriage notification — ward office** inside it, small enough to fit without touching the edge. The next square already held **passage?** She capped the pen and returned it to the magnetic clip.