## Chapter 393 — The Distance to February

Saturday, 29 January began with Thomas and Isha leaving the flat in different directions.

Isha had a climbing-centre shift. Thomas had intended to use the municipal range, but his shoulder had been mildly tired after Friday's gym session and he had no interest in turning beginner archery into a test of whether sensible limits applied to him personally. He packed no bow bag. At eleven, he met Kanno instead in a café two streets from Sendai Station, where she had already secured a corner table and placed a folded event leaflet beside her coffee.

Thomas sat opposite her and looked at the leaflet before taking off his coat. “This is the March thing?”

“Small Works Weekend,” Kanno said. “The title has survived three organisers and may now be legally protected.”

The leaflet was still a proof rather than a finished piece. Six names appeared beneath the event title, Kanno's among them, with short descriptions and blank boxes where publicity images would go. Her biography had been reduced to the thirty words she had finally tolerated. Thomas read it, then turned the leaflet over as though a hidden page might contain the embarrassing version.

“You removed ‘visual attention to provisional civic surfaces.’”

Kanno stared at him. “I told Isha that in confidence.”

“She told me because marriage has no legal protection against bad artist biographies.”

Kanno reclaimed the leaflet before he could inspect the other biographies. “That is not how marriage works, and you are not my editor.”

Thomas surrendered the proof. “Both useful clarifications.”

Their food arrived: a toasted sandwich for Thomas, soup and a small roll for Kanno. Neither was remarkable enough to become part of the conversation. That suited both of them.

Kanno had accepted the March invitation on the condition that she could show *Until Replaced* and leave the unfinished wall series at home. The organiser had agreed easily. Her problem was abundance: three existing photographs from the booklet could go on the wall, and she had narrowed the choice to seven.

“You are asking me to choose?” Thomas said.

“No. I am complaining that seven is too many.”

“Good. I can support the complaint.”

She showed him the contact sheet anyway.

Thomas had seen the booklet often enough to recognise most of the images. A taped notice with several generations of correction marks. A clear patch over a cracked panel. A temporary arrow retraced so many times that the correction had become more visible than the original sign. A wall where something rectangular had been removed after the surrounding paint faded.

He pointed at none of them.

Kanno noticed. “You have learned.”

“I was explicitly told I wasn't choosing.”

“You can still have an opinion.” She turned the sheet towards him again.

Thomas kept his hands away from it. “That sounds like a trap. Berlin also began with a photograph.”

Kanno's mouth moved before she managed to stop it. “Fine. I prefer the cracked panel, the retraced arrow and the wall with the missing board.”

Thomas looked again. “Then why are there seven?”

“Because I may be wrong.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is called editing.”

He ate half the sandwich while she complained about the difference between selecting images for a booklet and hanging three prints in a room where people could approach them in any order. The booklet controlled sequence. A wall did not. Someone could see the last image first, walk away before the middle, or stand too close to the one Kanno considered quiet and turn it into the centre simply by spending longer there.

Thomas listened because he liked listening to her talk about work when the work was actually hers. Publishing complaints often came with a client somewhere behind them. This time Kanno was making the problem for herself and, despite everything she said, seemed pleased to have it.

When she finally stopped, he said, “I think this is the first time I've heard you complain about people having too much freedom with one of your pages.”

“They are not pages.”

“Exactly.”

Kanno considered that, then folded the contact sheet and put it back in her bag. “You may attend in March if you want.”

“Thank you. I had not planned to seize a table.”

“As a visitor,” Kanno said. “And you are not allowed to stand near *Until Replaced* explaining hidden context to strangers.”

Thomas looked offended. “I understand exhibitions.”

“You understand being useful.”

He accepted the distinction with a small grimace. “Unnecessarily accurate.”

Kanno drank the last of her soup before answering. “I invited you because I would like you there. That is all.”

Thomas nodded once. “Then I would like to come.”

He stopped there instead of adding Isha's name. Kanno had invited him; she could invite Isha herself if she wanted.

Kanno noticed something else. “How is the university committee?”

“Still in April. I received two background documents ‘for awareness’ on Thursday, put them in a folder called April Working Group and stopped after the summaries.”

Kanno raised her coffee cup in acknowledgement. “Growth. In publishing, ‘no action required’ has never prevented action.”

“They genuinely meant it this time.”

Thomas told her about the group more fully than he had during the chat: the cross-office membership, the half-day monthly meeting, the explicit workload reduction, Mori's role in nominating him. He was still pleased enough that talking about it made the pleasure visible. Kanno noticed before he finished explaining the workload reduction.

She asked whether the reduction in his current work was written down and accepted his yes without turning into Mori at a different table.

“Do you want it to lead somewhere?” she asked.

Thomas looked through the window at people moving along the winter pavement, coats open because the midday sun had taken some of the edge off the cold. “I think so. Not somewhere specific yet.”

“Management?”

His expression answered before he did. Kanno waited, amused, while he rubbed his thumb along the seam of his coffee cup.

“I managed people before, as Daniel. I don't object to doing it again eventually. I object to treating it as the only direction that counts as progression.”

Kanno nodded. “Publishing also has a traditional career path where you become successful enough to stop doing the part you were good at.”

“That seems widely implemented.”

Their conversation moved to other things: a client who had rediscovered a deleted paragraph after three rounds of approval; Thomas's refusal to turn his April folder into January homework; the stranger who had recognised *Until Replaced*; whether Kanno had now become famous enough to require dark glasses.

She told him to finish his sandwich.

It was only when Thomas reached for his coat that Kanno glanced at his phone on the table and asked, “Have you changed the invitation?”

“No.”

“The page.”

“I know which invitation you mean.”

Thomas sat back instead of putting on the coat.

The Common page remained under its clear protective sheet at home. They had not edited it since the previous Saturday. Every rereading produced a possible improvement, and every improvement risked turning the invitation into a document about their anxiety instead of a request to people who could answer for themselves.

“I've thought of changes,” he said. “I haven't made them.”

“Good.” Kanno slung the bag strap over one shoulder. “I am confident in approving your decision not to rewrite a finished page every evening.”

“You have become very confident in approving things you don't own.”

Thomas was smiling as he said it, and Kanno ignored the objection.

She gathered her bag. “Are you imagining it?”

“The café?”

“Seeing them.”

He looked down at the empty plate.

“Yes.”

Kanno waited. She had asked because she knew Thomas, and because she was among the few people on Earth to whom the answer required no protective fiction.

“I keep thinking about my father asking to inspect the door,” Thomas said.

Kanno smiled. “Ian suggested that.”

“I know. Which is annoying because now I don't know whether I imagined it before he said it.”

“You may never recover ownership of that particular image.”

“I also keep thinking about my mother seeing us move.”

Kanno's smile faded into attention.

“She has photographs,” Thomas said. “Ian met them. Kelda tells them things. But a photograph doesn't show that I stand up normally, or that Isha interrupts me, or that I still make the same face when someone says something stupid.”

Kanno considered him across the table. “You do.”

Thomas looked at her.

She put on her coat. “You can tell your mother I verified continuity.”

They left the café together and separated near the station entrance. Kanno went west with the event leaflet in her bag. Thomas headed towards the river before turning home, taking the longer route because he had nowhere else to be until Isha's shift ended.

---

At the climbing centre, Isha's six Coach 1 questions had become eight.

She had not intended to expand them. The extra two appeared after Ishikawa sent her a preliminary operator note on Friday: one about what happened if a course date fell on a week she had already agreed to extra cover, and one about whether qualification would create any expectation that she become available for competitions or external events.

Ishikawa read the page on Saturday afternoon after the busiest beginner block had cleared. “You printed them.”

“I wanted to remember the answers.”

“I was going to give you a written proposal.” Ishikawa glanced over Isha's list again. “Keep yours. It tells me what you are worried about.”

They used the small office with the door open to the reception area. Yoshida was covering the desk. The arrangement kept the conversation private enough for employment terms while leaving Ishikawa visible if the floor needed her.

The operator's support was better defined than the first note had suggested.

The centre would pay the formal course fee and required materials. Necessary travel for scheduled in-person training would be reimbursed under the operator's normal training policy. Required attendance would be rostered as paid training time, with Isha's other shifts reduced or moved so that the qualification did not simply sit on top of her guaranteed twenty-four-hour week.

Isha stopped Ishikawa there to test the edges. Longer training days would count for their actual required hours, with the rest of the week adjusted around them. If a course date fell on one of Isha's usual days off, it would become a work day for that week unless she chose another arrangement. She wrote both answers beside her original questions.

The operator would not pay her for every hour she chose to read beyond the required material, practise explanations at home or observe climbing videos out of personal interest. It also would not assign compulsory preparation outside recorded work or training time and call it enthusiasm. Ishikawa said this without emphasis, as though the issue had already caused trouble somewhere else.

The future-duty answer was more complicated.

Qualification would make Isha eligible to lead a broader range of beginner and progression sessions within the centre's programme, and the operator expected to schedule qualified staff for some of that work. It would not automatically increase her contracted weekly hours, require full-time employment or turn every shift into coaching. Floor safety, equipment work and customer support would remain part of the job.

External events and competitions were simpler. Both would need separate agreement. Staff training might eventually become part of Isha's role, but anything beyond her normal duties would need its own discussion. Isha added three small marks beside that section.

Pay was the least satisfying section because it was the least finished. The current policy did not attach an automatic permanent salary increase to this single qualification. Ishikawa was prepared to request a role review once Isha was qualified and actually carrying broader coaching responsibility, but she would not promise the outcome in advance. Lead sessions that attracted a specific coaching allowance under the centre's existing schedule would be paid that way when Isha performed them.

Isha leaned back slightly. “So I could become more useful to the centre before my base pay changes.”

“Yes. That is possible.” Ishikawa kept the proposal between them instead of trying to sell it.

“Do you think that is fair?”

“I think you should know it before you agree. The pay policy is not mine to promise around.”

Isha looked down at the proposal.

She had not become interested in Coach 1 because she wanted another title. Nishimura had made the interest more concrete; Sakai had complicated it. The qualification would teach things Isha had already discovered she lacked: session planning, communication choices, movement analysis for bodies unlike hers, and ways of watching people that did not assume watching itself felt neutral.

Those lessons were worth something to her even if HR never rewarded them as cleanly as she would prefer.

“How long after qualification before you would request the role review?”

Ishikawa thought before answering. “I would want enough scheduled coaching to show that the role had actually changed. Not six months if we can establish it in two. Not two weeks because that would be theatre. We would agree the review point before your first post-qualification block.”

Isha wrote that down too.

“What do you think I am bad at?”

Ishikawa looked up from her copy of the proposal. The question had not been on the printed list. “As a coach?”

Isha nodded. “That is what I would be training for.”

Ishikawa rested the pen against the paper. “You see physical problems quickly. Sometimes too quickly. You can give a correct answer before the customer has shown you which part of the problem matters to them.”

Isha thought of Sakai.

Ishikawa continued. “You are also very still when you watch. Some people find that calming. Some feel examined. You already know that now.”

“I do.”

“You are good at stopping when a customer says stop. You do not bargain with fear. I care about that more than whether every beginner prefers you.”

She turned the proposal around so Isha could read the final section.

The operator was not asking for an answer that day. Course places would likely open in spring, with exact dates still pending. Once dates were available, Isha could decide whether the actual schedule worked before the centre committed money.

“Do you want me to put your name forward provisionally?” Ishikawa asked.

Isha read the question twice.

“What does provisionally mean here?”

“That I tell the operator you are interested and want a place held if one is available. You still see the dates and final agreement before registration.”

Isha nodded. “Yes. Do that.”

Ishikawa wrote it on the form. The pen mark changed no duty or pay that afternoon; it only held a place open until real dates existed. Isha was due back on the floor in seven minutes.

Ishikawa handed her a copy of the proposal.

“Keep your question sheet.”

“I was going to.”

“I assumed.”

Isha folded both pages into her work folder and returned to reception.

Her next customer was a six-year-old who had somehow twisted one rental harness leg loop through the other while still wearing it. The problem required no coaching philosophy. Isha knelt, asked the child to stand still for a moment and fixed it.

---

Thomas was home first.

He had rice washed and vegetables cut by the time Isha came through the door. She removed her rings at work for the shift and had put them back on before leaving; the green sapphire caught briefly under the hall light as she took off her coat.

Thomas looked at her face. “You spoke to Ishikawa.”

“Yes. Mostly a good offer.”

He moved the knife aside so she could put the papers on the counter without bringing them near chopped leek.

Isha gave him the shortened version while he cooked. Course and required materials paid. Required travel reimbursed. Training time paid and fitted into her twenty-four hours. No automatic increase in contracted hours. No automatic base-pay rise. Review later if the role actually broadened. External events separate.

Thomas listened without turning it into a spreadsheet.

“And?” he asked when she finished.

“I told Ishikawa to put my name forward provisionally.”

He smiled. “How does that feel?”

“Like I have agreed to receive dates.” She took the knife when he offered it, then added, “I am interested.”

“That sounded more like you.”

She finished the mushrooms while he worked on the pan. They ate early, talked about Kanno's March event and Thomas's coffee with her, then spent an hour doing things that had accumulated around the week: laundry, a bathroom shelf that had started to loosen, Isha's work clothes for Monday.

The invitation page remained on the sideboard.

Neither touched it.

At half past nine Thomas went into the flexible room for a spare charging cable and found Isha there three minutes later.

He was sitting on the floor beside the low storage unit, cable forgotten in one hand. The clear protective sheet lay where they had left it, the Common page visible beneath.

Isha stopped in the doorway.

“You were looking at it.”

“Yes.”

She came in and sat beside him without asking for the cable.

For a while they looked at the page together.

The words had not changed. **We want to see you.** The names remained in one line near the bottom. Mira. Rowan. Mara. Tessa. Sereth. Ruvan. Aelira. Lethira. Kelda.

Twenty-two days had become fifteen.

Thomas put the cable on the floor.

“Kanno asked if I was imagining it.”

Isha's shoulder touched his. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“So am I.”

He looked at her.

She had not said much about the meeting since they wrote the page. She had discussed conditions with Ian and corrected details with Thomas, but the people themselves had mostly stayed inside their names.

Isha drew one knee up and rested her forearm across it.

“I keep hearing my mother say my name.”

Thomas waited.

“Not what she will say after. Only the first time.”

Her mouth tightened slightly. “Sometimes I hear it in the way she said it when I was a child. Sometimes after the bridge. Sometimes when she was angry with me.”

Thomas set his hand over hers.

“I don't know which voice she will actually use.”

Thomas shook his head when she called the thought stupid. “It isn't.”

Isha looked at him. “You are supposed to qualify things more than that.”

“I'm off duty.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder.

Thomas had his own rehearsals. He had imagined Rowan inspecting the café because Ian put the idea into the conversation. He had imagined Mara looking at him and immediately saying something that made being dead twice sound administratively inconvenient. He had imagined Tessa asking about the arrow before she hugged him, or after, or while doing both.

Mira was harder.

“I keep trying to decide whether I stand up when my mother comes through the door,” he said.

Isha lifted her head.

“Why would you not?”

“I don't know. Because if I stand, then I have to walk towards her. If I stay sitting, she has to walk towards me. Both versions feel wrong when I rehearse them.”

Isha stared at him for a second, then laughed once—close enough to being at him that he objected with his face. “You are planning the first three steps.”

“Yes. I know.”

She took his hand and stood, pulling him up with her. “There. You managed it.”

“That was not emotionally equivalent.”

“No.” She kept hold of his hand. “But you stood.”

He looked down at the invitation again.

“What if they don't all want to come?”

The question had been built into the page from the beginning. Saying it aloud made it different.

Isha's fingers tightened around his.

“Then they don't.”

Thomas nodded. His grip on her hand tightened once before Isha crouched and slid the clear cover fully back over the page where he had disturbed one corner. Her hand stayed there a moment after the plastic lay flat.

“Fifteen days,” she said.

Thomas picked up the forgotten charging cable.

“Yes.”

They left the flexible room together and turned off the light.