## Chapter 472 — Friday to Sunday

Mori approved Thomas's leave for Friday before he had finished his first cup of tea on Thursday, 25 May.

He entered the leave in the office calendar and sent Isha a message. Hers took a little longer. Ishikawa needed to check the climbing-centre roster, and Isha spent the rest of her shift putting away equipment, answering questions and occasionally remembering that she might soon have somewhere else to be. The answer came on Friday: her three shifts could fall earlier in the holiday week, leaving 2–4 June clear.

By that evening, they could book.

Thomas had brought the laptop to the dining table. Isha sat close beside him, one bare foot hooked around the leg of her chair, looking through the rooms they had saved. The first was unavailable for both nights. The second still looked pleasant until they found a photograph taken from somewhere other than the doorway.

“There is nowhere for the bag,” she said.

“Under the desk.”

“And then where do your legs go?”

Thomas enlarged the picture. The desk chair was tucked so far beneath the worktop that its back almost touched the edge. He had been treating it as somewhere they could sit. Now he could see why the photographer had kept it out of the wider view.

“Perhaps the bag sits at the desk and we go under the bed.”

Isha laughed and returned to the other saved hotel. Its double room was less sleek: brown furniture, pale curtains and a small seating area by the window. They had looked at it earlier in the week and kept coming back. The price was higher, though still within what they had agreed to spend.

“I like this one,” she said. “We could actually come back here for an hour.”

Thomas looked through the pictures again. The room had space on both sides of the bed and somewhere to hang clothes. Beyond the window lay an unremarkable piece of the city. He liked that too. It would be a room they could use, with other people’s evenings going on outside.

“The room-only option?” he asked. “Then we can have breakfast wherever we find it.”

“I’d like breakfast here one morning.” Isha indicated the hotel’s breakfast room. “Come downstairs, sit, let someone bring things. I don’t want to choose every meal.”

He had been imagining an unfamiliar café and a slow walk afterwards. She had been imagining considerably less movement before coffee. They looked at the booking options, then chose the room without meals; the hotel information said breakfast could be added separately. They would decide which morning when they were there.

The remaining checks were brief. Two adults. Two nights. A non-smoking double. Arrival on Friday, 2 June, departure on Sunday, 4 June. Thomas read the final total aloud, and Isha checked the dates beside it before he completed the booking.

The confirmation arrived while the page was still open.

Isha leaned forward to read it, her hair slipping across his arm. He moved the laptop between them. She looked at their dates for a moment, then turned and kissed him.

“We’re going.”

“Yes.” Thomas smiled against her mouth. “We have somewhere to sleep now.”

She kissed him once more before sitting back. He could already picture her in that room, barefoot beside the window, deciding whether she wanted to go out again. The photograph on the screen began to look less like an advertisement.

They booked their trains next: north from Sendai late on Friday morning, back from Morioka on Sunday afternoon, with seats together in both directions. The outward journey left time for breakfast at home. The return would get them back with an evening still available for unpacking and finding something for supper.

Thomas saved the confirmations and sent copies to Isha. He started to reopen the map, stopped with his finger over the trackpad, and looked at her.

“Do you want to settle anything else tonight?”

“No. I want to get off this chair.”

She stood and stretched, the hem of her shirt lifting briefly above her waist. Thomas’s attention followed the movement before returning to her face. Isha noticed and held out a hand, smiling.

“Come on. The room will still be booked tomorrow.”

---

Kanno arrived a little after two on Sunday, 28 May, carrying a paperback and a paper bag which she held unusually level.

“Please open these over a plate,” she said as Isha let her in.

“Are they dangerous?”

“Biscuits. I put the book on them.”

Isha peered into the bag while Kanno took off her shoes. A few biscuits had survived intact; the rest had become pieces large enough to eat with dignity, provided nobody examined the bottom too closely. She carried them through to the kitchen, where Thomas was making coffee.

The flat had a mild, airy warmth. Laundry shifted beyond the balcony glass, and Isha’s paper hanging cast thin overlapping shadows against the wall. Kanno put the paperback beside her bag and sat in the chair she usually occupied. She had spent part of the morning in a second-hand bookshop and more of it than intended reading the first few pages of the book before buying it.

“Have you booked?” she asked when Thomas brought the coffee over.

“Everything we need to get there and stay there,” Isha said. “Friday to Sunday. The second to the fourth.”

Thomas set the plate within reach. “We even agree about the room.”

Kanno accepted Isha’s phone and looked at the photographs. The curtains were very pale, the bedside lamps rather square. One picture showed a chair beside a little table, with enough space around it to suggest the person sitting there might also be allowed to stand up.

“That looks comfortable,” she said.

“I intend to find out.” Isha took the phone back and put it aside. “We’ve left the walking undecided. We know where we’ll start.”

“And where we’ll sleep,” Thomas added. “I can tolerate quite a lot of uncertainty in between.”

He sat beside Isha on the sofa. She shifted her feet to make room and settled with one knee touching his leg. Kanno took a piece of biscuit and tasted it before deciding that the damage had done nothing important. The coffee was still too hot for more than a careful sip.

They talked about the room for another few minutes, then about leaving on Friday instead of trying to compress the journey into the end of a working day. Kanno envied that part. She looked towards her book, its cover protruding from beneath the folded handles of her bag.

“That’s what I’d like. A train in the morning, when I’m awake enough to read. Whenever I leave straight from work, I spend the first part wondering whether I forgot something and the second part wanting dinner.”

“I nearly chose an earlier train,” Thomas said. “Then I thought about getting up for it. This one gives us plenty of time.”

Isha had considered the earlier departure too. Now she pictured breakfast here, with the bags already packed, and the unfamiliar pleasure of going through the station after everyone in a hurry had started their day.

“I should take something,” Isha said, looking at the paperback beside Kanno’s bag. “I don’t particularly want to spend the whole journey looking at my phone.”

Kanno retrieved the paperback, keeping a finger between the pages while she showed them the cover. It had cost little enough that she had bought it after reading the opening in the shop. She was already looking forward to continuing.

“Not this one yet. I’m only thirty pages in.”

“Is it good?” Thomas asked.

“I think so. Someone has disappeared, and so far the people looking for him have made things worse. I want to find out whether one of them is doing it deliberately.”

Thomas read the back while Isha looked over his shoulder, then returned it. Kanno put it beside the chair, where she could pick it up later if the afternoon grew quiet.

Isha asked about Wednesday’s order. Kanno had posted the copy on Thursday and was still curious about how that particular buyer had found *Until Replaced*.

“They didn’t say anything with the order. Just the details. I keep wondering whether they saw it somewhere or someone told them about it.” She brushed a crumb from her finger onto the plate. “I checked for another message after posting it. Nothing.”

“Do you have many copies left?” Thomas asked.

“A few. I need to count properly before I decide whether I’m pleased or annoyed by how much space the packing materials take up. The envelopes are now the larger publication.”

Thomas laughed. The last good piece broke as he picked it up, so he left half on the plate and ate the rest. Isha asked how Kanno’s working week had been, and she described the concert programme which had occupied Wednesday morning.

“We got it through. I saw a finished copy on Friday. The coordinator wanted the names larger, and I thought it would wreck the cover. It did wreck the version I liked.” Kanno considered. “The second one works better in your hands, though. The first one looked good lying open on my desk. That was about the only place it was useful.”

She demonstrated the first arrangement with a folded napkin. Thomas followed with his cup resting against one knee; Isha took the napkin afterwards and opened it in the wrong direction.

“Yes,” Kanno said. “Exactly. Thank you for being my audience.”

Isha looked at the blank paper. “I was trying to find somewhere to put a biscuit.”

That made Kanno laugh harder than the failed layout deserved. She unfolded the napkin and passed it back. Thomas leaned forward to put his cup down, reminded of a conversation which had taken a few days to become funny.

“I had someone looking for a room in another building on Thursday. Same room number as one of ours. He kept telling me he’d already looked there, and I kept trying to explain where it was. Then he showed me the message with the building name.”

“Did he get there?” Kanno asked.

“I walked him far enough to show him the entrance. Then someone recognised him and waved him over. I hope they were the right people. They seemed pleased.”

He had felt faintly foolish for the rest of that morning. Remembering the student’s expression when they finally understood one another made him smile now. Kanno recognised that moment from several conversations with clients and supplied one of her own.

The conversation wandered into buildings they disliked finding their way around, then shops they had entered for one small thing and failed to leave promptly. Isha admitted that the paper shop remained a particular difficulty. Kanno looked at the hanging on the wall and asked whether she had started another.

“No. I still have enough paper to become tempted.”

“That’s how they get you.”

Isha smiled, but her attention stayed on the folded layers for a moment. From Kanno’s chair, the smoky blue showed more clearly than it did from the dining table. She liked having it there through different kinds of day. This morning she had hardly noticed it until opening the balcony door made the lowest piece stir.

Thomas got up to make more coffee. Kanno declined a second full cup, then revised that to half when he said he was making some for himself anyway. While he was in the kitchen, Isha asked whether she had been taking photographs that weekend.

“Yesterday, no. I went shopping and watched something stupid.” Kanno paused. “Actually, I watched the same thing on Wednesday too. There is a programme which shows close photographs of things and makes people guess what they are. I keep watching because I think the next one will be difficult.”

“Are you always right?” Isha asked.

“No. That’s the other reason I keep watching.”

Kanno set her cup down and leaned forward, warming to the complaint.

“There was one yesterday which looked like part of an engine. Metal, dark, something that looked oily. I was completely convinced. Then they pulled back and it was a perfectly clean piece of kitchen equipment. They’d lit it from underneath.”

Isha was amused by how much resentment remained in the account. Kanno’s hands described the shape she remembered, then fell back to her lap when she realised she was still trying to justify the answer.

“I suppose that’s the point. I was much angrier when I knew one immediately and they spent five minutes arguing about it.”

From the kitchen, Thomas looked towards them.

“How close?”

“Close enough to remove most of the useful information.”

He considered that while putting down the coffee. Then he took out his phone, turned towards the kitchen again and spent a few moments doing something which appeared to involve a tea strainer.

His first photograph defeated nobody.

“Tea strainer,” Kanno said.

“You can see the handle,” Isha added.

Thomas studied the screen. Half the sink was also visible. He had become so interested in the little pattern of wires that he had neglected the surrounding evidence. He cropped the image and showed them again, receiving a patient look from both women.

“Now we know,” Kanno said.

“I was hoping you might forget.”

She held out her hand for the phone, and he passed it over. The picture became more difficult when she cropped past the edge and rotated the remaining circle slightly. Thomas could still recognise it, but it now looked like something he might not have named on first seeing it. He saved the altered version beside the original.

Isha had already stood. She went to the kitchen, where she could keep her hands out of their sight, and returned with a photograph of narrow silver shapes repeating across darkness.

Kanno leaned closer. “Something on the draining rack?”

Thomas thought it looked familiar in a way he could not immediately place. There were marks along one edge, tiny scratches brighter than the surrounding metal. He glanced towards the kitchen, then caught Isha watching him and returned his attention to the screen.

“The grater?”

She smiled and showed him the wider photograph. She had taken it from inside, close to the curved little blades.

“I use that more than you do,” he said.

“Yes. I thought you would get it.”

She sat beside him again, pleased by the short interval when the familiar thing had been difficult to recognise. Kanno took out her own phone and chose something near the balcony while they finished the fresh coffee.

Hers was blue, with a pale curve and a small metallic part at one edge. Thomas guessed part of a pen. Isha thought it belonged to the washing rack but could not say which part. Kanno let them argue for a while before holding up a clothes peg.

The competitive element arrived gradually. Thomas objected to having watched Kanno go towards the balcony, because it narrowed the search. Isha pointed out that he had photographed his first object in full view. They agreed to look away for the next attempts, although Kanno said listening to the household noises was entirely legitimate.

For the next half-hour, the flat acquired several unflattering portraits of things nobody normally looked at for long. Isha found the scored underside of a plastic lid more interesting than its upper surface. Thomas made a cupboard hinge look briefly like a piece of heavy machinery. Kanno failed to recognise the woven texture of the chair she was sitting in until Isha lowered the phone and looked meaningfully at her elbow.

“Oh, that’s unfair.”

“You’ve had the best opportunity to examine it.”

Kanno ran her fingers over the chair arm, comparing the small pattern with the enlarged one on the screen. She had sat here often enough to know precisely how far back she could lean before the cushion shifted. The fabric itself had never required much attention.

She took the phone again. “Show me the full photograph.”

Isha did. Kanno laughed, shook her head and handed it back.

They stopped keeping even an approximate score after Thomas correctly identified the bottom of a biscuit packet which Kanno had folded to make it harder. By then the plate was nearly empty, their cups were cool and sunlight had moved across the floor to the leg of the dining table. A neighbour’s door closed out in the corridor. Somewhere beyond the balcony, someone was calling a child indoors.

Kanno stretched her legs and looked at the time. There was still a piece of Sunday available. She wanted to read more of her book, and she also wanted to remain exactly where she was for another little while.

“Send me one from Morioka,” she said. “Something difficult. I’ll try to guess.”

Thomas looked at Isha. “We could send you the entire hotel room. Apparently the photographs are already deceptive.”

“One object,” Kanno said. “And you have to know what it is yourselves.”

Isha liked the prospect. She pictured stopping somewhere with Thomas because one of them had noticed a small, peculiar shape. Then she looked at the phone in her hand and remembered the photograph she had not shown them yet.

“We have one left.”

She turned the screen towards Kanno. A dark curve crossed a pale surface, with three parallel lines disappearing beyond the edge. Kanno took the phone, rotated it once and immediately rotated it back. Thomas moved closer to look over her shoulder.

Neither spoke for several seconds.

Then Thomas glanced towards the kitchen and started to get up.

“No,” Kanno said, catching his sleeve. “Don’t open cupboards. I’m still guessing.”