Chapter 115: 115. She’s Probably Anticipating Or Wanted To Hear More Of Those Sounds!

When he opened his door at seven-forty on Friday morning, Haruka Kanata was already in the hallway with her bag over one shoulder and a travel cup in her right hand, looking at him with an expression he had not seen from her before: a studied nonchalance that seemed to be working moderately hard.

"Morning," she said.

"Morning," he replied.

She looked at him for a moment longer than she usually did before turning toward the staircase. He fell into step beside her, and they went down in the usual order, which had established itself without either of them deciding on it.

Haruka took the stairs at the pace of someone who was awake before she wanted to be but refused to let that be visible, and Mike matched it without comment.

They fell into step toward the building’s front door in their usual arrangement, which had become comfortable enough over the past week that neither of them needed to narrate it. It was only when they were on the pavement outside and the morning was showing itself as overcast and mild that Haruka said, without looking at him: "It was quiet last night." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"It was," Mike agreed.

"I mean specifically in the direction of your apartment." She took a sip from her travel cup. "I was awake until about one, and then, thank god, there’s nothing."

"Disappointing, huh?" Mike said.

She glanced at him sideways. "I didn’t say disappointing."

"You said you were awake until one, which implies that you were listening and anticipating something." He kept his voice level and entirely innocent of judgment. "It’s a logical inference."

Haruka’s cheeks went through a sequence of developments that Mike found genuinely entertaining. "That is not what I said at all!"

"I was awake because I was studying. The fact that I noticed the silence is merely incidental and observational."

"Of course."

"I’m a naturally observant person."

"I know."

"And last time, it was extremely loud, which disrupted my studying environment." She squared her shoulders. "So, of course, I noticed the contrast. That’s just normal."

"Completely normal," Mike said.

She walked for another half-block, and he let the silence do its work, because the silence was doing excellent work.

"You went out, didn’t you?" she said finally, her tone not quite forming a question.

"Mm."

"Late."

"Around two."

She processed that. "And came back very late."

"Around four-thirty."

Another few steps. "Alone?"

"I’m walking with you now, aren’t I?"

She exhaled through her nose in the way that was not quite a laugh but wanted to be. "You’re impossible."

"You keep saying that," Mike said, "and you keep turning up at the door on time."

She opened her mouth and then closed it, which was the most honest response she could have given, and she seemed to know it because she took a long sip from her travel cup and looked straight ahead at the street in the manner of someone who has decided that the conversation requires a redirect.

"I called Ren last night," she said.

"How is he?"

"Good. He’s good." She spoke in a tone that suggested her answer was true but didn’t fully address the question. "He’s been working a lot. Long hours."

"He says it’s a good thing, that the project is interesting, but..." She paused. "He was tired... I could hear it."

’I don’t want to hear this at all...’

"And he couldn’t hear that you were tired."

She looked at him sideways again. "I wasn’t tired."

"You’ve been awake since at least one in the morning, by your own account," Mike said.

"That’s different. That was studying," she said, considering her words. "And apparently, you were also paying attention to sounds from next door, since you won’t let that go."

"I wasn’t the one who brought it up," Mike said.

She made a sound of genuine exasperation that was also, underneath it, a sound of someone enjoying themselves against their better judgment.

"You are a very specific kind of annoying," she said. "I want you to know that."

"Noted," Mike said.

"Most people, when they’ve done something that a neighbor could reasonably find disruptive, show some level of consideration about it the next morning."

"I asked how you were when I opened the door."

"You said ’morning.’"

"With implied inquiry," Mike said.

She stared at him. Then she laughed, properly this time, a short, real laugh that she did not try to stop.

"With implied inquiry," she repeated, laughing again. "That doesn’t count."

"It does in some cultures."

"Which cultures?"

"Several," Mike said. "I’ve lived in a lot of places."

She shook her head and looked ahead again, but the shape of her mouth had changed, softened toward something that she was not going to name directly.

They turned onto the transit approach, and the street widened, and the Friday morning crowd thickened slightly around them, people moving with the particular purposeful shuffle of commuters who had done this route enough times that they did it on a kind of muscle memory.

"May I ask you something?" Haruka said.

"You usually just ask."

"I know, but this one I’m asking about first." She looked at him. "Do you understand what you are doing with everything involved?"

"The people, the situations, all of it." She was watching his face with the direct and slightly unsettling attention she sometimes produced when she was being genuinely serious rather than deflecting. "I’m not asking to judge it, but..."

"I’m asking because I think about it sometimes and I genuinely can’t tell whether you have a plan or whether things just keep working out, and you’ve mistaken that for a plan."

Mike looked at her. It was a better question than most people asked him, and he gave it the consideration it was owed.

"Both," he said. "There’s a plan."

"But plans are frameworks, not scripts."

"The things that work out are usually things I’ve already prepared the ground for, so when they happen, it looks like luck from the outside." He paused. "It rarely is."

Haruka was quiet for a moment, processing the information with the particular thoroughness she applied to things she took seriously.

"That’s either very reassuring or slightly terrifying," she said.

"Probably both," Mike said.

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

She looked at him for another moment, and then she looked ahead at the transit entrance coming up on the left, and she slowed her pace slightly, which was something she did when she was about to say something she had been holding for a while.

"I’m not worried about you," she said, in the tone of someone clarifying a position. "I want to be clear about that."

"I know what you’re doing isn’t exactly ordinary, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t notice things..."

"Uhm, well, I notice things." She glanced at him. "But you’re very consistent."

"This level of consistency is greater than what most people achieve."

"Consistent," Mike said.

"You are the same person every morning at seven-forty," she said. "That’s rarer than it should be."

He looked at her with something that was close to genuine interest. "That’s a specific observation."

"I told you," she said, "I’m a naturally observant person."

[HARUKA KANATA — DESIRE LEVEL: 44/100.]

[YOU BARELY DID ANYTHING. SHE’S BEEN THINKING ABOUT YOU. NOTED FOR YOUR FILES.]

...

The District 2 line was moderately full for a Friday morning, with a particular population of people who were making their way to a place they needed to be rather than wanted to be.

Mike and Haruka found seats near the middle of the car. Haruka opened her phone and scrolled through it in the organized way she always did when she was reading rather than browsing, while Mike looked out the window at the city emerging from the gray morning.

The train moved through two stops in comfortable silence. Haruka finished whatever she was reading and closed her phone and held it in her lap, and for a moment she just looked at the window across the aisle without seeing what was in it.

"You know what I’ve been thinking about," she said.

"Tell me."

"Long distance is a specific kind of thing," she said. "It works or it doesn’t based on very different factors than regular relationships, and most people treat it like a lesser version of the real thing, like a placeholder, but it isn’t."

"It’s its own thing entirely. It has its own rules." She glanced at her phone before placing it in her bag. "I’ve been wondering if I’m approaching it the right way."

"What would doing it right look like?" Mike said.

"Being honest about how it feels..."

"Not just updating him on what I did this week but actually saying the things that are complicated." She tilted her head slightly. "Ren is very stable, which is a good thing."

"However, there are times when I share something difficult, and he tends to respond with a solution rather than just taking a moment to sit with it..."

"Just sitting with it for a moment."

"And you want him to sit with it."

"Sometimes," she said. "Not always."

"But sometimes, what helps the most is simply having the other person present with the feeling, rather than trying to fix it. Just being there." She paused. "Does that make sense, or am I being too abstract?"

"It makes sense," Mike said.

She looked at him.

"See, and that’s the thing. You just said it like it was obvious." She made a small gesture with her hand. "You didn’t try to give me a framework for how to communicate it to Ren or tell me that I should bring it up directly or offer a strategy. You just said it makes sense."

"Because it does," Mike said.

"I know it does," she said, with the mild exasperation of someone making a different point than the one being responded to. "The point is you didn’t feel the need to fix it."