Chapter 6 It’s MeYour Work Chocolates #3
“May I ask you what you would like to discuss?” As I kicked off the conversation, Kikuno looked a little uncomfortable and scratched the back of her ears.
“Well…” she said.
“Yes?”
“What’s more important—me or your work?”
Taken aback by the unexpected question, I found myself flinching.
She continued, “Have you ever asked that of someone you went out with?”
Yes. I definitely have.
My brain decided to recall unwanted images from the past and put them on autoplay.
Hozumi peered at me. “You’ve said that before, haven’t you, Momoko?”
“Please, don’t ask me that right now.”
Evading Hozumi’s gaze, I stirred my latte.
It’s the classic relationship dilemma that never seems to get old despite being talked about over and over again. People are always saying, “Women who ask that question are the worst.” So despite knowing that it’s exactly the kind of question that destroys relationships, why do we keep saying it?
“Has anyone ever asked that to you?” Kikuno changed her question and directed it to Iori.
Hozumi and I turned to Iori at the same time.
“Oh, me?”
“Surely someone’s said that to you before.”
“Yes,” Hozumi chimed in, “I bet this guy has been asked that a million times.”
“I suppose so…okay, to be honest, I am constantly being asked that question.”
“I knew it,” Kikuno said. “Iori, what do you think is the right way to answer this?”
“I guess the classic reply is ‘Sorry to have made you feel so lonely,’ ” Iori said. “Or, ‘I didn’t know that you were suffering so much. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize.’ I used to say that one a lot.”
Used to say that a lot, eh?
He’d been asked it so many times, he seemed to have developed a variety of answers.
“Although only amateurs use words to solve a situation like that,” Iori added.
“All right, let’s hear what a pro would do,” Hozumi said.
“You embrace them gently, of course. That’s the best thing to do.” Iori slid his fingers through his bangs, showing off his beautiful face.
“Maybe that only works because you have such a pretty face,” replied Hozumi.
“You’re really something,” I said to Iori.
To Hozumi and me, it was just another typical chat with Iori. But while the two of us simply rolled our eyes at him, Kikuno seemed to take his words to heart. Letting her body sink into the sofa, she buried her head in her hands.
“Right. That’s what I should have said. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words…”
Huh? She couldn’t say the words?
“Hold on, you were the one being asked the question?” Hozumi said.
Kikuno gave a single nod.
Perhaps her partner saw how dedicated she was to her work and became insecure about their relationship.
“The second he asked the question, my mind went blank.” Kikuno stared at the ceiling. “Before I knew it, I had told him that work was more important.”
“Seriously?”
How many people in this world can give such a straight answer to this impossible question?
“Why? Didn’t you love him?” Iori asked.
“I did…” Kikuno muttered, holding her hands behind her neck. “I thought I did.”
The rain grew louder and heavier as the wind gathered force. The air inside the café had turned cold, and a shiver ran down my back.
“I met him when I was twenty-nine,” Kikuno said, wrapping her hands on her cup and feeling its warmth with her cold fingers.
“Which means this was six years ago. I was at that age when everyone around me was getting married. The majority of my friends were settling down or having babies, and my parents were pressuring me to do the same. I felt like I was running out of time.”
I felt a pang in my chest, as if someone had scraped my heart with the bristles of a tawashi scrubber.
Twenty-nine. That’s exactly my age.
“I wanted to find a husband as soon as possible. I signed up for every matchmaking app I could find, and went on God knows how many group blind dates. I met my ex-boyfriend at a matchmaking party in Roppongi.”
Kikuno caressed the rim of her cup with her thumb.
“It was one of those large-scale parties. There were about two hundred attendees in total, a hundred men and a hundred women. It was perfect for someone like me, who wanted to find a partner in a cost-effective way. Of course there were all kinds of people there, but my ex was the one who really stood out. Within a minute of meeting me, he said, ‘I’m looking for a partner to marry.’ I thought, He’s perfect! I pick him!”
She’s a salesperson through and through, I thought. Once she’d set herself a goal, she mapped out the most efficient route to get there and followed it with confidence.
“So what kind of person was he? What were your first impressions of him?” Iori asked.
He had brought over a bottle of brandy at some point. A pleasant sound filled my ears as he glugged it into a balloon-shaped glass with a practiced hand. Kikuno accepted the glass with a slight bow and brought it to her lips without wavering. She took a long swig.
Isn’t that a really strong drink?
I was impressed.
Staring at the ceiling, Kikuno considered Iori’s question for a minute. She placed the glass back down on the table nonchalantly.
“He was gentle-natured. Not the chatty type. Time seemed to slow down around him. He was the complete opposite of me.”
“What did he do for work?”
“He’s an IT engineer at one of the big telecom companies.”
“What about his face? Good-looking?”
“I’m not so bothered by looks.”
“Could you at least try to describe him? What celebrity does he look like?”
“Okay…let me think.” Again, Kikuno looked completely unfazed as she tilted her glass, generously pouring the amber liquid into her mouth. “If I had to choose…”
She turned toward me, giving a small gasp of revelation.
“If you had to choose?” I echoed her words.
“I guess he looked a bit like Orlando Bloom.”
Oh. My. God.
This came as such a surprise that I spat out a bit of my latte. Dabbing my mouth with a hot hand towel, I took a moment to process the information.
“Orlando Bloom, as in the guy with the bleached-blond hair in The Lord of the Rings?”
An Orlando Bloom look-alike at a matchmaking party? Roppongi must be a fabulous place.
“I said if I had to choose. He wasn’t actually Orlando Bloom.”
“How many levels down from Orlando Bloom would you go to get to your ex’s face?” I asked.
“Levels? Umm…maybe two?”
“That’s pretty damn close to Orlando Bloom!”
Still maintaining a cool expression and now on her second glass of brandy, she mumbled something about how she didn’t think Orlando Bloom was that good-looking, at least not as good-looking as Tom Hanks. I couldn’t believe her indifference!
I was starting to get a little too excited, as it felt more like a night out with friends than a Funeral Committee meeting. I was beginning to wonder if someone like Kikuno really did have a past that she wanted to lay to rest, if this was truly a breakup story filled with any heartache for her.
“Anyway, what was I going to say…” Kikuno continued. “After the big matchmaking party, we went on about three dates. We became a couple on Christmas Day. I remember it being so cold.”
“Christmas Day? So romantic!”
“Who asked who out?”
“He asked me to be his girlfriend.”
“Where?”
“I think we were at Tokyo Tower.”
“Wow, sounds perfect so far,” I said, holding my blushing face. “Christmas Day, Tokyo Tower, Orlando the IT engineer. Talk about ticking all the boxes. It’s like getting a straight flush in poker.”
“From what we’ve heard so far, I can’t think of a single reason why you would break up.” Iori chortled.
“I don’t see how anyone could go from that to an ‘it’s me or your work’ situation.”
After swallowing the cracker she’d been nibbling on, Kikuno spoke.
“It was nighttime. We saw the view from Tokyo Tower.”
“Oh my God. A nighttime view of the city from Tokyo Tower!”
“Quiet, Momoko,” Hozumi said.
“And then, as we were walking back to Hamamatsucho Station…”
“Wow, a station…”
“Why are you getting excited over a station?” Iori asked me.
“Right. Good point.”
Oops. I had gotten so carried away, I had lost my sense of proportion. I relaxed my breath, inhaling deeply with my hand on my chest.
“Did you hold hands?” Hozumi asked.
“We did. We held hands as we walked, and that was when he asked me to be his girlfriend.”
Hozumi gasped, clasping his big hand over his mouth, and I found myself doing the same. It seemed that neither of us had expected such a romantic story.
Oh, God, my heart is thumping!
Opening the window slightly for some fresh air, I felt a pleasant sensation as the cold rain touched the tips of my fingers.
“So, what did Orlando love about you?” Iori asked as he stabbed a toothpick into an olive.
“He didn’t tell me. I never thought to ask him, either.”
“Really?” I said. “I would’ve asked him all the time. Didn’t you want to know?”
“Well, he was going out with me, so that means he loved me, doesn’t it? He wouldn’t have gone out with me if he didn’t.”
I felt a sense of déjà vu.
Where had I heard those words?
Ah, right. It was Kyohei.
Kyohei had said the exact same thing. “Why would you ask such an obvious question?” he would say. I was so insecure then that I would ask him over and over again if he loved me, and he would sigh at me and look annoyed.
Kikuno opened the window farther and leaned out of it. “But maybe that was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Since we’re going out, he must love me, and he must want to marry me. Great, I’ve ticked that box! I’ve secured my future husband! Now, I have some work to do!”
Kikuno was looking up at the night. Every time she blinked, the streetlights reflecting in her eyes flickered.
“Thinking about it now, I did a horrible thing.”
I started to disagree. “No…”
I couldn’t blame Kikuno. For a twenty-nine-year-old woman, finding someone to marry is the heaviest, most suffocating task in life. When my relationship with Kyohei ended, it felt like the cruelest thing someone could ever do to me.
If only he had dumped me two years earlier, I thought, at least I’d still be solidly in my twenties.