16. Dojin
SIXTEEN
DOJIN
They closed the restaurant.
Not deliberately. The courses kept coming, and the sake kept flowing, and the conversation refused to end—veering from animation to her grandmother’s matcha philosophy to his mother’s conviction that duck was the answer to every emotional crisis to her father’s legal career to the specific joy of building a world from scratch.
Nari talked the way she performed—with her entire body, her hands shaping ideas in the air, her voice shifting pitch and tempo, her laugh arriving sudden and loud and uncontained.
The chef watched them with patient amusement. Thirty years of feeding couples in this room. He knew exactly what he was looking at.
Outside, the West Village was cold and quiet. At eleven p.m., the streets emptied, the brownstones lit, and the air was sharp enough to taste. Nari pulled her coat tighter, and her shoulder bumped his arm, and the contact was small and electric and she didn’t move away.
“You’re warm.”
“Good circulation.”
“I once dated a man who was perpetually cold.” She walked beside him, their steps syncing without either of them arranging it. “Like cuddling a parking meter.”
“A parking meter.”
“Thin. Metal. Zero warmth. You are the opposite of a parking meter.”
“I’m putting that on my business card.”
“Dojin Keiser. CEO. Beekeeper. Not a Parking Meter.”
He laughed again. The second genuine laugh of the evening, which was two more than most people extracted in a week. The sound filled the narrow street and bounced off brownstone facades, and Nari grinned up at him—quick, bright, delighted with herself.
Her shoulder pressed against his arm again. This time she stayed.
His hand found her waist. Not a calculated move—his palm settling against the curve above her hip with a certainty that bypassed his brain entirely.
She was wearing a wool coat over the good jeans, and the fabric was warm from her body, and his hand stayed where it landed like it had found the place it was supposed to be.
She didn’t pull away. Didn’t comment. Didn’t acknowledge it with the deflecting humor she used when the air between them became too charged. She walked beside him in the cold with his hand on her waist and her shoulder against his arm, and the silence was full and warm and unhurried.
Three blocks. They walked three blocks without speaking, and every step was a conversation about the thing they weren’t saying.
At the corner of Bleecker and Seventh, she stopped. Turned. Looked up at him with those sharp brown eyes that missed nothing and had been cataloging him since the day they met.
“This wasn’t about the project.”
Not a question. Not an accusation. An observation from a woman who named what she saw.
His hand was still on her waist. Her face was tilted up, close enough that he could see the streetlight catching her mouth, her breath making small clouds in the cold air, her eyes holding his like she’d made a decision and was waiting to see if he’d make the same one.
“No.”
She nodded once. Her gloved hand came up and straightened his collar—a small, deliberate gesture that had nothing to do with his collar and everything to do with putting her hand on his chest.
“Goodnight, Dojin.”
“Drive safe.”
She stepped away. Walked to the corner. Hailed a cab with the effortless authority of someone who’d been navigating Manhattan since she was old enough to go out alone. Before she got in, she looked back over her shoulder.
“The wildflower honey was the best one.”
The cab pulled away. The street went quiet. Dojin stood on the corner of Bleecker and Seventh with his hand still warm from her waist and the taste of sake.
His phone buzzed.
Reo: How was the “creative inspiration space”
Dojin: How do you know about that
Reo: I run security. I know when you take the elevator to the rooftop on a Saturday with a civilian. How was it?
Dojin: It was fine.
Reo: You were up there for three hours. Then you went to dinner. Then you walked through the West Village at 11 PM. In February.
Dojin: You tracked me.
Reo: I track you EVERY DAY. Today was more interesting. Scale of one to “I should order more consoles”?
Dojin looked at the street where the cab had been. The space where Nari had stood. The way the streetlight fell on the spot where she’d straightened his collar and he’d stopped breathing for a full second.
Dojin: Order the consoles.
Reo: Ordering. Anything else?
Dojin: She talked about her grandfather.
Reo: And?
Dojin: And I told her about Hana.
A long pause. Reo’s response, when it came, had none of his usual dry precision. Four words, stripped of everything except what mattered.
Reo: That’s a big deal.
Dojin pocketed his phone. Started walking uptown.
The wildflower honey was the best one.
He walked twelve blocks before he realized he was smiling.