Chapter Text
After two weeks of staying with her mother, Kana began searching for a new job.
Admittedly, it was nice to take it easy after such a long illness, to not have any work or urgent tasks taking up her time, to simply relax with hot cups of tea or books she’d been neglecting. But even so, since she wasn’t working under Hatori anymore, she knew she would need to find employment sooner rather than later, and there was no time like the present to start looking.
Several days of jobhunting via the Internet and newspaper ads and making phone calls that led to nowhere passed before Kana finally managed to schedule an interview at a hospital located in Fukuoka. If she ended up getting hired, she would have to move away from home, but all things considered, it seemed a reasonable price to pay. The last time she saw Hatori, he’d suggested that going to live somewhere else would be good for her health, and who was Kana to disregard what a doctor told her, especially when said doctor was her old boss?
The morning of her interview arrived with cool breezes and sunny skies, and she decided it was a good sign as she boarded her flight. Five hours later, the plane landed in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka, and with all necessary documents in hand, she took a train to Kobayashi Hospital and arrived at her destination with ten minutes to spare. So far, so good.
Before long, Kana was in a meeting room, sitting with perfect posture at a table with four other candidates and hoping her polite smile wouldn’t falter under the serious gazes of the three men sitting opposite them. The questions came, one after the other—about personal strengths and weaknesses, about personality, about reasons for applying—and she answered as clearly and concisely as she could. When she wasn’t answering questions, she was listening to her fellow candidates answer questions, knowing the interviewers would take note of her level of engagement.
As she caught a flight back to Tokyo, she mentally crossed her fingers that she would be called about a second interview soon.
Three weeks later, she was.
For her next interview, it was only her and the HR manager in the meeting room. Most of his questions were about work: What work experience did she have? Could she tell him about her work in the medical field? What had she achieved in her career so far? With every question, she gave a ready answer, each no longer than was necessary.
“Why did you leave your last job?” the HR manager was now asking.
“I got very sick and was bedridden for two and a half months,” Kana explained. “Dr. Sohma recommended that I find another job elsewhere.” Her smile widened a little. “I hope this hospital will be where I take the next step in my career.”
“How did you get sick?”
She paused, considering the question. Come to think of it, how did she get sick? She remembered being in bed day and night (and didn’t Mayuko and Hatori come to visit her sometimes?), but how had she ended up in that condition in the first place? She wondered, but no memory came to her.
Strange. She didn’t usually forget things like that.
Regardless, the HR manager was still waiting for an answer. With her smile still on her face, Kana said, “I was so eager to do my job to the best of my ability, I ended up overworking myself.”
It was as good an explanation as any, she decided. The HR manager must have thought so, too; instead of pressing the matter further, he simply went on to the next work-related question.
The interview eventually came to a close, and she returned home with her hopes high.
Those hopes were rewarded with a third interview about a few more weeks later.
Eight days after that interview, Kana was back on a plane, flying to her new life in Fukuoka.
As it turned out, her current job was much like her previous one. She was still under the supervision of a doctor as she examined and treated patients, and she still ordered medicines, looked over charts, and filled out medical forms. About the only thing she didn’t still do was confirm appointments over the phone, but since Kobayashi Hospital was a fully-staffed institution rather than a single doctor’s office inside a house, it made sense. After all, why would a physician assistant be answering phones when a receptionist could handle it?
The second Friday morning at her new workplace found Kana sitting at the computer in Dr. Yumiko Inoue’s consultation room, reviewing correspondence. The minutes ticked by as she read reports from various specialists and results from labs and imaging studies that she’d ordered on her patients. Some were printed out so she could compare them to patients’ charts later, others so she could stamp them with her hanko and fax them off.
Next were the forms sent by pharmacies and insurance companies. Kana printed those out as well, completing and faxing them off one at a time. Once she was finished, she moved backward slightly in her chair to glance at the clock hanging high on the wall. It was twenty minutes past eleven, so she still had another hour or so before any patients showed up today.
With all of her official work done, at least for right now, she busied herself with taking inventory of the medical supplies Yumiko kept in the sink’s drawers and cabinets. Bandages? Check. Swabs? Check. Gauze? Check. Antiseptic wipes? Che—wait a minute.
Kana frowned as she stared into the last drawer on the right. There was an open box of antiseptic wipes, but it was almost completely empty. Did Yumiko know? Probably, but on the off chance she didn’t, she was currently in a meeting, so Kana could hardly go and tell her about it now.
She could always tell her about it later, though.
Or she could go out and buy more wipes herself. That way, neither she nor Yumiko would need to worry about not having enough in case they needed them, and they were going to need them at some point. Besides, the nearest pharmacy was practically right next door to the hospital—she could just head on over there, buy wipes, and be back in no time at all.
If she had the opportunity to be helpful, then why not take it?
Her mind made up, Kana wrote a quick note to Yumiko explaining where she went, ended it by drawing a smiley face (a habit she got into during the early days of working for Hatori and hadn’t broken since), and left for the pharmacy. As expected, it was a quick trip—she found the pharmacy easily and was able to find the wipes she needed. By the time she returned to Yumiko’s consultation room, her new boss was there, standing by the computer desk and smiling as she read the note.
She was standing in the doorway, back from her errand, watching Hatori read the note she left him. He was smiling—the first smile she’d seen from him—and the sight was enough to warm her heart.
Kana blinked, and the mental image vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Huh...? was all she could think. Where in the world had that come from?
“Sohma?”
Yumiko’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts, and Kana bowed apologetically. “Oh! I’m sorry, Inoue. Did you say something?”
“Just that you can put the wipes away.”
“Ah, right.” Straightening, Kana stepped over to the sink and did as she was told, her mind still half-preoccupied by...whatever that was. A daydream, maybe? Some little fantasy her brain conjured up? She supposed that made some sense—after all, she’d nursed a private hope that her notes with the smiley faces would one day make Hatori smile, but they never did. Still, she hadn’t really been thinking about Hatori before, so why would she suddenly be thinking about him now?
“Workplace policy requires me to say you should come talk to me when there’s a problem,” Yumiko was saying as Kana closed the wipes’ drawer and turned to face her. “Then I’ll go to my boss and tell him about it, then he’ll go to his boss, and...” She paused, then continued after a moment. “Well, so on and so forth.” She winked conspiratorially, another smile crossing her laugh-lined face. “Feel free to not do that next time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kana said, hoping her own smile didn’t look as awkward as it felt. “So, anyway,” she added, injecting extra cheeriness into her voice, “do you have any more work for me before the patients get here?”
As she spoke, she mentally tucked that daydream of Hatori smiling into a corner of her head, to be pondered over at another time.
It was on the night of her first drinking party that she came face to face with the prospect of finding a significant other.
After two hours of drink, food, and socialization with various Kobayashi Hospital employees, Kana stumbled out of the pub, feeling warm and sleepy and almost hearing her bed from her rented apartment calling to her. She turned to Yumiko and opened her mouth to say goodnight, but the latter shoved a flier into her hands before she could get a single word out.
It took a moment and some blinking at the bright colors and kanji advertising the event before she realized what she was looking at.
“A konkatsu party?” She lifted her gaze to Yumiko, her alcohol-induced buzz immediately evaporating into stone-cold sobriety.
Yumiko beamed, her dark eyes overbright—whether from liquor or excitement or both, Kana couldn’t tell. “Of course! You’re single and still young, so why not?”
“I don’t know...” The words were said out loud before she could think about them, and they sounded ridiculous even to her. A konkatsu party was a way for her to meet men who were looking for a wife, or at least a girlfriend who could eventually become a wife, and when was the last time she’d dated a guy? Not since her second year of high school, she realized, and that was, what, eight or nine years ago?
Goodness, had it really been that long?
“You don’t know?” Yumiko parroted, staring at her incredulously. “A sweet, pretty girl like you, and you don’t know if you want to go out and find the right man? Blasphemy!”
Kana laughed shakily. “Well, when you say it like that...”
The image of a smiling Hatori flashed in Kana’s mind, but it was swiftly dismissed. Yes, she’d been infatuated with him—why wouldn’t she have been? He was easily the most handsome man she ever met—but he had never been her boyfriend. He had never even been attracted to her, let alone in love with her. Why shouldn’t she go to this party? Why shouldn’t she try to meet other men?
And who knew? Maybe it could lead to something good.
“I guess I can go,” she said.
Yumiko beamed again. “Excellent! I promise you, Sohma, you won’t regret it!”
Over three weeks later, Kana stood in a private room of a restaurant in one of the most expensive hotels in Hakata-ku, surrounded by smartly dressed men and women chatting over glasses of wine and already feeling fatigue settle in her bones. She’d just spent exactly one hour having three-minute conversations with the twenty men attending the konkatsu party, and in truth, she couldn’t say any of them had swept her off her feet. Some seemed kindly but rather paternalistic—it was great that they made enough money to provide for a wife, but she’d still prefer to keep working after getting married—and others were so shy that they barely said two words to her. A few appeared to be okay—they could carry on a conversation that wasn’t about their income, at least—but “okay” meant...well, okay. It meant average, unexceptional, unremarkable.
Words that you’d never use to describe Hatori.
Kana squeezed her eyes shut as she took a sip of her wine. She was being unfair, wasn’t she? Just because these men weren’t the handsome, withdrawn doctor she used to work under didn’t mean they weren’t worth giving a chance. What was the point of being here if she didn’t make an effort? And so, resolving to keep an open mind, she took a deep breath and made her way across the room, passing about a dozen couples before finding a table with a man—one of the “okay” men, incidentally—sitting by himself.
“Hello again,” she greeted, taking a seat opposite him and bowing.
“Hello again,” he echoed, also bowing.
“You’re Daisuke Sato, right?” As she spoke, she took in his features: dark brown eyes; short, tousled black hair; a plain, ordinary face. Nothing about his appearance got her heart beating faster, but he wasn’t the worst-looking man in the world. That was something, at any rate.
“I am.” Daisuke smiled, and that, too, didn’t make her heart race, but it was nice to look at—pleasant and inoffensive. “And you’re Kana Sohma?”
“That’s me,” she confirmed, smiling politely back.
“So, you’re the new assistant at Kobayashi Hospital?” It wasn’t really a question—like all the other men she’d talked to, he would know what her job was from the profile card she had to fill out beforehand—but she couldn’t blame him for asking. They had to start somewhere, after all. “By any chance, do you know Yumiko Inoue?”
Kana nodded. “She’s my boss.”
Daisuke let out a short laugh. “That’s funny, because her husband is my boss. Well, one of them, anyway.”
She hummed, vaguely recalling Yumiko saying something about her husband, Yamato, being a managing partner at a law firm. “Small world,” she remarked, taking another sip of her wine. She was about to ask Daisuke what exactly he did at Yamato’s firm—his profile card only gave his workplace’s name, if she remembered correctly—when he spoke again.
“Have you been an assistant for a while?”
“I worked for another doctor for six months before moving here, so, yeah, it’s been a while.” Kana drank more of her wine, smiling again. “I needed a change of scenery, but I didn’t want it to change too much, you know?”
“That’s understandable,” was all Daisuke said before sipping at his own wine. He didn’t say anything more, apparently content with leaving it at that, and Kana remained silent as well, letting her gaze wander downward to the almost-empty glass in her hand.
“Do you want me to get you a refill?” Daisuke asked.
“That’d be nice, thanks.” Kana gave him her glass, and as he left to find a wine bottle, she thought that “nice” could easily describe their conversation so far. There weren’t any crazy sparks, but that was fine, wasn’t it? A lack of immediate excitement didn’t mean that romance couldn’t bloom in the future, and in any case, she knew all too well that attraction at first sight was no guarantee of romance. Maybe what she needed was something less grand and fairytale-esque and more simple and down to earth.
It would be more than what some people had.
Daisuke wasn’t Hatori, but maybe—just maybe—that could be enough.