Archive of Our Own

Yamada liked consistency. She liked having a routine. She liked working in the same shop with the same people day in and day out. She liked knowing that at the end of her shift, Sasaki would stop by; they'd smoke together behind the supermarket and walk home through the quiet streets.

Home.

Her place, which had become their place, since Sasaki rarely spent time at his own apartment anymore. His toothbrush lived in her cup; spare shirts and trousers hung in her closet. They'd fall asleep tangled together, and she'd get up with him each morning to share a smoke in the pale dawn light. She'd watch him walk away with a smile, then crawl back into bed, surrounded by the smell of his until it was time for her own shift.

That was their routine.

And she liked it. Nothing needed to change.

Except sometimes, alone with her own thoughts, she wanted it to. And that thought scared her more than anything — enough that she couldn't sleep, that she lay awake in the dark watching the slow rise and fall of Sasaki's chest, tracing the faint crease between his brows that never quite smoothed out even in sleep.

Why isn't this enough?

Did she want …

...him gone?

The thought of him not being beside her hurt worse than a blade between the ribs. It stole her breath out of her lungs. Her heart pounded so hard it filled her ears, drowned everything out, until there was nothing left but her own pulse.

No. She didn’t want him gone. But what was it, then?

Had she….fallen out of love?

She'd never been in love before. Not like this. Not enough to know what it was supposed to feel like when it stopped. What if this — this ache, this restlessness — was simply what love became, eventually, for everyone?

Her breathing turned shallow, uneven by the rapid beating of her heart. She needed air. Needed the cold. Needed the burn of nicotine.

She eased out of bed and padded to the living room, collected her cigarettes, and stepped out onto the balcony. The sky looked almost the same as it had the night they'd started their relationship, over a year ago now.  She had been happy since then. Genuinely happy. Why did happy suddenly feel like it wasn't enough?

The smoke settled warm in her lungs before dissolving out into the cold, carried off somewhere she couldn't follow. Usually that was enough. Usually, the first cigarette of the night loosened whatever knot the day had left behind her ribs. But tonight the knot only pulled tighter.

"...What's wrong with me?" Her voice barely carried past her own lips.

The city didn't answer. She laughed quietly at herself and shut her eyes. She used to tease Sasaki for being slow. For not noticing things right in front of him. But here she was, the one who didn't understand her own heart.

Behind her, the balcony door slid open, and seconds later something warm settled over her shoulders. She startled hard enough that ash nearly scattered off her cigarette.

"...You'll catch a cold."  His voice was thick and slow with sleep. The worry in it was so completely, entirely Sasaki. He had no idea what ugly thoughts had chased her out here in the middle of the night. No idea at all.

If I told him. If I actually said the words out loud would he leave? Thinking it was what I wanted?

It hurt. It hurt so badly to imagine this. She didn’t want him gone. But still her heart yearned for more. Why couldn’t it be happy? Why couldn't it be happy with what it had?

"...Thank you," she murmured, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders, grateful for an excuse to look away from him.

He nodded, heavy-lidded. His hair stuck up in every direction, flattened stubbornly on one side from the pillow. In the weak light spilling from the moon, his face looked soft, unguarded, still creased faintly with sleep. Just looking at him warmed her more than the blanket had.

"Nightmare?" he asked after a moment.

She nodded. It wasn’t a full lie. Her thoughts were a nightmare.

She could feel him watching her, but he seemed to understand she didn't want to talk. He reached into the pocket of his sweatpants and came up empty. Wordlessly, she held out her own cigarette. He took it, a faint color rising in his cheeks.

Once, she'd have teased him for that reaction. Now she couldn't stop worrying.

His hand reached for hers on the railing. She pulled away before she even realized she was moving. His hand lingered awkwardly in the empty space between them before slowly falling back to his side. The confusion and hurt in his face made her dig her nails into the inside of her palm.

"...Sorry. I—I'm just sleepy."

She turned and went back inside before he could see her face, before he could ask questions she didn’t want to hear, before the lie could crack open into something neither of them was ready for.

She couldn't look at Sasaki that morning. It was unfair, so unfair to him but she still found reasons not to meet his eyes. When he finally left for work, it was as if a weight had been lifted off her chest. Only for it to come slamming back down the second the door clicked shut behind him.

She had been relieved to see him go.

She was truly the worst.

She smiled at all her customers. Nothing was wrong. Nothing at all.

When Sasaki stopped by that evening, she gave him her usual Yamada smile, the one that used to turn his ears pink. It didn't work tonight. He didn't smile back, instead he just looked at her.  She was aware of it, and she wanted to tease him like she’d always do, but she couldn’t get her mouth to move or her voice to work.

"...Do you want to eat Ramen tonight?" he asked once they were outside, tucked behind the wall that hid the smoking area.

"I’m a bit tired." she says quietly and closed her eyes. But even with her eyes closed, she thinks she would have felt the disappointment radiating off him. Even when he’d never admit it.

She hated to be the source of it.

Sasaki was not as slow as people assumed. He was kind, and kindness meant waiting until people were ready. He'd waited a long time for her to be ready to tell him about Yamada, about who she was underneath the smile at the register, and he never once made her feel guilty for playing him.

And just like back then, he’s waited now, too. It went on like that for a week. Him giving her room. Her smiling a beat too late. Nights spent lying rigid beside him, matching her breathing to his so he wouldn't know she was awake, hating herself a little more each time.

She hoped this feeling would disappear, but it never did. That she would finally understand what it was that made her feel so….much like she needed more.

"Out with it."

Yamada looked up from her cup Ramen at the sharpness in Goto's voice.

"...Do you also want some?" she asked, holding it out weakly, like the offer might buy her another minute.

Goto didn't even look at the cup. "Yamada."

"...It's good Ramen."

"Yamada."

She set it down. There was no getting out of this one. And maybe it would help, actually saying it out loud. Goto was an expert in romance. She'd know what was wrong. She’d know if Yamada’s worst fear was right.

She exhaled, long and deep, and stared down at her own hands. "Nee, Goto. How do you know when you've fallen out of love?"

Goto spit out her coffee mid-sip and started coughing. "What?" Her voice cracked halfway through the word. "You two broke up?"

“No but….”

Goto’s eyes turned to slits. "You'd better spill everything right now, Yamada. I did not sit through a year and a half of you two dancing around each other just to watch you throw in the towel."

"I'm not throwing in the towel," she muttered, picking at the label of her own drink, not quite meeting Goto's eyes. "I just…I don't know. Something feels off. Wrong, almost. Like there's this…..this itch under my skin that won't go away, and I don't know where it's coming from."

"Yamada."

"I don't know if that means I don't love him the way I used to. I don't have anything to compare it to. I've never felt like this before, with anyone. What if….what if I fell out of love?” Her throat was tight and her eyes stung, and she hated how pathetic it all sounded said out loud, stripped of whatever dignity it had inside her own head.

Goto was quiet for a moment. Her expression had gone strange somewhere in the middle of Yamada's rambling. Her cheeks pursed, her lips pressed into a thin, trembling line, like she was physically holding something back. She took a slow breath in through her nose. Then another. Her shoulders shook, with the effort of restraint.

"Manager?" Worry filled her voice.

"I'm — " Goto pressed a hand flat against her own chest, as if to keep her heart in place. "I'm fine. Continue. Please. I need…..I need a second."

Yamada blinked at her, thoroughly confused. "Are you laughing at me?"

"No! No, absolutely not, I would never—" A small, strangled noise escaped Goto's throat, and she pressed her knuckles to her mouth to muffle it. When she finally spoke again, her voice wobbled with the effort of keeping it steady. "Yamada. Listen to me very carefully, because I am about to say something and I need you to actually hear it."

"...Okay?"

Goto reached across the table and gripped both of Yamada's hands in hers, her eyes suddenly alarmingly serious.

"What you just described to me is not falling out of love." She squeezed Yamada's hands for emphasis. "It is the exact opposite. You are falling deeper in love than you've ever let yourself fall before and it is terrifying you, because you have absolutely no idea what to do with a love that big. That's it. That's the whole diagnosis."

Yamada stared at her. "...What?"

"You heard me. What you describe to me is not wanting out but wanting more. Something permanent.”

At Yamada’s puzzled look Goto sighed again. Then she held up a hand and tapped one finger pointedly against her own ring finger.

"Marriage. Must I spell it out for you in block letters?"

Yamada’s mouth fell agape. She wanted to laugh out loud in disbelief, but instead her voice came out strangely hoarse. “No — no." Yamada shook her head fast, her cheeks warming despite herself as if sunburned. "We aren't — we're not like that.”

"Mm-hm." Goto-san didn't look convinced in the slightest. She took a long, satisfied sip of her coffee, watching Yamada over the rim of the can like a cat that had just found a glass of milk. "Sure you don't."

It was ridiculous how fast the word settled in. Marriage. Suddenly it was everywhere, as if the whole city had decided to needle her with it — posters, conversations, even the subway ads. It stopped feeling like some distant, abstract thing that happened to other people and started feeling like a door she hadn't noticed standing right in front of her.

She thought about it stocking shelves. She thought about it on her break. She was so deep in it that she didn't hear Sasaki calling her name until his hand closed over hers on the counter shortly before her shift had ended.

"—mada. Yamada."

“S-sorry." She blinked up at him, her cheeks still warm, as if he could somehow see straight through to what she'd been imagining. A ring on his hand. His name on some form next to hers. Waking up every morning already knowing, permanently, that he was hers. Completely.

She averted her gaze as if that meant she could somehow hide the blush high on her cheeks.

“It's fine." She nearly squeezed her hands together over her chest, to prevent her heart from jumping right out.

Husband.

She liked how it sounded. And it …..felt right.

How does one approach the topic of marriage?

The problem wasn't the asking, not really. The problem was: what if I'm not the kind of person he'd want that with?

He'd always been careful not to make things too permanent. For her own good, he'd said, and she believed him, mostly. That was Sasaki. He never believed he was good enough for anyone. But there was a small, nagging voice that wondered if it was really only about her wellbeing. Maybe he wasn't fully sure she was what he wanted. She wasn't the smiling woman behind the register who he had crushed on first, and she wasn't the strong one who faced everything head-on either, who he fell for — she was just this: a cashier who loved her job, who tried to be strong and ended up hiding when things got hard. And he was the one who always found her anyway, who gave her the room she needed while still offering the support she craved.

What did she have to offer someone like that?

He's here because it's comfortable, a small, ugly voice reminded her. Don't confuse habit for something bigger.

She shook her head. No. He wasn't like that. If she were only comfort to him, he wouldn't still be here.  Not after everything he'd had to overcome just to be with her in the first place. She had pushed and pulled and reminded him of his old trauma. He had to work through it all to be with her after the whole Noma situation. And she too, had to face her own demons. In some sense they were each other’s vessel of facing the past and looking forward to the future together.

Still. He'd never once brought it up. Not as a joke, not in passing. Maybe he liked things exactly as they were. Maybe he'd hear the word from her mouth and his face would do that thing it did when he didn't know how to say no gently.

What if I ask and he panics. What if this whole time I've been building a house in my head that he never agreed to move into.

It would be so much easier to just not. To keep smoking behind the supermarket, keep falling asleep tangled together, keep letting the routine be enough — or at least look enough, the way it had for the past year and a half.

But she already knew, with the same certainty that had scared her awake at 2 a.m., that pretending wouldn't work anymore. Goto had ripped the lid off something, and now she couldn't stop seeing it: she didn't just want him beside her tonight. She wanted him beside her at forty, at sixty. She wanted his name to sit next to hers on something official, and permanent, and real.

She just didn't know if she was allowed to want that. Or if he'd ever look at her and think — yes. Her. Permanently, her.

“Nee, Sasaki.”

“Mm?”

She kept her eyes on the road ahead. Not on him. If she looked at him she'd lose her nerve. "Do you ever think about...the future?"

"The future," he repeated, his voice was weirdly rough, almost irritated.

"Yeah. Like… where you'll be. What you'll be doing. That kind of thing."

She could feel him thinking, mulling over his words carefully.

"Sometimes," he said finally. "Why?"

"No reason."

He was silent for the next couple of steps. The silence sat in her ears like water pressure. Like she’d sunk herself under the surface and all she could hear was her own heartbeat.

"Have you?" he asked, carefully neutral.

Her heart was going too fast now, a stupid, traitorous gallop against her ribs. She made herself keep talking, because stopping now would be worse than any wrong words. "Sometimes. It’s like….I…I have this really delicious Ramen but lately it didn’t taste as if it was enough. Maybe I wanted to try a new Ramen. Or maybe I realized what it was missing but what if I am the only one who will like the new Ramen?”

Sasaki went quiet for long enough that she risked a glance at him. He was frowning slightly, the crease between his brows deepening the way it did when he was working through something that didn't sit right.

"...A new Ramen," he repeated slowly, as if the word was difficult to voice.

"Yeah." She kept her own tone light, testing. "Not because the old one's bad. Just,… maybe it's not enough anymore. On its own."

She watched his hand tighten slightly around the convenience store bag, watched him stare straight ahead like the sidewalk had suddenly become very important.

"So, you want something different," he said finally. Carefully, as if each word was a step onto ice he wasn't sure would hold. As if it was torture.

"I mean — not different, exactly, more like—" She fumbled, because now that it was out of her mouth it sounded worse than it had in her head, some clumsy, half-formed thing that didn't carry any of what she actually meant. "It's not that the Ramen's the problem. It's good. It's really good. I just — I keep thinking there's something that could make it better. Complete it, maybe."

Sasaki stopped walking again. When she turned, he was staring down at the bag in his hands.

“Have you never felt like it?” Her voice came out smaller than intended.

"No." The word landed flat, clipped—but his throat moved hard around a swallow right after, like it had cost him to say it that way. Sasaki wasn't cold. He was a fumbling mess, easily flustered, always too gentle by half. She had never once heard him sound like this, and some part of her filed the wrongness of it away even as it hurt her.

“I see.”

He exhaled hard, and when he finally turned back to her, his eyes were bright in a way she didn't understand yet. He looked like he was holding something down with both hands.

"I..." He hesitated, searching for words that clearly weren't coming easily. “I don’t want my Ramen to change. But I understand if people want something better. There are probably a lot of better ones out there. And maybe the new one will suit someone else’s taste even more.” He gave a small, unconvincing shrug, his jaw tight around it. "I'll treasure them either way."

Was that a rejection?

She couldn’t tell.

“So you would not want to change the Ramen?” She needed to make sure.

“No. If -“ he looked away. “I wouldn’t want a different Ramen. Ever.”

Oh.

That night, for the first time, it was him who pulled away. And she knew, with a sinking feeling, that she had ruined it.

Sasaki distanced himself after their talk. He wasn't there anymore when she looked up from scanning a customer's groceries at the end of her shift. And when she went out behind the supermarket, she found him already finishing his cigarette, halfway to leaving. The ten minutes they used to stretch into thirty had shrunk to the length of a single smoke.

He still walked her home. He still slept in her bed. But now he slept at the very edge of the mattress, a careful six inches of space between them that hadn't existed in over a year.

Even his toothbrush had gone back into his own bag instead of her cup.

I did this, she thought, watching the back of his head from across the pillow. I asked for too much, and now he's telling me he doesn’t want more. Maybe he is thinking of leaving completely.

She didn't ask him about it. She didn't know how. Instead, she bit her tongue hard enough to hurt and looked away, hoping somehow that thing’s would fix itself.

And she told herself it was fair. Even when it hurt

He was allowed to pull away from someone who wanted a future he'd never promised her.

Goto took one look at her during the Friday shift change and made an executive decision.

"We're going out."

"I have work—"

"You have a later shift. I know your schedule. We are going out.”

Maybe it had been exactly what she needed to do. One drink and it undid all the things she had swallowed. Warm and sharp and forgiving, in a way nothing else in her life currently was. By the third little cup Yamada had stopped tasting it and started just feeling it, the pleasant blur that softened the edges of everything, including, mercifully, finally, the constant low static of he doesn't want you, you asked for too much, you ruined it.

“I wasn't wife material anyway,” she informed the ceiling, somewhere around cup number five, her chin propped unsteadily on her palm.

Goto looked over at her.

“That is not what we're talking about.”

“It is.”

“No, it really isn't.”

“It is.” Yamada nodded solemnly, nearly tipping sideways. “It's fine. It's the twenty-first century. People don't need—don't need papers. Don't need rings. You just need to be together. That's enough. Completely enough.”

"Yamada."

"If anything he did me a favor." She jabbed a finger vaguely in Goto's direction, missing by a wide margin. "Saved us both. Imagine if we'd actually gotten married and then he realized, ohh, actually, no, this isn't…. this isn't what I wanted, this isn't her — "

“He's just an old sleazer anyway,” Kawakami added, equally as drunk as Yamada.

Yamada's head snapped toward her. “He is not a sleazer.”

“You will find someone better,” Kawakami added, sliding another small cup toward her and ignoring Yamada’s protest. “There are plenty of men.”

 “Kami is right.” Chief Maezawa chimed in. “There are lots of men out there who want to get married.”

Yamada frowned at them both. “I don't want lots of men.” The words came out much quieter. “I just wanted him.”

That silenced the table and for a moment, even Yamada seemed surprised by what she'd said. Then she looked down at her hands.

It was true. She didn’t want anyone else. She didn’t even want to imagine anyone else. And suddenly all her worries about falling out of love sounded even more ridiculous. There could not be anyone else. Even when he didn’t want her as family.

"I'm fine." She wasn't fine. Her eyes burned like they'd turned to sandpaper, and she dragged the heel of her hand across them like she could scrub the tears back in before anyone noticed. "I'm completely fine, I'm — Kami! More sake!"

Things blurred after that. At some point Goto got her outside on the promise of a cigarette, but smoking felt wrong tonight. It reminded her of Sasaki. She didn't want to be reminded of Sasaki. Didn't want to think about him, or ramen, or marriage, or toothbrushes, or the six inches of mattress he'd taken to leaving between them.

And she definitely wasn't drunk. No. She wasn't.

Or maybe she was, because somewhere in the haze she saw a figure running toward her and Goto. And when the figure grew larger, closer, she could swear she could make out the shape of him.

Sasaki.

It took her another few seconds to understand that he wasn't something her drunken mind had invented. There he was. The source of all her worries. Panting as though he'd run the entire way there, his hair damp and his suit wrinkled, his chest rising and falling beneath his loosened collar.

“...Sasaki.” Her face crumpled the second she saw him. Against Goto's shoulder, she became a wobbling, uncoordinated mess of relief and misery all at once.

“Thanks for coming.” Goto said. Yamada looked at her suspiciously. Suddenly the phone call Goto had made earlier made a lot of sense.

Sasaki greeted her with a quick nod before offering a hand to Yamada.

"Can you walk?"

She stared at his outstretched hand. At the empty spot on his ring finger that seemed to taunt her.

"I can always walk," she informed him with great dignity. She didn't need help from that empty hand. Didn't even want to touch it.

She took a step forward and immediately stumbled.

Goto snorted.

Sasaki caught her before she could fall. “Right. Thanks Goto-san for calling, I will take her home.”

He got her moving, one arm firm around her waist, her head lolling against his shoulder. The night air was cool enough to make her shiver despite the warmth of the alcohol still running through her.

At least his hand — the traitor, ringless thing — was hidden now, so long as she didn't look at it.

The walk home was slow, mostly her own fault, since she insisted on walking herself and the road seemed to have developed opinions about that. And because focusing on not falling over was easier than thinking about how his arm was there to catch her, but never once let her get closer than that.

Halfway home, she stopped walking altogether.

Sasaki turned to her.

She was swaying slightly, her eyes too bright and too honest in a way sober Yamada would never have allowed. Brave, and daring, and probably stupid enough to say the things she'd never let herself say to him otherwise.

"...Did I really mess up that badly?" Her voice cracked around the words. "For wanting more?"

Something flickered across his face. His jaw worked for a moment before he managed to speak.

“...We'll talk in the morning,” he said quietly. “Okay? Let's just—let's get you home first.”

“No. Tell me.” She caught the front of his jacket and pulled him back toward her. “Was I…?” She swallowed. “Is it wrong?”

He looked away, biting his lip. “Yamada, this isn't—”

“Isn't what?” Her fingers tightened in his jacket.

“Isn't a good time? Isn't fair to ask a drunk person? Or isn't—” Her voice wobbled and dropped lower. Ugly with fear. “Isn't something you actually want to answer because the answer is no?”

“That's not it.” He said it too quickly. His hands came up to steady her by the shoulders when she swayed. “Yamada, please. You're not even standing straight. Let's just—”

“I'm standing fine.”

She wasn't.

The street tilted gently beneath her feet, the whole world listing to one side, and she had to grip his sleeve to keep from proving herself wrong.

“I just want you to tell me. Is it wrong that I want—” Her breath hitched.

For a second, she looked less drunk than simply terribly young, staring up at him like a child waiting to be told something she already suspected was true.

He exhaled deeply. “No.” The word came out rough. Almost pained.  “No, it's not wrong, Yamada. It's—”

“Then why do you avoid me?” It cracked out of her louder than she'd intended, echoing faintly off the buildings around them. “You stopped coming to the supermarket. You sleep on the edge of the bed like—like I'll bite you if you get too close. You used to fall asleep with your face in my neck, and now there's this whole—” She waved a hand helplessly between them. “This whole country between us.”

“Yamada.”

His voice broke slightly on her name. His hands tightened around her shoulders, not pulling her closer but holding on as though he were steadying himself as much as her.

"I promise you, I don't want to avoid you. You mean too much to me for that. I just—"

He stopped. His eyes dropped. “Not like this.” He looked back at her. “Not when you won't remember half of it in the morning. And not when I might say something wrong.”

“So there is a wrong thing to say.” Her eyes were swimming now, tears catching in the streetlight. She hated how her voice shook. Hated that she couldn't even manage to sound angry.  She only sounded small. “You already know what you're going to say, and you're just postponing it. Being kind about it.” Her mouth trembled. “That's so you, Sasaki. Being kind right up until the part where it actually hurts.”

His jaw was tight. His eyes were bright in a way that mirrored hers too closely. He let his head hung. “I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you.” He swallowed. “I… We… I- I didn't handle your request well.”

He swallowed. “But you have to—no.” He shook his head, before looking up into her eyes again. “I promise you, Yamada. I will not hurt you. Not if I can help it.”

She stared at him for a long moment, swaying slightly, her chest heaving with something caught between a sob and a held breath.

"...Promise?" It came out so small it barely survived the distance between them.

“I promise.” He pulled her in then, tucking her face against his shoulder, one hand cradling the back of her head. “Tomorrow,” he murmured. “I swear. Just—let me get you home first. Please.”

Something in her finally gave out.

The fight left her all at once, exhaustion and sake and heartbreak collapsing into something much simpler.  Something that just wanted to be held.

She let him guide her the rest of the way home. Let him ease off her shoes. Let him tuck her into bed with a glass of water on the nightstand and a bucket carefully placed within reach, just in case.  Small, quiet acts of care.

She was too far gone to properly register them, but some distant part of her noticed anyway. Just why….why do all of this when he didn’t want a future with her.

Why….

She was asleep before he turned off the light.

She woke to a headache that drummed through her skull.

For a long moment, she simply lay there, disoriented, blinking against the thin morning light filtering through the curtains. Her mouth was dry. Her head throbbed with every heartbeat.

Then came the sound again, the rasp of a zipper, the soft thump of fabric being folded and pressed down, and she turned her head, wincing at the movement, and saw him. Sasaki. Crouched by the closet. His duffle bag open on the floor beside him, half-filled with a folded shirt going in, then another.

Nausea curled up her throat. She swallowed it down. He'd promised her tomorrow. He'd promised her we'll talk. And here he was, packing before she'd even opened her eyes.

He couldn't even wait until morning to break his own promise.

She pulled the comforter up to her chin, as if that could block out his shape, but it only made her more aware of the empty side of the bed, the folded-back sheet, the careful, deliberate way he moved, as if not wanting to disturb her.

He's leaving.

He probably thought this was going to hurt her less. That was so like him. Being kind right up until the part where it actually hurt.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t trust her voice enough to try. Instead, she just lay there a moment longer, watching him fold a shirt she'd secretly used to wear whenever he had a business trip, just to feel close to him. Then she pulled herself up from the bed, found her cigarettes and walked past him—past the duffle bag, past the damn shirt still hanging half-folded over his arm—and out onto the balcony.

The morning air was cold enough to sting. Good. Better that than feeling the other thing.

She got the cigarette lit on the third try, her hands uncooperative, and took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to loosen the vice around her chest.

I'm fine, she told herself. It doesn't matter. I lived my life longer without him than with him. So what if he decided he wants to leave?

Behind her, the balcony door slid open. She didn't turn around.

"Yamada."

“You are done?” Her voice came out colder than she meant it to. She vaguely saw her hands trembling as she breathed in the cigarette smoke. "You said we'd talk this morning."

“I ….I know. I thought it would be easier this way,” he admitted quietly.

Easier for you? But she swallowed the hurt down, and just nodded. "Okay."

"Okay." He repeated.

Her thumb worried at the edge of the cigarette pack, over and over, a small useless motion to keep her hands busy so they didn't do something stupid, like reach for him.

He exhaled deeply. "Is there really no chance?" he croaks, his voice strangely raspy.

Why does he sound so hurt? She gritted her teeth. Isn't he the one who wanted to leave? The one who didn't want a future with me? Why does he make it sound like this is all my doing?

Her silence must have given him an answer. He exhaled again, deeper this time, like he was coming to terms with something.

"I want to thank you for all the time we spent together. I really do. It's been the most wonderful—"

"Stop it." Now her eyes really started to burn. She bit her lip, a nervous gesture that separated her even further from the confident, self-assured woman he'd once known as Tayama. "Just go. I understand. You don't have to give me the whole speech. You don't have to tell me you don't want a future with me. Or you'll really become a bad person, saying it like that."

"What?"

His hand landed on her shoulder, and he turned her softly until her eyes met his confused ones. He looked wrecked — dark circles bruised under his eyes, hair a mess from raking his hands through it too many times. She wondered if he'd slept at all. Her stomach twisted with worry at his appearance. But then came the anger.

Why did he look like the one being left? It was him who decided to throw the towel in.

" Why couldn't you just say it? I would have accepted it," she pushed on, anger covering the ache. "I'll stop asking. I'll stop pushing for a future you don't want." She needed to stop talking.

Sasaki’s head cocked to one side, like he was sure he must have misheard her. “I…I don’t understand.” He shook his head, fingers dragging through his hair, leaving the strands in hopeless disarray.

"I get it." Her voice cracked wide open, and she turned her back to him, pressing the heel of her hand against her mouth, trying to hold the rest of the sentence in. It didn't work. "I do, I really do, but—must you leave?" And she was begging him. Her shoulders slumped, and she pushed away from him.

“Yamada, look at me."

"I'm fine where I am." She said it again, quieter, like she was trying to convince the railing instead of him.

"Please." His hand pulled her back to face him. "I packed because I thought that's what you wanted."

"...What?"

"I thought—" He dragged a hand down his face again, and for a second he looked like a man trying to find the least painful order to say something in and failing. "The Ramen. What you said, on the walk home. That it wasn't enough anymore, that you wanted something more, something different." His jaw worked. "I thought you were trying to tell me, kindly, that you'd realized I wasn't — that there was something else out there for you. Someone. Something I couldn't give you. And I didn't want to make it harder by making you say it outright. So I thought the right thing was to let you go before you had to ask me to."

The words didn't make sense at first. She stood there turning them over, waiting for them to click into the shape she'd been dreading all week, and they wouldn't. They kept clicking into a different picture entirely.

"You thought I was leaving you?"

"Weren’t you?" his voice became shaky, uncertain.

“No!” She wanted to laugh but instead a sob broke through it. “No, Sasaki. No. Why would you even come to that conclusion?” But even as she said it, she understood exactly how her own silence this week must have looked.

"I don't have much to offer," he smiled warily and shrugged. "So when you started talking about wanting more, I didn't think you meant more of me. I thought you meant — better. Someone better." He looked down at the duffle bag, his voice dropping to a murmur. "I'm selfish enough that I didn't want to let you go. But I thought I owed you the choice. Even if it broke something, giving it to you."

She stared at him. "I thought you were rejecting me," she said, barely above a whisper. "I told you I wanted a future — I meant marriage, Sasaki, I meant you, I meant your name on a form next to mine — and you went …,” she stopped herself, she couldn’t think of that moment again, the hurt when she thought he was rejecting her.. “I thought I'd asked for too much and scared you off. I've spent a week thinking you were letting me down easy."

The silence that followed was so complete she could hear her own pulse in it.

"Marriage," he repeated, as if only really registering the meaning of the word. “with me?"

"Who else would I mean? I thought you'd decided I wasn't enough to build a life with, and you're telling me you were packing your bag because you thought I wanted to build a life with someone else?"

His eyebrows rose, his lips parted, but no words came.

"I just wanted to know if you'd ever thought about it," she continued, her voice softening. "About us. About being—family."

"You wanted to marry me." Sasaki repeated, his voice sounding torn between disbelieve, hopeful and skeptical.

"Yes." She laughed, because the alternative was crying harder. "Yes, you absolute idiot."

He looked away, one hand covering his mouth, a shaky breath escaping him. “I see,” he answered firmly, the line of his jaw tightening. And then suddenly he was tumbling to the floor, his legs giving out beneath him. He dragged a hand over his face, and when he looked up at her again his eyes were too bright, his jaw working around something he couldn't quite say yet.

"I was so scared," he finally managed, still sitting there, looking up at her like she was something he hadn't let himself believe in. "Of losing you."

"The Ramen was never about someone else." She wiped furiously at her cheeks. "There's no different bowl I want, Sasaki. I don't want anyone new — I want the same one. Forever. I just wanted to know if you'd ever thought about it. About us. About being family."

He stared at her for a long moment from the floor, something breaking open behind his eyes. Then, shakily, he got to his feet. He crossed what little space was left between them, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his gaze. His hands came up to frame her face, careful, like he still didn't quite trust that this was real.

"Yamada. There is no future in my imagination that doesn't have you in it." His thumb brushed under her eye, catching a tear. His forehead dropped to touch hers, and she closed her eyes, breathing him in. Her hands were trembling, but her voice, when it came, held steady.

“So you want a future. With me?” A hot flush rose in her cheeks, stinging against the cool morning air. It was, she thought, the most exposed she'd ever let herself be in her entire life — so much so that her heart felt like it might climb straight out of her chest. She looked up into his eyes. The morning light was turning gold now, catching the edges of his hair. She could see the faint lines around his eyes, the ones that only showed when he smiled too wide.

His thumbs rested in the hollows of her pulse points, and she was sure he must be able to feel exactly how erratic her heartbeat was.

"Yes."

And then her knees went weak, and the crushing weight of the past few days simply fell away. A misunderstanding. He wasn't leaving. They would be all right. Her fingers curled deeper into his shirt, anchoring herself to him, testing the solid reality of this moment—afraid it might dissolve like a dream. All would be okay. All would be okay.

"Just to be absolutely clear," she heard him murmur, his voice warm and muffled against her hair, the faintest smile curving at the corner of his mouth now. "You want to marry me."

"I want to marry you." She heard herself admit.

"Okay." His smile widened, disbelieving and delighted all at once. "Okay."

Yamada pulled back just far enough to stare at him. "Do you?"

"Yeah." He laughed, a little helpless. "I mean — yes. I've never been more certain of anything. But I also just spent three days packing my bag because I thought you wanted someone else, so maybe I need a minute to catch up."

She laughed, and it came out wet and broken and absolutely full of relief. "Take all the time you need. I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I." he said, and pulled her back in.

It shouldn't have surprised Yamada that the moment she stepped into the smoking area, Goto was already there, smirking.

"So. When's the wedding?"

"You knew all along, didn't you?"

Goto just smiled, saying nothing.

"I expect front row seats," she answered instead.

Yamada still liked consistency. She still liked having a routine. She still liked working in the same shop with the same people day in and day out.

But somewhere along the way, she'd learned that consistency didn't have to mean standing still. That wanting more didn't mean what she had wasn't enough. That love wasn't a finite thing that ran out or a door that closed.

Sometimes it was just a door she hadn't noticed was already open.

And sometimes—most of the time—it was just Sasaki, his toothbrush back in her cup, his hand finding hers on the railing, his forehead pressed to hers in the pale dawn light. His name next to hers on a document, his finger and hers being decorated by a golden band.

Yeah. This felt right. More than right.