Second to None

37. no again

At daybreak, Mayu woke up to the summer sun hitting her face. She rolled over to check the time then checked on Ryoma: he slept on his side facing her, his shoulders falling and rising with the long, rhythmic breathing of sleep. Ever so cautiously, she inched off of the bed, grabbed her clothes from the floor and tip-toed into the living room.

Outside, the eastern skies were lighting up while most buildings stayed dark and still like sleeping giants. She put on the clothes she'd come with and hung up Ryoma's shirt on the back of a dining chair. On the table were the dozen roses, slightly wilted from never having been put into a vase. She considered taking them, knowing they'd go into the trash otherwise. In the end, she decided against it. It was better to leave without any evidence of yesterday.

In the kitchen drawer, she found a pen and ripped off a blank section of a tennis magazine.

"I'm going home and I'll be fine," she wrote. "Don't worry and don't call. Good-bye."

She tucked this piece of paper under the roses. Quietly, she picked up her purse, slipped on her shoes and took the elevator down. The doormen weren't there and Mayu was relieved that the concierge didn't look at her twice.

She made it to the station in time to catch the first train. It was only six a.m. by the time she got home. A letter stamped "URGENT" had come in while she was gone and the building manager had slipped it through the bottom of the door. The address showed it was sent out from Germany yesterday. 

She ripped open the top to find a single piece of paper inside with Tezuka's hasty writing: "I'm so sorry, Mayu. Please call me. I'm worried about you."

Mayu read his note once then again and slumped against the door, eaten up with guilt even though she felt justified in her rage only a day ago. The rising sun cast red shadows into the room. They fell against her open palms like she had blood on her hands, like the guilt she could not wash off.

All of a sudden, her phone started ringing and jarred her back to the present. On the screen was Ryoma's number. With some hesitation, Mayu picked up. "I told you not to call."

"Yet you picked up anyway," he said, sounding angry. "How could you have left like that? It's not safe for you to go home alone that early."

"I got back fine, as you can tell."

"Wake me up if you need to. Don't pull a disappearing act again."

"There's no need. There's no 'again'."

"And if I want to see you?"

"You won't anymore," she said, and she hung up without a goodbye.

Mayu called Tezuka that night to tell him to focus on work and they could talk later. That done, she reconnected the landline and unblocked his number. 

Tezuka came home a day later with a bouquet of pink roses so similar that Mayu had to wonder if he and Ryoma had visited the same florist. With the flowers, he also bought her a box of handmade truffles and a beautiful silk scarf from a luxury store in Ludwig Beck. When she didn't accept his gifts right away, he apologized again and asked for her forgiveness.

She looked at his face, haggard from work and a long flight, and sighed. "You don't have to apologize again. Neither one of us could've foreseen this. It's bad luck and it's not meant to be."

"Don't say that."

"Tell me the truth, Tezuka: was Director Yanagi mad that I didn't show up? Was the Minister mad?"

"From what I've seen, more disappointed than mad."

She let out another sigh and looked out the window. "So it's worse than I expected."