Aiko's POV:
When the bathroom door closed, I felt as if the air had taken a step back. I stood still, my hands still warm from his face and nothing left to hold. I straightened my dress, gathered my hair the way one gathers something they don't want to let fall and went back to the theatre. On the screen the movie went on, silly and loud, but the laughter I know was missing: the one that rises from his chest and reddens his ears. I finished my glass of water. I counted to sixty twice, but then I stopped, exhausted.
The days that followed were orderly. I kept them that way on purpose.
In the morning I open the side door of the restaurant, and the first thing I notice is the smell of wet wood, the click of the lights and the kitchen faucet coughing before letting go completely. My father tests the knife on a spring onion; the sound is dry, sufficient. My mother washes the rice as usual, humming a verse from some Italian song from the '50s. I check the register, run my finger down the reservations, arrange the glasses on the counter like every other day.
At 7:12 a.m. I write to him: "Open." Yes, it's a new habit I started not long ago. I send it anyway, even though I know he won't reply. It's my own thing: a way of saying, "I'm here, even without making a sound."
Then, I think of his window at 7:15 a.m.
I don't put on a scene: I stop for a moment in the back, behind the noren, and close my eyes for ten minutes. Sometimes I feel a strange chill at the back of my neck, like when the fridge is opened for an instant. Sometimes I feel nothing. Either way, whatever comes, I always go back to work. 7:25 a.m. Window is closed. Words I've learned to accept the way one accepts the rain during the fish delivery. If it rains, it dries. And life goes on.
I often think back to that night at the cinema, the bathroom break. Those few minutes when he wasn't there. I wonder: did I not notice because I didn't want to? Then I take the thought apart. I don't need it. Why dwell on it? That night I saw Yuji come back with eyes full of guilt. I chose him, not Sukuna. That's enough for me to sleep—though not always to eat in peace. But enough, at least, for something.
The yellow sweatshirt he left in my room, I folded it more carefully. It's in the closet on the top shelf, still carrying the scent I know: detergent, sweat, a trace of vanilla and chocolate. I don't wash it. It's my way of telling him, "Come back whenever you want; your shape has a place here."
At 1:30 p.m. the dining room is at the right capacity: chopsticks brushing against each other, oil turning into steam, the refrigerator breathing on its own. I repeat my liturgy: "salt, water, hands." If someone at the back table raises their voice, I quiet the murmur with three short phrases: "coming right up," "got it," "I'll take care of it."
Measure is made with small words. I learned that here, thanks also to Sukuna. I defended Yuji even from him. And I will do it again.
Nobara and I understand each other without needing many words. Every now and then she drops by alone, leaves a bag of pancakes and a post-it: "Tell the 'shy one' that if he disappears again I'll come drag him back by the ears." I smile. I don't tell anyone. I put the pancakes aside for my parents' after-lunch treat.
At 4:30 p.m. my legs feel a little tired, but I keep the rhythm. In the kitchen every gesture is a note; if you go off key, you start over. Sometimes I reach out toward the phone. I don't write. I tried to send him "Where are you?" twice. Deleted both times.
In the evening, I write to him: "closed". Above the word I place a photo of the stovetop and the counter cleaned. I don't ask, I don't want to ask. I don't insist. I leave the side door shut, the bolt turned twice as always. I lay my head on the pillow and the first breath comes easy, the second a little less so.
I do feel fear, but it has the right shape. It's not the kind that paralyzes me; it's the kind that makes me prepare two broths instead of one, because if the first goes bad at least I don't waste the day and I don't waste my time. It's the same fear that once made me say to Sukuna, "you won't use his body to touch me." I hold that promise tight like a sharpened knife: it's useful, but it doesn't comfort. That's fine.
Of Yuji, I miss everything he did in front of me: like when he sat on the back step and rolled up his sleeves; the way he looked at me in profile when he thought I wasn't watching; the awkwardness with which he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and then regretted it, thinking he'd gone too far. I even miss the silly messages: "I'm here," "goodnight, love." That precise way of being present without intruding.
If he comes back, there will be one clear rule, said only once: if the window opens when I'm there, he steps away. No heroics, no tests. Normality is not a reward: it's something you set together. I know how to set it. He learned it too, even if he thinks he hasn't now.
In the meantime, I do my part. I keep the dining room standing, keep the accounts tight, keep my back straight. And when at 7:30 p.m. the place is full and the noise is good, I think that the world may tilt at the wrong angle, but in here I set it straight every night.
At midnight I turn off the last light. On my phone there's no blinking dot, no messages. I open the window of my room: I think of him training to empty his head. I think of his shoes, worn down at the front and untouched at the sides...
"Come back whole," I say softly, without making a sound. It isn't a prayer. It's a gentle directive.
"I'll keep your place. I'll keep the broth on low heat. I'll keep the measure you know."
When you knock at the back door with your crumpled sweatshirt and red ears, I'll open it for you. I'll sit you down on the stool closest to the warmth. I'll place a bowl in your hands and watch you eat. And if your gaze is yours again, I won't need words.
Until then, I'll write "open" to you in the morning and "closed" at night. Between the two, all I know how to do is: endure without making a sound.
***
YUJI:
Mornings always began with the same first gesture: cold water on his face, the red sweatshirt pulled on in a rush, the shoes worn at the sides. Then he would run beneath the plane trees until his breath stung his lungs; he counted steps, then breaths, then let go of numbers and listened only to the sound of the leaves.
Every eight hours, though, something crossed his chest like a receding tide: ten stolen minutes, a thread tugging from the sternum and then releasing. He didn't make a scene. He leaned against a wall, waited for it to pass, then started walking again. The city never noticed; he did.
At the Institute, Megumi spoke little and straight to the point; Yuji nodded, memorized, repeated. Nobara shoved a box of pancakes into his hand and shot him a look that was half a slap and half an embrace. "Eat, idiot," she muttered, and walked away leaving the scent of sugar in the air. Yuji smiled from the heart. Right after, though, he missed another kind of laughter—the one that straightened his ears and eased his shoulders.
In the evening he returned to the dorm with tired legs and his head full of small images: the side door of the restaurant, the service hallway smelling of lasagna, the empty crates lined up like little soldiers, the broth's steam fogging the back windows.
He spread his sweatshirt over the futon like an extra blanket, sat for a while in the silence, and every eight hours his heart would take that small step back—brief, inevitable—then return.
Sometimes he opened Aiko's chat. He typed I'm here, goodnight, I miss you. Then erased it all.
He closed his eyes and saw her profile when she was focused, the curve of her lip when she held back a laugh, the fingers that straightened his collar and then withdrew quickly, as if they had gone too far.
With that room in his head—motionless chairs waiting to be set back in place—he lay down and waited for sleep to find him.
He cried twice in a month. Quietly and in secret.
One morning, while tying his shoes and the lace slipped from his fingers; one afternoon, in front of the station's vending machine when it spat out a drink with a sharp thud... in that moment he thought of her saying: "you really are such an adorable idiot."
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, laughed softly at himself and carried on.
By day he caught himself talking to himself: practicing simple, gentle phrases that wouldn't wound. They came out crooked; he put them back in order.
At night he opened the window and let in the scent of a city in motion; he imagined that, somewhere, she opened hers too. They hadn't written to each other in weeks. But the thought traced the same path: come back whole—come back home.
And in between, every eight hours, that small emptiness that ebbed and flowed like a wave.
He stayed, he breathed, he waited. And he thought of how normality was set, when the time would come to sit down together again.
***
AIKO:
The restaurant was supposed to stay open even when it rained, and she with it. In the morning she wrote Open—a message to a chat that stayed silent, but it was like saying "I'm here, and I'm thinking of you." Then she put on her dining-room smile: the one that kept the tables, the voices, even the patrons' glances in order. In front of others she laughed, and she did it well.
Inside herself, sounds carried her through the day: she heard the water running in the sink, the rice her mother washed against the steel, her father's knife keeping a sharp rhythm—tok, tok, tok—and her mother tasting sauces with her eyes closed: "This one is 'hold on tight.'This one is 'let go.'"
Aiko nodded, adjusted her apron, and set down two glasses almost automatically. With Kazuma she joked just enough:"If I add the chopsticks together, they're always an odd number!"
"Then don't add them," she replied without looking up, sliding the missing chopstick into place like a note in the right spot.
Everything flowed, at least on the surface.
When she disappeared from the pass, it was only for a minute: in the back, among empty crates and the smell of damp wood, she unfolded the yellow sweatshirt she kept aside. She never washed it. She buried her face in it just enough to warm herself and breathe in its scent. Then she returned and her smile slipped back into place.
Every eight hours the air shifted by a single degree: sometimes she felt a small chill behind her sternum, like a refrigerator door opening and closing in the kitchen. But she never stopped. She passed a plate, marked down a bill, kept going straight ahead without ever turning back. She didn't ask anyone for news; not out of pride—out of restraint. That was her strength: keeping pace, never making anyone else pay for it.
At night, the dining room was silent. Aiko would write Closed, sometimes adding a photo of the polished counter, then sit on the edge of her bed with the phone in her hand. I miss you so much appeared, disappeared. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, slipped back under the sheets.
Three times in a month she cried, always in the kitchen, between one shelf and another: a crying that fell but burned out quickly, without a sound. Afterwards she cleaned herself up, counted, and began again.
When she opened the window of her room, the city was calm: she caught the familiar smells of rain-soaked asphalt, the fried food from nearby restaurants, cars passing by. She whispered a single phrase, always the same, saved up during the day to release in the dark: "Good night, shy one."
The next morning she laughed again, and no one could have said how much it cost her. Only her hands, when they lingered a second longer on the folded sweatshirt, truly knew.
There were mornings when, without knowing it, they moved at the same minute. Yuji stopped at the station vending machine and dropped in a coin that clinked, releasing a cold can with a puff of breath hanging in the air. He pushed up his sleeves with that short, precise gesture, two fingers pressing the cuff.
At that same moment, Aiko was at the bus stop with a canvas bag full of notebooks and notes from her shift: she pushed up her sleeves too, a sharp tug, as if her skin needed more room to stay awake. Neither of them knew it, but that gesture aligned them for a second, like two clock hands overlapping before moving on again.
At noon, the city dazzled.
Yuji stared at an intersection and counted the steps of strangers so he wouldn't have to count his own; the traffic light changed without hurry and, for a moment, everything hung in suspension.
Aiko crossed the square with a bag of vegetables from the market: the cellophane rustled, the scent of herbs clung to her. She paused for an instant at the edge of the fountain, let her shoulders drop, then resumed walking. In that moment, far apart, they thought the same phrase in different words: don't throw it all away out of fear. It didn't console them, but it kept their backs straight.
Yuji chose streets with more sky, as if the blue could thin out his anxiety; he passed a flower shop window, lingered on the plain white of the carnations, then kept walking with his hands in his pockets: it wasn't time yet to buy anything.
Aiko pedaled slowly on her bike between one supplier and the next; she dropped her clean uniform at the laundromat, waited sitting on the windowsill with her headphones off, listening only to the hum of the machines. Now and then she opened her notes and wrote down a couple of lines: schedules, deliveries, small promises to herself.
In the evening the neon lights made a quiet sea.
Yuji stood at a corner and looked at other people's windows: curtains being drawn, distant televisions, someone laughing. He liked the lit-up houses because they promised returns.
Aiko got off the tram two stops early, to walk part of the way; she stopped at the kombini for a juice and a mint gum, slipped the receipt into her jacket pocket, and carried the silence as if it were fragile.
And between one morning and the next, between an intersection and a square, the absence became something precise: not an ache of emptiness, but a place set at the table. It stayed there, waiting. It didn't ask. It didn't demand. It simply remembered that, when the time came, two hands would draw it under the table, and the seat would be filled again.