Haruka set the cup down properly again and looked at her hands for a moment. "That's sad," she said. "Not what she did, but the reason she did it."
"Yes," Mike said. "It is."
She was silent long enough for the atmosphere to shift. When she finally spoke, her tone had changed slightly—still direct, but with a more cautious undertone.
"Ren and I," she said. "We've been together three years."
"And the distance is already—" She stopped. "I talk to him every day."
"We call. We message. But there are entire hours of my life that he doesn't know about. Whole days." She turned her gaze toward the window. "And I don't want to become someone he stops seeing just because he believes he already knows me."
"You won't," Mike said.
"You don't know that," she said.
"No," he agreed. "But you're the kind of person who would notice if it was happening."
"You'd say something."
"What if he's the one who stops noticing?" she said. "What if I say things and he just—"
