"Find your own ride."
The words landed with all the warmth of a slap. Katsuki didn't even look at her. Just tossed it over his shoulder like she was some stray intern and walked out—with PR Barbie clinging to his side, all perfume and pearlescent talons and the kind of giggle that made Hana want to throw herself into traffic.
She stood there. Blinking. Processing.
Had she... hallucinated that?
Nope. Her boss had, in fact, ditched her.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Don't commit homicide in a Michelin-star restaurant. The lacquered floors were probably hard to clean.
She straightened. Her fingers clenched around her phone.
What the hell had she done?
Was it the clause? She'd just—what, pointed out a contradiction Henrik asked her about? Was she not supposed to speak? Did she breathe too loud? Blink wrong? Accidentally project some non-consensual happiness while eating? Because God forbid she enjoy a perfectly cooked piece of duck without inciting male rage.
And Henrik laughed. He laughed and complimented her.
That was it, wasn't it? Katsuki's god-complex short-circuited because someone else acknowledged her existence. How tragic. Should she have apologized for having a personality?
No. Absolutely not. She'd done nothing wrong except show up, be competent, and slay. Per usual.
Whatever. He could choke on his own arrogance.
She looked around the now-empty dining room. The staff were clearing plates with that quiet, unnervingly polite energy that screamed we would like you to leave, madam. Fine. She was leaving.
She opened her ride app.
Requesting.
Requesting.
Declined.
Okay. Saturday night in Nagoya. That made sense. Everyone was drunk or dating or both. Try again.
Requesting—
Accepted.
Oh thank God.
Cancelled.
"WHAT—"
She clamped her mouth shut before she could commit verbal arson. Her phone screen glowed innocently, like it hadn't just betrayed her on a cellular level.
Another try.
No drivers available.
She marched to the front, heels clicking, head held high like she wasn't planning a future crime.
"Excuse me," she asked one of the staff. "Where's the nearest bus or train station?"
A pause. A polite, pitying smile. "About fifteen minutes by car."
Right. Sure. Of course.
Hana did the math. Fifteen minutes by car. Walking? Two hours. Minimum. In heels. On dead feet.
She took a breath. Then another. Then immediately started plotting Hasegawa's death.
Not literal death—she wasn't a monster. But like... subtle, creative suffering. Laxatives in his coffee. Swapping out his password on every internal system. Maybe sneaking into the garage and pelting his car with eggs. Organic, free-range ones. Because she was vengeful, not wasteful.
She started walking. Maybe someone would pick her up. Maybe she'd get kidnapped and sold for parts. Honestly? Wouldn't be the worst outcome. At least then she wouldn't have to go to work on Monday.
A car approached. She stuck her thumb out.
It passed.
Another.
Nothing.
Cool. So this was how she died. Not in court. Not in a blaze of glory. But ghosted by an English teacher, abandoned by her boss, and rejected by Toyota Camry #7.
Her feet hurt. Her soul hurt. Everything hurt.
Then her heel caught on a divot in the road and snapped.
She stumbled, barely catching herself. Stared down at her now-limp right shoe with the kind of numb, slow-building fury that could power a nuclear reactor.
She peeled both heels off and chucked them into the nearest bush.
"Traitors," she muttered, and started walking barefoot.
The gravel sucked. Her dress was clinging. Her thighs were chafing. And her phone was at 12%.
She checked the ride app again.
Still no drivers.
Of course.
Then—rain.
Out of nowhere. No wind-up. No cloud-dramatics. Just sudden, torrential sky betrayal.
She stood there for a moment, eyes wide as the cold soaked her hair, her shoulders, her wrap dress that was now one flimsy tie away from a public indecency charge.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" she shouted up at the clouds. "Is this punishment for enjoying the kaiseki?!"
Because it had been divine. That abalone had changed her life. She would've died for that duck. Was that the sin? Liking something for once? Having one nice thing?
She ran for the nearest awning, soaked to the bone, dress plastered to her body like a second, much colder skin. Her feet were bleeding. Her curls were waterlogged. Her waterproof bag was the only thing standing between her and total emotional collapse.
She crouched under the awning, shivering. Furious. Clutching her phone like it might summon divine intervention. Nothing.
No ride. No shoes. No dignity.
And she was dangerously close to crying.
Not the elegant kind. The messy, chest-tightening, silent sobbing kind that left your face puffy and your self-worth circling the drain.
She took a breath. Then another. Then blinked up at the ceiling of the overhang and whispered to no one:
"Am I so bad I end up always getting abandoned?"
Her ex. That ghosting coward. The blind dates who left mid-meal. The English teacher who didn't even bother showing up. And now this.
Maybe the universe was trying to tell her something. That no matter how competent she was, how useful, how unreasonably good at her job—people still left.
"What's wrong with me?" was a quiet thought that didn't even sound like her—too soft, too honest, too close to the thing she didn't want to name.
She hugged her bag to her chest, lips trembling.
And for the first time in months, she seriously, seriously considered crying.
-----
She wasn't sure when the crying started—only that at some point, it became impossible to tell where her tears ended and the rain began.
The sky was doing a full dramatic breakdown, and so was she.
Her wrap dress, clingy and traitorous, was suctioned to her body. Her feet were a war zone—blistered, bleeding, mud-slicked.
She was shivering under a metal awning that smelled faintly like wet rust and broken dreams, clutching her waterproof bag like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. Which, metaphorically? Fair.
And then—her phone rang.
The glowing screen lit up with the name that instantly boiled her blood like a kettle set to ruin your life.
Hasegawa Katsuki.
She stared at it.
Canceled.
It rang again.
She answered it this time, mostly out of curiosity about how many ways she could say I hate you in under thirty seconds.
"Where are you?" he asked.
That voice. That calm, commanding, deeply punchable voice.
"Fuck you," she snapped, and ended the call.
It rang again.
God, was this man incapable of learning?
She jabbed the answer button with the fury of a thousand unpaid overtime hours.
"Don't cut the call, Sukehiro. Where are you?"
Oh.
Oh, he did not get to pull the full-name card like he wasn't currently on her Most Wanted list.
She launched into it, voice shaking with cold and rage and the kind of righteous theatricality that came from standing in a torrential downpour with mascara in her eyes and a former date's rejection still fresh in her spine.
"Where am I? Oh, I don't know, Hasegawa," she said sweetly, voice climbing an octave in that telltale she is about to go full chaos register. "Somewhere between emotional collapse and early-stage trench foot. You'd like it—it's very quiet, very bleak. Wet. Miserable. Much like your entire personality."
She sniffed, furiously wiping her face even though there was no dry skin left to wipe. "I hope PR Barbie gave you chlamydia. I hope the Viking buys you lunch and never calls you again. I hope the next time you draft a contract, all your redlines spontaneously combust and you have to handwrite a merger agreement in blood."
Silence.
Then, low and sharp:
"Stay there."
Click.
She stared at her phone.
Did he just—did he just hang up on her after that?
No context? No apology? No acknowledgment of the emotional monsoon she just delivered?
She let out a strangled noise—part laugh, part sob, part possible demonic summoning—and kicked at the puddle by her foot, splashing muddy water across her bare shins.
Stay there, he says.
Oh sure. Because she clearly had a wealth of other options. Like calling a new ride. Or summoning a personal helicopter. Or building a raft from twigs and her last shred of dignity.
She slumped back against the wall, soaked, vibrating with fury, humiliation, and something dangerously close to heartbreak.
And still, still—she waited.