Something was wrong.
She woke up with that heavy, stomach-sinking dread that usually meant she'd either forgotten to pay a bill, missed someone's birthday, or the ghost of her middle school self was about to haunt her for calling her teacher "dad" again.
She blinked at the ceiling. It wasn't the usual existential dread. No, this had flavor. The kind that settled between her shoulder blades and whispered, run.
Then her phone buzzed.
Yuna.
"Are you home? Or like... going anywhere today?"
Okay. Weird opener.
Hana yawned into her pillow. "Why? Are you sending me a strippergram again?"
But Yuna didn't answer. The line just... went quiet. Then dead.
Cool. Love that for her nervous system.
Before she could spiral further, her phone buzzed again.
Sato.
The human equivalent of a tax audit.
"Just checking in," he said.
Which meant something was on fire and he wasn't allowed to say what.
She told him she was bored. Because she was. Her brain was 80% festival logistics, 10% financial panic, and 10% homicidal ideation.
He laughed. "Maybe not anymore."
Sketchy. Suspicious. Full red flag energy.
But whatever. Everything about Sato was sketchy. He probably smiled during HR investigations.
She shrugged it off. Made tea. Stared at the weather app like it owed her money. Her savings were dwindling. Her resume was gathering dust. And her name was apparently radioactive, because not one callback had come in this past month. Not even from that overpriced Tokyo firm that ran a hiring seminar called "We Love Nontraditional Backgrounds" (liars).
If she didn't know better, she'd think Hasegawa was blocking her applications.
Which... yeah. She did know better.
He absolutely was.
Petty little man. With his shiny suits and his perfect case win record and his pathological need to win every conversation like it was a legal deposition. She bet he had charts on her. Flowcharts. With bullet points. Possibly laminated.
And the worst part?
He hadn't even reached out.
No apology. No message. No explanation. Just silence. Like she was another name on his revolving list of burned-out assistants, filed away between Too Slow and Cried Twice in Q4.
Fine. Whatever.
She didn't care.
She was just jobless. And spiraling. And regretting the 9,000 yen she spent on fancy gel pens for her nonexistent desk.
And okay, she liked the firm. More than she ever admitted. It had chaos. Banter. People who didn't care if she forgot their birthdays as long as she remembered the statute of limitations on corporate fraud.
But crawling back?
Absolutely not.
Even if Sato called her every other day like a jilted ex with bad reception.
"The firm's circling the drain," he'd said on Tuesday.
Sure, Jan. The firm was built on lawsuits and caffeine. It'd survive an asteroid.
Sato was just a manipulative little bitch.
By 10:00 AM, she was outside. On her mom's old bike, which made a weird creaking sound every time she turned left. Like the ghost of a tired delivery man lived in the pedals.
She biked into town, hair shoved under a cap, water bottle bouncing in the front basket like it was hanging on for dear life. The August sun was already trying to boil her alive, but for once-thank god-her mom had finally caved and installed AC units in every room. Miracles did happen.
She reached the town center, which was halfway into its summer festival transformation.
Bamboo poles were going up. Paper lanterns being strung like they were hosting a wedding for a forest spirit. It wasn't until she reached the booth area that her day really started unraveling.
First, her shoelace got caught on the bike pedal. She nearly ate asphalt.
Then Ren-bless him, chaotic gremlin that he was-dropped a full hammer on her foot while building their sake booth. Didn't even say sorry. Just yelled, "IT BOUNCED!" like that made it okay.
By noon, she'd spilled ink on the booth sign she was painting. "Sukehiro Sake" now read something closer to "Suckhiro." Which, unfortunately, might attract the wrong kind of attention.
And then came the final sign of doom: her stomach growled loud enough to scare the town cat.
Still no good news. Still no call back.
And of course, Hasegawa lived rent-free in her head like a freeloading ghost. Popped in every time she picked up a brush or tried to smile at a festival volunteer.
Today, she imagined murdering him slowly.
Stealing all his Montblancs one by one. Replacing his stylus pen with a chopstick. Removing every other page from his court documents. A slow, legalistic death. Torture by clerical error. Maybe she'd put glitter in his air vents.
Hana smiled to herself. Therapeutic.
She rubbed her foot, the one Ren tried to shatter, and huffed as she tied the booth banner with uneven knots.
Everything in her life right now felt temporary. Half-tied. Fragile.
But she'd fake it. Like she always did.
-----
The booth was... done. Kind of. Maybe. If no one breathed too hard on the signage.
The paint was still tacky in places, the corners of the banner were fraying like they'd been chewed on by a stressed-out squirrel (read: her), and Ren had decided "structural integrity" was a capitalist myth. But it was standing. Technically.
She stepped back and squinted at the lettering. "Sukehiro Sake" gleamed in lopsided strokes of deep navy. The 'S' still looked vaguely phallic, but she wasn't fixing it. Not again.
"Looks good," Ren said, perched proudly on top of the booth like some discount Shinto gargoyle.
"It'll last a week," she muttered, wiping her hands on her shorts. "Maybe. If the wind doesn't unionize."
By noon, she ditched the chaos and met up with a few friends for lunch. Mostly locals she hadn't seen in years-some already married, some halfway there, and one who still worked at the soba shop they all loitered behind in high school. The usual small-town time loop.
And Hiro was there.
Of course Hiro was there.
High school boyfriend. All smiles and soft eyes and hometown familiarity. He still made his own bentos. Still had that same lopsided grin that made her 16-year-old self swoon during physics class. Still said things like "you haven't changed at all," which-bold of him to assume she hadn't developed a laundry list of personality disorders since.
Her mom loved Hiro. Still asked about him. Still dropped "he's single, you know" into casual conversation like it was weather talk. Hana's go-to response was always the same: He's too good. I'm not staying. I'll break him again.
And she meant it.
Hiro was the kind of guy who gave you the last piece of karaage and never brought up your bar exam failures. She was the kind of girl who'd lose interest the moment she felt trapped. It wasn't fair. Not to him.
So she kept it light. Ate her curry. Laughed too loud. Teased him about the shirt he'd clearly bought on sale from Uniqlo in 2012.
By mid-afternoon, the group began to scatter, and her phone buzzed.
Mom: Can you pick up your father's phone at the brewery? He forgot it again.
She tied the hem of her tank top behind her back-it was too hot to exist-and pedaled off with one of the girls toward the south road. They split at the corner near the flower shop, and Hana waved lazily. "See you tomorrow!"
She coasted to the edge of the brewery and parked her bike against the outer stone wall with a soft thunk. The breeze smelled like rice, yeast, and the sharp mineral bite of damp stone-comforting, if a little haunted. She adjusted her cap, tucked a loose curl behind her ear, and slipped through the side door of the brewery.
It took all of six minutes to grab her father's phone, talk to one of the brewers about the festival, and steal a single chilled ume soda from the back fridge.
She stepped out into the late afternoon sun, sipping, squinting against the glare-
And then stopped.
There was someone standing across the street.
Still. Tall. Dressed down in jeans and a black T-shirt, cap low over his eyes. One foot propped casually against a utility post like he belonged to the scenery.
But she knew those eyes.
Even at this distance.
That exact brand of judgmental stillness. That low, electric pressure in her chest like her body had just gone into court mode.
And without thinking, the words flew out of her mouth on instinct.
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me."