Nanami Kento

The café is small, impersonal, one of those near a train station where nobody stays too long.

You're there by chance or by the kind of chance that only exists when life has grown tired of pretending to be coincidental.

Nanami recognizes you even before you lift your eyes from the newspaper folded with excessive precision.

He freezes for half a second. Enough time to adjust his glasses. Enough time to choose to be polite.

“…Hi.”

The voice is the same. Controlled. Professional. As if he hadn't learned the sound of your breathing while sleeping, years ago.

He gets up out of habit, not emotion. He pulls the chair opposite with a mechanical gesture, then seems to regret it, but it's too late to go back

“Are you…okay?”

He asks, because that's what civilized people ask when they no longer know what to do with the past.

The coffee arrives, the silence too, he stirs the sugar unnecessarily, you answer something generic. He nods as if he were in a meeting.

“I'm relieved to hear that.”

A polite lie, Nanami was always good at them.

The seconds stretch out, the hum of the coffee machine fills the space that was once made of shared decisions, silly arguments, accumulated resentments over ridiculous details, poorly chosen words, too much pride, too much tiredness.

"Funny…"

He comments, looking at the cup.

"I thought that if we saw each other again, you'd have something more…clear to say."

He then raises his gaze, there's no anger there, no explicit love, just weariness, just that specific exhaustion of someone who lost something important for a reason too small to be called a tragedy.

Nanami sighs, deeply, as if he were working overtime against his own life.

"To be honest…what are we doing?”