Page 99 of The Wedding Pact
They of course spoke in easy Japanese, something Flynn was enjoying flexing his vocal muscles around again. He was enjoying a lot about being back here, and stealing a glance at Yui, he knew he was enjoying her company again as well.
‘How are you?’ Flynn asked.
‘I’m good, very well. How are you? How is England?’
‘It’s … different.’
‘Different? Do you mean different from when you lived there before?’
‘Different from here,’ he clarified. ‘Everything feels very, very, different.’
‘Are you not happy?’ Yui asked.
‘Not really,’ he admitted. He felt foolish doing so, partly wishing he was back here telling Yui that everything was great, that it was the right decision. But he was tired; he’d done a lot of pretending, one way or another, over the past few months. And so he confessed, ‘Sometimes I wonder if this was just one huge mis-step.’
‘Why?’ Yui asked, seeming genuinely puzzled. ‘It’s never a mistake if there’s an adventure beside it. Aren’t you having an adventure?’
‘There never seems to be time for adventuring because my job is so busy. I had this image of learning all about the history of the city of Bath, taking trips around the UK, visiting old haunts and new roads. Then having weekends away across Europe, seeing all the countries I’d never made it to before in big, bright detail. But I’ve barely done any of it. All I see in detail are legal documents, spreadsheets, the walls around my desk.’
Yui was silent for a while, sipping her drink, digesting what he’d said, until she said, ‘You were the same here too, you know.’
This surprised him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When we first got together, you talked about the excitement of moving to Japan a couple of years previously, how there was so much you wanted to see here. You were going to snowboard in the north and visit your grandmother down in the south. You were going to jump on planes and visit China and Taiwan. You were going to eat at every restaurant in Tokyo.’
Flynn felt a sadness at all the missed opportunities, all the things he’d never done when he lived in Japan. This was all the more reason to come back, permanently, right?
‘Don’t look so glum, that isn’t why we broke up,’ Yui continued, giving him a nudge. ‘You never promised me we’d do all those things, and they weren’t the reason I was with you. I’m just … pointing out that this situation isn’t new for you. It’s not a bad situationbecause you moved to England.’
They walked in silence for a few minutes, with Flynn wondering what to say. He had a million questions he wanted to ask her, about her family, their friends, her life, but they all felt like the kind of questions you ask when you haven’t seen someone in a few weeks, not half a year.
‘How’s your work?’ he settled on eventually. It was an extremely dull question, and he had the flash image of August swatting him with a magazine for being so beige among all of this colour and beauty in the gardens, and next to Yui.
‘It’s fine, same as usual,’ Yui said.
‘And your family?’
‘Everyone’s doing well.’
‘Do you still live in our apartment?’ he asked, needing to know.
‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I moved out a month or so after you’d gone. It wasn’t right for me anymore. I’m now in a place by myself, it’s really nice. Small and cosy and has a view over the Sumida River.’
‘That sounds perfect for you,’ he answered. She’d always loved the water. In their worst days, when they seemed to argue whenever they had a rare moment together, Yui would take herself off for long jogs from their apartment block and alongside the river.
‘It is, it suits me.’ The way she said it felt dipped in sentiment, like she was trying to tell Flynn in the kindest possible way thathehadn’t suited her, thathehadn’t been right for her anymore. ‘What is your home like in England? Do you live on your own?’
‘No … ’ he paused. ‘I share the flat with a woman, actually, but she’s just a flatmate.’Just a flatmate.
‘Does she find your early-morning banana milkshake habit as annoying as I did?’ Yui asked, and chuckled.
Flynn thought of August, and how at the sound of the blender she’d always appear, no matter how early, in the kitchen, sniffing at the air. He knew now to always make enough for her to have one too. Bananas had been added to the ‘shared’ shopping list long ago. ‘Luckily for her, the blender we have is much quieter than the one you and I owned.’ Flynn remembered that blender well, a gift from Yui’s parents which she’d never quite forgiven them for, that churned and ground away like a pneumatic drill was being used inside the apartment.
‘What’s her name?’
‘August,’ Flynn handled her name with care, unsure how Yui would respond to it.
‘August … ’ Yui turned the name over in her mouth. ‘Like the month?’
