Chapter 5 - Ryo Nakano

The next day, I was as nervous as I'd been in a long time. My meeting with the user Ryo_Nakano72 was scheduled for 9 a.m. at a café near a station in a district close to my college. 

Luckily, classes wouldn't start for another week, so I didn't have to worry about running into classmates. Even so, I was very nervous.

'Should I dress formally to make a good first impression?' I thought, and put on a suit I'd had since I was fifteen for job interviews.

As you can imagine, this suit was so tight on me that the buttons were about to burst. I had grown a lot in the last three years. 

'I think something more casual might be a better choice!' 

I tried on as many clothing combinations as my limited wardrobe allowed. However, when I looked at my watch, it was already eight o'clock in the morning.

I lived in Nakano, so I had to leave early if I didn't want to be late. For this reason, I put on the clothes I always wore in the city center: normal pants, a normal T-shirt, and a black jacket. 

In order to arrive before the couple I was meeting, I rushed to Nakano Station. The train was packed.

Squeezed between a gentleman carrying a golf magazine under his arm and a high school student with headphones leaking muffled bass, I tried to convince myself that I wasn't sweating too much. 

The black jacket, which had seemed like a good idea in the mirror at home, made me feel like a chicken in an oven. 

'Why didn't I think of the August heat?'

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A notification from YeahChat.

[Ryo_Nakano72: I'll be arriving a little earlier than scheduled.]

I almost dropped my phone on the ground. I got off at the next station, relying more on the GPS than on my sense of direction — after all, I had just moved to the big city and didn't know most of Tokyo's districts apart from the main ones.

I walked through streets that all looked the same — convenience stores, shiny restaurants, rusty bicycles chained together in dark alleyways.

The café, when I finally spotted it, was smaller than I had imagined. A faded wooden sign read "Cioccolato Fondent".

It was quarter to nine.

I leaned against a brick wall, catching my breath. 'Are they here already? Would they recognize me just from my profile picture?'

My photo was from almost a year ago, taken last summer. 

I rolled my eyes at myself, thinking that I should have accepted Carl's idea and uploaded a more up-to-date photo. 

Two teenagers walked past, laughing at something on their phones, and one of them almost bumped into me. I dodged him instinctively, which caused me to step forward slightly and check my reflection in the café window. Hair messy from the wind, a slightly wrinkled T-shirt, and a face that looked more sleep-deprived than it should have. 

'At least the jacket hides the shirt...'

Just then, the café door opened. A woman in an olive green dress and a black handbag came out, looking at her watch. Her long black hair was pinned up with a star-shaped clip, and for a moment, I was in shock. She was so beautiful that she looked like a famous actress. 

Before I could decide whether to say hello or get out of her way, our eyes met. She frowned and then smiled with the corner of her mouth.

"Are you Nishida-san?"

"That depends... Are you Ryo_Nakano72?"

She gave me a small, almost mischievous smile. "Ryo, yes. But Nakano isn't my real surname. I prefer to use a different name in these chats, for safety reasons, you know."

Sure, it made sense to use a pseudonym in a group like that.

"What about your... husband?" I asked, looking through the café window. 

She stepped aside and held the door open for me to enter. "He's at work. Something came up, and he couldn't make it, but he told me he had no objections and trusted my judgment." 

"Oh, right," I muttered.

Her husband wasn't there, but he knew about the meeting. Was that... less uncomfortable? A little. At least I wouldn't have to look a man in the face and wait for him to decide whether I could sleep with his wife in a hotel or in my apartment.

"Well, shall we go inside? No point in staying out here." Ryo said. 

I agreed, following her into the small café. The interior was cozy, with walls covered in dark wood and a few shelves full of books that made up for the lack of customers.

As I looked around, I noticed something odd and voiced my thoughts.

"Doesn't this place have a waitress?"

Ryo pulled up a chair and sat down at a table in the middle of the room. She laughed and shook her head. "Actually, no. This is my café."

"Yours? Like, you own the place?"

"My husband bought this place a year ago," she explained, placing her bag on the table. "He thought it would be a good idea for me to have something to do, to build something of my own. Spend some time away from home."

There was something in the way she said it — a touch of embarrassment, maybe even a hint of sadness. Having worked as a bartender in many bars, I knew that a person's choice of words usually spoke volumes about their true feelings. 

"Got it," I replied gently, so as not to seem too curious or invasive. "It's a nice and cozy place."

"Thank you..." she said, looking down. "Ah, yes. I'll get some water."

Ryo got up and walked over to the counter, where she picked up a pitcher of water and two glasses. She then sat down in front of me and filled both glasses.

I watched her as she did this. Her movements were calm and elegant, but I couldn't help noticing that she was very nervous. So nervous that when she moved the pitcher away from the glass, the tip hit the rim and... I caught it before it spilled.

"Sorry, thoughts distracted me." 

"Do you really want to do this?" I asked, looking into her eyes.

Ryo swallowed at my question. Then she nodded while maintaining eye contact. 

"Yes, I want to have your child."

A smile almost appeared at the corner of my mouth. That's when I stood up, took her right hand and started walking with her to the back of the café.

Her husband wasn't here, Ryo's own the café, and it didn't look like any customers would arrive for months. We were alone and had no reason to waste time looking for a motel nearby. It was best to use this old café, and I knew this because Ryo had purposely chosen to meet here.