The hot spring steamed between them.
Kaito looked at the ceiling.
Satsuki looked at him with the warm, composed expression she wore for most things — the one that had a second layer and a third layer and, underneath all of them, something she had been keeping very organised for eleven weeks.
"Coincidence," he said again, to the ceiling.
"Mm," she said. She moved to the other side of the spring — the rocks along the edge, the warm water, the steam doing what steam does. She sat. Settled. Like a woman who had arrived somewhere she had planned to arrive and was not going to rush it.
He looked at her.
She looked back.
"Satsuki-san," he said.
"You can drop the san," she said. "We're in a hot spring."
He looked at the ceiling again.
She waited.
He had, she noted, the specific quality of a man who was running out of ceilings to look at and was going to have to have a conversation eventually.
"How," he said, "did you know about this resort."
"I chose you," she said.
