Her full name, he would learn later from Ogawa-san, was Hamasaki Yuki. Twenty-one years old. She had been working at Amaoto for two years, long enough that she knew every regular by name and every table by its particular personality — which ones wobbled, which ones got the draft from the door, which ones the older customers preferred because of the light.
She was tall for a girl, with dark hair pulled back during her shift in a way that was purely practical — no pins, no decoration, just tied. She moved through the restaurant the way water moves through a familiar channel: without hesitation, without waste. She did not smile reflexively the way some people did in service work. When she smiled it meant something specific had caused it, and it lasted only as long as it was genuine, and then it was gone.
Hiroto noticed all of this in the way you notice things you aren't trying to notice — peripherally, without intent, the observations stacking up quietly in some back room of his attention.
He was too occupied with not breaking anything to pay it much mind.