Chapter 40: Stay

They ate, they drank, they watched TV and talked — steering clear of the things neither wanted to mention, filling the time with conversation that was mildly boring yet somehow kept going. Setting aside the sudden knocking and that inscrutable plate of vegetables, the evening turned out to be the most relaxed stretch of time Ma En had experienced since arriving in Japan. Without noticing when it happened — whether it was the beer or the easy atmosphere between them — he felt the faint warmth of a buzz. He glanced up at the clock. Already past nine.

Seven or eight empty beer cans sat piled in front of Hirota. She'd drunk that many and her gaze had gone a little hazy, but her words still tracked perfectly — no sign of being drunk. Her posture, though, was another matter. She'd slumped sideways against the coffee table in a way that wasn't exactly dignified, apparently without noticing, and Ma En had lost count of how many times the angle had given him glimpses he wasn't supposed to have.

He wasn't going to bring that up.

When the TV show broke for commercials, Ma En braced a hand on his knee and stood. "I should head back."

"Already?" Hirota checked the clock too. "It's even earlier than last night."

"It's not early. Being in your apartment this late isn't exactly proper." He started gathering the dishes from the coffee table, but the moment he picked up a plate, her hand closed around his wrist.

"What's improper about it? Stay a little longer?" Her eyes were almost pleading. "I don't like drinking alone. It gets too lonely."

"So you don't drink when you're by yourself?" Ma En asked, unmoved. He pulled gently free. Her grip released. He went back to stacking the empty plates, and she sat there watching him.

He could feel the warmth in her gaze.

"Of course I do. The more I drink, the lonelier it gets. Sometimes I want to cry." Hirota said. "I love that feeling sometimes. But most of the time, I hate it."

"What about friends? Call them over."

"I have a few. But they've got their own evenings. The married ones go without saying, and the single ones have their own nightlife." Her voice came out like something between a sigh and a complaint. If that low, dusky tone had a color, Ma En thought, it would be the same deep purple as her underwear.

"Don't go. Stay tonight. Please?" She said it softly, her eyes sliding away from his face. The words had escaped before she could think. She'd never imagined she was capable of saying something like this to a man she'd just met — a young man, at that. The moment it left her mouth, she felt a dim awareness: Am I hoping for something? But it had come so fast — fast enough to catch even herself off guard — and she had no desire whatsoever to take it back.

Hirota felt like a stranger to herself tonight. But a stranger who was, perhaps, a little bit excited. As though these words would determine the color of the rest of her life — a turning point, taut with tension. She didn't know how Ma En would answer. She didn't dare imagine it. The anxiety churning inside her dragged her back, suddenly and inexplicably, to her school days in the countryside — back then, she'd been completely free of feelings like this. Or rather, she'd only heard about them in stories and envied the girls who'd experienced them firsthand, while she herself never had.

And I'm already twenty-seven.

She told herself this, and when she looked at Ma En again, her heartbeat was climbing. Racing, oscillating, caught between calculations she couldn't complete — whether he understood the implication, what he'd think if he did. Having already said it, being rejected now would ruin the rest of her night. She'd feel relief, yes — but once the relief faded, the dejection would be worse.

Was she overthinking this?

But she didn't hear an answer. She could only watch as he gathered the dishes for two, carried them to the kitchen, turned on the tap, and began washing.

The longer he stayed silent, the larger her hope grew. And watching him there at the sink, feeling that same faint buzz, she wanted nothing more than for time to stop right here.

A moment ago she'd felt her invitation was too sudden. But now she was grateful — grateful that the words had tumbled out when they did. And although there was a dishwasher under the counter, she would absolutely never tell him.

The commercials ended. The show returned with a burst of studio laughter, but even that sound couldn't drown out, in Hirota's heart, the water running at the kitchen sink. Everything happening over there was so warm — more absorbing than any program.

Ma En finished the dishes, cleaned out the sink and the countertop scraps, and then finally turned to her. "I still need to study tonight."

"Study?" Hirota blinked. "Work" she could have prepared for, but "study" had never been among her mental list of possible answers.

"Mm. I have some research to do." A pause. "Not about the new job. Personal interest. To do it right, I need to teach myself a few things."

"Does it have to be tonight? You could study some other time, couldn't you?" A note of urgency crept into her voice.

"I'm sorry — studying is the one thing I can't skip." He looked her in the eyes, steady and serious. "If I slack off even once, everything slows down. I'm lazy by nature. So no matter what I'm doing, I have to stay on my own case."

"...Could you study here?" She held his gaze, and felt that pushing any harder would cross into unreasonable — but giving up entirely wasn't something she could accept. "I just don't want to be alone. Study here. I won't bother you." She took a breath. "I just need to be able to see you."

Ma En was about to decline. Then her eyes stopped him — a look so vulnerably beseeching that continuing to refuse would only cause her more pain. Meeting the gaze of this woman three years his senior, he felt that holding the line would accomplish nothing but hurting her. He wanted to study, yes, but he couldn't withstand this — the soft voice, the quiet plea. This woman who'd been murmuring over her drinks all evening about loneliness — he wasn't incapable of understanding it. He'd felt the same thing himself, in his own solitary hours.

Ma En didn't read this as a seduction. Hirota might have meant something more — he couldn't be sure — but these were words the beer had loosened. Right now, her emotions were unstable. He didn't think this was the moment to push for anything. He'd considered many angles: accepting a single adult woman's invitation to stay in her room had never, for him, been a simple proposition.

Still — the things requiring caution were many, but perhaps staying by her side tonight wasn't the wrong choice.

With that thought, Ma En finally nodded.

"Let me go get some materials."

The gloom on Hirota's face broke apart like clouds after snow. She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding so hard the sound seemed to ring in her own ears — she almost wondered if he could hear it too. She didn't know how to name what she was feeling. She only knew that what he'd just said was the best thing she'd heard all night.

"I'll come with you," she said quickly.

"Sorry — my room isn't ready for guests yet."

"Then I'll wait outside the door."

Ma En was already at the entryway, changing his shoes. Hirota followed, opened the shoe cabinet, and slipped on a pair she could wear outside. He glanced at her, considered objecting, and let it go. But when he opened the door, he blocked her behind him without making it obvious — checking the peephole first, confirming nothing unusual in the hallway, and only then stepping out.

Past nine at night, the corridor held no one but the two of them. The lights were bright enough, though the color temperature ran cold, and the hallway was almost too clean — the kind of emptiness that made you feel something might flicker at the edge of your vision. Hirota seemed to have already forgotten the earlier fright, following behind Ma En with a natural expression.

For Ma En, this quiet corridor never quite felt safe. Out of habit, his eyes swept the other doors. Room 5: the same as always, not a sound, shrouded in something that felt like dead air. Room 3: equally silent, yet he could sense it — the watching gaze, pressed against the door, waiting for something. Rooms 1 and 2 showed clear signs of life. The warm light leaking through the door gaps was faint under the hallway's fluorescents, but the temperature of families gathered together was unmistakable. He thought the soundproofing in these units was well done, yet faintly — just barely — he could hear voices from behind both doors.

It was precisely the ordinariness of Rooms 1 and 2 that kept this hallway from becoming, in Ma En's mind, a gathering place for monsters.

And it was precisely because of their warmth that he wanted, even more, to keep the Room 4 Ghost Story from touching these people.

"Ma En-san?" Hirota's voice broke his observation.

"Nothing. Let's go." He walked to his own door, and as he opened it, said once more: "I'm leaving the door open. But don't come in."

"Got it." She smiled. He gave her a look, confirmed she'd genuinely taken the instruction to heart, and stepped inside.

He rearranged the desk quickly — hiding what needed to be hidden, leaving out what served as camouflage, folding the scattered materials, rechecking bookmarks and notes. He selected what could be brought to Hirota's apartment.

He knew what he was doing, and his hands moved fast. Within a few minutes, the Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records original and the Room 4 intelligence had been sorted and set aside. Everything else — the books and materials on the Twenty-Four Solar Terms — went into his bag.

When Hirota saw him again, he was wearing the dark suit jacket, the deep red tie and hat, and the old-fashioned black umbrella hung from his arm.

"Are you going out?" That was the impression his appearance gave.

"No — didn't we say I was coming to your room?" He locked his door behind him, looking at her with genuine confusion.

"..." Hirota wanted to comment on the outfit. She held it in.

They walked back to Room 6. Ma En stayed watchful the entire way, alert for anything that might happen. Nothing did. If anything, the uneventful walk made him feel like he'd been paranoid. But the sense that something was about to happen lingered as long as he stood in the corridor. Only after stepping back into Hirota's apartment did the residual warmth in the living room ease the tension out of his body at once.

The door closed. Two people in one space again. It felt as though everything dangerous had been temporarily sealed outside. Ma En was surprised to find that he felt safer here than he did alone in his own room.

Should I be suspicious of that feeling? He shook his head. The thought itself was absurd. If he couldn't even trust a sense of safety, then there was probably nowhere in the world where he could feel safe at all.

Hirota was already thinking about where to set him up, her steps light. She had a guest room, but it had long been repurposed as a storage space and changing room — it contained things she'd rather a guest didn't see. Besides, she intended to have Ma En stay the night, and she didn't want him sleeping in there.

While she was scheming, Ma En had already walked up to the guest room door.

"Not there!" Hirota called out in a rush, darting over to block the entrance. "It's a mess inside."

Ma En tilted his head, then carried his bag back to the sofa. He'd already made his decision: if Hirota insisted on him spending the night, the sofa would do. Studying at the coffee table was fine; it wouldn't disturb her rest. If she just wanted someone in the apartment for company, the living room was actually better — he'd have a clearer vantage point to monitor any disturbances.

The eye he'd seen at the peephole was still on his mind. From a security standpoint, his presence might attract danger. But if the danger wasn't aimed at him alone, staying had its own advantages. What that eye was, what its appearance meant, what had triggered it — none of these questions had answers yet. For now, he could only take things one step at a time.

Across the room, Hirota fished out her key and locked the guest room door. She glanced at Ma En — his back to her, pulling materials from his bag one by one — and breathed a small sigh of relief before slipping into her bedroom.