The resort restaurant had a terrace that overlooked the ocean.
At seven PM the sky was doing the Okinawa thing — going orange and pink and deeply serious about it, the kind of sunset that made people stop mid-sentence and look.
They had pushed two tables together.
Ten people. One long arrangement. The kind of seating that required decisions about who sat where, which had produced approximately four minutes of subtle maneuvering that everyone pretended wasn't happening.
Final configuration: Kaito at one end. Riku and Kenji in the middle like a buffer zone they had nominated themselves for. Hana next to Kaito because she had simply sat there and nobody had argued. Saki beside Hana. Nana across from Kaito. Yoru to his left. Tsukasa and Haruka toward the middle. Yuki at the far end. Satsuki beside Yuki, which was either strategic or coincidental and nobody was going to ask.
The food came. Okinawan. Good. The kind of meal that deserved attention.
They gave it attention.
