“The protocol,” I say softly. “He set the protocol to protect me. Not to protect himself. If something has happened to him, Ian, we are sitting in a house in Japan, and he’s?—”
“We don’t know that something has happened.”
“We don’t know that somethinghasn’t.” My voice stays even. It takes everything I have. “And we are sitting in this house, and every morning I walk to that castle, and I sit on that bench, and I count the days, and I talk to him in my head like that does something, like he can hear me, like—” I stop. Press my lips together hard. “I need you to tell me what you actually think. Not the protocol. Not the reassurance. What Ian thinks. Right now. In this kitchen. With no one listening.”
He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I hear the neighbor’s car start somewhere down the street and pull away into the morning, and the garden settle into its latesummer stillness, and the tap begin its thirty seconds and stop.
“I think,” Ian says slowly, “that whatever happened didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
The words land softly. I absorb them the way you absorb something you already knew—not as a shock but as a confirmation, the thing you’ve been carrying finally being named out loud and given its real shape.
“And Valeria?”
His jaw tightens. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think she has him?”
“Sophia—”
“Ian.” I hold his gaze. “Do you think she has him?”
Something crosses his face. Raw and unguarded for one undefended second—real fear, the kind that lives underneath all the capability and all the competence and all the careful management, the fear of a man who loves someone and cannot reach them—before he gets it back under control. He breathes out slowly through his nose.
“I think,” he says, “that Reth is the most capable person I have ever known. And I think that whatever is happening right now—” He stops. Tries again. His voice is very quiet. “He knows where you are. He will get to you. Whatever it takes, whatever state he’s in, whatever she’s done—he will get to you. That’s not me performing okayness at you. That’s not the protocol. That’s just—” He exhales. “I know him. I’ve known him for years. And that part I’m certain of.”
I look at him for a long moment. At this man who has held me together for three weeks with sarcasm and routine. Who has made rice in the mornings and gone for runs he doesn’t need and invented reasons to leave the house so Ican cry in private and comes back like he didn’t know. Who has been terrified, quietly, without letting me carry any of it.
Who has gotten into bed with me when the nightmares come.
They started again on day three. The waking up, violent and gasping, the disorientation of an unfamiliar ceiling and the wrong quality of dark, and then Ian already there, sitting on the edge of the mattress with his hand on my shoulder sayingYou’re in Joetsu, you’re in the house, breathe. The same low, unhurried tone he used in Paris. In Greece. The tone of someone who has done this enough times that it lives in his body now, automatic, the way you reach for a light switch in a dark room without thinking.
He’s trying so hard to hide his worry from me, hoping it’ll settle my fears. But for the last few days he’s been struggling to hide the cracks.
“You’re terrified,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t answer. Which is its own answer. And I want to cross the kitchen and put my arms around him the way you do for someone who’s been holding something too heavy for too long, but I don’t, because Ian would fold it back and redirect and make a joke, and some kindnesses aren’t actually kind.
The silence stretches between us, honest and tired.
Then Ian straightens. Uncrosses his arms. And the performance slides back into place, but softer now—less armor and more him, just Ian, choosing to keep going because stopping isn’t something either of them can afford.
“Right,” he says. “Here’s what I think we should do today.”
I blink. “What?”
“I think we should go find a matsuri.”
“A—what?”
“Festival. It’s late summer, and there’s always something on. We’ll eat things on sticks, you can watch me embarrass myself at whatever game involves throwing rings at bottles, I’ll buy you something horrifyingly touristy, and for approximately four hours we will behave like two completely normal people visiting Japan and not like—” he gestures vaguely at the kitchen, at the weight sitting in it, at both of us, at three weeks of fear wearing the costume of routine “—this.”
I stare at him. “You want to go to a festival?”
“I want to go to a festival.”
“While Reth is?—”
“While we are waiting for Reth,” he says, and there’s something firm and almost fierce underneath the lightness. “Losing our minds in this house is not going to make him appear any faster. And frankly, Sophia, you’ve walked to that castle twenty-one consecutive mornings, and I think the swans are starting to feel pressured.” He raises his eyebrows. “Come on. Things on sticks. You need things on sticks.”
