The door to the hotel bathroom stood open, filling the room with clouds of warm steam. The window across the room stood open, and the summer night air wafted in to mix with the steam, and the sound of a loudly running bath mixed with the faint noises of car and foot traffic from the street far below. A girl sat on a chair by the window, the curly red wire of a telephone wrapped five times around her slender left wrist, and she looked from the window, to the bathroom door, to a digital clock on the nightstand that read 7:24. Her body was wrapped in a white hotel robe folded over once.

"Tai," she said, "this isn't the 1940's. Nobody's taking advantage of anybody. Nobody takes advantage of anybody anymore. He has his own room, and he's being a perfect gentleman.—You'd be surprised how much he's grown up, for your information. He really acts like he's about sixty-two. Sometime I think he looks sad.—Well I wouldn't know about Davis, we haven't seen him yet, he's very busy, apparently there's some kind of Japan Ramen Idol competition coming up and the posters are everywhere…" She got up suddenly, snorting laughter. "You are not getting on the next plane with blood pressure like yours, mister. I know you're eating ramen twice a day without me to look after you anyway. I'll tell you how it goes, and I'll give Davis your best. I have to go, okay? My bath's almost…"

A knock on the door. Color rose to her cheeks, and in an unthinking moment, she almost hung up the phone.

"Kari? You decent?"

"We'll talk later," she whispered, but the voice on the other end of the line rose until it was perfectly audible in the room:

"Is that the little twerp? Put him on the line!"

"Tai, no!"

"Takaishi?" said the phone, "Takaishi T., what the hell are you doing knocking on my kid sister's door at seven at night when she's running her bath?—Kari, you put him on right now!"

Blushing furiously, Kari went to the door, holding her robe shut with one hand, heaved it open, and thrust the phone at TK. The cord was stretched taught. Leaning on the door as he shut it, TK ground his face into one hand as he muttered:

"Yes, sir, Mr. Yagami, I understand. I wouldn't dream of it. Yes, I'm a scrawny little keyboard-tapper and you could still kick my ass. I know I get it from my brother. I know he has a way with the ladies." He managed to chuckle slightly, although his and Kari's embarrassment was very real. "I know you're jealous of him.—No, sir, I don't think that joke was very funny. Oh, please, Tai, you'd have to catch me first, I've seen the kind of shape you're in these days. Sorry. Not sorry! Ha, ha!"

"No-o!" Kari whined, swatting at him, but held the phone smugly out of her reach, before hanging up. "Oh, no! He'll kill you."

"C'mon." TK sank down on the bed, undoing his collar. "It's all in good fun."

"You don't understand, TK. Sure, he's joking, but he's really worried about me. I tried telling him if nothing ever happened back then for years and years and years, nothing's very likely to happen now, but he said…well, let's just say I had to tell him that only cheeses and wines get more attractive with age. Not people."

"It's cute," said TK, leaning back. His suit was creased and the skin of his face looked tired and yellow. He shut his eyes. "But if he could hear what my brother's been telling me, he'd have four aneurysms. You know Matt's always telling me I don't get la—don't date enough; and you know they say Fukuoka girls are pretty…"

She smirked. "Well. Are they?"

"Hmm. I haven't noticed.—Oh, jeez." He blinked. "You weren't kidding about that bath, huh? I can come back later…"

"Shh."

Kari put a finger on his lips. She was regarding him with a warm smile, and he looked back with an ambiguous expression on his tired face, in his slightly bloodshot eyes; cheerful, perhaps slightly grateful; but slightly wary.

"No," she said quietly, "let's talk. We barely have talked since we set off on this little trip. And on the train doesn't count, you were so stiff and awkward. I told him you were being a perfect gentleman but you're being too much of one if you ask me."

Before he could properly respond, she sprang up, knelt down in front of the minibar, and returned, suppressing a giggle, with a wine bottle and two narrow glasses. This elegant impression was ruined slightly when she set the bottle down, and a dull click betrayed that the bottle was plastic.

"Relax, it was just five hundred yen at the convenience store.—Sit back, relax. I'll pour for you."

TK shut his eyes again. He heard a faint trickle of wine, then Kari's softly padding footsteps; then the running water in the bathroom shut off. Her voice came:

"Y'know, I don't know what's the matter with me. I feel ten years younger all of a sudden.—What have you been up to all day? Did you see your painting thing? What was it, the Venus de Milo?"

"That's in Italy, you doof.—And no, I didn't see the painting. The moment's got to be right. Seeing it on my first day in town would ruin everything. It's like…like…never mind."

He opened his eyes, and she was sitting in the chair across from him, hands pressed between her knees, the light shining on the tiny point of her chin, gazing at him with a broad smirk.

"Like what?"

"I'm not telling you," he said, "it's dirty."

"Oh, come on!"

TK sipped the wine. "Hey!—Not bad for five hundred yen."

"Don't try and change the subject. What would it be like, seeing that painting on your first night in town? Like going all the way on a first date? I'm not that naive, and I might not be some great writer, but even I have that basic a command of simile…Mr. Takeru Takaishi."

"Heh. Okay. It's not that, it's something an American writer said once.—To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end."

"Wow."

"I told you you wouldn't like it."

"No," she said honestly, "I think that's great. Who was it?"

"I don't remember."

A car honked in the street outside, and they both started, jolted out of some mild dreamlike state caused by the late hour, and the smell of the wine and hot bathwater.

TK got up abruptly.

"I'd better go," he said. "Um, here's your camera."

"Aw. Really?"

But there was no force in her protest. She had not filled his glass very much, and he'd already drained it in two sips.

"We should get an early start tomorrow. Lots to see and do. Besides, that bottle's a twist-off. Not like we have to finish the whole thing tonight."

"Yeah…I guess you're right."

As he stood in the doorway, looking back, a gleam returned to TK's eye as he said: "I know what's got your brother's so paranoid."

"I know, he gets like that when any guy…"

"No. It's not any guy. It's me. Say you and me got married—it'd be like you were marrying Matt. Can you imagine how much that would piss Tai off? He'd much rather see you with Davis. Then he'd practically be marrying you himself."

"Oh, ew."

She slammed the door over the sight of his cackling face, and his laughter could be heard as it retreated down the hall, slowly, but not very far. There was a beeping noise made by a keycard in a door. Just like the one whenever she entered her room. Five doors down, and across the hall. She could practically count the steps.

With a vague look on her face, now holding the robe closed with both hands, Kari entered the bathroom. She slowly put out one long, pale finger until its tip just brushed the surface of the water.

She grimaced. It was lukewarm.