A thousand dotted lights stared back at me and Takasaki like a theater audience of red eyes from the tops of the cluttered Tokyo skyline across the bay. Lines of fluorescent windows striped across in dozens of layers up and across each building like the illuminated golden lettering of massive upright books, while skeletal cranes of steel clawed for more from the tops of the financial district into the peach and plum streaked sky above. The Rainbow Bridge lit up its eponymous spectrum across the heights of its suspension towers, casting a mirror into the dark, swishing ocean below its span. Sparks of carlight danced and scurried across it like fireflies in the thick, sticky summer humidity settling upon my neck.

I turned my head and looked at Takasaki, the latter munching in thought on a skewer of chestnut dango I had bought for her at a stand by the waterfront. She tried to separate the sticky dumpling with her straight, pearly teeth, baring them somewhat to avoid smearing the dabs of chestnut cream on top onto her bright lipstick. She wore a navy blue tweed jacket buttoned only at the top, and a matching knee-length pencil skirt and low heels. It was one hue darker than the dress she wore five years ago when we had first met, although I dismissed the possibility that she could have thought of that. A silver chain draped across her chest to terminate at a tiny bright blue leather bag adorned with the crosslinked silver C's of Chanel - borrowed from her mother's only one, she demurred. I couldn't help but notice the beauty with which the blues complemented her brilliant eyes against the backdrop of the twilit water.

I almost reproached the relative ease of my own button shirt and dark slacks I threw on this morning.

"Oh, it's so pretty!" she interjected, pointing at the chromatics of the Rainbow Bridge. A pink leather Fitbit bracelet jangled against her lithe wrist. "It's funny how every time I've seen it up until now, the lights always had some other color scheme. This is my first time actually seeing it in rainbow at night."

I already beamed like an idiot, but I couldn't help but stretch the edge of my straining mouth even further at her excitement.

"Yeah, it is," I agreed. "It's interesting how Tokyo isn't really that far, but we never seem to make the trip more often, isn't it."

"Well, we're students, we're busy and I guess we never really have a particular reason to day to day," she explained.

"Well, we did today," I responded. She turned her head to me.

"Yeah, I think it was a good idea coming out here today," she replied with a soft smile. "That kaiseki place you recommended was kind of stuffy but the food was the best I ever had."

I didn't know what overcame me with intemperate greed in that moment. I felt my chest thumping inside and then almost trying to escape my throat as I resolved to risk it all.

My fingertips twitched, inching back and forth towards Takasaki. I made up my mind and seized her hand, wrapping her cool, slender fingers within mine. They felt so soft, and it felt at once terrifying and yet intimate to tether myself to her like this. I ran my thumb over the plush smoothness of her skin, the bumpy firmness of her knuckles, the cool stiffness of her unpainted fingernails. The sweat emanating from my warm palm and threatening to slide it away. I knew I didn't earn this, and I didn't know how she would react, but a tiny, pernicious slice of my mind I would rather not acknowledge felt entitled to this nonetheless.

She didn't pull it away, but she did look away with an expressionless line between her lips and said nothing. Her hand decided to go limp in mine as she gave it over to my direction.

"Sorry we had to meet up so late even on a Saturday," I tried to divert the topic. "Just, math competition today, and then I have homework and projects tomorrow, so kind of hard -"

"I understand, Reader-kun," Takasaki excused me. "What you're doing is all for a good cause. Besides, I like going out and seeing all the lights of the city at night - I mean, I wouldn't do it on my own, I guess, but as long as I have someone protecting me - er, accompanying me."

She tried to correct it, but the slip up excited me even more.

"I'm protecting Takasaki-san," the gremlin in my head shuddered in excitement, and I squeezed my hand around hers even more. I'd never held a girl's hand before, and it pumped so much electricity into my arm and heart that I was afraid I would lose control and let go.

Takasaki and I - the couple, my mind fancied - promenaded down the waterfront until I spotted a few big rocks leading down to a tiny, stony beach. There was a takoyaki stand nearby, and though I regretted to let go of my princess for even a second, I spent a twenty-second detour to pick a few up for the two of us. The octopus balls were so scalding that even through the faux-wooden cardboard boat I jolted.

Takasaki wiped the surface of one of the rocks, before I intercepted with a spread-out paper napkin for her to sit on. I joined her, and together we stared at the tide washing in and out over the smoothed stones on the tiny remnant of an urban shoreline. The rhythmic swish of the water, as dark and troubled and sea-blue as Takasaki's eyes, measured the time away in seconds. By now the moon had come out and joined the bridge and city lights in casting their reflections on the undulating surface.

"When I look at these sorts of rocky beaches, I can't help but think of the beaches at Nice," I recalled from my childhood. For all the grief my mother gave me, my father's largesse had familiarized me with the basics of Europe in person.

"You've been to Nice?" Takasaki inquired, and I nodded.

"That's so cool! I've never been to Europe, although my parents promise we'll go when I graduate, especially if I get into a good college. If…if…if."

"Nice was my favorite, actually. There just isn't anything else like it in the world. Although, it was kind of hot in the sunny sort of way when I was there, and the beach is just full of sharp rocks and it's impossible to walk on, much less play on." The latter prompted Takasaki to laugh, and I joined her.

"I've always dreamt of Sorrento myself, for some reason. Waking up in a princess bed, throwing open french doors onto a balcony, and seeing the black volcanos shrouded in mist across the water."

A beat. "You know," she added, "I always heard that love is so strong in Europe, especially France and Italy. We've never been able to see that in Japan with the Yukari system, but I wanted to get a chance to see what it used to be like…But Italy just passed their own Yukari Law in a referendum a few days ago. Italy! They're the ninth E.U. member to do so…I never thought it would have spread outside Japan, especially in the West…how could…" Her voice trailed off as she stared out into the water, shaking her head.

"That's why you want to go into politics, isn't it?" I cut through her mumbling. I had debated whether to divert the conversation or…well, I had made my decision.

Takasaki exhaled, bringing up her knees and tucking them in against her body.

"Not the only one, but yes, the main one," she admitted, and a tiny shard of the hidden Takasaki cracked and fell away. She gritted her teeth and balled up a fist and hooked at the moon. "I want to destroy the Yukari marriage notices, carthago delenda est and all that. Love comes out of the heart and the ether, not some state-sponsored computational slurry of linear algebra and vector calculus!"

"It's not impossible they could happen to come out to the same answer?".

Takasaki crooked her head in confusion.

"Well…"

"I love you, Takasaki-san, but you were assigned to me anyway," I wanted to finish. I had already told her anyway, last week, when I had confessed my feelings and gotten our notices. She had only betrayed her disappointed smile and wan eyes right then. Since then, she had donned a cheery facade. When my parents (really, my father) arranged for me to take her on a date, she complied with all her typical ebullience. When I picked her up at her home, she waved her parents goodbye with all the outward enthusiasm of a girlfriend.

Girlfriend.

I stared up into the empty night sky, the city lights crowding out all the stars that might have otherwise streaked and painted the universal canvas. I was out on a date in the city with the girl of my dreams, now also my assigned wife thanks to the magnanimity of the Yukari system. Eating together, walking and talking together, holding hands together. I had loved her and my shyness could only dream of her for the past five years, and now it had finally come true.

So why did I feel as empty and airy as the sky above me?

Even a dream come true is still a dream.

I stuck a toothpick into one of the mayonnaise- and worcester-drenched fried monsters and blow on it. I offered it to her, a hand cupped underneath to foreclose the possibility of a spill on her rather dapper outfit, and she accepted it albeit with some difficulty stuffing the whole food item into her small mouth.

"I wonder if all of the shoreline looked like this before they built anything here," I wondered out loud, looking down at the pebble beach again.

"Probably," Takasaki affirmed. "I wonder if people were happier back then. Less of being told what to do, and all that."

"I mean, we still had feudal lords back then. Marriages were still arranged, too."

"I guess. Why couldn't we do better thousands of years later?".

I popped the other octopus ball into my mouth, then put my hand over Takasaki's, prompting her to look at me. I took a moment to gulp it down before continuing.

"We can do better," I declared without even knowing what I meant in the specifics. "I have a feeling that we'd make a great team for what you want to do. I'll help you the best that I can, I promise."

"That's…" Takasaki trailed off. What did she mean to add? I wasn't sure even she knows.

I leaned in towards her. I moved my hand to brush away a loose strand of hair and rested against her cheek, causing her to jump in surprise. It felt so smooth, her face so pale and flawless

"Listen, Takasaki, I know there's many things that make you sad, even though you try so hard to look happy to make others happy. You have secrets you won't tell me, and troubles that I can't fix. But you're angry at the world and the way it is, and you feel that addressing these larger problems might indirectly assuage your smaller, personal ones for which you have no answer.

Well let me tell you something: I am too. Maybe not as much as you, but I know where you're coming from. I just want to see you happier, to see you smile - really smile, not just labor at one day in and day out - and I'm not sure how to do that, but I want to try my best. Because I feel the same way."

Takasaki closed her eyes and bowed her head, exhaling.

I took the cue, closed my eyes as well, and leaned into the last few centimeters between our lips to -

Takasaki put a finger to my mouth and pushed me back. Cursing at myself for misreading the situation, I opened my eyes and my sight overrode my previous concerns. Her watery irises sparkled like sapphires beneath the moonlight, as if set within the glaring velvet jewelry boxes at the Fifth Avenue Tiffany's. Iridescent diamond tears pooled at the bottom before drip, dripping down her fine china cheeks. Even through my guilt, even though she was hurting, I couldn't help but admire her incredible sublime beauty in this moment. A perverse thought, but maybe even more than usual?

She buried her head into my chest and grabbed my arms, crying.

"You deserve better, Reader-kun," she muffled out. "You're so nice and smart, Reader, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry, you don't deserve this."

I ran my hand through the back of her downy shoulder-length hair. So fluffy, it parted into strands between my fingers. Lavender wafted from the traces of shampoo and I breathed it in; I was almost tempted to ask her which one she used.

"You're right, I don't deserve this," I muttered in literal agreement but figurative disagreement. "I got assigned to the most beautiful, kindest girl I ever met. What did I do to deserve this indeed?".

Her warm tears soaked into my shirt, but I didn't mind. Besides her crying in the first place, of course. Her forehead felt firm against me, and even given the circumstances, even given the words between us now, I enjoyed touching her, having her so close.

"You deserve someone who loves you, Reader-kun."

"So do you," I declared, "and that's what you got."

She bawled and hugged me harder.

"I don't love you! I can't love you, because I already love someone else! I'm so sorry!".

My heart cracked like an overbaked ceramic, and I kept thinking to myself that it didn't make any physiological sense for it to physically hurt like it did now. I was sad too, and she blurred in my eyes with their own tragic moisture, but I continued to stroke her hair and maintained the best even tone I could.

"I know."

"You know about the mathematician Evariste Galois?" I began to recount. A pointless rhetorical question, of course she didn't. "Brilliant Frenchman. Invented an entire new branch of math called group theory when he was just a teenager and centuries ahead of his time. Died at the tender age of twenty, penned all his great mathematical insights into letters the night before he got shot in a duel over a lover. Do you think he was a genius or an idiot?".

Takasaki, too occupied in her weeping, didn't answer, so I provided my own.

"I think he was an idiot. Such a genius, and yet did all that and died over some girl who didn't love him back."

"Just like me," I added in a whisper.

Takasaki got up, rubbing her eyes, and their redness pulled at my heart. Even if it wasn't my direct fault, even if there were nothing I could really do about it, I still felt responsible.

"I can lie. I can go out with you, maybe I can even hold your hand. I can lie to others. But how can I lie to myself? All I'm good at is lying, is keeping secrets hidden from other people, but in the end there are some lies too big for me to tell after all."

"Even if it's a lie, I don't care, I love you anyway," I told her, and she shook her head.

"You idiot," she choked out between tears, "you really do love me, don't you? Why can't you…you wouldn't…you wouldn't be willing to get the marriage notice annulled, would you?".

I looked away towards the skyline, towards the gleaming glass spires looming over the financial district across the bay. Outsize logos of Barclays and HSBC and Goldman Sachs shined back at me.

"Even if I hated you, even if it cost me nothing emotionally, it would cause legal problems and harm our future careers - mine most likely, yours definitely," I tried to disclaim through other means. "It can't be an option."

Takasaki buried her face into her hands, catching a few tears. "Why are you like this, Reader-kun? Why are you so blind? Why can't you just hate me?".

The answer gleamed as simple and unchanging as the derivative of the exponential.

"Because I love you, Takasaki-san."

Author's Note: See chapter 1 for disclaimer.