When he saw her outside the tea shop where they had agreed to meet, Saionji thought that Kanae looked as nervous as he was trying not to feel. She had forgone the look of austere, worldly chic that she had worn when he had last seen her at Ohtori in favor of an outfit utterly innocuous in its lacy, frilly girlishness.
For a moment, he considered moving on without stopping, pretending he's never seen her, and letting the both of them out of the whole mess. But the meeting was perfectly innocent, wasn't it? Kanae only wanted to talk. It was absurd for a man to lock his wife in a walled garden and insist that she never speak to anyone older than seventeen. Especially in this day and age.
It was worse, he thought, if that man never talked with his wife himself. And if that man was Ohtori Akio, then an anachronistic sense of propriety became a cruel, hollow mockery thereof.
So, summoning up as much confidence as he could manage, Saionji approached Kanae and greeted her in a friendly manner.
"I- I'm so glad you came!" she replied, with a pained smile. "For a minute, I was worried that you'd forgotten, or..."
"I'm terribly sorry that I caused you such displeasure."
"It's nothing, please! I—" she stopped abruptly, bringing one hand to cover her lips, then slowly lowering it. "It's nothing."
Saionji was fairly certain that she'd been about to say that she was used to being forgotten or left, and the thought of such mistreatment fueled his anger towards Akio.
The two of them were seated, and struggled to make polite conversation. Kanae stared at her hands folded in her laps while Saionji glared at nothing in particular. After a time, they parted, Kanae thanking him profusely, quite flustered, and Saionji assuring her that it was nothing.
When Saionji got home, Touga eyed him suspiciously.
"Where have you been, old man?" he asked.
But Saionji refused to tell him anything.