Brooks. Just a little warm in here. She took a sip of water. Her hand trembled and the ice clinked against the glass.
Iris stood at the service station, back straight, hands clasped in front of her apron. From where she stood, she could hear every word, not fragments, not guesses, complete sentences, perfect comprehension. She knew what katazoku meant. She knew the specific contempt baked into the way Nakamura pronounced kudo, the way he flattened the vowel turning a color into a slur.
Six years in Tokyo had taught her many things. How to read a room, how to hold her temper, how to let a man talk until he had buried himself so deep that climbing out was no longer an option. Nakamura was digging fast. She could have stopped him, could have turned around, opened her mouth, and ended it right there.
But a waitress accusing a CEO of racism in Japanese in a restaurant where no one else spoke the language would have been her word against his. Raymond would apologize to the guest, she'd be sent home, maybe fired, and Nakamura would laugh about it on the flight back to Tokyo. No. She needed more.
She needed him to go further, past words, past insults, into something no one could deny. She picked up the dessert menus and walked back toward table nine. He was about to give her exactly what she needed. Iris pushed through the kitchen doors and leaned against the wall behind the dessert station, closed her eyes.
3 seconds. Just three. The stainless steel was cold against her shoulder blades. The sound of the kitchen, sizzling pans, clanging plates, a sous chef cursing at a line cook in Spanish, felt like white noise.
Familiar, safe, a world away from table nine. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. Just through her mouth. 3 seconds.
The way Professor Tanaka had taught her during her first semester at Waseda, when the pressure of studying in a foreign language had kept her awake for three straight nights. Professor Tanaka. She hadn't thought about him in months. But Nakamura's butchered keigo had dragged the memory out like a splinter working its way to the surface.
Waseda University. Shinjuku, Tokyo. She'd arrived at 20, with a scholarship, a suitcase, and exactly $400 in her checking account. She left at 24, with a degree in international relations, a certificate in Japanese-English interpretation, and a fluency that made native speakers do a double take.
Six years in Tokyo. Not as a tourist, not as a study abroad student dipping her toes in the culture for a semester. Six years of riding the Yamanote Line at rush hour, of eating convenience store onigiri for dinner because her scholarship didn't cover meals, of standing in lecture halls and debating trade policy in a language she'd taught herself from YouTube videos in a bedroom in Queens. She'd been good.