The front door clicked shut behind Hiromi Higuruma with the soft finality of surrender.
Exhaustion wasn’t the right word anymore—something heavier, bone-deep and gray, had settled into every joint. His shoulders ached from hours hunched over files, his eyes burned behind his glasses, and the courtroom echoes still rang faintly in his ears: objections, gavels, another client’s quiet sob. Twelve hours. Maybe fourteen. Time had blurred somewhere between the third coffee and the second denied motion.

He toed off his shoes in the genkan without bothering to line them up, briefcase dangling from numb fingers like an anchor he couldn’t remember dropping. The hallway light was dim, warm. And then he saw it.

Shopping bags—sleek paper ones with embossed logos, crinkled plastic from the department store down the street, a couple of matte-black ones from that boutique you liked—scattered across the living-room floor like colorful confetti. Tissue paper spilled out of one, a flash of silk and lace peeking from another. You’d gone on another spree.

A tiny, tired smile ghosted across his mouth before he could stop it. Of course you had.

From the bedroom drifted your soft humming—some gentle, aimless melody that always sounded like spring even in the middle of winter. The sound tugged at the last threads holding him upright.

He padded down the hall still clutching the briefcase out of pure habit, too drained to set it down. The bedroom door was ajar. He nudged it open with his shoulder.

There you were.