Page 3 of Bearly Out Loud

8PM. WEAR THE RED LIPSTICK. WE’RE MANIFESTING.

Manifesting what?

UNSPECIFIED ABUNDANCE.

She set the phone down and stared at her reflection in the booth’s glass walls. Black hair pinned up in a clip that was losing the fight. Yesterday’s mascara smudged beneath her eyes. An oversized NYU sweatshirt that hadn’t seen the outside of this apartment in three years and had a coffee stain in the shape of what Takumi insisted was a dolphin, and she maintained was an inkblot of her deteriorating social life.

Empress Kira would have me beheaded. And honestly? Fair.

TWO

NARI

An hour before leaving, she showered, because civilized humans did that before inflicting themselves on restaurants, and spent twenty minutes choosing an outfit that communicated “I have my life together” to anyone who hadn’t seen the rice cracker situation on the couch. Red lipstick, as mandated. A structured blazer over a silk tank. Statement earrings her mother would approve of. Heels that said:I am a professional woman who dines at places with cloth napkins and does not eat rice crackers over a sink at midnight.

The heels were liars. But convincing ones.

The cab from Tribeca took eleven minutes. Long enough to check email, confirm tomorrow’s session schedule, and spiral briefly about whether she’d given Kira’s final line enough stillness or if she’d pushed too hard.

By the time she hit the sidewalk, she’d decided the take was good, second-guessed that decision, reversed the second-guess, and arrived at the restaurant in a state of professional satisfaction that would last until she listened to the take again at midnight and found three new problems.

The cycle of vocal performance: deliver perfection, identify seventeen flaws, agonize, repeat. Very healthy. Very normal. Therapist says it’s fine.

Her therapist had never said it was fine. Her therapist had used the word “pattern.” Nari had filed that under “accurate but unhelpful.”

The restaurant operatedon the principle that if you needed a sign, you didn’t belong. Low lighting, exposed-beam ceiling, a wine list longer than most screenplays and twice as dramatic. Takumi had secured a corner booth because Takumi treated restaurant reservations the way generals treated supply lines: with aggressive foresight and zero shame about calling four times.

He stood when she approached—designer streetwear, hair freshly styled in the undercut he’d been refining since college, one too many rings on his fingers. The sound wave tattoo on his inner wrist caught the candlelight as he gestured her over with the enthusiasm of a man who’d been alone with a bread basket and his own thoughts for too long.

“You wore the lipstick.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “The universe is aligning.”

“The universe is doing no such thing.” She slid into the booth and reached for the water. “The universe is indifferent to my cosmetic choices. I wore the lipstick because you become unbearable when I don’t, and I lack the energy for a twenty-minute lecture on self-presentation.”

“It was one voice note.”

“Forty-five seconds. I timed it. You referenced astrology, color theory,anda K-drama I haven’t watched.”

“The K-drama was contextually relevant.” He flagged the waiter with the ease of a man who believed waitstaff existed to facilitate his narrative. “Two of the sake I had last time. The Junmai. She’ll pretend to look at the menu, but she’s getting the hamachi.”

Nari opened the menu on principle, scanned it for three seconds, and set it down. “I might have gotten the salmon.”

“You have never once gotten the salmon. You have a longer relationship with hamachi than you’ve had with any man in the last two years, and the hamachi has never disappointed you.”

Harsh. Accurate. The hamachi/man comparison is going in the vault for future deployment.

The sake arrived. They ordered. Takumi launched into a story about a mixing session that had devolved into a philosophical argument about the emotional frequency of C-sharp minor, and Nari let the rhythm of dinner settle around her—the clink of ceramic, the murmur of a restaurant at capacity, Takumi’s voice rising and falling with the cadence of a man who treated every anecdote like a TED Talk with better hair.

She loved this. The noise. A room full of people generating sound without thinking about it—the unconscious symphony of forks and conversation and ice shifting in glasses. Her professional life existed in controlled silence. This was the antidote. Volume without consequence.

“So.” Takumi set down his cup with the deliberate precision of a man about to steer the conversation somewhere she hadn’t agreed to go. “How’s your love life?”

“Nonexistent. By design. Extremely fulfilling. Next topic.”

“That’s not a topic, that’s an exit strategy.”

“It’s efficient. I’m saving us both the twenty-minute postmortem on why I’m single, which will inevitably circle back to my ‘intimidating energy’—” She made air quotes. “—and conclude with you telling me I deserve someone who can matchit, which I agree with, and yet the dating pool in Manhattan remains shallow, tepid, and full of men who think ‘good listener’ means waiting for their turn to talk.”

“You did the entire conversation in one paragraph.”