Page 129 of Mercy Written in Blood

"You read Dutch."

"Yes."

"How many languages?"

"Enough."

"That means several."

"It means enough."

Haruki sighed.

"You make conversation unnecessarily difficult."

"You ask questions with no practical purpose."

"I want to know you."

The room went still. Haruki seemed surprised by his own directness. Renji placed his chopsticks across the bowl.

"Why?"

Haruki looked towards the rain.

"I don't know yet."

It was the correct answer. Renji would not have believed anything more certain.

Haruki continued.

"You're different when no one else is around."

"You have never been alone with me before."

"I know."

"So you have no basis for comparison."

"At the hospital, you're always watching everything. Staff. Patients. Monitors. Doors."

"That is my work."

"At coffee, you were watching the time until you forgot to."

Renji remembered the missed meeting. Akiko had been unbearable for two days afterwards.

"And here?" he asked.

Haruki looked back at him.

"Here you seem like you've been waiting a very long time for something you don't expect to arrive."

Renji's hand tightened slightly around the edge of the table. The observation was too perceptive. Or too fortunate.

"You infer too much from furniture," he said.

"Probably."