"lkkkklkkkmj", thought Haruka to herself. She was no stranger to all-nighters, she knew the rules. But with last night and those late overnight working hours, she was exhausted past the limit. Yet there she was, on an arranged date, looking perfect, except even the strongest japanese concealer couldn't fully conceal the deep circles under her eyes. She stayed up most of the night, making sure the chauffeur took both Mr CEO and Prime Minister to their houses. She was also organising a hospital for the unexpected guest, and trying to find out who he actually was. From his grand entrance she saw that he was probably some foreigner, with blonde hair of his, and his three-day stubble.
As for her date, she had no idea who the guy was, even though her mother spent half an hour rambling about him, and he spent a good half an hour rambling about himself. All she could tell was that he was not too tall with a face with a likeness of background noise, his father was some high manager in some important corporation, and he had quite a list of what women should be like. She wanted to go home, but the restaurant he took her to had pretty tasty food, so she noted the name and location in her app, to come here again. And just when she was waging a decision for a second coffee in her mind, she heard a question:
"You ate quite a lot, didn't you? That was not really ladylike", he scrunched up his nose in distaste and gently shook his head..
"Ooooh, it's so on" - thought Haruka. She was thinking she would just politely say goodbye and never see him again. And then her phone buzzed, and she saw it was her work. This meant that either this foreigner woke up in hospital or The Prime Minister woke up in his home, and demanded her attention. She needed at least 15 minutes to take care of it, but at the same time it was such a great opportunity to unload a little.
"And you have no ambition, no drive to change this world for better, yet you come with a list of demands, and the career you have to tell most about is your fathers. No wonder you resort to arranged marriage. I'm done here." She abruptly stood up and left. This guy looked at her in disbelief.
"You're not going to even pay your part of the bill?" he shouted after Haruka.
Her heels clicked faster.
Haruka looked at her phone. It was a message from the hospital that the foreigner woke up and was a little confused. She ran to the hospital without delay. On the way, she checked what her sources had found out about that guy. Apparently, he was from Denmark, he was learning japanese in one of those schools that took people for study visas, from three months to a year, and he was close to finishing, which explained why he was talking Japanese. Besides that, he looked like an upstanding citizen, being some sort of government consultant in Denmark, maybe with exception of one weird trending tiktok. Most important thing, she needed to find out if he was dangerous - as the Prime Minister had a different face than the one he showed to the media, and he tended to be quite sentimental and idealistic, it was quite probable that he would believe that guy was actually summoned by this silly ritual.
This hospital smelled of medicine, but at the same time, there was this once a year restlessness felt in the air - sakura trees were meant to go in bloom any day now, even if it was earlier than usual, and with trees outside of the hospital, you could feel the impatience of both doctors and patients. In times like this it was nice being a government official - people didn't really bother her much, she could ask questions, she could walk where she wanted to - no questions asked. Without delay, she went to the hospital room the foreigner was in.
For a second she thought she went into some sort of movie set of hospital advertisements; He was looking through the window with such a soft impression you could not have guessed he could make a grand entrance. His light hair that had given up on lying flat and the only thing that was attaching him to this reality was the IV line and two surprisingly muscular forearms gripping the hospital blanket.
She cleared her throat to get his attention.
Jens looked at the woman in an elegant two piece outfit. She looked flawless, and yet, when he looked in her face, he noticed this look in her eyes that he had seen in many people before - constantly tired, but determined to push through that and do their best. It made him a little sad that this look is so… culturally universal.
"Oh, hello", his voice sounded definitely more sober than last night. "Can I help you with anything?"
Haruka felt surprised how polite he sounded. Did she not expect this kind of politeness because he was a man, or a foreigner? Was she distrustful, or just reasonably cautious?
"Let me introduce myself. I'm Haruka Tanikawa and I'm a government official. I need to ask you some questions about yesterday night."
"Oh, of course though I don't remember much. I was on this japanese course and we are encouraged to speak japanese, as I speak to you, so I went to some restaurant of izakaya type, famous for their sake fish. I tried to order that but for some reason, they just gave me alcohol all night long. I even tried to show them, like, sake" - he made some moves with his hands that could, with enough grace, look like fish swimming.
"You meant to say salmon, right?" - she asked.
"Yea, like I told you. Sake".
"Salmon."
"Sake".
She understood something.
"When you say it like saaake it means alcohol. Fish is like sakeee ".
"Oh my god." He covered his face, which quickly became cherry red, with his big hands. "Oh my god…"
"This man can't be an assassin nor a spy", thought Haruka while taking notes on her tablet.
They did stay in silence for a good minute.
"Well, let me ask you some more questions. And tell me if you need water or a break" - started Haruka.
"I-i told you I don't remember much from this night…" Jens started to sound kind of upset.
"Oh, I understand, we will take a security camera recording to check how you ended up there. I need different information, like your name, age, occupation, visa status, this kind of stuff".
"Oh, of course. My name is Jens Soerensen, I'm 31, I am a consultant for work-life wellbeing in Denmark… I mean, now jobless."
"So jobless or consultant?"
"Let me call it between jobs" - his face had barely returned to its usual paleness before it began to blush again. It fascinated Haruka.
"What is even a work-life wellbeing consultant? And why did they fire you?" She was full of curiosity.
"Work-life wellbeing consultant is a person whose responsibility is to care about the wellbeing of all employees in an organisation in order to increase productivity and morale.
"So you make people rest or be happy in order for them to do more work? No wonder they fired you, you make people lazy!"
"Quite on the contrary, they fired me because there was no more work for me. Everything and everyone were working optimally, company profits were higher than anytime in company history, and people were happy. They did not need me anymore" - Jens said with a bitter smile.
She knew about Denmark as much as every other person in Japan, but hearing all that made it seem like he was from another world!
After a short while, she asked him about his contact information. As she got it, and said her goodbyes, she heard another unusual thing:
"Thank you, and I'm sorry I made you work at Sunday"
This kind of apology was the first she heard in her career, though not because she did not work Sundays.
When she came back home, and she felt sweet freedom from her heels, the only thing she wanted to do was just to go to sleep, even when it was 6 PM. But she decided to just take a quick nap, after that she could do her yoga, so she won't be so stiff and do her evening routine.
But after she woke up two hours later, and she looked at her phone, she discovered she had 6 missed calls from her mother.
Which made her shiver in a way arranged marriage could not.