The knife hit the cutting board at 4:47 PM.
Sakura didn't need to check the clock, for she knew the rhythm of Neko Ramen better than her own pulse. Chop, slice, scrape. Green onions fell into neat rows while bamboo shoots glistened with oil, and the counter, dark wood polished smooth by thirty years of elbows and raincoats, had stained dark where a thousand bowls had rested.
At 4:47, the afternoon rush began with the salarymen who worked the early shift, the university students cutting class, and the old woman from down the street who always ordered extra menma and pretended not to notice when Sakura's grandmother slipped her an extra slice of chashu for free.
At 4:47, the shop came alive.
"Oi, Sakura-chan!" Mr. Tanaka from the fish shop waved through the steam, his cap damp from the drizzle outside as he smelled of salt and ice and the sea. "My usual?"
"Your usual," she confirmed, grabbing a bowl for extra garlic and firm noodles. The man had ordered the same bowl for fifteen years. His wife had left him, his daughter had moved to Osaka, but the ramen stayed the same. "How's the knee?"
"Rain coming," he flashed a gap-toothed grin. "At my age, the body's a better weather forecast than NHK."
She laughed, as she always laughed, because the customers expected it. Tanaka Sakura, the cheerful daughter of Neko Ramen, always ready with a smile and always quick with a kind word. The role fit like her grandmother's apron, comfortable and familiar, a little frayed at the edges.
Just one year.
The thought slipped in uninvited, just to see, just to try. If she didn't get in, it was fine. If she did...
Her knife slipped.
It didn't cut her, for she had handled steel too long for that, but the rhythm shattered as the blade clattered against the wood and a single green onion rolled onto the floor.
"Sakura?" Her mother's voice came from the kitchen doorway, concern wrapped in love wrapped in the particular exhaustion of someone who had been working since 5 AM. "You okay?"
"Fine, Mama," the smile snapped back into place, automatic as breathing. "Just thinking."
Her mother's eyes lingered, for she saw too much as she always did, but she only nodded the way she had learned to do when Sakura was fifteen and wanted to dye her hair blonde, when Sakura was eighteen and wanted to study in Tokyo, when Sakura was twenty-two and still here, still helping, still home.
Dinner service ended at nine, cleanup continued until ten, and then the family gathered at the small table in the back surrounded by boxes of noodles and jars of tare, eating the meal they had been serving to strangers all day.
Her father sat at the head, grayer now and slower but still the strongest person Sakura had ever known. He had built this place with his hands, held it together through the recession, through his heart attack, through everything. The shop was his body made manifest, weathered and imperfect but still standing.
"Sakura." Not a question but a statement. He knew, of course he knew, for fathers always knew.
She put down her chopsticks, and the table suddenly felt smaller. Her mother's hand found her father's while her brother, three years younger and still living at home, still figuring out his own path, stared at his bowl like it held the secrets of the universe.
"The assignee program," the words tasted like copper. "In Tokyo. I got in."
Silence followed, the kind that has weight, that presses against your chest, that makes you understand why people fill empty spaces with words.
Her mother's eyes glistened while her father's face was impossible to read. Her brother's shoulders tightened the way they did when he was trying not to feel something.
"One year," Sakura added quickly, too quickly. "Just one year. Then I'll come back, and I will figure it out from there."
"No."
Her father's voice was quiet and final.
Sakura's heart stopped.
"If you go," he continued slowly, "you don't come back planning to leave again. You go to stay. Or you don't go at all."
"Mama..."
Her mother shook her head, not in refusal but in agreement with her husband as always, after twenty-five years. "He's right, Sakura. The shop will be here, and we will be here. But if you go with one foot out the door, you will never really be there, and you will never really come home."
Home.
The word echoed in the steam-stained air. Home was this table, home was her grandmother's recipe book handwritten and stained with decades of use, home was Mr. Tanaka's gap-toothed grin and the old woman's extra menma and the rhythm of a knife against a cutting board at 4:47 PM.
But home was also something else, something she had never named. A restlessness that woke her at 3 AM, a hunger that noodles couldn't satisfy, a voice that whispered late at night. Is this it? Is this all?
Her brother finally looked up and met her eyes, and for a moment he was the older one, the wiser one, the one who saw her clearly.
"You should go, Onee-chan."
"Satoshi..."
"You have been dying to leave since we were kids." He smiled, small and sad and true. "I have always known. We all have."
Her mother was crying now, quietly the way she did everything. Her father's hand covered hers, and Sakura sat at the table where she had eaten ten thousand meals, surrounded by the people who had made her, and felt the world tilt.
"One year," she whispered, a promise and a question and a plea.
Her father nodded once. "One year. And then you decide."
Later, alone in her room, Sakura stood over her suitcase.
Half empty, she had packed and unpacked three times. Her clothes were easy, for Tokyo was cold and she would need layers.
The food blog was still open on her laptop, the one she had started secretly and nervously, telling no one. Three hundred followers left comments from strangers who had tried her recipes, including a woman in Osaka who had written, "I made your grandmother's tonkotsu for my husband on our anniversary. He cried. Thank you."
Sakura hadn't told her family about the blog, hadn't told anyone. It felt too much like a confession, too much like admitting that the shop wasn't enough, that she wasn't enough, that there was a version of herself she hadn't yet become.
The application form for the assignee program was still open in another tab, unsent. She had filled it out at 2 AM three months ago in a fever of loneliness and hope, never really believing...
But here was the acceptance letter, here was the train ticket, here was the future knocking.
Just one year.
She closed the suitcase without looking inside, without letting herself think about what she was leaving or what she might find.
"Just one year," she whispered to the empty room. "Then home."
But even as she said it, the laptop screen flickered and a new notification popped up over the blog dashboard. An email with the subject line: Shin Zaibatsu Housing Assignment.
She clicked it open.
*Welcome to the Crystal Tower. Your unit is ready. Please note: Building security is monitored 24/7. Some areas are restricted. Do not wander.*
Do not wander.
A chill crawled up her spine as she looked at the ticket in her hand. The train left at 6 AM, and there was no turning back now.
She turned off the light, and the darkness smelled like garlic and old wood. For the last time in a long time, it smelled like goodbye.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand from an unknown number.
Welcome to Tokyo, Tanaka-san. Don't be late.
Sakura stared at the screen as her heart hammered against her ribs.
Who knew she was coming?