Friday of the following week, eight at night.
Fujita's small white pickup pulled up in the lane in front of the house.
"Evening. Good work today."
"You too."
"Employee, in driver mode."
The pickup left the residential streets and turned onto a back street behind a shopping arcade a little way off.
At the far end of the lane stood an old two-story wooden building.
Above the first-floor entrance hung a single sign, small, of black metal.
Bar Reposé
"It's a bar we renovated. Belongs to someone we know."
From the driver's seat, Fujita craned his neck to look toward the sign.
"Apparently this was the old boss's last job before he passed. The boss told us to look after it."
"..."
She got out of the pickup.
From beyond the sliding door of the entrance, the sound of a record leaked out low.
When she slid the door open, a dim counter stretched away toward the back.
On the shelves behind the counter stood a long row of bottles of spirits, all different shapes and colors.
In a seat about halfway down the counter, Toru sat alone, in a shirt that was not his navy work uniform.
A beige shirt, a little long. The sleeves were rolled carelessly above the elbows. On the inside of his forearm ran two or three faint scratches, likely from a site.
"Good work today."
"Good work today, sir."
"Fujita, thank you."
"No problem. I'll be going, then."
Outside the sliding door, Fujita bowed his head slightly, then went back to the pickup.
"Well then, Mitsuki. Shall we?"
Behind the counter stood a bartender of about fifty.
A black bow tie. A white shirt. His bangs were combed back neatly.
"Good evening. You must be Takanashi's companion."
"Yes."
"The companion of Takanashi, the third-generation head, who has looked after this building since his father's day. —You are most welcome. What may I get you to drink?"
Toru pointed lightly to the highest shelf at the back.
"Single malt. The usual."
"Certainly."
"Sakura, you're not much of a drinker, right?"
"No. Do you have anything weak?"
The bartender took down a bottle from the left side of the shelf.
"I'll mix a light gin with grapefruit juice."
"Please."
In front of Toru, just a spoonful of amber liquid was poured into a large, round glass.
In front of Mitsuki, a small glass of pale yellow, a little slimmer than a highball.
The two of them touched their glasses lightly.
The sound of the glass meeting was low and short, and it melted at once into the dim air over the counter.
"Cheers!"
For a while, neither of them said anything.
Behind the counter, the bartender was polishing a glass for another customer.
The low sound of the record flowed slowly through the dim air.
"How have things been at Ichotei lately?"
"Busy. The article about the contest is still having an effect."
"The people at my company say they want to go eat there again."
"They're welcome."
"I'll send them."
"Okay."
Toru took a little of the amber liquid into his mouth.
He rolled it on his tongue for a while, then let it slowly down his throat.
The bartender quietly returned the glass he had been polishing to the shelf and turned back toward them.
"Tonight's single malt is from an island in the north, with a good touch of the sea."
"Yes."
"It draws out the best of the cask before the peat becomes too strong."
"It's a good one."
"Thank you."
The bartender met Mitsuki's eyes briefly, too.
"May I bore your companion with a story?"
"A boring story?"
"About how whisky is made."
"Please."
"With whisky, you heat a kind of porridge of barley, gather only the steam that rises from it, cool it again, and make it into liquid."
"Only the steam."
"If you were to drink the porridge itself, you'd get the cloudiness of the barley, the off-flavors, all of it. In the steam, only the good part of it rises, made light. That is laid down in casks for ten, twenty years, and only then does it become something you can drink."
"...Twenty years."
"We call that distillation."
The bartender ran his hand lightly over a glass on the shelf once more, then withdrew to the back of the counter.
On the counter, only two glasses remained—the amber one and the pale yellow one.
Toru turned his glass lightly on the counter.
The amber inside the turning glass slowly caught one of the counter's indirect lights.
"'Distillation.' I like that word."
"The alcohol kind?"
"The alcohol kind, and the people kind."
"The people kind?"
"The people kind."
For a while, Mitsuki looked at the pale yellow in her glass.
Then she set the glass down again.
"By the way, can I ask about how you stopped going to school in your second year of middle school?"
"Yes."
Toru took another sip of the amber in his glass.
"In the winter of my second year, I talked to an AI every day, from morning till night. That was right around when AI services were starting to take off in the world. The accuracy was still low. But for me, it was a shock."
"A shock."
"No matter how many times I asked the same thing, it never complained once, and it taught me at my level. The teachers at school weren't bad people. They were good teachers, probably. But only one teacher's head's worth ever passed over to me."
Toru let his eyes run lightly over the row of bottles on the shelves behind the counter.
"An AI is a head that has eaten all the heads of all the teachers in the world, so if you talk to it every day, all kinds of teachers' heads gather in you, little by little. —In AI terminology, that's called distillation. I learned that word from the AI, too."
"One morning, I realized. The amount I was learning from the AI was clearly getting into my head more than the amount I was learning from my teachers at school."
Toru laughed lightly. He rolled the amber from his glass briefly on his tongue, then went on.
"So that night, I went home, bowed my head to my parents, and they let me quit. Normally I listen to what people say, AI included, but when I'm certain something isn't right, I'm the type to trust myself. Thanks to that, my final level of education is elementary school."
"Elementary school."
"Elementary school graduate."
"When I quit middle school, my father didn't speak to me for three days. On the fourth day, he gave in—'If you've decided.' —He died when I was twenty, and I took over the construction company. Everyone at the company is someone who didn't go to school, or couldn't, or couldn't keep going. The way of working I wanted when I quit middle school, I'm passing on to the people who work for me now."
On the counter, the pale yellow in Mitsuki's glass had gone down by about half.
By that much, the color of the counter lamp looked to have sunk low toward the bottom of the glass.
"Sakura, why did you become a cook?"
Toru turned his gaze back to her as he set down his glass.
For a while, Mitsuki looked at the glass with only a little pale yellow left in it.
"My dad was an AI researcher. He died five years ago."
"Oh, I see."
"Mm. Even after he died, an AI stayed behind in his study."
"...What?"
"It's my father's AI."
Toru tilted his head slightly.
It was not the kind of tilt Kiryu gave, a tilt for appraisal.
It was the tilt of a listener, letting what had just fallen to him pass once all the way into the back of his ears.
"Oh, that's amazing. That's wonderful."
"Huh? Amazing?"
"So you were distilled from your father as you grew up, too, Sakura."
At the bottom of Mitsuki's glass, one last mouthful of pale yellow remained.
She looked at that mouthful for a while.
The counter's indirect lighting faintly caught the yellow at the bottom of the glass.
In her mind, the blue light through the gap in the study door at home settled, once, over that yellow.
The amber and the blue light were part of the same distillation.
"...Mm. Maybe so."
"That's wonderful. I'd like to meet him sometime."
The glasses on the counter both had only a little left at the bottom.
Toru turned his glass lightly on the counter, then set it down again.
"Sakura. I like your cooking. And I like you, as a person."
"Mm."
"Would you go out with me?"
"..."
"I'm sorry this is so sudden. It's hard to know how to answer, isn't it. If you turn me down, please don't worry about it."
Mitsuki looked at the bottom of the pale yellow glass again.
She had the feeling that something at the very bottom of four years of silence was slowly rising up.
"I won't turn you down."
"Oh."
"I won't turn you down."
"Are you sure?"
"Mm. I'm sure."
"Thank you. I'm incredibly happy right now."
Toru lowered his head slightly toward the counter.
For a while, the lowered head did not come up.
Behind the counter, without a sound, the bartender brought out another bottle from a different shelf.
"Allow me to make something to celebrate."
"Oh, thank you. Please."
"I understand your companion isn't much of a drinker."
"I'm not."
"Then I'll make it light."
"Please."
Into new glasses, pale orange liquid was poured, enough for two.
"About as strong as a champagne cocktail."
"Thank you."
"The spirit in it is a twelve-year-old from the neighboring island. A bottle I've been keeping on behalf of Mr. Takanashi's father."
For a while, Toru looked silently at the bartender behind the counter.
The bartender bowed his head slightly and withdrew toward the shelves at the back.
Toru wrapped both hands lightly around the glass in front of him.
"My father was always prepared. Even though he got so angry when I said I was quitting middle school. Even though he gave in with 'If you've decided.' In the end, it seems he knew a night like this would come someday."
"He knew."
"Looks like it."
The two of them touched glasses lightly once more.
The sound of the glass meeting was low and short, and it melted again into the dim air.
"Sakura. I have to tell your father. I haven't met your father yet. When can I come and introduce myself?"
"Next Saturday evening. Want to come over?"
"I'll come."
"My dad gives long lectures. Can you listen all the way to the end?"
"All the way to the end."
In the two glasses on the counter, the pale orange slowly went down by two sips.
The low sound of the record still flowed slowly through the dim air over the counter.