Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop

Chapter 1

Cancer’s Cheese Fondue and Sagittarius’s Candy Apples

Satomi Ichihara


“Oh, jeez . . .”

I was sitting in the corner of our bustling office with my phone in my hand, sighing. I checked my calendar and realized we were already in December. I swear autumn had only just begun.

“At this rate, Christmas is going to be here in a flash,” I grumbled, complaining about what I should do. The young woman sitting at the desk next to mine craned her neck toward me.

“What’s wrong? Did you get another annoying project?” she asked, looking concerned.

Her name was Koyuki Suzumiya. She was a young temp brought onto my team to help out during this fiscal year. I was impressed by how she was always looking out for the people around her.

“Thanks for asking, Koyuki, but it’s not work. It’s personal,” I said.

She grinned, seeming a bit relieved. “It is almost Christmas. I bet you’re getting buried in date invites, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Oh my gosh, Koyuki, no. Well, you’re right that it’s an invitation for a Christmas date, but it’s from my boyfriend.”

My eyes dropped to my phone, which now sat on my desk. My boyfriend’s message was still on the screen:

Satomi, I really want to spend Christmas Eve with you this year. Do you think you can make time? I don’t care how late you get off work, I’ll wait.

Satomi was, of course, me. And it seemed Koyuki had seen the message, too. “It’s always busy on Christmas Eve in this line of work. I know he wants to see you, but some things are just impossible . . .”

I sighed and agreed. For someone in charge of events for an advertising agency, Christmas Eve was just another workday, not a day to spend with my boyfriend as it was for everyone else in Japan. He was well aware of that, too.

“He did say he doesn’t care how late you get off work, though. Maybe you can manage something?” said Koyuki.

“Yeah, that is true, of course . . .”

I felt an unwavering determination in his message.

We’d started dating nearly seven years ago, during university. But in all that time, he’d never said anything like “Satomi, I really want to spend Christmas Eve with you this year” or “I don’t care how late you get off work, I’ll wait.”

He was going to propose.

My head dropped into my hands. Koyuki looked at me with confusion as I told her my suspicion.

“Why is that a problem? Most people would be happy their long-term boyfriend was going to propose on Christmas Eve.”

“I don’t want to get married yet. I’m too comfortable with my current lifestyle.”

I turned around and stared out the window. Our office was connected to Shibuya Station, and my apartment was in Ebisu, about a twenty-minute walk away. I had a convenient, picture-perfect life in which I could even cycle to work on sunny days.

“Your boyfriend,” said Koyuki. “Didn’t you meet when you were both at the University of Tsukuba?”

“Yeah. He’s a lecturer there now.”

“That’s amazing,” she said, clutching her hands together in excitement.

“But that’s the problem . . .”

Tsukuba, in Ibaraki Prefecture, was my hometown. I had studied at the university there. When people talked about that university, it was always about how there were a lot of couples who lived together as students or got married after graduation. Some even went so far as to say, “The countryside is boring and there is nothing to do, so people just get married.” But it’s surprisingly untrue. Ibaraki always ranks low on lists of the most desirable prefectures, but it’s actually a nice place to live.

My brother’s wife comes from Kamakura and even she says that the city is ideal for her life. And out of all the towns in Ibaraki, Tsukuba is one of the most academic. It has lots of research facilities run by large companies. The city itself is very pretty, with spacious parks as well as fancy international cafés and shops. In terms of the right environment for raising children, nothing beats Tsukuba. That’s why so many people decided they liked it enough to settle down there.

But I was still in love with Tokyo. Tsukuba just lacked something for me. My boyfriend wasn’t going to quit his job at the university, either. That meant that if I wanted to keep working at mine, I’d have to commute to Shibuya from Tsukuba. Though my company had a branch office in Tsukuba and they’d most likely let me transfer there if I requested it. It was difficult to transfer from a branch to the main office, but easy to go the other way.

My parents would be happy, too, because I’d be closer to them. But I’d worked so hard for the life I had now. Maybe it was an old-fashioned value from the time of the bubble economy in the TV programs I watched, but I’d always admired the woman working hard in Tokyo. It wasn’t something I wanted to let go of.

“Well, you don’t have to think about transferring right away,” said Koyuki. “What if you commute for a little while to start with and think about it later? Doesn’t Tsukuba have the Press train or whatever?”

“Express. It’s the Tsukuba Express.”

“Yeah, that. I’m pretty sure it only takes forty-five minutes to get from Tsukuba to Akihabara on that.”

“Still . . .” I said with a half-smile.

“Besides,” continued Koyuki, “you could always consider living separately.”

I shook my head. “If we’re going to be living separately, I don’t see the point in forcing the relationship to be something other than what it is now.”

“I guess not,” she said. “Is your boyfriend originally from Tsukuba?”

“His family is from Tokyo, but he hates how jumbled and confused Tokyo feels. He went out of his way to choose Tsukuba. He’s the polar opposite of me.”

He was always saying “I like cities like this, with lots of green,” but I’d always assumed he’d find a job in Tokyo after graduation. I never expected him to stay at the university. . . . But that was just the sort of person he was. Laid-back, kind, warm. I could see how the atmosphere of Tokyo just didn’t suit him.

And I honestly did love him. I treasured the time I spent with him. I didn’t want to marry him, but I also definitely didn’t want to break up with him. If I turned down his proposal, though, we might very well end up separating.

And that was why I said, “This is a mess . . .”

I was potentially standing at a fork in the road, one where I had to choose between love and career.

My phone suddenly vibrated on the desk, causing me to jump. It was probably him. Afraid, I checked the screen to find the caller was Junko Ichihara.

My sister-in-law.

“She doesn’t often call me . . .” I murmured. The two of us were as close as real sisters and we texted regularly, but she rarely rang me.

I wonder why she’s calling?

I picked up my phone and stood up from my desk to go out into the hallway. “Hi, Junko. How are things?”

“Satomi, that event you planned was so much fun. Thank you for putting it together.” That was the first thing she said.

“Oh, you mean the event at the Science Expo Memorial Park. I heard you adopted a dog.”

“Yeah. But there’s a bit of a long process, so she hasn’t come home with us yet. We’ll be able to bring her home on Christmas Eve. Ayu’s so happy.”

“You didn’t go out of your way to adopt her just because it was an event I put together, did you?” I asked, feeling apologetic, but Junko cheerily said no.

“I think it was fate. I needed to thank you.”

“Oh, no. You don’t have to thank me. So, what made you call?”

“Right, so, after the adoption event, we stopped by Iias, and there . . .”

Iias was a large shopping center in Tsukuba. It was as big as a town in and of itself, with so many different shops it was hard to imagine there might be anything you couldn’t buy there. During my days at university I used to go there regularly. Actually, it was still somewhere I had to go to every time I went home to visit the family.

“. . . I saw Ryo at the jewelry store staring at the rings and I called out to him before I could stop myself. He gave some excuse about looking for a Christmas present for you.”

Ryo was my boyfriend. My shoulders heaved with a sigh of frustration as I listened to Junko babble excitedly. If he was planning some wonderful surprise, then word like this from a relative would ruin it. Junko was normally so thoughtful. It didn’t seem like her to spoil a surprise. . . .