Treat

By late morning the office had loosened — the keys slowing, a chair creaking somewhere, the long tables settling into the lull before lunch.

Across from Misako, the young woman sat half-hidden behind her own work. She kept her documents stacked like a wall between them: clear plastic folders piled into a little mountain, case files squared at the edges. To say anything to Misako she had to lean and look over the top of it.

She looked over it now — broad-shouldered, her short hair pushed back. "I've got no motivation these days," she said, bright. "What's a person supposed to do about that?"

It was the kind of thing you said as a joke. It landed about half a beat past the joke, and then she laughed, which closed it again.

"Something sweet?" Misako asked.

"Nah."

"Something sharp, then."

The young woman considered the mountain, or something past it. "...I could go for that, maybe."

Misako stood. "I'll go get something."

The convenience store was around the corner, down the street. She was back before the noon chime.

What she set out on the desks were fruit jellies — small ones, the size of a fingertip, each twisted shut in cellophane with a little gold tie. Three sharp flavors, three colors: acerola, kabosu, lemon, all of them on the tart side of sweet. She gave a handful to the young woman and the same to the two beside her.

"Aw — you didn't have to —" the young woman said, too loud, the way she said most things, already pulling at a gold tie. The little wrappers caught the light across the three desks.

The girl worked too hard, was the thing. It had been a few hundred yen. Misako hadn't meant to spend it on anything in particular.

She went back to her seat. She'd bought herself a coffee and nothing else — the cheap konbini kind, black, already going lukewarm in its paper cup. On the other desks the bright colors glinted. On hers, the plain cup.

The treat had been for them. Hers was the coffee, and it came out about even.