Her phone buzzed.
It was a message from a friend asking whether she had met anyone interesting yet.
Yuki looked at the screen, sighed, and turned the phone facedown.
“An excellent decision,” a voice said nearby.
She looked up.
An older man stood several feet away, holding a bottle of lemonade. He had silver hair, a slightly sunburned nose, and the relaxed expression of someone who had stopped trying to impress strangers decades earlier.
“Sorry?” Yuki asked.
He pointed toward her phone.
“Turning that thing over. One of humanity’s greatest achievements. We invented
a device that allows everyone to contact us at any moment, then spend our lives trying to escape it.”
Yuki stared at him for a second before laughing.
The man seemed pleased with himself.
“I’m Kenji,” he said. “Retired professor, occasional gardener, and a man who has recently discovered that retirement does not automatically make tomatoes cooperate.”
