“Yuki,” she replied.
He nodded toward the empty space a short distance away.
“Would you mind if I sat there? I promise not to lecture you about physics unless you specifically request it.”
“Are you a physics professor?”
“Retired. Which means I can tell people I’m an expert and blame the university if I’m wrong.”
She laughed again, more naturally this time.
Kenji sat down, leaving enough distance between them to make it clear that he was not trying to intrude. He opened his lemonade and offered her the second bottle he had
brought.
At first, their conversation stayed light. They talked about the weather, the beach, and the small restaurants nearby. Kenji made fun of his own terrible sense of direction, explaining that he could once calculate the trajectory of a moving object but still occasionally become lost on the way to a supermarket.
Then, without either of them quite realizing how it happened, the conversation became more personal.
