If you are available and willing to participate, kindly reply to this email at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely, K. Watanabe
I cross checkmy master planner before responding.
Dear Watanabe-San,
Many thanks for your kind email. I’ve just checked the dates against my planner, and it looks as if I’ll be able to take all three meetings. Please go ahead and schedule me.
If something changes, I’ll drop an email to your office.
Best,
Kaori, the Princess Sorahino
Alice has also sent a request.
Dear Kaori,
Can’t wait to hear about your latest outing with Theo the next time we chat. Just working on the upcoming United Voices schedule for quarter fourand wanted to see if I might be able to secure you for our virtual holiday party in December. I don’t have a date set yet, but I was looking at the 14th or 21st of the month.
Please let me know your thoughts when you can.
Yours,
Alice
I reply:
Dear Alice,
I will! It’s one of those stories that I need to tell you about over video chat instead of text.
As for the holiday party, I’d prefer 14 Dec, if possible. I’ll be traveling home to Orlando on 20 Dec and I’d very much like to celebrate the holidays with your Kindness Ambassadors.
Best,
Kaori
I hit send onthe last reply, watching the status bar vanish with a soft whoosh.
It’s a strange juxtaposition. One minute I’m coordinating with the Japanese Consulate as a subject-matter expert on studying abroad, and the next I’m checking dates for Alice’s charity holiday party. My calendar is a patchwork of royal duties and personal ties, a neatly filed grid that suggests I have everything under control. Which I do, most of the time.
But today, the exhaustion is catching up with me. Iclose my laptop and turn toward my dual-monitor workstation, taking a deep breath. Juggling two entirely different lives—Princess Sorahino and Kaori the junior engineer—isn’t easy. I know it’s part of the package, but still. Sometimes I wish I could separate the two. Even for a day.
That’s why I need to take moments like this for myself. I turn my focus to my workstation, ready to spend the next few hours losing myself in somethingIwant to do—playing with more coaster designs.
On Monday morning,it’s back to reality. I spend the first hour of the day buried in restraint-bar specifications for a new midsized steel-hybrid coaster. It’s still in early development, so my assignment this week is to double-check the shoulder restraint measurements by making sure the lock-points are as safe for a ninety-pound kid as they are for a six-foot adult.
It’s tedious work, the kind I can usually lose myself in for hours. But today, the CAD models aren’t enough to drown out the noise in my head. No matter how many wireframes I open, my thoughts keep drifting back to the weekend.
It’s ridiculous how easily Theo has managed to lodge himself in the back of my brain. I’ll be staring at a pivot point, and suddenly I can hear the exact vibration of his laugh through the phone’s speaker. I’m effectively haunted by a man five time zones away.
I take a long, slightly desperate sip of coffee and try to force my eyes back to the monitor, focusing on the safety tolerances. I just need to get through this one spreadsheet. I just need to?—
There’s a soft knock on my cubicle. I twist around.
“Morning,” Anya says, stepping inside. She’s holding a slim folder and her ever-present tablet, looking alert and unfairly put together, far more than I feel. And she’s the one who’s spent the weekend traveling. “Do you have a minute?”
