Thursday.
Nizuo rang two days ago, straight after I'd locked up the shop.
"Facial," she said, no hello first. "I know someone. My shout, don't argue."
I laughed. In the three weeks since we found each other again, it's always been the same café, the same window table. This was the first time she'd asked me to go somewhere instead of turning up with something in her bag.
"Where?"
"Chatswood. Above the bakery on the main street. Second floor, easy to miss the door. Mei's studio — we go back a while."
Mei buzzed us in before Nizuo even reached the intercom, like she'd been watching for us.
The basic facial went the way I imagined a facial would go. Warm cloths. A cleanser. Something cool that smelled faintly of cucumber. I lay there with my eyes closed and let my mind go quiet for the first time all week.
I thought that was the end of it.
Then I heard Nizuo's voice near the door. "Same as always, Mei?"
"Same as always."
I opened my eyes in time to see her unzip a small case she'd carried in without me noticing — set down quietly in the corner when we arrived, almost forgotten until now. Inside, a compact white device. Beside it, a bottle labelled ageLOC Body Serum.
"WellSpa," she said, catching me looking. "Every time I come here, I get Mei to do my neck and back. At home it's usually just my arms and stomach — two or three times a week, whenever I remember."
Mei worked on Nizuo first — slow, even passes along her neck and down between her shoulder blades, the serum going in with a faint warmth I could feel just standing near it. Nizuo's eyes closed. Her whole face changed, the way it does when someone finally stops holding something they didn't know they were holding.
"Your turn," she said afterwards, already sitting up.
I almost said no. It felt like something meant for her, not for a guest.
But Mei was already reaching for a fresh towel, and Nizuo was watching me with that patient look she gets when she already knows what I'm about to say before I say it.
I lay back down.
The warmth came first. Then a kind of pulling, gentle, along the back of my neck, down between my shoulders — somewhere I hadn't realised I'd been carrying weeks of tension.
I've had massages before. The cheap ones near the station. The expensive ones as birthday treats. This wasn't quite either.
It felt closer to being unwound than being rubbed.
Nobody said much the whole time. Just Mei's hands, the small hum of the device, and the two of us in a quiet room above a bakery on a Thursday afternoon.
Afterwards, sitting up, my shoulders felt like they belonged to someone who'd slept properly for once.
"Well?" Nizuo asked.
"I don't know how to describe it," I said, and meant it.
She just nodded, like that was the right answer.
On our way out, Nizuo stopped at the front desk and pulled a few bottles from her bag, setting them down in front of Mei.
"These are the ones you ordered," she said.
Mei nodded, barely looking up, and slid them straight into a drawer under the counter — a small, practiced motion, like something they did every few weeks without needing to discuss it.
I didn't ask what was in the bottles. Or how long they'd been doing this. Or how many other people Nizuo did this for.
I wanted to. The questions were right there.
I just didn't ask them yet.
We walked back down past the bakery, the smell of warm sugar still in the stairwell, and I carried the questions home with me instead — unopened, the same way I'd carried the sachet in the cup holder weeks before.