the old man said as if reconfirming the situation. Then he set his glass on the desktop with a little thump. “This has to be some kind of special convergence, don’t you think?”
Not quite convinced, she managed a nod.
“Which is why,” he said, touching the knot of his withered-leaf-colored necktie, “I feel it is important for me to give you a birthday present. A special birthday calls for a special commemorative gift.”
Flustered, she shook her head and said, “No, please, sir, don’t give it a second thought. All I did was bring your meal the way they ordered me to.”
The old man raised both hands, palms toward her. “No, miss, don’t you give it a second thought. The kind of ‘present’ I have in mind is not something tangible, not something with a price tag. To put it simply”—he placed his hands on the desk and took one long, slow breath—“what I would like to do for a lovely young fairy such as you is to grant a wish you might have, to make your wish come true. Anything. Anything at all that you wish for—assuming that you do have such a wish.”
“A wish?” she asked, her throat dry.
“Something you would like to have happen, miss. If you have a wish—one wish, I’ll make it come true. That is the kind of birthday present I can give you. But you had better think about it very carefully because I can grant you only one.” He raised a finger. “Just one. You can’t change your mind afterward and take it back.”
She was at a loss for words. One wish? Whipped by the wind, raindrops tapped unevenly at the windowpane. As long as she remained silent, the old man looked into her eyes, saying nothing. Time marked its irregular pulse in her ears.
“I have to wish for something, and it will be granted?”
Instead of answering her question, the old man—hands still side by side on the desk—just smiled. He did it in the most natural and amiable way.
“Do you have a wish, miss—or not?” he asked gently.
“This really did happen,” she said, looking straight at me. “I’m not making it up.”
“Of course not,” I said. She was not the sort of person to invent some goofy story out of thin air. “So…did you make a wish?”
She went on looking at me for a while, then released a tiny sigh. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I wasn’t taking him one hundred percent seriously myself. I mean, at twenty you’re not exactly living in a fairy-tale world anymore. If this was his idea of a joke, though, I had to hand it to him for coming up with it on the spot. He was a dapper old fellow with a twinkle in his eye, so I decided to play along with him. It was my twentieth birthday, after all: I figured I ought to have something not-so-ordinary happen to me that day. It wasn’t a question of believing or not believing.”
I nodded without saying anything.
“You can understand how I felt, I’m sure. My twentieth birthday was coming to an end without anything special happening, nobody wishing me a happy birthday, and all I’m doing is carrying tortellini with anchovy sauce to people’s tables.”
I nodded again. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I understand.”
“So I made a wish.”
The old man kept his gaze fixed on her, saying nothing, hands still on the desk. Also on the desk were several thick folders that might have been account books, plus writing implements, a calendar, and a lamp with a green shade. Lying among them, his small hands looked like another set of desktop furnishings. The rain continued to beat against the window, the lights of Tokyo Tower filtering through the shattered drops.
The wrinkles on the old man’s forehead deepened slightly. “That is your wish?”
“Yes,” she said. “That is my wish.”
“A bit unusual for a girl your age,” he said. “I was expecting something different.”
“If it’s no good, I’ll wish for something else,” she said, clearing her throat. “I don’t mind. I’ll think of something else.”
“No, no,” the old man said, raising his hands and waving them like flags. “There’s nothing wrong with it, not at all. It’s just a little surprising, miss. Don’t you have something else? Like, say, you want to be prettier, or smarter, or rich: you’re OK with not wishing for something like that—something an ordinary girl would ask for?”
She took some moments to search for the right words. The old man just waited, saying