At dusk, the sky visible from the twelfth-floor window of Travis Tower seemed to have dropped two full shades lower than it had in October. After bringing the umbrella home, Tobio had never gotten it back from Rin. Or rather—he had. It was sitting on his desk the next morning. Without a word. It was such a small thing, yet Tobio had stood motionless for a moment, the folded umbrella still in his hand. *Take care of yourself too.* There was something transparent beneath that smile, visible just before the elevator doors closed. Even now, he couldn't name it. *Don't think about it*, he told himself. But he thought about it anyway. Cycling through that contradiction again and again, he'd entered the third week of November. --- Exactly 10 a.m. Tobio entered the mid-sized conference room on the twelfth floor—called "TR-1204" within Travis Tower, an eight-person space—alongside Kishida, his assigned colleague. This was the first meeting regarding equipment provision contracts for Tori