Koyamo thanks the singer for her time—not a good time, just her time. And promises to text if her schedule lightens up. At this point, she has no idea what’s coming out of her mouth. She simply throws more and more words at the singer while propelling her toward the door, saying whatever it takes to get her out of there.
After Koyamo closes the door behind her, she sags against it.
At first, she sighs, so relieved to be rid of the singer. But then, a wave of incredible loneliness washes over her. And she just feels sad. And dumped.
“You don’t have to worry about that. Not with me. I don’t get dumped. And if I dump you, I promise not to stalk you.”
That had been Nora’s saucy comeback when Koyamo explained why she never dated students. Even former ones.
Nora boldly called Koyamo on her apartment landline the very day she received her end-of-term grade for the class. And Koyamo, who hated confrontation of any kind, had been forced to explain that she couldn’t date former students because it could lead to awkwardness.
She gave Nora a gentle no that night. But Nora called back the next day and the one after that until Koyamo relented to a date—just one date. But that had been that.
Before she was Koyamo, a late bloomer lesbian who’d taken a fellowship in Geneva to escape her parents’ grief over not getting the daughter they had always wanted.
But with Nora, she became herself. Someone who tried things that were wholly unfamiliar to her. Someone who learned to love someone else with all her heart. Because Nora told her after just a month of dating, “I am in love with you, Professor, and I want you to be in love with me back.”
Koyamo had never met someone so direct and honest. And that made her want, for the first time in a life of worrying about what others would think of her, to be honest about her feelings for the outrageous Chinese woman too.
So she decided to love Nora back.
And she probably would’ve gone on loving Nora forever if not for her tearful confession right before her graduation from the Geneva Institute of Finance’s graduate business school.
“I’ve tried everything I could to get out of it. But I must marry someone else, and my fiancé won’t allow me to keep a lover. Koyamo, I’m so sorry.”
A lover? Was that all she was to Nora? All she’d ever been?
“What happened to loving me with all your heart?” Koyamo asked her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.
“I do! I do love you with all my heart!” Nora insisted with tears streaming down her face. “That will never change. I will never stop loving you. But I have family obligations.”
Family obligations? Koyamo had those too. Before she, in her parents’ words, “ruined everything” with Hayato Nakamura, the youngest scion of the Nakamura Motor Corporation family.
Koyamo had never met her girlfriend’s parents. Nora’s mother had died of cancer when Nora was young, and Koyamo had assumed her relationship with her father had been the same as hers with her own parents. Estranged and mostly silent, save for dutiful visits once or twice a year.
But according to Nora, that wasn’t the case. It had never been the case. From the age of sixteen, she’d known that she would be expected to marry a particular man of her father’s choosing.
“You don’t understand my world,” Nora explained to her. “It’s not pretty like yours. I can’t just call off my engagement. Men have all the power. And the women in my world must do as we’re told.”
“And what if you didn’t do as you are told?” Koyamo asked Nora, her heart shattering in slow motion. “What if you stayed with me like you claim you want to?”
“I can’t do that,” Nora had answered with a mournful look. “My father is a very dangerous man who will stop at nothing to get his way. I will marry who he wants me to marry. Or else he’ll have me killed. Possibly you too.”
Koyamo had jerked inside. Not wanting to believe.
But in the end, there was nothing else to explain it. To explain Nora.
It all made sense after that confession….
Nora’s uncharacteristic self-confidence and boldness. It wasn’t a natural trait but something that had come with knowing she only had a very few years of her adult life to live as she wanted.
Koyamo should have been grateful that her ex-girlfriend had chosen to spend two of those years with her. She told herself that after Nora left Switzerland—and her—behind.
She tried to see the bright side of things up until now. To not think about the fact that it’s August, the month in which Nora is supposed to get married.
But alone in her apartment, in the wake of that disastrous morning with Not Nora, a hollow feeling guts her from the inside.