Reiner – His Invitation

“No, actually, I was wondering…if you want to have lunch together with me?” Reiner asked bluntly.

“Lunch…with you?” I repeated questioningly, unable to believe what I had just heard.

Reiner is asking me to have lunch with him? Huh? Why? Why this all of a sudden?

“Yes, lunch with me,” Reiner repeated with his eyes still on my face.

I blinked rapidly as his words started to sink in. Is this really happening?

Honestly, if he had asked me to join him for lunch a few days ago, I would have jumped up and cried for joy. However, I wasn’t sure what I should be feeling now. My feelings were completely messed up. I didn’t feel any happiness at all…I just felt uncomfortable and anxious. Pushing my messy thoughts and feelings aside, I decided to concentrate on the facts. It doesn’t matter why he asked me out, a lunch is just lunch. It’s probably not strange for a boss to invite his subordinate to eat lunch with him.

Don’t read too much into this, Natalia.

“Sure. What would you like to eat? I’ll leave it up to you to choose,” I replied before smiling a little at him.

Just act normal, Natalia.

“My schedule is quite free in the afternoon, so we don’t need to rush. What about Japanese?” Reiner asked casually.

“Sounds good…” I replied smoothly.

I couldn’t care less what we ate. I just hoped that lunch would pass by without any emotionally damaging incident. Reiner opened the door for me, and I walked out of his office into the hallway. I wasn’t sure which restaurant he had in mind, so I let him lead the way after we got out of the elevator.

To my surprise, Reiner led me to the parking lot where he had parked his car.

“We need to drive to get there,” he explained before we got into the car.

…

Reiner drove us to a part of the business district that I had never been to before. Apart from the area around the office building where we worked at and where my new apartment was located, I haven’t travelled anywhere else in the business district. We arrived at our destination which turned out to be an expensive-looking hotel.

“There’s a pretty good Japanese restaurant here at this hotel,” Reiner said casually as we got out of the car.

“I see…” I mumbled.

Reiner led the way to the restaurant that was located on a high floor. After stepping out of the elevator, it was like I had arrived in Japan. The restaurant was decorated in the theme of a Japanese garden with Sakura trees and there were tatami mats on the floor. Cute low Japanese style tables were neatly arranged for customers to sit on. Although it wasn’t real, it still looked very impressive.

“It’s like we’ve been teleported to Japan,” I commented.

“Yeah…” Reiner replied.

A lady dressed in a beautiful pink and gold kimono came to greet us and lead us to our table. The restaurant was quite dim while the table was lit with just enough orange warm light for us to see. The atmosphere in the restaurant was quiet and peaceful. Apart from us, there were only a few occupied tables.

We ordered our food and the lady in the pretty kimono accepted our orders with a charming smile. I wondered if Reiner liked coming to this type of restaurants. The atmosphere was overly pleasant that it was bordering romantic. Now that we were alone again, I didn't know what to say or how to react.

The silence between us made me feel uncomfortable. I decided to talk about work just so that the silence would stop suffocating me.

"Thanks for bringing me here. This is a nice place. About the work, I think we should have all the interviews with the agents scheduled soon. All interviews can be wrapped up next week,” I informed him.

“Right. Thank you,” Reiner replied.

I ran out of things to say, and it didn’t seem likely that I could keep the flow of the conversation going.

An uncomfortable silene crept up on us again. I picked up a small ornament that served the purpose of decorating the table and began examining it. There was absolutely nothing interesting about this little sculpture of a fish in the Japanese art style, but I stared at it as if I had never seen such an interesting thing before in my life. It was better than not having anything to do at all.

I’ll just pretend to look at this and that until our food arrives or something…

Reiner didn’t say anything, but I could feel his eyes on me. When I looked up from the little fish sculpture, our eyes immediately met, and I glanced away in a hurry. That was scary and not so good for the condition of my heart. This situation was supposed to be a good opportunity for us to get closer, but I couldn’t focus at all. I felt so anxious about everything, and I was so aware of his presence sitting opposite me at the table that I just wanted this lunch to be over and done with.

Thankfully, the lady soon returned with our order. I returned the smile that the lady graciously offered as she served our food in front of us. I had ordered the recommended sushi set. I stared at the various colorful sushi on my plate before reaching out for my chopstick. I glanced over at Reiner who had begun eating his sushi casually. Maybe I was the only one feeling awkward in this situation.

I picked up a sushi with my chopstick and looked at it before putting it in my mouth. The fish tasted fresh, and the rice tasted slightly sweet and sour. Lucien liked to take me out to eat Japanese food like this. He knew that I loved Japanese food and any fusion variations of it. I wondered what Lucien is doing now? Was he very upset or mad when he found out that I was missing?

--To be continued…