The Fourth Place Setting

The Fourth Place Setting appears during one of Sachiko’s dinners with the Mori family. The table is set for four: four glasses, four sets of chopsticks, four places arranged with the easy habit of someone preparing a normal family meal. But the Moris are three — Rie, Sota, and Ami. One place has no food in front of it. Rie notices it partway through the meal, removes it, and calls it a miscount. The conversation continues.

Later, the extra setting returns.

This time, no one collects it. It remains at the table through the meal with the quiet certainty of something that has already been accepted. No chair scrapes back. No unseen hand reaches for the bowl. No voice asks to be included. The wrongness is smaller than that: an empty place made ready, an absence given manners, a family unconsciously making room for something living with them.