At the party, no one would dance with the Japanese millionaire… until the waitress invited him in Japanese…
The party was held in one of Guadalajara’s most exclusive venues, on the glass-enclosed terrace of the Demetria Hotel, from where the orange sky fused with the city lights. It was an elegant wedding, full of forced smiles, tailored suits, and expensive perfumes floating in the air. The orchestra played a bolero with technical precision, but lacking in soul.
Everyone tried hard to look happy, everyone except one. At a round table, set back from the center of the room, sat a man who seemed to have been placed there as a protocol error. Kenji Yamasaki, Japanese, with an impassive face, a dark suit without a single wrinkle, his hands resting stiffly on his legs.
He didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t look at anyone, just watched in silence, as if the world around him were a silent movie he’d seen many times before. Around him, the guests avoided even meeting glances. Some whispered about him openly. They say he’s a millionaire, but he doesn’t look it. I heard he has car factories or that he bought half of Jalisco, but no one came near.
And even though the dance floor was beginning to fill with people moving awkwardly between laughter and drinks, he remained there motionless, as if he didn’t know or didn’t want to be part of it. He didn’t understand a word they were saying, but he understood the gestures, the suppressed laughter, the averted glances.
The discomfort doesn’t need translation. Meanwhile, between trays and empty glasses, Julia walked nimbly around the room, dodging conversations that didn’t belong to her. She was 24 years old, with alert eyes and an expression that tried to remain neutral, although her thoughts were rarely silent. She wore the staff uniform: a white shirt, black vest, and a neatly ironed apron.
No one knew she spoke Japanese. No one knew she had been an outstanding student at university before dropping out. At the wedding, she was just the dark-haired waitress in the corner and was used to being invisible. But that night her attention was drawn to Kenji, not out of superficial curiosity, but out of something deeper, more human.
There was a loneliness about him that seemed familiar, a rigidity born not of pride, but of rootlessness. From her corner, she watched him take just a sip of water. She noticed how he struggled to maintain his composure, as if defending a silent dignity that no one there seemed to recognize. There was no arrogance in his gaze, but a subtle, ancient weariness.
When their eyes met, for a moment, Julia instinctively lowered her gaze, but she felt something. It wasn’t a romantic connection or a flash of attraction, it was something else, as if in the midst of the party, they both knew they didn’t quite belong there. That exchange of glances was brief, so brief that no one else noticed.
But for both of them, without knowing it yet, that night would not be like the others. Julia didn’t usually get involved with guests; she knew her place: to go unnoticed, take her turn, and return home before tiredness turned to sadness. But that night, as the toasts were repeated with increasingly loud laughter, her gaze returned again and again to the corner, where Kenji remained like a shadow.
Alone, his hands firmly in his lap, his eyes fixed on the center of the room, not moving an inch. Something inside her wouldn’t let her ignore him. She’d seen plenty of people alone at parties, drunks without company, ignored women, divorced uncles with a blank stare. But this was different. It wasn’t the loneliness of someone who’s been excluded.
It was that of someone who, although present, had never actually been invited. Pulia watched him for several minutes amidst trays of snacks, chatter about investments, and classist comments thrown like darts wrapped in politeness. “That man seems mute,” said a woman in a red dress, smiling maliciously. “Or he’s waiting for them to come and worship him,” her friend replied. “Or he just doesn’t want to mix with Mexicans,” a man added, letting out a tense laugh. Julia felt those words tighten in her chest. Not because of him exactly, but because she’d heard that tone so many times directed at people like her, people who worked serving, cleaning, caring, people who didn’t matter.
Meanwhile, Kenji still didn’t react, but there was a slight tension in his shoulders, as if he understood more than he let on, as if each word touched him from afar, but touched him just the same. After half an hour, Julia approached their table with a tray of refreshments. She didn’t have to, since another waiter was in charge of that area, but something compelled her.
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