Most profiles on the app are weeks old. Risa's was three years old, and that turned out to be the interesting part.

The stats told the story before she did. Registered in early 2023. Three hundred-odd messages received in all that time, which for a woman who looks like Risa is nothing – a month's worth for the popular ones. A reply rate of 40% - fairly selective until you notice it's 40% of almost nothing: about a hundred and twenty replies in three and a half years. Someone had signed up, found what she was looking for fast, gone dormant for the best part of three years, and come back. Her bio said as much, in the plain way the good ones do: I was seeing someone. He was transferred away. I'm looking for one person, long term.

She's 25, works in beauty, has weekdays off and will move a Saturday if you ask nicely, and her reply to my opening message was the first one I'd received that had clearly read my opening message. Not "nice to meet you, let's get along." A paragraph. Which line she'd liked. A question about the band, and a second one about how long I'd been here that suggested she'd thought about what the answer would mean. At the time it was the best first message I'd had. It's still on the podium.

The coffee was a Monday at the start of August, and the place I'd chosen was shut. I was standing in front of the door reading the 定休日 sign for the third time, in the way you do when you're hoping it'll say something else, when a voice behind me said "Hi. We're meeting now, right?" She'd spotted me from across the street, which, in fairness, isn't hard. We ended up in the only thing open, a hole-in-the-wall kissaten that had been decorated in the nineties, possibly the 1890s, run by a tiny old woman who had quite possibly been at the grand opening and treated us like a couple who'd wandered in from a film. It had seen better days. It had charm. Risa laughed at it, long and hard, and then laughed at me, and then at some point she said a message was いきそう – about to go through – and I said that would be a problem, here, in front of the lady, and we were off. A flirty little joke about a LINE message is not much. It's more than most first coffees manage.

Somewhere in the second cup she started explaining how this would go, and she'd arrived with the architecture already built. I'm used to being the one who explains my desired trajectory - coffee, then a dinner or two, then a conversation about whether it becomes something. Risa explained it to me. She'd like a couple of dinners first. She'd like the cadence to be flexible, because her weekdays move. She valued the relationship over the arrangement, and said so, and said it in a way that made clear she'd had both and knew the difference. I sat there being told my own framing by a woman 37 years my junior and thought: she's done this before, and she did it well, and she's not going to let me rush it.

An hour after we parted, before I'd got home, she wrote. Thank you so much. You're many times lovelier in person than you were in the messages. Let's plan dinner. Read that again. She proposed the dinner. I had a whole message drafted to do that, and she got there first, and I sent mine anyway because it was already written and it said the same thing. Somewhere after the first dinner the です・ます went, quietly, without either of us mentioning it, and the thread since has been the easy, unpunctuated kind you have with someone you've decided about.

She went dark for a week with work and came back warm, with an apology and a date. I sent her the wrong venue once, and she absorbed it without a word of drama. She confirmed the second dinner herself, on the morning, unprompted. None of it is exciting. All of it is what Saki never did.

Before the second dinner I sent the message I send – after dinner I'd like the evening to be ours, if you would; entirely up to you – and her reply was the best no I've had on the app. Thank you for saying that. Would you indulge me and let it be one more dinner? Sorry for being slow. 甘えて, she wrote: let me lean on you for this. And ゆっくりでごめんね, which is an apology and a promise in six characters. It isn't a no. It's a yes with a date on it, and the date is the dinner after next. Miho said no without a reason and without a counter; Risa said not yet with both. I said of course, her pace, and meant it, and the Spanish place on the 26th was the easiest evening I've had since Hina.

The third dinner is on the 16th. It's the one she named. Terms were settled at the coffee – she asked for them, in fact, one, one, five, no haggling – so there's nothing left to negotiate, only to arrive. I'll send the day-before confirmation like I do for everyone, and I'll read her reply for what it is and not what I want it to be.

I think she'll say yes. I thought Saki would turn up. The Board exists because I've stopped trusting what I think.