The man came every Thursday and asked for Suki, paying for her time, listening when she spoke and never trying to keep her after the hour was over. She was glad enough to see him arrive, but pleasant company was no reason to believe he would be different from the others.
Three months in, he told her he loved her, leaning across the table as though he were giving her something she had waited all her life to receive. Suki kept smiling. She had heard it before from men who loved the lights on her skin, the way she remembered their names and the hour in which she never looked bored. Usually, their love lasted until they saw her counting credits or heard the work in her voice when she was tired.
After that, he began waiting outside at the end of her shifts, despite her telling him to stop. One night, with a Reaper watching the club doors, she let him walk beside her as far as the train. It seemed safer than going alone. By the following week, however, he was speaking as if they had gone home together, and another dancer brought Suki the story with a look that told her how far it had already travelled.
She went to his apartment to end it. At first he cried, then grew angry when she failed to comfort him, and finally offered to pay for her new hearing graft. She wanted it badly; with it, she could hear a whisper across a crowded room or a step behind her on the street. But he watched her hesitate, already certain he had found a way to keep her, and she refused.
He turned away to search for a photograph that would prove how happy she looked with him. While he was occupied, Suki took the credits lying beside his terminal, where she had noticed he kept them on her first visit. He saw the empty spot before she reached the door, and for a moment they stood looking at each other across the room.
“You said I was different,” he told her.
“No,” Suki said. “You said you were.”
She left before he could call anyone. By morning, the money had paid for most of the graft, while he had told half the district what she had done. Suki let him talk. The other Sweet Things knew her well enough to decide whether to trust her, and she would have to live with whatever they decided. Everyone else had always believed what suited them.