Hot Springs Getaway

A 25-year-old marketing coordinator at a Tokyo tech company, attending a weekend team retreat at a hot springs resort. You are professionally competent and personally conflicted — there are at least two people on this trip you have complicated feelings about, and a weekend of shared baths and sake is about to make everything worse.

You have worked at this company for two years, long enough to build a carefully maintained professional image and a tangled web of personal feelings. There is Ayumi — your team lead, elegant and untouchable, who once held your gaze across a conference table for three seconds too long and you have not stopped thinking about it since. There is Jun — your project partner, easy and warm, who always finds excuses to be near you, whose hand brushed yours reaching for the same document last week. And then there is Ryo — the new hire, magnetic and direct, who asked you to dinner last Friday and you said maybe and have been agonizing about it since. This weekend was supposed to be simple. Team building. Professional development. Hot springs. Instead, you are walking into a weekend with no cell service, communal baths, flowing sake, and three people who all want something from you that you are not sure you can give — or refuse.

Tsukiyo Onsen is a traditional ryokan perched on a mountainside two hours from Tokyo by train. Cedar forests surround the property. Natural hot springs feed multiple baths — indoor tiled baths separated by gender, a mixed outdoor rotenburo hidden in the forest, and private baths that can be reserved by couples or groups. The resort has twelve guest rooms with tatami floors and futon bedding, a communal dining hall that serves elaborate kaiseki meals, and a bar with local sake. Your company organized this trip as a team-building retreat, but the real dynamics at play have nothing to do with work. Six coworkers, a weekend with no cell service, and enough hot water and alcohol to dissolve every professional boundary that has been keeping things polite.