“Please, um, please keep this a secret from school and my parents…”
One minute later. Standing by the register of the customer-free adult corner, Yuki, her ears dyed bright red with shame, her head hanging like a condemned criminal awaiting execution, pleaded with Aya like that.
Aya, who never would have imagined that the Kayano Yuki could have this kind of hidden side, gazed at her face and groaned in deep deliberation. It was fair to say the two of them had almost no point of connection.
They were in the same class in high school, and both of them had fairly wide social circles. After spending several months in the same class, naturally there had been chances to talk. But the content of those conversations was limited to light small talk and the bare minimum of administrative matters. Their mutual impression of each other was based solely on the superficial, inferred from everyday behavior.
And the Kayano Yuki seen through that lens was an honor student who boasted grades at the very top of the year, a cut above everyone else.
Supposedly the daughter of a doctor. Said to be aiming for medical school.
It wasn’t that Aya had ever paid particular attention to her grades, but even so, her academic ability was rumored often enough to reach her ears regularly. When tests were handed back, the area around her would grow noisy, and the word “perfect score” could be heard again and again, that sort of thing. Her personality was good too: sociable and gentle. In other words, an honor student everyone relied on.
Aya crossed her arms and stole a glance at Yuki’s face.
“Well, y’know, there’s confidentiality and all. I won’t tell anyone.”
At that, Yuki’s face showed blatant relief as she confirmed, “Really?”
Chuckling wryly at this human side of an honor student who’d always seemed somehow removed from the world, Aya pointed at the floor.
“This place is my dad’s shop. If a customer sued us, my whole family would be out on the street. I won’t do anything stupid.”
Yuki stared wide-eyed at Aya’s face, then pressed her five fingers together in front of her chest and looked around the store.
“…So it’s your family’s shop, Mizuki. Wasn’t the name ‘Sagara Books’? A previous generation or something?”
“It’s my dad’s former surname. He married into the family and became a Mizuki. Well, he and my mom are already divorced, though.”
At that, Yuki made an awkward face and gave her a look of sympathy, saying, “Oh, I see.”
Then she apologized, “Sorry, that was kind of insensitive,” so Aya laid it bare: “You don’t have to apologize. We’re living comfortably off the alimony.”
”, But wow, I never figured you’d be interested in this kind of thing, Kayano. It was so unexpected that even after looking at your face for months, I was slow to catch on.”
That type, meaning the kind that suited this pink-colored space. Understanding what Aya was getting at, Yuki flushed red again as if boiled, and looked away with a half-smile.
“Well, sure, I’m interested. I’m only human.”
“I guess that’s true. Maybe I had an unconscious bias, even honor students calmly click ‘YES’ on the age-restriction screen on porn sites, huh.”
“Wait, that hurts, my heart hurts. I’m sorry, okay.”
Sexual curiosity is only natural to have, but separate from that, a girl under eighteen entering this kind of space was a problem. There was also the surprise that she hadn’t thought Yuki was the type to do such problematic things.
Utterly deflated, Yuki, looking like a leafy vegetable tossed into a kimchi hot pot and gone limp, kept her face red as she tried to make feeble excuses with “But y’know” and “I mean.”
“…I have confidentiality obligations, so I won’t spread it around school. But as a store employee, technically I’m supposed to kick you out. I’d like you to understand where I stand on this.”
“…Are you going to tell the police, after all?”
“No, it means, ‘If anything happens, I’ll cut ties and deny everything.’ I’m a bad employee, so I won’t say anything.”
At that, Yuki’s face lit up as if a light had switched on, and her cheeks slackened sloppily.
“Th-thank you!”
Her body swayed a little, like a dog wagging its tail. Her heels danced.
She really was a charming girl. Aya let her expression soften just slightly as she watched, and quietly closed her eyes.
“So, what’ll it be? Buying one? A quiet rotor. I’ll give you advice.”
She’d meant to say it as sincerely as possible, but she hoped Yuki would forgive the little bit of teasing that leaked out. As Aya spoke with the faintest smile at the corners of her mouth, Yuki glared at her bitterly with a face the color of early autumn leaves. Groaning “Ugh” as she wrestled with herself, she closed her eyes, tugged down the hem of her clothes that she’d been pinching, and said “O…”
“Please… I’ll take it.”
“Okay, okay. Then let’s take a look.”
Walking single file down the empty adult corner, they came to stand in the women’s goods area at the corner. Standing before the rows of pink packages hung from hooks glued to the wall, Aya browsed the merchandise. She looked for something reasonably priced, prioritizing cost-performance based on quietness and price.
“Do you get to know a lot about this stuff, working at a shop like this?”
Yuki asked, stealing glances at Aya’s profile. Curiosity dwelled in her eyes.
“Hmm, I wonder. That’s a little hard to answer. If you’re asking whether working here tends to make you knowledgeable, I can’t really say, I’ve only ever worked here. But my dad’s friendly with the suppliers. I get to hear product explanations a lot, so personally I’d say I’m pretty knowledgeable.”
Aya looked at the products and picked up a few.
“You have your own room? Is it enough if the quietness is secured to some degree?”
“Ah, yeah. As long as it’s not extremely loud, I guess. And then… a reasonable price, and, um, the s…”
She looked at Yuki, who had faltered and trailed off awkwardly. Receiving Aya’s gaze as she waited for the rest, Yuki faltered even more awkwardly, and with an embarrassed flush, she softly let it out.
“Practicality, I guess?”
“Got it. Then this one around here is the standard choice, I think.”
Saying that, Aya handed her a box of a reasonably priced, well-reviewed item. Yuki received it reverently with a tense expression, swallowed hard, and dropped her gaze to it. “This one?” “Yeah.”
“It’s a semi-new release from a popular brand, apparently developed with cost-performance in mind. So far the reviews are mostly good. It has several vibration patterns and remote control operation. The price is two thousand yen. When I used it on my ex, it was a big hit. She was praising the company’s efforts while getting excited.”
As Aya recounted her review as if nostalgic for the past, Yuki’s round eyes turned toward her.
“Your ex.”
She murmured, seemingly without thinking, surprised, so “Ah,” Aya realized the cause of her surprise. And she nodded to convey that it wasn’t a misunderstanding.
“Yeah. A woman. We broke up a little while ago.”
“Ahh… I see.”
Without commenting further on Aya’s sexual orientation, Yuki, her eyes faintly wandering, said “I see” and dropped her gaze to the package. She pressed her lips together a little awkwardly. She seemed taken aback by the sudden revelation and unsure how to react. Had Aya done something wrong? , Still, Yuki neither excessively respected nor rejected it; she accepted it as just one item in a dating history, steered the conversation back on track, and looked at the box with a troubled expression.
“I-is it really okay? This one.”
The sound of swallowing hard again. It was small, drowned out by the moans of the actress in the sample video.
“Want a cheaper one?”
When Aya asked while glancing at other products, Yuki agonized with “Hmm” and “Ugh,” and in the end said “No” in a trembling voice filled with resolve.
“I’ll go with this. Um, could you open the box for me?”
“Ah, right. Disposing of the box is a pain too, huh. Sure, I’ll do it as a service. You wanna gear up right here?”
“Don’t be silly. That’s sexual harassment, you know.”
When she picked up the famous line from a nationally beloved role-playing game, Yuki, cheeks flushed, warned her with a look of exasperation. Aya shrugged and returned to the register, scanned the barcode, and deftly opened the box, which she’d opened once before. Then she put the item inside into a paper bag and folded it up neatly.
With a tense expression, Yuki took pocket money from her wallet and placed it on the change tray.
Aya operated the register smoothly, tossed the receipt in the trash, and quickly placed and returned the change. Then she held out the small paper bag containing the product and gave a light greeting: “Please come again.”
But for classmates shopping together, finishing the business and immediately parting ways was a lonely thing, wasn’t it.
Having received it, Yuki said nothing and didn’t move from the spot either, gazing at it with a tense expression for a while. Eventually, she turned eyes tinged with a little hesitation toward Aya.
“U-um… can I come again?”
Aya put a hand on her hip and thought for a moment.
To give the conclusion first: it was fine. Having let her off today, it probably wouldn’t make much difference how many more times she let her in. That was Aya’s thinking, but still, to come back again after being put through this kind of embarrassment showed quite a lot of nerve, which was admirable. So…
“Are you that pent-up?”
She found herself asking that out of pure curiosity. She wouldn’t say pent-up with what, but it meant that, of course.
Yuki shook her head as if hit where it hurts, and hung her red face.
After inserting a few meaningless interjections like “Well” and “Hmm,” she fanned her flushed face with her hand and lifted her head, but still looked away as she spoke.
“I don’t really want you to tell anyone else, but… um, well,”
Aya didn’t have a habit of exposing others’ secrets. When Aya said “Yeah” to prompt her, she spun out her words.
“Stress-related? The, um, feeling kind of thing, a little.”
It was a more serious matter than she’d expected, so Aya shut her mouth again and ended up staring straight at Yuki’s face.
Given the situation and all. Unable to withstand Aya’s direct gaze, Yuki turned her face away as if to flee. But behind that embarrassed expression, something dense, almost like exhaustion, could be seen. And there, at last, Aya understood why she hadn’t recognized Yuki immediately upon seeing her face.
Her expression lacked the vitality she showed in the classroom.
Unsure of what to say, Aya fell silent for a while. As she mulled over whether she should offer words of comfort or encouragement, a silence settled between them. Under that silence, Yuki’s face turned toward her with an anxious look, so Aya gave a light cough and decided to dig into the topic a bit more.
“Studying and stuff?”
Whether probing was the right move, she didn’t know, but Yuki responded, looking awkward.
“…Yeah. More or less, that kind of thing.”
She didn’t seem like the type to voluntarily air her own hardships, and it appeared she had no intention of saying anything further. But Aya knew she wasn’t the sort to play the victim and bask in it, so she had no desire to ask anything more. Stress, something Aya, who was allowed to live relatively freely, had little acquaintance with, might be all too familiar to Yuki, who ranked at the top of her class, had a promising future, and bore the weight of so many expectations. And if she had chosen sexual release as a means of venting it, then all the more Aya couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone about her visits; instead, feelings of sympathy and a desire to help rose up in her.
Aya wanted to be of help to her if she could, and found herself about to draw out a little more.
But forcing out what the person herself didn’t want to say felt wrong.
After agonizing a little, Aya lowered the hand she’d rested on her hip and gave a faint smile.
“It’s fine. Come again. But keep it quiet, okay?”
At that, Yuki’s expression, which had been stiffening, softened gently, and she smiled with an impossibly delighted look.
But it slackened so completely that she too pressed a hand to her cheek and kneaded her face. Crafting a slightly more proper, calm expression, she gave a small, bouncing nod. “Yeah.”
“…Mizuki-san, I’d never really talked to you before, but. You’re a good person.”
Praised straight to her face, Aya’s eyes went wide with surprise, and feeling a bit embarrassed, she averted her gaze.
“You think so? Well, it’s not really, I’m just a bad person. I haven’t fulfilled my duty as an employee.”
“See, there, good and bad change depending on your standpoint. To me, you’re a good person. Of course, it’s not like you’re just ‘a convenient person,’ okay? I genuinely think you have a wonderful character.”
This girl says things like this so plainly, no wonder she’s adored by so many, Aya thought with fresh admiration. Feeling a bit self-conscious, she gave an vague smile and looked away, then closed her eyes and drew an arc on her lips.
“Thanks. It doesn’t feel bad.”
“Good. I’ll be causing you all sorts of trouble, so it’s kind of like a thank-you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I haven’t done anything. I just did my job.”
With that, Aya waved her hand to prompt her to leave, and with a composed face, bade her farewell.
“Then, tell me if anything comes up, okay? If you’re worried, I’ll lend an ear.”
Faint hesitation flickered in Yuki’s eyes.
Words like “tell me if anything comes up”, she seemed unsure just how much to take them in. But after a shallow breath and inner conflict, she nodded, then nodded once more as if resolving something, and smiled.
“Yeah. See you.”