Episode 1: I Picked Up a Woman. In an Alley.
I picked up a woman. In an alley.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
This is the story of how I, a president who was supposed to be cold and ruthless, stepped into the quicksand of a younger woman, drowned, and couldn’t find my way back out.
＊＊＊
The third resignation letter thrown at me this month.
“I can’t work under you anymore. You’re not human.”
The door slammed shut, and the sound of heavy footsteps receded down the corridor.
I, Seto Reina, stood alone and pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose with a long sigh.
Itou had never shied away from cold-call sales, topped the company in new accounts, and had a spotless consulting track record. Which made this a significant loss for the company.
My smartphone buzzed on the table. I checked the client name and answered.
“Yes, right. I think you’ll want to prioritize improving the CPA and redesign from the top of the funnel to re-capture leads. Looking at LTV——”
I ended the call. A little while passed.
Knock knock.
“Excuse me,” said Matsuyama Maho, a second-year employee, coming in. She set a coffee on my desk and opened her mouth hesitantly.
“President. Itou-san is… leaving…?”
“That’s right. She left.”
“Um. That’s the third person this month… Hanaki-san too… she handed in her resignation out of nowhere last week and stopped showing up…”
“There are plenty of replacements. This industry isn’t gentle enough for anyone who crumbles under a little pressure from me. It works out fine.”
I said it flatly, eyes on my computer screen, fingers still moving across the keyboard. I glanced sideways at her. “Is that all?”
Matsuyama made a troubled face, then dropped her gaze slightly and said:
“President… I’ll always stay by your side.”
I didn’t bother to reply. My eyes had already moved on to the materials for the next consulting case.
＊＊＊
“Good work today.”
The last employee went home. The office was mine alone. The clock read nine in the evening.
I’d wanted to finish putting together the materials for the funding meeting, but decided that was enough for today.
I switched off the office lights and stepped outside.
The street to the station was crowded with people finishing late shifts, groups coming back from drinks.
Something made me want to walk somewhere quieter.
Before I knew it, I’d turned into a narrow alley. From the lead-grey sky, raindrops began to fall, and I fished my folding umbrella out of my bag. The rain grew steadily louder.
So there’s a street like this here.
Small family-run izakayas, a tired-looking love hotel, a hostess club, things of that sort, all pressed together shoulder to shoulder.
The click of my heels mixed into the sound of the rain. Strangely quiet. It settled something in me.
A little further along, the way ahead went dark.
No streetlights. Beyond the reach of the neon signs.
Honestly, I was a little afraid. Still, I kept walking — and then something shifted in the shadows.
A person.
When I drew close enough for the garish neon of a nearby club to reach, the shape came into focus.
My feet stopped without thinking.
Softly textured hair, faintly waved, a pale blonde. Her skin was less white than ashen, one might say.
Unhealthily translucent, smooth in a way that seemed almost unreal.
Hair and skin wet with rain, catching the light. Hollow cheeks. Startlingly large eyes. Long lashes, rain beading on them. A straight, fine nose. Well-shaped lips.
Each individual feature looked somehow lifted out of reality.
In the middle of winter, just a short-sleeved shirt that barely covered her thighs.
Nothing else.
The wet fabric clung to her body.
Don’t get close, some instinct murmured.
But we made direct eye contact. I looked away and started walking again.
From behind came the sound of water splashing underfoot, and I glanced back slightly.
The woman had stood up and called out to me.
“Hey, doesn’t the sound of rain echoing down this alley feel kind of… calming?”
She said something completely out of nowhere.
I looked at her with suspicion, left her strange question unanswered, and asked what had actually caught my attention.
“…What are you doing in a place like this?”
Her gaze drifted up and to the side. After a moment’s thought, she narrowed her eyes and smiled, loose and soft, and said:
“I got thrown away.”
Her expression was unmistakably a smile. But the eyes weren’t smiling. The lightless pupils beneath wet, dripping lashes left a strange impression.
“So, big sis——” she continued.
“Could you let me stay? Just for one night?”
Suspicious in every possible way.
She lived in a different world from mine. I had no business getting involved.
I turned on my heel, faced forward, and walked on.
But.
“You’re not human.”
Itou’s parting words came back to me.
Not human. Maybe so, I thought. I’m the kind of person who can keep walking even when someone is collapsed in an alley, I thought.
One step, then another.
But——
Somewhere along the way, my feet stopped.
I couldn’t find the words for why.
I turned around and went back to the woman.
“One night only. I want you out tomorrow.”
Under the umbrella I held out, the woman’s wet eyes gazed steadily up at me.
＊＊＊
An auto-lock high-rise condominium, five minutes’ walk from the station. Fifteenth floor.
No friends, no lover. Nothing I could call a hobby. Having nowhere to spend money, I had at least not spared any on where I lived.
Not because I had particular taste, just because nothing else had come to mind.
I opened the apartment door and let the woman in.
“Go have a shower.”
I said it bluntly, folding the umbrella.
I didn’t want her walking around the place dripping wet.
That was all it was.
The woman, still soaked, nodded once and made her way to the bathroom.
＊＊＊
With the sound of the shower in the background, I slurped instant noodles from a cup and cracked open a can of lemon chu-hai.
I pulled out my phone to look through market trends in preparation for tomorrow’s client presentation.
A competitor’s recent moves, shifts in search volume, figures from industry reports — I was building the picture in my head, scrolling with my fingers.
A thought occurred to me.
Had that woman eaten anything? If she’d been huddled in an alley like that, thin as she was, she probably hadn’t had a proper meal in some time.
— Well. That wasn’t my concern. I had no reason to feed a stranger I’d found on the street.
The door clicked open.
There stood the woman, wrapped in nothing but a bath towel.
“Pfft——!!”
The instant noodles I’d been slurping went down the wrong way and I choked violently.
“…Clothes?”
“I don’t have any. My underwear got soaked through too. Is there anything I can wear?”
She tilted her head softly, smiling a helpless smile.
Then she drifted toward the large glass window as if drawn to it, and looked out over the Tokyo night.
“Woah… amazing.”
She let out a sound she couldn’t hold back. Then she turned to look at me.
Her expression was bright and childlike, eyes shining, but her flushed cheeks looked oddly alluring, and something small stirred in my chest.
Then, still in just the bath towel, she surveyed the room. She made a slightly puzzled face, and dropped a few quiet words.
“You know, big sis… are you bad at tidying up?”
She tilted her head to one side, the corner of her mouth lifting. Something about the gesture felt like it was looking down on me, and I found it irritating.
“I’m busy with work.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I don’t have time to tidy.”
“Sure.”
“And I don’t really feel the need to tidy, either.”
“I see.”
She neither denied nor agreed, just smiled pleasantly and offered the occasional sound of acknowledgment. The more excuses I piled up, the more I felt I was digging my own grave, and I didn’t like it.
Honestly, I’m bad at tidying. I don’t really understand decluttering, and once things start piling up I lose track of where to begin.
I’d never had anyone at the apartment before, so there’d never been any urgency about it.
…Anyway. That’s beside the point.
I went to the wardrobe to look for something to lend her.
I had no reason to lend a stranger my pajamas. Much less underwear — out of the question.
But having a complete stranger sitting in my apartment in a single towel was also a problem.
As it happened, I found an unused set of underwear buried at the back of a drawer, and handed that over along with the pajamas.
＊＊＊
The woman, swimming in my oversized pajamas, said I’ll sleep here and lay straight down on the floor.
I swept the pile of things on the queen-size bed to the floor with a series of thuds and lay down alone.
Why had I bought such a large bed when I had no one to share it with?
If I had to say, it was probably because when I was buying new furniture, the shop assistant had smiled and told me, For one person, a single would be plenty. Before I knew it, my pride had made my mouth say Queen size.
I had no reason to let a stranger use the bed.
But the bed’s needlessly large size meant I felt a strange guilt about letting the woman sleep on the floor.
And without noticing, I fell asleep.
＊＊＊
Morning.
I woke to an odd sensation near my ear.
The rim of my ear, faintly warm.
Something pleasantly warm was gently tracing the curve of it.
And then a soft breath drifted into my ear.
This is… someone’s… breath.
“…Huh?”
The sound that escaped me was embarrassingly small. I looked toward the presence with a puzzled expression, and there, seated at the bedside, was the woman I’d picked up the night before.
Chin resting in her hand, face nearly touching mine, smiling.
Morning light streamed in through the window, bathing her pale skin until it looked almost translucent.
“Morning.”
A sweet, soft voice drifted down.
“Breakfast is ready.”
That smile, somewhere between seductive and serene.
Something in the back of my chest felt strangely ticklish.
This was the first morning between me and that woman.