#23: Peach Lady / ep.1
Mikoto woke to an unfamiliar ceiling overhead.
Nothing like the discount bed back at her apartment. The mattress sank deep beneath her, yet still cradled her hips and back firmly. The sheets, crisp with ironing and starch, carried the clean scent of freshly laundered fabric.
Sensing a presence near the pillow, Mikoto turned her gaze toward it. Not Shandy. Not Rinko. A woman stood there instead, wearing a navy jacket, a scarf knotted at her neck.
“Um…?”
Sensing that Mikoto had woken, the woman spoke before Mikoto could even ask who are you? — straightening her posture and bowing with practiced courtesy.
“My apologies for disturbing your rest. I’m Kuze Fumika, on staff here. Kurosu-sama was resting in the lobby, so I took the liberty of showing you to your room.”
“You carried me here…?”
“Yes. I happen to be exceptionally strong.”
Fumika answered with a soft smile. Her eyes had settled into a waxing crescent.
That perfectly straight posture, that manner of speaking, even that particular curve of a smile — all of it resembled someone so closely that Mikoto found herself blurting out a question before thinking.
“Are you the Cheshire Cat…?”
“My apologies. I’m not familiar with whoever that might refer to, but I don’t believe that’s me. I was asked to carry Kurosu-sama here by my senior colleague — no, by Charlotte Gabrielle-sama.”
Still foggy from waking, her mind wasn’t quite keeping up.
There was no doubt Kuze Fumika had carried her to the room herself — but even at a top-tier hotel like this, would staff really carry a sleeping guest to their room while leaving them asleep the whole time? And why had Fumika used Shandy’s alias — and, more than that, called her senior?
“…Did Shandy-san used to work here?”
“So that’s the name she’s going by these days. Very like my senior.”
Laughing softly, “fufu,” in that same manner so like Shandy’s own, Fumika made to leave the room.
“I’m sorry, could I trouble you for a little of your time? I find myself wanting to reminisce a little about Shandy — no, Charlotte Gabrielle-san.”
“Yes, understood. I can’t promise the story will be to Kurosu-sama’s liking, but attending to our guests’ wishes is exactly what hotel staff are for.”
Mikoto offered the bedside chair to Fumika, who’d been about to speak standing, and waited for her to begin.
＊
—Rewinding roughly ten-odd minutes earlier.
“Caught you. Peach Lady, was it?”
“…Who exactly are you?”
The one who seized the arm of Shirai Rinko, stroking sleeping Mikoto where she dozed on the sofa, was a blonde woman.
Dressed in a gray hoodie, hardly the sort of casual outfit you’d expect at a top-tier hotel. Her once neatly styled hair, presumably freed from whatever product had been holding it in place, still carried the faint waves of its earlier shape.
“A friend of Mikoto-san’s. Charlotte Gabrielle, if you would.”
It wasn’t every day a Western-looking woman suddenly claimed to be a friend. And on top of that, she was the one who’d just interrupted Rinko.
Rinko went on guard at once. That voice. That manner of speaking. The same figure who’d come up in her earlier exchange with Aomi Shiina, the close, intimate someone who called Kurosu Mikoto by her first name.
“No need to worry, please. I’ve no intention of eating you alive, or anything of the sort.”
“Could you drop that way of speaking? It feels like you’re mocking me, and it’s making me angry.”
“My, unexpected. The Peach Lady speaks her mind plainly, doesn’t she? Fufu.”
A laugh with a faintly nasal, mocking edge caught in Rinko’s ear. Charlotte was openly hostile. Rinko judged, almost instantly, that this was someone she simply wouldn’t get along with, and hesitated over whether to bare her own teeth in turn.
But Mikoto was right there beside her. And whatever the truth of it, this woman was claiming to be Mikoto’s friend. Better not to make an outward scene. Suppressing her anger, Rinko forced a smile — one carrying its own edge of hostility.
“Kurosu-san’s my coworker. My apologies for the late introduction — Shirai Rinko.”
“I see. What a lovely name, Peach Lady-san.”
Still grinning, she made no move to drop the nickname. The unspoken message came through loud and clear: your name means nothing to me.
At last, Rinko settled her judgment.
This woman was an enemy. And worse — either she was after the very thing Rinko had already given up on claiming for herself, or she already held it in her hands.
“Our managing director secured a room for Kurosu-san. So, if you’ll excuse me — I’ll be the one taking her there.”
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself. Maverick has a capable junior colleague on staff.”
Still wearing that fixed smile, she waved toward the front desk. The hotel employee who appeared wore a name badge reading Kuze Fumika.
“Fumika-chan. Would you carry our sleeping beauty here to her room? Like a prince rescuing her from a wicked witch.”
“So you’ve come back for a day as a bartender on a whim, and now it’s manual labor. You’ve always been a woman of mystery, senior, but tonight you’re outdoing yourself.”
“Isn’t ‘Kuze Fumika’ itself a mysterious stage name of your own? We’re even, then.”
“Not to disparage the profession, but some people mistake the term ‘stage name’ for something else entirely and take offense — I’d appreciate ‘service name’ instead, if you don’t mind.”
Without so much as a twitch in her faint, fixed smile, Kuze Fumika lifted Mikoto with a strength that belied her frame entirely. Watching the sleeping princess vanish toward the elevator hall, Rinko had no means left to follow.
“Now neither of us can lay a hand on her. Reassuring, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I don’t like women who talk in riddles.”
“Fufu, first time we’ve actually understood each other. I don’t much care for myself either. Though I’d still say that’s better than a woman like you, dropping hints without saying anything outright.”
Struck right at the heart of it, Rinko’s guard rose further still.
It had all started with something small. September, two years ago.
On Rinko’s first day at Meiji Stationery, freshly hired as an office clerk, the first person to speak to her had been Kurosu Mikoto. Beautiful, kind, and yet somehow never quite grounded — that had been Rinko’s first impression of her.
Rinko had been watching Mikoto this whole time. Not out of any special feeling — or so she’d told herself. Convinced from the start that Mikoto wasn’t like that, she’d never even let herself consider her a candidate — no, she’d deliberately kept herself from framing her that way at all.
—Just being friends is enough. As long as I get to stay by her side.
Wishing for exactly that, she’d kept up her quiet, aching watch.
“…It’s you, isn’t it? The woman behind the orange scent.”
“That’s right, Peach Lady-san.”
Earlier this year, Mikoto had changed. If it had just been different makeup, that would’ve been understandable enough — chasing a trend, or perhaps a boyfriend’s preference. But a scent doesn’t change so easily.
“Are you the one getting her drunk every night too?”
“Yes. I am a bartender, after all.”
No one else would have noticed. But Rinko’s sense of smell was unusually sharp.
Mikoto had started carrying the scent of alcohol. Even her own body’s natural scent had grown stronger, more noticeable.
However hard she tried to hide it, Rinko could tell.
The slight wear in her clothes, the tired droop of her collar. Stifled yawns, sleepy, half-lidded eyes. And during work hours, that distracted, faraway look — glancing wistfully at the office clock before slipping out the moment the workday ended.
“…Because you’re a bartender?”
“I’m not quite following what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb.”
Why did Mikoto go drink at this woman’s place at all?
For two whole years, Mikoto had never touched alcohol outside of work obligations. Never once worn the same outfit two days running. So why, all of a sudden these past few months, had she started going every single night?
She didn’t need to think hard to know the answer.
“You’re dating that woman, aren’t you?”
It stung. For Rinko, who’d told herself she isn’t like that and resigned herself to friendship, this felt like a betrayal in every sense. And then…
“You knew I was pining for her the whole time, and you were laughing about it behind my back, weren’t you…?!”
—this woman was unforgivable.
Not because Mikoto had been taken from her. But because this woman had called Rinko’s own careful restraint — the effort she’d forced herself into, holding back from crossing a line she desperately wanted to cross — nothing more than hinting.
She’d never wanted to share her scent like that.
Never wanted to transfer her own perfume onto someone else’s clothes.
Because Mikoto was a precious friend to Rinko, she’d deliberately played the part of a woman with feelings, in order to steer her away from someone dangerous. She’d meant to protect Mikoto. That had been the whole point.
“…You didn’t even know I’d convinced myself she wasn’t like that.”
“Yes, Mikoto-san isn’t. As it happens, the two of us are stopped right at the edge of actually dating.”
Whatever emotion she’d been suppressing pushed at her brow, her eyelids. Her expression, no longer under control, must have shown anger plain enough for anyone to see. But Rinko, half lost to herself now, wasn’t in any state to notice.
“If you know she isn’t like that, why would you reach out to her anyway?! People like us loving someone normal — it’s nothing but pain…”
“Everyone loves differently, don’t you think? Watching over her while erasing yourself, the way you do — that’s one form of love. Living fully as myself and guiding her forward, the way I do — that’s another.”
“And if she gets hurt because of it, what then?”
“I don’t make mistakes like that. Though you might have, once.”
“…! What would you even know about it?!”
Charlotte wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked at Rinko the way you might look at someone pathetic — or someone to be pitied. An expression somewhere between compassion and contempt.
“I understand. Your suffering.”
“Don’t say you understand so easily.”
“…Do you think this is something I’d say easily?”
Rinko had raised her voice out of pure anger — she noticed, belatedly, the doorman and the cloakroom staff glancing her way. Charlotte pressed a finger to her own lips with a soft “shh,” which only made Rinko angrier still, and she dropped her head, trying to force her anger back down. In that moment, Charlotte continued.
“I was the one who was guided, once. And the one who guided me abandoned me.”
“…………….”
Meeting Rinko’s silence, Charlotte spoke again.
“Maverick’s bar has private rooms too. If you’re willing to hear the rest, would you join me? Shirai-sama.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Rinko rose quietly to her feet.
“…I don’t want Kurosu-san to get hurt. Which is why I’m going to convince you.”
“Yes, by all means. I’ll be the one refuting you, though. I’ve no reason to have my way of loving dictated to me by someone like you.”