#26: Mikoto
“Th’ materials ah ordered a week back still ain’t come in yet. Ah know it’s me who catches hell from th’ customer if it ain’t delivered quick, but that don’t matter to you lot, does it?! Good-fer-nothin’s, th’ lot o’ ya!”
“Y— yes sir…! My sincerest apologies!”
“How many times I gotta say it ‘fore it sinks in, useless as ya are! Th’ fella before you had it to me the very next day after I emailed, and now look at ya! Can’t get a lick o’ work done with ya like this. Get me a new rep, or I’m takin’ my business elsewhere!”
“Eh…?!”
“Get outta here!”
Battered by a torrent of Tsugaru dialect he couldn’t make heads or tails of, the former head of Hibiya Trading’s planning department — Kosugi — hung up the office phone.
“From cradle to grave.”
Hibiya Trading’s prestige, illuminating all corners of Japan as the first-rate corporation it was, never quite reached this far — the Aomori sales office, Tōhoku branch, of its own logistics subsidiary, Hibiya Logistics. At the very bottom rung supporting the head office’s lordly business practices, the power dynamic with customers ran in exact reverse. The customer was king.
“DAMN IT ALL!”
Kosugi roared into the empty office. Despite his once-glittering résumé as division head of Planning, he hadn’t attempted a job change — no, he couldn’t attempt one — for one reason and one reason only.
Someone had leaked his misconduct to the HR departments of every partner company he’d ever done business with. As a result, the reemployment that should have been his for the taking had gone nowhere at all, leaving him with no choice but to accept the company’s decree — a brutal demotion, banished to the sticks.
Kosugi knew immediately who’d leaked his misconduct.
“OKAMURA SANAEEEEE!!!”
“Oh my, aren’t we worked up. Division Head Kosugi? Or, is it Section Chief Kosugi now?”
“Do something about this, Akazawa!”
The woman on the office’s video call screen — Akazawa Kurume — looked back at Kosugi with something close to open contempt.
Akazawa Kurume. A voluptuous, sultry, mature woman. Downturned eyes, makeup emphasizing prominent under-eye bags, every bit the femme fatale — a third-year employee in Hibiya’s own sanctuary, the Secretarial Division.
“You only got into Hibiya because of my recommendation! So arrange for me to get back to Hibiya!”
“You really think a little office girl in Secretarial can pull that off?”
“That’s exactly your job, isn’t it?! Think of something!”
“Hmm, let’s see…”
Painting her nails a vivid red, Kurume blew lightly on them before speaking.
“Why not just crush whoever crossed you, Kosugi-kun?”
“Okamura Sanae, you mean?!”
“Ah, that one’s a no-go. Did you know? She’s got her hooks into everyone internally. Move wrong against her and you’ll get transferred instantly. I don’t wanna end up somewhere as backwater as Aomori.”
“Then what am I supposed to—”
Kurume smiled, sly and sultry.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there? The bad little girl who crossed you and stole your project.”
“Kurosu Mikoto, from Meiji Stationery? But she’s not even someone inside the company!”
“That’s not entirely true, actually~.”
Humming to herself, Kurume relayed information she claimed to have pried out of HR. Kosugi’s furious expression gradually shifted into the same sly smirk Kurume wore.
“…I see, that’s excellent. I’ll leave the method to you — ah, wait!”
As Kurume reached to end the video call, Kosugi called out.
“I’m counting on you, hm? Kurume-chwan?”
“Yes siiir, understoood~.”
Kurume force-quit the video conferencing app on her tablet like she was handling something filthy, then glanced up at Hibiya Trading’s headquarters building, visible from her seat at an open-air café.
“Ugh, gross, gross. What a creep. Should’ve never taken that mistress-hire slot in the first place.”
＊
Reiwa Year 2, March. Meiji Stationery.
Half a month since the Hibiya project incident, Kurosu Mikoto had been enjoying a peaceful stretch of days when the kindly old managing director summoned her to the manufacturing division’s office in the factory.
“A transfer to Hibiya Trading? Me?!”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Mikoto doubted her own ears at the managing director’s easy, unhurried delivery.
According to him: the earlier Digital Memo proposal, while it hadn’t made the final cut of five, had been recognized as genuinely excellent — and, doubling as an apology for the whole business with Division Head Kosugi, Hibiya had decided to move forward with the project in-house. Kurosu Mikoto had been specifically singled out to lead it. An unprecedented promotion.
“What about the new-product project here at our company?”
“Of course, you’ll keep that going too. Though even calling it a ‘transfer,’ it’s really just once a week. Flex hours, too. And Hibiya’s covering your salary for it.”
“Just between us — take-home pay’s double what we pay you,” the managing director whispered, and Mikoto’s head spun for a moment. Given how much she’d been spending on nightly games lately, the offer was, in a certain sense, exactly what she needed.
Naturally, though, her workload would increase. Juggling two companies at once was no small undertaking.
“I do want to confirm you’re on board with this, since it’s coming as a courtesy from their side too. Hard for the company to turn it down outright. I’ll give you some time — think it over, would you?”
“Ah— yes. I’ll consider it seriously…”
Even reaching for the usual cliché of stalling, it was plain enough that the company’s own judgment would win out regardless.
Joy at the possibility of career advancement, tangled together with dread at having her private life eaten alive by more work — the two blended into a single unsettling cocktail, and Mikoto spent the rest of the day thoroughly distracted.
＊
“Oh my, what wonderful news. I’m proud of you too, for the promotion, Mikoto-san.”
The edge of Roppongi, the authentic girls’ bar Antiqua.
Hearing the news of Mikoto’s promotion from her prized seat, owner-bartender Shandy let her amber eyes curve into their usual waxing crescent.
“Yes, I suppose it’s thanks to my overflowing talent.”
“Fufu. Putting on airs even at your new post, are we? I wonder if that little act of yours will hold up against Hibiya’s cutthroat, dog-eat-dog staff.”
“Yeah, about that…”
Mikoto’s shoulders drooped.
Part of her reluctance about the transfer came down to real anxiety over her own lack of skill and experience. In her six years at Meiji Stationery next month, aside from the project, all she’d really done was run a modest ad campaign or two — with barely any measurable results to show for it, even now.
“Even just once a week, I really can’t picture myself thriving at that company…”
Hibiya was, after all, the company where the brilliant Yanase Sanae worked. After a few meetings following the whole incident, Mikoto had learned she was a Kyoto University graduate, elite through and through. Compared to Mikoto, a graduate of some mid-tier private university, the two of them were simply playing in different leagues from the start.
“More than that, though, I’m worried about you getting swept up in some needless office romance, Mikoto-san. You still haven’t given me your answer, after all.”
“No need to worry there. As I’ve said many times, I’m devoted to you and only you, Shandy-san.”
“Even after kissing a woman who wasn’t me?”
Sanae’s face flickered through Mikoto’s mind, but all that surfaced with it was a fierce wave of discomfort and distaste.
“Th— that was unavoidable circumstances! Besides, she’s a married woman!”
“Being married doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t lay a hand on someone, though.”
“I don’t do affairs or cheating.”
“Is that so? Will you swear to it? ‘I will absolutely never cheat.’”
“Yes, of course. I will absolutely never cheat.”
Caught in those amber eyes. No matter how many times she saw them, she never grew used to it — eyes that seemed to pull you in bodily. Every time their gazes met, her heart skipped, her spine straightened on reflex.
“Say it while looking me in the eye, won’t you?”
Once caught in that gaze, there was no way she could ever cheat. No escaping the amber-colored dream.
How many lives had those eyes derailed, Mikoto wondered. And of everyone caught in them, why had she been the one — presumably the only one — chosen?
The answer lay somewhere inside Shandy’s own mystery.
The list of things Mikoto still had to unravel only kept growing.
“Go on, say it?”
“I— I will absolutely never cheat…!”
“Fufu. Your face has gone quite red, Mikoto-san.”
“I changed my blush today, that’s probably why.”
“Let’s go with that, then.”
Smiling as if to say I see straight through that lie, Shandy set down tonight’s first drink.
“Tonight, to celebrate your growth, Mikoto-san — an original cocktail of my own making. The Mikoto.”
“Wait, that’s amazing…”
Looking at the glass set before her, Mikoto let out an unguarded gasp.
The Mikoto.
According to Shandy, an arrangement of the Beautiful Star — vodka-based, with grenadine and lime juice kept as-is, but using an amber coloring where the original called for green, and sinking a vivid red maraschino cherry into the glass as an accent.
Visually close to a Manhattan, but built for Mikoto’s own taste — the dry bite of vodka balanced against the sweetness of juice, with the sugared rim’s snow style dissolving the two together into a medium-sweet profile.
“Doing something like this so effortlessly is just unfair…”
“Yes, I do love being unfair. You know the saying, don’t you — the three B’s you should never date? A be-autician, a ba-nd member, and a ba-rtender. Well, doesn’t apply to me, since I’m a woman.”
“If you’d been born a man, Shandy-san, things would’ve turned out quite something, I imagine.”
“Would you have preferred that, Mikoto-san?”
Leaning over the counter, Shandy asked, and Mikoto found herself caught, momentarily, without an answer.
It was true — if Shandy had been a man, maybe things would have moved into a relationship without nearly this much agonizing.
But it was precisely because she was her that she was Shandy at all. Imagining her as a man wasn’t something Mikoto could even really picture — and, as things stood, her gaze, her heart, her very lips had already been thoroughly claimed by a woman.
“…I like the Shandy-san you are right now. Honestly, I still feel some hesitation, even now — but when I think of you, there’s no holding back this racing heart. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before… so it’s going to take a little time.”
“Yes. Once that hesitation clears, I do hope for a lovely confession.”
“Ugh…”
Struck speechless by sheer embarrassment. However much she attacked with kisses, once caught in that gaze, Mikoto went weak all over again. It always felt like Shandy could see straight through everything, no matter what words she reached for.
“This is exactly the moment to put on airs, Mikoto-san.”
“R— right! Understood! I’ll manage a confession so lovesick you won’t be able to see anyone but me, Shandy-san!”
“I’m already thoroughly lovesick, though.”
Brushing their lips lightly together, Shandy smiled.
There was no winning without first conquering those amber eyes — eyes that spoke of love more eloquently than any words could. Mikoto analyzed her own defeat and, choosing to ignore the fact that it was really a serious case of lovesickness, washed her sigh down with a sip of the Mikoto.
“Though with the transfer, coming by Antiqua regularly might get difficult. Wasn’t your home in Machida, Mikoto-san?”
“Yes, more or less. No transfer needed from Meiji Stationery in Yushima to Antiqua on the Chiyoda Line, but from Hibiya’s head office in Shimbashi, it might be a bit of a hassle.”
Mikoto checked a transfer app as she spoke. From her home in Machida to Yushima, a single transfer sufficed. Antiqua sat right along that same route — the edge of Roppongi, Akasaka Station on the Chiyoda Line.
Getting from Shimbashi, where she’d now be commuting weekly, to Akasaka would require a transfer of its own. Just the once, admittedly, but transferring during rush hour was its own particular misery.
“So your commute takes a full hour, does it?”
“Unfortunately, my take-home pay doesn’t stretch to anything closer.”
“Meaning I’m the one squeezing that meager take-home pay of yours dry?”
Shandy let out an “hmm,” gazing off into empty space, thinking it over. Finger pressed to her chin in that easily-readable pose of hers, she mulled it over for a while before speaking.
“Mikoto-san, would you like to live at my place?”
“WHAT?!”
The sound came straight from her gut. Assuming this was another one of her bad jokes, Mikoto denied it instantly.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“Fairly serious, actually. My place is in Kyōdō. Go ahead and check the travel time to Yushima and Shimbashi from there.”
Doing exactly as told, Mikoto checked the transfer app. Both routes came in under thirty minutes at the fastest. Compared to commuting from her own place, an overwhelming difference.
Thirty minutes in the morning especially was precious — particularly for Mikoto, whose head was heavy with a hangover most mornings.
“No, I mean, I really do appreciate it! But wouldn’t that be a huge imposition…?!”
“Imposition, no way. I’m out of the house during exactly the hours you’d be asleep, you know?”
“Ah…!”
Unlike day-shift Mikoto, Shandy ran on a nocturnal schedule. Shandy woke up right around when Mikoto finished work, and closed up shop right around when Mikoto headed out for the day. The only time the two of them ever actually shared the same hours was on Antiqua’s regular days off — Sundays and holidays.
“Feel free to make use of the place without any hesitation on my account. Though, of course, if you ever brought the Peach Lady over, I can’t say what I might do.”
“I already swore I wouldn’t cheat, just now!”
“Then, would you dislike sleeping in the same bed as me?”
Smiling slyly, Shandy delivered the question — testing, clearly.
Mikoto scrambled to hold onto whatever composure she had left, but the pace of this conversation had gotten away from her entirely.
“I wouldn’t dislike it! But, um, living together is…”
“Oh my. Aren’t we friends? I only proposed this as a room-share, you understand. Whatever were you expecting, Mikoto-san, to jump straight to living together?”
Realizing she’d detonated spectacularly in her own hands, Mikoto covered her face on reflex.
Just when she’d thought she was finally starting to hold her own — one moment’s carelessness, and here she was again. Tonight, she’d been thoroughly, completely played.
“Ngh…!”
“Fufu. Your real feelings slipped right out, didn’t they? I do love that honest streak of yours.”
Still, she didn’t want to keep losing like this. Face flushed a brilliant red, Mikoto met Shandy’s eyes head-on.
“If I lived in your room, I’d fall apart! Because I love you too much!”
“…!”
Shandy raised the tablecloth she’d been holding and covered her own face with it. Just for an instant, Mikoto caught a glimpse of those amber eyes going wide.
The strategy Mikoto had picked up for handling Shandy: a reckless, near-suicidal frontal assault, throwing away shame and dignity entirely. A method as childish as it was far from the composed, grown-up woman she aspired to be — but better than nothing, at least.
“…Tonight, I win!”
“…Fufu. Just because you got bold with one last push doesn’t mean you get to call it a win, you know.”
But a reckless frontal assault carried one fatal weakness.
It only ever lit Shandy’s own competitive fire.
Her pale, porcelain skin, faintly tinted now. In its hollows, her eyes gleamed sharp — the eyes of a predator who’d just spotted her prey, refusing to let Mikoto go.
“Well, do think about the room-share seriously. You’d save a bit on rent too, and personally, I’d be glad to have someone watching the place while I’m out.”
“That may be true, but you’re overselling how much watching the place actually—”
“Meow.”
Doing her cat impression yet again, Shandy held up a photo on her phone.
A beautiful, velvety ash-blue coat, and amber eyes just as lovely as Shandy’s own. A Russian Blue.
“My one and only family. Her name’s Mimosa.”
“Aww! She’s adorable…!”
A committed cat person who’d always wanted one but never been able to keep one, Mikoto found herself, at last, seriously considering the room-share.
As they say — there’s no winning against a crying child, a local landowner, or a cat photo.