#30: Final Approach / ep.1
On a stovetop and frying pan that showed barely any sign of use, Mikoto scrambled eggs and ham. Beside her: thin-sliced toast spread with mayonnaise, and two servings of instant cup soup waiting on the electric kettle to finish boiling. Neither dish, naturally, contained a single vegetable.
The mismatched set of dishware lined up on the counter told its own story — clear proof of a single person’s household.
“Meow.”
“Just a little longer, meow~? Making breakfast for your master.”
Mimosa rubbed her cheek against Mikoto’s calf, as if to say where’s my food already.
A holiday Friday. Kyōdō. Room 302. Eight in the morning.
The temporary room-share, decided on the spot when Shandy came down with a bad cold — the one most delighted by the arrangement wasn’t Mikoto or Shandy, but the beloved cat and reigning queen, Mimosa.
The sweats Mikoto had brought from her own place had already been thoroughly claimed and covered in fur, marked as Her Majesty’s property in record time. Unlike her owner, Mimosa, it seemed, was the more straightforward one of the two.
“All right, Mimosa, go wake your master up, would you? Meow.”
“Meow~.”
And, oddly enough, Mimosa was remarkably obedient. Not really expecting it to work, Mikoto asked anyway — and sure enough, Mimosa padded gracefully out of the kitchen toward the bedroom where Shandy still slept.
Just as Mikoto sandwiched the finished filling between the toast slices and poured the boiled water into the cup soup, a voice came from the bedroom.
“Owww?!”
She couldn’t help a wry laugh. Her Majesty was nothing but rough with vassals not in her favor. Presumably she knew exactly how to wield an XYZ.
Having opened a can of cat food as Mimosa’s reward, Mikoto looked up to find Shandy shuffling out in nothing but a long T-shirt, rubbing at her still half-asleep eyes. Her amber eyes were heavy-lidded and unfocused.
“Good morning, Shandy-san.”
“G’mrnin’…”
Letting out a small “fwaah,” Shandy settled at the table, and Mikoto set down the toast sandwich and cup soup in front of her. A breakfast menu chosen specifically because Shandy had declared, with childish insistence the night before, “I’m sick of liquid food!”
“Huh? Breakfast…?”
“I figured it was about time for something more substantial.”
“Making the most of the moment to show off your good-wife credentials, Mikoto-san?”
Still half-asleep, Shandy’s eyes curved into a waxing crescent anyway. Her loose blonde hair, tousled with bedhead, caught the morning light filtering through the curtains and glittered faintly.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll eat it myself.”
“I never said I didn’t want it. And it looks like you’ve thoughtfully avoided the vegetables I hate, too.”
“I’ve covered the nutritional balance separately.”
Mikoto set a carton of vegetable juice down on Shandy’s side of the table. Shandy immediately pursed her lips into a pout and pushed it aside with a flick, exactly like Mimosa rejecting something she didn’t like.
“What a troublesome master we have, isn’t that right, Mimosa?”
Munching away at the premium cat food now transferred to her dish, Mimosa let out a meow that seemed to say couldn’t agree more.
“Has your fever gone down?”
“37.2. Quite settled compared to yesterday’s 38-something.”
Along with a change of clothes, Mikoto had brought over a few household items from her own place. A thermometer among them. 37.2 degrees — matching exactly what Shandy had reported. Relieved that the nursing had paid off, Mikoto let out a breath.
“Your color looks better too, but don’t push yourself.”
“Yes. Since I’m at it, I think I’ll take the full three-day weekend off. I’ll head over later and put up a notice outside the shop.”
Pressing her palms together with an “itadakimasu,” Shandy brought the cup soup to her lips. “Hot,” she said, adorably, and reached for the toast sandwich next.
“I’ll handle that. I’m heading out today, anyway.”
“Oh my, leaving poor sick me behind for a date with someone else?”
Smiling slyly, as if testing her, Shandy threw out the loaded guess.
Even a cold couldn’t keep her words in check, it seemed.
Today’s plan wasn’t a date — well, not exactly. It was Rinko’s date-planning session. Mikoto hesitated over whether to mention her — someone whose standing with Shandy remained ambiguous, friendly or otherwise — but Shandy just laughed, light and rolling, before she could decide.
“Fufu. No need to worry on my account. I can’t imagine someone who’d go this far for my sake would drift toward anyone else so easily.”
“True enough. I really would rather devote every effort to you, but unfortunately, I can’t go back on a prior engagement either. Being this popular has its downsides.”
“My, how enviable.”
The two of them met each other’s eyes and laughed. Finally at a drinkable temperature, Shandy took a sip of the cup soup and asked.
“Your someone today is the Peach Lady, isn’t it? Shirai Rinko-san, if I recall. Am I right?”
Propping her elbow on the table, Shandy fixed her with a gaze that saw straight through everything. Before those wide, round amber eyes, no lie stood a chance.
“…However did you know? Quite the Charlotte Holmes, aren’t you.”
“I see everything about you, Mikoto-san.”
Humming to herself, Shandy took a bite of the toast sandwich. Despite the fact that she was about to meet Rinko, of all people — someone she’d once fought a genuine battle of wills with at Maverick — her eyes stayed a composed, settled crescent rather than flashing with any anger.
“I expected at least a little scolding, given it’s Shirai-san.”
“Oh my? I don’t dislike Rinko-san at all, you know. I only put her through some embarrassment because she tried to find fault with the way I love.”
“Could you go easy on her? She is a coworker of mine…”
“No. She’s interesting, you see. And it seems she’s finally worked up the resolve to step onto the same stage as me.”
“The same stage…?”
Shandy smiled, bold and unshaken. Something must have happened between Shandy and Rinko that Mikoto wasn’t privy to.
“Fufu, call it the confidence of the legitimate wife, shall we say. Ah, but would you promise me just one thing, Mikoto-san?”
“What’s that?”
“Come home before it gets too late. I’d like your company for our game.”
“A game even at home now?”
“Yes.”
With that, Shandy pointed to the game console beside the TV.
“Mario Kart.”
“Ah, that kind.”
Shandy laughed, bright and unguarded as a carefree girl.
＊
That same afternoon. Harajuku, Takeshita Exit, as arranged with Rinko.
Arriving five minutes ahead of schedule, Mikoto spotted Rinko already waiting and hurried over.
“You’re early, Shirai-san. Been waiting long?”
“No, I just got here.”
Rinko’s outfit was nothing like her usual commuting clothes. Early spring — a soft-toned, demure blouse and flared skirt, weather warm enough that a single cardigan sufficed for a coat. Against the flashier crowd of Harajuku’s fashion-forward streets, it wasn’t especially bold, but that restraint gave it its own quiet, age-appropriate poise.
“That suits you, Shirai-san. I’m a little jealous — I can’t really pull off cute like that.”
“Thanks. But today… I wanted you to see a different side of me.”
Rinko’s carefully styled bangs stirred in a gust of wind blowing in from the direction of Yoyogi Park. Riding on it, the faint scent she wore tickled at Mikoto’s nose.
“Well, first, let’s analyze what kind of thing your someone likes. Can’t build a strategy without knowing the client’s needs, right?”
“Ahaha. Sounds like you’re at work.”
Led by the hand, laughing brightly, Mikoto let herself be pulled out onto the street.
Harajuku. Past the main thoroughfare of Takeshita Street, a distinctively shaped fashion building came into view. Riding an escalator that felt like stepping through a kaleidoscope, they entered a forest of clothing spanning East and West alike. Walking through it, Mikoto asked.
“Your someone’s a coworker at our company, right?”
“You remembered? From when I confessed it, at the hotel bar.”
That match had ended in a draw — the game where they’d each named what they loved about their someone. Rinko, putting up a genuinely good fight against Shandy, had dropped a few hints along the way.
“If I recall, someone kind who spoke to you first, made you want to root for them. And always looking busy, wasn’t it?”
“Any guesses, Kurosu-san?”
“Hmm… no idea, honestly. I figured maybe someone young from Manufacturing.”
Mikoto ran through the names of every male employee in Manufacturing she could think of, but Rinko just shook her head each time. She even worked her way up through section chiefs, department heads, all the way to the managing director — nowhere close.
“Ugh, nope. I give up. Won’t you just tell me?”
“Still a secret, for today. First, let’s find some clothes — oh! This is cute!”
Rinko picked up something equally demure, equally sweet, and held it up against herself in front of a full-length mirror. Row after row of tightly cinched pieces, the kind that only looked right on a mannequin with an impossibly narrow waist.
Mikoto glanced briefly at Rinko’s own waist. A well-balanced figure, curved in and out in all the right places. Unlike Mikoto’s own, which had softened slightly from all those nights at Antiqua.
Even so—
“Might suit you.”
—Looking at the demure, sweet clothing she could never pull off herself, the image that surfaced in Mikoto’s mind was Shandy. Someone even more doll-like than the already-slender mannequin, chest carved away thinner still — she’d probably wear it effortlessly. Mikoto pictured her standing there, right beside her, dressed exactly like that.
And then felt embarrassed at having pictured it at all.
“Really? Is this the kind of thing Kurosu-san likes?”
Holding the organza peplum top against herself, Rinko sent an upward glance her way. The warm undertone of her skin matched beautifully with the pale fabric.
“Like — or more like, admire. I can’t pull that off myself.”
“You think so? I think it’d suit you too, Kurosu-san.”
Standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the mirror, they held the clothes up together. Against Mikoto’s own familiar, sharp features, the sweetness felt like a poor match entirely. The scent of peach registered more clearly now than it had at their meeting point, or on the walk down Takeshita Street.
“Peach, today?”
“And you’re orange again today too, Kurosu-san.”
Rinko’s smile carried a faint, unsettled edge to it.
The orange scent clinging to Mikoto was, of course, just from the shampoo Shandy favored — natural enough, given she’d been commuting from Kyōdō these past few days.
Right after, Rinko’s nose twitched.
“And… it’s making my nose a little itchy. Did you start keeping a cat, by any chance?”
Rinko sneezed — “achoo.” Scrambling for a handkerchief, she wiped her nose and stifled several more sneezes, careful not to spray toward Mikoto.
“I’m looking after a friend’s cat, actually.”
“Sorry. I’m allergic to cats. I think they’re adorable, but I can’t stop sneezing around them…”
The impromptu lie made it even harder to bring up the room-share now. Not that it would’ve been a problem to mention outright, exactly — but admitting she was living with a woman, let alone Shandy specifically, wasn’t something easily said.
Not wanting Rinko, a coworker, to read anything strange into it, Mikoto searched for the right words.
“Sorry, if I’d known you were allergic I’d have been more careful. Is it really that strong a smell?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m just especially sensitive to scent. So… once we finish here, why don’t we head over there next?”
“Over there?”
Rinko pointed outside the storefront. Across the corridor stood a shop lined with countless small bottles and dried flowers.
“An aroma shop. Let’s try out some scents there — one for you, one that might suit me. We can even swap out the cat and orange smells for something new.”
Skipping any fitting-room try-ons and finishing her purchase, Rinko led the way to the aroma shop.
A familiar face behind the counter, apparently — while Rinko exchanged a few words with the shop clerk, Mikoto browsed the countless small tester bottles lined up on display.
Frankincense. Clementine. Melissa.
Among names she’d never heard of, a few rang a bell.
Foremost among them, Ylang-Ylang. Opening the small bottle and bringing it close to her nose, the thick, almost overwhelming floral scent shook something loose in her mind.
“Do you like that one too, Kurosu-san? Ylang-Ylang?”
“Hmm. So-so, I guess?”
“I see.”
Beside Rinko, who answered somewhat curtly, Mikoto’s eyes landed on a display of reed-diffuser bottles, and her thoughts drifted back to work.
“Actually, speaking of new projects — could I get your input on something, Shirai-san?”
“Of course. The aroma-and-pencil combination idea, right?”
Switching her mind back into work mode as she sampled tester after tester, Mikoto explained.
The next new-product proposal after the Digital Memo — the Aroma Pencil (tentative).
The idea had come from the thin wooden reeds — rattan sticks — used in aromatherapy diffuser bottles: essentially, replacing the rattan reeds with the company’s own pencils. A genuinely reckless concept, when you got down to it.
But it came with a major problem.
“I tried swapping in one of our pencils instead of a rattan reed, as a test — and it barely gave off any scent at all.”
“Really, that’s an interesting experiment.”
Rinko let out a soft, wry laugh and continued.
“Rattan’s full of tiny holes, so it draws the oil up and lets it evaporate easily. But our pencils are hinoki cypress, right? Being a plant, it’ll draw up liquid too, but probably nowhere near as much evaporates compared to rattan. And hinoki has its own natural scent besides.”
“Yeah, figured as much…”
An idea good enough to save the company clearly wasn’t going to come easily. However hard she searched for some fresh use for a pencil, the more she thought about it, the more stuck she became. And besides, if there really were some untapped use out there, someone would surely have found it already. Not really her place to be the one to discover it, she thought.
As if trying to lift Mikoto’s spirits, Rinko’s voice brightened.
“You really are working hard at this, though, Kurosu-san. It makes me want to root for you so much!”
“But it doesn’t mean anything without results… Learning Hibiya’s rules is hard enough on its own, and then there’s the whole Akazawa situation…”
“I get it, that you’re busy. Even when you were just starting out, busy as you already were, you were the first one to speak to me, remember?”
What Mikoto could actually recall of her own work at Meiji Stationery amounted to little more than a barely-noticed ad campaign. Surely there’d been other marketing pushes besides that one — and yet none of it came to mind at all.
“Was I? I’ve honestly forgotten.”
“…You really are dense, aren’t you.”
The murmur that slipped out of Rinko caught Mikoto off guard. All the more so because Rinko wasn’t the type to use anything close to an insult in casual conversation.
“Huh?”
“Well, we’re already here, so let’s find you a scent you like! If there’s something that could soothe you when you’re this busy, maybe it’d help you push through work even more.”
After talking something over with the familiar clerk, Rinko began putting together an original test blend using the testers.
Mikoto couldn’t follow a word of what Rinko and the clerk discussed — something about the top note, wanting to strengthen the middle note. Watching her eyes light up over something completely outside Mikoto’s own knowledge felt, somehow, familiar — the same way Shandy looked whenever she talked about cocktails, fully absorbed in something she loved.
“…Kurosu-san, what do you think of this! Top note’s Bergamot, middle’s Ylang-Ylang. I couldn’t decide on the base, so I made two — one with Cedarwood, one with Rosewood. Go ahead, smell them?”
“Fufu…”
Mikoto found herself smiling naturally at how earnest Rinko looked, fully absorbed in her work.
Seeing a side of Rinko she’d never witnessed before, she felt, if only slightly, the distance between them closing.
“Ah, I got carried away there. Was that a little much?”
“No. You looked like a real professional. That’s pretty cool, actually.”
“Like a professional…”
Amused, Mikoto laughed without noticing the brief flicker of confusion that crossed Rinko’s face.
Having tested both bottles of the handed-over original blend, Rinko finally spoke up.
“…Kurosu-san. There’s still something I want to tell you today. Would you mind staying out with me a little longer?”
＊
“Meow~.”
“Oh my, rain?”
The moment Mimosa’s paw brushed her face, the clear March sky outside clouded over. No sooner had the laundry been hurriedly brought in than the overcast sky began to weep, drop by drop.
“I wonder if Mikoto-san took an umbrella with her.”
Hand resting on the window sash, watching the rain sheet down, Shandy murmured to herself. The thermometer tucked under her arm, finally, showed a normal reading.
Normal temperature. Proof, at last, that the cold had run its course.
“Mimosa? Your master’s stepping out for a bit. Can you hold down the fort like a good girl?”
“Hisss!”
“No need to hiss at me. I have to go pick up the person Mimosa loves most, after all.”
For the first time, Mimosa licked the hand Shandy extended toward her. Her rough tongue traced gently over the exact spot she’d bitten that morning, as if to erase the mark.
“I do love an obedient girl. Fufu.”