#35: Between the Sheets
Having finished her weekly Pilates session at a gym in Nakameguro, Akazawa Kurumi checked LINE and smiled to herself.
“Hehe. As expected of a gossip reporter, you work quickly.”
The chat contained photographs of a woman who looked very much like Kurosu Kotone, affectionately fooling around outdoors with a blonde woman. One showed her carrying the other bridal-style; another showed them kissing on a bench in a roof garden. A whole collection of scandalous, voyeuristic photographs.
Kurumi sent a casual reply, and it was read immediately. The reporter’s answer came back without delay.
“Thank you for the tip, but the woman in these photographs does not appear to be Kurosu Kotone.”
Kurumi laughed as though that were exactly what she had expected, then apologised over LINE as if it had all been a simple misunderstanding.
“Is that so? What a shame.”
In fact, Kurumi had used an acquaintance’s connections to exchange contact details with a gossip reporter.
She had a single purpose: to find a scandal involving Kotone, then use it to blackmail her sister, Mikoto.
Based on sightings posted to social media, Kurumi had established that someone resembling Kotone appeared around Roppongi every evening. She leaked that information to the reporter and had them hunt for a scandal.
It was easier than investigating personally, and cheaper than hiring a detective.
Akazawa Kurumi’s academic performance and personnel evaluations had never been particularly impressive, but when it came to this sort of low cunning, she was more gifted than most.
“Honestly, Mi-chan and Kotone look so alike.”
Kurumi could not suppress the smile rising to her face.
Just as the reporter had said, the woman in the photographs was not Kotone, but her older sister, Mikoto. At a glance, the two were very alike. In low-quality candid photographs, they were difficult enough to distinguish.
“They resemble each other this much. I can tell them apart, but can the general public? Hehe…”
Kurumi had never intended to uncover a scandal about Kotone herself. Rather than wait for wary Kotone to expose a weakness, it was much easier to fabricate one and turn it into a scandal.
And so Kurumi had obtained evidence of a scandal involving Mikoto, the sister who looked so much like Kotone. Now that she had the photographs she needed, only one thing remained for her to do.
You understand, don’t you? If you do not want me to hand these photographs to a gossip magazine…
Mikoto went into the office every Friday.
Even on the afternoon of a day off, when thoughts of work would usually make her miserable, Kurumi’s steps were light.
Mikoto awoke amid the lingering scent of oranges.
Shandy’s bedroom in her two-bedroom flat in Kyodo. There was a reason Mikoto, who had slept in a sleeping bag in the spare room while caring for Shandy, was now asleep in her bed. There was also an unbearably embarrassing reason for her unusual thirst, the way every muscle in her body twitched as though in spasm, and the fact that she lay naked beneath the sheets.
“Good morning, Mikoto.”
The instant she saw Shandy standing at her bedside, all drowsiness vanished. Last night came flooding vividly back to her, and Mikoto buried her face in the sheets.
Last night.
After their all-out confession in the roof garden, Mikoto and Shandy had returned to the Kyodo flat. The moment the front door closed, Shandy stole Mikoto’s lips. Before she knew it, she was on the bed, being loved exactly as Shandy had declared she would be. It had been utterly one-sided, and utterly—
“Did it feel good?”
“I-I’m not telling you!”
“Hehe. I am glad you enjoyed it.”
It had been a game intense enough that Mikoto could not say how many times she had nearly lost consciousness. The result scarcely needed stating: the greatest, most complete defeat of Mikoto’s life.
Shandy’s claim that there was still much for her to teach had been inscribed upon Mikoto’s body in the clearest possible fashion. All Mikoto could do was curl up as small as possible, savouring the blissful ache running through every inch of her.
“Now that we are officially lovers, shall we go shopping right away?”
“Shopping…?”
“Our room-sharing arrangement is over. Our life living together begins now. We need to buy the household things we will need.”
“Won’t I be a burden…? And what about the tenancy agreement? Can I just move in?”
“Oh? You do not want to live with me, Mikoto?”
Shandy asked the difficult question with shining eyes.
Moving from Machida, where Mikoto lived now, would require all sorts of arrangements. Changing her registered address and mail forwarding, dealing with movers and estate agents, cancelling electricity, water, gas, and so on. None of it was difficult, but there was enough of it to make her reluctant to begin.
And besides, how was she meant to explain moving in with her girlfriend to her parents?
“It is not that I do not want to…”
“I will help with the arrangements. I am idle while you are at work, after all.”
“That is not it. I mean, how am I supposed to explain it to my parents?”
“Do you need your parents’ permission before you can live together? You are a fully grown woman.”
Perhaps it was a childish way of thinking. She could always tell a convenient lie, say that she had decided to live with a friend. But there was a problem now that she knew the truth about Kotone.
When Rinko left, she had said something astonishing.
“My last customer was Kotone-san.”
If Kotone, the younger daughter of the Kurosu family, was like that too, the Kurosu family line would end with them.
It was not as though the Kurosu family was an old family who would demand that their daughters take husbands to preserve the household. Still, from time to time, their parents would mention stories about cousins having children, or the adorable grandchildren of neighbours. Not pushily, but with a pointedness that was hard to miss. Mikoto had always brushed it aside vaguely, saying they could leave that to Kotone. But if they could not leave it to Kotone, the situation changed.
“They have looked after me all my life. I want to at least speak with them about it.”
“My, my. It is not as though we have decided to marry yet.”
“No, but Shandy-san and I…!”
“You and I? What is it? Please, do go on.”
Catching precisely the end of Mikoto’s sentence and twisting it, Shandy laughed quietly. Wrapped in the sheets, Mikoto turned away, her face burning. She was being so childish that it hurt even to herself.
“I know. I know you are thinking about this properly. It is because you are so kind that I fell in love with you, you know.”
“That somehow sounds like an excuse, and I do not like it.”
“Are you sulking?”
“I am only a child, after all.”
“Hehe. I like you when you are not stretching yourself too, Mikoto.”
Shandy kissed the nape of her neck. At once, the events of last night returned, and heat rose through Mikoto’s whole body.
“Well, I will not interfere in your family circumstances. Do as you wish, Mikoto. I will follow your lead.”
“Then… would you meet my parents once?”
“Should I say, ‘Please give me your daughter’?”
Shandy’s amber eyes gleamed with an amused composure, as if they saw straight through Mikoto’s heart.
“I do not want to provoke them too much, so I will introduce you as a friend first. I am sorry I cannot insist that you are my girlfriend, but…”
“I do not mind. It is hardly unusual.”
Already dressed and made up, Shandy slipped into the bed. She hugged Mikoto from behind, pressing their bodies together.
Shandy was slender, yet soft in Mikoto’s arms. The reassurance of being held by a man, of feeling protected, perhaps. No, this was an even greater comfort. Now that she had experienced it, Mikoto felt she need never have worried over finding the courage to choose this.
Yet from now on, she would need to find a different kind of resolve, separate from the resolve of beginning a relationship.
The first was the resolve to come out to her family.
“…But I am a little unhappy about it, so you must be punished.”
With that, Shandy gently bit her earlobe. Her hot breath against Mikoto’s ear turned even the pain into something precious.
Sometimes Shandy showed her affection indirectly, in ways that contradicted her words. This sweet little bid for attention, trying to leave teeth marks behind, made Mikoto’s sulking heart tip at once.
“Shandy-san, I love you…”
“My, my. You are so blissfully lovestruck. You are beginning to sound like Toko-san.”
Shandy laughed as though exasperated, then helped Mikoto sit up.
“Come, get ready to go out. Unless you take a hot shower, you will be advertising to the world that you belong to me.”
“Eh…?”
Sitting up, Mikoto understood the state she had been left in.
Her body, thoroughly carpet-bombed with kisses, was covered with bruises in the shape of lips. Her arms, shoulders, stomach, and inner thighs, at least wherever she could see at a glance. In places hidden from view, she could not begin to guess how many marks of love Shandy had left.
“Will these disappear…?”
“They will fade in about three days. Though once they do, I will simply renew them.”
“Is my body a canvas…?”
“Yes. A canvas exclusively for me to paint with love. Do you dislike that?”
Another difficult question.
There was no way Mikoto could dislike such tangible proof that Shandy, shrouded in so much mystery, loved her. But if she said that honestly, Shandy would surely seize the chance to pounce on her with sweet words.
Mikoto straightened her posture and composed her newly awakened expression into something dignified.
“No. I was only thinking it might become a work of art too precious to erase. Would it be called Shandy’s Love?”
“If I were naming it, I would call it A Map of Kurosu Mikoto’s Erogenous Zones.”
“W-what…!? Th-that is not true at all!”
“I told you, did I not? That I would spoil you thoroughly.”
Shandy smiled like a sensual adult and tickled the side of Mikoto’s torso, marked with kisses. Caught off guard, Mikoto’s body jerked.
“Oh? Why did you react like that, I wonder?”
“I-I was just startled because it was sudden! You would react too, Shandy-san!”
“Shall we test that?”
“You intend to tempt me like that, but I will decline. If we try now, I feel as though I will lose myself until the day off is over.”
The truth was, Shandy was extraordinarily skilled.
The more Mikoto remembered, the more all she could recall was bouncing on the bed. She pressed her face into the pillow, but the orange scent that had soaked into it only made the memories sharper, until heat rushed through her body again.
“Hehe. You may forget work, forget everything, and fall into decadence if you like. To me, it would only mean one more pet cat.”
“I will not fall into decadence! I will be the one to make you fall into decadence!”
“Yes. I look forward to it.”
Shandy’s slender fingertips stroked Mikoto’s back, and her body responded despite herself. In one night, Shandy had marked herself into Mikoto completely.
Her anxiety over whether she could get through the coming days unscathed mingled with a faint desire to abandon herself to it. Half regret, half anticipation, Mikoto let out a warm, unsteady sigh.
“…So I have decided to start room-sharing with Charlotte-san.”
The Kurosu family home in Yokohama.
Eager to act while the iron was hot, Shandy had rushed Mikoto into bringing her home while they were out buying household necessities. The four of them, Mikoto and Shandy with her parents, sat facing one another at the living-room table. Kotone was absent, but it was a family meeting.
There was no objection, as Mikoto had faintly worried there might be. Naturally enough: she was an adult. Her parents merely said, “Oh, I see,” with startling indifference.
Rather, it was Shandy’s astonishing propriety, her flawless act of innocence, that caught their attention.
“My name is Charlotte Gabriel. Mikoto-san has been tremendously kind to me.”
“Your Japanese is incredible!?”
With Japanese so fluent that it seemed entirely mismatched to her appearance, and impeccably polite speech to accompany it, Shandy first left Mikoto’s father dumbfounded. She had even brought a box of sweets. It was impossible to believe this was the same Shandy who behaved so freely at antiqua and at home.
“I had long wished to meet the parents of Mikoto-san and Kotone-san. Mikoto-san kindly gave me the opportunity, so I took the liberty of coming to introduce myself.”
“Oh, no, really. Our daughter is nothing special.”
“Please do not diminish her so. I am certain she is the person she is because of everything you have taught her. Mikoto-san is so kind because she was raised with such love. I lost my parents when I was very young, so…”
And with the one unhappy piece of her past that Shandy had shared, she firmly secured Mikoto’s mother’s sympathy.
As an aside, Mikoto’s personality came from her mother. She was so indecisive that even in a restaurant, she took ages to settle on an order. Her father and Kotone were the opposite, answering most questions by instinct within seconds.
“Oh, your parents… You have had a difficult life…”
“Yes. But for me, it was simply normal not to have them. Being here, among all of you, makes me feel as though I understand the warmth of a family. You are all so kind. Well, Kotone-san is ordinary, of course.”
She teased Kotone too, perfectly finding the points that made Mikoto’s father and mother laugh. Leaving no opening for criticism, Shandy played the part of a well-bred young foreign lady to perfection.
To begin with, Shandy was delicate as a girl and lovely as a doll. Even silent, she made a beautiful picture. Add flawless manners, and most people’s affection for her would shoot through the roof at once.
The result was that Mikoto’s parents were the ones who began to defer to her.
“If you do not mind having our Mikoto, please, by all means, let her room-share with you. Her salary is nothing grand, but she can cook reasonably well, at least.”
“Do not embarrass Charlotte-san, Mikoto.”
They had fallen completely, spectacularly. Blood would tell. All Mikoto could do was laugh, while committing to memory the bright face of the fraud beside her.
If you recognise this face, call 110.