#37: Earthquake / ep.1
Friday. At the entrance gates of Hibiya Trading’s headquarters in Shimbashi, Mikoto held her ID card to the reader, then pressed herself into the corner of the glass-sided lift.
She came every week, but she was still an outsider. After confirming only that the lift stopped on the tenth floor, where General Affairs was located, she watched the view below grow gradually smaller.
“Good morning, Kurosu-san.”
“Ah…! Sanae-san?”
She had been so intent on looking outside that she had not noticed until the voice addressed her. Yanase Sanae from General Affairs stood beside her, looking up at Mikoto from her shorter height. Her usual sour expression was in place, with dark circles beneath her eyes, whether unsuccessfully concealed beneath make-up or simply left alone. Not a face one wanted to see first thing in the morning.
“You look unwell. Are you all right?”
“I was looking into something. Do you have time, despite having only just arrived?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
Sanae pressed the button for the top floor, passing the tenth-floor stop. This was not something they could discuss before work, nor in the General Affairs office. As Mikoto had expected, it concerned Kosugi and Akazawa.
“To give you the conclusion first: we need to engage Akazawa… no, the entire Secretarial Section, in battle.”
On the roof of the headquarters building, Mikoto sat on what was probably the bench where Sanae usually ate her lovingly prepared lunch. Then she heard the whole story.
“What do you mean?”
“The Secretarial Section and General Affairs Section are organisations within the same General Affairs Department. Their respective duties are entirely different, but their parent organisation is the same. Until the end of the next financial year, that is.”
As Sanae had said, the ID card hanging from her neck read General Affairs Department, General Affairs Section. Mikoto imagined an organisational chart with two sections attached directly beneath the department.
“The General Affairs and Secretarial Sections are to be merged. More precisely, the Secretarial Section will be dismantled and absorbed into General Affairs.”
“And you have been assigned to arrange that, Sanae-san?”
“It is not final yet. The Secretarial Section is fiercely opposed. Given the nature of their work, they are a group within the organisation that keeps itself at an equal distance from the organisation.”
“Er… what does that mean?”
Sanae’s thoughts moved too quickly for Mikoto to follow. When Mikoto asked, Sanae widened her eyes as if wondering how anyone could fail to understand something so simple, scratched her head, and explained more plainly.
“The Secretarial Section is full of women like Akazawa, each with one or two troublesome traits. Nearly every one of them is beautiful and intelligent. A women’s garden of talents blessed with beauty and ability. You could call it Hibiya’s Ōoku.”
“Ōoku…?” 1
The corner of Sanae’s mouth rose slightly. She remained as poor at smiling as ever, so it was difficult to read her true intent, but it was probably a joke of her own.
“It is only natural that the perfect superhumans in the Secretarial Section would not wish to work shoulder to shoulder with the ordinary people of General Affairs. That is the internal matter. Now, for the part that concerns you, Kurosu-san.”
“Me?”
Sanae changed the ID card at her neck. The title General Affairs Department, General Affairs Section became General Affairs Department, Secretarial Section.
“They have demanded a personnel exchange between General Affairs and the Secretarial Section. I believe their aim is to prove that exchanging roles makes the work impossible, and thereby prevent the dissolution. The person moving into General Affairs in my place is—”
“Akazawa?”
“Exactly.”
Akazawa Kurumi: third-year employee in the Secretarial Section, with heavy make-up, pronounced aegyo-sal under her eyes, and swollen lips.
A devil who had caused a major incident from the very first time they met.
“My instruction is to dismantle the Secretarial Section. Therefore, I intend to perform flawlessly even in my new placement there. But Akazawa will be acting with precisely the opposite objective.”
Mikoto understood why Sanae had dark circles beneath her eyes.
She must have been sacrificing sleep to prepare, determined to show the members of the Secretarial Section exactly what she could do.
“If it becomes clear that someone from the Secretarial Section is useless in General Affairs, the plan to dismantle it can be withdrawn…”
“Yes. Akazawa will undoubtedly cause trouble in General Affairs. And she will do so at the desk beside yours. In other words, you will have to deal with Akazawa alone.”
The anxiety of losing Sanae, and Mikoto’s anger towards Kurumi, churned inside her. She would be separated from the dependable hound of General Affairs, then made to stand beside a fearsome beast. The threat was impossible to measure.
“Will you be all right, Sanae-san?”
“Worry about yourself first. I have Toko.”
Sanae’s phone wallpaper was an ordinary moment from Toko’s life. For some reason, Mikoto felt faintly envious of the Yanase wives, who had progressed so much further than she and Shandy had.
“You really do love your wife.”
“Please do not make a move on her. You have that bartender, after all.”
There was something dear about the way Sanae looked at her, as though she were a little jealous and meant to stake a mild claim. Mikoto could not help smiling at the thought that even Sanae, whose default expression was a glower, could make a face like that.
“I will not. I am not indiscriminate.”
“Of course not. Anyone playing at being a gigolo would not wear a ring on her ring finger.”
A vow ring gleamed on Mikoto’s right ring finger, where there had been none before. It was the slim platinum ring Shandy had given her. It was worlds apart from the silver matching ring Mikoto had bought.
“I shall tell Toko that the two of you have reached the stage of exchanging rings. She is very fond of you both.”
“I cannot say that makes me happy…”
“Anyway,” Sanae said, rising to her feet with a determined little shake of her shoulders.
In a school uniform, she might have passed for a high-school student. If one were kind, she was youthful; less kindly, she was tiny and childlike. Whether she could embody the beauty element of the Secretarial Section’s beauty-and-ability ideal was doubtful, but even without that beauty, Sanae surely possessed all the talent needed to serve as a secretary.
“Our fight with Akazawa is now your fight. I am sorry to involve you, an external employee, but I have faith in your abilities.”
Sanae was technically younger than Mikoto, but receiving an evaluation from someone so capable did not feel bad. Mikoto stood too, meeting the eyes of the little giant before her.
“Do your best, Sanae-san.”
“You too, Kurosu-san.”
Mikoto parted from Sanae as she headed for the Secretarial Section’s offices, then went to the desk assigned to her in General Affairs.
“Hellooo. I will be working in General Affairs for a while now. Nice to meet you. Oh, you can call me Kuu-chan, if you like.”
“I look forward to working with you too, Akazawa-san.”
“Mi-chan, you are no fun.”
Just as Sanae had said, Akazawa Kurumi occupied the desk beside Mikoto’s, the one that had belonged to Sanae. Her heavy make-up and grating, nasal way of speaking had not changed. If anything, she seemed more aggressive than before.
Mikoto tried to remain calm. Unlike Sanae, Kurumi’s purpose was to cause trouble at her new posting. That meant Mikoto, the seconded employee, would be the first to suffer.
“Excuse me. I have a meeting with the Planning Department.”
“Ahh, Mi-chan? Could I have a word?”
Having gathered the materials for the meeting, Kurumi grasped Mikoto’s hand. Her right hand, where the ring Shandy had given her gleamed.
“Oooh, what a beautiful ring. I wonder who gave it to you?”
“A few things happened. Excuse me—”
“Ah! It was that blonde foreign woman, was it?”
Mikoto stopped dead.
She had been struck so precisely that she could not help it.
Kurumi should not have known about Shandy. Mikoto tried to conceal it by playing a card of her own.
“Hehe. Did I hit the mark?”
“Goodness, anyone would react if you said ‘a blonde foreign woman’. Someone like me, whose secondary-school English is barely reliable, could not possibly have an international acquaintance.”
“But that is not quite true, is it? Will you look at this?”
On the phone Kurumi produced was an image of Mikoto and Shandy. It appeared to have been taken a few days earlier, in the roof garden of the commercial building near antiqua, when Mikoto had confessed.
“A friend sent this to me. Do you not think the woman in this photograph looks like you, Mi-chan?”
Mikoto drew in a breath. If someone had secretly photographed that moment, Kurumi might know about Shandy, perhaps even about antiqua itself.
That meant danger not only for Mikoto, but for Shandy too. She could not allow that, under any circumstances.
“I am honoured that you think so. I am nowhere near as beautiful as this woman.”
“Really? So this girl just happens to resemble Mi-chan very closely.”
“Yes. A lookalike, no more.”
“Come to think of it, Mi-chan, you have a younger sister, do you not? Her name was Kurosu Kotone, was it?”
In Kurumi’s saccharine voice and vulgar smile, Mikoto understood.
Kurumi’s target was not Mikoto.
“No, that is incorrect. Who is this… woman called Kotone?”
“You do not know? Kurosu Kotone-chan is a promising young actress who has been getting a great deal of attention lately. A twenty-three-year-old chameleon actress who takes on any role. Apparently she has an older sister, four years her senior.”
“My, what a coincidence. We have the same surname and age. But that is all it is, a coincidence.”
“Of course. Then if the woman in this photograph is not Mi-chan… perhaps it is Kotone-chan?”
Mikoto could only fall silent. No words would come.
Kurumi, meanwhile, smiled as though declaring victory.
“Maybe I should spread this photograph on social media? An actress currently in the spotlight, kissing in broad daylight, and with another girl, too. What a huge scandal, right? If something like this came out, do you think she could keep acting?”
Mikoto could not let that happen. She could not allow Kotone’s hard work, all her struggle to succeed as an actress, to come to nothing because of this. At once, she corrected her so that Kotone would not be harmed.
“You have me there, Akazawa-san. The woman in that photograph is me. The ring on my right hand was given to me by the blonde woman beside me. I was embarrassed, so I tried to evade the question.”
“Hm, is that so? But, Mi-chan? There is something I wonder.”
“What…?”
To Mikoto’s strained question, Kurumi gave her a chilling smile.
“Do you think everyone out there will believe what Mi-chan says? That the photograph is of Mikoto, Kotone-chan’s lookalike older sister?”
So that was it. Kurumi’s target was not Mikoto, but Kotone. Worse still, she intended to use Kotone as leverage to threaten Mikoto.
“Believe it or not, it is the truth. The woman in the photograph is me. Kotone has nothing to do with this!”
“If you want to make it have nothing to do with her, do you not think you ought to follow my orders? Do you, Mi-chan?”
Mikoto could say nothing before sadistic Kurumi. No matter how underhanded her methods, she could not call attention to them and bring this problem into the open.
Kurumi won if she caused trouble within General Affairs. In other words, no matter how unjust it was. Even if Mikoto wished to accuse her of secretly photographing them, even if she wanted to make her stop pursuing Kotone, she had to obey Kurumi’s instructions.
“I have no wish to indulge your games, but if you insist, I will accept.”
“I wonder how long you can keep up that cool attitude?”
Letting Kurumi’s parting shot, practically a declaration of war, pass by, Mikoto went to her meeting with the Planning Department.
Naturally, she could not think properly. She felt terrible towards the people who were going out of their way to help with Digital Memo, but all she could think about was Kurumi, and the danger now hanging over Kotone and Shandy.
After the meeting, Mikoto stopped by the roof and opened her chat with Kotone, intending to contact her. But she had no idea what to say or how to say it. Her fingers typed, erased, and typed again.
She could not help mocking herself. She was still a child.
“This is something I have to resolve on my own.”
She hesitated to consult Shandy about it. Yet she felt so alone, and thought even hearing Shandy’s voice might give her courage. So Mikoto changed the chat from Kotone’s to Shandy’s.
Her finger still hovering uncertainly, she pressed the call button. It was early afternoon. If things were as usual, Shandy, a woman of the night, ought to have been asleep. After several rings went unanswered, Mikoto was about to give up when the tone abruptly cut off.
“Fwaaah… What is wrong, Mikoto? I am still sleepy…”
The voice on the phone belonged to Shandy, Mikoto’s live-in partner. Mikoto could instantly picture her rubbing sleep from her eyes as she spoke in that drawn-out voice. Just imagining that voice, that figure, calmed the storm of her mind. It was love; she was proud to love someone like Shandy.
“I am sorry. It is about work, so I thought I should resolve it myself before I asked you for advice, Shandy-san. But I could not stop worrying.”
“Oh? Worrying…?”
Mikoto decided to explain what Kurumi had told her.
-
Ōoku was the women’s quarters of Edo Castle, a highly hierarchical inner institution serving the shogun. Sanae’s “Hibiya’s Ōoku” joke frames the Secretarial Section as an elite, insulated female court within the company. ↩