#38: Earthquake / ep.2
Mikoto explained the situation to Shandy over the phone.
That Akazawa had secretly photographed her confession the other day. That she intended to insist the woman in the pictures, who looked so much like Mikoto, was Mikoto’s younger sister Kotone, then spread the photographs on social media and in tabloid magazines in an attempt to end her acting career.
And more than anything, that Shandy herself might be in danger.
Mikoto listened closely at the phone. Shandy had mostly listened in silence, making only the occasional sound of acknowledgement. The moment Mikoto finished, she gave a short, immediate answer.
“And?”
“And…?”
“I understand the situation. You are such a worrier, Mikoto.”
In contrast to Mikoto’s concern, Shandy laughed lightly down the line.
“The photographs are simply of you and me. So if a reporter comes asking, I only need to tell them honestly that I am in a relationship with Kotone-san’s sister. A scandal between ordinary people does not make money, so no reporter will care.”
“But Shandy-san and I are one thing. Kotone is…!”
“Yes. That is the problem, is it not?”
Shandy fell silent, breaking off as though to consider it. Filling the pause, Mikoto spoke.
“I do not want this to hold her back. I have seen how hard she works, in my own way…”
“What beautiful sisterly love. I am jealous.”
Shandy teased her lightly, but Mikoto knew how hard Kotone worked. For action roles, she built up her body; for school dramas, she softened her figure to seem more approachable. At times, she had even gone so far as making her cheeks hollow with an almost unhealthy severity for a part. Just recently, Mikoto had desperately stopped her when she murmured, “Maybe I should have four of my molars pulled.”
Kotone was an incorrigible die-hard actress. Seeing the way she risked everything for her work, Mikoto could not bear to stand in her way.
“Now then. You went out of your way to call, which means there is something you want to ask of me, does it not?”
Mikoto’s lips stopped before she could speak. This was, in a sense, the consequence of her own careless behaviour, despite knowing she looked so much like Kotone. Shandy was kind and sharp-minded; if Mikoto asked, she would surely devise one or two clever solutions. But Mikoto did not want to depend on her over something so personal.
“…It is nothing. I only called because I thought the photographs might cause you trouble.”
“Hehe. You are stretching yourself again. Will you not rely on me?”
“I merely meant to show you that I could manage without relying on you.”
“My, is that so? I am a little disappointed, but if that is how you feel, Mikoto, I will respect it.”
“Anyway. Please be careful too, Shandy-san.”
“Of course. I shall be waiting at antiqua for the woman I love to return.”
Heat rushed through Mikoto’s entire body. Shandy’s usual, suggestive words now carried an abundance of love. The provisional platinum ring around Mikoto’s finger was proof of that, collateral for Shandy’s affection.
“…I will settle this quickly and come home.”
She ended the call and touched her ring finger. She had more than her own strength now; she had the strength of that ring as well. And she could not show its giver, Shandy, the childish and pathetic sight of her failing.
Her destination was General Affairs, the battlefield where Akazawa Kurumi waited, watching for Mikoto like a tiger stalking prey. With renewed determination, Mikoto left the roof.
“Akazawa-san, we need to talk.”
The moment she returned to General Affairs, Mikoto took Kurumi aside. At the end of the corridor outside the General Affairs office, before the door to the emergency staircase, was a tucked-away spot where people were unlikely to see them. A place for private conversations, taught to her by Sanae.
“Bringing me somewhere like this. You are bold, aren’t you?”
Kurumi laughed in a voice designed to grate on the nerves. Mikoto threw away her professional mask and spoke.
“About the photographs, they are of me and my girlfriend. They are not Kotone’s.”
“Mi-chan really has a bad memory, does she not? Even if what you say is true, do you really think all the people who see those photographs will think the same?”
“It does not matter. I do not intend to let you leak the photographs.”
Mikoto clenched her teeth and bowed her head.
It was humiliating. She was bowing of her own accord to someone so despicable that she had even stolen Mikoto’s lips without warning. Her insides felt ready to boil with rage. But this was to protect Kotone. To protect her younger sister, who had already achieved success, unlike Mikoto, who had become no one. It was the one thing she could do as Kotone’s older sister.
“Please. Do not do that to her. Kotone has nothing to do with your objective.”
“Oh? When someone is making a request like that, should she not be kneeling and bowing to the floor?”
“…If I do that, will you stop?”
“That is not something a person making a request gets to say, is it?”
Kurumi’s sneering laughter pried at the anger Mikoto was holding back with all her reason. But if she broke here, everything would be wasted.
Mikoto dropped to her knees on the floor. Looking up, almost glaring, she saw Kurumi sitting on a bench in the corridor with one leg crossed over the other. Her bright-red stiletto swung provocatively.
“I have always wanted to say it, you know? ‘Show me your sincerity.’ Will you obey anything I say, Mi-chan?”
Mikoto did not answer. Instead, she slowly lowered her upper body to the floor. She wanted to protect Kotone, even if it meant making herself look utterly pathetic.
“…Please.”
Her body shook on its own from anger and sorrow towards the self that could do nothing but this. Tears immediately spilled from her burning eyes. Mikoto thought back, wondering how many years it had been since she had last cried.
She had always believed she must not cry. Women who cried easily were childish, and so no matter how painful things became, she had held it back. Yet her best effort at stretching herself was defeated so easily.
“Ahaha, this is fun. I might understand a little better now, this feeling of wanting to do awful things to girls.”
After Kurumi’s grating laugh came the sharp click of a camera shutter. Even then, Mikoto restrained herself from lunging at her and kept her forehead pressed to the floor. Everything was for Kotone. And to show Shandy that she had resolved this with her own strength.
Without the slightest consideration for Mikoto’s endurance, Kurumi continued.
“Well, merely bowing to the floor will not satisfy Kosugi-kun, you know? Mi-chan knows about the former head of Planning, Kosugi-kun, does she not?”
“…The man who stole my proposal.”
“Hmm? Is that so? But, you see, Kosugi-kun asked me for something. He wants Mi-chan to admit to absolutely everything and prove to headquarters that transferring him away was a mistake.”
Kurumi was telling her precisely what Sanae had warned her about.
Kosugi’s purpose really was to return to headquarters. Which meant Mikoto would have to take the blame for stealing the proposal. If she did that, Meiji Stationery would be sued at last, and Mikoto would go to prison. The faces of the employees who had cared for her at work, of Rinko, Shiina, and Executive Director Tsuzuki, flashed through her mind.
“…I cannot do that.”
“Then perhaps I will spread Kotone’s photographs after all. Is that all right? Your adorable little sister might be blacklisted from the entertainment industry. An actress who appears in ordinary romance dramas turning out to like girls, that could become quite a scandal, could it not?”
Kotone or Meiji Stationery: a forced choice between the two. There was no way she could choose only one.
“Hehe. Well, I am not that bad a person, so today I will be satisfied with just these photographs of you bowing to the floor. Will you raise that pretty face for me, Mi-chan?”
Mikoto did not want Kurumi to see her crying face, so she wiped away her tears with her sleeve. Her eye make-up would be ruined regardless, but she still did not want Kurumi to see.
“Since we are playing at the office, we ought to enjoy it much more thoroughly, do you not think?”
The shutter clicked again. Satisfied after photographing Mikoto’s crumpled, tearful expression, Kurumi strode away, her stilettos ringing against the floor. Mikoto, left behind, could not even rise from the ground. All she could do was wait for her tears to run dry.
On the outskirts of Roppongi stood antiqua, the girls’ bar run by a bartender whose ring gleamed on her ring finger.
Beyond its heavy door was an amber-coloured adult world. Mikoto knew its unwritten rules well. So, desperate not to let her true feelings, full of anger at herself and miserable humiliation, show through, she stood at her preferred seat with her back stretched as straight as it would go.
“Tonight’s cocktail is an Earthquake. A cocktail with a shocking flavour, like an earthquake.”
Earthquake.
As Shandy said, this cocktail, named for an earthquake, contained dry gin, whisky, and anise liqueur. The anise clouded when diluted, its haze blending with the colour of the whisky into a pale yellow, rather like mimosa flowers. But the flavour was anything but hazy. True to its name, the Earthquake’s formidable strength shook the mind and vision.
“You will not tell me, Mikoto-san?”
Until Shandy set the glass before her, neither said a word. Aside from a greeting when she arrived, only the classical music playing over the shop speakers filled antiqua’s otherwise empty silence.
“…Yes. I handled it well.”
“Is that so? You did very well.”
Shandy reached over and stroked her head. Slender fingers moved as if gently untangling Mikoto’s dishevelled hair. The moment her hair, which she had not felt like fixing after bowing to Kurumi, was put in order, what she had buried deep inside began to spill out.
“I… handled it well…”
“…Mikoto-san. Please drain that cocktail. I feel like making you a second.”
The moment she spoke, Shandy took up an ice pick and began breaking ice.
Crushed ice: ice broken into fine pieces for juleps and frozen cocktails. The regular sound of the pick piercing and splitting the large block steadily grew louder, driving the classical music far away.
Through eyes blurred with tears, Mikoto could not make out Shandy’s expression in antiqua’s dim light. But Shandy’s usual mature composure had vanished tonight, replaced by an acute tension like the Earthquake Mikoto had drained.
“…You will not ask me what happened, Shandy-san?”
“My work is to wait for a customer to speak to me. Here, I am a bartender.”
“Of course…”
“Yes. I only offer a hand when it is asked for. Besides, if I forced the story out of you and acted, you would become dependent on me. That is the sort of relationship you dislike most, is it not, Mikoto-san?”
“…Yes.”
“Hehe. I do not mind you depending on me as much as you like, though. For example, with a Between the Sheets.”
“…”
“Oh? No reaction? You are seriously unwell, then.”
Even Shandy’s smile, which usually enthralled her, could not reach Mikoto tonight.
Unless Mikoto spoke first, Shandy had no intention of helping. Understanding Mikoto’s wish to stretch herself, she was deliberately keeping quiet rather than intruding.
Which was exactly why Mikoto had to resolve this herself. She had to escape the photographic trap Kurumi had set, and crush the scheme lurking behind it, Kosugi’s scheme.
“…But if it is only the matter of the photographs, I think there is a way to resolve it at once.”
“That means…”
With mischief glittering in her amber eyes, Shandy poured the contents of a blender full of crushed ice into a glass.
“You are drinking at a slightly brisk pace, but here is your second cocktail of the evening: a Frozen Daiquiri. Please enjoy the sherbet-like texture of this Instagram-worthy cocktail.”
Frozen Daiquiri.
An arrangement of the usual Daiquiri, made with white rum and lime juice, this cocktail used a blended method: ice and ingredients were mixed in a bar blender, rather like a kitchen mixer. Mixed quickly, it became an enjoyable and delicious sherbet-like ice. Its only flaw was that it could give one a headache.
“Instagram-worthy… That is the word least suited to antiqua.”
“Indeed. I think I myself am adorable and photograph well, but this bar’s appeal lies in its dimness.”
“Social media…”
Mikoto recalled what Kurumi had said during the day. If she posted that photograph on social media, Kotone’s acting career would surely be finished. No matter how often Mikoto repeated that it was not Kotone in the photograph, scandalous rumours would spread and leave the truth behind.
Somehow, she had to render that photograph powerless. She had to make it so that even if it was posted online, it would not hurt Kotone in the slightest. Was there not some way to prove to ordinary people that the woman in the photograph was Kurosu Mikoto, the older sister who resembled Kotone so closely?
“…Ah.”
Having followed the thought that far, Mikoto finally found her idea. As if to say, You finally noticed, Shandy smiled faintly.
“It seems Kotone-san is having trouble finding things to post on Instagram.”
On the phone Shandy showed her were photographs Kotone had evidently taken: skies, clouds, bowls of ramen she had eaten. If the account did not have its official verification badge, it would be no different from the account of some random member of the public, filled as it was with completely inconsequential scraps of daily life.
The hashtags ran vertically beneath them:
#AnotherOrdinaryDay
#ThereIsNotReallySomethingToPostEveryDay
#ButMyAgencySaysIHaveToPostEveryDay
#DoingMyBestAtPromotion
#ManagerAreYouWatching
It was completely Kotone: utterly transparent about her lack of interest in social media.
But this was an opportunity. Mikoto might be able to provide Kotone with material for her account while protecting her at the same time.
“I just have to use social media against social media…!”
“Hehe.”
Mikoto immediately sent Kotone a LINE message. Her short message, Come to antiqua, was read at once, and a single K came back.
“Shandy-san, please reserve a seat.”
“Certainly. I will hold the one beside you.”
Shandy placed a coaster beside Mikoto’s and smiled.
“…Though, Shandy-san, you use Instagram. That is surprising.”
“Meow.”
The imitation of Mimosa’s meow told Mikoto everything she needed to know about the sort of things Shandy posted. Immediately, Mikoto tapped the Instagram icon on her phone, which she barely used.
Before Mimosa, even someone as negligent about social media as Mikoto could change.