#53: Masquerade / ep.5
Continuing the act was painful.
I lost count of how many times I had to fight back a sob at her words. My character setting was nothing more than a hastily improvised book. I had been complacent because acting was something I had learned long ago, and that was my undoing. I completely forgot my role and made a pathetic spectacle of myself in front of her.
Even so, she still hadn’t realised Riddle Smith’s true identity.
Originally, I had intended to make a game out of whether she would figure out who I was. But not only did she refuse to play along, she dangled the words I had wanted most in front of me.
I want to love the person you are now.
I can’t trust other people.
And yet, even for someone like me, I want to believe those words. I have no choice but to believe them.
Those words she spoke to Riddle Smith, a complete stranger to her, weren’t some pretence or consideration directed at me. Her habit of putting on a brave face is simply part of who she is, but the reason she keeps doing it is because she herself wants to be that kind of person.
She is trying to love me, Charlotte Gabriel, almost blindly.
She is trying to accept me exactly as I am: someone who doesn’t want to talk about her past, someone selfish enough to insist that she wants to be loved only for who she is now.
There is no other way to interpret it.
No matter how incapable I am of trusting other people, she trusts me.
Even when I treat her harshly, she tries to understand my feelings, the true feelings I’m too afraid of being betrayed to express directly.
“You’re far too kind compared to someone like me…”
It made me happy, and I cherished the fact that the woman I loved trusted me.
And yet I envied her, too.
I envied how easily she could trust other people.
“Haah…”
The place where I went to let out all those conflicting emotions was the washroom at Hotel Maverick.
The woman reflected in the enormous mirror looked hopelessly ugly.
Her skin looked unhealthy, her make-up had been designed to accentuate shadows and make her look like an entirely different person, and after wiping away her tears countless times, it was now a complete mess. The eye make-up had smeared all over the inside of the masquerade mask.
My tears had flowed so freely that my contact lenses were completely useless.
I threw the disposable crimson lenses into the bin and looked at myself in the mirror again.
“…If I’m going to be ugly anyway, wouldn’t it be better to be ugly only on the inside?”
The hideously disfigured woman, Riddle Smith, spoke to the mirror.
The woman reflected there was forcing her amber eyes into a distorted expression.
The woman reflected in the mirror was the woman who had been by my side for so long.
Strong.
Beautiful.
Mischievous.
Seductive.
The ideal woman I considered the most beautiful person in the world.
The bartender at Antiqua.
Shandy.
Borrowing her wisdom and strength, there had to be a way to get through this situation.
“Hehe. I’ve thought of something good, Charlotte.”
This was Maverick.
My old home, from my days as a hotel employee and later as an actress.
If there was an answer, it would be in the warehouse of the theatre attached to this hotel.
If I wanted to save the woman I loved more than anyone, Kurosu Mikoto…
If I wanted to test whether she truly trusted me…
There was only one thing I could do.
“…Let me make you believe in me, Mikoto.”
＊
On the dance floor, glamorous men and women stood at regular intervals.
The members of the Secretarial Division and Akazawa were also mingling with male guests, performing their duties as hosts.
Amid them, there was one pair facing each other who stood out from everyone else.
Two women.
Mikoto and Rinko.
“…You’re Shirai-san, right?”
“I’m Seta Maria!”
Rinko, otherwise known as the self-proclaimed Seta Maria, answered with her cheeks bright red and a tone bordering on outright anger.
Mikoto thought it might be rude to press the matter any further, so she swallowed her mounting questions for the time being.
But she still couldn’t understand why Rinko was here.
The conversations around them gradually faded away.
The murmuring became silence.
Then a slow introduction began to play.
A waltz.
Moon River.
“Won’t you dance with me?”
“Oh, yes. Of course.”
Mikoto caught Rinko and assumed the closed position.
The unfamiliar perfume Rinko had put on for the occasion, different from what she normally wore, sweetly tickled Mikoto’s nose.
As she gradually adjusted her body to the slow triple metre of the music, Mikoto began the Natural Spin Turn exactly as she had been taught—
“Double Reverse Spin.”
“What!?”
Rinko dragged her around.
Mikoto and Rinko suddenly spun anticlockwise.
Over the three beats of a single slow bar of the waltz, Rinko made her rotate twice.
Mikoto somehow managed to improvise her footwork, but the resulting steps were an absolute mess.
“Wait, Shirai—”
“Another Double Reverse Spin! This time, lead!”
“Lead!?”
The music wasn’t going to stop just because Mikoto was panicking.
Desperately recalling the anticlockwise turn she had just performed, Mikoto caught Rinko’s body and, just as she had practised with Shandy, guided her in the direction of the rotation.
She had no idea whether her steps were even correct.
It was a completely improvised lead.
Even so, Rinko somehow managed to follow Mikoto’s movements.
“Next is Wing! Just walk! It’s easy!”
Following Rinko’s words, Mikoto moved across the floor with her.
The surrounding dancers deftly avoided the pair who weren’t dancing according to the standard pattern, circling anticlockwise around the centre of the floor.
Two women dancing together, and neither of them dancing properly.
They were drawing attention.
That was inevitable given their lack of experience, but if this continued, they would be playing directly into the Secretarial Division’s hands.
“Shirai-san, what are you—”
“Leave it to me.”
Rinko pulled Mikoto firmly towards her.
They returned to the flow of dancers, walking in the same direction as everyone else.
Then Rinko said:
“Stop.”
Mikoto stopped.
Rinko twisted her body halfway around, ninety degrees, presenting her beautiful back to the spectators.
She remained there as though an angel were resting its wings, letting three beats pass.
“Next, Natural Spin Turn. Then Reverse Turn into an Overturned Natural Spin Turn.”
“Shirai-san, have you done ballroom dancing before?”
“I practised just now!”
“Just now!?”
“Never mind! Just do it!”
The Natural Spin Turn was a movement Mikoto had practised with Shandy.
During the first three beats, the couple made a slow turn, and during the latter three, the woman, the partner, was turned around completely.
Once it was finished, the Reverse Turn restored their position, allowing them to continue with the opening movement.
Rinko’s chest, larger than average, was pressed against Mikoto’s right side.
Though Rinko was about the same height as Shandy, her body was fuller, overflowing with a more overtly feminine beauty.
If she hadn’t been attracted to women, it was easy to imagine that she would have been pursued by even more people than Mikoto herself.
Supply and demand did not always match.
“How did you—”
“Overturned! Here we go!”
Rinko’s hands clenched tightly.
She was trembling terribly with nerves.
Mikoto somehow managed to keep up with Rinko’s forceful lead from the woman’s side.
As the name Overturned suggested, there was more rotation in the latter half than in the Natural Spin Turn.
Where a half-turn would normally have been enough, they rotated a full 360 degrees, and the centrifugal force left Mikoto’s feet unsteady.
Even so, Mikoto somehow completed the turn.
She then gently swayed her body in place, repeating the preliminary step, the simple side-to-side movement used as an idle step.
“Now dance however you like, Kurosu-san.”
“I can do that, but…”
Mikoto began the routine Shandy had taught her.
The four steps she had learned, repeated again and again as a way of fooling spectators who had no real interest in ballroom dancing.
As she continued the steps she had practised over and over with Shandy, the gift Shandy had given her, Mikoto gradually calmed down.
She couldn’t help asking the woman pressed close against her.
“Why are you here, Shirai-san?”
“…I’m Seta Maria.”
“That’s enough of that.”
Mikoto slipped a slightly forceful Reverse Turn into the routine.
She looked into Rinko’s eyes, their bodies still pressed together on the right side.
Rinko answered with a confused expression.
“…That woman asked me to.”
“You mean Shandy?”
“Yeah. That infuriating woman.”
The routine came to an end. But the waltz showed no sign of ending.
Moon River.
It was a song about a river on the moon.
Even when faced with a tremendous obstacle, a river supposedly more than a mile wide and difficult to cross, the lyrics declare that they will cross it magnificently rather than give up.
A rather ridiculous display of putting on a brave face.
And yet Mikoto found the song reassuring.
It seemed to be urging her to overcome the Secretarial Division.
To overcome Akazawa.
“…She invited me. She asked me to infiltrate the party.”
“Then Shandy is here?”
“Just look at me for now. Dance with me.”
Mikoto wanted to stop dancing immediately and search for Shandy.
But if she abandoned the dance, she would be playing directly into the Secretarial Division’s hands.
It would mean surrendering to Akazawa’s mocking laughter.
Sanae’s sorrowful expression flashed through her mind.
She didn’t want to lose.
There was nothing she could do but keep dancing.
“I don’t know why, but she asked me to teach you the steps. So I desperately memorised them.”
“…”
Just as Mikoto had thought.
Shandy had gone so far as to use Rinko to teach her the dance.
She really did care about Mikoto.
And precisely because she was that kind of woman—
Mikoto could trust her.
She felt sorry for Rinko, but she could trust Shandy.
“I almost want to ask you instead. Kurosu-san, what is that woman thinking…?”
“I know what Shandy is thinking.”
“Stop being so mysterious and tell me…”
As they turned, Mikoto embraced Rinko.
She looked into those suspicious eyes.
“She’s protecting me and helping me grow.”
“…Protecting you… and helping you grow?”
“She never told me that herself, though.”
Listening to Riddle Smith had finally allowed Mikoto to sort out her thoughts.
She would love Shandy, the woman who had become unable to trust other people because of her complicated past, her past as Alice.
She would believe in Shandy’s roundabout love, the love of someone who protected and helped her grow while she was in trouble.
“Do you really think that woman is that noble?”
“I believe in Shandy.”
“You really won’t wake up, will you, Kurosu-san?”
“Even if I discover later that it was all a dream, that’s fine.”
“…I see.”
The song entered its second half.
The violin’s vibrato tugged at the heart.
The deep voice of the unnamed male vocalist was soothing.
Mikoto had finally grown accustomed to the routine, and the exhilaration of dancing well enough to blend in with the other dancers enveloped her.
“…Kurosu-san has gone somewhere I can no longer reach.”
“I may have risen through the ranks, but I’m still just a stationery shop employee.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I heard about it. You’re fighting some bad person called Kosugi. The Hibiya Secretarial Division, too. And Akazawa.”
“That’s right.”
“I want to protect you, but I can’t anymore. So I’m no longer needed, am I?”
Rinko’s eyes were glistening.
The sight hurt too much to watch.
Mikoto instinctively turned her gaze away and moved into the Whisk.
She moved in the same direction as the other dancers, like a school of fish swimming through a gigantic aquarium tank.
“…Kurosu-san, I love you.”
The feelings contained within that love were something Mikoto could not accept.
No matter how deeply Rinko cared for her, Mikoto could love only one person.
“Shirai-san, that’s unfair. You’re trying to make me say it.”
Mikoto had wanted to avoid confronting Rinko with those words directly.
She knew how painful Rinko’s romantic history had been.
A relationship between two friends of the same sex who had built up years of trust could be destroyed by a single confession.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine how many times Rinko had been hurt that way in the past.
So, at the very least, Mikoto didn’t want that to happen to their relationship.
Not merely because they worked for the same company and were on the same project.
She didn’t want to lose a precious friend who had gone out of her way to help Mikoto.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll be hurting forever.”
“I know.”
“You don’t! I… I can’t stop myself!”
During the game involving Shandy, Mikoto had pretended to build a harem.
It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to surround herself with beautiful women.
She had done it because she wanted Rinko to give up on her.
But at the same time, it had been Mikoto’s own way of running away from those words.
“If you’d just reject me once, I could give up on you!”
“By saying sorry?”
“Yes! Why won’t you put the final nail in the coffin of my feelings!?”
Rinko was right.
If Mikoto simply said I’m sorry, everything could be erased.
That was the kindness people often talked about: severing both love and the relationship itself, and allowing a painful unrequited love to end.
But at least…
Would resetting everything really be kindness for Rinko?
And, in the first place, was it even possible to reset everything completely?
“I love Shirai-san too. As a friend.”
“That isn’t the kind of love I mean. My love is—”
“There’s one thing I want you to promise me.”
“A… promise?”
For Rinko’s sake.
For the sake of Rinko, who had broken friendships over this kind of love again and again, Mikoto had to say it.
It was terribly difficult to say.
Rinko might resent her for it.
It might be an insurmountable problem, like Moon River’s mile-wide river.
Even so, if she truly cared about Rinko, she had to cross it.
Mikoto drew a breath.
“Will you stay my friend from now on, Shirai-san?”
“Your… friend?”
“No. My best friend. Until now, we’ve only been colleagues, but I want to go out together. We could walk around town, or maybe travel together.”
“That would just make it even more painful…”
“But if we become best friends, you might get some candid photos of Kotone.”
“D-don’t try to tempt me with Kotone!? I want them, but… really badly…”
Mikoto stopped her steps.
The song was approaching its outro.
All she needed to do now was continue stepping from side to side in place, which was enough to fool the spectators.
“I don’t want to lose a precious best friend, like what happened with your relationships in the past, Shirai-san.”
“Then I’ll never be able to give up on you…”
“It’s all right. I’m going to spend the rest of my life getting along with the woman you hate most.”
“…I hate you a little more now.”
“That’s a problem.”
They faced each other.
Rinko, who had remained sullen since the dance began, finally managed a wry smile.
“I was joking. I absolutely hate that woman, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to start hating you, Kurosu-san.”
“Thank you for indulging my selfishness.”
“…If we’re best friends, I can indulge a little selfishness.”
Without either of them consciously deciding who would move first, they embraced.
They remained in each other’s arms, gently swaying until the song faded out.
The first waltz was over.
As applause filled the gap, Mikoto asked in a voice only Rinko could hear.
“Will you promise? That we’ll stay best friends forever?”
“…It hurts. But if you’re saying it because you care about me, then I promise.”
“Then—”
“Wait. Let me say it.”
Rinko took a deep breath.
She met Mikoto’s eyes and confessed once more.
“…Kurosu-san. I loved you so much.”
The words hurt.
So did Rinko’s forced smile.
Even so, this pain was better than ending their relationship altogether.
It was a pain the two of them would learn to share from now on.
She believed that the years ahead would eventually heal it.
“I’m sorry, Rinko-san. From now on, please stay with me as my best friend.”
“Thank you, Mikoto-san…”
Rinko desperately held back what was welling up inside her and managed to smile.
Then she turned around and left the dance floor.
Her posture was dignified, her back so straight it seemed almost unnaturally so.
The woman with the unrequited love walked away having become Mikoto’s best friend.
＊
Rinko returned to the crowd of spectators.
Only then could she finally cry.
The pain of heartbreak never became easier, no matter how many times she experienced it.
But this time was different.
Her friendship hadn’t been destroyed.
If anything, their relationship had advanced further than before.
Mikoto’s considerate kindness was as sweet as confectionery and as bitter as poison.
“Uu… uuuuh…”
She couldn’t hold back her sobs.
She curled up in the middle of the crowd, hugging her knees.
Rain began to fall, leaving marks on the marble-patterned floor beneath her.
“Rinko-san?”
She knew that voice without even looking.
Kurosu Kotone.
Rinko didn’t want to be spoken to.
She didn’t want her idol to recognise her, and she especially didn’t want Kotone to see her at her most pathetic and become disappointed in her.
“…Ah, Rinko-chan. If you crouch down there, someone’s going to kick you. Come on, let’s sit.”
Kotone dropped out of actress mode and returned to her natural self.
She pulled Rinko by the arm and settled beside her in a seat as far from the dance floor as possible.
“…Being nice to me isn’t going to make me fall for you.”
“Who’d try to pick you up at a time like this, idiot?”
“Don’t call me an idiot!”
“You’re more energetic than I expected.”
“I’m not energetic…”
Tears had stained the dress Rinko had gone to the trouble of buying.
She tried desperately to stop them, but the pain only made the tears keep flowing.
When Kotone handed her a handkerchief, Rinko took it unconsciously and wiped her tears.
Only then did she realise what she had done.
“…I’m wiping my tears with my idol’s handkerchief. This is the worst…”
“Ahahaha. What a fascinating emotion. You must be sad after getting rejected by my sister.”
“If you were watching, don’t laugh! Isn’t being kind what you’re supposed to do!?”
“Is it? I think sometimes laughing it off and letting it pass is kindness too.”
“Seriously, you sisters are both completely insane…”
“I know. My sister’s a little weird.”
“I mean you too! And don’t badmouth Mikoto-san!”
Kotone cackled.
Rinko hung her head, thinking how carefree she was for someone who had no idea how much pain Rinko was in.
“Well, then… I guess this is what Rinko-chan wants to hear most right now.”
“…What?”
Kotone reached a hand towards Rinko’s back.
She let Rinko lean against her.
Rinko’s cheek came to rest against Kotone’s bare shoulder.
“You did well, Rinko.”
“…That’s… really… unfair…”
Rinko cried for a while with Kotone’s shoulder to lean on.
Although Kotone resembled Mikoto, she was nothing like her.
And, at that moment, Rinko found that utterly unlikable woman strangely reassuring.