#68: Rosa Rossa / ep. 1
The first day of Hello Work for Twenty-Three-Year-Olds came to an end with actress Kurosu Kotone, her manager Shirai Rinko, and a social-studies field trip through the broadcasting industry. The moment they returned to their temporary home in Kyōdō, Aoi muttered, “That’s not for me,” so perhaps she had taken something away from the experience after all.
Mikoto was much the same.
The industry her little sister and her friend worked in made her feel that, no matter how she might have been scouted, there was no place for her there. She had been approached once on the street, and a second time by Kotone’s agency, but the more she learned about what went on behind the scenes, the further she felt herself drifting away from it.
“I knew it, really, but the entertainment industry is tough…”
Perhaps she was exhausted beyond words. Despite it being not yet ten o’clock at night, Aoi was already asleep. The person sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Mikoto at the low table in the living room was Shandy, the owner of the Kyōdō house and the originator of the Moratorium Game.
She wore her usual enigmatic smile as she knocked back what Mikoto had long since lost count of as her nth Shandy Gaff. Shandy had been drinking a remarkable amount during the period of self-restraint. The fact that she hardly seemed to get drunk at all was frankly enviable.
“I think it would be easier if you used Kotone-san to make your debut. You could call it basking in your little sister’s reflected glory.”
“You know better than anyone that I have no talent for acting, Shandy-san.”
“Yes. Your choice of dialogue is riddled with clichés, and whenever I provoke you into an improvised etude, you can’t stand it and immediately let your true self slip out.”
“And whose fault is that…?”
Confronted with the truth, the blood rushed to every inch of Mikoto’s face.
The person responsible for dragging out the unvarnished personality she had wanted desperately to keep hidden, the part of herself that could never quite manage to become a proper adult, merely laughed.
“Hehe. Aren’t you normally the one who likes to put on airs for me?”
“Er, yes, I suppose I am… No, I can’t do it right now. I’m not in the mood…”
“So how many companies have rejected you in total?”
“Nine made it as far as interviews before rejecting me. Twice that many turned me down by email.”
Mikoto’s job hunt had completely run aground. She had registered with several job-search sites and submitted applications, but administrative positions were a nationwide game of musical chairs. She had no qualifications particularly useful for office work, and apart from an automatic-transmission driving licence, she had little in the way of credentials. An administrative position simply wasn’t going to come her way.
“…And, actually, there were two companies that accepted me, but I turned them down when I found out they wanted to assign me to reception.”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
Mikoto felt conflicted. She was reasonably aware that she was attractive, but she had no desire to exploit it, nor did she know how. Even if she did figure out how, she had no intention of stringing someone along and manipulating them when she already had someone she loved. It would be unfair to Shandy, and unfair to the other person.
“Stop bringing up my looks…”
“I like your face, Mikoto.”
Shandy said it without the slightest trace of embarrassment. Mikoto knew it was neither flattery nor empty consolation, and she knew Shandy was trying to encourage her.
But those weren’t the words she needed right now. If anything, the more Shandy loved her, the less she wanted to lean on her. She wanted them to remain equals.
“That’s not what I mean…”
“I know. You want a job because you want us to be equals, don’t you? That’s how you love.”
“If you understand, then…”
Anxiety over her unsuccessful job hunt threatened to turn her words sharp, but Mikoto somehow swallowed them down. With a long sigh, she leaned against Shandy sitting beside her. She rested her cheek on Shandy’s slender shoulder, only for the bone to dig painfully into her face.
“Hehe. You’ve been especially adorable lately, Mikoto. You can lean on Mama a little more, you know?”
“Mama…”
With no regard for dignity or appearances, Mikoto wrapped her arms around Shandy. The scent of orange was losing out to the smell of alcohol. Just breathing it in, and feeling the warmth travelling through Shandy’s skin, was enough to make her feel almost drunk. On alcohol, and on Shandy.
“Want some breast milk?”
“…Not in the mood.”
“Oh dear, oh dear.”
Her soft voice and arms enveloped Mikoto’s head. Slender fingertips slipped between her hair and stroked it. Even Shandy’s caresses, which could normally melt away any anxiety, had done nothing but prick at Mikoto’s heart over the past few days.
“I keep thinking that my worth is this low…”
“That’s not true.”
Shandy immediately rejected the idea.
“It’s only my theory, but…”
She continued.
“The bond between two people, just like the bond between a company and an employee, ultimately comes down to compatibility. It’s only when two sets of bumps and hollows fit together that you get something indescribable. Like you and me.”
When you were job hunting as a university student about to graduate, you knew nothing about the world of work. Every rejection letter made you believe that you were a useless person.
But once you actually entered society, you realised something. Trying to see through a human being in a recruitment process that barely lasted three days in total was fundamentally impossible. What interviewers were looking at was usually not ability or technical skill, but simply whether you seemed compatible with the atmosphere of the workplace.
“I know that, but…”
And that was precisely why it hurt. There was no workplace that needed Mikoto. She didn’t want to believe that the reason was her face, which had a tendency to create romantic battlefields she never wanted in the first place.
“It’s the sort of worry you can’t tell anyone about, isn’t it? The moment you talk about it, people envy you and tell you not to be so demanding.”
“Yeah…”
“But I know just the workplace for you.”
Shandy laughed softly and rested her forehead against the back of Mikoto’s head. Her forehead was hot from the alcohol. The breath brushing Mikoto’s ear was hot too, almost enough to make her surrender.
“…Don’t tell me you mean assistant bartender at antiqua.”
“Nope. You’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
Shandy whispered the destination for the second day of Hello Work for Twenty-Three-Year-Olds into her ear.
“…That’s not for me…”
“It’s all about compatibility. It depends on the fit.”
Still holding Mikoto in her arms, Shandy drained her glass and smiled meaningfully.
＊
The following day. Shinbashi.
During the period of self-restraint, with remote working in full swing, the area around the headquarters building near Shinbashi Station was eerily quiet, as though the bustle of its former days had been nothing but a lie.
“Wow! Hibiya Trading really is huge!”
The destination for their social-studies field trip, with Aoi practically in sightseeing mode, was Hibiya Trading, a first-class trading company that moved Japan, no, the world.
Even the three female employees who normally staffed the reception desk near the entrance were nowhere to be seen. In their place was nothing more than a laminated sheet reading For enquiries, please use the internal chat, along with a tablet casually left sitting there.
“The reception is high-tech!”
“I’m terrible at this sort of thing…”
Mikoto disinfected her hands and tried to operate the tablet, but couldn’t quite figure out how it worked. She was struggling to make headway with Aoi watching, when the person they had come to see appeared from the lift hall beyond the entrance gates.
“Good morning, Kurosu-san. Seeing you in a suit is quite refreshing.”
“I-I’m saved… Sanae-san…”
During her time on secondment, Mikoto had worn ordinary clothes, but now she was an intern. Sanae, wearing ordinary clothes and a mask, had come to meet Mikoto in her recruitment suit, just like Aoi. The zip was still refusing to reach the very top.
Sanae glanced at Aoi standing beside Mikoto and gave her a slight bow.
“Let me introduce myself properly. I’m Yanase Sanae of the General Affairs Department, General Affairs Section, and I’ll be responsible for the two of you during your internship. This is my subordinate, Iida.”
“M-Miko-nee’s cousin! I-I’m K-Kurosu Aoi!”
Aoi’s mangled self-introduction echoed through the cavernous entrance hall.
Sanae remained expressionless. Iida’s glasses fogged from the breath escaping around his mask. A silence descended in which Mikoto couldn’t help wishing that someone, anyone, would say something.
Eventually, as Sanae handed over their visitor passes, she spoke.
“First things first. Iida-kun, I’m leaving Kurosu Aoi-san’s internship in your hands. Show her around the company. Her clearance level is equivalent to Level One.”
“Understood.”
Led by Iida, Aoi disappeared beyond the entrance gate, which looked like an automatic ticket barrier at a railway station.
Apparently Sanae herself had designed this entry system, Secure. Her competence was honestly frightening.
Once Aoi was out of sight, Sanae suddenly cut to the chase.
“I’ll give you the conclusion first. Kurosu-san, you will be joining Hibiya Trading.”
“What!?”
Mikoto was utterly dumbfounded. An offer beyond anything she could have hoped for had just fallen into her lap, and from Hibiya Trading of all places.
But working for Hibiya would present far too many problems.
“No, no, no! I don’t have that kind of ability! I don’t have enough achievements either!”
“That is what today’s internship is for. I have spent almost all my time working remotely, yet I came into the office today specifically for this. I think our sincerity should be self-evident.”
The selection criteria for Hibiya Trading that Sanae had previously told Mikoto about were absurdly high. For national universities, the old Imperial Universities were the minimum. For private universities, the top three were the baseline, while even MARCH and Kankandoritsu could be cut at the initial screening stage. For overseas positions, the standard was a university abroad that even Mikoto would recognise by name.
They were all completely beyond her.
Sanae, apparently unconcerned by Mikoto’s internal struggle, continued calmly.
“I should warn you that I am the Hunting Dog. My nose for distinguishing human ability has been thoroughly trained. Do not mistake me for one of those ordinary interviewers.”
“No, I really appreciate the sentiment, and there’s no question that you’re extraordinarily capable, Sanae-san, but…!”
“Then is there some other kind of work you want to do?”
“No! But that’s not the point! I have no reason to work for Hibiya Trading!”
“Because I want to work with you. That is my reason.”
“Uhh…?”
Sanae’s mask puffed out slightly. It was impossible to tell from her eyes alone, but presumably she had exhaled a laugh. Her normally inscrutable expression was even harder to read behind the mask.
“…Just as Charlotte told me. If I come straight out and tell Kurosu-san I like her, she immediately falters.”
“This is Shandy-san’s doing, isn’t it…?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I have Toko, so there is no possibility of SanaMiko.”
She tossed out another mysterious term as casually as anything, then held her employee ID against the railway-gate-like entrance system.
Sanae looked at Mikoto as if to say, Come on.
Faced with that look, Mikoto could hardly back out now.
Sanae was a genuine career woman who, once she decided to accomplish something, would use every means at her disposal to see it through. The figure “3.5 billion” flashed through Mikoto’s mind.
“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything bad to you. Your overtime will increase, but so will your salary.”
“Urgh…”
Sanae had hit her where it hurt.
Mikoto had no grand dream. What she wanted was a stable income and money for the wedding. That was why she had started job-hunting, only to fail time and again. And now Hibiya Trading had appeared, offering to pay an outrageous amount for whatever ability she might or might not actually possess.
But Mikoto had neither Rinko’s grand dream nor Sanae’s passion for her work.
“…This really is just an internship, right?”
“Yes. For now.”
Unable to look directly at Sanae’s fierce determination to bring her into the company at all costs, Mikoto touched her visitor pass to Secure. The LCD displayed the words Guest: Kurosu Mikoto, and she followed Sanae inside.
Of the six lifts in the lobby, they took one up to the General Affairs Section on the tenth floor.
When they entered the department where Mikoto had frequently visited during her secondment, a familiar face appeared.
A dangerous woman with heavy make-up emphasising her lower eyelids.
Akazawa Kurumi.
“Mi-chan! Long time no see! Oh, have you put on a little weight?”
“…………”
Mikoto’s mind went back to the exhibition dance at the social party.
Without Shandy’s help, she might not only have been humiliated, but might also have inadvertently helped Kosugi return to the company and brought the whole stolen-project affair back into the light.
Kurumi, however, laughed in her familiar simpering voice as though she had forgotten all about it.
“Don’t give me such a scary look. I’m on your side now, you know? More precisely, I’m Sanae-chan’s subordinate.”
“…Is that really true, Sanae-san?”
“Akazawa has severed her relationship with Kosugi. Rest assured. She is harmless.”
“Harmless…”
“Sorry about back then, okay? But Kosugi was the one who did everything wrong, so I didn’t do anything bad at all.”
She showed not the slightest remorse. Without even wearing a mask, Kurumi displayed her swollen lips beneath a layer of lurid red lipstick as though determined to make sure Mikoto saw them.
If anything, she looked like exactly the sort of person Mikoto wanted nothing to do with.
“…Come to think of it, where did Kosugi go?”
“He fell into hell.”
“Serves him right~. Hehe.”
The brilliant Sanae and the wicked Kurumi exchanged glances and smiled ominously.
Kosugi really had probably gone to hell. Mikoto decided not to ask any more questions. Digging into it could easily get her dragged into trouble as well, so she pretended she had heard nothing.
“I assume you already know about General Affairs, so I’ll introduce you to some of the other sections. There is someone who has been asking to meet you. Let us begin with an introduction.”
Leaving Kurumi behind, the lift descended to the sixth floor.
It was the Planning Department, the section Mikoto had not even been permitted to set foot in during her secondment, despite working in planning herself.
The first thing to greet Mikoto and Sanae when they stepped out of the lift was a wall that revealed absolutely nothing of what lay beyond it.
The stronghold of secretive people, packed with confidential information.
Sanae held her employee ID against the card reader for Secure, and the sealed door opened.
“The person who wanted to meet me…?”
“She is a woman you met when you were Takahashi Marina. Do you remember her?”
“Takahashi Marina… Ah. From Adholic.”
During the stolen-project affair, Mikoto had infiltrated the party under a false name. The person who wanted to see her was probably one of the three Planning Department employees who had initially come under suspicion for failing to meet their quotas.
Just as expected, the person waiting to greet Mikoto was Terakado Hitomi, a female employee specialising in the lifestyle sector. Her brisk, short haircut made an immediate impression.
“Heh heh heh! So you snuck in here under a fake name, Marina-chan? And then it turns out you were Kurosu Kotone’s older sister! You should’ve told me! I wanted her autograph!”
“No, well, I’m sorry. There wasn’t any other way I could have handled things at the time.”
“Too stiff, too stiff! I’m younger than you, so don’t be so formal! Okay?”
Hitomi slapped Mikoto repeatedly on the back in friendly fashion, then held up a tablet showing two men, Kamishima and Higo, members of Hitomi’s team. They were apparently in the middle of an online meeting.
“She is also one of my cohort, just like Akazawa. Though there are around four hundred people who joined in the same year if you include the whole group, so I don’t know every single one.”
“Yanase-san is the exception, though. Seriously, there isn’t anyone at Hibiya who doesn’t know Yanase-san.”
Sanae accepted the compliment without changing expression, nor did she even bother with a false display of modesty.
According to Hitomi, once Kosugi’s disgrace had come to light, the personnel transfers that would have resulted from their failure to meet their quotas had been postponed for the time being.
The company was currently overhauling its personnel evaluation system under its new head of division.
Naturally, Sanae had a hand in that as well.
A wind of change was blowing through Hibiya’s Planning Department.
After laying out the company’s internal situation without holding anything back, Hitomi smiled at Mikoto.
“The reason I wanted to meet you is business, okay? We discussed it within our team, and if you’re willing, we’d like to formally take over your projects here.”
“My projects?”
“That’s right! We’ll take over the Digital Memo from Yanase-san. And the Shavings Potpourri, too, even though that one stalled halfway through. Especially the potpourri. It seems like we could apply it to things besides pencils, and because it uses scrap material, it’s eco-friendly and keeps the cost down. Sounds pretty good to us.”
“I see…”
Something inside Mikoto grew faintly warm.
Not only could she be reunited with the child she had once been forced to let go of, but even her second project, which had died before it could draw its first breath, might be brought back to life.
Sanae, who had been listening beside her, tapped Mikoto on the shoulder.
“I had forgotten. It blends in so naturally that I occasionally forget I have it with me.”
Sanae reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out what appeared to be a paperback book with a cover on it.
Except it was actually the prototype of Mikoto’s Digital Memo.
“The Digital Memo I designed…! It’s finished!?”
“It was finally completed the other day. It isn’t exactly according to Kurosu-san’s original specifications, but the design philosophy should be alive and well. Please take a look.”
“Of course! Wow…!”
The device in Mikoto’s hands was the crystallisation of all her hard work.
It weighed around three hundred grams. In both size and weight, it was almost indistinguishable from a paperback, making it easy to carry even for someone without much physical strength. With a commercially available book cover, users could customise it to their own taste.
Her heart racing, Mikoto opened the cover.
If it were a novel, what appeared on the first page was a monochrome LCD screen.
The pen used to write on it was the finished version of the stylus that had once been little more than one of Meiji Stationery’s own pencils wrapped in paper.
The Meiji Stationery logo was firmly engraved on the pen.
Mikoto tested how it felt to write.
Exactly as she had imagined.
She checked the list of functions, and found that neither Bluetooth nor the network synchronisation function had been omitted. They were both there, alive and well.
“Shall we test the communications function?”
“Please!”
Sanae took the other Digital Memo that Hitomi had been holding and moved her pen across it.
A notification appeared on the gadget in Mikoto’s hands, informing her that a communication had arrived.
She gave permission, and words appeared on the screen, apparently written by Sanae.
Do you still intend to say that you have no ability?
Mikoto’s eyes suddenly grew hot.
At the planning stage, it had been little more than a blueprint. She hadn’t known the first thing about the technology required to make the communications function work.
A hope she had more or less thrown over the wall for someone else to deal with had become almost perfect, functioning exactly as she had envisioned.
The one achievement produced by the Next Core Product Development Project had truly taken shape.
“…Did you make this, Sanae-san?”
Sanae gave a proud little snort.
“All I did was negotiate with the parties involved. Internal departments and our partner companies bent over backwards to make Kurosu-san’s design a reality. It was a project worth bending over backwards for.”
“…………”
Mikoto was too moved to speak.
The project she had crammed together without knowing up from down had been brought to life by the hands of countless people.
People whose names she didn’t even know had worked using the project she had drawn up as their signpost.
This was no longer Mikoto’s project alone.
It was their new product.
“I really did something this amazing…”
“Yes. Our company wants to buy your ability as a planner. Will you consider it?”
Mikoto hesitated at Sanae’s words.
Very few projects ever made it into the real world.
Almost every product on the market shone brilliantly above a mountain of discarded ideas.
She had managed to create one of them.
It had taken an extraordinary amount of time.
She had gone through an unimaginable amount of hardship.
She had endured what could only be called ceaseless effort, burning with resentment and determination, refusing to give up, and created the project almost expecting it to fail.
And now it was in Mikoto’s hands.
Ah… So this is…
The words that followed, the emotion Mikoto felt for the first time at that moment, were impossible to put properly into language.
Was it the joy of having her hard work finally rewarded?
The gratitude she felt towards the many people who had helped her?
Or perhaps the happiness of knowing that people would actually use the child she had brought into the world?
“I’ll give it serious consideration…”
At last, the cliché she managed to squeeze out was not, in business terminology, a rejection.
She genuinely thought that perhaps she could give it a try.
A job in planning, the very job she had once abandoned.
“Then let’s have an interview. It may be rather presumptuous of us to approach you about joining the company and then turn around and ask you to interview, but there are several things I’d like to confirm.”
“Understood.”
After saying goodbye to Hitomi, they took the lift to the third floor.
Mikoto followed Sanae down the corridor lined with meeting rooms, packed one after another.
The actual Digital Memo she had been given “as a memento” was as light as expected and easy to carry.
For some reason, it reminded Mikoto of the feeling she used to have when someone bought her a new toy.
“This is all thanks to you, Sanae-san. Thank you.”
“You haven’t been hired yet. Much as I regret it, this is as far as I can go on my own authority.”
There was a faintly apologetic note in Sanae’s voice.
Even the “Hunting Dog of General Affairs” was only in her fourth year with the company. Despite having neither executive authority nor personnel authority, she had arranged everything up to this point.
“…You’re kind. I can see why Toko-san fell for you.”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Even if I did, you wouldn’t say yes, would you?”
“No. As a human being, I… well…”
They must have reached the meeting room they were looking for.
Sanae stopped and faltered.
Her awkward hesitation made her glance up at Mikoto, though given the difference in their heights, she normally had to do that anyway.
In a voice so quiet it was almost disappearing, Sanae said:
“…I like you.”
“W-wait… isn’t that adultery?”
“As a human being. Don’t misunderstand me. I have a wife who is hundreds of times cuter, dearer, brighter, and more straightforward than you.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better…”
“I have to go that far to satisfy that woman. Isn’t that right, Charlotte?”
You really do understand me, Sanae-san.
Shandy’s voice suddenly came from somewhere.
Mikoto was surprised, but this wasn’t without precedent for Sanae.
Just as when she had exposed Kosugi’s lies, she had presumably been secretly carrying her phone around with the call still connected.
But something was strange.
“I thought I heard Shandy-san’s voice coming from inside the meeting room…”
“That is correct.”
Sanae answered with a completely emotionless, innocent expression.
Shandy’s voice hadn’t come from Sanae’s phone.
It was unmistakably coming from beyond the door.
“Wait, what!? Why did I hear Shandy-san’s voice coming from the meeting room!?”
You’re a planner, aren’t you? How can you not figure out something this simple?
The meeting-room door slowly opened.
The person who opened it was no longer wearing her usual white jacket, but a business suit.
Golden hair.
Porcelain-white skin.
Amber eyes, opened wide in a round, delighted surprise.
“What are you doing here!?”
“Hehe. It is time for an enjoyable Interview Game. Are you prepared?”
The interviewers, Shandy and Sanae, narrowed their eyes into mischievous smiles.