#72: Mint Julep / ep.3
“Why don’t you give up already!?”
“Why don’t you give up!?”
The Fat-Burning Game.
Rinko’s legs were growing heavier as she waged a death match against the detestable bartender Shandy. Even with a regular exercise routine, running five kilometres was no easy feat. And this was a race, with a prize waiting for the winner. Naturally, that was enough to throw their pace completely out of whack. The light jogging pace they’d started with was long gone. They had become nothing more than middle-distance runners reliving the sort of race they’d last done in PE lessons.
The same was true of Shandy, her fated rival, the one who chased Rinko as hard as Rinko chased her.
“I think I’m reaching my limit…”
“That’s a lie. You’re trying to make me let my guard down, aren’t you?”
“No, honestly. I’m a delicate maiden, you know.”
“Your heart’s that of a wicked woman.”
“Yes. And you seem to like me as a wicked woman.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I hate your very existence.”
“Hehe. When you say things like that, I might just fall for you.”
Their conversation showed no sign of diminishing. Rinko glanced sideways, wondering if Shandy was immune to fatigue, only to find her face twisted with obvious discomfort.
She had actually managed to drive Shandy to the limit.
The thought was immensely satisfying. Good. Serves her right.
But her opponent was the former actress Charlotte Gabriel, a woman who was exceptionally good at lying. There was no guarantee that a single word she said was true.
“Give up already. You’re tired, aren’t you? I’m going to keep running.”
“Boo. Rinko-san, you’re so heartless. Mikoto will hate you.”
“She already keeps her distance from me, so I don’t care.”
“You know that, and you’re still planning to sleep with Mikoto. What a carnivore you are, for someone with such a cute face.”
“I don’t think I’m going to make Mikoto-san mine. I just don’t want you to sleep with her.”
“We have the same reason for running.”
Neither of them wanted the person they loved to sleep with someone they hated.
That was the biggest reason they were both gasping for breath, but Rinko had another reason, one no less important.
“…Well, in my case, that’s not the only reason.”
“Oh? You have another?”
Rinko remembered the Game Kotone had proposed to her the previous night.
*
The previous night.
Kotone’s home, on a middle floor of a tower block in Minato Mirai.
Kotone had had no real work that day, so she’d spent the entire day binge-watching a foreign television drama she hadn’t had time to watch before.
For an actress like Kotone, watching dramas was work too. And when one’s employer invited one to watch together with an enthusiastic “Come on, let’s watch it together!”, a manager like Rinko had little choice but to oblige.
That was only until five, though.
Rinko could be uncompromising about her nine-to-five hours and refuse any overtime that hadn’t been notified in advance, largely because her employer was indulgent with her.
“Hey, Rinko-chan, what are we having for dinner?”
“It’s five o’clock. Rinko Manager’s office hours are over. Thank you for your custom!”
Rinko cut off the invitation to dinner precisely at closing time and fled from the living room to her own bedroom.
She was mildly curious about how the foreign drama would end, but her desire to stay away from her oshi outweighed it by far.
Rinko had been given one of the three bedrooms in the three-bedroom flat. It was the largest guest room, complete with a balcony.
Compared with the one-room flat she’d previously lived in at Kitasenju, it was enormous. It had become the site of Rinko’s siege. Instead of a lock, she’d bought a tension rod from a hundred-yen shop and wedged it against the door handle to keep the enemy out.
“Come on, dinner’s no big deal! Let’s live together like a share house!”
“No! Absolutely not!”
But Kotone, Rinko’s employer, refused to let her hole herself up in peace.
Feeling Kotone’s presence on the other side of the door, Rinko braced herself against it with all her might. Not a single step would be conceded. She felt like a warlord from the Sengoku period.
She knew the names of only three of them, Oda, Toyotomi and Tokugawa, but that was beside the point.
Hearing Kotone’s coaxing, wheedling voice through the door, Rinko mentally lowered the shutters.
Business was closed for the day.
“Come on, we already share the toilet and entrance, don’t we?”
“The toilet nearest my room is mine! You use the big one!”
“What if I suddenly need to take a shit?”
“Kotone doesn’t shit!”
“Of course I fucking do! I’m human!”
“Then stop being human! Become a goddess or something and go somewhere so far away I can’t touch you!”
“Isn’t you who’s the goddess, Rinko-chan? You’re hiding inside Ama-no-Iwato. Maybe if I dance, you’ll come out?”
“What are you talking about!? I hate people who say things that make them sound clever! But tell me if you’re going to dance. I’ll watch through the gap!”
And so, shouting at each other through a closed door, the two carried on their daily routine of living together without actually sharing anything.
Rinko’s room had just enough appliances for her to scrape by, separate from the kitchen. A small refrigerator, microwave and kettle allowed her to prepare cereal, cup noodles and microwave meals. She used the secondary bathroom just outside her room, while she went to a nearby hot-spring inn a few minutes’ walk away for bathing and laundry.
The baths alone cost her nearly ¥2,000 a day, but since she absolutely refused to share a bathroom with Kotone, there was no helping it.
“I mean, you can use the kitchen, bath and washing machine whenever you want, can’t you? Why the hell are you paying all that money just to bathe at a hot-spring inn? That’s stupid.”
“I can’t!”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean…?”
“Because you’re my oshi! I don’t want to affect my oshi’s life!”
“Hahaha. That’s not something I’d expect to hear from someone living under the same roof as me.”
Whose fault do you think that is?
Rinko thought that while holding the door handle so that the outward-opening door couldn’t be forced open.
Her salary was twice what she’d earned at Meiji Stationery, and almost every one of her demands had been accepted. It was her ideal working arrangement.
Rinko had inwardly rejoiced at the triumph of work-style reform.
She had yet to realise just how persistently Kotone would pursue her.
Something similar had happened during her time at Aromatic. There had often been troublesome customers who weren’t satisfied with a single night of fantasy and wanted to date her outside the establishment, completely ignoring the rules.
Like most of the cast, Rinko absolutely hated such customers.
She would therefore treat them coldly and try to put distance between them, but doing so inevitably made them fall even harder. They could pour every last yen in their wallets into the establishment, and it still wouldn’t make Rinko’s heart move.
The result was Rin, the number-one cast member who, from the outside, looked as though she’d squeezed every last drop out of her customers before throwing them away.
Her reputation among the other cast members was consequently atrocious.
“Anyway, no! Absolutely not! Once it’s past nine to five, don’t involve me!”
“Aww, but I want to involve you.”
“I told you, didn’t I!? I love the dream you show me as my oshi, and I don’t want to see anything else. I want you to remain the pure Kurosu Kotone! I don’t want my filth mixing into you and changing you!”
Suddenly, the door was struck hard.
Rinko flinched at the noise, but she couldn’t afford to be frightened by something like this.
“Trying to intimidate me through a door won’t work! Mikoto-san and everyone in the entertainment industry may have gone easy on you, but I’m different! Don’t rely on me! Don’t pay attention to me! Go away!”
“…Then, how about a Game?”
“No! Why would I!?”
“If you win, I’ll give up. I won’t pay attention to you. I’ll deal with you strictly as my manager, on a businesslike basis, and I’ll stay the Kotone you like forever. How about that?”
Rinko swallowed hard.
If she won the Game, Kotone would remain the actress Kurosu Kotone, exactly as she was.
Her dream wouldn’t be destroyed. Kotone would remain her ideal self.
At the very least, she wouldn’t casually demand sex or pound violently on Rinko’s bedroom door anymore.
“…Tell me what the Game is.”
Kotone’s voice was suddenly weak.
“Whether you can sleep with Sis within three days.”
“That’s…!”
Rinko was about to say impossible, but her mouth stopped.
Tomorrow was her final day reporting to Meiji Stationery. She would have a chance to see Mikoto.
If she could just get to Mikoto, perhaps she could somehow take advantage of the confusion and get her into bed.
“Well, assuming you can do it.”
Kotone had already identified the opening.
Mikoto was weak to alcohol and sweet words. Two cans of beer were enough to get her tipsy. Rinko, meanwhile, could hold her liquor reasonably well, so there were ways of using the difficulty of the job hunt or Kotone’s complaints as an excuse to get Mikoto drinking.
How could she get herself to the finish line?
As she pondered it, a sudden suspicion occurred to Rinko.
“Why drag Mikoto-san into this? You love your sister, don’t you? Do you really want to watch her get hurt?”
“Hmm…”
A shy, bashful voice came through the door.
It was quiet.
Rinko pressed her ear against the door, determined not to miss a word.
“I don’t have a hobby of stealing Sis’s things. If Sis lets Rinko-chan have her body, then I can give up too.”
“What is that supposed to mean… Some kind of devoted-little-sister act?”
“I told you she’s my pride and joy. And, well, I just hate being compared to her.”
“So it’s an inferiority complex towards your sister?”
“Being compared to a massively popular young actress like her is just cruel to Sis. She’s fucking hopeless.”
Rinko wondered whether they really were close, but perhaps this was simply the form sibling love took after so many years together.
If she had had an older sister rather than an older brother, perhaps she would have felt the same way.
At any rate, she managed to convince herself.
What mattered was what would happen if she lost the Game.
“…What will you do if I lose?”
“I want you to grant me one request.”
“Sexual relief, I assume. No.”
“No, I just want a proper massage. I’m all stiff, and I can’t cause a scandal, so I can’t call anyone in this climate.”
The first of the Five Promises was absolute: don’t cause a scandal.
Rinko had summarily banned delivery massage services because eighty percent of them seemed suspicious, but she’d forgotten one thing.
There were perfectly respectable mobile massage therapists in this world.
“Really? Just an ordinary massage?”
“Yeah. Just the tip is fine!”
“That’s what the person doing the seducing is supposed to say…”
Even if it was only a massage, Rinko didn’t want to touch her oshi.
But if she won the Game, she could avoid being recognised by Kotone as anything more.
She weighed the two options.
In the end, she chose to gamble.
“…Fine. I’ll accept the Game. I’ll make Mikoto-san mine and get you to give up.”
“Good luck!”
Kotone cackled.
Annoyed, Rinko slammed the door hard from her side.
It was a battle she couldn’t afford to lose, if only to preserve the image of Kotone she’d created in her own mind.
And so the Game began.
*
“…If I sleep with Mikoto-san even once, Kotone will give up!”
As Rinko ran towards Yoyogi Park, she explained the Game from the previous night as though reminding herself of its terms.
Shandy, running alongside her, was clearly finding five kilometres fairly punishing. She was gasping for breath, her face contorted with effort, yet she continued to cling to Rinko.
“So let me have this one! I have no intention of taking Mikoto-san away from you!”
“Then all the more reason I can’t lose!”
Despite having almost no strength left, Shandy’s amber eyes gleamed.
Rinko had thought that lowering herself and asking nicely might work.
Instead, she’d only stoked Shandy’s fighting spirit.
“Why!? I just told you!”
“I don’t want to teach Mikoto an act without love…!”
“What’s wrong with that!? Besides, you’re way too possessive!”
“What is wrong with wanting to nurture Mikoto and guide her?”
“Where exactly are you planning to guide her!?”
“To Yoyogi Park!”
“Answer seriously—wait, what!?”
Shandy suddenly accelerated.
So she’d only been pretending to be exhausted after all. There wasn’t a single moment when she could afford to let her guard down.
Rinko increased her speed too.
The road signs were beginning to point towards Yoyogi Park.
The finish line was close.
“I can see it…!”
Both Rinko and Shandy cried out.
They weren’t looking at the finish line.
They had finally caught sight of the prize, Mikoto’s back.
Far down the long straight pavement of the main road leading towards Yoyogi Park, Mikoto could be seen running while clutching her side.
She had probably overtaken them by taking a side street while they were busy with their ridiculous philosophical debate.
If they hadn’t wasted all that time, one of them would have had victory in the bag by now.
“No hard feelings!”
“No. I’ll curse you for generations to come. Though I suppose you’ll be the last generation, Rinko-san.”
“Women will be able to have children together one day, so I won’t be the last generation!”
“The child born between you and Kotone-san would surely be adorable.”
“That’s why I keep telling you Kotone is impossible!”
“‘No, no’ means ‘yes, yes’. You’re such a tsundere.”
“I told you that’s not it!”
“But I’m not going to lose.”
Shandy accelerated again.
Rinko couldn’t believe there was that much stamina hidden inside such a slender body.
But she couldn’t lose.
She couldn’t allow the image of Kotone inside her head to be destroyed any further.
Her lungs hurt.
Her legs were beginning to scream.
And, to make matters worse, the borrowed running shoes, which happened to be the same size as Shandy’s, were rubbing painfully against her ankles.
Even her shoes were Rinko’s enemies.
When you hated Shandy, apparently you hated her shoes too.
“You could at least let me have a little bit of this!”
“Hehe. I’m rooting for you and Kotone-san, you know. Think about it. If the two of you got together, Shandy and Rinko-san would become sisters-in-law. I’d be Shandy, your sister-in-law! Come on, repeat after me.”
“I absolutely fucking won’t!”
Rinko launched into her final sprint.
About five hundred metres remained to the police box in front of the park.