#73: Mint Julep / ep.4
“Oh. Sis is in first place.”
“Go, Mikoto-san! For the sake of MikoSha!”
The Fat-Burning Game was entering its final stretch.
Using her celebrity power to secure a parking spot near the police box in front of Yoyogi Park, Kotone and Toko waited for the three runners to arrive.
The greatest obstacle on the urban course from Kyōdō to Yoyogi Park was, without question, waiting at traffic lights.
In particular, the intersection in front of the police box just before the finish, where the broad Akasaka-Suginami Line meets Inokashira-dōri on the route towards the Shibuya television stations, was a devilish stopping point. It was the sort of place where someone could be caught at the very last moment. Knowing how to make use of it was crucial.
And the first victim claimed by that devil was Mikoto.
The light had just changed from flashing green to red. The road was broad, and there was a police box directly in front of her. Mikoto simply didn’t have the nerve to ignore the traffic light.
“I ran all this way and they’re going to catch me…!”
Across the intersection, Kotone and Toko were waving from beside the police box. Mikoto repeatedly stamped her feet, trying to suppress her impatience and keep her body from cooling down, but all she could think about was the pressure behind her.
When she turned around, she saw two figures closing in.
It took barely a few dozen seconds for the pursuers to catch her.
Shandy wrapped her arms around Mikoto and stopped. Mikoto could feel the warm, damp heat of her sweat and the frantic beating of her heart.
“I caught you… Mikoto…”
“You didn’t have to run so desperately…”
“I had to!”
Beside Shandy, Rinko had likewise doubled over, exhausted after running at full speed. Her fringe was plastered to her forehead, and her make-up had begun to come apart slightly. She looked utterly desperate.
“No, can we please stop this ridiculous Game!? It makes no sense for first place to sleep with third place!?”
“You’re hardly in a position to complain when you were aiming for first place.”
“I have to win or something horrible will happen to me! More importantly, what are you two planning to do if I come second!?”
Even though Shandy’s face was contorted with pain, the corners of her mouth curled mischievously upwards.
“As promised, I’ll have you. I’ll give it everything I’ve got, considering how often you pick fights with me… I was thinking of making it rain on the pillow and bed…”
“That goes for me too! Mikoto-san, don’t worry. I’m used to no-strings relationships and all…!”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want! I don’t want to have a physical relationship with someone over something this stupid!”
Naturally, Rinko took Shandy’s provocation as a challenge.
Mikoto couldn’t deny that part of her wanted to know, out of sheer morbid curiosity, which of the two women with vastly greater experience than her was stronger. But she had no idea what it would do to her emotionally if it actually happened.
After all, whichever of them won this Game, it would still amount to cheating.
“Seriously, you two are insane!”
“I’m madly… in love with her…”
“I have a promise to keep with Kotone…!”
“Why does Kotone come into this!?”
“…Will you listen?”
Rinko seemed about to explain herself, then glanced discreetly to one side.
Following her gaze, Mikoto suddenly noticed that the pedestrian signal opposite them was about to turn red.
“You just checked the traffic light! You’re pretending to explain yourself so you can catch me off guard, aren’t you!?”
“I-I didn’t! I wouldn’t pull something like that, Charlotte would!”
“Hehe. We really are two of a kind, aren’t we?”
“Don’t lump me in with you!”
Just as Rinko rounded on Shandy, the pedestrian signal finally turned red.
A few seconds later, the traffic light governing the cars blocking Mikoto and the others changed from green to yellow, then red, followed by a right-turn arrow.
The countdown display showing the pedestrian waiting time began to disappear.
One inverted red triangle vanished.
Then another.
It looked just like the starting lights at a motor race.
Once the countdown of inverted triangles reached zero, the course would open.
The winner of the five-kilometre run would be decided by the short sprint across the road: whoever reached the other side of the pedestrian crossing first would win.
At the finish line, Kotone and Toko joined hands to form something resembling a finishing tape.
Apparently, whoever broke through between them would be the winner of the Game.
Mikoto and Rinko took their positions again, one on either side of Shandy.
“Hey, Mikoto.”
“Are you trying to mess with me at a time like this?”
“But it’s only a game. You like being shaken up, don’t you?”
“I hate this kind of shaking up!”
“Hehe. That’s more like it. If it’s only a casual relationship, I don’t mind how many people you have on the go. But if you’re going to spend your life with someone, I prefer a little seriousness.”
“Don’t test me on that now…!”
Mikoto already knew perfectly well that no matter how hard she tried, she could never love anyone but Shandy.
And yet Shandy still refused to believe it and kept setting Games for her.
Mikoto could only marvel at how little Shandy trusted people, but if changing such a deeply suspicious and cautious nature were easy, Shandy herself wouldn’t have such a hard time.
Breathing heavily, Shandy smiled.
“Then one last question. If you won, who would you want to sleep with?”
“That’s why it isn’t about winning or losing! I only want to do that sort of thing with someone I’m actually in that kind of relationship with!”
“It’s hypothetical. Me or Rinko-san?”
“Don’t make me say it…”
“If you don’t tell me, I won’t know.”
Please, don’t make her heart beat any faster.
Mikoto scratched her sweaty head furiously and shouted.
“Ah, fine! I want to sleep with Shandy-san! Happy now!?”
“Yes. Very happy—”
At that moment, the lights changed.
Signal green.
The blue-green pedestrian light came on, signalling that they could cross, and all three bodies pitched forwards.
The contest would be decided in an instant, a short-distance sprint.
But only Mikoto ran.
As she reached the middle of the crossing, she heard Kotone laughing uproariously behind her, having volunteered to be the finishing tape.
Something had apparently happened to the other two.
Mikoto turned around.
“What are you two doing!?”
They weren’t following her.
If anything, they were getting farther away.
They were running in the opposite direction.
“Oh dear. Looks like Rinko-chan figured out the winning condition too.”
Kotone watched the two silhouettes disappearing into the distance and muttered to Mikoto, who had, for lack of anything better to do, broken through the finishing tape.
“If Shandy-san runs the wrong way, Rinko-san can’t win, can she…?”
“Exactly. Actually, this Game doesn’t work if even one person isn’t taking it seriously.”
Kotone smiled cheerfully and handed Mikoto a sports drink, presumably one she’d bought from the vending machine. With almost no grip strength left, Mikoto somehow managed to unscrew the cap.
Kotone then laid out the logic, true to her science-oriented background.
“Basically, Shandy Sis wins without even running if Sis comes first. And if Shandy Sis chooses to come last, Rinko-chan can never win.”
“I refuse to accept anything except ShaMiko, so congratulations, Mikoto-san!”
Toko chimed in, apparently caring nothing for how the contest had actually ended. She simply accepted the result and smiled happily.
It was almost enviable how much fun she seemed to have every day.
“But Shandy-san was running seriously…”
“Well, that’s because Sis had even less stamina than she expected. Seriously, what’s with that stomach? Don’t you have any awareness that you’re the sister of an actress?”
“Don’t say it…”
“So Shandy Sis had no choice but to run seriously too. Though I’m sure part of it was that she didn’t want to lose to Rinko-chan.”
“Rinko-san didn’t want to lose to Shandy-san either. That’s what love can do!”
“Yeah, but Rinko-chan had one extra reason.”
“What’s that…?”
Kotone merely cackled instead of answering, but Mikoto could tell there was a reason for Rinko’s desperation that she herself knew nothing about.
“Anyway, first place has been decided, so now we’ve got an epic battle for third. Though they’re running backwards, so I suppose there isn’t really a finish line anymore.”
The winner of the Fat-Burning Game was Mikoto.
But Mikoto’s victory had simply opened a new contest for third place.
Exhausted beyond belief, however, Mikoto had neither the energy nor the inclination to watch how the Game unfolded.
“Those two are still running…?”
“Maybe they’re planning to run all the way back to the starting line.”
In the end, the two women running in the opposite direction collapsed from exhaustion on the course and were picked up by the red emergency vehicle.
The Game ended in a thoroughly inconclusive fashion, and Mikoto watched the passing scenery through the car window in relief.
Today’s Love Game: No Contest.
＊
“So! Cheers!”
The moment the Game had been declared a no contest, Shandy moved fast after returning to Kyōdō.
She immediately jumped into the bathroom for a shower, then grabbed a can of beer that had been waiting for her in the fridge.
It wasn’t even mid-afternoon yet.
By the time Mikoto and Rinko had finished their showers, Shandy and Toko were already well and truly drunk.
This was no gentle little tea party.
This was what happened when a group of drinkers gathered at a drinker’s house.
“Are you really going to undo all the calories you burned that quickly?”
“Beer tastes better after exercise. Isn’t that right, Toko-san?”
“Alcohol tastes good even when you haven’t exercised! Rinko-san, you should drink too!”
The low table in front of the television, normally the drinking den of choice, instantly became the scene of a full-blown banquet.
A little way away on the sofa, designated driver Kotone sipped oolong tea.
“Why don’t you drink too, Sis?”
“I’m dieting.”
Mikoto sat beside Kotone, leaning back against the sofa while the drinkers nearby somehow became engrossed in a discussion about massages.
The pleasant lethargy and sense of accomplishment that came after running five kilometres enveloped her.
“I must have lost a kilo.”
“No way. Don’t underestimate what it takes to maintain your figure.”
Just as Mimosa seemed to have finally found her rightful place and came bounding over, she delivered a body-blow-like cat punch that brought Mikoto back to reality.
Cats were perfectly capable of clinging to you when they felt like it.
Fat, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly so obliging when it came to disappearing.
It was Kotone who spoke.
“…So, think you’re going to manage the job hunt?”
“Aoi’s?”
“I’m worried about her too, but I mean you.”
Aoi was still indulging in her sleep.
Her habit of staying awake until late at night and sleeping towards morning, much like Shandy, was probably because she spent hours talking to her friends on the phone.
Mikoto explained to Kotone what had happened at Hibiya the other day.
The competition deadline was exactly one month away.
Before then, she had to prepare a proposal good enough to make it through the competition.
“So, got any ideas?”
“Not a single one.”
Mikoto picked up Mimosa and covered her face with the cat as though she were using her as an eye mask.
The distinctive warm, sunny scent of a cat stimulated Mikoto’s nose.
This was known as neko-sui, “cat-sniffing”.
“Is that going to be all right?”
“A former colleague gave me her notebook of ideas, but nothing in it really speaks to me.”
Mikoto had skimmed through the idea notebook of Aomi Shiina from Meiji Stationery, but it consisted mostly of highly specific requests that would be difficult to expand into broader applications.
To get a proposal approved at Hibiya, she needed something that could appeal to a much wider range of potential customers.
There was another reason she was struggling too.
“Until now, I at least had the restriction that I was working for a stationery company. This time I don’t have that.”
“Like not knowing what to do for a free-study project?”
“Exactly. Sanae-san told me, ‘Anything is fine,’ but when anything is fine, I don’t know where to start.”
The things necessary for creation are often the very constraints that limit creation.
Precisely because humanity cannot do whatever it likes, it has developed the tradition of exercising ingenuity within the bounds of what is possible. Perhaps this is particularly deeply embedded in the Japanese genetic code.
As a result, Mikoto had indeed been saddled with the impossible demand to “launch a new product for a low wage”, but the truth was that constraints made it easier for her to organise her thoughts.
“…Then how about coming up with one just for me?”
Kotone leaned over and whispered so that the drinkers couldn’t hear her.
There was a mischievous grin on her face.
It was probably half-joking, as usual.
“You can’t build a business around just one customer.”
“Think of it as practice for responding to user needs. You know what they say. If you make something that satisfies one person, it’ll reach other people too.”
“Sanae-san said something like that too…”
Just as Sanae had admitted, she had been quoting business books.
More to the point, there was probably no one who bent herself to satisfy the needs of her audience as relentlessly as Kotone did.
Kotone was a product before she was a human being.
Through self-production and self-branding, she had remained successful.
In that respect, she was doing more planning than any planner.
“Then I’ll ask you. What are your needs?”
Kotone’s breath brushed Mikoto’s ear.
She really didn’t want the drinkers to overhear this private conversation.
Mikoto’s guess had been correct.
“…I want Rinko-chan.”
Mikoto immediately realised that this wasn’t her usual half-joking remark.
“You’ve already got her right beside you…”
“You know what I mean. You know what I want.”
Kotone was serious.
She genuinely wanted to do something about Rinko.
From their personalities and the snippets of conversation Mikoto had heard, it wasn’t hard to imagine that neither of them was going to be easy to deal with.
When Mikoto first heard that Rinko had accepted the manager position, she had thought Rinko had finally given in.
Apparently, the opposite was true.
She hadn’t given in at all.
She had only become more firmly entrenched.
Against Kotone’s approach, rushing like a raging torrent, Rinko wasn’t merely trying to pole her way upstream.
She had built a dam.
“…Why don’t you give up?”
“No. I want Sis’s hand-me-down.”
“She isn’t a hand-me-down, and stop treating people like objects.”
“Then think of a way for one person to fall in love with another. A way to destroy that annoying oshi feeling and get her to see me as a human being.”
“You’re better at that sort of thing than I am.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“That’s because—”
Mikoto was about to say because she doesn’t feel that way about you, but even with Kotone she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Besides, Mikoto didn’t actually know whether Rinko had no feelings for Kotone.
The feeling Rinko directed towards Kotone as her oshi was probably a kind of admiration.
Perhaps it was similar to the way Mikoto herself had gradually been drawn to Shandy, an adult among adults who could effortlessly switch between her many different faces.
“…Maybe she wants to be like Kotone?”
“Is that what they mean by wanting what you don’t have?”
Rinko was the sort of woman who looked almost innocent, with an abundance of natural charm.
Kotone, on the other hand, was a cool beauty who suited “beautiful” better than “cute”.
Their respective styles were clearly divided, right down to their everyday clothes and make-up.
More importantly, Mikoto lowered her voice against Mimosa’s belly and asked:
“Why do you like her?”
“Because she’s interesting.”
“Oh, come on…”
Ultimately, if Kotone continued like this, Rinko was never going to say yes.
She had joked about it during the dance party, but as far as Kotone was concerned, Rinko was still material for her craft.
Perhaps that was fine between two actors, but for an ordinary person it was unbearable.
Not knowing whether the person you love truly loves you in return.
The thought reminded Mikoto of her own relationship with Shandy.
Needing to calm herself, Mikoto inhaled deeply from Mimosa as though she were smoking a cigarette she didn’t even smoke.
“…Why don’t you change that part of yourself?”
“It’s just embarrassment! You understand that, don’t you?”
“I might understand it, but that doesn’t mean she will.”
Mikoto implicitly indicated Rinko, who had somehow begun demonstrating massage techniques on Toko.
With the relationship between sisters, Mikoto could understand Kotone’s selfishness and her habit of hiding embarrassment behind jokes.
But Rinko was different.
Rinko wouldn’t interpret it as embarrassed affection.
“Sis, you used to hide behind embarrassment too.”
Mikoto immediately covered her face with Mimosa.
Just remembering the night Shandy had exposed everything about her made her mortified.
In that Game she’d still dream about, Mikoto had exposed the true self lurking beneath her attempts to stand taller and her habit of hiding embarrassment.
“In my case…”
“What?”
“…Oh. Right. Then maybe it was that Game.”
Mikoto shifted Mimosa back onto her lap and glanced towards Shandy.
Like a cat, Shandy sensed the look instantly and came over to the Kurosu sisters.
“Hehe. Looks like you need my help, Kotone-san.”
“Mhm. Something like that.”
When Mikoto proposed that Game, Shandy agreed without hesitation.
She smiled delightedly and took her cocktail equipment and a raw egg from the kitchen.
The cocktail they were going to make was Yes and No.
A notorious Game in which the participants could answer only “yes” or “no” while forcing one another to reveal their true feelings.
“Well then. Rinko-san, Kotone-san? Would you care to play a little Game with me?”
Shandy’s eyes, now that she had assumed the role of matchmaker, gleamed with mischief…
…but also with unmistakable kindness.
It was the sweet reward she occasionally revealed beneath her mocking manner and merciless whip.
Perhaps that was exactly why Mikoto had been so thoroughly rendered helpless by her.
She was overcome by a strangely happy, strangely embarrassing sense of regret.