#75: Lighthouse / ep.2
“Right, I know! Why don’t you work in the sex industry? Rinko-chan, would you work for me?”
Young entrepreneur Hiroo Ayuru had neither a sense of context, an ounce of common sense, nor even the slightest shred of tact.
“Don’t say it like you’re suggesting we pop over to Kyoto. And no men.”
“No, no, it’d be a place for women like us! You’d be perfect for it, Rinko-chan. Isn’t this exactly what you’d call a godsend?”
“Power harassment, sexual harassment, moral harassment. That’s a triple jackpot.”
“Ayuru-chan thinks of Rinko-san as family, so it’s okay!”
“If you think of me as family, don’t make me work in the sex industry. Good night.”
Two years earlier, back when Rinko had been working as a cast member at Adult Nursery, the establishment run by Ayuru, this had been a joke of a recruitment pitch made during their after-hours chatter.
The problem was, Ayuru had a history of starting massage parlours and cafés with that exact same joking attitude. So she was serious this time, too. The proof was that she had grabbed Rinko firmly by the arm when she tried to leave, leaving her with no means of escape.
“Please! We’ve got history, remember? You helped out at the massage parlour!”
“So that means you owe me, right? You were late paying my wages, too.”
“It’s an age where women can go to the sex industry too! My goal is sexual liberation! In other words, this is an act of social contribution—”
“Don’t casually ignore me. And you should stop throwing around phrases like ‘social contribution’ so lightly. It’s genuinely insulting to people who are actually working hard to contribute to society.”
“Fine, I’ll stop contributing to society, so will you work for me?”
“This woman…”
Ayuru was the sort of entrepreneur who never listened to what anyone told her, who would talk at length with blatant sophistry and simply bulldoze her way through opposition. Everything about her, her actions, her words, her intentions, all of it leaned aggressively forward. She was the sort of businesswoman you would never want as either an enemy or an ally.
Once she took a liking to someone, there was no escape. She would use her speciality, relentless bulldozing, to manipulate them however she pleased, leaving nothing behind but exhaustion. At least she did eventually pay wages commensurate with that exhaustion, even if they were often late, which had just barely kept her out of court. She was the sort of person who teetered precariously along the wall dividing genius from stupidity.
“I’ll set the price fairly high, so your cut will be bigger too. And someone like you would be incredibly popular, Rinko-san! You can even have romantic relationships with the customers!”
“No.”
“There it is! Rinko-san’s ‘no’! Why not? Don’t you want money? There’s nothing wrong with earning money!”
Getting tired of answering Ayuru’s relentless pushiness, Rinko finally told her the truth.
Looking back now, perhaps this was Ayuru’s own peculiar technique for getting inside people’s heads: playing the idiot so they would eventually reveal what they really thought.
“I don’t want to become the sort of woman who sleeps with anyone and everyone just because she wants money.”
“Gasp! That’s occupational discrimination! I’m gonna beat you with the Political Correctness Stick!”
“Don’t invalidate my personal beliefs! And I wasn’t discriminating against anyone, either — no, wait, is the sex industry even politically correct in the first place…? Ah, forget it. Just put the stick away!”
“Ayuru puts away the Political Correctness Stick. And in its place!”
“I can’t sleep with someone if there’s no love involved!”
“Oh, that’s fine. We’ll ask the customers beforehand what they want and make sure everything’s agreed on.”
“Huh?”
Ayuru grinned smugly, looking like an idiot who had just come up with the greatest idea in the world, then showed Rinko the business plan on her tablet.
A business plan spanning dozens of pages. It covered not only the break-even point and projected profits and losses, but also the conditions and benefits offered to the cast members under her.
One glance was enough to reveal that the whole breezy, “Why don’t we go to Kyoto?” routine at the beginning had been a complete act.
Ayuru swiped through several pages, then stopped at a handful of slides condensed into a presentation.
It was presumably material prepared to recruit investors.
“Rinko-san. What kind of people do you think come to places like this?”
“Women like us, obviously?”
“Hmm. Half right.”
Ayuru gave a sly grin.
Annoyed, Rinko tried to leave, only for Ayuru to stop her by wrapping her legs around Rinko’s ankles. Once she had marked someone as her target, she would not let go until she had caught them. She was practically a seasoned hunter.
“You know, I’d like people who are struggling with how to live their lives to use the place too.”
Rinko still remembered it clearly.
This was the one thing about the hopeless entrepreneur Hiroo Ayuru that, much as it pained her to admit it, she had to praise without reservation.
“No matter how much society comes to understand people like us, I think there’ll always be people who wonder, Is it okay for me to be someone who loves the same sex? Even if society says, ‘Diversity is welcome! Homosexuality? Bring it on!’ that’s a separate matter from what an individual thinks. Because it’s a question of identity.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Hmm. If the goal is to ‘live life as yourself’, then what exactly is that ‘self’? Like going on a pilgrimage around Shikoku or travelling to the Indus River to find yourself.”
“You mean you want to help people find themselves?”
“Exactly! I want to run a sex-industry business for people who are struggling. I want to be there for them when they’re struggling with their identity, help them let off steam, give them a dream for one night. Society will probably look down on it, but there are definitely people who need it. It’s a valuable job.”
Ayuru looked infuriatingly pleased with herself, as though she had just said something profound.
She even struck the sort of pose you might expect from a young startup founder gesturing grandly over a pottery wheel, grandly waving around idealistic theories whose realisation was anything but certain.
“I’m speechless. You really are good at making everything you say sound impressive…”
“Rinko-san praised me! Yay! So easy!”
“And you ruined it immediately.”
“No, no. Honestly, it isn’t all that noble. Not really.”
After a brief pause, Ayuru let out a small sigh.
“I just hope the new place I’m opening can be medicine for everyone’s emotional wounds. Not just the customers. Ours too.”
For just a moment, Rinko thought she caught a glimpse of the heart hidden beneath Ayuru’s normally carefree exterior, a heart that seemed to have no connection whatsoever with worries.
The questions of identity never ended. Neither did the ways of resolving them, or the ways of finding salvation. Just as there was no medicine that worked for everyone, there was no way to solve everyone’s problems.
But even if you could not solve someone’s problem, you could still be there beside them.
You could stand beside them and ease the pain, even if only a little.
“Isn’t that just licking each other’s wounds? Doesn’t sound very constructive.”
“Who cares if we’re licking each other’s wounds? If that helps the wounds close and lets us walk forward again, then what’s wrong with it?”
“……”
“Hmm… Guess it really isn’t for you. Well, can’t be helped. Everyone thinks differently. Sorry. I won’t ask again.”
“…I’ll think about it.”
“Really!? Oh, actually, I’ve already worked out the pricing plans! And about your shifts, Rinko-san, I was thinking you could start by coming in at eight after finishing your day job and leaving around eleven. How does that sound? I’d like you three days a week if possible, but if that’s too much, two days is fine!”
All Rinko could do was laugh in exasperation.
Ayuru was a captain.
She showed a treasure to a band of outcasts, something worth setting sail towards, then gathered her colourful crew beneath the Jolly Roger and pushed onward.
A ship called Aromatic, sailing from island to island, sea to sea. No map, no idea where they would end up. A reckless voyage of adventure that knew neither its own limits nor the value of its own life.
And yet, she would not have minded boarding Ayuru’s ship.
Much as she hated to admit it, Ayuru was overflowing with that kind of human charm.
As a romantic prospect, however, absolutely not.
“This is the age of great sex-industry adventure! I’m gonna be the Sex Industry King!”
“You’re going to get sued for that.”
Two years later, a great storm in the form of a new virus would leave Ayuru’s pirate ship, Aromatic, on the verge of sinking.
But that was a story for another time.
＊
Despite having declared so firmly that she would reject both recognition and physical contact, Rinko was now lying with her head in her oshi’s lap.
A glass on the table had been filled with water, and a packet of herbal medicine for sobering up lay beside it.
Her body felt heavy and sluggish, and she no longer had the energy to resist close contact. She kept her eyes fixed on the variety programme playing mindlessly on the television, making sure not to meet Kotone’s gaze as she looked down at her.
Every word Kotone had uttered during that time had been a passionate advance.
No matter how much Rinko rejected her, no matter how hard she tried to keep her distance, Kotone simply kept doing the same thing, closing the distance whenever Rinko tried to put some between them.
And then came the supposed continuation of Yes and No, delivered as though it had hit the nail perfectly on the head.
Worn down to the point of collapse, Rinko had finally snapped awake.
“Is it because you’re a sex worker that you think you’re not suited to having an actress as your girlfriend?”
For two years, as one of Aromatic’s founding members, Rinko had spent two days a week talking with all kinds of women, holding their hands, pressing her lips to theirs, and sharing their bodies.
Clean and dirty. Beautiful and ugly. Company presidents and part-time workers.
She dealt with at least two customers a week. At the simplest possible calculation, that meant around two hundred people. Factoring in repeat customers brought the number down to roughly sixty percent of that, but even so, Rinko had encountered all kinds of troubles.
At first, even Rinko had thought it was a terrible job.
Of course, she could never tell her parents. Nor was it something she could bring herself to confess even to the handful of friends she had already come out to.
But the longer she continued, the more she came to love seeing the relaxed expressions customers sometimes showed as they left.
For their sake, she found herself willing to suppress her normally short temper and listen to them.
Even if people sneered at it as nothing more than futile wound-licking, she wanted to be the medicine that soothed their emotional wounds, to be there beside their pain.
No matter what anyone said, Aromatic was a valuable job, one that people needed.
“…Are you saying that because I’m a sex worker society points its finger at, I’m holding back from sleeping with Kotone?”
“Am I wrong?”
Those two years of Rinko’s life had just been dismissed.
Of all people, by her oshi.
“……”
“Aha. Hit a nerve. Don’t worry, I don’t care about that sort of thing at all.”
Kotone’s cackling laugh, as though she had just claimed the head of an enemy, grated on Rinko’s ears.
It was an unbearable sound, enough to make her want to silence her forever.
She had wanted to become a woman like Kotone. The image of Kurosu Kotone as her ideal woman was now being utterly demolished by the human being lurking inside that image.
“…That’s not…”
“You’re so shocked you can’t even get the words out?”
“Don’t you fucking dare!!!”
Rasping out the scream through her inflamed throat, Rinko hauled herself upright.
She was exhausted, still suffering from her hangover, and all four limbs felt terribly heavy. But she wanted to beat the person in front of her, the woman who had denied everything about her based on nothing but prejudice.
She slammed Kotone back against the sofa.
Kotone looked genuinely shocked.
And with good reason. Even for the normally short-tempered Rinko, she had rarely experienced such all-consuming rage.
“Do you have any idea how everyone felt when they were working there!? Do you have any idea what our customers felt when they called us!?”
“R-Rinko-chan…?”
“You don’t know anything! You just make judgements based on prejudice and feel good about yourself! Is it fun looking down on people just because you’re beautiful, clever and popular!? Don’t fuck with me!”
Rinko swung her hand to slap her, but the tiny fragment of reason she had left managed to stop it.
Kotone was an actress. There was no way Rinko could damage the face that was her livelihood.
So all the anger packed into her right hand went into Kotone’s shoulder instead, and she shoved her down onto the sofa with all her strength.
Rinko ended up straddling her.
Not, however, in the vulgar sense of a sexual riding position.
This was a mount, the position used to pin down a helpless opponent and beat them from above.
“I don’t think Aromatic is dirty work! No matter how many people point their fingers at me, I believe it’s a valuable job, one where I can heal someone’s wounds! And you just—”
“Stop—”
By then, reason could no longer hold her back.
Her raised palm came down once against Kotone’s cheek.
A dry crack rang through the spacious flat.
The echo pulled Rinko back towards rationality for the briefest moment, but the flames of her anger were still roaring, showing no sign of going out.
“You think I’m too filthy a sex worker to be a match for you!? Don’t get so fucking full of yourself when all you do is put on that good-girl act behind a fake face! The reason I don’t fall in love with you! The reason I think I mustn’t fall in love with you, it’s not because of some fucking ridiculous reason like that! I, I…!”
Her throat closed up.
Even so, Rinko continued shouting through her hoarse voice.
“To protect your image…! If people found out your girlfriend used to be a sex worker, your career as an actress would be over! That’s why I…!”
She had always intended to protect her.
If Kotone continued protecting her image, Rinko would support her, and if anything got in her way, she would answer it with a dropkick or a vacuum flying knee.
She did not care if that meant Kotone hated her.
She did not care if Kotone avoided her.
As long as Kotone could continue to be the idealised figure Rinko had made of her, that was enough.
That was precisely why they could not date.
Precisely why Rinko must not fall in love with her.
The reason she had absolutely refused to share her body with Kotone was not that she could not bring herself to sleep with a deified version of her oshi.
It was because doing so would destroy Kotone’s career as an actress.
Kotone was a beloved star at the height of her popularity, with a promising future ahead of her. She had spoken so passionately about acting being her calling.
Rinko could not bear the thought of seeing that woman brought to her knees.
“To protect… my image?”
Tears welled in Kotone’s eyes.
Her oshi was lying on her back beneath Rinko on the sofa.
A thin tear slipped through the narrow gap between her eyelids.
But seeing her cry did not make Rinko stop.
She had seen her oshi perform tears countless times before. She was used to them.
Rinko even knew that Kotone had once bragged on a variety show that she could cry on cue within seconds.
“You think you’re the most important person in the world, don’t you!? You think you can trample all over people’s hearts just because you’re doing it for a role!? You think acting all aloof and cynical about society makes you look cool!? Fuck you! Fuck you!!! Just because you’re an actress! Just because I’m your fan! Don’t think that means you can get away with anything!!!”
“……”
“What happened to wanting me to look only at you!? What happened to wanting me to be your lighthouse!? If that’s what you wanted, were you looking at me!? What were you looking at!? You weren’t seeing anything at all! You didn’t know how I felt. You never even thought about how much pain I was in, and then you expect me to fall for you? You expect me to love you? That’s fucking convenient, isn’t it!? What an idiot!!!”
“……”
“Don’t just sit there in silence! Say something! I’m not your big sister. No matter how much you cry or keep quiet, I’m not going to cave!”
“…I’m… sorry…”
Kotone’s apology came between sobs.
She was supposed to be several centimetres taller than Rinko, yet she looked incredibly small.
She was twenty-three, an adult by age, and yet she looked like a frightened little girl.
Guilt spread through Rinko’s heart at having forced her to apologise.
Even so, she did not want to give in.
She could not give in.
Rinko had quit Aromatic in order to confess her feelings to Mikoto because she cared about what society thought.
But she had done it for Mikoto.
No matter how proud she was of her work, it was still considered a dirty profession by society at large.
She had been afraid Mikoto might not accept her.
In the end, the two of them had never become lovers, but Mikoto had accepted Rinko, including Rin, the part of her that belonged to Aromatic, as a friend, even if that friendship came with its own share of pain.
But Kotone had denied it.
Of all people, she had been the one to say the words Rinko least wanted to hear, in the way Rinko least wanted to hear them.
“…It’s over.”
Rinko staggered towards her room.
She dragged out a suitcase and carelessly stuffed in her bankbooks, seals, several days’ worth of clothes, cosmetics and whatever else she could grab, then hurried towards the entrance wearing whatever she had on.
There, just as expected, stood Kotone, her eye makeup completely ruined.
“Wait…!”
“Shut up! Move! If you don’t move, I’m calling the police!”
“If you do that, there’ll be a scandal—”
“Stop thinking I’m your oshi!”
The moment Rinko shoved Kotone aside and opened the front door, there came a dull thud.
Beyond the door, sprawled across the corridor of the apartment building, was a long-haired woman.
Her neighbour, Saikawa Hifumi.
“I… heard such a loud voice…”
Hifumi had nothing to do with this.
Rinko swore to herself that she would not take her anger out on her, then somehow forced herself to suppress it enough to speak.
“Saikawa-san, thank you for everything, even if it was only for a short time. Please tell the company. As of today, Shirai Rinko is resigning as manager for Kurosu Kotone and Saikawa Hifumi.”
“No!”
Kotone’s scream of despair filled the corridor.
Rinko was deeply disillusioned.
Why had she ever made this woman her oshi?
She was thoughtless and selfish, using her acting as a shield while trampling all over people’s hearts without a second thought.
“Where… are you going…?”
“I’m going back to my parents’ house. Goodbye.”
Kotone collapsed barefoot onto the corridor floor, while Hifumi hovered beside her in bewilderment.
Rinko felt bad for dragging Hifumi into this, but an apology could wait. She could call her later, or send her a message on LINE.
For now, all she wanted was to leave this apartment, and Yokohama, with its bitter memories, as quickly as possible.
She immediately called a taxi.
Her destination was Shin-Yokohama.
She could still make the last Shinkansen to her parents’ home in Hamamatsu.