#76: Blue Moon
My cousin Miko-nee, whom I had met again for the first time in over a decade, had a fiancée.
And, astonishingly enough,
she was a foreigner. A woman, at that.
＊
“Tokyo really is more advanced than Matsuyama…”
Tokyo was so bustling that I sometimes wondered whether there was a festival going on every single day.
My hometown of Matsuyama is a reasonably large provincial city, with a population of around half a million. But Setagaya, where Miko-nee and the people who had probably been kind enough to let me stay lived, was twice as crowded despite having only one-seventh the area of Matsuyama.
In other words, Setagaya was a city where I saw about fourteen times as many people as I did back home.
There were people everywhere. On the way to the supermarket where I had been sent on an errand, at the shopping complex in front of the station where I stopped for a little look around, even at TSUTAYA when I went to buy books for my job hunting.
People, people, people.
What about staying home? Social distancing and all that?
It was enough to make me tilt my head in confusion, but surely the reason I was seeing so many people was simply because there were fourteen times as many of them here.
I had always dreamed of the big city, but would a country girl like me really be accepted here?
Then again, the friends Miko-nee occasionally brought home were a little… no, considerably strange, but they were all wonderful, kind people.
So I wanted to get used to living in Tokyo as soon as possible.
I wanted to make friends in Tokyo.
I wanted to enjoy Tokyo to the fullest and become one of those fourteen-times-as-many people.
Well, for that, I needed a job.
“I’m home!”
“Welcome back, Aoi-chan. There’s ice cream in the freezer if you’d like some.”
“Yay!”
The biggest mystery for me since I started staying here was this person.
Miko-nee’s friend, or rather her fiancée, Shandy-san.
She was unmistakably foreign, yet spoke Japanese astonishingly well. A beautiful blonde woman who, if she and Miko-nee walked down the street together, would make pedestrians, shopkeepers, stray cats, birds, even flowers blooming through cracks in the asphalt turn around to look at them.
They really were a perfect couple.
Well, they were a couple, apparently.
“Oh, where’s Miko-nee?”
“She said she was meeting with a former colleague from her previous workplace.”
“The manager from Koto-nee’s agency?”
“Probably someone else. If it were Rinko-san, I think she would have said so.”
Shandy-san smiled at me as usual while I savoured my reward, a Haagen-Dazs, then lowered her eyes back to her paperback.
Was she always smiling because living together with Miko-nee made her happy every day?
If so, then the two of them really were a couple.
Which meant I had barged into the home of two people I had thought were merely sharing a flat, making myself an unwanted third wheel.
Hmm.
Being an unwanted third wheel wasn’t good.
But I had nowhere to go because I had no money.
I didn’t want to go back to Matsuyama, and Mum had already told me, “Don’t come home.”
“What am I gonna do…?”
“Yes. Once you become accustomed to Haagen-Dazs, you can no longer appreciate ordinary vanilla ice cream, can you?”
“Oh, no, that’s not it. I was wondering whether it’s okay for me to stay here.”
“Oh my.”
Shandy-san raised her eyes from her paperback, smiling.
“Why did you start thinking that?”
And then she looked at me and asked me the question.
Shandy-san always looked people in the eyes when she spoke to them.
Even when the three of us ate dinner together, even when we watched television on the sofa, Shandy-san was always looking at Miko-nee.
And, of course, Miko-nee was looking at Shandy-san too.
The dinner and television, which were supposed to be the stars of the show, had been reduced to supporting roles. It was almost pitiful.
From the outside, they looked like a couple madly in love.
Yes.
Just like an ordinary couple.
“Just a feeling?”
“You have ‘I want to ask something’ written all over your face.”
The truth was, I wanted to ask.
That was only natural.
But it might be rude, and even if I found out the answer, I wasn’t confident I could keep the conversation going. I only understood things I had experienced myself.
My school reports had said “lacks imagination” for twelve consecutive years, so I was a thoroughly battle-hardened case of zero imagination.
So, what does a person with zero imagination do when she wants to understand something?
There was only one answer.
If you don’t understand, ask someone!
It was foolproof.
Whenever I didn’t understand something, I just had to ask someone.
I, Kurosu Aoi, had acquired another name alongside the dishonourable nickname of “the girl with no imagination”.
The Question Machine.
I had been raised with my entire family constantly telling me, “If you don’t understand, keep asking, and asking, and asking until you’ve got your answer.”
And then there was my middle-school teacher, who had told me: “Never leave something you don’t understand as something you don’t understand.”
I remember those words clearly. Thank you, whoever that teacher was.
And now here was the biggest mystery of all.
The relationship between Miko-nee and Shandy-san.
Miko-nee was one thing, but Shandy-san was a complete mystery.
Her age, her name, which apparently wasn’t actually Shandy, what country she was from…
No matter how many things I asked Miko-nee, all I got back were vague answers.
It didn’t feel as though Miko-nee was trying to hide anything. And there shouldn’t have been any reason to hide it.
So perhaps Miko-nee genuinely didn’t know Shandy-san’s personal information.
Which meant maybe they weren’t a couple after all?
Because if someone was your lover or fiancée, surely you would know their age and name.
If you didn’t know their birthday, you couldn’t give them a present.
If you didn’t know their age, you couldn’t put the right number of candles on their cake.
A serious problem.
If you put down an arbitrary number of candles, people got angry.
I still remembered the sad look on my aunt’s face when we celebrated her birthday at home, Miko-nee and Koto-nee’s mother.
I had to be careful.
So I wanted to ask all sorts of questions.
I really did.
But…
“Hehe. Are you staring at me?”
Shandy-san’s smile looked kind, but somehow frightening.
After groaning and agonising over it, I eventually chickened out.
Mum, I’m sorry for being such a useless daughter.
“Ah! I was just wondering what you were reading! Does Shandy-san read really difficult books?”
“I’ll double your money!”
“Pyeh!?”
See?
She really was scary!
“It’s a novel. Although, despite being by the same author, the one I’m reading is about a small factory building rockets.”
The cover showed a rocket flying towards the moon.
I had been startled by the amazingly convincing delivery of “I’ll double your money!”, a line from a television drama, but apparently Shandy-san read ordinary books too.
And watched television dramas.
So that “double your money” thing had apparently been a joke.
Mmph.
She was playing with me.
“You can read Japanese?”
“Yes. Four other languages as well.”
“Wow! Have you lived in those countries?”
“Yes. On the Moon.”
“The Moon? The one floating in the night sky…?”
“That’s right. I’m from the Moon Kingdom of Silver Millennium.”
“H-how did you get to Earth…?”
“By UFO. I sold it to Autobacs, though.”
“Autobacs in Tokyo buys UFOs!?”
“It was an old model, so I didn’t get much for it.”
Shandy-san was a mystery wrapped in mysteries.
She spoke five languages and was an alien who had come from the Moon.
For a moment, I almost believed her, but surely even I knew the Moon part was a lie.
I was capable of understanding at least that much.
“Then what’s your blood type!?”
“I’m actually rather serious and meticulous.”
“I know! A type!”
“I can also be rather stubborn and selfish.”
“Then B type…?”
“But I tend to cut corners where cutting corners is appropriate. And I’m quite laid-back.”
“O type…?”
“Oh, speaking of which, Mikoto once said I was mysterious.”
“Er, AB…?”
“Have you worked it out?”
“Wh-who… Who exactly are you, Shandy-san?”
“I’m a very cute bartender.”
“You really are cute…”
“You have a good eye. You may have another ice cream.”
“Yay! …Huh!?”
There was no way I was going to figure Shandy-san out.
Not if I could be bought off with ice cream.
Of course, I was trying my best to get information out of people.
But when I messaged Koto-nee on LINE, she left me on read.
When I called the manager whose number was on her business card, all I got was, “That woman is impossible!”
And when I spoke to the cheerful person who had come over here before, she spent the entire time passionately proclaiming, “MikoSha is precious!”
Miko-nee’s friends weren’t normal people.
I supposed it couldn’t be helped.
“Is the Question Game over already?”
Shandy-san smiled happily, but the mystery was only getting deeper.
If the two of them really were a couple, how on earth had Miko-nee managed to get together with Shandy-san?
For that matter, what had Shandy-san fallen in love with in Miko-nee?
Her face?
Or perhaps her kindness?
Her slender figure?
But even if I asked her directly, I had a feeling she would dodge the question.
“Ahh… I really can’t ask…”
“You’re saying your thoughts aloud.”
Oops.
Well, if things had come this far, there was nothing left to lose.
As people used to say, “The shame of travel is left behind.”
I had no choice but to ask her directly.
“Are Miko-nee and Shandy-san… a couple?”
Shandy-san showed no sign of being flustered. She simply smiled her usual adorable smile and said:
“Yes.”
Yes?
Huh?
She dodged questions about herself, but this one was fine?
“Eh…?”
“And what did you think about it, Aoi-chan?”
This time, Shandy-san was asking me a question in return.
She wanted to know what I thought about Miko-nee and Shandy-san being a couple.
What did I think?
The only image that came to mind was the two of them walking side by side through the city.
“You’re both beautiful, so I thought you suited each other.”
“Let’s have sushi for dinner tonight.”
“Yay! …No, wait! Why!? Why are you…”
“Because we’re both women?”
“Yeah, but…”
In the end, she had anticipated my question before I could even ask it.
Shandy-san was several levels smarter than me.
I vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that if two people’s IQs differed by more than twenty points, they couldn’t have a proper conversation.
My IQ was only a little over 110 when I tested it for fun, so perhaps Shandy-san’s was higher.
Shandy-san closed the paperback that had been lying open and silently looked into my eyes.
Her gaze was incredibly intense.
Even I felt my heart skip when such a beautiful woman looked at me like that.
“It’s true that Mikoto and I aren’t what most people would consider normal.”
“Yeah. That’s why I was wondering why.”
“But to me, this is normal. Of course, the kind of romantic relationship you’re imagining is normal too, Aoi-chan.”
Gong.
The shock felt like the bell at Ishite-dera back home in Matsuyama had suddenly started ringing beside my head.
My definition of normal had begun to wobble.
When I thought of something normal, I imagined falling in love, eventually getting married, then living while raising children, either by working or being a housewife.
Of course, I had never had a man in my past, no matter how far back I looked, nor did I have a job that seemed likely to provide me with a boyfriend.
I wanted to have children, but I didn’t know why I wanted to have them.
Was this what people called instinct?
Or was it simply because that was what was normal?
“What even is normal?”
“Hmm. In this day and age… perhaps it’s a ruler whose markings are different for every person.”
“Whoa…”
The difference in our IQs was obviously too great.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
If everyone’s ruler had different markings, then it sounded as though you wouldn’t be able to measure anything at all.
“For example, I love alcohol. Among other things, I can drink Shandy Gaffs endlessly.”
“I only drink alcohol sometimes. And one glass makes me sleepy.”
“Then is there something you like, Aoi-chan?”
“Hmm… If I had to pick something… moss.”
“Moss?”
“I like looking at moss by the roadside. It makes me think, ‘You’re doing your best.’”
“Hehe. What a lovely hobby. I’m not interested in moss in the slightest, though.”
“What!? Moss is cute!”
“That is what I mean by a ruler.”
Moss was a ruler?
Did my moss have markings on it?
“Everyone likes different things, and the degree to which they like them is different too. And you can’t compare how much people like something. Romance is the same. Everyone has different people they direct their affection towards, and different ways of doing so. At minimum, everyone has their own ruler.”
“But there are loads of people who have normal relationships, right?”
“That’s normal as seen by Aoi-chan. To the people themselves, they have their own version of normal.”
It was difficult.
I could tell that clever Shandy-san was trying to explain something to me, but I didn’t really understand what.
And somehow, I felt that even if I thought I understood it now, I probably wouldn’t really understand it at all.
If I didn’t understand something, I should ask someone.
But even when I tried to put that into practice, I didn’t know what to ask or how to ask it.
“I don’t get it…”
“You don’t have to. Your collection of rulers will grow as you live.”
“I don’t really get it, but somehow that sounds profound…”
I really didn’t understand.
But maybe I simply didn’t understand yet.
Apparently, my collection of rulers would grow as I lived.
What would happen once I had collected lots of different rulers?
Would I eventually be able to use a set square to measure strange, ambiguous angles like 75 or 120 degrees?
Would I finally be able to explain in painstaking detail the difference between a metre, a foot and a shaku, which I still didn’t properly understand?
If so, perhaps there was a little hope for me.
Even someone as ordinary and unremarkable as me, with hardly any talents to speak of, might eventually be able to fit into Tokyo if I collected enough rulers.
“Shandy-san, how old are you?”
“I’m a seventeen-year-old JK. Like, totally maaanji.”
“That is definitely a lie.”
Shandy-san really wasn’t normal.
I had absolutely no idea what she was thinking.
Perhaps I would never acquire a ruler capable of measuring Shandy-san.
But maybe…
Perhaps Miko-nee had one.
A ruler capable of measuring Shandy-san.
Just as Shandy-san said, perhaps Miko-nee had acquired it naturally through living.
And, of course, Shandy-san must have a ruler of her own, one that could measure Miko-nee much more accurately than I ever could.
That would mean…
“Sounds nice, having each other’s rulers.”
“Oh my. You really are a Kurosu woman, Aoi-chan.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have a habit of suddenly throwing bombs at people.”
Shandy-san blushed faintly and smiled.
Her expression, her reaction, were no different from the ordinary romance I had imagined: a girl falling in love with a boy.
Whether you loved a boy or a girl, perhaps there really was no difference in the feeling of falling in love.
If that was the case, then perhaps liking someone was enough.
As people used to say, “Anyone who gets in the way of another person’s love deserves to be kicked to death by a horse.”
I had tried horseback riding once, and if one of those muscular hind legs came flying at me at that tremendous clip-clop speed, I imagine I’d be sent flying like something out of Super Smash Bros.
I’d rather not be kicked by a horse.
Oh, and I’d rather not get kicked out of job interviews either.
“Ah. I’m going to get kicked by a horse…”
Right!
If the two of them were a couple, then I really was an unwanted third wheel!
“Aoi-chan is amusing. You’re so easy to read, for one thing.”
“Huh?”
“You’re thinking that you’re getting in the way of our life together, aren’t you?”
“Are you a psychic, Shandy-san!?”
“Yes. And please, don’t worry about it. You can stay here until you’re independent and have enough financial breathing room to move out.”
“You’re a psychic and an angel!?”
“And a bartender, and a masked princess. Though the curse was broken by a prince’s kiss.”
“Are you actually some kind of princess from some kingdom…?”
“As I said, the Moon Kingdom of Silver Millennium.”
“Where even is that…?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not very honest. Though I’m not quite from the generation that experienced it firsthand.”
“Hmm…?”
The phantom Moon Kingdom, Silver Millennium.
What kind of place could it be?
There were so many things I didn’t understand that my circuits were on the verge of shorting out.
It was the first time I had really sat down and talked with Shandy-san, and I had asked her all sorts of questions, but somehow her mysteries had only multiplied.
I was completely outmatched.
Normal but not normal.
A psychic, an angel and a bartender.
A princess from some kingdom who had even had her curse broken by a prince.
There was no way my ruler could measure her.
“You’re kind of like an actress. You have so many different faces, I really don’t understand you at all, Shandy-san…”
“Could I win Best Actress?”
“Yep! I’ll give it to you! And please continue looking after Miko-nee.”
“Hehe. I accept your request.”
I had been nervous the whole time, but I felt as though I had finally managed to smile.
Shandy-san was a mysterious beauty, and she could be a little frightening, but I thought she was a kind person.
If it was her, I could entrust Miko-nee to her without worrying.
As her cousin, I wanted to give her my wholehearted stamp of approval.
Don’t cause her too much trouble, Miko-nee.
“Speaking of actresses, I wonder if Kotone-san was all right after what happened? Have you heard anything, Aoi-chan?”
“Um… you mean the thing where the manager turned pale as a sheet?”
That had been yesterday.
I had woken up from my sulk-induced nap after another failed job application, only to find Koto-nee, her manager, and a cheerful woman who looked as though she would still be smiling if the end of the world arrived, all gathered in the living room.
I hadn’t really understood what was going on beyond the fact that they had been asking each other questions and drinking alcohol, which Shandy-san called a Game.
Come to think of it, Koto-nee had said something about liking her manager.
Or maybe she had.
Hmm.
I was still missing a ruler or two.
“Well, Koto-nee keeps leaving me on read when I message her. Isn’t that awful?”
“She’s probably finding it bothersome.”
“I only sent her, ‘Are things all right with Manager-san?’ You’d think she could at least send one sticker!”
“Oh no. It isn’t that replying to LINE is a bother.”
“Huh?”
Perhaps I had misunderstood something.
Koto-nee was lazy, so it was easy to imagine her not wanting to reply to LINE messages.
But perhaps there was another reason.
I was about to think it through, but Shandy-san told me, “Don’t worry about it,” so I stopped.
If Shandy-san said not to worry, I wouldn’t.
“Rinko-san is every bit as sensitive as Kotone-san, after all.”
“Hmm…”
I gave a thoughtful-sounding grunt for the moment, but naturally, I understood nothing.
There were truths everywhere that an ordinary girl like me simply couldn’t reach.
“Oh, I got a LINE from Hifumi-san.”
“Kotone-san’s neighbour, Saikawa-san?”
“Yeah. She gave me her contact when I went to visit the TV station.”
Actually, on the day I had reunited with Koto-nee and gone to visit the television station, I had secretly exchanged LINE details with Saikawa Hifumi-san.
Officially, I had asked for her contact details so I could repay the money I had borrowed whenever I was able to.
In reality, I just wanted to be able to message a celebrity.
Koto-nee didn’t count as a celebrity because she always left me on read.
Besides, she was family.
I opened the message Hifumi-san had sent me and couldn’t help shouting.
“T-the manager quit!?”
“Oh my.”
The message we checked together read:
She had a huge fight with Kotone, and Rinko-san left the flat. She says she’s quitting as manager too.
“W-what should I do!?”
I was in complete panic.
“What am I supposed to reply to a LINE message from a celebrity!?”
“Hmm…”
Shandy-san groaned quietly, then suddenly stood up.
“I’m going out for a little while. Could you look after the house?”
“You’re going to Koto-nee’s!? Then I’ll come too!”
“No. We’re leaving Kotone-san alone. I think that’s what she wants.”
“Eh? Huh? Wait… what about your make-up!?”
Without changing her clothes, without putting on any make-up, carrying nothing but her bag, Shandy-san got ready to leave with impossible speed.
Then she smiled at me by the front door.
“It’s all right. I’m cute, after all.”
“You really are cute…”
“I’ll bring back some waffle sandwiches from GRANSTA as a souvenir.”
“Yay! Wait, where’s GRANSTA…?”
When I don’t understand something, I ask someone.
Or rather, I ask Google.
A quick search revealed the true identity of GRANSTA.
“An underground shopping area beneath Tokyo Station…? Why would she be going there…?”
The mystery only deepened.