#81: Lingering Scent

“Morning routine?”
“A morning routine. You just have to film me, that’s all.”

Dear Mum,
I’m doing fine.
I managed to achieve my original goal of staying at Kotone-nee’s place, but in exchange I’ve been roped into filming some mysterious activity called a “morning routine”. In fact, it seems like I was only invited over for the sake of filming, and I’ve been firmly reminded that I’m to leave once we’re finished. I’d much rather put down roots here and make this my base for the time being, but still.
What on earth is a “morning routine”?

“I just have to film?”
“Yeah. And absolutely do not speak. If your Iyo dialect gets into the footage, it’ll ruin Kurosu Kotone’s image.”
“That’s ridiculous! Iyo dialect is cute, so it is!”
“Nobody actually says ‘zo-na-moshi’ in real life!”
“They do! My maths teacher in high school used to say it all the time!”
“Zo-na-moshi, zo-na-moshi, you’re really getting on my nerves!”
“See! You said it!”
“I said it on purpose! Now just film me and make it look stylish!”
“What does ‘stylish’ even mean!?”

Without having the slightest idea what a “morning routine” was, or what constituted “stylish”, I decided to start by filming Kotone-nee crawling into bed in her pyjamas.
As far as I know, Kotone-nee is a woman loved by the goddess of beauty. Even without makeup, she looks hardly any different from when she’s made up, which is terrifyingly enviable. I ought to have inherited a decent amount of the same blood, but all my friends ever say is, “Your features don’t look anything alike, but somehow you two look similar. Like, your general vibe.”
Fate is cruel.

“Guaaah…”

Kotone-nee, who had been wide awake until just a moment ago, woke up. Her eyes were bleary with sleep. She yawned. She even deliberately messed up her straight hair.
She’d been awake until a moment ago.
And she’d been combing her hair, too.
I focused as I pointed the camera at her.

“Good morning. I’m Kurosu Kotone.”
“Pffft! That’s not Kotone-nee at all!”
“Cut! That’s a NG!”

I laughed because it was too ridiculous, resulting in an No-Go take. Apparently I wasn’t allowed to talk or laugh during filming. Come to think of it, she had told me not to talk earlier. I’d forgotten.

“This isn’t a home video!”
“I can’t help laughing when you suddenly turn all ladylike!”
“This is a video for a channel I’m making, and it’s proper work!”
“If it’s work, why don’t you get your manager to do it… Ah!”

I remembered when Kotone-nee glared at me.
Hifumi-san had told me about it. Kotone-nee’s manager, Rinko-san, had said she was quitting and left the flat. I had decided to keep quiet about it, since I was at least capable of being considerate when I tried, but apparently Hifumi-san had let it slip.
Bad Hifumin.

“Eeeh? Did something happen with your manager?”
“Just shut up and film me! That’s your job!”
“Hey, hey. If it’s work, you’re gonna pay me, right?”
“This little shit’s taking advantage of the situation…”

It worked.
At first, I’d thought she was planning to send the video to Rinko-san and say something like, “I’m no good without you! Come back!” But if it was work, that changed things.
Work comes with responsibility, in exchange for being paid.
I feel like Shandy-san said something like that once. Maybe she didn’t. But she’s the sort of person who would say it, so I decided that was good enough.

“If it’s work, I’ll do it properly. I won’t laugh, and I’ll do my best to make it look stylish!”
“Why the hell are you suddenly showing professional pride at a time like this… Three thousand yen. Sound good?”
“This isn’t a kid’s errand!”
“Tch. Then how much?”

The household accounts in my head went ching as they calculated.
Between the money I’d borrowed from Kotone-nee and Hifumin, and the allowance Mum sent me, I had three hundred thousand yen in total. Even though I was being careful with money and Shandy-san was covering my living expenses, buying all the various things I needed for my job hunt was putting a serious dent in it.
And I wanted to live on my own as soon as possible. I wanted to do that thing they show on television, where some poor country girl moves to Tokyo and takes her first step towards a new life in the big city.
The girls on that programme usually arrive in Tokyo with at most about five hundred thousand yen.
Which meant that with five hundred thousand yen, I could live on my own.

“Then how about this!”

I held up two fingers for the time being.

“Twenty thousand? I suppose that’s not completely unreasonable…”
“No. Two hundred thousand.”

Kotone-nee pulled an unmistakable grimace. It ruined her beautiful face.

“Are you taking the piss out of society?”
“But I need the money!”
“Two hundred thousand includes editing, you know. You can’t edit, can you?”
“I’ll work hard if it’s work! I’ll study!”
“You have a computer?”
“I’ll borrow one from Hifumin! She looks like she knows that sort of thing!”
“Have some consideration for Hifumi…”
“But she said I could ask her for anything whenever I needed help.”
“That’s what you call a social nicety… Do I really have to explain this from scratch? What kind of education did your parents give you? They’re my relatives too, for crying out loud!”
“God, I’m tired of correcting you…”

As she said this, Kotone-nee pulled thirty thousand yen from her wallet.
But that was below my target amount.
I couldn’t accept it.

“If it’s thirty thousand, I’ll only do thirty thousand yen’s worth of work.”
“I’d hire a production company before I paid you two hundred thousand. You’re fired. Go back to Kyōdō.”
“Hmm…”

This was that thing I’d seen in my job-hunting textbooks: competitive quotations.
You deliberately get estimates from other companies and then put silent pressure on some tiny business by saying, “But this other company says they’ll do it for this much,” until you squeeze them into lowering their price.
Competitive quotations were unforgivable.
That said, I didn’t have any editing skills or equipment. My only choices were to go home empty-handed or compromise at thirty thousand yen.

“…Fine. I’ll cut corners as much as I possibly can. So at least make it sixty thousand.”
“Thirty.”
“Then fifty!”
“Thirty.”
“F-fourty, then! I’m really stretching myself here!”
“Thirty.”
“Isn’t this the part where the price goes up in a film!? Haven’t you seen that one with the circus?”
“Reality isn’t The Greatest Showman. Here. Thirty thousand yen in wages. That’s it.”
“Uuugh… But that film was based on a true story…”

In the end, I was a tiny company brought to its knees by a competitive quotation.
I couldn’t resist Kotone-nee, the capitalist demon who had sold her soul for money. I carefully put the thirty thousand yen into my wallet and reluctantly returned to filming.
It was almost noon.
But according to the setup, it was supposed to be nine in the morning.

“First thing after waking up is to wash your face.”

At last, I had begun to understand the mysterious “morning routine” I’d been wondering about.
A morning routine.
It was a type of realistic video that followed someone closely to show “what their daily life is like in the morning”.
The problem was that it wasn’t morning, everything had been staged, and the real Kotone-nee was nothing like this demure.
It was fake.

“Looking at your face in the mirror also tells you what sort of condition you’re in that day.”

In full demure-actress mode, Kotone-nee began washing her face at the large basin.
Having spent the night here, I knew that this was actually her second face wash of the morning.
Though “washing her face” was really just rinsing it with cold water. Whether she had extremely sensitive skin, or whether she had already judged the condition of her skin from her reflection, I didn’t know. But avoiding covering herself in cleansing foam was probably one of Kotone-nee’s own beauty secrets.

“And then, before the lotion, I use a booster…”

Like a proper celebrity, Kotone-nee brought the bottles close to the camera so that the product names were clearly visible.
Booster, toner, serum, emulsion. Since she was going outside, sunscreen too.
Apparently makeup came later.
But were her fans really happy watching a video of Kotone-nee doing nothing more than washing her face and vigorously pressing skincare products into her skin with her hands?
It was just an ordinary woman getting ready in the morning.
I couldn’t see how there was any value in a video like this, but I supposed this was what they called star power. It would probably get an absurd number of views.
It was unfair.

“There. Kurosu Kotone is more or less ready. Ehehe.”

More importantly, I had a major problem.
Kotone-nee had been making me laugh ever since we started.
Someone as foul-mouthed and ill-tempered as Kotone-nee would put on a completely different face and perform an enormous act the moment work started. Telling me not to laugh at something like this was simply unreasonable.
To me, Kotone-nee wasn’t a celebrity.
She was my cousin’s sister.
And since she was only six months older than me, with me being born in April, she was twenty-four now, technically the same age as me.
Sure, she was a beautiful woman.
But she was still just my beautiful older cousin.
And now that person was saying “ehehe”.
It was just too funny.

“Fufu. Are you all right, staff member? Is everything being recorded properly?”

As I was thinking this, Kotone-nee put pressure on me with a silent smile.
It reminded me a little of Shandy-san, somehow, but there was something intimidating about Kotone-nee’s smile.
Nothing like the gentle Shandy-san.
For the moment, I nodded the camera up and down to show that I was answering her question.
Then I followed Kotone-nee as she left the bathroom.

“We’ll record the narration later, so just film whatever for now.”
“Record the narration?”
“You record the narration separately and put it over the footage.”

She was a celebrity, after all, so she must have been accustomed to being filmed. I didn’t really understand what she was doing, but she must have been able to see what the finished video would look like.
In an instant, Kotone-nee switched into actress mode and put on the air of a fresh-faced, wholesome young woman.

“First thing in the morning, it has to be mineral water.”

Kotone-nee poured water from the water dispenser into a glass.
I thought she was going to drink it, but then she casually brought out a second matching glass and poured water into that one too.
Thinking she was giving it to me, I held out my hand.

“Sorry. Cut this part.”

Meaning that once she had prepared water for two people, it was time to cut.
Well, of course.
If people found out that someone else lived in the home of an actress whose brand was built on wholesome purity, it would be a major scandal.
Even if that person were her manager.

“Oh, I get it. You poured some for your manager too.”
“Stop rolling the camera.”
“The zombie-film one?”

I wanted her to retort that this was the one where you don’t stop the camera, but Kotone-nee didn’t answer.
Instead, she downed the water she had just poured in one go, ignored the filming altogether, and sprawled face-down on the sofa.
Suffocation… should be fine. She wasn’t a baby, after all.
Though she was throwing a tantrum like one.

“Kotone-nee, aren’t we filming the rest?”
“Forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“…You really aren’t filming, are you?”

Since she’d asked, I handed back Kotone-nee’s smartphone, which we had been using for filming.
That brought the shoot to a halt.
Surely I hadn’t done thirty thousand yen’s worth of work yet.

“I haven’t worked thirty thousand yen’s worth yet.”
“What kind of logic is that? First you demand some bizarre amount of money, then you start showing professional pride…”
“Money is important to me.”
“…Fine. I’ll give you the remaining one hundred and seventy thousand. As hush money.”

The calculator in my head started working instantly.
Three plus seventeen equals twenty.
If I added the two hundred thousand yen I wanted more than anything, I could finally start looking for a place of my own.
Just as I was about to accept it without a second thought, Kotone-nee spoke.

“…You’re good at keeping secrets, right?”
“I’m pretty good.”
“Sounds like a lie…”
“If I’m getting paid, I’ll protect it properly! I’m a professional!”
“What kind of professional are you supposed to be…? A professional listener to people’s complaints?”
“So, what am I supposed to keep quiet about?”

I didn’t really understand what, specifically, Kotone-nee wanted me to keep quiet about.
There was nothing particularly important about her having poured water into a second glass.
Kotone-nee rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with one arm before speaking.

“…I can’t remember what I used to do when I was alone.”

I didn’t really understand what she meant.
I’d never lived alone, so perhaps this was a problem I simply couldn’t understand.
But I could understand the sadness in her voice.

“So that can happen.”
“Yeah. Even when someone comes over, they only stay for a night or two, so it’s basically like living alone, right?”
“I stayed here tonight, though.”
“I told you. It’s basically like living alone. I just… forgot how to live alone.”
“Why?”
“…You’re supposed to figure it out without me telling you.”
“Hm…?”

As I scattered question marks around the room because I genuinely didn’t understand, Kotone-nee muttered with an exasperated look.

“…Fine. I’ll show you my real morning routine. Just keep quiet about it.”
“Roger!”

I gave a sharp salute and followed Kotone-nee.
She got up from the sofa and knocked on the door at the end of the corridor.

“The actress is awake! Get up already, Rinko-chaaaan!”
“Didn’t Manager-san leave?”
“You really are hopeless at understanding things like this…”
“Huh?”

Without saying anything else, Kotone-nee turned the doorknob.
It was Rinko Manager’s room.
Just as Hifumi-san had told me, Rinko-san’s belongings were scattered here and there, as though she had rushed out with nothing but a single suitcase.
There was so much evidence of someone living there, and everything was so neatly arranged, that it was hard to believe she had actually left.
Kotone-nee poured some of the water she was carrying into the aroma diffuser beside the bed, then added a few drops of aroma oil.
A floral scent reminiscent of tropical fruit drifted through the room on the rising vapour.

“Did you make up with Rinko-san?”
“No.”
“And you’re still using her aroma oil?”
“Got a problem with that?”
“You’re allowed to use Rinko-san’s stuff without asking?”
“I’ll apologise when she comes back.”
“You want her to come back?”

Kotone-nee gave no answer.
But even I could understand that much.
If she didn’t want Rinko-san to come back, she wouldn’t have gone to call her from her room.
And there was no point turning on an aroma diffuser in a room where nobody was coming back.
In other words, Kotone-nee wanted Rinko-san to come home.

“That’s not like you, Kotone-nee. You can’t just keep quiet about this!”
“Shut up. I can’t help it.”
“Did you call her? Send her a LINE? Or ask Miko-nee for help?”
“I’ve tried everything. She won’t answer. And I’m not asking my sister.”
“Why!?”
“How the hell am I supposed to talk to my sister about something like this!?”
“I’m an only child, so I don’t get it!”
“…Anyway. It has nothing to do with you.”
“It does! You’re my cousin!”
“That’s exactly what ‘nothing to do with you’ means!”
“My relative caused trouble for Rinko-san! I have to apologise!”
“Quit with that uniquely rural Japanese sense of collective responsibility!”

With that, Kotone-nee shoved me out into the corridor.
Over the bubbling sound of the aroma diffuser, I could hear Kotone-nee sniffling.
Probably because she was leaning against the door so I couldn’t get back inside.

Kotone-nee was crying in the room of the woman who wasn’t coming home.
What that meant was…

“Kotone-nee…”
“Go home.”

All I could hear was her muffled sobbing through the door.
I wanted to do something for her.
After hearing something like this with two hundred thousand yen sitting right in front of me, surely it was only natural that I wanted to use every means at my disposal to help her.
But I didn’t know where Rinko-san had gone.
I didn’t know how to contact her.
Kotone-nee, who surely did, probably wouldn’t tell me.
And Shandy-san probably wouldn’t either.
If I asked Miko-nee, I would break my promise to Shandy-san.

“So you really did love Rinko-san…”

I quietly slipped the money I’d been given back into Kotone-nee’s wallet and decided to leave Yokohama.
Even after hearing everything, there was probably nothing I could do to solve it.
Now I knew that.
I left Kotone-nee’s flat and walked through the communal corridor towards the lift.
Saikawa Hifumi lived next door to Kotone-nee.
I thought about going to say hello, but it would be inviting trouble if she suddenly asked me to pay back the money I owed her.
Better to quietly walk past.
That was what I thought as I hurried past the door of the Saikawa household.
Then—

“Eeeeeek!?”

—the door of the Saikawa household suddenly flew open, and I was dragged bodily inside.