#83: Turning Point / ep.2
When people think of symbols of the countryside, most would probably picture the quintessential Japanese landscape: fields and farmland, wide-open skies, mountains and the sea. These days, however, suburban shopping malls that suddenly appear amid bleak, empty scenery have also earned a place on that list. Satisfying men and women of all ages while making the surrounding countryside feel anything but run-down, they are oases rising beside the national highways.
In a vast outdoor car park, in a secluded corner far from the mall, the sort of place only someone with something to hide would use, Shirai Kaya, formerly Hakamada Kaya, switched off the engine of her kei car.
“It’s huge, isn’t it? It was built around the time Karin was born.”
Whatever Kaya said, Rinko felt as though she would end up reading too much into it, so she gave no reply and simply stared at the shopping mall visible from the passenger seat.
Even if Kaya was proud of how big it was, Rinko knew plenty of malls larger than this one. Odaiba, Ebina, Koshigaya. All of them were bigger, but she also knew perfectly well that pointing that out would earn her a jibe about having “sold her soul to the city”.
It’s not as though I wanted to sell my soul to the city.
She had abandoned her hometown because she felt she would go mad if she stayed at her parents’ house. There had been only one reason she had thrown away her longing for Hamamatsu, ignored the attempts of friends who had stayed behind to persuade her not to leave, and gone to the city.
To erase her feelings for Kaya.
“I’m so glad you came back, Rinko.”
Kaya’s hand reached over from the driver’s seat and touched Rinko’s thigh. Rinko instinctively brushed it away, only for Kaya to catch her hand instead.
“It takes me back. You always hated having your body touched, didn’t you, Rinko?”
She had grown older and had even had a child. Her appearance had changed dramatically, yet that smile, as though she could see straight through Rinko’s heart, was exactly the same.
Back then, Rinko had even found that quality clever, and loved her for it. Now, it only made her feel more uncomfortable.
Rinko turned her gaze towards the cloudless blue sky, careful not to let her irritation show on her face.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time.”
Rinko let Kaya’s heated words wash over her without really listening. If she took them seriously and started thinking about them, all the troubles she had crammed tightly into the drawers of her heart would come spilling out.
That was why, ever since what had happened in Yokohama, Rinko had not wanted to think about anything.
Even while being embraced by an old lover, or perhaps by someone she could not even be certain deserved to be called a lover, she desperately abandoned all thought and watched the white heron that had landed in the rice paddy beside them, following the movements of its legs.
“Rinko becoming like this was my fault, wasn’t it?”
There was not the slightest hint of an apology in Kaya’s voice.
And the lack of understanding packed into the words like this cut deeply into Rinko’s chest.
If Kaya had no intention of meeting her halfway, Rinko almost wished she would simply tell her she was disgusting. Kaya did not understand that unnecessary euphemisms could, instead of cushioning the blow, become sharper than a knife.
“I think I should have taken things more seriously back then.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You confessed to me, remember? And then we sort of ended up thinking, ‘Shall we go out?’”
There was no way Kaya could know how much Rinko had agonised over that confession ten years ago. Kaya laughed happily, as lightly as though she were turning the page of a glittering youth album.
“You know, back then? I figured I’d marry a man once I became an adult anyway, so dating a woman would be a life experience. Something like youthful folly, or a temporary lapse in judgement. I told you, didn’t I? That I wasn’t serious.”
Rinko should have been able to remain unmoved even if Kaya dragged up that old trauma now.
Her feelings for Kaya had ended on the day Kaya discovered she was pregnant, the moment her lover became her sister-in-law, and most of those feelings had been violently torn out of her heart in the process.
And yet.
“Did I make you remember something painful? I’m sorry.”
The moment Kaya forced the truth of that time upon her, telling her that the love she had shared with her beloved senior, Hakamada Kaya, the woman Rinko had worked so hard to impress, had merely been a temporary lapse in judgement, a piece of youthful folly, everything Rinko had been holding back spilled out.
It wasn’t because she was lonely after losing Kaya.
It wasn’t because she was disappointed in the elder brother who had taken Kaya away from her.
It was because, despite Rinko having explained homosexuality to Kaya time and time again, this was all she had understood.
The thought that her own foolishness had allowed a person with such a shallow understanding to distort the course of her life afterwards was painful. It was sad.
“…Don’t apologise when you don’t understand anything.”
“Why? Let’s make up. I mean, because of you… no, thanks to you, I did have a bit of a sexual awakening.”
“Thanks to me…?”
With tears filling her eyes, Rinko glared at her sister-in-law in the driver’s seat.
“Well, yeah. Back then, I was dating you for fun. I’m sorry things ended so horribly.”
“That’s not what I want you to apologise for. I knew it was just for fun.”
“So that means you’ve forgiven me?”
A violent anger welled up from the depths of Rinko’s stomach. It was such a fierce hatred that, for a fleeting moment, she almost understood why one person might kill another.
She wanted Kaya to stop talking. Right now.
Just listening to her mistaken, nonsensical rambling made Rinko feel as though not only her elder brother, but even the beautiful memories of her high-school days, were being destroyed.
Yet Kaya continued, carefree enough to be exasperating.
“But after I married my husband, I realised something. I really can love women just as much. You know, bisexual.”
The first face that came to Rinko’s mind was that of the woman she had loved one-sidedly.
Kurosu Mikoto.
She, too, was someone who had been educated into recognising her own way of being, just as Kaya had. But that was where the similarities ended. Mikoto and Kaya were fundamentally different.
“Being bi is lucky, though, right? You can love men and women equally.”
Rinko could not understand what kind of thought process produced a statement like that.
It was the very definition of treating bisexuality like an accessory, and yet, when Rinko considered that perhaps Kaya had agonised over it before simply deciding to embrace her own conclusion, she could not say outright that she was entirely wrong.
For an instant, a notification flashed across the smartphone Rinko glimpsed in Kaya’s hand.
Would you like to meet for tea? With emojis attached.
It was a notification from the dating app Rinko herself had used once before.
“Are you going to leave my brother?”
“Huh? Why?”
Kaya stared at Rinko blankly, apparently unable to understand what the problem was.
Perhaps she truly did not see anything wrong with it. Or perhaps she simply possessed a mentality impervious to the judgement of society.
At this level of shamelessness, it was almost refreshing.
“My husband is my husband, and you’re you, aren’t you?”
“Do you even realise what you’re saying?”
“Of course I do?”
“You don’t. It’s adultery.”
“It wouldn’t even count as adultery.”
Rinko nearly swung her fist.
Kaya’s stomach was just swollen enough that Rinko could not tell whether there was something inside it or not, and that was the only reason she managed to stop her arm at the last moment.
She could not hide her fury or contempt.
“…What do you mean, ‘even’?”
“Huh?”
“In the end, you… you only ever thought of me as a bit of fun, didn’t you?”
“Why would you think that? Is this about that day?”
Rinko was sick of explaining.
Kaya would probably never understand, no matter how long she lived.
It wouldn’t even count as adultery.
What those words concealed was that, despite Kaya’s claims that she could love men and women equally, she had no intention of doing anything of the sort.
She was not trying to balance the scales between them. She simply wanted to get back together with a convenient woman she could pick up whenever it suited her.
Rinko unfastened her seat belt and reached for the door handle.
It did not move.
She pulled again.
Nothing.
The door could not be opened from inside. The child lock was on.
“…Open the door. I’m going home.”
“Don’t get so angry. You broke up with your girlfriend and came back to your parents’ place anyway, didn’t you? So why not fill the gap with your old girlfriend?”
The face that came to mind was hers.
A woman who was frivolous to an almost unbelievable degree, who tested other people because she wanted to understand human emotions. A woman who looked at people and saw litmus paper, destroying one fantasy after another that Rinko had held.
That woman had no sense of delicacy.
Nor did she possess even the warped kindness of her sister.
And yet, compared with Kaya, she seemed overwhelmingly better.
“…I haven’t broken up with her, so no.”
“You’re lying. You definitely broke up.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then call her. In front of me. Convince me.”
With one elbow resting on the steering wheel, Kaya wore an unpleasant smile, as though looking down at Rinko’s feet.
It was childish.
There was something wrong with anyone who would rise to such an obvious provocation.
“So you really are single, aren’t you? Why not just admit it?”
It hurt.
Of course, things between Rinko and Kaya were over.
The honeymoon of ten years ago would never return, and the ten-year fissure that had opened between them had divided them so completely that it could never be repaired.
No matter how much Kaya might want it, there was absolutely no chance of returning to the way they had been.
But to make Kaya admit it, Rinko would have to make a phone call
To the woman who had given her both a place to live and work, however briefly, and who remained, despite everything, her favourite idol: the promising young actress Kurosu Kotone.
“…That’s not it.”
Rinko could not expose Kurosu Kotone to a woman like this.
As her manager, she wanted Kotone to remain healthy in both body and mind.
As a fan who wished for her to be happy.
And—
“Then you can call her, right?”
Kaya’s face drew close to Rinko’s as she hesitated.
“…Fine.”
I’ll take the gamble.
Even if the odds are terrible.
The smartphone Rinko had checked for the first time in several hours contained no new messages.
The day after she quit, countless notifications had poured in from agencies and the media. After a few days, however, everything had gone quiet.
It felt as though society itself were telling her, You’re no longer needed.
Part of her found that strangely relaxing, yet at the same time, the thinning of her connections made her uneasy.
And despite having said *I love you so passionately, Kurosu Kotone had not contacted her even once.
Perhaps that passionate pursuit had simply been another Game, like the one Shandy had played when she tempted Mikoto.
When she lifted the lid on it, all the women approaching Rinko were only interested in playing around.
Kaya during their school days.
A meaningless romance undertaken merely to heal a broken heart.
The customers from her time at Aromatic.
Why was it that nobody ever truly loved her…?
“If she doesn’t answer within ten rings, I’m not accepting it.”
It was that unpleasant kind of behaviour unique to older local seniors.
That nasty form of affection where they put pressure on someone younger and enjoyed watching them squirm.
Thoroughly fed up, Rinko put the call on speaker.
She could have phoned some friend Kaya did not know and asked them to play along.
At worst, she could connect to Shandy. She would probably tease Rinko about it with little jabs and quiet laughter for years afterwards, but Rinko knew she would play along properly.
Even so, Rinko did not back out of the gamble.
Three rings.
The electronic ringing echoed through the silent kei car.
Five rings.
She knew who she was calling. If she was working, there was no way she would answer.
Seven rings.
So Rinko had already given up.
It had only ever been a game. She had merely been teased.
Nine rings.
But she wanted to believe.
“Aw, too bad. She didn’t answer. You lose, Rinko.”
“…Yeah. I guess I lose.”
The instant the ten-ring limit expired, the phone suddenly began vibrating violently instead.
“Ah…”
“Stay quiet, Rinko. I’ll answer.”
The moment Kaya pressed the answer button, she snatched the smartphone from Rinko.
The name displayed on the call was Takahashi Mikoto.
It was the false name she had given when Rinko first met her.
A troublesome woman who had borrowed the name of her strikingly similar sister to call a lesbian escort service, because without such a disguise she would have caused a scandal.
“Aah, hello? Nice to meet you. I’m Rinko’s ex-girlfriend. And you are?”
There was a slight pause.
Then the woman on the other end spoke clearly.
“I don’t know whether you’re her ex-girlfriend or whatever, but could you please not put out the lighthouse light?”
“The lighthouse? What are you talking about?”
“Hmm. It only needs to make sense to the people who understand it.”
Kaya stared at Rinko with an expression that seemed to say, What on earth is that supposed to mean?
Rinko paid it no attention.
The name displayed on the phone was Takahashi Mikoto.
The person appearing on the other end was her true self.
Kaya would never realise.
She could never know that the woman on the phone was none other than Kurosu Kotone, an actress known even to Kaya, and even to her daughter Karin.
“Where are you?”
“Why should I tell you? Takahashi Mikoto-san?”
“I wasn’t asking you. Rinko-chan, tell me.”
“I’m currently—”
Kaya clapped a hand over Rinko’s mouth.
A voiceless cry travelled through the connection, flying towards Yokohama.
“Why don’t you come and get her if you’re really her current girlfriend? If Rinko is your lighthouse, then you should be able to find her by following the light, shouldn’t you? That’s what love can do, isn’t it?”
At Kaya’s provocative words, Kotone seemed to laugh for a moment.
“That sounds fun. Then I’ll show you this thing you call love.”