#89: Impossible / ep.3
“Right, I see.”
For what felt like the umpteenth time, Mikoto gave another little response, and Michelle replied, “Exactly,” in agreement for what must have been the umpteenth time as well.
In the underground storage room, all raw concrete and fluorescent lighting, Mikoto had resigned herself to being the listener. The stories that tumbled out of Michelle’s mouth were impossible to classify as either complaints or anything else. People ignoring her when she said hello. People failing to tell her when her tights had laddered. Endless, vague little episodes that were difficult to definitively call bullying.
“And then, you know, the section chief is scary, you know? The other day I made her some tea, and she said, ‘Don’t waste your time on low-productivity work like making tea for other people. It’s because women waste their energy on things like that that society looks down on us’…”
“You only made it for her, though.”
“But then, when I didn’t hand out the doughnuts I’d bought as souvenirs, she said, ‘You can’t even manage this much basic consideration? You’re a disgrace to the Secretary Division!’…”
“She really ought to pick one or the other.”
Even if the details were vague, Mikoto could piece together a hazy picture of the people in the Secretary Division from Michelle’s stories.
Utada Rieru. She looked down on everyone in the Secretary Division, Michelle included. She probably placed herself at the top of the pyramid and constantly lorded it over her lowly colleagues. The fact that she made a point of acting friendly and treating them as equals on the surface only made her all the more unpleasant.
Mashiko Remi. Whenever she saw a colleague looking worn out, she would greet them with, “Is it that time of the month?” Or, in a perfectly open setting, happily launch into a discussion of the hair removal and bleaching done down there. She lacked even the most basic consideration. Perhaps she had slept through every moral-education class in primary school.
Mochida Latifa. A section chief who was merciless towards anyone who couldn’t keep up. Her main target was Michelle, with Rieru occasionally joining the list. Michelle had spoken self-deprecatingly of it as, “Maybe she just can’t stand someone as useless as me because she’s so capable.” But if Latifa really were that capable, she would never engage in behaviour that amounted to workplace bullying or harassment.
And then there was her. Hirose Michelle.
“Yeah, yeah. She really should pick one or the other. Tea’s bad, but she wants you to bring doughnuts. It’s weird, isn’t it? Is it because they have holes?”
“Maybe it was just one of those days.”
“What kind of day? Rubbish-collection day?”
She was, without question, completely and utterly natural.
“…Anyway. But Akazawa is kind, right?”
“Mm-hm. Kuto-san is the Red Queen!”
And for some reason, Michelle was extremely attached to Kuto.
The goddess-like praise of Kuto that came out of Michelle’s mouth was so completely at odds with the image of her as a calculating wicked woman that Mikoto felt dizzy. In terms of controlling her subordinates at will, though, she really was the Red Queen.
“Oh! But Mikoto-san is really kind too. It’s been ages since I’ve had such a fun chat with someone.”
Mikoto found herself captivated by Michelle’s bashful expression. She could suddenly understand why so many people had become so hopelessly obsessed with this woman that they had even bought her smartphones.
She was a Michelle swamp.
Damn it, but she was cute. Hirose Michelle. What a terrifying girl.
“That’s good to hear.”
This was her one chance to escape from the underground. Mikoto chose her words carefully, taking care not to let Sanae’s plan slip too far.
“I wish I could work together with Mikoto-san…”
“I came here today because I thought it would be nice if we could work together, so I wanted to say hello.”
“Really!?”
“They got angry at me that time and said anyone could come up with a project like mine, didn’t they? So I thought I needed to make something that only I could have come up with.”
“The section chief was scary that day…”
Michelle wrapped her arms around Mikoto from behind while she was still tied to the chair. Something soft pressed against her back, but that surely wasn’t deliberate either.
It was natural charm of a calibre worthy of preservation as a national treasure.
“So I was planning to ask the Planning Division to consider it. Although you caught me first.”
“But, but, the Planning Division is… the Secretary Division…”
Michelle stopped herself mid-sentence.
There must have been a gag order in place. That didn’t mean Mikoto could simply give up.
“Is there some connection between the Planning Division and the Secretary Division?”
“Uh… I’m sorry. If I tell you, the section chief will get angry with me…”
“It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone. It can stay between you and me, right?”
Mikoto moved closer to the surprised Michelle.
What she was doing was essentially a honey trap, but the Secretary Division’s work involved honey traps too. If you’re willing to dish it out, you’d better be prepared to take it.
She suppressed the slight pang of guilt rising inside her and put on the most cloyingly sweet voice she could manage.
“Come on, Michelle?”
“Um… Does that mean you’ll become my special person…?”
She had resorted to a method she was completely unused to, and stepped straight on a landmine.
She had assumed at most that Michelle meant becoming friends, so having her suddenly bring up being someone special was enough to shake Mikoto’s resolve.
“Won’t you choose me instead of that blonde woman who appeared at the masquerade ball…?”
“B-Blonde woman?”
“She came to ask if she could participate in the masquerade ball. The seniors didn’t notice, but Riddle Smith is a false name, isn’t it?”
“Really? Maybe she just looked like someone else.”
Michelle had been there as a member of the Secretary Division at that particular masquerade ball. She had said absolutely nothing during the introductions or the meetings, so Mikoto had barely noticed her. In reality, though, she seemed to have been observing everything happening there more closely than anyone else.
“Does Mikoto-san like foreigners? Is it because I’m half-Japanese that I don’t qualify?”
“It’s not about race or nationality.”
“Then is it because she has blonde hair? I’ll dye mine for you, Mikoto-san.”
Under the white light illuminating the storage room, Michelle’s hair was an ambiguous pale shade that was neither quite red nor quite yellow. It was lighter in pigment than Shandy’s, but beautiful in its own way. It would be a terrible waste to dye it.
And it would cause Mikoto problems if she actually did.
“You don’t have to dye it…”
“Can’t I become your special person?”
Of course the answer was no. She couldn’t become Michelle’s special person.
Even so, there was no turning back now, and escaping this situation left her with no choice but to say yes. At the same time, she couldn’t exactly brush Michelle off.
“I mean, not straight away. Normally you’d take things one step at a time, wouldn’t you?”
“So you really do like the blonde woman more…”
A clumsy refusal made Michelle visibly deflate.
If Mikoto pushed her in a negative direction, she might end up being kept down here forever. To get out of this place, she had no choice but to accept Michelle’s proposal.
“O-Okay. Let’s go on a date sometime. We can’t become important to each other without getting to know each other first, can we?”
“…You’re not just saying that like Rieru does?”
“I’m a woman who keeps her promises!”
“Really…?”
“Really, really. So please. I have to go to the Planning Division and submit my project to the competition, otherwise I can’t work at Hibiya.”
Michelle’s lips curled into an unsettling smile.
Mikoto immediately understood what that expression meant, and a chill ran down her spine.
This was the very foundation of her plan: creating the established fact that Kurosu Mikoto had submitted a project to the competition. If she told the Secretary Division about it, they would get ahead of her. That was why she had needed to act secretly, beneath the surface.
She had told them.
She had told someone from the Secretary Division.
“…Oh. So that was Mikoto-san’s objective?”
Michelle was holding a craft knife.
She clicked the blade out, then held it up to the fluorescent light. The dull gleam of the blade was now pointed directly at Mikoto’s nose.
“You wouldn’t…”
“Ehehe… Don’t move, okay?”
Michelle raised her arm as high as she could.
So she really was a member of the Secretary Division after all.
She had made Mikoto think she was simply a natural airhead, lowering her guard before dragging the secret she had so carefully hidden into the light.
The plan had failed.
Mikoto prepared herself for death.
“Nnngh, nngh… There! It’s cut.”
“Huh…?”
Mikoto opened the eyes she had instinctively squeezed shut.
Nothing had happened.
It didn’t hurt.
If anything, it felt as though her cramped body had suddenly been released.
She looked down.
The craft tape wrapped around her had been sliced cleanly down the middle.
“If I kept you tied up, we couldn’t go on our date, could we?”
With that, Michelle took Mikoto by the hand and pulled her to her feet.
Mikoto felt slightly dizzy.
With her head still swimming, all she could manage was a rather stupid question.
“You’re not going to tell the Secretary Division…?”
“I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be a secret date.”
Michelle linked arms with her, beaming bashfully and looking thoroughly pleased with herself, and somehow Mikoto made it safely out of the basement.
Apparently, she was going on a date now.
Her head was already filled with schemes for creating an alibi so Shandy wouldn’t find out.
Shandy would probably forgive her if she explained everything, but Mikoto had no idea what might happen in the time between being found out and being forgiven.
“It’s okay. Apparently I have people I’m dating too…”
That wasn’t okay at all. If anything, it made things even more complicated.
Was she planning to count women as not counting?
“Oh… Oh, I see. Congratulations…”
“Mm-hm. Nine boys and two girls. But I don’t really understand what dating someone means… so if they confess to me, I have no choice but to say yes…”
Hirose Michelle was a genuine, unadulterated natural, and her natural airheadedness had, as a result, developed into a devastatingly seductive force of nature.
“If you gather all your boyfriends and girlfriends together, you could make a football team.”
“Oh, really? Maybe I’ll tell them that next time.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Do you want to be the referee, Mikoto-san?”
“Yay! Sure, sure!”
By this point, Mikoto had given up and was laughing.
“Argh! I can’t think of a single thing!”
Kotone had claimed the prime seat in the U-shaped sofa in the living room and was raking her fingers through her long hair in frustration.
The memo on her tablet still said Planning Meeting!, but everything beneath it was completely blank.
“Rinko-chan, you think of something too. As a fan, shouldn’t you be honoured to come up with ideas for your oshi’s channel?”
“No.”
Rinko, folding laundry a little way away, dismissed the idea without mercy.
A new rule had recently been added to the Yokohama Minato Mirai flat: everyone washed their own clothes.
This was because there was someone who became an immediate, “No way!” whenever her oshi’s underwear appeared in the laundry.
It was only sensible.
“No, come on, you must have something. Like, ‘Kurosu Kotone tries this and that!’ You know?”
“I do, but I’m not telling you. If one of my ideas gets adopted, I won’t be able to enjoy your videos. So I’m not giving you ideas, and I’m not helping with filming either.”
“What the hell is that? Isn’t that what a manager’s for?”
“I’m eighty per cent fan, twenty per cent manager.”
Rinko might be Kotone’s manager, but she was an obsessive Kotone fan who was even more determined not to be spoiled.
Having moved behind the scenes meant that Rinko was subjected to spoilers earlier than any other viewer. Content that Kotone made without Rinko’s involvement was therefore precious to her.
“Just film and upload anything. As long as you don’t break character.”
“So what, I should upload a video of me eating ramen? That’d be fucking boring.”
There were three videos on the channel Kotone had started: a morning routine, a video of her eating pasta while chatting, and a night routine.
Even a nationally famous actress had been reduced, in the online world, to a person who simply woke up, ate, and went to bed.
“Then make ramen from scratch. Buy some flour or whatever and just have a go.”
“Sounds like a pain, but maybe I’ll do that…”
“Right. That idea is officially off-limits.”
In the space of a few seconds, one video idea had vanished.
The more Kotone asked the spoiler fanatic Rinko for ideas, the more she was effectively strangling herself.
The more ideas she gave her, the more she could torment Kotone.
Perhaps Rinko had realised how much fun that was, because she grinned and started fiddling with her phone.
“Actually, I’ve thought of quite a few ideas. For example…”
“Wait, didn’t you just say I couldn’t use them?”
“You don’t want to hear them? They might be useful for reference.”
Rinko was grinning happily.
Once she opened up, she made expressions like this.
Kotone was delighted to discover this side of Rinko that she had never known existed. It made her want to steal even more of her emotions, even her love.
The more she stole, though, the more ideas disappeared.
“Tell me. I’ll use them for reference.”
“How about talking about rejected questionnaire answers?”
The questionnaires Rinko meant were the ones needed to prepare for talk-based variety programmes.
On variety shows, it was customary for the production team to know the performers’ anecdotes in advance before filming or a live broadcast. The performers answered questionnaires prepared by the programme staff, then waited to see which answers would be used.
Naturally, unusable anecdotes were rejected.
“So I talk about the rejected ideas?”
“Yep. Talk about the rejected stories, analyse why they were rejected, then finish by summarising how they could be improved. I think the surreal aspect of ‘Why is actress Kurosu Kotone being so ruthlessly serious about variety TV?’ could be the selling point.”
“Can you stop giving me ideas that are actually usable?”
“Then why not take some inspiration from your neighbour?”
Rinko showed her the channel belonging to their neighbour, Saikawa Hifumi.
As one would expect from a singer-songwriter who had made it big through the internet, Hifumi had more than ten times as many subscribers as Kotone.
She was literally in another league.
Her uploaded videos consisted of music PVs and gaming streams.
However, the games she played were retro titles that went completely against the current gaming trends, and despite being gaming streams, she simply played in silence without saying a word.
The view counts were correspondingly dismal.
“Does that girl even give a shit…?”
“She makes her money from her actual work. It’s fine.”
As they idly browsed Hifumi’s channel, a new video suddenly appeared.
The thumbnail read: A Tour of Saikawa Hifumi’s Workplace.
Without thinking much of it, Kotone tapped it.
And there was Hifumi, appearing on camera with her face fully visible, despite being someone who hated appearing in front of people.
“Hifumi’s showing her face. Is that okay?”
“What? I didn’t know anything about this.”
Rinko had announced that she was quitting as manager and walked out, but in the end she had returned to her old position, handling both Kurosu Kotone and Saikawa Hifumi.
Even Rinko, who knew the work schedules of both of them, apparently had no idea what was going on. She peered suspiciously at the same phone.
“More importantly, who’s filming this? Did she hire staff?”
“Maybe she asked a friend or someone she knows?
“Hifumi doesn’t have friends.”
“Fair point… Wait. That voice behind the camera…”
“Hm?”
They rewound the video and both strained to listen to the voice of the person who seemed to be filming.
It was unmistakably familiar.
And it was speaking Iyo dialect.
“Today we’re visiting Hifumin’s workplace!”
“Mm… Come in…”
“So Hifumin works at home, does she?”
“Yeah… Home…”
“Yaaay! Home, as in…”
“Yaaay…”
Rinko and Kotone looked at each other.
“What the hell is that idiot doing…?”
Still wearing whatever they happened to have on, Kotone and Rinko went next door and rang the doorbell of their neighbour, Saikawa Hifumi.