#101: Eternal Force Blizzard / ep.2
The mysterious original cocktail, the forbidden spell Eternal Force Blizzard.
Effect: the opponent dies.
Of course, drinking it would not actually kill her, but there was no telling what had gone into it. Mikoto cautiously tasted it with the tip of her tongue before bringing it into her mouth.
Not bad.
In fact, it was quite delicious.
Why give something this ridiculous a name? They could have given it something that actually sounded like a cocktail.
“Now, solve the seven mysteries!”
With the maid and Rinko cheering her on, Mikoto began deducing the forbidden spell’s true name, or rather, its recipe.
First, there were three ingredients she did not need to deduce at all.
The salt around the rim.
The cut lime frozen into the ice.
And the blue-coloured liqueur, Blue Curaçao, pooled at the bottom of the glass.
She could answer the easy three first.
Four remained.
“I’m pretty sure it’s dry gin and tonic water. And then…”
The base was a Gin and Tonic, but she gave a small cough.
Her throat burned and she choked slightly. There was a strange sensation in the back of her throat, as though something had caught there, along with a lingering sting.
Dry gin became mellower once diluted, so it could not be the alcohol causing it.
There was only one thing it could be.
The mixer from the cocktail she drank every night.
“It’s ginger ale, isn’t it? How am I doing so far?”
“Splendid! The adventurer has correctly identified six! Only one remains!”
“You really have been brainwashed by that woman.”
Rinko watched on in exasperation as Mikoto searched for the identity of the final ingredient.
She tasted the aftertaste with her tongue, the lingering aroma with her nose, the faintest visual trace with her eyes.
But—
“Ugh… I have no idea. Can I have a hint?”
“Very well! Your hint is something sweeeet!”
“Sweetness…”
If the final ingredient was something sweet—
Shandy changed her methods depending on what her customers requested. If someone wanted an already-sweet cocktail to be even sweeter, she might add rum, a spirit made from sugar cane, or sugar syrup.
But sweetness was delicate.
Unless used sparingly, as a subtle hidden flavour, it would become too prominent and ruin the cocktail’s original character.
Would they really make such a subtle seasoning the answer in a recipe-guessing game?
It was almost unfair.
“Aah, there’s no time! Adventurer, you have five seconds left! Four, three…!”
“T-then there’s just a tiny bit of rum in it!”
“Now! What will become of the world?”
The spotlights went out, and the normal lighting came back on.
Immediately, a blizzard struck Mikoto full in the face.
The maid had fired a dry-ice cannon at her, the sort of contraption one often saw in TV-show punishment games.
“Cold!”
“Alas, the adventurer has been frozen in ice! And the correct answer is…”
After a drumroll sound effect, the maid smiled.
“My love!”
“Ah…”
Mikoto no longer had the energy to complain.
She was also mortified that she had answered rum with such confidence, as though she had known the answer all along.
Unable even to meet the maid’s eyes, and averting her gaze from the camera during the instant photo she had earned for getting six questions right, Mikoto silently drained her Eternal Force Blizzard.
“Pretty fun, right? This place?”
“Are you enjoying teasing me?”
“You know I’m not!” Rinko laughed, but the way she said it made her true feelings perfectly obvious.
Mikoto was annoyed, but she also realised something.
The relationship with Rinko, which had once been so fraught, had reached the point where they could joke around with each other.
“Thanks, Mikoto.”
“For what?”
“For thinking of me as a friend.”
They had only become close recently, yet they already knew each other as though they had been together for years.
“Not a friend. A best friend, surely?”
“Ugh…”
“Did that put you off?”
“…I think you should work on that habit of casually stringing women along without even realising you’re doing it.”
Rinko swallowed her sigh with the Enchanted Peach Paradise, which turned out to be a Peach Fizz, then began eating the roast beef.
Just as she had said, she could not simply give up and forget the love that had never come true.
“This is just how I relate to people.”
“And you’ve somehow managed to get this far living like that…”
Mikoto followed Rinko’s lead and indulged her own carnal desire.
The roast beef was rare, still faintly red inside. The rich umami of the lean meat, its satisfying texture, the fat and the accompanying Western horseradish came together beautifully.
It was fatty, yet she could have eaten it forever.
Delicious.
This, surely, was what a signature attraction was supposed to be.
She could not very well serve roast beef at antiqua, though.
“Hey, Mikoto. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time. Can I?”
“What?”
Mikoto thought it was going to be an ordinary question.
“Is the reason you’re kind to everyone because, maybe, you don’t have much confidence in yourself?”
Something cold ran down Mikoto’s spine.
“Why are we talking about that again?”
“Instinct? I guess experience, really. I’ve heard all kinds of women’s stories, so I can tell. My job was to strip people naked right down to their hearts.”
If that was what she thought, Mikoto wished she would stop stripping people naked.
Everyone had one or two places they did not want others to intrude upon.
“No, no, it’s not like that…”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Huh?”
“I tried to get inside your heart. Normally, if someone used a vulgar expression like ‘strip you naked’, you’d get angry. But you didn’t. You just dodged the question, didn’t you?”
Mikoto did not want to answer.
Because that was the real reason.
The real reason she kept making childish attempts to act grown-up.
“People who try to please everyone or who can’t make up their minds tend to be disliked, but I think that’s because they put other people before themselves. That’s just my opinion, though.”
“I see.”
Her response was perfunctory.
She could not bring herself to agree with Rinko when she could not even accept herself.
“Oh, right. What about you and Kotone?”
That was why she changed the subject.
She already had a date arranged with Rinko because of the Mimosa situation, and she had wanted to ask about Kotone too.
She convinced herself that she simply wanted to hear Rinko’s side of things, using that excuse to run from the truth.
“I want to know whether my troublesome little sister has been causing you any trouble. Big-sister concern, you know.”
Perhaps because Mikoto had forced the subject elsewhere, Rinko frowned, but apparently decided to let it go.
She spat out a single, She pisses me off!” and bit into the roast beef without even bothering with a knife.
Definitely a carnivore.
“That girl keeps trying to make me think about her.”
“Think about what?”
“Marriage. And both sisters use exactly the same tactic. I couldn’t help laughing.”
Kotone had been dropping hints with bridal magazines too.
Apparently she had some desire to get married after all.
Mikoto felt faintly dizzy at the glimpse of this unexpected feminine side of her own little sister.
“You said you weren’t interested, Rinko?”
“Not at all.”
Mikoto had no idea what response she was supposed to give as Rinko drank her second cocktail.
She had brought up the subject herself and now did not know what to do with it.
It was a difficult position to be in.
She could not choose between her friend and her little sister.
Emotionally, she found herself sympathising with Kotone, who was letting her own wishes show, but she could understand both ways of thinking.
“It’s complicated…”
“Hm.”
Rinko glanced at her.
Her gaze was suspicious.
Mikoto became increasingly anxious that she had realised she was changing the subject.
It was another kind of psychological Game, different from the ones she played with Shandy.
“I can understand why Kotone wants to get married. You’re cute, Rinko.”
“Maybe I’d consider it if it were you, Mikoto?”
Mikoto ignored Rinko’s teasing and continued.
“But I can understand the idea that marriage doesn’t have to be the goal either. Especially for celebrities. It seems complicated for people in that world.”
“Well, honestly, that’s how I feel.”
Rinko exhaled softly and leaned back against her chair.
The badly fitted chair creaked.
“I’ve given up on it, but it’s not that I don’t want it. It’s just that I love Kotone the actress even more than I love Kotone as she normally is. If our relationship were reported and it gave her some strange image, it could cost her work because of me. I couldn’t bear that.”
“You really do love Kotone, don’t you?”
“It’s more than I can express with something as simple as ‘love’.”
Rinko lowered her eyes.
Her eyelashes were beautiful.
She kept trying to seduce Mikoto whenever the opportunity arose, always knowing it was a long shot, and she acted as though she had no real interest.
But her true feelings were obvious enough.
“Kotone doesn’t deserve you.”
“Please stop saying things that make women think you mean more than you do.”
“I don’t even realise I’m doing it…”
“That makes it worse.”
They laughed together, and the conversation drifted into ordinary, meaningless chatter.
They talked about how convenient it was that Mikoto had been trying to think of a signature attraction for antiqua. They traded insults about Kotone’s peculiar habits.
Rinko told her about what was happening at the apartment: the neighbour Aoi being unbearably noisy as she did housework while singing at the top of her lungs, Saikawa remaining as impossible to read as ever.
Kotone appeared in every story.
And the Kotone Rinko described contained things Mikoto had never known.
Not Mikoto’s little sister, Kurosu Kotone.
Not actress Kurosu Kotone.
Just Kotone.
The Kotone she herself had chosen to become.
Kotone had grown up.
Leaving behind Mikoto, who had never quite managed to grow into an adult.
“Thanks for today, Rinko.”
“Yeah! I had fun!”
After paying the bill, they wandered around Akihabara.
Rinko was pleasantly tipsy. Her eyes had gone slack with drink, and she linked arms with Mikoto, pressing herself against her.
She was drunk, so there was nothing she could do about it.
Besides, Mikoto had been drinking more than usual herself, desperate to forget everything Rinko had dragged to the surface.
“Rinko, you’re big. What size are you?”
“G seventy-five!”
“Wow!”
“Want to touch?”
Mikoto wondered where the line for cheating was.
Then she stopped caring.
Rinko was only a friend, after all. There was no reason to worry about it.
That was how she justified it to herself, without even noticing what she was doing.
But they were in front of Akihabara Station, after eight in the evening, right in the middle of the city, where there were still plenty of people around.
The last scraps of Mikoto’s reason would not allow them to get too intimate in public.
“Can I touch next time? Preferably somewhere more private.”
“You’re way too serious, Mikoto! I wish I could average you and Kotone out!”
Still engaged in their utterly nonsensical argument about whether Mikoto would or would not squeeze her breasts, they reached the ticket gates.
A crowd had formed there.
The electronic departure board was scrolling the words service suspended from right to left.
Apparently there had been an electrical system failure.
The railway map was glowing red.
The face reflected in a nearby mirror was unbelievably red.
Mikoto was very drunk.
“Looks like the trains aren’t running.”
“Mmm…”
Rinko casually took out her phone and made a call.
“Hey. Come pick me up at Akihabara.”
“What? You’re off tomorrow, aren’t you? It’s fine.”
“Why are you drinking!? I can’t believe you! What the hell is wrong with you!?”
Judging from the way she was speaking, it was probably Kotone.
The little sister who had always made unreasonable demands was now on the receiving end of someone else’s unreasonable demands.
Mikoto found that rather amusing.
She took the phone when Rinko handed it over and shouted into it.
“Can’t you do your big sister a favour!?”
“Why the hell are you there too, sis? Are you cheating on me?”
“Come pick us up or I’ll steal Rinko away!”
“I’m being stolen!”
The two of them burst into helpless laughter.
Kotone had probably only just started drinking and was not drunk yet. Her response was flat and thoroughly put-upon.
“You could just get a taxi home. Or go to Roppongi—”
“No! Not that woman!”
Rinko abruptly hung up and turned away from the ticket gates.
Mikoto followed as Rinko pulled her along by the arm.
If the trains were stopped, then there was always a second bar, a third.
She still had paid leave she needed to use up before the end of the month, so in her fuzzy state she decided they could drink until morning and call it in.
It was simply fun.
For one brief moment, she could throw off the restraints that held her down.
She could forget the exhaustion of constantly worrying about other people’s opinions, of being a people-pleaser, of never being able to make up her mind.
She could trade it for a heavy blow waiting for her the following morning.
That was probably the attraction of alcohol.
Its magic.
So it did not bother her much that Rinko was not actually heading towards a second bar.
＊
When Mikoto opened her eyes, she was in bed.
An unfamiliar ceiling greeted her, along with warm, silky-soft linen against her skin.
The fact that she could feel the bedding against her skin meant—
“Ah. My head hurts…”
She lifted her throbbing head.
This was certainly no business hotel.
The interior was glittering and stylish.
The digital clock beside the pillow showed just before ten in the evening, and beside it sat two small square packets.
Something a female couple would have no use for.
Mikoto realised instantly where she was.
At the same moment, she heard the door click shut.
“Good morning, Mikoto.”
“Er… what is this…?”
Rinko giggled.
“You were cute.”
“Wha…!?”
Mikoto clutched her head.
She desperately tried to remember, but there was nothing.
She was wearing only a single piece of underwear.
And if she had been asleep in a love hotel bed…
There could only be one explanation.
She had cheated.
She had committed adultery.
She had slept with her own little sister’s woman.
This was on an entirely different level from the Michelle incident.
“Just kidding. We didn’t do anything. Yet.”
“Don’t joke about that…”
Rinko had removed both Mikoto’s clothes and underwear, so there was absolutely no credibility to her claim that they had done “nothing”.
But the plastic shopping bag in Rinko’s hand made the situation clear enough.
“I was going to get a taxi home, but you got to the point where you couldn’t walk. The taxi stand was crowded too, so I thought it might be better to rest here.”
“So I bought breakfast,” Rinko said, putting rice balls and sandwiches into the refrigerator.
She gave Mikoto some water.
Rinko, apparently still not finished drinking, opened a can of peach chūhai and sat down beside the bed.
“Did you think I’d attacked you?”
“…Honestly. Sorry for doubting you.”
“If you say things like that, I can’t attack you.”
After another half-serious, half-joking attempt to seduce her, Rinko casually began taking off her clothes.
Long black hair spilled from the neck of her cable-knit jumper. Beneath the thin inner layer, a sweetly lacy bra strained around her ample figure.
It was quite large.
“Phew…”
Mikoto reflexively looked away.
Then she wondered whether there was any reason to look away at all.
She could only see Rinko as a friend.
And if Rinko had undressed Mikoto because she considered her a friend, then—
“Here. You can touch me if you want.”
“I know I said somewhere more private, but…!”
“So you remember that part?”
“I remember up to the phone call with Kotone.”
While drinking the water Rinko had given her, Mikoto found herself looking at Rinko’s body.
Rinko had the sort of figure that made Mikoto wonder whether she had been hiding it with her clothes.
Curves where there were supposed to be curves, and a waist where there was supposed to be a waist.
She had a distinctly feminine, voluptuous figure, the exact opposite of Shandy, who was so slender that there was little more than the contours of her bones.
Thinking that this was the sort of body Kotone liked gave Mikoto a complicated feeling.
“What’s with that complicated look?”
“Nothing. I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of Kotone’s tastes.”
“I know that feeling. I felt the same way when I found my brother’s porn. Amateur college girls.”
“Your brother lives locally?”
“He’s a dad now.”
Rinko’s expression darkened slightly.
Mikoto wondered if she had asked something she should not have.
She hurriedly looked up and away, searching for another subject.
Rinko immediately called her out.
“You tried to change the subject again. You look at people’s faces too much, Mikoto. Are you some kind of consideration demon?”
Mikoto was lost for words.
Rinko continued without giving her time to laugh it off.
“I know you’re trying to be considerate so you don’t hurt people, but I’m not a child who’s going to be hurt by something that trivial, okay? I’m almost thirty.”
“Sorry…”
“You’re apologising again… Do you act like that with that woman too?”
“Act like what?”
“That thing where you immediately withdraw your own opinion and try to accommodate the other person.”
Rinko took a swig from her can and began flicking through the channels on the television.
Apparently bored with terrestrial broadcasting, she switched to satellite channels, then stopped on an adult channel.
On-screen, a professional actress was moaning seductively.
Her partner was, naturally, a man.
“I’ve never been with a man. Not even once. And I’ve never wanted to be. What about you, Mikoto?”
“I’ve… had those thoughts.”
“You have? You haven’t? Have you ever wanted to be held by a man?”
Mikoto did not understand what she was being asked.
She had never had a friend she could talk about such things with, and suddenly having someone push straight through that boundary made her lose all sense of how close they were supposed to be.
“…Yes. But.”
“Then maybe you won’t understand.”
Rinko prefaced it with that and moved closer.
Their bodies touched.
Perhaps because they had been outside, Rinko was colder than Mikoto.
They both buried only their lower bodies beneath the blankets and watched the dry, joyless depravity of the adult video.
“I was in fourth grade, I think. I got my first period while I was worrying about how I could become closer to a girl who was my childhood friend.
“When it happened, I thought, ‘Oh. So I’m a girl.’
“And then I thought, ‘Because I’m a girl, I’m not allowed to like girls.’
“It shocked me.
“And when I realised I was shocked, I realised that meant I must have liked her.”
Rinko put her can of chūhai beside the pillow and pressed her skin against Mikoto’s.
Her skin was soft, smooth and unobstructed.
“This was a long time ago, before you could casually ask people for advice online. I was in the countryside, and I was a child, so it was genuinely painful.
“And I was stupid, too. I wanted to smash society’s expectations to pieces, so I confessed to her. It went badly.”
Rinko’s story was so sad that Mikoto put an arm around her back.
At the very least, she wanted to warm her cold body.
“I transferred schools.”
Mikoto understood what must have happened from those words alone.
“After that, I decided I’d pretend to be attracted to boys, like a normal girl.
“I’d already developed early, so I got confessed to quite a lot and went out with some boys, but I never fell for any of them.
“The person I liked was the girl who cried because I’d taken away the boy she liked.”
“I see…”
Mikoto could not bring herself to say anything sympathetic.
She was afraid Rinko would respond with, What could you possibly understand?
“After that, it was always the same.
“I barely had any female friends, and people treated me like a slut.
“Ridiculous, right? They called me a slut when I’d never even kissed a man.”
Rinko spat out a sigh and continued.
“But there was one childhood friend who understood me.
“She was a year older than me, like an older sister, and she told me, ‘There’s nothing strange about you, Rinko. I like you.’
“Her name is now Kaya Shirai.”
“Now?”
“She became my sister-in-law.
“She married my brother and even had his child.”
Rinko’s history had been a succession of betrayals.
She had confessed and been bullied.
She had kept quiet and still been treated badly.
And the one older girl she thought she could trust had eventually become her sister-in-law.
“But I don’t regret it.
“No matter how much the world throws its cold north wind at me, I can hold my head high and say I wasn’t wrong.
“Well, maybe I’m just stupid.”
“I think it’s cool. That way of living.”
“Really? Thanks.”
She said it, then kissed Mikoto on the neck.
Mikoto decided to accept it as a token of friendship.
“That’s why I decided I wasn’t going to care what other people thought.
“I’ll just stick with people I get along with.
“Why should I waste my time worrying about ugly bitches throwing stones and calling me a disgusting lesbian, or flat-chested bitches calling me a slut?
“It’s a waste of time. If that’s what they think, then fine. Whatever.”
Rinko’s confession really was like stripping herself naked, body and soul.
Mikoto supposed there was a reason Rinko stayed with Kotone, despite everything, and kept coming to antiqua despite being treated so badly there.
There must be something there that spoke to her.
“But you’re different, Mikoto.
“You look like the kind of person who thinks that as long as everyone around you is happy, it doesn’t matter what happens to you.”
“…Is it really so bad to not want anyone to hate me?”
The words slipped out.
Shandy had probably already seen through her, but Mikoto had never actually said the problem aloud.
“…I’m not as strong as you, Rinko.”
Rinko quietly embraced her.
“That woman really is the worst…”
“Don’t say bad things about Shandy…”
“I can’t help wanting to.”
She hugged Mikoto tightly.
The scent of peach mixed with the aroma of her conditioner, tickling Mikoto’s nose.
She liked that smell.
“That woman isn’t kind.
“She’s afraid to step into your heart, so she just pretends to acknowledge and accept you.
“That’s why I can’t forgive her.”
Tears welled up.
They rained onto Rinko’s cold back.
It hurt to have her helpless truth exposed.
It was humiliating to be comforted.
“If you keep killing yourself because you don’t want people to hate you, eventually you won’t be able to love anyone.
“Just like her.”
“Shandy isn’t like that…”
Mikoto no longer knew what to think.
Her inability to move forward with marriage.
The Games they played.
Everything suddenly felt superficial, sliding across the surface without ever reaching anything deeper.
They had sworn that they trusted each other.
Yet even that vow seemed to be trembling.
“…I don’t want to take you away from her.
“I want you to be happy with that woman.
“It pisses me off, but I want you to be so happy that even watching you makes me furious.”
“What… what kind of thing is that…?”
“You’re the one who changes her.
“That ridiculous bartender who pretends she’s thrown away her past while remaining completely bound by it.”
Mikoto had never tried to force Shandy to tell her about her past.
Whatever had happened, Mikoto was prepared to accept it.
She had not asked because she had told Shandy that if she did not want to talk about it, she did not have to.
But if—
If the reason Shandy refused to step any further was rooted in her past—
“What should I… do…?”
The shoulder that had been holding her was released.
Rinko took her by the arm.
They stood side by side at the bedside, both of them in their underwear.
“Good evening.
“I’m Rin from Aromatic, back for one night only.
“You can tell me anything, Mikoto-chan.”
There stood Rinko with a smile on her face.
No.
Rin, the former escort, was there.
Mikoto had been crying, yet she could not help laughing.
The one who had been killing herself because she did not want to be hated was actually Rinko.
But that kindness was surely something she offered Mikoto as her best friend.
“I don’t have any money…”
Rinko kissed her cheek and smiled.
“Then just make my wedding reception favour a little more extravagant than everyone else’s.”