#106: Camp Fire / ep.2
Stepping out of the cottage’s built-in bathroom, Rinko dug her cosmetics out of her travel kit.
Campfires scorch the skin and dry out the air. Out here in raw nature, staying “natural” simply wasn’t an option Rinko was willing to entertain.
She was twenty-eight already. Long past whatever turning point her skin was supposed to have hit, and always standing next to the very embodiment of beauty besides. She simply wanted to stay beautiful, as a woman, on her own terms.
More than anything, she absolutely refused to be seen as anything less than impressive as Kurosu Kotone’s manager.
Strong, kind, sharp — none of which was remotely true of her, in reality — but she couldn’t forgive herself unless she became a manager worthy of her idol. Fan psychology, taken to its logical extreme.
“Ah-uh-ah-uh-ah.”
Drenching her face in a waterfall of lotion, sealing it in with serum and emulsion, she worked through facial exercises in front of the mirror while drying her freshly-treated hair. Every time Kotone laughed and called it “overkill,” Rinko wanted to shout back, loudly, who exactly do you think this is for?
But doing it for herself was doing it for Kotone too.
Framed that way, all of it counted as a necessary expense, and even the pore-tightening skin and the smooth, glossy hair became something to cherish.
Looking at her reflection, she thought she looked at least a little more beautiful than she had a year ago. Ninety-nine percent of that was down to upgraded skincare products, sure, but she was willing to credit a small sliver of it to something like the power of love.
“…What an indulgent woman I’ve become.”
The existence of Kurosu Kotone, demanding this much effort of her, felt just slightly detestable. Of course, nobody had ever told her to “stay beautiful” — she was doing all of this entirely of her own accord, so resenting Kotone for it was more or less unfair.
“I really am devoted, aren’t I.”
Devoted as a manager, and devoted as a girlfriend both. Having once been betrayed by someone she’d devoted herself to and endured the worst kind of breakup because of it, her own inability to learn from that was almost laughable, throwing herself right back into devotion all over again.
Being changed like this — no, having changed on her own, without meaning to — felt like something to be proud of now.
“………….”
And realising you’re in love always happens suddenly, out of nowhere.
However hard you chase after it, it slips out of reach; you go about your days with no awareness of it at all, and then, out of nowhere, a warm happiness seeps up from somewhere inside your body and fills you from the crown of your head to the tips of your toes.
Being brought this far felt maddening, somehow.
“Well, fine, I suppose.”
The phrase soulmate drifted across her mind, and she found herself disgusted at her own naive, love-drunk foolishness.
But all of it was something she’d wanted, and something wanted of her in turn. She couldn’t lie to herself, so this childish inability to be honest with herself about certain things was just something to correct, little by little, over time.
She couldn’t marry Kotone. That was for Kotone’s own sake, and for the sake of Rinko herself, a fan waiting eagerly for that actress’s career to flourish.
A contract that limited an actress’s career wasn’t something she needed. Supporting her, devoting herself to her, being allowed to stay by her side — that was enough.
“Well, it’s basically already like that anyway.”
She glanced down at the red nail polish painted onto the ring finger of her left hand.
Not something meant to be shown off to the world. Just a private proof, meaningful only between the two of them.
“…Still, maybe I could let her buy me an actual ring at some point.”
She imagined what expression that beautiful face might make. Just picturing it was thoroughly enjoyable.
“Aren’t you carrying an awful lot on your own, all by yourself?”
“That’s because people like you exist, skiving off work…”
The nap room. In one of the private capsule-hotel-or-internet-café-style pods lined up in a row, Sanae lay listening only to the sound of Kuto’s voice.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the ceiling panel. Normally she’d have been picking out the pattern in the arranged holes and working out their exact count through a bit of simple arithmetic, but her brain refused to cooperate at all. The quadruple affliction. It reminded her, belatedly, that she too was only human.
“Then how about a chat with me? If it’s a work report, it still technically counts as working, doesn’t it?”
Probably meant as consideration, though realistically it was ninety percent Kuto just wanting an excuse to slack off. Handing her that excuse stung a little, but Kuto’s actual department was the Secretary Division. Sanae wasn’t her superior.
Well, fine, Sanae thought, through a brain that still wouldn’t spin properly.
“…In that case, go ahead.”
“Honestly, what a boring woman you are.”
Twirling a lock of wavy hair around her finger, Kuto began speaking, slowly.
“About that spy-flushing job you asked for — there’s at least a whole hand’s worth of them slipped in, if not more.”
“About what I expected.”
Sanae forced her brain back into work mode, digging up the memory of asking Kuto to run the investigation.
Since the coup last year, President Emi Gozen had grown steadily more wary of Cheshire, the venture run by Ashiya Chie. Founding the Special Missions Office had been part of that response. If the Hamamatsu branch’s role was purely defensive, then Special Missions existed to strike first against outside threats.
But the enemy had already infiltrated head office.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“There’s no ruling out the possibility that you yourself are a Cheshire spy, you know.”
“Ooh, paranoia~”
Kuto wore a smirk dripping with implication.
Realistically, this past year, Sanae had kept a suspicious eye on every single employee in the company. The reason Special Missions had only three members despite the sheer volume of work was that she’d deliberately gathered only people whose innocence she could count on with confidence.
Iida was capable but too timid to ever consider selling information. Michelle had zero ambition for advancement and no appetite for betrayal.
“You suspecting me and Mī-chan too, then?”
“…Just as a precaution.”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
Meanwhile, she still couldn’t place her full trust in the outside collaborators either.
Kurosu Mikoto, who despite their genuine personal friendship, was easily rolled around in the palm of someone else’s hand. Akazawa Kuto, free-spirited and reckless, though owed a debt of gratitude. And then there was Kusumoto Kaori, who she’d butted heads with during the coup, and who could turn on her again at any moment without warning.
Of course, she had countermeasures ready in case any of them tried to pull something. Even so, it wasn’t entirely without a twinge of guilt.
“…Sorry.”
“Go get some proper rest, would you. Pushing yourself never does anyone any good.”
With that, Kuto took her leave. Before Sanae could even fully process whatever mix of gratitude and irritation those parting words deserved, her phone buzzed. Toko, apparently having caught wind of the situation from somewhere, had come to pick her up near the head office.
“Such a worrywart…”
In truth, Sanae knew perfectly well she was useless in this state. She marked as read the barrage of “Are you okay!?” and “Don’t push yourself!” messages flooding the Yanase family LINE group, sent back nothing but a thank-you sticker, and stepped out of the pod.
Making her way on unsteady legs toward the 26th-floor office, she was filing for an early leave and going back for her things when Iida came bursting out of the elevator.
“Senpai, this is serious!”
“What is it…”
She felt a flicker of irritation at herself for snapping at a subordinate, unable to hide her own foul mood. Not letting any of that show, Iida gave his report.
It concerned the true identity of the reporter who’d come to interview Mikoto: Miyashita Kanade.
“The reporter is… connected to Cheshire…”
“I already asked for the interview to be rescheduled, but what do you want to do about it?”
“What do I want to do—”
Her brain had already stopped working entirely. Her wavering vision blacked out, and the ground gave way beneath her feet. Iida’s worried voice echoed somewhere distant.
She regained consciousness in the back seat of a taxi. A coat had been draped over her like a blanket, and her head rested on someone’s lap. That familiar softness, that familiar scent. The quadruple affliction seemed to ease, just slightly.
“…Toko.”
“Geez, I was so worried!? I told you this morning not to push yourself!”
Underneath the worried tone, something like anger and exasperation both leaked through. Turning her head to look up at Toko felt somehow pathetic, so instead Sanae buried her face against a thigh, no doubt still in the thin leggings Toko had thrown on before dashing out.
“Anything to say for yourself?”
“…Sorry to have worried you.”
“You really should be!”
Sanae let herself be thoroughly mussed, hair rumpled under Toko’s hand, as the taxi carried them from Shimbashi toward home in Kawasaki.
Toko’s anger, however, wasn’t really aimed at Sanae for overworking herself. It was aimed somewhere else entirely.
“Iida-kun’s seriously not okay for this! Even in a state like this, he kept insisting he absolutely had to tell you something!? Can you believe it!?”
Iida was loyal to a fault. No doubt he’d stuck rigidly to proper reporting procedure even with Toko glaring daggers at him the whole time. She’d have to apologise to him later.
“What did he say?”
Apparently disgusted by her workaholic tendency to put the job ahead of her own health, Toko spat it out.
“Something about the reporter who came to interview Mikoto-san being the enemy, or whatever…”
“The enemy…”
Special Missions’ single greatest enemy right now was Ashiya Chie, of Cheshire.
If the reporter was one of the enemy’s people, then the target was—
“…Can I ask you for one favour?”
“Not just one, as many as you like, obviously.”
She felt herself dissolving into that soft warmth. But falling all the way into sleep would have to wait a little longer.
“Tell Charlotte. Tell her Mikoto-san is being targeted by Cheshire.”
In place of an answer, Toko stroked her hair.
Things were about to get brutally busy from here. So for now, just rest, and prepare for what was coming.
With that, Sanae let herself sink fully into the comfort surrounding her.
Out on the fringes of Roppongi tonight, business was dead quiet. Even so — even if the sole customer tonight was an uninvited one — this is my stage. Antiqua, the theatre where an actress who once threw everything away comes to settle the score, once and for all. Which is exactly why I have no intention of dropping the act.
“Still clinging to that final role, are you? Lingering attachment to the stage?”
“I’ve no idea what you could possibly mean.”
If you’re going to dig up the past, I’ll bury it right back down, as many times as it takes. Pile the soil of forgetting over the past I already burned, and tamp it down firm with the future. That’s how this country does things. I quietly recall my mother, risen as smoke from the crematorium.
“If you ever want to come back, just say so. Actually, come back now. I still have plenty of pull with the agency. Let’s produce your triumphant return from tragedy.”
“No thank you.”
“You’d love it, I promise. Let’s make every last person who ever disrespected you eat their words.”
Rich, coming from the very person who disrespected me the most. Not that saying so would land with this woman.
Ashiya Chie. The woman who once sheltered me after I fled the stage, who once supported me both financially and emotionally.
On the condition, of course, that I accept being controlled.
“Fufu. Aren’t you being sentimental.”
“So are you. What exactly do you get out of living such an old-fashioned life, out here in the sticks?”
“I’m a perverse, contrary sort of woman. I simply can’t rest easy unless I’m resisting whatever’s fashionable.”
“I see. So you’re saying you hold firm to yourself. How admirable.”
This woman is impossible to pin down. Try to grasp her true nature and you get pulled in yourself instead. A monster of unrestrained self-interest, without a shred of conscience, endlessly pursuing her own benefit with total indifference to what anyone else might think. A successful psychopath, in other words.
“Then market that stubbornness of yours instead. The aloof, difficult, unreachable flower on the mountaintop. That’s a way of life you’d enjoy, isn’t it?”
“And where might I find such a person?”
“Right in front of me. Serving me a cocktail. Shal.”
This is how Ashiya Chie operates people.
Don’t engage her. Don’t converse with her. Don’t spare her a moment’s consideration. Beneath that unfathomable, mystery-wrapped spirit lies something utterly hollow, and the instant you show even a flicker of sympathy, you’re swallowed whole.
Just as I once was. Just as that reporter, Miyashita Kanade, has been.
“We’re closing. Would you mind leaving?”
“Then let’s make it a second stop. Mikoto-kun doesn’t seem to be home tonight, does she.”
Sending Mikoto off camping had been the right call. The Kyodo apartment’s location is already compromised. I hurried to call a locksmith and had the locks changed, but you can’t exactly change an entire residence. And even if I did — even if I relocated Antiqua itself — Chesha would never give up.
“We don’t allow discussion of matters outside the shop.”
“I’ll have to insist, in that case.”
The phone she held up to show me displayed the name of her loyal little puppet. The reporter, Miyashita Kanade, PR for Cheshire — I already knew, thanks to Toko’s message. One signal from her, and the Kurosu sisters are finished.
Coward.
“You can’t run anymore, my dear Shal.”
“I rather thought you preferred love that has to be chased.”
“Then consider yourself caught.”
Caught up by my own past, there’s nowhere left to run. Not Kyodo, not Roppongi. Even Kurosu Mikoto, my one remaining refuge, now hangs by a thread.
“You belong at my side. Let’s love each other again, just like back then.”
There’s no choice but to accept it.
There’s nowhere left to run.
“…You’re right. I’ll stop running.”
“Wise of you. Now then, with me—”
I can’t keep running from my past forever.
Which means I have to fight, for the sake of the future.
“Let’s play a Game. Chesha.”
Hiding my trembling fingers beneath the counter, I see straight through this hollow woman’s mind.
Back in the old Kyodo days, I never once won. Every Game with Chesha was always rigged from the start, and I kept losing, over and over, simply to fill the emptiness inside her. The loser is always crushed, love and body and free will alike devoured, remade into a puppet. And made to believe that’s what happiness looks like.
“Ha. I love it. I’ll make sure it’s just as enjoyable as it was, four years ago.”
Watching her bare her teeth in that grin, I once nicknamed her the Cheshire Cat. And came to regret giving her that name shortly after.
You cannot kill the Cheshire Cat. Even the Red Queen can’t have it executed; it simply vanishes somewhere, and that’s the end of it.
I swallow down the raw fear, the chill running down my spine. I hide every trace of unease beneath a smile.
What keeps me standing is the present I’ve only just managed to rebuild, and the dazzling future still ahead of me. And the person who embodies that future above all else. Kurosu Kotone.
“Let me make one phone call.”
“A farewell call? Be my guest.”
On the grill grate, meat fat crackled and popped. Juices dripped onto the coals and evaporated, soot dancing up into the air. At a campsite with nothing left to do but grill meat, the barbecue proceeded with maximum sizzle appeal. All around lay pitch darkness and bitter cold, but hunger won out over both. Some instinct made it plainly clear: this meat was going to be delicious.
“Rinko-chan, is it done yeeet?”
“Yes, yes.”
Checking the doneness under the light of an LED lantern, Rinko started dividing portions onto plates. The instant meat landed on her own plate, Kotone’s chopsticks were already moving, washing it down with beer. Like an endless bowl of soba, refilled the instant it’s finished.
“Aaah! I’m alive!”
“Sounds like a beer commercial.”
She wasn’t actually in any beer commercials, but a bona fide top-tier celebrity carried a different aura regardless. The way she savoured the anticipation of the meat cooking, the restless way she tossed piping-hot pieces straight into her mouth and fanned her tongue, the way she lingered over the aftertaste of her beer — every single gesture looked ready-made for the screen.
“Rinko, swap with me.”
“Ah, that one’s the one I’ve been tending!”
Even while handing over the tongs, Rinko pointed at a particularly large cut of meat she’d claimed as her own project. Presumably a reward reserved solely for the cook, but Kotone’s chopsticks were already reaching for it, popping it straight into her mouth.
“So good!”
“This girl, honestly…”
Too drained even for anger, Rinko could only look on in exasperation while Kotone cackled with laughter. Whether from the alcohol loosening her mood or something else entirely, whatever had been troubling her earlier seemed to have blown clean away.
Mikoto’s own worries, meanwhile, showed no sign of letting up. She couldn’t quite bring herself to drink to oblivion, perhaps because this wasn’t alcohol Shandy had poured for her.
“Still, kind of surprising that woman let Mikoto-san go camping so easily.”
“What’s wrong with a bit of camping? Was Shan-nee ever really that jealous a type?”
“I mean, with me here. She’s supposedly hopelessly distrustful of people, seems like she’d be paranoid I might steal her away.”
Rinko had a point. Shandy knew about the morning-after with Rinko, knew about the venue viewing. Given everything up to now, this seemed like exactly the sort of thing she’d corner Mikoto over with that quiet smile of hers.
When Mikoto had nervously mentioned the camping trip, the reply that came back had been almost disarmingly simple.
—I don’t mind at all. Please, spread your wings and enjoy yourself.
Whether to take it at face value, or whether it was a cold sort of dismissal, was impossible to say. Shandy’s tone had been the usual soft, playful one that gave nothing away, and there’d been nothing to read from it over the phone. Even face to face, honestly, her expression probably wouldn’t have given anything away either.
“What d’you make of it, sis?”
“…That she trusts me, maybe?”
“That woman? Seems like she’d doubt even you.”
Rinko’s blunt observation landed with a jolt. Mikoto had been trying not to think about it, but the fact that Shandy still kept her past sealed away had started to feel, uncomfortably, like a mark of distrust.
“It’s fine, really.”
So she smiled, as if trying to convince herself, and kept grilling. All Mikoto could do now was wait for Shandy. Pushing or pulling, Shandy wouldn’t budge until she was ready to. So all there was left to do was stay close by, until she moved on her own.
The nightingale that will not sing, I shall wait until it does. Extra syllable and all.
“Sorting out feelings like that just takes time, is all.”
“Guess that’s true.”
Somewhat mollified, Rinko finally got her own share of the meat. Listening to the sound of her carnivorous couple of a sister and sister-in-law, Mikoto kept charring the red centres of the meat down to done. If only the anxiety could just cook away the same way the meat did.
“Sis, phone’s ringing. It’s your girlfriend.”
The phone left on the folding camp table was buzzing. Probably about to receive a lecture or two for enjoying herself out here camping. Bracing herself to take it in stride, Mikoto pressed the call button. Steeling herself.
“Oh my. Feeling a little lonely, are we?”
Shandy paused for a moment, then spoke, quietly.
“I felt like playing a Game.”
“Of course. What are tonight’s rules?”
There was no bell-like laugh this time. Faintly, in the background, she could hear the classical music playing inside Antiqua.
“Whether you’ll trust me, all the way to the end.”
“That’s not even worth testing, you know.”
They were listening in on us. Turning her gaze away from Rinko and Kotone’s smirking faces, lit up by the LED lantern, Mikoto looked down at the meat instead. A thick, bone-in short rib, dripping fat.
“That was the answer I wanted to hear.”
“Then I suppose the Game goes to me.”
“No. This Game doesn’t end until one of us surrenders. It’s not over yet.”
Something was wrong.
Mikoto pressed the phone tighter to her ear, desperate to catch even the smallest shift in tone.
“…Did something happen?”
“Can you make me a promise? Can you, or can’t you?”
“I can, but—”
“I trust you.”
Shandy took a slow breath on the other end of the line.
And then said something she couldn’t possibly have meant.
“Mikoto-san. Goodbye.”
“…What?”
“I love her. Chesha.”
The meat she’d just picked up slipped from her fingers, falling onto the grass.