#107: Camp Fire / ep.3
“What… did you just say?”
She’d had no warning at all that a breakup was coming. Thinking she must have misheard, she asked again, only to be met with the same merciless words returned to her.
“Goodbye.”
Unable to process it, she scrambled to find a reason.
Had going to view the wedding venue without asking been too much? Had staying out all night with Rinko been the cause? Or had she simply seen Mikoto’s guard down too many times — her sleeping face, whatever else — and grown tired of her?
The call cut off with a click, and Mikoto was left standing there, abandoned.
“What’d Shan-nee say?”
“She said… to break up with her…”
She couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. It had come so suddenly that she ought to have been grieving, or chasing after an explanation, but all she could do was stand there in shock.
“Huh? Why?”
“She said something about — Chesha, an old lover, that she’s still in love with her…”
“What d’you think, Rinko-chan?”
Rinko, cheeks still full of grilled onion, answered without a trace of interest.
“Sounds like one of her games. Ignore it, ignore it.”
“That, right there!”
“Wait, hold on!? You mean it’s a prank!?”
“She kept going on about a Game or whatever, right?”
“Well, yeah, she did say that, but!”
Mikoto recalled Shandy’s words, delivered almost like a scripted line. Bringing up a breakup while emphasising a promise all in the same breath — maybe that was just another of her games, shaking someone’s heart to test them, same as always.
“That woman lies the way normal people breathe.”
“Even so, there’s no reason for her to bring up breaking up over it!”
“Maybe it’s the whole ‘don’t go playing around while I’m working’ thing?”
“You’re saying this is her being spiteful? That’s way too twisted a personality!”
“You’re only just now noticing that?”
“Ngh.”
Mikoto wanted to defend Shandy’s honour, but she had no evidence solid enough to actually convince either of them.
It was true, Shandy lied constantly. Usually to hide embarrassment, or as some sadistic little tease meant to rattle Mikoto for fun. Shandy, the boy-who-cried-wolf of girlfriends who lied as a matter of daily routine — maybe this really was just another lie too.
“There’s got to be a reason, probably. Something other than just being spiteful…”
“Wanting you to overthink it so she gets your attention?”
“She’s a total attention-seeker underneath it all, Shan-nee.”
Her appetite and even her buzz vanished in an instant; a single glance at the meat and vegetables still piling up on her plate turned her stomach. Even if she wanted to rush straight to Shandy’s side, every driver here was thoroughly drunk. She doubted any taxi or designated driver would come all the way out to the mountains of Gunma.
“Why would she say something like that…”
Shandy’s phone was switched off. Her LINE call went unanswered, not even marked as read. Her Instagram hadn’t updated since a photo of Mimosa posted days earlier.
“Why not just leave it alone? Sounds like one of Shan-nee’s little episodes.”
“How can you say that so confidently? What would you even know?”
“Nothing at all. She never tells me anything.”
Kotone remained thoroughly, completely detached. Rinko, meat-hungry as ever, considered the conversation over and returned to carefully tending her beef on the grill.
Mikoto alone was the anxious one. Realising that made it unbearable.
“Anyway, no need to worry. Shan-nee’s not really the type to just cut things off like that, is she? She’s way too soft on you.”
“Sickeningly soft, when it comes to Mikoto.”
Mikoto had always thought Shandy was kind to everyone. But apparently, from Kotone and Rinko’s vantage point, it looked entirely different.
“Shan-nee’s real picky about who she bothers with, y’know. She’d never fuss over just anyone like that. Same for you, right, Rinko-chan?”
“Yep. If I show up at Antiqua alone, she flat-out ignores me. Which is irritating in its own way, honestly.”
The Shandy Mikoto had always seen only existed when Mikoto herself was present. The version she showed Kotone and Rinko was something else entirely.
“Just trust her, why don’t you? Trust that she loves you.”
Hearing it put like that, Mikoto nearly snapped back on reflex.
She trusted Shandy more than anyone. It was precisely because she trusted her that she was so tormented over whether this breakup was real or fake.
“And if I trust her, and it turns out to be real?”
“Then you’ve got me and Rinko-chan, right?”
“I’ll make you forget all about her, if you want.”
Talking with the two of them only turned into more of the same joking around. Mikoto finally gave up trying and simply waited for word from Shandy. Hoping, again and again, for her phone screen to light up, fighting against the anxiety trying to crush her chest flat.
In the end, no word ever came from Shandy. Unable to sleep a wink, all Mikoto could do was sit huddled in her coat, watching the eastern sky slowly turn pale.
“You’re serious about going home?”
“Dead serious.”
Sent off by Kotone and Rinko’s exasperated sighs, written plainly across both their faces, Mikoto left the campsite behind. More precisely, Kotone drove her down to the bus stop at the foot of the mountain, and from there it was transfer after transfer until she finally made it back to the city.
The whole way, rattling along on buses and trains, her eyes stayed glued to her phone screen. She lost count of how many times she watched the clock tick over, or the battery percentage tick down.
Once the shop closed for the night and morning came, surely some word would arrive. Clinging to that thought, she waited for contact, and tried reaching out herself in turn — met each time with nothing but silence.
The breakup was starting, finally, to feel real. Whatever hope she’d had that this was just some prank, as Kotone and Rinko insisted, wore thinner with every passing hour.
What sort of person is Chesha, really?
The identity of the former lover who’d stolen Shandy away remained even more of a mystery than Shandy herself. Knowing wouldn’t actually let her do anything about it, and yet the question wouldn’t leave her alone.
Or rather — it was the only thing left within Mikoto’s power to do. However long she waited, Shandy sent no word. And even if she asked outright, Shandy surely had no intention of answering.
On the shinkansen bound for Tokyo Station, Mikoto turned it over in her mind.
Isn’t there some clue, somewhere, that might lead to Chesha—
“Ah!”
—One did come to mind.
The moment she arrived back in Tokyo, Mikoto headed not for Kyodo, but for Nihombashi. Praying that today happened to be her shift.
Nihombashi, Hotel Maverick. The place where the woman once known by her stage name Akutagawa Alice — Charlotte Gabriel — had once worked, both as a member of the affiliated theatre troupe and as a bartender.
Just as she’d hoped, there she was, standing perfectly poised in the lobby.
“Welcome. Are you checking in today, Kurosu-sama?”
“Kuze-san, I need to talk to you!”
As far as Mikoto knew, only two people alive knew Shandy’s past. The hotel concierge, Kuze Fumika, and the bartender, Mr. Iimori. The last time she’d asked, they’d spoken as though sworn to secrecy — but this wasn’t a moment to worry about that anymore.
“I’m afraid I’m on duty at the moment, so a long conversation might be difficult.”
“Please, somehow! It absolutely has to be you, Kuze-san, nobody else!”
She’d ended up shouting it across the lobby. From a certain angle it probably looked like she was making a very public declaration of love to a hotel concierge, which was mortifying in its own right.
Leaning in close to Mikoto’s shrinking form, Fumika spoke quietly.
“Did something happen with Senpai?”
Mikoto nodded wordlessly, and Fumika stepped out from behind the cloakroom counter. “This way,” she said, leading Mikoto to what was currently a closed authentic bar. Pushing the door open past the “Closed” sign, she caught the eye of Mr. Iimori, who was in the middle of prep work.
“Did my hopeless pupil go and cause a mess?”
“That’s exactly it.”
Mikoto glanced at Fumika, oddly casual all of a sudden. Just as she was thinking this must be how she talked off the clock, three cups of coffee were set out on the table.
“Sounds like she still hasn’t told her anything. About the Maverick days, and everything.”
“Her devotion to secrecy has genuinely reached the point of being funny.”
“Right?”
With that, Iimori and Fumika exchanged a glance and laughed together.
For some reason, the two of them seemed unusually close.
“Now then, where to even begin, I wonder.”
“Your stories run long, so let’s have Kurosu-sama ask the questions instead. Do you have anything you’d like to know?”
“Um, well…”
Looking back and forth between the two of them, Mikoto finally asked.
“What exactly is the relationship between you two…?”
Laughter slipped from both of them at once. Fumika stifled her chuckling and answered.
“We’re married.”
“I see…”
As it turned out, Iimori and Fumika, with nearly a two-decade age gap between them, had registered their marriage four years ago. Four years ago. Right around the time Shandy’s suicide article had run in the weekly magazines.
“I only heard from an acquaintance that Shandy-san used to be an actress, but beyond that I don’t know anything else at all.”
Adding that she’d only learned her real name yesterday, Mikoto watched both Iimori and Fumika go slack-jawed. Understandably so, she thought. Shandy withholding her own real name was one thing, but agreeing to marry someone without even knowing her real name was, frankly, a little unhinged on Mikoto’s own part too.
“This is going to run long, so let me explain. You’ve got work to get to, don’t you, Fumika?”
“My apologies, Kurosu-sama. I’m afraid I can’t stay away for long.”
“No, it’s me who’s imposing here.”
With that, Fumika hurried off. Never in her wildest imagination had Mikoto guessed that the two people who knew Shandy’s past were a married couple, and now this fresh surprise left her not quite sure what to do with herself.
“The two of us, my wife and I, might as well be the ones who destroyed her career as an actress. I’d ask you to hear this not as gossip, but as an act of atonement.”
Lowering his gaze to his hands, Iimori slowly began speaking across the counter.