#112: Classic / ep.3
Reaching the cemetery hadn’t required the map at all.
The gravestones covering the small hill were all colourless — white shading into grey, then black. Nothing else but the blue of the sky and the green of the grass and trees. In a world this drained of colour, blonde hair was easy enough to spot.
Mikoto opened her mouth to speak, and stopped herself. Not just because the right words wouldn’t come — but because the profile of her face, eyes closed before the gravestone, was so beautiful, and looked so terribly fragile.
The family name carved into the stone read Akutagawa.
“…My mother’s side. I haven’t seen anyone from that side since her funeral, so I can’t even remember their faces anymore.”
Still standing with her eyes closed, she rose to her feet as she spoke. Her long blonde hair swayed, caught on the breeze.
“However did you find this place?”
She ignored the question. There was no end to the things Mikoto wanted to confirm. The suicide attempt in her past. The unresolved tension with Ashiya Chie. And the truth behind that “goodbye.”
But this wasn’t someone who answered anything asked head-on. She was contrary by nature. She hated letting anyone in. Hated it — because being let in meant the truth would come out, and she feared, above all, that the truth would make her hated.
That was the real substance of the mystery she wrapped herself in.
A cursed suit of armour, built out of lies and smiles, worn in exchange for a heart — a self — that could no longer trust anyone in this world.
“I asked the people who love you, Shandy-san.”
“Well, of course. I do have my share of admirers.”
A stylish little smile crossed her profile, trying to paper over the truth. That imperious manner of hers was simply a way of deflecting words, letting them slide off rather than actually receiving them. She had no intention of taking any of this in. She’d been running this whole time.
Not brave enough yet to push straight in, Mikoto worked to close off her escape routes instead.
“The one who told me you’d be here was Sugie-sensei, from Kodomo no Ie.”
“Still as talkative as ever, that woman.”
“And the one who told me about Kodomo no Ie was—”
“Iimori-san and Fumika-chan, I take it? Traitors, the pair of them.”
“But the one who told me absolutely everything was Rinko.”
“Well, she did keep it to herself for a full year. I suppose we’ll let that slide.”
Rinko, apparently, had been carrying the whole truth about Shandy inside her for a very long time. She may have had her own reasons for it, but that hardly mattered now.
“So you know, then.”
Seeing the sorrow settle onto Shandy’s face, Mikoto’s body moved before words could.
She pulled her into an embrace. Wrapping tight around that slender frame. Praying, with everything she had, don’t go anywhere, just stay here with me.
“I’ve disappointed you, then.”
No words came. Whatever she said, it didn’t feel like it would reach that closed-off heart, so instead she simply held the warmth in her arms tighter. Her parched, dry mouth and throat finally managed to force out a voice.
“Just this much? If this is all it took to torment yourself over, you should have just told me sooner.”
That slender shoulder trembled, faintly. The orange scent clinging to her blonde hair tickled Mikoto’s cheek. She wanted more of it. The warmth, the scent. And finally, the growth in herself that had let her put a hand to the door of that long-sealed past.
“………..”
“Don’t say goodbye to me.”
They sat together on a bench, looking out over the cemetery. On the horizon beyond the small hill, an unseasonably eager thunderhead cloud billowed proudly upward.
She said nothing. Mikoto said nothing either. Just as they watched the passing time drift by, a small murmur slipped out, its tremor barely held in check.
“I’m at a dead end. I’ve nowhere left to go.”
Even more abstract than her usual manner of speaking, the words carried something like frustration underneath. Drawing on everything she knew about her, Mikoto searched for what she meant.
“You’d been a missing person.”
“Yes.”
She admitted it. Whether she’d realised there was no point lying with the whole story already uncovered, or whether she’d simply opened that long-closed door of her own accord — Mikoto, unable to read her mind, couldn’t say which.
“Chesha, who freed me from the stage, is owed a debt I couldn’t possibly repay in full.”
Ashiya Chie had killed Akutagawa Alice. And she’d supported her through the years that followed her rebirth. Whatever else was true, the fact that she was a benefactor was unshakeable.
“But. I’m no longer someone content just being some beautifully arranged doll. I’m a selfish, awful woman, after all.”
Those glistening eyes fixed on her. How many tears had those amber irises shed by now? From childhood, through her years as an actress. Through the time she’d spent kept under Chesha’s protection. And right up until the moment she met Mikoto.
“Being selfish’s just part of who Shandy-san is, isn’t it?”
“Do you think that’s enough to make me feel accepted? What a lazy little cliché.”
She questioned the words almost reflexively. The armour of distrust she wore was formidable. Approach it head-on, and it simply wouldn’t be received honestly.
So Mikoto didn’t stand head-on. Instead, she stretched, ambitiously, beyond herself.
“Well-worn clichés suit me better than clever, showy words, if I’m honest.”
“How disappointing. Here I was expecting some carefully crafted, one-of-a-kind declaration of love.”
“Don’t you think the more you dress up words, the harder it gets for the real meaning to actually come through?”
“You’re saying you’d rather strip away the flourishes entirely? And you think a single word from you could sweep me off my feet like that?”
“Charlotte.”
She spoke her name, and their eyes met. The veil of mystery had finally lifted.
The person standing before her wasn’t the enigmatic bartender.
Just an ordinary human being, Charlotte Gabriel.
Grown worldly and resigned from that dim, wounded past, from every scar carved into her — but that had only ever been because she hated the idea of being known and hated for it, hated the thought of unwanted pity.
“You worked so hard, didn’t you.”
Someone genuinely fragile underneath, unable to trust anyone, not even herself. Fierce, headstrong, forever putting on a performance to appear bigger and stronger than she was — the ultimate method actor, playing herself.
“From now on, let me carry the weight of your twenty-five years too.”
Her frozen eyes held a huge, full amber moon.
“…Do you understand what you’re saying?”
Surprised, or grieving — Mikoto couldn’t tell which. There wasn’t even room to know. There was no way to fully understand the heart of someone who’d lived a life this different for twenty-five whole years.
“I don’t understand. But I can at least help carry it with you, can’t I?”
“Carry what, exactly. I’m a woman with a rotten personality and far too much pride, who tried to kill herself once, who betrays even the love of the person she owes everything to out of pure selfishness.”
Her usual formal speech slipped away, and Charlotte finally showed herself. Irritation and anxiety seemed to dissolve into that first genuine expression of anguish, into her trembling voice.
Charlotte swallowed her next words.
Head bowed, she stayed silent for a while. A voice, nearly drowned out by the rustling of wind through the branches, finally came.
“I don’t want to become a burden to you.”
“You’re plenty light. You’re skinny, after all.”
“…Idiot.”
Being thoroughly exasperated at made her happy, somehow. Finally, she’d met and could speak with the real, deeply buried heart beneath. That downward-tilted profile, the blush spreading across cheeks and ears half-hidden by blonde hair, burned itself onto Mikoto’s eyelids.
“Cute.”
That’s the alluring figure of a worldly bartender.
And the flawless, doll-like beauty of a Western porcelain doll.
And a contrary, moody, mischievous little girl.
“…I’m not cute. Don’t look at me.”
“I’m always looking. I’ll keep looking. I love you including the parts you don’t want anyone to see.”
“………..”
“Do you really want to leave me that badly?”
Saying nothing, Charlotte leaned in close. Burying her face against Mikoto’s chest, unwilling to let her expression be seen. Now that she thought about it, Charlotte never met her eyes whenever she’d been caught off guard.
“I’d rather you didn’t run from me.”
Mikoto stroked her softly swaying blonde hair. Funny, how she ran from eye contact and yet never pulled away from the touch of a hand, almost like soothing a child.
Honest, or not honest at all — impossible to say which.
“…This is my problem to deal with.”
The problem surrounding Charlotte was a wall, tall and unyielding. But Mikoto had no intention of standing idly in front of it.
“That’s why we will carry it. Because it’s our problem.”
The moment she’d grasped the full truth of Shandy’s situation, Mikoto had already reached out to the one person most reliable and knowledgeable on exactly this kind of problem. Sanae.
“First, about being a missing person — if it’s within seven years of going missing, you can restore your family register just by filing at the ward office.”
“…The record of the incident itself can’t just be scrubbed away.”
“Don’t worry. Only the memory needs to disappear.”
This part, too, was Sanae’s idea. Mikoto found herself grateful, once again, for Sanae’s oddly deep knowledge of law and how to cover up crimes.
“You just have to claim you lost the memory too. Failed suicide attempt, followed by amnesia. With your acting skills, fooling the police should be simple enough. Suicide itself isn’t a crime, after all.”
“And what about Chesha?”
“She’s the benefactor who kept an amnesiac Charlotte alive. That’s simply the story going forward.”
“…And if I say that’s not what happened?”
This, too, was a loophole in the law.
Suicide itself carries no criminal penalty. But assisting a suicide does.
“If you say that’s not what happened, you’re admitting to the crime of assisted suicide, aren’t you.”
Charlotte, her memory restored, leaks somewhere the story of how she came to praise Ashiya Chie so highly. A heartwarming tale of a charismatic female entrepreneur saving an amnesiac woman would spread like wildfire in no time. Ashiya Chie, already a media presence, would never willingly give up the honour and admiration the public would shower her with. Not even at the cost of admitting to assisting a suicide.
“If this counts as a Game between you and Ashiya Chie, you’ve already won from the very start. Actually, you’d already worked this much out yourself, hadn’t you?”
Charlotte let out a small breath.
“…Sanae-san’s idea, I take it?”
“Ugh…”
Her usual formal speech returned, laced with that same unclear mixture of respect and mockery. She seemed to have regained a measure of her usual composure.
Not Charlotte anymore, but the familiar figure of Shandy. Seeing her return to this form made Mikoto happy too.
“Naturally, I’d already worked out that much myself.”
“Then why?”
“Because there’s a reason I can’t do it, which is exactly why it’s a dead end. You adorable little fool.”
“Why not? What’s the reason?”
She only gave a small chuckle, and fell silent again.
She’d shown Charlotte, buried deep within her, but the one thing she absolutely refused to explain was why she wouldn’t fight back against Ashiya Chie.
If there’s a reason she doesn’t want to say, then she doesn’t have to say it. The same thought as always crossed Mikoto’s mind. Forcing it out of her wouldn’t accomplish anything good. It would only end with her being deflected once more.
“Hey. Shandy-san.”
“Yes?”
“If you say it’s a dead end, if something’s standing in your way—”
But she’d already decided to push in.
She’d decided to push in, and she’d already said she’d carry the weight.
So then. If there was a reason she couldn’t move. If there was a wall too high to climb.
“—let’s break it down. Together.”
As frightening as it had been, saying it out loud left her feeling clear-headed.
“There’s no secrets left between us now anyway. There’s no one else who could put up with a hopelessly high-maintenance blonde pain in the neck like you, besides me.”
“…That’s the worst proposal I’ve ever received, without question.”
Shandy laughed. Exasperated, resigned — and, beneath it, a smile of genuine peace.
“If pulling doesn’t work, try pushing instead. That’s a negotiation principle you taught me yourself, actually.”
“I have no memory of teaching anyone such a disparaging tactic.”
Making her move, Mikoto realised something.
A Game is something that meets the other person’s heart where it stands. Even when given a choice, the one who actually chooses is no one but yourself.
“If you don’t want it, that’s fine. If you’d rather break up, go ahead and break up.”
She’d always been the one pushed forward by their Games.
Rinko had once told her she was just dancing on Shandy’s palm, and maybe that was true, but so what. However embarrassing it got, through Game after Game, it had always been Mikoto herself who kept choosing the outcome she actually wanted — the outcome that would make Shandy happy.
“But even if this ends in a breakup, I’ll never forget your kindness for as long as I live. I’m—”
So this time, it was Mikoto’s turn to meet her where she stood. No lies, no reaching beyond herself. With her own heart, exactly as it was.
“—I love Shandy the bartender, and Akutagawa Alice the actress, and Charlotte Gabriel. All of you.”
It was embarrassing. But not the embarrassment of getting caught stretching beyond herself.
This, surely, was what it meant to push in.
Perhaps this bashfulness was simply the price of facing someone head-on, for real.
“Then, one thing. Would you allow me to ask a question?”
“Oh my, a Game, is it? Gladly.”
Tears spilled from those amber eyes. Mikoto held her as she wept quietly, and waited through the long silence that followed.
The answer itself didn’t matter. What made her happy was simply being able to swear, from the very bottom of her heart, that she loved every part of the woman once wrapped in mystery.
In a trembling voice, she spoke. A question nearly lost beneath the sound of the wind reached Mikoto’s ears.
“Shandy, and Alice, and Charlotte. And… will you love Kurosu Charlotte too…?”
Easier than any Game they’d ever played before, and without a shred of hesitation.
“I love you.”
She said it, and the two of them let out a long breath together. Even the timing of that tension-releasing breath matched perfectly, and finding that funny, they both laughed, and finding even the laughter matched made them happier still.
“Aah! How infuriating, this is so infuriating!”
Shandy burst into an angry, tearful little fit. Mikoto could sort of guess why, now.
“I wasn’t actually planning to make my vow just now! I was hoping you’d give me a much more dramatic confession!”
“Eh…? Like what, for instance?”
“Storming Chesha’s wedding ceremony and stealing me away as I flee! It was a dream of mine, you know!”
Terrifying. To think she’d been imagining a scenario like that. And to think she’d said “goodbye,” declaring an intent to break up, purely in service of some fantasy like that.
“Um, hey… Didn’t I already tell you, back at that dance, not to go testing my love like that…?”
“Yes. But this time, I wasn’t testing you at all, you know.”
“You said ‘goodbye’ to me!”
“Surely that goes without saying? Do you honestly think I’d ever let go of you? Fitting behaviour for a hopelessly high-maintenance blonde pain in the neck, wouldn’t you say?”
She wore her usual mischievous smile. Even now that the mystery had been solved, that same suggestive, teasing manner hadn’t changed a bit, and somehow it was simply adorable, and reassuring.
“Guess I’ve landed myself quite the troublesome woman, huh.”
“The feeling’s mutual. Isn’t being troublesome practically part of my charm?”
“Depends on the person, I’d say.”
“And me?”
“I love you, I already said.”
“More.”
“I love you so much.”
“More, more.”
“I like you, I love you, I love you so, so much.”
“Reaching for clichés is your own way of hiding embarrassment, isn’t it. How adorable.”
“Ngh…”
Just as she’d finally relaxed, that same unguarded, always-one-step-ahead Shandy peeked right back through. That incorrigible sadistic streak of hers, at least, was clearly no act or performance whatsoever.
“You’re really going to lose all your friends someday, you know…?”
“So long as I have you, that’s plenty.”
Laughing happily, she took Mikoto’s hand and led her onward. Walking through the cemetery, they arrived before the Akutagawa family grave. Standing alone among people with no connection to her at all, she pressed her palms together before her late mother. And, of course, Mikoto did the same.
“…My mother was Christian, actually, you know.”
“I see.”
Regardless of the deceased’s faith, her mother had been cremated, reduced to bone. This was surely the truth behind that offhand remark she’d once made — I’ve abandoned my faith.
“They’re that kind of self-serving family, so honestly, I’ve come to be grateful we’re estranged. Even if I introduced Mikoto to them, they’d only object anyway.”
“Maybe your mother would object too, huh.”
“If she ever stood at my bedside, I’d tell her exactly this. That someone who died on her own selfish terms has no right whatsoever to stand in the way of my happiness.”
A tear traced down her smiling profile. Pretending not to notice that tear, the last remnant of her hard-won composure, Mikoto leaned her body against her shoulder.
“You’ll still love everything I’ve been, this whole time, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“…Then, I’ll tell you. Why I can’t play my trump card against Chesha. It concerns you, and your sister. And someone who might, in time, become a beloved sister-in-law of mine too.”
“Kotone and Rinko…?”
Why on earth would the matter with Chesha have anything to do with the two of them? Mikoto waited for the answer, a question mark hovering visibly over her head.
As their eyes met, those amber irises still glittered in their upper crescent, undimmed. That provocative, defiant, headstrong figure. The illusion of a dependable woman who’d made Mikoto fall in love, then not only caught that fall but sheltered and raised her, as a person, in the process.
“Let’s start by claiming victory over some gyoza and beer, shall we? Since we’ve come all this way to Utsunomiya.”
Flexible as ever, free-spirited as ever, laughing brightly, she was still, unmistakably, Shandy the bartender from Antiqua.