#95: Night Cap
I was dreaming.
I dreamed that the person most precious to me, who had grown so large that she occupied not merely half of me but most of me, was nowhere to be found, no matter where I searched through our familiar two-bedroom flat. I dreamed that the prince who had supported me through life, with whom I had shared our dreams, with whom I had promised that one day we would overcome this suffocating dead end, that we would smash through the wall of gender, had gone away.
“Where did you go,——”
I was crying. The torrents pouring from my eyes eventually became a waterfall, transforming the 2 bedroom flat from the plunge pool at its base into the depths of a deep sea. The dream changed at dizzying speed, like the tides of life itself. No matter how hard I poled against the current, I was swept along, and when I clawed at the mass of water with my palms, I had become a mermaid.
The Little Mermaid.
The moment I recognised myself as such, my throat closed and my windpipe was crushed. I could no longer make a sound. The tail fin that had been two human legs only moments before dissolved into foam and vanished.
My body itself turned to foam. The air in lungs that were probably blackened by second-hand smoke, the air inside a useless womb, rose in carbonated bubbles. The scales that had fallen from my tail fin glittered in the sunlight filtering down through the surface of the water.
Like salt smoothed around the rim of a glass in a snow style.
Or perhaps like sugar finished in a coral style.
I was drowning in an unrequited love, in love with nowhere to go, in bloated self-conceit. I was becoming foam and disappearing. Soon I would be no more than seaweed and driftwood on the ocean floor. The Andersen-esque ending befitting a mermaid who had reached too high and lost the love of her prince was almost too perfectly karmic.
If this was a tragic love story, I wanted to resist.
I was no longer weak.
I was no longer someone who could only be swept along by whatever was beautiful and beloved.
I didn’t want to become a puppet bound to a script so worn-out that it had been rubbed threadbare and grown mouldy.
I wanted to throw away the past, live in the present, and have a future.
With only the two arms and face that had failed to become foam, I reached towards the human world, towards the warm, sunlit surface beyond the water.
Please. Save me.
Save me from the bottom of the deep sea——
“Ow…”
——From dream to reality. The arm of the person sleeping beside me had dragged a woman back from the depths of the sea to our 2 bedroom flat in Kyōdō.
I wanted to complain that she ought not to smash the face she had once described as doll-like when I was trying to seduce her. But the sheer vulnerability of her sleeping form robbed me of the energy to be angry, and the warmth that had taken root inside me seeped into my chilled body.
“What a troublesome prince you are.”
I left a kiss on her bare skin and in her hair, scented with apricot from her treatment, then slipped out of the narrow bed. The prince turned over with a little roll and occupied the bed entirely.
It was as though she were telling me the bed was hers. In fact, it was the bed she had brought from her own home.
It was funny.
And dear.
When was the last time I had thought another person dear?
After living all those years with my chin held high, sneering at people and burying them beneath my clever arguments, playing the victim because I trusted no one, now even the noisy women surrounding her seemed dear to me.
What I had given the prince was a cocktail. What I had received in return was the ability to love someone.
I had been given so much that even if I put everything I possessed on the other side of the scales, it would never balance. I could never repay it in a lifetime.
Nor did I want to.
That was why I wanted to remain faithful.
To become a person worthy of her, so pure-hearted that she knew nothing of doubting others.
And finally, I thought I could throw it away.
I broke the seal on the drawer.
A scrap of paper dated four years ago, bearing only my own name, on which I had written my vow.
And the Marlboro Menthol left behind by the prince who had come before her.
On the balcony, I lit that final cigarette and wrapped it in the red envelope on which the vow had never been delivered.
The scrap of paper slowly blackened and spread with the smell of burning, while the red flames crept along its edges, gradually consuming both the vow and the curse.
“If only I could forget this as easily.”
I scattered the ashes of the past down to the ground below.
If one of the residents complained, I would bring them a little gift of apology and go round to say sorry. I would be handing out congratulations to people in every direction before long anyway——and I wanted to hand them out wrapped in mizuhiki and decorated with noshi.
A rehearsal, of sorts.
The smell of burning made my eyes sting.
And at last, I felt as though I had managed to shed tears for our parting.
＊
“A transfer order? For me?”
March, Reiwa 3.
In the wake of a certain young actress’s rampage, Mikoto, now a Hibiya employee, was visited by Terakado, her colleague in the Planning Department.
She was an easygoing woman who didn’t worry about the hierarchy between colleagues, and Mikoto was comfortable around her too. Terakado was technically her senior in terms of length of service, but she was younger, so it evened out. Mikoto had taken advantage of Terakado’s friendly gesture of telling her to speak casually.
“Maybe you did something bad.”
Mikoto had far too many possible answers.
She had dragged the former general manager over the coals, wrecked the Secretary Division’s party, and, after appearing alongside her sister, leaked information that went viral online.
Even after joining the company, she had continued submitting proposals and had achieved a few results, but honestly, none of them had exactly set the world alight. The signature work of planner Kurosu Mikoto was still the digital memo she had created back when she worked for Meiji Stationary.
As for her pencil-shaving potpourri, she had managed to persuade an affiliated company to commercialise it by stringing together fashionable buzzwords such as “eco-friendly” and “SDGs”. But at the end of the day, it was still pencil shavings.
It was rubbish.
So it was only natural that, along with the unsold stock, it should eventually be swept up with a dustpan and thrown away.
“I’m depressed…”
“As long as there are people who recognise your work, you don’t need to worry.”
Following the transfer order Terakado handed her, Mikoto left the Planning Department office and went to the twenty-sixth floor, directly beneath the top floor.
The doors of several rooms had makeshift nameplates attached with magnets, each one nothing more than an A4 sheet of paper printed out in a hurry.
One read:
Special Investigations Unit, General Affairs Department.
“…I figured it would be something like this.”
“You’ve saved me the trouble of explaining.”
The newly established Special Investigations Unit was not a place where gentlemen sipped tea while presenting their deductions.
There were certainly sharp and intelligent people there, but they weren’t being treated like outcasts in some television drama. And there were far too many members for it to be called a Special Investigations Unit of just two people.
“Yanase Sanae, Chief of the Special Investigations Unit, General Affairs Department.”
Perhaps introducing herself face-to-face after all this time felt embarrassing. Sanae looked vaguely uncomfortable.
Mikoto felt the same.
“Kurosu Mikoto.”
The formal introductions were so belated that the two of them simultaneously grinned and burst out laughing.
Terakado’s “people who recognise your work” had not been wrong.
They had caused one another plenty of trouble over the past year, and been troubled by one another in turn, but Mikoto was simply happy that they had ended up on the same team.
“As I’m sure you already know, but just to go over everyone again. First, Iida-kun.”
Iida Tarō.
A promising young man with a difficult road ahead, being worked to the bone under Sanae. Perhaps because Sanae had dragged him down by the scruff of his neck yet he had still managed to get onto the promotion track, there was a faint confidence in his plain, bespectacled face that otherwise looked so thoroughly unreliable.
Good luck.
Just don’t die.
“Then Hirose Michelle, poached from the Secretary Division.”
“Eh!?”
From the hot-water area at the back of the room, Hirose Michelle poked her head out.
She seemed more lively than she had been in the Secretary Division, though that had nothing to do with her transfer.
“Listen, listen! Shandy-san is so mean! She decided I can only have three shaken cocktails because they make her tired!”
Hirose Michelle.
Ever since that incident, she had apparently become antiqua’s biggest-spending regular. Every week, even on Fridays, which were already terribly busy, she would rush in the moment the doors opened and drink at high speed until closing time.
As a result, Shandy would wake up on Saturday morning with aching muscles from all that shaking, then spend the day sprawled around doing nothing, much like Mimosa.
“Don’t make her shake her arms too much, okay? She was worried she might not be able to wear long sleeves.”
“What does that mean?”
Mikoto was still marvelling at Michelle’s strange-girl nature, unchanged in the slightest by her inability to understand jokes, when suddenly someone blew into her ear from behind.
A strange sound escaped her.
When she turned around, a wicked woman with strikingly bright-red eyeliner was smiling at her.
“I’ve missed you. Aww, has my little Mi-chan lost weight?”
“I haven’t missed you…”
Akazawa Kuto.
As before, she would remain officially attached to the Secretary Division while continuing to work as Sanae’s spy.
And the same went for Mikoto.
“Mikoto-san, you’ll remain attached to the Planning Department while working as a spy for the Special Investigations Unit. We have several other collaborators, but they’re all out at the moment.”
“I might actually be better off getting fired from Planning. The responsibility is rather daunting…”
“If you get fired, tell me, okay? I got all tense after Michelle was stolen away from me, and I need something soothing.”
That was what Kuto said as she hugged fluffy Michelle.
The section chief had served as her outlet for stress, Remi had been her audience for dirty talk, and Rieru had vented by one-upmanship. With a hole now left in the Secretary Division, it must have become hell.
Mikoto wanted no part of it.
“I miss Kuto-san…”
“Aww, there, there.”
Michelle, who had gotten exactly what she wanted and helped destroy the Secretary Division, looked happy.
Kuto and Michelle were completely different types of people, yet they looked like close sisters.
It was heartwarming enough that Mikoto found herself watching them.
“Today is just for introductions. I’ll contact you if there’s any work. For now, concentrate on your regular duties.”
Mikoto left the Special Investigations Unit and looked at the nameplate made from copy paper.
It had been almost a year since she had landed a job through that whole fiasco.
Her results weren’t anything to boast about, but she had grown accustomed to her work, and there were people who relied on her.
“Let’s do this!”
At the very least, she wanted to be a full-fledged employee when it came to enthusiasm.
She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes with determination. Taking advantage of the fact that nobody was watching, she raised a little victory cry of “Heave-ho, heave-ho!” and returned to the lift lobby.
“…I got that on camera. Mi-chan is so cute~”
“Right? Right?”
＊
“I’m home.”
“Mraow.”
Returning to the empty flat in Kyōdō, reading the note left by its owner, complete with a love bite, opening Mimosa’s dinner with a satisfying pop, and then fussing over the cat had become part of Mikoto’s daily routine.
antiqua had resumed operations in June of the previous year, giving up its days off in an attempt to make back the money it had lost.
For owner-bartender Shandy, the Labour Standards Act and the Article 36 Agreement might as well not exist. Apart from the Bon, New Year and other major holidays, she had been running at full speed ever since, and was currently in the middle of a gruelling sixty-day stretch without a break.
“Mimosa, you’re lucky. You get to see Shandy-san at home.”
Their schedules were exactly twelve hours out of step.
Around the time Mikoto left for work, Shandy would return home with a sleepy face. When Mikoto finished work on time, if she was lucky, they might pass each other at the station.
“It’s love where we keep passing each other,” Shandy had joked at the ticket gates.
But Mikoto wasn’t experienced enough to find that funny yet.
“You said what matters isn’t work, but trust.”
A year had flown by.
Her job had changed and her salary had increased, so she had managed to save a little money. But there was nowhere to go even if she wanted to take a trip.
And if she went to antiqua, Shandy would invariably tease her.
Hehe. Did you come to see me because you were lonely?
Mikoto knew that she only needed to admit that she was lonely.
Even if their schedules meant they passed each other during the week, she could still sleep beside Shandy for a few hours on Sunday mornings.
Wasn’t that enough?
She told herself it was.
But then came the but.
“I’m working hard, so I don’t want to hold you back, but…”
Everything beyond that but was nothing more than a childish, selfish whim.
If she told Shandy she was lonely, Shandy would surely make sure they had time to spend together and change Sunday back into a regular day off.
Mikoto wanted to be able to spend a whole day without having to pass her by.
But.
“No…”
She had begun entertaining the wicked thought that she wanted to go back to those two months when antiqua had been closed.
That wouldn’t do.
So she devoted herself to stroking Mimosa instead.
Her heart was unsettled because it was that kind of day. There was no helping it.
Her circular thoughts kept turning to the right as the clock hands announced bedtime.
That was Mikoto’s every day since June of the previous year.
She wanted to see her.
Even though they lived together.
She mustn’t see her.
She mustn’t tell her that she wanted to see her.
“Does Shandy-san really love me, I wonder? What do you think, Mimosa?”
After venting to Mimosa, the cat walked away as if to say, You’re noisy.
Of course Mikoto trusted Shandy.
What she hated was that she couldn’t completely deny the but that had just slipped out of her mouth.
A beautiful, charming, capricious woman like Shandy could find someone to replace her easily enough.
Eventually, Mikoto even found herself becoming jealous of the customers who merely came to antiqua to talk with Shandy.
Her thoughts were a rightward-spinning drill, boring deeper and deeper into the earth.
That was what Shandy’s notes were for.
Mikoto filed them all away neatly, and had made a habit of reading through them whenever she needed to distract herself.
“Please bring in my laundry.”
“I played a little prank. Can you guess what I’ve hidden?”
“You don’t like shiitake mushrooms, do you? You can’t fool my eyes.”
“I wanted tempura, so I bought some. It’s in the fridge.”
“You left the shiitake again. You’re a bad girl, Mikoto.”
Just following the rounded strokes of Shandy’s handwriting with her eyes was enough to vividly conjure her face and voice.
Her breezy manner.
The way she puffed out her cheeks.
Her light, airy laugh, like air escaping.
For as long as she was rereading those notes, Shandy felt close.
Shandy didn’t use LINE, so Mikoto had no choice but to make do with these little phrases, shorter than letters, and endure.
She picked up today’s note to file it away.
“You’re awfully slow, aren’t you? Even though it’s such an obvious Game.”
“What does that even mean…?”
The note was so completely disconnected from everything before and after it that Mikoto burst out laughing.
However she read the notes from the past five days, there was no meaning beyond what was written.
Ah.
Oh, come on…
“Do you really have to do things like this…?”
She had noticed because today’s note, unlike the others, was written vertically rather than horizontally.
She had spent day after day missing Shandy and staring at these notes until she could have bored holes through them, yet she had failed to notice something so simple.
She was embarrassed that she had doubted Shandy.
“Look after the house, okay, Mimosa?”
“Mraow.”
The trains were still running.
Mikoto dashed for Kyōdō Station, determined to go and make at least one selfish demand.
＊
She opened the heavy door.
The darkness immediately inside was so deep that no matter how hard she strained her eyes, she could see nothing.
She listened to the classical music playing inside the bar, to the presence of its customers.
Then a light laugh whispered beside her ear.
“Did you figure out my Game?”
“I was afraid it might be some kind of Seto Kimten.”
The Game hidden in the notes was a vertical reading of their first characters.
Put them all together and—
“So, when did you actually figure it out? Was today’s hint what gave it away?”
“Of course it was——”
“If you tell me honestly, I’ll give you a reward. It has been a while, after all.”
The fingertip touching her was sensual, stroking around her abdomen.
Down.
Further down.
It made her conscious of the place, then moved back up without touching it.
To win this wicked Game, in which either choice would only leave her embarrassed, there was only one thing to do.
Break the rules.
Break the prohibition she had imposed on herself against getting in Shandy’s way.
“I’ll tell you honestly.”
If Shandy touched her, Mikoto could tell where she was even in the darkness.
She spread her arms wide and caught her almost immediately.
After that, her body remembered where Shandy’s lips were.
“Mmm…”
She held her tightly and stole her lips.
This was different from the greetings they had exchanged in passing at the entrance, at the station, or whenever they happened to cross paths.
She pressed her against the wall, joining her chilled lips with the warmth of her tongue.
“T-They can hear you. The customers…”
“I don’t care. Tonight, I’m going to be selfish.”
“What a troublesome woman…”
She was the one who kept tangling her tongue with Mikoto’s.
Mikoto wanted to say Which one of us is the troublesome one?
But the words never made it out.
She was grateful for the darkness that swallowed everything, and for the classical music leaking from the wired broadcast.
“…Rinko-san is watching.”
“Eek…”
Mikoto recoiled in shock.
Through a gap in the curtain, a familiar silhouette peered out.
Even though the backlighting concealed her face, Mikoto recognised her from the scent of peach drifting through the air.
She decided to be grateful that it was still dark.
“Oh? So that’s what that dark little space is for? For doing things like that? I’ve learned something new. Rinko Shirai’s personal education programme~.”
“Please feel free to make use of it whenever you like.”
Unlike Mikoto, Shandy reacted to having their intimate encounter witnessed as though nothing had happened, batting away Rinko’s teasing with a smile.
This was antiqua, the girls’ bar on the outskirts of Roppongi, overflowing with respect for the law and back to all-night opening from the very day the restrictions were lifted.
Perhaps people had gathered because they had missed Shandy during the period of self-restraint.
Or perhaps it was simply the fruit of their efforts to keep the business going.
Either way, antiqua was packed.
Someone was already occupying the prime seat by the wall, so Mikoto slipped into the seat beside Rinko.
“I heard, Mikoto-san. Apparently you haven’t been coming here? Have you fallen out of love with her? Shall I play with you instead?”
Half of that flirting sounded serious enough that Mikoto ignored it.
But she had launched straight into the heart of the matter, leaving Mikoto swallowing her words.
She wanted to warm things up a little first, so she searched for another opening.
“I’ve been busy. Kotone looks busy too.”
“She is! Listen to this. The other day that idiot did a remote appearance, and she absolutely refused to stop insisting that she was going to put me on television for the whole country to see! I kept telling her I didn’t want to appear on screen with her, and that they’d cut me anyway, but she wouldn’t stop! What on earth did the Kurosu family parents teach that girl?”
“That was the education she received…”
Mikoto could only smile wryly.
That woman had always had a bad habit of pouring her heart and soul into things she didn’t need to do.
Rinko’s complaints were all perfectly believable stories of Kotone’s behaviour.
On quiz shows and physical challenges, she knew perfectly well that getting questions wrong or failing spectacularly made for better television, yet she would still get every question right or set a record score, leaving the staff looking bitter.
Then there was the time she became the official ambassador for a card game she hadn’t even been interested in. She had used cunning and money to build a tournament-standard deck and proceeded to crush an elementary-school champion.
“She was standing there grinning stupidly with her trophy while this little kid next to her was desperately trying not to cry! Can you believe her!?”
“You know Kotone. She probably did something to make up for it afterwards, didn’t she?”
“I don’t even know that! When the poor kid finally started crying, Kotone told them something like, ‘If you can’t stand losing, then claw your way back up,’ and the whole venue went wild! Later I found out it was apparently an important line from the anime version, and ever since then her nickname online has been Empress Kotonerias! What even is that!?”
“Ahahaha…”
“It’s not funny!”
“No, it’s just… hearing that Rinko-san has finally learned what it’s like to live with Kotone made me laugh a little.”
“Honestly, every day is another episode of ‘I never knew she was like this!’”
Mikoto wanted to ask why Rinko hadn’t quit being her manager after all that.
But she decided not to.
It was obvious enough.
Every so often Kotone sent Mikoto secretly taken photographs of Rinko, so everyone knew that Rinko continued living in Yokohama with her.
Technically, it wasn’t cohabitation.
Rinko got angry if anyone called it that.
The demands of their busy work might not have changed the distance between the two of them.
Or so Mikoto thought, until she noticed Rinko’s nails.
On the ring finger of her left hand was Kotone’s favourite colour:
red.
“That nail polish looks nice. Do you normally wear it?”
“Oh, this is…”
“Kotone-san’s marking. I got her to confess just now.”
Shandy cut in as she served Rinko a Shandy Gaff without even being asked to take her order.
Apparently it was something Kotone had left behind before going away from Yokohama for several days on location.
“You’re not going with Kotone?”
“I became the agency’s chief manager, so I can’t exactly stick to her side all the time anymore. I just hope she doesn’t do anything strange…”
Rinko produced her business card.
Printed across it was her new title: Chief Manager of the entertainment agency Ambush.
She looked gentle and unassuming, so she didn’t exactly give off the air of a ruthless professional.
But considering how popular her two talents were, it was a perfectly reasonable promotion.
“She must be worried about you. You’re popular with people, Rinko-san.”
“I wish I were popular with girls. I want a sharp-looking older woman…”
“Oh, what a shame. And after you were wooed by such a handsome man?”
“Well… you know? It’s a secret, but he was in…”
It turned out that a young, handsome actor had hit on Rinko in a station’s waiting room.
Mikoto knew his name.
And, to make matters worse, he was married.
Her mouth fell open.
“That’s… quite something.”
“No, no, I might have misunderstood! But when I told Kotone about it, she got furious and started saying ridiculous things like she was going to drive a truck into his agency. It was awful.”
Shandy deliberately let out a long, long sigh, loud enough for everyone to hear.
She even wore an expression of utter exasperation.
“You were pleased, weren’t you? That marking, that worry that comes from being so possessive, that jealousy strong enough to make her angry. It must have sent your maternal instincts into overdrive, you love-struck manager.”
“You…”
Rinko’s anger flared like wildfire——
Then she lowered her voice.
She had learned to hold herself back.
Good for her.
“…She just painted them when I was leaving the house.”
“Then shall I remove it? I have some remover.”
“No. It’ll damage my nails.”
“I think leaving the polish on would damage them more.”
Faced with that perfectly reasonable argument, Rinko ground her teeth.
So obvious.
“Hehe. This isn’t even a Game.”
“More importantly, how are things with you, Mikoto-san? Have you settled into Hibiya?”
The attempt to change the subject was painfully obvious, but Mikoto went along with it and looked back over the changes of the past year.
She had managed to find a job thanks to that whole commotion.
The potpourri had been a failure, but despite being nothing particularly spectacular, she had managed to get several proposals approved.
As of today, she had become one of Sanae’s subordinates.
And the Secretary Division had become hell.
Mikoto was grateful to have two people who listened to her account, reacting with delight or dismay to every little thing she said.
She watched their exchange from the corner of her eye, unable to tell whether they actually liked or disliked each other, and found the time spent drinking cocktails strangely comforting.
antiqua really was a good place.
A place that accepted worries and anger, where happiness and joy could be shared.
There were cocktails there.
And there was Shandy, the bartender who looked after the bar and created not only the cocktails but the atmosphere itself.
“I was being selfish…”
When Rinko left, saying she had a recording with Saikawa tomorrow, another customer was already sitting in the seat beside her.
Shandy continued taking orders and serving the never-ending stream of customers.
Despite being in the middle of an exhausting run of consecutive shifts, she showed no sign of fatigue.
She smiled.
She joked.
She puffed out her cheeks.
She entertained her customers.
Creating this place was Shandy’s job.
Soothing customers with cocktails and witty conversation was her job.
To take even a single day of that away from her and monopolise her would be far too childish and selfish.
I was lonely.
But.
If this was what Shandy wanted to do, Mikoto wanted to endure it.
She wanted to become someone capable of enduring it.
“I have work tomorrow, so I’d better go.”
“Yes. Warm the bed for me and wait there.”
The customers, who surely had no idea that they were living together, began hooting and teasing her.
Mikoto wanted to shrink into a little ball.
She paid her bill and returned to the darkness.
After receiving the coat Shandy had been keeping for her, Shandy took her by the hand.
Beyond the darkness, through the door, was the fluorescent-lit back room.
From darkness into daylight.
The sudden change in brightness made it dazzling.
“Mmh!?”
Suddenly, her lips were covered.
This time the situation was the exact opposite of when she had entered.
Shandy pinned her against the wall in the corridor and gave her a long, hot caress of the lips.
Which one of them was the troublesome one now?
“You don’t have to endure it.”
With that single sentence, Mikoto understood what Shandy was trying to tell her.
In the end, Shandy saw straight through her.
She had been waiting for Mikoto to say what lay beyond that selfish little but.
“What are you talking about?”
“Hehe. Are you copying me? You’re just as bad at being honest.”
“You seem rather more honest than usual tonight.”
“I am being honest. I’m honestly asking for what I want.”
Another hot kiss felt wonderful.
She held Shandy tightly, unwilling to let go of her living scent, not merely the lingering trace she left behind.
She hadn’t been a person who wanted someone this badly.
She had promised herself she wouldn’t be selfish.
“…I want to be with you longer.”
She said it.
She couldn’t stop herself from being selfish.
Her true desire to fill the days when they passed each other could not be held back once she was overcome by the heat.
Every part of her, down to the last drop of blood coursing through her veins, was crying out for it.
“You said it. Well done. Though you really did endure it for quite a while, didn’t you? I thought you’d give up after about a week and come crying to me like Nobita.”
“Doraemooooon!”
“Hehehe. What’s the matter, Mikoto-kun?”
The imitation was so terrible that Mikoto burst out laughing.
They laughed together.
Shandy stroked her.
And the fact that Shandy listened to her and accepted what she said made her feel at peace.
Warmth.
Her voice.
Her scent.
And the kindness in her heart.
They wrapped Mikoto up gently.
“I knew you were working hard, so I thought I shouldn’t get in your way…”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been enduring it all this time, but… I was lonely…”
“Yes. Yes.”
“I…”
The rest of the words she couldn’t say were understood without being spoken.
“How could I possibly love anyone other than you? Me, of all people, who distrusts humanity.”
Shandy’s arms tightened around her back.
“I want to connect the present to the future. Together with you, the person who allowed me to throw away my past.”
“I don’t really understand that…”
“Think of it as something like a declaration of intent.”
At the end, Shandy kissed her forehead.
Under the white light of the fluorescent lamps, the flush spreading across her cheeks was plainly visible.
Even without putting it into words, Mikoto could feel that Shandy felt the same way.
“Well then, I’ll get back to work. I have about sixty more consecutive shifts to get through before Golden Week.”
“Right. Do your best, but don’t overdo it.”
Things hadn’t gone according to plan.
Working that much couldn’t possibly be good for her health.
No matter how many times Mikoto hinted at it, Shandy stubbornly refused to budge.
“…You’re really terrible at lying, you know. My sweet Mikoto-san.”
Mikoto lowered her head, crestfallen, when she heard the words spoken almost to herself.
Then Shandy put on an exaggerated voice and went, “Ta-da-da-daa~,” as though she were producing a secret gadget.
“Shall we go on a honeymoon before the wedding?”
She showed Mikoto a travel-booking website, with photographs of hot-spring inns.
And she smiled.
Up, down, then up again.
Being tossed around in the palm of Shandy’s hand like this was, for now, something Mikoto was happy to endure.
“Keep this weekend free, won’t you? I’ll close the shop for a special holiday.”