Love x 2 (the entire series) [easy navigation on 1st page] Complete

[OTN1]

Two - Prelude

I saw Miki at the post office today.  She thinks I didn't see her.  She looked all proud when she dodged her way out of my line of sight, hiding behind the tall man that stood in front of her.

But I saw her.  It was definitely her.

She hasn't changed much.  She looks older, of course, but still the same.  She's aged well, and I'm surprised.  One would think that she would have let herself go downhill.  I guess it's just another one of those surprising aspects that you learn about someone you think you know really well.  And with her, I've got some experience finding out that kind of thing.

I thought that without me, she might have given up caring.  That maybe her last few words to me were true and that I did matter.  That whatever I said mattered.

But evidently I didn't (and still don't) matter quite enough.  She looks like she's doing very well for herself, and part of me is angry because I want her to look rundown because I haven't been there to take care of her.  I want her to feel even more regret about what she's done.

I sigh.  I haven't thought like this in years.  Once I stopped talking to her, I quit thinking about that whole period of my life.  I banished all thoughts of Miki's actions from my mind.  I actually came to accept her in a way.  Not quite forgiveness, but I realised that thinking about it and being angry all the time wouldn't get me anywhere.  I let go of it all.

I tolerated my job for two years after that.  Thank god she got kicked out right away.  If she hadn't been, I would have quit.  Perhaps I should have quit anyway.  Just seeing all those other people made me think of her.  But I stuck through it and worked hard.  I saved up an incredible amount of money.  When I finally went to my manager and showed her the letter of resignation that I was going to hand over to the agency, I had nothing to hold me back.  No insecurities.  I knew exactly what I wanted.

Once I was out of that bad atmosphere, things looked up.  I moved to a suburb of the city where an apartment just as nice as mine was a fraction cheaper, and I invested my money.  I didn't know how to on my own, so I asked a banker friend of mine to help me, and he did so happily and expertly.

I didn't work for a few years.  I didn't have to.  I spent my time relaxing, taking a well-earned break.  I mostly stayed around my neighbourhood and took up some activities in and around home, but I got out and travelled a bit around the country and a few times overseas.  It was during my travels within Japan that I met someone that could distract me from my misery and my recently developed fear of getting close to people.

Kazuyoshi became my best friend, actually, and I told him everything about myself.

Everything.

In turn, he told me everything about himself.

He had a daughter named Yuki from a previous marriage.  She was one-and-a-half years old.  Her mother, Kazuyoshi told me, was actually a lovely woman, but they simply didn't click.  They'd always known that and they had jumped into marriage without any deep consideration.  His ex-wife had agreed to let Kazu take care of Yuki because she was planning to move to China to take up a job there.  Apparently she was always wild and not so good with commitments.  As a result of having sole custody of their daughter, Kazu often brought Yuki along when we got together.

When Yuki started addressing me as "mommy", we knew something had to be done.  Children are intuitive little creatures, though, and Yuki was always exceptionally brilliant.  She could sense something in the air when I was around her father, and so she clung onto the idea of me being her mother.  She knew I wasn't her real mother, but aside from being brilliant, she was forgiving, and didn't seem to have any qualms about welcoming me into her little family of two.  No feeling of being betrayed by her blood mother.  No feeling that I was trying to replace some other woman.

Kazu and I had a discussion.  We didn't have to say much.  It was pretty obvious what we felt.  A few months and a short ceremony later, I officially became Yuki's stepmother.  I swore just the day before that I would never be evil.  I would never treat Yuki like Cinderella.  I told her so much in a half-joking way, but she didn't understand the reference.  One day soon I'll sit her down and make her watch the Disney movie.  Hopefully we'll be able to laugh about it together.

So I became involved in another one of these unconventional relationships that I so much like to be in.  Married to a divorced man who has a daughter and is on amiable terms with his ex-wife.  I don't think my mother has quite forgiven me yet.  My sisters, however, have stopped thinking I'm stark raving mad.  My father straddles a tipsy wall.  On the one hand, he wants to support his wife's opinion.  On the other, he wants to support his daughter.  Thus, he is always dodging the bullet, avoiding questions and simply not becoming involved in anything that requires mention of Kazu.  He is an atypical father.  None of my friends' fathers are like him.  I'm lucky to have him, but sometimes I wish he'd take a firmer stand and tell me what he really thinks.  Whether he approves or not.  I want to know.

I disappeared from the entertainment world right after my retirement.  I refused to be associated with anything public anymore.  I received intermittent requests to do ceremonies or benefit concerts, but I always turned them down, often without reply.  Tsunku, the man who helped me start my career, gave me the occasional call just to check up.  Even though painful memories resurfaced whenever I spoke with him, I took his calls because he was genuine in his caring.  I trusted him to keep his mouth shut and not say a word to anyone about where I was and what I was doing.  I told him about Kazu and Yuki, and I told him I was happy.  He confided in me some of his secrets, and the first time he told me personal things about himself, I felt like I had finally grown up enough and was now invited to go and sit with the grownups at the grownup table.

Ceasing all entertainment industry activities didn't keep me out of newspapers and magazines.  That would go on (and still goes on), but they had nothing but empty speculation.  I was spotted with Kazu or Yuki (or both), and then whole pages were written about my secret pregnancy and the shotgun marriage.  I did my best to ignore it all.  My family and my friends knew the truth.

As for Miki... I didn't care what she thought.  It would be better if she believed those articles.  Then she wouldn't think I was heartbroken forever.  She'd see I had a life.  A post-Miki life.  That she didn't matter anymore.  Not one bit.

I expel another sigh.  Thinking of Miki makes me think about my entire life.  I have to push her out of my mind.  Otherwise I'll sit here all afternoon and reminisce, analyse, criticise, and blah blah blah.  She's not important.  Not important.

But sometimes Kazu tells me that she was important.  Maybe not anymore, but that once upon a time, before step-moms and step-sisters were a thing of reality in my life, she did matter.  I'm not sure that he's right.  Once upon a time I was misguided.  Blind.  Or blinded by something.  I thought something was important when it really wasn't.  I get angry at him for telling me what I thought.  I'm me.  I should know.  He becomes silent when I snap at him, and it makes me feel uncomfortable and guilty.  As if maybe I've just proven the point he was trying to make.

My phone rings.

I check and it's Kazu.  I hold the little ringing machine in my hand and watch it, knowing that after ten more seconds, the caller will be directed to my voicemail box.

After nine seconds, I pick up.

"Hi."

There comes a thoughtful pause from Kazu's end.

"What's bothering you?" he asks.

It's obviously not what he is calling to talk about.  Who calls someone out of the blue and asks "what's wrong?" when they have no idea something could possibly be wrong?  He must've picked up on my mood.  But from one short greeting?  That's pretty amazing.  Yuki definitely gets her smarts from him.

"Nothing," I lie automatically, and then I think better of it.  "Uh, I'll tell you later tonight."

And I will.  Hiding things from people is no good.  I've learned that.

"I hope you're okay," he says, and I can picture him winking at me as he says it.  "I was just calling to ask where you are."

"I'm sitting on the left side of the new couch," I reply in a serious tone.

He laughs, which is what I intended. 

"Is Yuki-chan still out with Aunt Yuu?"

Aunt Yuu is Kazu's aunt.  Yuki loves her more than she loves me and Kazu combined.  That's because Yuu spoils the girl rotten.

"Yeah, they were just breaking for lunch before going to the zoo last time I got mail from them."

"Okay, then.  Come and meet me for lunch!"

He sounds excited.  Maybe something good happened at work.  He works at a lumber company that imports from North America.  He's the head of his department and loves his job.  I've never met someone who loves and knows so much about lumber.  Japan is lucky to have such a dedicated man working for the sake of the people.

I tell him I'll get ready and go meet him.

"Meet me in front of that fountain across from my building, okay?  We're going for Korean," he says enthusiastically.

When he's bursting with excitement, he gets bossy like that.  It's funny because sometimes I check him.  I tell him to stop ordering me around, and he flushes with embarrassment and quickly retracts everything he has said.  This time I don't tease.  I tell him I'll be there as soon as I can.  We hang up, and I sit back on the couch before getting up.

I haven't brought Miki up in conversation in a long time.  A few years at least.  I feel apprehensive about doing it today.  I'm worried.  I don't want him to think that I'm obsessing over something.  Because I'm not.  I'm not obsessing over anything.  It was just a chance meeting. 

A chance meeting, but an odd one.  What are the chances of going to the post office after having just moved into a new apartment complex in the neighbourhood and almost bumping into someone that you haven't seen in ten years?  Maybe she works in the area and was taking some time off to pick up or deliver something.  Kazu happens to work within easy walking distance.  I'll have to be careful in the future.  If Miki does work around here, I don't want to make it a habit of bumping into her.  She might not matter anymore, but-

No.  That's it.  Full stop.  She does not matter anymore.  No more.  The only thing she's important for is as a reminder of the tough lesson that I've learned.

I stand up and go to the washroom, touching up my makeup and then making my way out to make sure I have everything I need in my purse.  I turn off all the lights and lock the door.

I get the strangest sense that I'm forgetting something.  Maybe an umbrella.  But the weather forecast has called for clear skies and zero percent chance of rain.  I shake my head and take the elevator down to the street.

I take out my phone and message Kazu.

I've just left the building.  Be there soon.

I look down the street in the direction of the post office.  I sigh for the umpteenth time.  I turn on my heels and walk in the opposite direction.

[OTN1]

Three - Act I

My vision is blurred by the tears pouring out of my eyes.  Hiroshi says something to me, but I can't pay attention to him.  Whatever he's saying is unimportant in the face of my greatest challenge since I was born.  I look in the direction of the door where two customers have just entered.

"Miki!" Hiroshi's voice finally gets through to me, and I sniff, looking back at him.

I'm still blind.

"Are you okay?"

I grab a tissue from my purse and wipe my eyes and nose, followed by gulping all of my water down.  A waiter who is sensitive to my distress is standing nearby, and he quickly fills my glass up again.

"Ahhh," I gasp, finally able to make a sound, my breath laboured.  "That was spicy."

I shudder as I think of the size of the chilli pepper I just ate.  It was just sitting there in my food looking all mild and delicious.  How was I supposed to know that this restaurant used the real thing and not the dumbed down version for wimps (of which I can swallow down ten at a time)?  I hadn't been mentally prepared.  I like my food spicy, but I have to know.  I need that vital information.

"Why'd you eat it?"

Does he have to ask me such a stupid question?  It's food and was on my plate.  Do I have to explain it to him?

I reply by scowling, and he pouts angrily at my reaction.  We sit there glaring each other while I take frequent sips of water to sooth my burning mouth.  The waiter hovers nearby, frightened by the looks on our faces but obligated to refill my water glass.

"Oh, come on," he finally huffs out in a frustrated voice.  "Don't glare at me like that."

I can't help but smirk.  He's always the first to break.  I let the smirk turn into a pleasant smile, and I stop looking at him as if I want to kill him.

"Then don't ask me stupid questions," I sniff jokingly.  "Are you done yet?"

I eye his plate which has one last bean sprout left on it.  He looks down at it and then catches my eye.

"That's a statement," he says, indicating the solitary bean sprout.  "I won't eat it.  It stays behind."

I roll my eyes at his wannabe artiste-ness, and he stands up and goes off to pay the bill.  I hurry close after, wishing I had a bottle of water to take with me.  My tongue hurts.  I stand beside Hiroshi as he pays and I look through my bag for anything to soothe my mouth.  A piece of gum, a candy, a chocolate... anything.

I get a prickly sense at the back of my neck.  It's like my Spidey senses are acting up, except that I don't have Spidey senses.  I look around the restaurant and see a few couples and a family.  It's on the later side of lunch time, but it looks like none of them have ordered anything yet.

I brush off the feeling, hook my arm around Hiroshi's, and pull him out of the restaurant as he fumbles to put his change away.  I take a look back and see movement out of the corner of my eye, but all I see are people ordering lunch.  No assassin coming to shoot me.

I pull Hiroshi over to a nearby ice cream shop, and finally my mouth is soothed and starts to return to its normal state.  We stand on the street in front of the shop and eat our cones.  I look at all the people walking by us, keeping a careful eye out for anyone I know.

"What's got you all riled up today?"

He sounds a bit rude asking, and if I didn't know him any better, I'd shove him away and stalk off.  I know, however, that it's his weird way of displaying curiosity. 

"I'm not riled up.  I'm just recovering from that pepper."

Hiroshi bites down into his ice cream with top and bottom teeth.  I suppress a wince.  It looks painfully cold to do that.  He doesn't notice my discomfort at his way of eating ice cream, and he continues obliviously, staring at me and waiting for an answer.

"Did something happen to you this morning?"

I shake my head.

"I went shopping.  That's all."

I don't even want to mention the post office.  If I do, I might start to say too much.

"You're no fun."

He scrunches his nose up at me and then takes off walking, his legs capable of long strides.

"Wh- hey!" I yell angrily, running to catch up with him.

"If you're going to be like that then I may as well get back to work."

He sounds a bit angry with me.

"I went to the post office and saw someone I used to know a long time ago, okay?  I'm just a little worked up because of that."

He stops walking at his fast pace and slows down to a slow shuffle, allowing me to keep up with him perfectly well.

"Old friend?"

"Something like that.  We parted on bad terms," I mumble.

He takes a deep breath and thinks it through.

"Since when does Micchan get all gloomy about people that are obviously not worth having as friends?"

I would have laughed if he'd been right, which he would have been in any other situation.  In this case, however, I'm the one who is not worthy to be had as a friend.  I'm the one who did something very, very wrong.

"Since it's Micchan's fault," I reply.

"The reason why you fought?"

I nod.

He thinks again.  It looks like he's going to dreg up the best things he can and pass on his wisdom to me.

He slaps me on the shoulder like I'm one of the guys.

"The past is the past, eh?" he laughs.  "You lived it, you learned from it.  Now you get over it!"

He gives me a cheerful grin, which I reply with a nervous smile that must look more like a grimace.  He then takes off with his long strides again.

"Walk me to work, will you?" he asks me.

I stay silent, but jog to catch up with him, shocked by his reply to my worry.  He really has no idea the kind of terrible things I've done in the past.  The way I've lied.

He can never know.

I walk him all the way to work.  If he thought I was riled up before, I wonder what he thinks now.  He doesn't seem to notice that I've become one hundred times tenser, however.  I say goodbye to him at his office, and I then wander back down the street in the general direction of my house, hoping to make it back without incident.

[OTN1]

Four - Act II

We walk into a Korean restaurant.  The room isn't that big, but it's long, making it appear twice as spacious as it is in reality.  Kazu is updating me on his morning.  He's gotten a promotion and is now in charge of a new sub-department in addition to his regular one.

"...  so we got Canfor to sign the deal with us after such a short period of time.  And they met all our requirements.  No compromises.  If it proceeds well, we'll start the operation within the month and..."

Kazu continues to talk, but I do not continue to listen.  I come face to face with her and fear spills through my guts.

She's crying and she looks right up at me.  Across from her is a man whose face I can't see.  What did he say to make her cry?  Did I just walk in on a break-up?

But then she wipes her face with a tissue and drinks water as the man says something to her in surprise and concern.

"...spicy," is all I hear from the conversation.

"This way," Kazu says, tugging at my elbow to lead me to a table.

I tear my eyes off of Miki.  Why is she here at a Korean restaurant that I'm supposed to be enjoying my lunch at?  Who is that guy with her?  And why did she do a stupid thing like that and order a dish too spicy to eat?

We sit down.  I happen to take a seat where, if I shift a bit, I can see Miki's table.  I have to be careful our eyes don't meet.  She looked right at me a few seconds ago, but I don't think she saw me because of her tears.

Kazu goes on about his dead trees while I sit and pretend to listen, all the while dreading the moment when Miki realises I'm in the room and comes up to me to talk.

No, she wouldn't do that.  She's either too cool or too scared of me.  Once we fell out, she wasn't one of those annoying stalker-types that kept calling to ask if we could talk.  She got the message and stayed away from me.

"... and with fifteen bananas, we can create a thermonuclear shield that will bring balance to the force."

"Fifteen bananas, huh?" I mumble, imagining feeling a hand tap my shoulder.

"In our battle against the Temperons."

"Oh, those Temperons," I agree, looking down at my hands.

I feel a hand tap my arm, and I jerk up, looking up and beyond Kazu.

"Right here," Kazu says.

I look at him and see him waving one hand at me, the other on my arm.  I sigh with relief and give him an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"No problem.  I was having fun talking to you about imaginary aliens."

I smile warily.

Should I say something to him?  Should I alert him to the fact that Miki is sitting in this very room?  Or should I just keep my mouth shut and not make a big deal of it?  If I point out that she's in here, I'll have to explain about the post office, and if she happens to overhear me... it's not a situation I'd like to be in. 

I'll keep quiet.  I'll tell him later.  Besides, when I walked in, it looked like the two were almost finished their meal.

"Would now be a good time to tell me what's up with you?" Kazu asks, interrupting my internal debate.

"No," I say quickly.  "Later when you get home, okay?  Now I want to enjoy lunch with you."

I smile and chuckle inwardly at myself as I begin to relax.  There's nothing to get worked up about.  So what if that girl is sitting across the room from me?  It's not like I'm obligated to talk to her.  It's not like I did something terrible to her.  It's not like she can hurt me now.  There's nothing she could say - nothing - that could make me hate her more than I hated her for a long time.  The hate has worn off with time, and so while I would push her out of the way of a oncoming traffic or call the police if a gun was pointed at her head, I would not want to speak with her.  I have nothing to say to her.  I am indifferent to her and her opinion.  I'm beyond it all.

"I kind of tuned out.  What were you saying about a can of four?" I ask, trying to get Kazu back onto his beloved topic of trees.

"Oh, Canfor.  The lumber company.  So we signed a contract with them..."

And just as he begins to explain everything I tuned out for the first time around, I see Miki and her date get up.  I look over Kazu's shoulder carefully and watch as they leave.  The man goes ahead and pays for the dinner and Miki walks up to him, still looking a bit pained from the spiciness of the food.

All of a sudden, as if she knows somebody is watching her, her head twitches up and she looks around the restaurant through searching eyes.  I feel a chill go up my spine as I watch her eyes seeking out the person that's staring at her.  I shrink back a fraction of a centimetre, and then as her eyes sweep by our table, I bend down and rummage through my purse, pretending to grab at a vibrating phone.

When I straighten up and put my purse back down without retrieving anything, I see that Kazu is still talking and Miki has turned away, apparently satisfied with her inspection of the restaurant.  I see her cling onto her companion's arm and pull him out, and a flash of something goes through me.  Perhaps it's sympathy.  For the guy.

Good luck handling her, I think.

I wonder if she can be completely honest with him.  If she can tell him about her past and still have his respect.

As soon as Miki is gone, though, I stop thinking about her.  She's like a mosquito.  Only an issue when in sight, but when not around, forgotten.  Kazu and I finish our meal with a normal conversation.  A very family-oriented one.  We discuss schools for Yuki.  The time is coming soon for her to start primary school, and we want to make sure she goes to a respectable one.

We leave the restaurant talking about the schools available in our neighbourhood, and by that time, I've forgotten all about the post office encounter.

"Don't you think Yuki'd like a sister?  Or brother?" Kazu asks me while in the middle of crossing an intersection.

I stop.  Kazu has to grab my arm and pull me to safety because the light has turned red.  We get to the sidewalk and I refuse to go a step further until I've thought about what he's just said to me.

We haven't talked about that in a long time.  We did initially, but he was so distressed at the thought of having to be away on frequent business trips that he refused to let anything happen while he wasn't around for half of it.  We decided there was no rush.  We had Yuki.  We were young.

But now with things soaring at work and fewer business trips, he can be home more often.  I'm more than ready for it.  I'm not getting any younger.  But now is not a good time to talk about, what with being on a busy street corner.

"Maybe she does need some company," I agree with a smile.  "See you after work."

He smiles back happily and says goodbye quietly.  I walk home, cheerful, nothing able to shatter my happy world.

[OTN1]

Five - Act III

I push the post office incident out of my mind.  Several days pass and I mostly forget it has happened. 

Shige calls me in for a one-on-one meeting on Friday afternoon, telling me that she has a new project we're going to get started on for the issue that will appear in the last week of next month.

"Anniversaries," she says to me when I walk into her office.

I take a seat and look at her blankly.

"Whose?"

"Suzuki Haruka: three years.  Onitsuka Mayo: four years.  Yumi: two years.  Do you know what all these three have in common?"

I don't know what she's getting at.

"They're all girls?" I ask.

Shige shakes her head, no doubt wondering where all my intelligence has gone.

"Um, they all like the colour pink?" I try again, only trying half-heartedly to guess at what she's talking about.

This time she rolls her eyes.

"June!" she tells me in a shrill, all-knowing voice.

"Their birthdays?" I ask, wondering if it's part of my job description to know those kinds of inane details.

"No!" she scolds me.  "Their month of debut."

Oh.

Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?

"I hate June," I mutter.

"Here we go again," Shige mutters back in response.

Here we go again, I think about her statement.

"I know that you have some built-in genes that don't let you let go of your past, but could you, like, try for once not to mention it out loud?"

Oh, nice one, Shige, I think.  You actually sound intelligent.  You also sound like Hiroshi.

"I wasn't complaining about that," I say defensively.

She thinks I'm making reference to getting kicked out of the Project.

"About what?" Shige asks.

Is she dumb?  She's the one implying things with her sentences.

"Getting kicked out," I roll my eyes.  "And anyway, I wasn't talking about that.  I just hate the month."

Plenty of other things - good and bad - have happened in June.  I traditionally hold it as my unlucky month of the year.

"Well, if it's not that, then it's something else.  But you know, it doesn't really matter what it is.  Why should you let it bother you anymore?"

"Listen," I say, shifting to the edge of my chair.  "I don't have a complex where I can't let go of the past, or whatever.  I just don't like this month."

I'm actually itching for her to continue.  I feel a need to yell something at somebody.  Shige makes an excellent scapegoat for my pent up frustrations.  She always forgives me in the end.

"Maybe it's because it's Matsuura-san's birthday," Shige goes on, not seeming to have heard me.

There's an unspoken rule between us.  We don't talk about Aya.  All she knows is that Aya and I don't talk anymore, but she never questions it.  She has respected that until this very moment.

"What??" I ask in disbelief.  "That has nothing to do..."

"I know you guys haven't talked in forever.  Maybe that's what's bothering you," she says, sounding thoughtful and a little inquisitive.

The girl must be taking random shots.  She can't possibly know I saw the girl just days ago.  It must be all one huge coincidence.

It's ridiculous.  Why does this sort of thing have to happen in my life?  Why can't my life be normal?  Without stupid occurrences that seem more like instances of divine intervention rather than just coincidence.

"No, that's not it."

"Or maybe it's 'cause you got dumped by the guy that caused you to lose your first job," she continues.

That was a cruel thing to bring up.

Right at the end of June, that oh-so-wonderful, funny, relatively new, great guy introduced a new element into our relationship, and that was the break-up.  He had found someone else, and he'd given me a day's notice before going to move in with her.  Some who knew what I did to Aya would have thought I had it coming to me, but it was a very different situation.  I cared about both people.  Mister Spectacular stopped caring about me completely.  It was like the light bulb illuminating his eyes died and could not be replaced.

Don't.  Freaking.  Remind me.

If Shige were a doctor, I'd complain about her bad bedside manner.

"It was-"

"-an amicable break-up," Shige says with me.  "I know, I know."

She doesn't believe that, though.  Of course not.  I always say it, but a few people know it's not true.  I've even talked to her about it when she was caught in a similar situation and I was imparting my wisdom.

"Then maybe it's the recent rainy weather," she finally finishes, a hint of a caustic tone in her words.

"Yeah, it's the weather.  Makes me cranky," I mumble, praying that our discussion is over.

"Anyway," Shige says, reverting to her bubbly tone, bouncing up from her chair and handing me a paper.  "Take a look at this.  It's just an outline of my idea.  Let's set a meeting for tomorrow and discuss it.   Bring your ideas!"

I find myself taking the paper and switching to my professional demeanour, making some preliminary comments off the top of my head.  I then excuse myself to go back to my own office.  When I get there, I sit at my desk.

Do I really let the past have such a hold on me?  It's not like I'm still longing for days of old.  I no longer obsess about going back into time and fixing my huge mistakes.  I don't constantly sit there and think "I wish Aya'd forgive me."  But Shige's right.  I have to stop thinking negatively.  Hiroshi's right.  The past is the past.  I've got to get over that last bit of it.  I'm almost there.

I look at the list of names on the sheet of paper Shige has given me, and I start to think about past Junes.  June twelve years ago: good.  Eleven years ago: good. Ten years ago: everything went bad.  The next two Junes I wallowed in self-pity the entire month.  Now the month approaches again, and while in the last few years nothing has gone awry, I still remember certain things.  The weather reminds me.  The things in the city that I see remind me.  The dates on the calendar remind me.

However, this is work.  I don't want to let our readers down by being so self-involved that I don't do my part properly in producing an interesting magazine for them to read.  I swallow whatever hesitation I have, and I jump into the work.

That evening, Hiroshi and I go out to meet some friends of ours.  We are lucky and have Saturday off, so we can stay out late and sleep in late.  There's nothing like a night out to erase all worries from my mind. 

The following Saturday, we wake up at noon and go out for lunch.  After we are stuffed with soba, we take a walk in the park.  We're talking about a story one of our friends told us yesterday, and I hang onto his arm, squeezing it as I laugh until a tear makes it way out of the corner of my eye.

It is then, gasping for breath from so much laughter, that I come face-to-face with the last person I want to meet.

[OTN1]

Six - Act IV

Kazu and I have a nice and long talk that evening after tucking Yuki into bed.  When I was a bit younger, planning the future used to come with a mixture of fear and excitement (mostly the latter), but now this time, it comes with a huge sense of relief.  It's a comfort to learn that we both are on the same wavelength.

A few days pass, and I feel recharged.  I consider the future of my career.  I have a secret from the world.  I may have removed myself from the entertainment industry, but I have certainly not taken music out of my life.  I've kept practicing on my own, and I've been working on creating my own music.  Kazu is my greatest supporter.  He's always hinted that I should go back out into the public and show them what I've been doing.  I've always ignored those hints.  But now... Now I might consider it.  I don't want to make a big deal about it, but it would be nice to show where I've managed to go since quitting the business.

On Saturday, Kazu has a day off.  Yuki goes off to play with her second cousin, so Kazu and I go for a long walk in the park.  We stop for ice cream and eat it by a tiny pond filled with carp.  Then we continue on our way, no plan in mind.

We walk along a small path wide enough only for two.  I notice another couple in the distance coming towards us, so I make a note to remember to move out of the way when we cross paths.  What I don't make a mental note of is what to do in case it's Miki, and of course (because my life is full of silly twists of fate) it happens to be Miki and that man I saw with her at the Korean restaurant.

I notice this when they are about three metres away.  I look up and simply don't believe what I see.  Miki is hanging off of Korean restaurant man's arm and laughing till she's crying about something.  This is the second time I've seen her crying in the past few days, although these tears are brought on not by sorrow.  The last time I saw her crying out of distress was ten years ago.

She looks up, her eyes lock with mine, and then it's clear that we're in a whole load of something that is not shaping up to be pleasantly fragrant like fresh roses.

I stop.  She stops.  Kazu looks at her.  I look at Kazu.  He recognises her.  Miki looks at Kazu.  She looks at the man she's with.  I look at the man she's with.  He does not show any sign of recognition.  He looks at Kazu.  He looks at Miki.  Miki looks at me.  I look back at her.  She takes in a breath.  Maybe she's going to say something.

Say "excuse me" and walk by.  There's not even an acquaintanceship between the two of us.

"Friend of yours?" Miki's man asks, seeing the obvious flash of recognition between us.

Don't start.  Please, I find myself begging desperately in my mind.

She's hanging off of his arm and they seem close, but if he doesn't know who I am, then I wonder how close they really are. 

Also, have I really changed that much in ten years?  Have people forgotten my face?  He seems to be at an age where he should have known who I was growing up unless he was raised in a remote island village in Okinawa or a foreign country.

"Yeah," Miki says in a quiet tone.  "Old co-worker."

The man looks at me a little more closely and understanding lights his eyes up.  Now he recognises who I am.  I guess he hasn't seen an updated photograph of me in years, much like the rest of the public.  I've been largely forgotten.  Three quarters of my old fans probably wouldn't notice me in a crowd.

"Long time ago," I add redundantly, speaking my first words.

There's a silence.  I can feel Kazu beside me.  Miki, Kazu, and I understand the tension in this situation.  It seems as though this man Miki is with hasn't a clue.  Miki has let go of his arm.  The four of us stand as if locked in a face-off.  The awkwardness doesn't come close to anything I've felt before.

"I'm Tabe.  Nice to meet you," Kazu says suddenly, addressing Miki and the mystery man.

What are you doing?

"Oh.  Sato Hiroshi.  The pleasure's mine."

Now the man has a name.  It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't have time to think about it.  My eyes lock with Miki's.  She looks away.

"Fujimoto," Miki says simply to Kazu, and then gives him a trace of a smile to lighten the impact of her greeting.  "I used to work with Aya-chan."

She gestures toward me with a brief flick of the hand.  I cringe at my name being spoken by her.  In a way it seems right that she still address me like that, but in another way she shouldn't even be using my name.  It's strange.  I should simple be "this girl" or "her".  Not "Aya-chan" or "Matsuura-san".

"Yes.  I've heard so much from Aya," Kazu says pleasantly, and for a moment I want to kick him.

Great.  Now Miki can jump to conclusions and imagine what sort of a nasty picture I've painted of her.

Miki's reaction is no reaction at all.  If she's upset to find out I've told Kazu things, she hides it well.  No surprise there.

The tension is such that I can see the man named Sato starting to feel it.  I look up at Kazu, who meets my gaze for a brief second before turning his head to Miki.

"Say, why don't you two go grab a coffee and catch up.  I've got to go and attend to some business anyway," he says.

Oh my god.  You are dead, Kazu.  Dead.  When we get home tonight, I'm going to beat you to a bloody pulp, drown your head in the toilet, fling you over the side of the balcony and-

"Oh, I don't want to take up any of your time," Miki says quickly, addressing me verbally but looking at Kazu.

However, her oblivious man (whose aggravatingly innocent role in all this reminds me briefly of a certain boy I used to date), pipes up.

"Yeah, why don't you two go on?"

I can tell from the way Miki's eyes narrow the slightest bit that she, too, wants to murder the man she's with.

Now wouldn't that make an interesting novel?  Two girls with a complicated history reunite ten years later and murder their respective husbands, leading to a thrilling epic tale of two girls turned friends turned lovers turned enemies turned accomplices in crime over the course of over a decade.  Racy.  Unsettling.  A page turner.

"I think-" I start.

"Excellent, then.  It's settled," Kazu says, clapping his hands together and then turning to Miki.  "It was nice to meet you."

And before I know it, the two boys have walked off, leaving me and Miki standing in the middle of a park on a sunny, warm day.

"What the hell, Hiroshi," Miki mutters under her breath.

I see she hasn't lost her particular charming self over the years.

I don't say anything to her.  What do you say to someone you haven't seen in ten years?  Someone who you used to be so close to but then was betrayed by?  She doesn't say anything either.  I wonder if guilt is eating at her.

"I'm sorry," she says suddenly, cutting into my thoughts.

For a second I think that she's apologising for ten years ago, but then she speaks some more.

"I didn't mean for us to get us into this situation."

It's not like she could have prevented it.  We both happen to be strolling through the same park at the exact same time.  We also both happen to have aggravating significant others.

We don't speak another word, and in silent agreement, we start to walk to an empty bench by the fountain.  We sit down facing the water and both look forward. 

Just as I've always thought.  We have nothing to say to each other.

"So is that guy your husband?"

No.  She doesn't deserve to ask that question.  She doesn't deserve to know anything about my life now.

"Yes," I reply simply.

I'm too polite to avoid answering a straightforward question.

"What are you now?  Tabe Aya?"

It sounds funny to hear her say that.  Like she's tasted something peculiar and isn't quite sure what to make of it.  Like tasting two fruits never before mixed together.

"Oh, no.  I kept my name," I reply firmly.

"That's just like you," she comments with a small, genuine smile that seems out of place here.

And she would know, wouldn't she.  I have to resign myself to the fact that despite her stupidity in the past, she knows my character well.

"What about you?  Married?"

She shakes her head.

"Not yet.  It's been a busy few years."

What has she been doing? I wonder.

Nothing to put her on billboards or television commercials is all I can figure out.  It's amazing how even when you completely ignore the entertainment industry, you can know so much just from the everyday things you see pasted on every available surface in the city.

"What have you been up to?"

The part of me that doesn't want to talk to her is slowly diminishing.  I'm extremely wary of what I say to her, but once faced with the beast, curiosity outweighs flight instincts, and I decide a little poking and prodding can't hurt.

She raises curious eyebrows at me.

"I suppose you don't read that magazine, then."

Enigmatic reply.  She's been in a magazine recently?  For what?  Modelling?  She's too old for that.  She doesn't look it, but she can't get away with lying about her age since it's an easily checkable fact.

"Remember Shige-san?  Sayu?"

Michishige Sayumi?  A name I haven't heard in years.  I nod.

"She's the head of the most famous girls' magazine in the country.  Ever heard of Superbly?  I work right beside her editing that."

I try not to let my jaw drop in surprise.  Of course I've heard of Superbly.  Nobody in Japan hasn't heard of it.  I've never touched a copy, but I've seen the cover of it at stores since it started as a small, humble fashion magazine.  To learn that Miki is some sort of high-ranking staff member of that magazine sends me into fits of disbelief.  That's only half of the astonishment I feel to hear that Michishige heads the publication.
 
How could a dolt like Miki be an editor?  Aren't editors supposed to be intelligent university graduates who are good at reading and writing and have an excellent command of the Japanese language?  Aren't editors supposed to be... not like Miki at all?  Where'd she get the smarts to do that sort of thing?  Miki meeting deadlines while under strict management is fine because she's motivated by a natural aversion to punishment.  But Miki meeting deadlines while being the management is impossible to believe.  Simply impossible.

"Oh," I say aloud, hiding my true thoughts.

She looks at me.  Peripheral vision allows me to see her eyes studying my face.

"You don't believe it, do you," she states.

I angle my head to return her look.

"But it's true.  Some time in the past ten years I really grew up.  Left that path of youth we used to walk down.  It's far behind me now."

She really has changed.  I can tell.  She's still the same Miki, but she's done extraordinarily well for herself.  Working as the sub-head of Superbly, living with a tall, handsome gentleman, and still looking not a day over twenty-five.

But as I look in her eyes closely now for the first time in ten years, I see something more there.  Under the thick layer of good feeling rests a kind of uneasiness.  It's probably brought out by my presence, but it seems something she's accustomed to.

"Are you happy?"

Maybe I'm bullying her with this question.  Maybe I'm trying to wrest out some admission of misery from her.

Her look doesn't change at all.

"Yeah."

She sounds like she means it.

"Are you?" she shoots back.

I think over my life. 

Am I happy?

Yes.  Yes, I definitely am.  I'm surrounded by people who love me and who I love back.  That's what I've always needed and wanted.

"Yeah," I echo her reply.

But there's one thing I'm not happy about, and that's her.  I realise that she represents my one failure in life.  The one big one.  She represents all my regret, because she's the only thing I truly regret.  But not in the way one might think.  I think if I never got to know her, I wouldn't be the person I am now, so I don't regret meeting her.  Kazu is right.  She was important.  Was.  I guess the thing that I regret is that it couldn't have worked out for the better or at least ended in a cleaner way.  That maybe it was destined to happen this way, and nothing could stop that stupidity we went through.  I regret that it happened, but understand that it had to happen.  We had to carry it out to the bloody, painful conclusion.

"Have any regrets?"

More bullying courtesy of me.  But I'm curious.  That's all.

She shoots me a look.

Should I not go there?  Or does she not mind and is just surprised?

"Don't we all?" she asks with a hint of acidity in her voice.

Well, I'd say I just struck a nerve.  However, I don't feel so good about it.  I need to stop before I become nasty, cruel.

I stand up, making it clear that I want this conversation to end soon.

"Well, I hope that you can get over them.  No use worrying about the past anymore."

It almost sounds like forgiveness coming from me.

She stares down at the dirt.

"See you," I finally say after she doesn't reply.

I turn around to go, thinking that leavings things like this will be a lot better than how they've stood for the past ten years.  I'm not refusing to acknowledge her and she's not begging for forgiveness.

"Aya," she calls out before I can leave.

Do I want to hear what she's going to say?  I kind of don't.  Her voice sounds a little anxious.

Don't say anything stupid, I beg her.  Don't say anything awkward.  Don't say anything to rehash a past that's done and over with and buried underneath heaps of rubble.  And most of all, don't admit your undying love for me.  Just let me walk away.

I stop and turn around, taking a few paces forward to the bench so that she doesn't have to broadcast her thoughts to the ravens that are puttering about nearby.

"I'm really sorry," she says quietly.  "For everything."

This time, I know for sure that it's an apology for all that mess.  I haven't heard one in ten years.

I've imagined this moment before.  We meet again after many years and she apologises... and I snub her.  I rub her bad deeds in her face, or I just ignore her words.  I say something nasty to hurt her.

"It's okay.  Don't worry anymore," I reply in the same genuine tone.

And then I give her a bit of a smile.  Not a big one.  Just a small, comforting one.

I am Ayaya, after all, and always will be no matter how much I grow up and remove myself from the period I used that name.  Hatred doesn't suit me.  Love does.  Compassion does.  It's time I remember that.  If I can smile and forgive Miki, then my heart can be saved from becoming a bitter, vengeful organ that holds grudges that do nothing but fester and make me feel like a dreadful person.

I hope that she can tell I mean it.  I want her to stop thinking about it.  I don't want to see her or anyone suffer.  The past is the past, after all, and I should make an example of taking my own advice.

I get a good look at her face before I nod goodbye and turn around to walk home.  I'm conscious of every step I take.  I half expect to hear footsteps come running after me, Miki asking in a roundabout and awkward way if we can be friends again.  But I know deep inside that she won't do that.  Before I turned around to leave, I saw in her eyes acceptance.  I saw gratitude.  And I saw understanding.  We're not best friends again, and we can probably never be, of which I am ninety-nine point nine nice nine percent sure of that.  I am sure she knows that, too.  She knows that it's best to just leave things as they are: on the good side of neutral.

And if we see each other on the street again from this day on, we can exchange polite greetings and continue on our separate ways.

I have a feeling, though, that this isn't our last meeting.  Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, but the way things have always worked out in my life, twists of fate seem to rain down on me in sheets.  If I decide to go back out into the public world, we might end up crossing paths at work.  Regardless of the direction of my career, we might end up in the same line at the supermarket.

The past will never come back.  Only our future will come.  And it won't be nearly as shiny and ideal as the one we imagined together a decade ago.  But that's okay.  We have our other sources of happiness.  Or at least I do.

I walk home no longer wanting to kill Kazu.  I want to hug him and thank him.  Not many people would do what he's done for me.  Because of him, I've discovered that I'm able to forgive.  That, I now know, is one of the most important things you can do with your heart.  Now that I've written the final sentence of the book that's been unfinished and waiting for years to be concluded, I feel renewed, and after ten years of going through life as though swimming through molasses, I can now start living life at my normal, vibrant pace.

I stop once I'm far away enough, and I turn around.  I can't see Miki, but I imagine that I can.  In real life, I take a deep breath and hold it in to remember everything that has just happened before turning around and walking home; in my mind, I smile at her, wave bye-bye, and skip off cheerfully towards the horizon.

[OTN1]

Seven -Act V

Why?  Why do we have to meet like this?  On my day off.  In such a peaceful atmosphere.  When I was having so much fun and finally forgetting about my sighting at the post office.

"Friend of yours?"

Those are the words that pull me out of my trance.  Hiroshi speaks them, and I remember that we're in a park.  He and I have been walking and laughing, and we've run right into two people.  One who I know, one who I don't.  I stare at both of them.

"Yeah," I reply almost straight away, surprised that my voice sounds normal, although quiet.  "Old co-worker."

That has to be the greatest exaggeration ever.  "Friend of mine"?  The answer to that is not even close to "yeah".  Now if it was "former friend of mine", then yes, that would be right.  But Hiroshi has no idea.

How can he have no idea who Aya is?  He knows I've worked with her.  She's famous!  Stupid Hiroshi.  Can't even tell when he's standing in front of one of the most famous idols in-

Former.  Former idol.  Many years ago...

I correct myself.  I scold myself.  Hiroshi shouldn't be expected to remember Aya's face so many years after she disappeared.  The only reason why I remember her is because I knew her.  He never knew her.  He never met her.  And I have rarely spoken about her.  He knows we had a falling out, and that's about it.  He asked me before - a long time ago - what it had been about, but I gave him a vague "it's a girl thing" kind of answer and that averted his curiosity.

I look at him quickly, and I see him eying Aya and starting to recognise her.

'Atta boy, Hiro-kun.

Sometimes he acts like a dumb dog, which is weird because he's so smart.  I love that about him.  But now is not the time to be thinking about my favourite Hiroshi charm points.  I let go of his arm subtly.

"Long time ago," Aya speaks, and after ten years, her live voice flows into my ears.

She sounds exactly the same.  Exactly.  It matches perfectly with my memories.  Memories of good times listening to that voice on lazy days, and being lulled to sleep by it...

Stop this line of thought now.

I follow my own command, and am engulfed by the awkward silence that settles over us.

Finally, the man Aya is with speaks.

"I'm Tabe.  Nice to meet you," he says to us.

And who are you, Tabe? I wonder. 

Her boyfriend?  Her cousin?  Her co-worker?

Her sugar daddy?

Don't think things like that!

I look at her, and she has an unreadable look on her face, although if I had to guess (and it's really not hard to), I'd say she wants to break up this little party as soon as possible.

I wonder if she'll hit me.  Slap me or punch me.  Or scream at me...

"Oh.  Sato Hiroshi.  The pleasure's mine."

My Hiroshi is as polite as ever, and even though he's starting to sense something a little off about this group of four, he keeps his nerves in check and turns on the charm.

Aya looks at me, and I look away quickly, addressing this boyfriendcousinsugardaddy named Tabe.

"Fujimoto," I say in a voice that is far too serious.

If I act angry, I'm not going to get anywhere.  I'm not going to get anything.  I'd better be polite.  I smile a bit.

"I used to work with Aya-chan."

The minute I say that, I bite my tongue.  What am I doing referring to her as if we're still friends? 

But better yet, what do I think I'm going to gain by being my most polite?  It's not like she's going to suddenly run up to me, give me a hug, and suggest we go for manicures and catch up on the past ten years.  I'm surprised she hasn't walked off already.

"Yes.  I've heard so much from Aya," Tabe says.

I resist the terrific urge to raise an eyebrow and look at Aya.  What has she told him?  Everything? 

I keep my outside features perfectly calm.

It doesn't bother me.  It doesn't bother me.  It doesn't bother me... I chant in my head like a monk.

Tabe looks up at Aya and then at me.

"Say, why don't you two go grab a coffee and catch up.  I've got to go and attend to some business anyway."

"What are you saying, you idiot?!  If you've heard so much about me, you obviously know that Aya never wants to talk to me again.  What the hell, you moron?  Get off my planet!" is what I want to say.

Of course I don't say that.

"Oh, I don't want to take up any of your time," I say, looking at Tabe.

I can't look at Aya.  I'm afraid of what I'll see.

But maybe I should.  Maybe Tabe is privy to some information about Aya.  That she wants to talk to me.  That she wants to be friends with me again.  That... I'm delusional and should be shot for thinking I'd ever be forgiven.

I cast a quick look at Aya, and I breathe a sigh of relief in my mind.  She's looking at Tabe.  She's looking a little angry.

I try not to feel like my one little flame of hope has been trodden on.  I know a snowball has a better chance of surviving in hell, but I suppose seeing how much she doesn't want to be left alone with me stings nonetheless.

"Yeah, why don't you two go on?"

Oh my god.  Shut up, Hiroshi!

I can't help but narrow my eyes and look at him.  If Aya doesn't want to be alone with me, I don't want to be alone with her.  I don't want to be in a scary situation where she obviously does not want to be there and is liable to blow up at me at any time.

"I think-" Aya starts, and I praise an almighty being for giving her an idea of how to get out of this.

However, she's interrupted by her own man.

"Excellent, then," he says with a clap of the hands.  "It's settled."

And the truth of it all is that I'm glad.  Even if she doesn't want to talk to me.  Even if she throws dirt in my eyes (which is a real possibility).  I want to give it one try. 

"It was nice to meet you," Tabe continues, looking at me.

The boys nod goodbye to us, and they leave us standing on the path together.

"What the hell, Hiroshi," I mutter, trying to relieve the enormous tension I feel by scolding someone else aloud.

It doesn't work too well.  I'm a bit terrified that Tabe is going to say something to Hiroshi.  Hiroshi is best left in the dark.  It's not that I don't trust him.  He'll just worry.  And my past is my past.  Mine mine mine.  It's private.  He doesn't have to know.  They're my accomplishments and my mistakes.  They've shaped me, and he gets the final product.  That should be a good enough thing for him.

So here we are.  Two former friends in a park.  There's an obvious pause where the first has to be brave and speak up.  I decide that I have to be the first.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't mean for us to get us into this situation."

Not that it's my fault, but I figure she's going to blame anything that goes wrong on me.  She'd probably blame me for last year's huge and fatal flood in Rio de Janeiro.  Anything to take a stab at me.

She doesn't say anything to me, and I stand there feeling awkward, my face probably red from embarrassment.

And what happens next?  Something that gives me hope.

After the uncomfortable silence, we make a decision together silently just like in the old days and move to sit on a nearby bench.  We still have that synchronised touch.  It seems it becomes one of the laws of nature when we are in each other's presence.

We sit facing a fountain.  I don't dare try to start the conversation again.  My attempt before was too lame.

But I have so many questions.  I have so much I want to say to her.  I can't keep quiet.  Not when I have this chance.  The tiny flame of hope is re-lit.  She hasn't shoved me in the fountain and run off laughing like a madman, so it means she can tolerate being in my presence.

I need to apologise to her.  I need to say I'm sorry for all the bad things I did to her.  But if I do, she'll get angry.  I can tell.  She doesn't want to hear another apology from me.

I settle for a polite but nosey question.

"So is that guy your husband?"

"Yes," she replies.

She doesn't even seem annoyed that I've asked her something personal.

But wait.  They're married?  Well, that's... a relief?  I guess all wounds heal after time. 

Right?

How much time left until mine heal?

"What are you now?  Tabe Aya?"

It sounds weird to say that.  I could never imagine her changing her name.  Tachibana Aya.  That would've been ridiculous.  Tabe Aya... that sounds even stranger.

"Oh, no.  I kept my name," she replies with a shake of the head.

Now that's a true relief!

"That's just like you," I say, the relief showing through in a smile that I let past my defences.

She looks a little irked to hear me say that, and I hush up, trying to wipe the smile off my face.  I don't need to remind her that once upon a time, I was the closest thing to her.  Before I screwed up.

"What about you?  Married?" she asks me.

Her turn to be intrusive.  I wonder if she really cares or if she's just being polite and returning my inquiries with fake interest.

"Not yet.  It's been a busy few years," I say with a shake of the head.

It's not because I can't get over you.  Don't think that for a minute, I think a little too forcefully in my mind.

"What have you been up to?"

Is she serious?  She doesn't know?

"I suppose you don't read that magazine, then," I say, raising my eyebrows in surprise.

I guess when she disappeared from the public, the public disappeared from her, too.  Like, seriously disappeared.  If she hasn't heard about me and Sayu and our magazine, then she must be living under a rock.

She gives me one of her "go on" looks.  I remember that expression.  She used to use it a lot with me...

God, even her expressions are still the same. 

But then what did I expect?  A completely different person?  Maybe parts of her are different, but her mannerisms are all exactly the same.  Of course she's far more cautious around me now, but there are things, expressions, that she can't control and that I know oh so well.  It starts to hurt just a little bit more.  What did I do?  How could I have been so stupid?

No.  I have to answer the question.

"Remember Shige-san?  Sayu?" I ask Aya, picturing Shige's cheerful face in my head, willing myself to concentrate on it so that I don't lose myself in a puddle of regret.

I think Shige would die of happiness to hear I am visualising nothing but her face in my mind and trying to make it as cute as possible.  The cuter it is, the less I'll think about my problems.  The more I'll want to poke fun at Shige for being so sickeningly adorable.

Aya's eyes light up in recognition.

"She's the head of the most famous girls' magazine in the country.  Ever heard of Superbly?  I work right beside her editing that."

Aya keeps her head pointed towards the fountain, but I can see the utter shock on her face.  That expression.  That one I know so well.  I used to get it a lot, although often as a joke.  But sometimes I really did do and say things to surprise her to great extents.  Let out some hidden layer of myself or made a smart statement she'd never have thought me capable of.

"When did you turn smart, Miki?  How the heck can you be editing a magazine when you can barely spell?" is what I bet she's thinking.

"Oh," she utters aloud, her voice filled with barely-hidden disbelief.

"You don't believe it, do you," I say, a little amused.

She looks back at me and says nothing.

"But it's true," I assure her.  "Some time in the past ten years I really grew up.  Left that path of youth we used to walk down.  It's far behind me now."

I don't need you anymore.  I don't I don't I don't...

Who am I trying to convince?

Left that path of youth?  I may have left it, but I didn't advance forward.  I'm walking on a path parallel to it and trying to find a bridge that'll take me over to the side I belong on.

Lend me a hand, will you?  Throw me a line.  Show me a weakness in the wall.

But I hide my desperation behind my well-practiced adult face.  I'm a grownup now.  I'm over thirty years old.  I have to be responsible for my life.  I can't go gallivanting around and messing things up like I used to.  Back when I thought there was no harm in giving two people my heart.  Different parts of my heart, but still the same organ.  Now that I have what I have, I need to settle down with it and keep it.  Not gather more and more.

I laugh at myself.  Who am I kidding?  I don't even have a choice about gathering more.  Aya's definitely not going to be coming over for tea any day soon.

But wait.  She's looking at me closely.  She's studying me.  What is she thinking?  She doesn't look angry.  She looks curious. 

"Are you happy?" she asks me.

It's as if she can sense this inner struggle of mine.  Maybe she's getting her secret weapon ready.  She's going to stab me in the gut with a phrase.  Make me feel terrible all over again.

So I decide on my answer.

"Yes, I am happy.  Hiroshi makes me happy.  Maybe not as happy as yo-"

Good thing I've learned how to think before speaking.  Sometimes. 

"Yeah.  Are you?"

She pauses to think.  Her face looks pleasantly pensive.

"Yeah," she says in the same tone as I just used, yet she manages to sound three thousand times more confident.

"Have any regrets?"

That's it.  She's officially gone into bitchy bully mode.  I don't deserve the luxury of angry.  I deserve exactly what I'm getting.  But I'm not going to follow the rules.  I shoot her a look that's halfway between angry and sad.  She must know that I have tonnes of regrets.  Tonnes.

"Don't we all?" I ask, trying to mask most of the bitterness.

I stare at her, wanting to yell at her for asking me such a thing.

But her eyes change.  Something goes through her like a ghost through a wall, and she's a different person than she was a millisecond ago.

She stands up and looks down at me.

"Well, I hope that you can get over them.  No use worrying about the past anymore."

I need to clean my ears about because she can't have said what I think she just said.

Or can she have?

It sounds like she's forgiven me.  She's telling me not to feel bad anymore.  She knows what my regrets are.  But does she know my thoughts right now - that I regret the past, and that despite everything Hiroshi and Shige and the entire world tell me, I want to reclaim that past?

I stare down at the ground.  I can't answer her.  I don't know what to say.  I want her to know everything that I'm thinking right now.  I want her to tell me again without a doubt that I'm forgiven.  That I'm not the evil monster I think I am - or was.  That she knows I didn't mean any harm.  That she understands what we've lost.  That she'd do anything to get it back.

"See you," I hear her voice come in through my partially blocked ears.

She turns around to leave, and no.  I can't let her.  Not until I've said something.  Anything.

"Aya!"

I call her back to me. 

Oh my god.  She's not going to turn around.  She can tell what I'm thinking.  I'm sure of it.  She doesn't want to turn around because she's scared of me.  My thoughts.  What I want. 

She turns around, though, and walks up to me.  She doesn't sit, but she stands beside me and listens.  She doesn't look angry.  She doesn't look nervous.  Just attentive.

What do I say?  What do I say to that face that won't give me any kind of clue?

Shige's face floats past my eyes again. 

"I know that you have some built-in genes that don't let you let go of your past..."

She gives me a menacing look that just looks cute.

Hiroshi joins her.

"The past is the past, eh?  You lived it, you learned from it.  Now you get over it!"

He laughs and gives me a playful whack on the head.

I do want to get over it.  I do want to fix my DNA and make it so that I don't care about Aya.

But you can't fix something when it's not broken.  My genes are not broken.  It's the way they were from the beginning.

But Aya's genes are different, I guess.  She's better at adapting to changes.  She's better at moving on.  She's a better person than me.  Always has been.  Always will be.  That's why she deserves to keep this happy life she's found.  Who am I to ruin it for her again?  I have to show her that I'm not a degenerate human being.  I have a heart.

"I'm really sorry," I almost whisper.  "For everything."

Everything bad I did to you.  Even everything good I did to you.  Because if I hadn't been around you at all, you wouldn't have had to deal with all that crap I put you through.  You could've done better.

She considers my apology, which is a lot better a reaction than I would ever have expected.

And then she speaks magic words.  They're the open sesame and abracadabra of my heart.

"It's okay.  Don't worry anymore."

And accompanied with her acceptance of my apology is a smile.  One of the ones she used to give me when I was sad and needed a little bit of subtle cheering up.  A smile specially reserved for me that I never saw her use on anyone else.

She stands there staring at me, and I wonder if she wants to say more.  I want her to say so much more.

But I know it'll never come.

She nods goodbye.

Maybe I'll never see her again.

She walks off slowly, but with a purpose.  I stare after her.

I wish she hadn't said those words to me.  She's given me more than I have earned.  She's handed me a pass that should lead me out of my prison of regret.

But it doesn't, because after talking to her again, what I want is not just forgiveness, but her.  Hiroshi can take the apartment and all the furniture and the money.  All I want is that person walking away from me.

Just you, I think, staring at her back.

But she turns off the path and walks beyond some trees.

And that's the moment where I know without a doubt that I have finally completed the process of losing the most important thing in my life.

-The end of story 11

[OTN1]

This picks up where Love x ∞ left off in the "other world" Aya was thrown into.  What if at that point, Aya returned to her own world, but another copy of her remained in the other world?

Restart (Love x ∞ Part II)
Final story.  Story 12

Chapter 1 of 29

I woke up suddenly.  My eyes just snapped open and I saw a sight completely different from what I usually saw in the mornings.  I was lying beside someone I'd only met two months ago.  A girl with long, dark hair and light, creamy skin that most people in the world would only ever see in moisturizer commercials.

Dear god, what did I do??

I panicked and started to hyperventilate as I rolled onto my back and looked at the unfamiliar hotel room ceiling.

I had cheated on my boyfriend, my almost-fiancé, with a famous idol.  Willingly.  And she was a girl.  I had stayed overnight in a hotel where guests of guests were not allowed to do so.  And I'd forgotten to call my parents to tell them I wouldn't be home for the night!  Somehow, even that last one seemed vitally important to note during my crisis.

My parents.  Oh, my poor parents!  If they ever discovered what the precious baby of the family was secretly doing behind closed doors, they'd never forgive themselves (or their precious baby).  I'd be disowned, ridiculed, shamed, gossiped about, run out of town...

But wait.  I was being selfish.  What about Aya?  Her career would be destroyed.  Her life would be even more ruined than mine.  I was just some country daughter, but she was nation-wide famous.  She wouldn't be able to walk to the store without being stared at or whispered about.  Her face would be plastered on all the gossip magazines and the newspapers.  Maybe they'd say she'd been seduced by some crazy Hokkaido delinquent whose goal was to tarnish the reputation of her most hated idol.

No, wait another minute.  That would hardly seem fair.  If anybody had been seduced, it had been me.  She was the one who had come here to this town, gotten to know me, kissed me, and then had made me stay overnight after she wouldn't let me get up from her bed.  She had led it all.  The attack.  She knew exactly what it all meant, and she knew exactly what to do with me and how to keep me there all night without a complaint.

Okay, so I had asked for it.  I had wanted it.  At the time.  I was feeling sad because she was leaving, confused because Hiroshi had proposed, and bewildered about a million other things.  But it had to have been a momentary lapse in judgement.

What am I going to do? I thought in desperation.

I blinked.  Maybe it had all been a hallucination.  But no, she was still there, curled up under the covers and facing away.  I couldn't see her face.  It was covered by her hair.  All I could see was the back of her head.  I knew she was asleep because of her breathing.  It was slow and steady, hardly making a sound.

What time is it? I wondered.

I looked at the bedside table at the standard hotel-issue alarm clock.  It read eight-thirty-eight.  Considering her flight time, I did the math and figured out that she'd probably want to be getting up in an hour to get ready to leave.

What was I supposed to do?  Stay?  Maybe I could sneak out and just let her go back to Tokyo, pretending this had never happened.

That's what I decided to do.  I'd leave before she woke up.  It would be perfect.  Nobody would ever find out.  I'd tell my parents I'd stayed at a friend's house, and Aya could go back to Tokyo peacefully without having to exchange any awkward words and excuses with me.  We'd never have to meet again.

That's what I would do.

And yet I continued to lie there on my side and stare at the back of her head.  I found myself wondering what would happen if I stayed.

If I stayed, I could find out her true reaction.  If I stayed, I could ask her all the questions in my head about what it all meant to her and why she did it.

My heart lurched when I thought of Hiroshi.  What would he think if he saw me now?  Or worse, what would he have thought if he had seen me last night, wrapped in someone else's arms as she said things to me that made me want to forget every point of my comparatively miserable existence until I met her.

What if I didn't really care what he thought?

That struck me as an oddity because I still really loved him.  Very much.  He was a lot like me.  Normal, but with a hidden quirky streak (although he was much weirder).  Raised in a small town but yearning to break out of this enclosed life and strive for something more.  He'd tried to do that by going to university in Sapporo, but somehow we both knew that he'd wind up coming back here to this rundown town to live.

For a brief moment as I lay there, I wanted nothing more than to marry him.  I had to.  We were a perfect match.

But the uncertainty came back.  If we got married to each other, we wouldn't escape that thing we both hated.  We'd be clinging onto each other because it would be the safe thing to do.  What we wanted, though, was to reach out and grab a bit of excitement, and we weren't able to provide that for each other.

With Aya, that had changed for me.  The minute she came to town, everything changed.  The time we spent together was the best I'd ever had.  She had piles of things to offer me.  She had a way of connecting with me that made me want nothing else.  Being with her may not have been safe or secure, but it felt more like living.  Maybe Hiroshi would understand that I couldn't marry him.  It would be for our own goods.

Just then, Aya stirred and my thoughts came to a halt.  Was she going to wake up?

She turned around and settled onto her side so that she was facing me, but her eyes were still closed.  She didn't seem ready to wake up.  She was teetering on the edge of consciousness, just barely there.  Her face looked radiant to me, even in such a state of sleep.  It looked like she was smiling.

I grew impatient, and with a bout of self-confidence that flew at me from nowhere, I reached my hand out and tapped her wrist, which was curled in front of her chin.

"Good morning," I whispered.

The first half of my greeting came out nice and strongly, but the confidence slipped out of my grasp in mid-word, and so the second half ended up weak and mumbled.

What was I doing??

Aya's eyelids fluttered open slowly, and I shrank back a bit as she focused on my face.

"Hmmm.  Good morning," she purred back with a sleepy smile.

How did she do that?  She sounded so at ease.  As if this was the most normal thing in the world.  It was baffling.  I smiled warily at her, and the smile dropped from her face.

"Bombs away!" I heard a little voice in a fighter plane yell as Aya's expression quickly sped from content to something closer to the opposite end of the spectrum.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly.  "I got a little carried away."

A little?  I'd say a lot.  She got so carried away that there I was in bed with her the next morning, completely naked, might I add, and I'm sure with not just a few red marks here and there.

I didn't say anything to her because I had no clue what to say.  What was I supposed to say?  I didn't even know how I felt.  How could I get her to try and understand anything in my brain when I couldn't understand it?

She must have mistaken my silence for anger or discomfort.

"But you kind of asked for it," she said, giving me a pointed look.

I certainly had asked for it after she'd stirred up my curiosity.

"I'm not upset," I said quickly.

I was clear on that much.  I wasn't upset.  Just confused.

"You look upset," she countered, sounding so sure of herself.

I wasn't upset.  She was wrong.  But then it struck me that maybe this was her method of trying to give me a way out.  I could leave and it would all be okay.  We wouldn't have to talk.

But that would be cowardly.  The truth was that I wanted to stay.  Stick it out.  Figure it all out.

"I'm not," I said firmly.  "I just want to ask you a question.  What does this mean?"

I had done it.  I had asked a good question.

"What does what mean?"

I didn't get annoyed by the question being thrown back at me because I knew she wasn't trying to be difficult and skirt the issue.  There were many ways my question could be interpreted.

"Well, do you usually sleep with your friends?" I asked in a blunt and perhaps far too sly tone.

I couldn't help it!  The idea of Aya being that type of person was foreign to me.

"No," she said, a look of surprise on her face.

Strangely enough, that was all she said.

"Then tell me why you did it," I demanded, gaining back my confidence.

"Couldn't you tell?" she asked so quietly that I had to strain my ears to hear her.

"Tell what?" I mumbled.

"Couldn't you tell last night why I did that?"

Her eyes pierced me with a look that I had seen the night before just as we had started down that long road that had led us here.  It had been erased early on, but now it was back.  A lost and needy look that was so out of place on her beautiful face.

I shook my head, and her gaze only intensified in its sadness.

The truth?  I knew.  Deep down inside, I knew.  I saw it in those eyes the night before.  Why she had made me - no, let me - stay over.  It was because she needed me.  She wanted me.  I didn't know how long she'd felt that way, but it was pretty obvious, especially after she'd almost uttered a confession during a very quiet moment we had shared.

She really almost had.  We were lying facing each other.  I was looking at her, and she had a hand on my shoulder, running her thumb lightly over my skin.  A look came over her face and she took a breath to say something, but she never said it.  She resigned herself to letting it go, and then distracted me from asking any questions (such as "what were you going to say?") by casually pushing me away and onto my back.

But that look.  I knew that look.  I'd seen it before twice.  Once was when Hiroshi had uttered the words "I love you" for the first time.  The other time was when Hiroshi had asked me to marry him, which had just been the other day.

The sheer absurdity of the latter being Aya's reason to almost speak, I assumed it was the former. 

No, I didn't assume.  I knew.  There was no doubt that what was in her eyes was love, and I stupidly ignored it, brushing it off as a facial expression brought on by the heat of the moment.

The next morning, though, it was clear.

And what did I feel?

I didn't know.  It couldn't be love.  Not after two months.  But chemistry?  Yes, there was a whole lot of that.  I couldn't deny it.  But I needed to know something first.

"Why do you like me so much?  You've only known me for a few months."

She stayed silent, her eyes downcast.  I had to fill up that silence.

"Is there something you want from me?"

I shouldn't have said that, but it just tumbled out of my mouth in a clumsy, unplanned way.  Aya looked at me with a glare, under which I withered.

"You think I'm trying to get something from you?" she asked sharply.

In my weakened state, I only shook my head.  She huffed out a breath of air.

"I knew this was a mistake.  I should have sent you off home before it happened," she snapped self-admonishingly.

What was I?  A kid that had to be told when to go home?  What a condescending girl.  She started it.  I just asked her to continue it, and she most certainly did continue it.

Living with my mother for twenty-five years, however, had forced me to learn how to not explode with anger.  (My mom could be a scary woman when aggravated, and I sensed some of that in Aya.)

"I didn't mean it like that," I said evenly, but with a hard tone.  "I guess I can't imagine why someone like you would be after someone like me."

I thought what I said was supposed to console her, but it had the opposite effect of making her angrier.

"Will you stop it with that?" she bit back.  "Stop saying 'someone like you' as if we're from different worlds.  Just because I'm on TV and people know my name, it-"

"Wait a minute," I interrupted.  "I never said anything of the sort.  I meant a person with a strong heart and mind like yours.  I wasn't talking about fame or whatever.  I don't give a crap about that."

She looked positively embarrassed for having misinterpreted my words, but she quickly relaxed

"Anyway," I continued.  "My first question still stands.  Why do you like me so much?"

"I can't explain it well without sounding crazy," she sighed, dropping the last vestiges of her guard.  "I just know you and your heart better than you think.  You complete something in me."

I couldn't deny that I felt something like that in the air between us.  The feeling that together, we made an ultra duo.  A perfectly working, well-oiled unit.  We were in tune.  I wouldn't call if love, but the potential for it was almost smothering.

"Oh," I said softly.

Her eyes flickered up to look at my face and gauge my true reaction.  She saw me looking probably a little bewildered and shy.

"Anyway, forget it," she said quickly, rolling up to get out of bed.  "It's crazy talk.  I have to shower."

She grabbed the top blanket and covered herself to get out of bed, but I grabbed onto the edge because the rest of the sheets were tangled at the foot of the bed.  I didn't want to be left lying there, exposed to the cold.

I also did it to entice her to stay for a moment.

She mumbled a distracted apology and reached for the other sheets, but I quickly took her wrist and forced her to lie down again, covering her up with the blanket I'd yanked away from her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Let's stay here together a bit more," I said with newfound courage.  "You don't have to get up this early."

But as usual, the courage left me and must have gone into her, because a look came over her face and she scared my by slithering up to me and planting a big, sleepy kiss on my lips.  We'd done more than that the night before, yet it surprised me and froze me up.  I thought that despite all our talk this morning, last night would have been it. There would be no continuation.  We'd return to what we were before.

Then I thought, Screw that.

It was us.  We weren't computers that terminated programs and started new ones according to system and order.  We were human beings with feelings that led us down winding corridors of discovery and excitement.

I wrapped my arms around her and let her climb onto me lazily.  Before anything got very serious, however, she lay herself back down beside me, her chin on my shoulder.

I want her to stay, I thought suddenly.  I want her to stay here with me so that I can figure all this out.

She must have seen my look.  Read it.

"I'm leaving today, you know?" she reminded me.

Everything inside me deflated.  So she wasn't going to stay.  I wasn't a good enough excuse to stay.  I couldn't believe how much I suddenly wanted her here.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah."

I grew curious.  She'd come here a few months ago claiming that she used to have family that lived here.  She told me about the big project she'd abandoned, and how coming here was her escape.

But why here?  Even if she once had had family here, what was the point?  They seemed to all be gone.  She didn't know anybody around here other than me, my family, and Baachan's family.  If she had really wanted to escape, she could have just as easily gone overseas, or at least she could have gone somewhere with a more hospitable climate in the winter.

And why had she suddenly quit that Italy project?  It didn't seem all that bad, and she wouldn't have been alone.  Her best friend from her Hello! Project days would have joined up with her there along with another former co-worker.  Aya avoided talking about it, though, and whenever I brought it up, she'd skilfully change the subject, although not without my noticing it.

"What was your point coming here?" I asked.

Maybe a bit forward, but then again we'd slept with each other the night before, so I assumed I held a bit of a privileged position that would allow me to be so direct.

I pulled away a bit so that I could see her face.  She looked down.  At first I thought she was just staring at my body and trying to make me feel uncomfortable, but then I realised it was because she was thinking hard.

"I came to find this," she finally answered, looking at my face as she spoke.

"Find what?" I asked, frowning.

"This," she repeated, and she put her arm around my stomach and hugged me to her.

She came to find me?  This closeness?  What did she mean?

"What do yo-"

She cut me off by putting her face right up to mine.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked.

Was that a trick question?

"No," I mumbled.

"Do you want to come with me?"

I wondered if I had heard her properly.  Come with her?  To Tokyo?  No.  She must have just meant the station.  Or the airport.  I'd told her the night before that I'd wanted to go to Tokyo with her, but I'd gotten the sense that she hadn't taken me seriously.  I didn't even know if I had been serious.

"The airport?" I asked, pushing her away from me to see her face clearly.

She shook her head.

"Tokyo."

She meant it?  Go to Tokyo with her?  I wanted to.  So desperate was I that I would have jumped up from the bed at that moment and run onto a plane completely nude if it was the only way.

I nodded my head, but then stopped.

"I don't have a job there.  I'm in school.  My parents-"

She cut me off with one of her special, fiery kisses, leaving me a bit dazed and embarrassed.  Did she have to be so... touchy-feely?  I was still trying to get used to being naked in front of her, even with a bed sheet covering me.

"Forget it all.  Just come with me.  We'll find you a job.  You can stay with me until then.  And we can... we can hang out."

Hang out?  She meant do this every night, right?

"And Hiroshi?" I asked.

I saw her cringe as I said his name.  I hadn't wanted to bring him up, but I wanted to know what she thought.  I'd been going out with him for two years, and I'd been friends with him for even longer - about twelve years.  I did have a sense of loyalty and commitment.

"He's not invited," she said, eyeing me carefully.

I looked to the side, staring at a tiny brown mole on her arm.

"Do I just leave him?" I asked her.

And I really did ask her.  I wanted her opinion.  Her advice.  Biased or not.

"You do what you want.  If you want to marry him, fine.  I'll be going back to Tokyo.  You can forget that this happened and I'll never bring it up again.  If you want to leave him and come with me, then we'll be in it together."

Why did she want me in her life so badly?  How could I have impressed her after two months of friendship?  Was I really that great?

"What if you get bored of me?" I asked seriously.

It could happen.  The underlying reasons for her coming here could have been to find a distraction from the pressures at work.  Maybe she'd wanted to go somewhere that was familiar enough to her (within Japan) but far away enough from Tokyo so that she couldn't be traced as easily.  The trip would have been an outlet for her stress.  By finding some form of highly different entertainment - in this case, me - and amusing herself for a few months, she could work everything out of her system before going back and restarting her career.

Maybe she was a mind-reader, because she looked at me like I was a rare specimen of amoeba.  She laughed, hugging me tightly and kissing my ear in a sloppy and wet way that kind of grossed me out, kind of made me feel mushy.

"You don't get it, do you," she giggled into said ear.  "We're meant to be together.  It's destined.  It's written in the stars.  It's not a question of getting bored of you."

"There's no such thing as destiny," I frowned, avoiding the issue for a moment.

She drew herself up and looked down at me again, smiling.

"I knew you'd say that.  I just mean that I'm positive I want you to come with me.  Last night changed everything."

It certainly had.  I hadn't seriously thought of following Aya to Tokyo until that morning.

So dump Hiroshi.  Say goodbye to mom and dad.  Let Baachan give someone else a chance to work in that wonderful environment.  Drop school.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?" Aya asked.

"I'm coming with you."

Her face broke out into a smile, and she hugged me, putting her forehead against mine.

"See?  It's meant to be."

I smiled back.

"But I can't leave this afternoon.  I'll need a few days."

I would have to pack, fill out forms to officially drop my classes, talk to my parents, talk to Hiroshi, buy a plane ticket...

"Take your time," she said.  "I'll be waiting for you in the capital."

"A few days only.  I promise," I said unnecessarily.

In a few days it would be a new year.  I wondered if it would be possible to get a flight or a shinkansen ticket on such short notice.  Probably not, but I'd try.

"Do you have the money?" Aya asked.

A painful and potentially awkward question.  Obviously, my family wasn't rolling in riches, but we were doing all right for ourselves.  I did have enough money for a plane ticket and initial daily needs, but not enough to start a new life in a new city, especially a city that was said to be one of most expensive ones in the world.  The rent would eat me alive.

I hesitated for too long.

"Just worry about your plane ticket.  I'll take care of the rest."

"No," I protested.  "I ca-"

"I still owe you for all that cooking at Baachan's"

"That's her place, not mine," I mumbled.

"And you know you're staying with me," she went on, ignoring me.  "My bed's big enough for the both of us."

At my look of mortification, she made an exaggerated show of correcting her sentence.

"Oops.  I mean my apartment's big enough for two."

Her eyes twinkled wickedly.  Living with a beautiful devil child?  It could be very fun.  But I still had to turn down her offer.

"Aya-chan, I can't impose on you like that.  You have a life.  A job.  You're busy.  I'll get in the way.  You-"

She put a hand over my mouth, and my words came out muffled and unintelligible.

"If there's anything I want from you," she started, making a pointed reference to my earlier stupid question, "it's for you to be beside me all the time."

I pulled her hand away with both of mine and rested those three hands on my stomach.  I gave up.

"Okay."

A simple word and her face broke out into a radiant smile.

"But I'm going to find a job as soon as I land.  Or, uh, maybe the next day," I insisted.

"Fine by me.  I'll probably be getting fired while you're being hired," she laughed.

With that statement, I remembered that she was going to be in very big trouble when she got home.  She had told me she'd probably be out of work, but I wondered what kind of company would be dumb enough to fire such a popular idol.  She had come such a long way since her Hello! Project days and was arguably even more stable in her position as a familiar face than she'd ever been before.  Unless they planned to deliberately sabotage her reputation so that no other agency would take her, they were better off keeping her.

She stayed like that for five minutes, breathing being the only sound that could be heard.

"I have to call Hiroshi," I said out of the blue.

"What will you say to him?"

"That I'm moving.  That I can't marry him."

A deep silence greeted my reply.

"But not break up with him?" Aya asked curiously, betraying no other emotion.

"I'll do that, too," I said quietly.

Did she realise how painful it was for me?  Did she really understand what I had with Hiroshi?  He was first and foremost a childhood friend, and no matter how mysterious and weird he was, he'd been there with me during the big moments in my life.  It was going to be difficult cutting off ties with a part of my history, especially such a safe one.

But Aya had a way of comforting me that nobody else had.  Her hand tightened over mine as though she could sense the pain and the struggle in me.

"I'm really glad you're coming with me," she said quietly in a near whisper.

"Me too," I whispered back.

Breaking up with Hiroshi would be easier if I could hold Aya's hand while doing it.  Maybe she did offer me some semblance of security after all.  I felt like I could do anything if she was around.

When the time came, I helped her pack.  We took showers, and I had to borrow more clothes from her.  I knew, though, that I would be able to return them soon.  I offered to go to the airport with her, but she told me to go home and start working on my parents.  I was afraid they'd be hard to convince to let me go.  I was the baby.  They were used to having me there.  My mother would miss having me around to shop together, to cook dinner together, and to have incredible disputes together.

We said goodbye in the hotel room.  I would leave a few minutes before her to avoid the front desk's suspicions.  Aya could have gotten into trouble for having a guest over against the rules, and walking out together would make it quite obvious she'd broken the rules.

The goodbye was uncomfortable on my part because I wasn't very good at that sort of thing.

"See you in a few days," I said, holding a bag with my still-wet clothes from the previous night's romp in the snow.

"I'll contact you when I land," Aya smiled brightly.

There was an awkward pause.

Were we supposed to hug?

I settled for nothing but a tight smile and a nod.  I turned around and put my hand on the doorknob.

"Hey, Miki.  Wait," Aya called out, making me stop instantly and turn around expectantly.

She studied me seriously for a moment and then smiled.

"Bye bye," was all she said with a loving look on her face that was starting to become familiar.

I smiled a big, relaxed smile.

"Bye bye."

I waved my hand, turned on my heels, and walked out feeling like a shooting star during its blaze of glory.  I went down the elevator and strutted out of that hotel as if nothing were amiss.  Nobody at the front desk said a word as I walked by, and I smiled secretly to myself.  Maybe I could make it in Tokyo.  If I toughened up, nothing in the capital could take me.

And I knew for certain that if I had Aya there to help me, I'd surely go a long way.

[OTN1]

Chapter 2 of 29

It was a bitterly cold morning.  My hands froze within minutes of being outside.  I tried my best to cover them with the sleeves of my jacket.  The rest of my body, though, felt warm, partly because I was thinking of Aya and the past seven hours, partly because I was scared out of my wits about facing my parents and Hiroshi and explaining to them my decision to leave home.

Despite my frozen fingers, I took out my cell phone and checked my messages.  There were three from my mother.  The first asked when I was coming home.  The second asked where I was.  The third stated that she was going to sleep, but to please get in touch in the morning.

I sighed and typed a quick message to her saying that I was on my way home from my friend's house and that I was sorry if she had been worried.  I continued to walk, and my mind started to prepare different thing to say.

"There's nothing for me here anymore.  I'm moving."

No...

"I'm moving to Tokyo and becoming a celebrity."

I laughed in my mind.  Silly.

"I'm moving to Tokyo and sleeping with a celebrity."

No, no, no.  No good.  I cringed at the thought of slipping up and saying that by accident.

"I can't marry you, Hiroshi.  I'm sorry."

My phone rang and mercifully pulled me away from my thoughts.  The message was from my mother.

Get home quickly!  There's a surprise for you.

A surprise?  I wondered what sort of surprise awaited me before noon.  Maybe my dad had gone out early to the bakery and gotten a loaf of that good bread we sometimes liked to buy on the weekend.  For a moment, I forgot about Aya, Tokyo, and Hiroshi, and I thought of nothing but eating yummy, warm bread fresh from the oven.

When I got home, there certainly was a surprise waiting for me.  It came in the form of a pair of old, but well-cared for sneakers.  They were very familiar to me, and when I saw them after opening the door, I tripped over my own feet and did a face plant on the floor in the entrance hall, alerting the whole family with a loud crash that their recently-turned-clumsy daughter was home.

"I'm home," I muttered into the chilly floorboards as several people gathered around me.

"Are you all right?" my mother asked worriedly, although I could hear the laughter that was masked by her tone of concern.

I groaned and nodded while getting up and slipping off my shoes.

"Are you sure you'd like to marry our daughter?" I heard my father say in a joking tone.

I cringed inwardly and turned around.  There was my father standing a metre away from me, and just behind him, a head taller, was Hiroshi.

What was he doing there?  And how did my dad know about the proposal?!  Had Hiroshi come here to elicit my parents' help in getting me to marry him?  If so, I was going to wring his neck.

I caught his eyes and sent him a death glare.  His eyes twinkled back, seemingly unconcerned with my irritation.

"She has her good moments," he told my father with a confident laugh.

I decided that the second we had a bit of privacy, I would throttle him.

"Hiroshi, what are you doing here?" I asked, trying to cover up my annoyance for the time being.

Hiroshi looked at my father first, then my mother, and then me.

"You left early and he missed you, so he called to ask if he could come over and surprise you late last night," my mom said for him.

That, I decided, was very, very sweet.  He had lousy timing, but he had a good heart.

I became cold with fear, though, after that warm and fuzzy moment.  This threw my whole plan off.  I couldn't just up and leave with him there.  Also, the fact that not even an hour ago, I'd been kissing someone else made me feel like a low life.  I was a cheater.  I hated people who cheated on their lovers.  Now I was one of them.

"Oh," I said reluctantly, and then added, "That's sweet."

Hiroshi and I exchanged glances, and I realised that I couldn't very well talk to him in the house.  The walls were paper thin.  My parents did not need to know the intimate details of our relationship.  I sucked in my guilt and smiled.

"Let's go," I said, reaching my hand out to him.

With a puzzled but easygoing look, Hiroshi took my hand.

"Where are we going?" he inquired.

"Out for a walk," I replied

We slipped on our shoes, said goodbye to my parents (who were somewhat bewildered by my behaviour), and set out towards the mountains.  It was the same walk I'd taken with Aya countless times during the past few months.  Hiroshi and I used to do it a lot when we were younger and he still lived in Takikawa fulltime.  We hadn't done one of these walks in a while, though.

I held Hiroshi's hand tightly as a million different phrases ran through my mind.  I wanted to explain everything to him, but I needed to find the right words because he deserved at least that much.  I also wanted to know why he'd told my parents he'd asked me to marry him.  Why would he do something like that when he knew me and my unwillingness to be swayed by other opinions?  Why would he try to get outside help?

We didn't talk while we walked, which wasn't unusual.  Sometimes we waited until we got to where we were going so that our conversation could be completely private.  Just between us and the trees, not the buildings, streets, and post boxes that we passed by.

We reached the edge of a cliff and stood to look out at the land below us.  Nothing but hills and pastures devoid of sheep.

"I need to talk to you seriously," I said, still holding his hand. 

Hiroshi continued to look forward, but his hand squeezed mine in a comforting way.

"You can't marry me," he said.

A...amazing, I thought, rather flabbergasted.

I looked down, my hand tightening around his.  He must've known from the moment he asked on Christmas Day.  The moment I said I needed to think about it.  And he'd been able to read me well enough just now to predict what I was going to talk about with him.

"I can't," I confirmed, my hand tightening around his, afraid that if I let go, I'd lose him forever.

Funny.  That's what was happening.  I was losing him - pushing him away voluntarily by breaking up.  And it hurt.  It hurt more than I could have imagined.  When I'd told Aya I'd break up with him, I hadn't imagined how much my heart would ache.  It was awful.  If only she could be here to tell me it was okay.  To hold my other hand and to comfort me...

"Can I ask why?" Hiroshi asked quietly, looking down at me.

I set my jaw in a hard way and tried to make a grim line with my mouth, but my heart wasn't in it.  I gave up, and I just rested my head on his chest as if listening to his heartbeat.  I couldn't hear it because of the thickness of his jacket and the layers he was wearing underneath.

"You and I aren't going anywhere," I murmured just loud enough for him to hear.  "We match well, but I know you can feel it too.  We're digging ourselves into a rut."

I spoke truthfully.  It was the only way that I could with him.

A few weeks after we'd started officially going out, Hiroshi had sat down with me and started a serious talk.

"If you're going to break my heart, just do it honestly," he had said to me.

At first, it had put me off.  He sounded so weak saying that.  Like a wimp signing a prenuptial agreement just in case.  Like he was accusing me in advance for doing something terrible like cheating on him.

The more I had thought about it that night and all through the next day, the more I had realised that he was stronger than any of the other boys I'd known.  He had had the courage to say that to me just as we were starting our relationship.  He'd wanted to set things right from the get go, and that was admirable.  It had made me fall for him just a little more.

From that day on, I never beat around the bush with him.  I was already a direct person, but with him, I could be myself and not have to worry about how hard I stepped on his toes.  If he was bothering me, I'd tell him.  If he was wrong, I'd tell him.  I expected (and received) the same treatment from him.  It was a mutual respect that I knew a lot of my friends hadn't been lucky enough to discover yet (if ever), and it was love of the real kind.

Fast forward through a few years, and there I stood, leaning against him and telling him that I couldn't marry him.

"Do you still love me?" he asked in a wavering voice.

Once I would have thought a wavering voice a pathetic display for a man.  But when you loved someone, that outlook softened and changed.

"Yes," I said honestly, looking up at him.  "I do.  But I can't marry you."

He looked down at me and I could swear that I saw unshed tears in his eyes.  They didn't spill out, though.  He was good at controlling that sort of thing.  The fact that I could see tears at all meant he was far more upset than I had imagined he would be.

"Will you ever be able to?"

I sighed.  This was it.

"No.  And what's more, I can't be with you anymore.  Like this.  I just can't."

He let go of my hand, and I suspected that he'd push me away from him, but instead, he hugged me closely.  I hugged him back.  There was no harm in a final moment with him.  We'd dated for two years.  You didn't just shut off your habits in one day.

"And I'm moving to Tokyo," I added in a small voice.

This caused him to suck in a surprised breath of air and push me away to get a clear look at my face.

"What?" he asked in disbelief.

"I haven't told my parents yet," I continued, looking away from him, "but it's pretty much a done deal."

"I... What?"

I looked down at the snow-covered ground between our feet.  I was shattering a life.  I was breaking it up into tiny fragments.  I was ripping apart his heart.

"You met someone else?" he asked in a tiny voice.

No, he didn't really ask.  He said it.  He could tell.  Maybe he'd seen one of those marks on my neck.  Aya had left a few. 

Come to think of it, she probably did that on purpose...

"It's complicated," I started, and he put a finger under my chin and forced me to look up at him.

His eyes were gleaming with emotion.  A lot of sadness and confusion, and a touch of anger.

"Don't avoid the question," he said to me.

"I'm not," I said defensively, shaking his hand off my face.  "I was just starting.  Yes, I met someone - a friend - who opened my eyes to the world out there, so now I have to go and see it."

Just at that moment, it started to snow.  Out of the blue.  Small flakes fluttered down on us, making the scene look unnaturally beautiful.  It would have been a confession scene in a movie, not a break up.

Hiroshi, indifferent to the snow, looked hurt, but when he spoke, he sounded so much more controlled.

"I thought that having each other would be enough, you know?" he sighed.  "Even if we moved here and became shepherds, at least we'd be together.  We wouldn't need fancy things."

This was Hiroshi, ace of the basketball team, frequently voted by his classmates as the handsomest boy in the school, and on his way to getting his doctorate.  A man who appreciated the simple things in life.  A man that loved me so much that he'd let go of all his dreams of playing basketball professionally or being a professor in a Canadian university just so that he could be with me.  That was why I loved him.  I loved his loyal heart, his gentleness, his carefully pursued ambitions, his way of thinking, his quirky habit of wandering off and disappearing in his own little world, the amount he loved me... and okay, yes, the sex was fantastic.

And for a second - a long second - I asked myself why I was throwing all that away for an idea of a glamorous life in Tokyo with a girl I hardly knew.  Why toss out this kind of love for something that was still floating in murky, unclear waters?

But when Aya's face came to mind, and I remembered the way she looked at me the previous night and that morning, it defeated all my senses and launched my feelings up to a whole different level.  Hiroshi was stable, Aya was not.  She was like a flame.  A flame that burned on and on, but that flickered constantly, leaving you guessing where it would jump to next.  She made me feel excited and invincible.  She filled me with hope, dreams, and optimism.  She filled me with the need to be beside her all the time.

"I love you, Hiroshi, but I need more.  So much more," I said softly.

Neither of use spoke.  The snow continued to fall, and I could almost hear each flake hitting various surfaces.

"So that's it for us?"

By the time Hiroshi spoke those words, the tops of our heads and shoulders were white with snow.

I nodded.

"That's it for us," I said with an air of finality.

He sighed.

"I just wish you hadn't told my parents that you had proposed to me.  They're going to worry now," I added in.

He looked up at me with a frown.

"I didn't tell them anything," he said.

Huh?

"But my dad-"

"Oh," Hiroshi interrupted me with his revelation.  "You thought he was... Okay.  No.  He was making a joke.  I never told him a thing."

That made me feel better.  Hiroshi was let off the hook.  He hadn't been trying to get my parents to force me to marry him.  It made everything a little bit better.

"Are you upset?" I asked.

"Do you even need to ask that?" he asked back in a sombre tone.  "Are you upset?"

I looked down.

"Yes," I said honestly.  "I'll miss you.  But I'm happy that I know what I want."

He tried to force a smile to come out, but it was gloomy.

"You're just going to quit school?"

There was definitely disapproval in his tone.  My silence told him that that was indeed my plan.

"Miki, if there's one last piece of advice I can give you as someone who loves you, it's to not quit altogether.  At least just take a semester off.  Ask them to hold your spot.  If you go to Tokyo and don't like it there, then you'll have something to come back to.  You're so smart, you know that?"

He reached out a hand and gently brushed the snow out of my hair, letting his fingers run through the dampened strands.

His advice made sense, but it seemed to dull the excitement of taking off for a new city and going in blindly with no safety net.

No, I would have a safety net.  Aya.  Nothing could go wrong if she was there.  That heightened my desire to drop school.

But I owed Hiroshi a lot, including comfort, reassurance, and trust.  I reached up and took his hand in mine, entwining my fingers with his and looking at him directly in the eyes with a soft smile.

"Thank you.  I can always trust your advice."

He put his hands on my shoulders, bent his head down, and without hesitation, he kissed me.  With our last kiss, I gave him everything that was his.  I sealed up my history with him, gave him the last ounce of love that I could, and said goodbye.

When he pulled back up, he wiped at his cheek hastily.  A tear had managed to work its way out of his eye.  Hiroshi.  A tough man on the courts.  A sensitive soul on snowy mountain paths.

"I'll go by your house and pick up my things later," he said quietly as if not to interrupt the concert the falling snow was putting on.

"You're not going to come now?" I asked with a frown.

He shook his head.

"I'm going to stay up here for a bit.  You go on ahead."

I gave him a concerned look, but he smiled.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything stupid," he said, touching my shoulder comfortingly.

I nodded, told him not to catch a cold, and then as if nothing heart-shattering had happened mere moments ago, I turned around and walked down the hill.

This was a pivotal moment in my life.  The era of Hiroshi had ended.  The era of Aya was about to begin.  When I finished walking this mountain path and entered my home, it would be time to talk to my parents and tell them about my plan to move.

So for the entire walk back home, I thought of Aya and pretended she was right beside me, holding my hand and giving me that unique strength of hers that warmed me up and made me indestructible.

With an image like that, there was no doubt in my mind that I was doing the right thing.

[OTN1]

Chapter 3 of 29

When I got home, my parents were eating lunch.

"Miki-chan, Hiroshi-kun," my mother sang out when she heard me open the door.  "Dad bought some of that delicious bread from the bakery at the supermarket.  Come and have some."

For a moment - just a moment - I was happy again.  So my dad had bought that bread.  But my heart fell again because I had to explain why Hiroshi wasn't with me.

I popped into the room and looked at my parents.  They looked up at me.  My mother smiled and glanced behind to me to look for Hiroshi.

"Mom, dad," I greeted them, walking into the room and sitting on the opposite side of the table, putting lots of space between us.

They came to realise that something serious was going on and that Hiroshi wouldn't be joining us for the conversation.

"I know this is rather sudden," I said, taking a deep breath, "but I've decided to move out."

In the silence that followed, you could have heard a pin drop all the way in the Swiss Alps.

"With Hiroshi-kun?" my mother asked, expecting me to answer in the affirmative.

"No."

More silence.

"And where do you intend to move?" my father asked.

"Tokyo," I said bravely.

I didn't feel brave.  I felt like I would crumble the minute my parents raised their objections.

"What will you do in Tokyo?"

My father again.  His voice was far too calm and controlled.  I could tell that there was a storm gathering, and it was ready to unleash its power.

"I'm going to work."

Silence.

No need to ask what kind of work I was going to look for because it was obvious I had no idea.

"Did that friend of yours put ideas in your head?" my mom asked.

So it was that easy to tell that Aya had been involved?  I almost broke my eye contact with my mom, but doing so would have weakened my position.  I steadfastly kept my gaze on her.

"Aya-chan helped open up my eyes," I confirmed, "but this is something I've wanted to do for a long time."

That was the breaking point.

"You can't leave now," my father said, voice like a razor-sharp knife.  "You're starting your last term of the year at school.  You have a job, too, and responsibilities-"

"I don't care about school!" I exploded.

My father jumped to his feet and looked across the table and down at me furiously.

"Don't go throwing that kind of attitude around in this house!" he thundered.  "Nobody in this family is a quitter.  Nobody runs away from their duties.  You can't go and make a selfish decision like that and spring it upon us expecting our full support!"

I had never seen my father so angry.  He had never yelled at me like that before.  Such fury.  I tried not to tremble in fear as my mother stood up to pacify my father.  Her face showed, though, that she sided more with him than with me.

But wait.  Me?  A quitter?  Here I was about to embark on an exciting and difficult journey, and he was calling me a quitter?

I jumped up to my feet, and what could possibly be called the fiercest Fujimoto family feud began.

"I'm not a quitter, Dad.  I'm going down there to follow my dream," I said harshly.

"Miki, you can't just drop school.  That's quitting," said my mother in a firm tone.

I trained my eyes on her.

"No, Mom.  That's not quitting.  Quitting would be if I stayed in school," I bit back.  "If I stayed when every centimetre of me wanted to move out and pursue my own life.  Do you think I want to be a bookkeeper?"

I pierced my father with a glare.

"I've hated studying economics at school.  I've found it a waste of my time.  I've only been doing it because I lacked the motivation to get out of here.  I've been too scared to leave this safe place."

My father's face grew red.

"How dare you throw our kindness back in our faces like that.  We've given you everything and provided you with a safe and comfortable environment in which to grow up.  You're an ungrateful, spoiled child."

That hurt.  I wanted to scream at him, but I kept a tight rein on my temper before I said something that would get me disowned by my family.

"I do appreciate everything you've done for me," I said through grit teeth.  "I've had a wonderful life.  But it's time to move on and grow up.  Start my own life."

I wasn't sure if my words had had any effect, because my mother changed the subject.

"You're going to let some wild, famous girl convince you to do away with this good life?"

Wild and famous?  I had thought that she liked Aya.

"Aya-chan is not wild," I said in a controlled voice.  "And she only let me see what's out there.  She didn't force me into anything."

There was a pause in the air as everyone tried to think of something new to say.  I took advantage of it and broke the silence.

"And besides, what happened to you two supporting my dreams, huh?" I asked, the heat coming back to my voice.  "You were going to let me go that audition all those years ago.  If I'd made it, you would've let me move to Tokyo."

My parents both looked chagrined, and I knew that I'd hit upon a good argument.

"I was in school back then, too.  You would have let me leave.  The way I see it, you're just upset now because it has to do with money and convenience.  We pay for university classes.  It's convenient that Inaba-Baachan has known me for years and thus trusts me with handling the till at the restaurant.  It's a good thing for you two that your youngest daughter is studying bookkeeping so that she can take over the family business one day," I continued.  "What happened to my supportive parents who helped me fill out my audition applications?  My parents who let me practice in front of them?  Who nursed me back to health after that stupid flu, and who assured me that my chance would come again?  Did you forget all about that?  Your promise to support me unconditionally?  Were they just empty words?"

I was on a roll.  Nothing could stop me.  Years of bottled up dissatisfaction came pouring out of me.

My parents stood silently, my father with a disturbed look etched into his face, my mother looking blank and maybe a little pale.

"I can't believe I live with a couple of hypocrites.  I've just told you that I'm miserable with my life and what do you do?  On the surface you tell me you want me to be happy, but in reality, you chew me out and tell me I can't get out of my situation.  You try to play on some sort of guilt I should feel because you raised me well.  But I want to leave."

They certainly looked chastised.  My mother's eyes showed a little shock.  My father's concerned expression had deepened.

"If that's the way it's going to be, then I definitely don't want to stay here.  I'm moving.  You don't have to support me in any way.  I'll find a job and pay you back for everything you've ever done for me."

I fixed my father with a chilly look, and after a few seconds, I shifted my gaze to my mother.

"I don't see how my departure will affect anyone in the long run.  I've broken things off with Hiroshi-kun, and other than him, I don't think any of my other friends are going to be very heart-broken about my leaving.  I'll be out of your hair in a few days."

With that, I turned on my heels and walked calmly out of the living room and up the stairs.

Once in the privacy of my bedroom, I sat down on my bed and let out a breath of disbelief.  I reached up to fix my hair, but my hands shook uselessly.  I sat on them, a habit I'd had when I was young and got nervous easily, and tried to formulate a plan.

I had told my parents off and angered them.  I couldn't count on them for any support.

Next, I had to call the registrar's office at my university.  The only problem was that I'd have to wait because it was a holiday.  Nobody would be in until after the New Year vacation.  I couldn't stay here and wait that long.  I decided I would call from Tokyo.  Long distance charges be damned.

Next on my list?  I needed a plane ticket.  Or a shinkansen ticket.  Or a boat ticket.  Any way to get south of here.  I'd take care of that in the afternoon.  Luckily, I had a stack of money with me, so no holiday bank closures could stand in my way.

Next?  Baachan.  I had to go and explain things to her.  I'd do that after securing transportation.

And then?  Packing.  I could start that now.  I needed to calm down before going to the travel agency.  Moving around and sorting through clothing would help.

I sat on my bed for half an hour, trying to gather the strength to stand up and start packing.

When I finally did stand up, it was on surprisingly strong legs that did not shake.  I went to my closet to find an appropriate suitcase or bag.  It was then when I heard a knock at my door.

It could only be one of two people.  I didn't want to argue anymore.  I just wanted them to leave me alone so that I could get my affairs in order and leave.

"I'm coming in," my mother announced, and she opened the door before I could object.

She walked in carrying a large bag.  I would have almost called it a sports bag, but it was a little more refined.  Classier.  She put it down in the middle of the room.

"I thought you might need a big enough bag for all your things," she said quietly.

I looked at her, keeping my expression neutral while my insides churned with disbelief.  I didn't say anything.

"If you want to leave, that's your decision.  I didn't realise we were holding you back and that you were so unhappy."

I started to feel bad because I hadn't been unhappy about everything.  Just certain things.  Important things.

"But I want you to know that the reason why we want you to stay is not because of money or convenience.  It's because we love you and worry that you won't be able to take care of yourself.  You seem to be going into this blindly and with high ambitions.  Tokyo life is tough.  Do you realise that?"

I sat down on my bed and looked up at my mother.  She didn't look angry anymore.  Her face was lined with anxiety.

"I'm not going blindly, Mom," I assured her, but she looked sceptical.  "I'll have Aya-chan to help me out.  She's letting me stay with her until I can find my own place to live."

This only made my mother give me a disapproving look.

"I don't want you to be a burden to other people.  Aya-chan's a kind girl, and I really like her a lot, but she's busy.  You know that.  She lives in a different world than the rest of us."

I balled my fists up.

"No she doesn't.  She's just like me.  Like us.  Why don't you give people a chance?" I snapped defensively.  "Just because she's a celebrity, it doesn't make her inhuman.  She has feelings too, you know."

Aya would have been proud.  I was fighting on her behalf.  My mother, much to my surprise, laughed.

"Oh my.  We've raised you so well that you've gone and out-moralised your own mother.  Must be my old age."

I unclenched my fists.

"You're right, Miki-chan.  I shouldn't judge like that."

My mother was a stubborn woman, but a smart one.  She knew when to admit she was wrong.  At least when it came to family members.

"It's okay.  It's natural to think that at first," I mumbled.

Even I had been guilty of that.  When I'd first seen Aya at the restaurant, my first thought had been "What's a top rate idol doing at my restaurant in Takikawa?"  But ever since she'd burst out with a plea to not think like that, I'd smartened up and done as she'd asked.

My mother came over and sat beside me on my bed.

"But still.  You can't impose on her forever.  And do you know how expensive it is to find a place to live?  A decent place?"

"She said she doesn't mind how long I stay," I insisted.

I was certain I could stay for a year and she'd love it.  I thought that she got a kick out of dominating me like she had the night before and then seeing me be all squeamish about it the next morning.

My mother still looked unconvinced.

Oh well.  Let her just assume Aya's just being polite on the outside.  I know for a fact that she means it.  Mom doesn't have to know the truth about last night.

"Anyway, Dad wants to apologise, too," my mom said.

"Eh?" I exclaimed with a frown.  "I thought he wanted to hurl me into the river."

"He got so angry because he loves you.  You're his little girl.  His favourite little baby.  You really gave him a shock."

Oh, Dad...

My heart ached just a little bit in advance.  Out of my whole family, I'd probably only really miss having my dad around the most.

"He's forgiven," I said quietly, and I looked up at my mother.  "I know you two want to protect me, but you have to let me go.  I'll be okay."

My mom smiled and ran a hand through my hair (everyone was doing that to me lately!).

"I know, Miki-chan."

We sat like that for a moment until my mother spoke again.

"Do you need any money?"

I squirmed.  I could use anything I could get, but I wasn't about to ask for it.  Talk about bad luck starting a period of independence by begging for a loan.

"No, I'm okay," I said with a persuasive smile.

"If you ever need anything, just call."

I nodded.

"When are you leaving?"

She didn't even try to mask her fear.  Or if she did, it didn't work.  I could read her perfectly.

"As soon as possible," I said softly as to not offend her.  "I'm going to JTB today to enquire about airfare."

My mother looked like she was about to say something important, but she exhaled and cut it off, starting in a different vein.

"If you need help packing, let me know."

And then she was gone, out of my room as though carried away by a strong gust of wind.  Such was the abrupt nature of the Fujimoto family.

I sighed and picked up the pseudo-sports bag.  It would do.  It was big enough for the essentials.  I'd have to buy a new wardrobe in Tokyo anyway.

Or borrow Aya's clothing, I thought slyly.

If she let me take off her clothes, I'm sure that meant we were close enough to wear each other's clothing on a regular basis.

For a moment, I pushed my parents out of my mind and I focused on starting to pack my things up.  I didn't even know when I'd leave, but I needed to do something to make it all feel more real.

I was single again.  I was going to drop school.  I was going to move to Tokyo.  I was going to live with a girl I'd met two months ago.

Life certainly did have the habit of throwing the oddest things out at the strangest times. 

This time, I was going to seize it and never let go, because suddenly my life had meaning.  Worth.  A purpose.  Thanks to Aya, I was finally going to start living.

[OTN1]

Chapter 4 of 29

Plane ticket - check.

Baachan - check (but have to pick up last pay cheque tomorrow afternoon).

Parents - check and check.

Rest of family - check.

Hiroshi - check point five (one more talk).

School - x (call next week).

Aya - x (check e-mail now).

My mental checklist looked good.  Much better, in fact, than I ever thought it could.  Several things had been accomplished in the space of half a day: I had gone to the travel agency and booked myself a plane ticket for - and I couldn't believe it - the afternoon of the first of January; I had gone to Baachan's and gotten her enthusiastic blessings for my journey (old people were so grand that way); I had made peace with my parents after a reasonably long and calm talk with them (more like I listened to my dad lecture on and on about Tokyo being dangerous for a girl on her own and what kind of men to look out for); and Hiroshi had come back from his solo mountain hike.  It was decided that he would stay the night since it was late and he'd come all the way to visit.  My mother was the one who insisted on his staying, and I knew that some part of her was scheming to get us back together.  But no matter.  He would sleep in a different room, and I was resolute in my decision to end things with him.

All that was left to do that day was to get in touch with Aya.  I had e-mailed her earlier, but I had gotten no response yet.

Late that evening, we finished a delicious dinner.  My parents were washing dishes together (my dad actually did help with the housework), and Hiroshi was in the bath ("Guests first," said my mom).  I was in my room with my phone.  I had still not received a reply from Aya.  I was gripped with an icy and ridiculous fear that the things she'd said hadn't been heartfelt and that it had all been a bout of temporary insanity that had made her say and do the things she had.  Maybe she'd said them to get rid of me.  Maybe she-

My phone started ringing.  As I was receiving mail, I all but tore the screen off flipping it open to read.

I sighed with relief.  It was from Aya.  Her flight had been delayed and her phone's battery had died.  She'd just gotten home that minute.  She'd read my mail about my flight, and she said that it sucked that we couldn't spend New Year's Eve together.  I blushed at the thought of spending such a family-oriented holiday with her.  She also wrote that she missed me, which made me bury my face into my pillow and squeal in giddiness and mortification.  I quickly stopped that and composed myself.  Acting like a fifteen year old girl with a massive crush on Kimutaku was probably not an attractive quality on me.  So "un" Fujimoto.

I wrote back and, while sucking in a big breath of air and clenching my jaw out of embarrassment, said that I missed her, too, and that at least we could celebrate the first day of the brand new year together.  I said good night, and that was that.

It took so little to make me feel so happy.  So excited about the future.

I lounged around until Hiroshi got out of the bath.  I took mine and then got into my pyjamas, ready to hit the sack a little earlier than usual.  I was about to slip under the covers when I had a change of heart.  I padded out of my room and made the trek over to the guest room Hiroshi was staying in.  I knocked, asking if I could come in.

"Yeah," Hiroshi called out.

I walked in and saw him sitting on the bed playing a video game.  He looked up as if he had to check who I was and then quickly paused the game, putting it down and giving me his full attention.

One of the reasons why I liked him.  A guy who would pause his precious video game for me?  A winner.

When he looked at me, though, his eyes were still full of love.  Maybe a bit of hope, too.  Hope that I'd take him back.  I felt sorry for him because he had to be around me and not act like we had up until that very day.  If he really was uncomfortable, though, he could have left.  There were several polite ways to decline an invitation.

"Playing games, huh?" I asked in a mock-scolding voice.

He grinned like a little boy.

"I remember a certain someone who came over to my place last summer and wouldn't let go of the game controller for two days straight."

I scoffed at him, but then laughed and sat beside him on the bed.

"Thanks for being so understanding, Hiro-kun," I said, shifting gears and expressing what I'd come by to express.

He looked down at his knees.

"As long as you're happy, I can't complain.  Just... whoever he is, be careful."

I tried not to react too much to that because it was so much more complicated than I cared to explain.  I sighed

"I'm not leaving you for someone else.  I'm doing it for me.  And you.  You can do better than little old me," I said in a light tone.

He looked up at me, eyes wide with longing.

"But all I want is you."

I shook my head.

"I'm sorry."

He looked back down and then up again (I was getting dizzy watching him), a silly smirk gracing his face.

"I know you hate weak men, Micchan," he said.  "I'll stop with that whiney crap."

"Stupid," I said, bonking him on the forehead.  "I know you're strong.  It's okay for you to have feelings."

He grinned back at me, and it felt like old times when we'd sit around and flirt harmlessly.  Only now, it didn't mean the same thing.  It would lead to nowhere.

Out of habit, I fixed his bangs, which I had displaced with my scolding tap.  I stroked the soft strands of slightly damp hair gently back into place and then took my hand away.

"You're a good man, Hiro-kun," I said in a moment of pure, unguarded honesty.  "Keep being good."

We shared a smile, and for a moment I thought that he was going to lean in and kiss me.  But he knew we were over.  He knew he'd upset me if he did anything.  I could see him restrain himself.  Very admirable.  But also fearful.  He knew I could throw quite a punch when I wanted to.

I stood up and walked to the door.

"Good night, Hiro-kun."

"Good night, Micchan."

I left.

Closure.

I sighed in relief.

I got into bed and checked my messages one last time.  Aya had written back to me while I'd been off chatting with Hiroshi.

Love you and good night!

Added on the next line were musical notes, a smiley face, and a heart.

I snapped my phone shut and turned the light out to try and lower the temperature of my face.

What a girl.

I had never expected in a million years that she could feel something like that about me.  It never would have occurred to me in the past two months we'd been hanging out.

Well, okay, no.  I admit that sometimes I wondered why she acted so familiarly with me, but I really had no proper inkling of her true feelings.  I chalked it all up to her friendly personality.  Not until last night had I had any real idea how strongly she cared for me.

I lay back and tried to remember every detail of the previous night.

I started to cry when we got to her hotel room.  It was something I hadn't done in front of another person for years.  But I desperately wanted her to stay.  My life became exciting because of her.

To try and let her know how truly grateful I was to her for being my friend, I reached out and hugged her.  She stood there stiffly for a moment, during which I was filled with the fear that maybe I'd been too presumptuous as to get close to her when she didn't want to have a friendship like that.  Maybe I'd crossed some sort of line that I didn't know was there.

But then she relaxed completely and hugged me back.

"Don't worry.  I'll visit again."

Liar, I thought through my tears.

I forced myself to stop crying, though, because it was humiliating.  Even in front of Aya, who I'd grown to trust more than some of the people I'd been friends with since elementary school, I couldn't stand being so weak.

I sensed something in that quiet moment, and before I knew it, she kissed me.  It was like a blunder.  One of things you couldn't help.  There was a tear on my lip, and she simply wiped it away with her own lips. 

But to me, it felt like more.  The way she did it was so full of adoration that it initiated some sort of urge in me.  Suddenly, I wanted her to do it again.  And I wanted to do it back.  I just wanted to stand there and hold her and maybe kiss her so that I wouldn't have to lose her so quickly.  Maybe by doing so, our friendship would deepen.  I didn't really understand, but it seemed exciting to me.  It felt right because it was different.  And she cared.  I could tell from that moment when our faces were so close together and her warmth became mine and vice versa.  It was something I had never felt, not even from Hiroshi.  It confused me, but made me happy.

I felt this overwhelming need radiating from her in that split second after she did what she did, but she controlled herself and forced me away from her.  She pushed a speechless me out the door.  I was about to allow myself to be shut out because I was in such shock, when my brain snapped.

This was what I wanted.  This moment and this situation.  I needed someone who understood me.  Aya was the only one who knew how I didn't like the direction in which my life was headed.  She knew I needed excitement, and she understood and supported me.

So I stopped her from closing the door.

"You know, I've never tried that before..." I propositioned her indirectly.

She snapped back without taking the bait, so I dug into her.  I got angry.  How dare she start something like that - give me the tiniest, briefest taste of excitement - and then yank it all away?  I wanted to see where she wanted to take that slip of the lips.

It seemed as though I angered her with my words, but quite the opposite turned out to be true.  She grabbed at me with needy hands, pulled me back into her apartment, and shoved me hard against the wall

They say there is a fine line between love and hate.  For a moment, I believed that the same was true for beating someone up and sex.  The way she dove into things with me was a shock to my system.  She seemed so desperate that she was almost rough with me, and she went much further than I thought she would ever have had the mind to.

But letting her take the lead, I grew courageous, and whatever desperation she felt was transferred to me through her kisses.

She seemed to know me so well.  Maybe even better than Hiroshi did.  She teased me.  Every minute we went at it, she would dangle something in front of me and laugh at how I couldn't get it.  She'd push and push and then retreat a bit, push some more, and then pull back.  It infuriated me in a completely animal way, and a primal side of me that I'd never known about came out to play.  I didn't even know what I was doing.  I had never even touched a girl like this before.

Well, actually, I was kissed by one once when I was in my second year of high school, but we were at a party and she was drunk.  She threatened to take off all her clothes in a room full of twenty-five boys and girls unless she got to kiss every single person in the room.  We figured letting her kiss each of us was the best thing, since she was a notoriously rowdy drunk who liked to run around outside.  Being completely naked while doing so would attract much more attention.  Small towns were not good for this sort of thing.

But it was time to stop reminiscing about my high school days while I was being... attacked.

The more she pushed me, the more I reciprocated.  We probably generated enough energy to heat all of Siberia for the entire month of January.

It had been a long, exhausting day.  I'd done school work in the morning, driven my sister to the hospital, and then gone immediately to work.  After work, I'd had to pick my sister back up, drop her off at her house, and then go on a hike with Aya to look at the night sky, where she dropped her bomb - she was leaving in less than twelve hours.  After that emotionally draining event, we'd gone back to her hotel room, talked, and then suddenly ended up in bed.

It grew very late - or rather early in the morning - and I could barely hold myself up anymore.  Aya was merciful, and she let me go to sleep.  As I lay there, drowning in waves of bliss and exhaustion, I felt her hand on my back.  I made a sound to acknowledge it.  She then drew a shape on my back.  A heart.  I groaned out loud, trying to tell her that it tickled and that I was too drained, my nerves too frayed, to deal with more of her teasing.  She put her hand flat on the left side of my back.  She was feeling for my heartbeat.  She wanted to feel the thing that was keeping me alive, pumping warm blood through my body.  Blood that she had just lit on fire.

It was a loving gesture that I would never forget.  Even if the next day we woke up and awkwardly parted with regret coursing through our veins, that one gesture would still mean something.  Millions of words.  She cared. 

I tried to mumble something, but I was far too sleepy to even take a deep enough breath.  I fell asleep while hoping beyond hope that this all meant something.

The memories were vivid in my mind.  As I recalled them, I started to feel the pressing need to see her.  To repeat last night.  This desire built up in me, and I started to fidget. 

What could I do?  She was almost one thousand kilometres away from me.  I held my breath, counted to twenty, and let it go.  I took another deep breath, and then counted to fifteen before letting that one go, too.  I forced myself to be still, and I took deep, calming breaths in an attempt to put myself to sleep.

It worked eventually, and my dream... was lurid.

In it, I got out of my bed.  I could sense with that mysterious sixth sense in dreams that Aya was nearby.

It was the dead of night and the neighbourhood was asleep.  Not a creature was stirring.  Not even a sheep.

I left the room and tiptoed past my parents' bedroom, slipping through the next door.  My sister's old room.  In the bed, basking in the moonlight that peeked in brightly through the thin curtains covering the window, was Aya, her skin looking smooth and inviting in the pale light.  I walked quietly and stood over the bed, studying her.

I reached out a hand and touched her cheek.  Her eyes opened slowly.  She smiled at me.  I looked down, serious, desperate.

"One more time," I whispered softly.

I demanded.

She looked surprised.

"Now?  You sure?"

I didn't reply.  She'd heard me.  I got onto the bed on my hands and knees and hovered over her.  I slowly lowered my face to hers.  Soon, we were clawing at each other's pyjamas, and I recall thinking in my dream that she looked so cute in pyjamas that it almost saddened me to take them off of her.  Almost.

But as we undressed in order to touch as much skin as possible, something about her felt different.  Familiar, but different.  The handful of X-rated dreams I'd had in my life paled in comparison to this one.  This one felt real.  Like she was actually there underneath me, doing things that made me shudder and gasp out mindless phrases.  Uttering them quietly, softly, muffling my sounds in her neck.  My parents were right next door, and in my dream, it was just as important as in real life not to subject them to play-by-plays of my sex life.

"Miki, I..." she whispered into my ear.

The chills I felt were not because of her warm breath hitting and tickling my ear, but because she sounded different.

I tried to pull back a bit, but things were spiralling forward, and I couldn't stop them.  Part of me pulled back, but part of me needed that release that was so near.  So I kept going.

Then two things happened.

One was that I felt impossibly good.  The other was that I felt the world come to a disastrous end.

The moment I was about to gasp out something - maybe her name, but most likely miscellaneous nonsense - I woke up.

The moment I opened my eyes and looked down, I realised that Aya was nowhere to be found.  I was not on top of her.  Instead, the person I was clutching to me as waves of ecstasy crashed through my body was Hiroshi.

The breath left my body, leaving me numb, unable to move.  He didn't seem to notice as he kissed me and then pushed me onto my back, continuing to move above me and then eventually muffling his own groan in the pillow under my head.  He fell (carefully) on top of me, both of us breathing hard, sweating, trembling.

He rolled off to the side and caught his breath while I lay there, stone still, trying to catch my own breath and figure out what was happening.

I was awake and in bed with Hiroshi.  Once again.

But I hadn't meant to come here.  I had been dreaming.  And not even about him!

What have I done? I thought in fear.

For the second day in a row, I cried in front of someone.

[OTN1]

 Chapter 5 of 29

The next few minutes passed with varying degrees of speed.  At first, the entire world slowed down, and I could feel each tear tumble down my cheek like large boulders rolling down a gradual incline.  Before Hiroshi could notice, I rolled onto my side, facing away from him, unsure how to explain what I felt.  I didn't even know what was happening.

Then time sped up.  Some minutes passed, and I felt him sidle up to me, spooning me, kissing my exposed shoulder tenderly.  He reached a hand down in front of me and tucked it in between the side of my stomach and the mattress, holding me like he always did when we spent the night together, tracing small circles on my skin with his thumb.

"Micchan," he whispered.  "You surprised me."

He spoke in a calm voice, his desires satiated.  He was oblivious to what I was thinking.  I tried to respond, but all that came out was a choked sob.  He craned his neck and peered into my face.

"What's the matter?" he mumbled.  "Did I hurt you?"

I burst out with a laugh and a sob.  He hadn't hurt me.  As far as I could tell (although it was all based entirely on conjecture), he'd done nothing wrong.  I was the one who'd make a mistake and hurt myself.  It was all very funny while not being funny at all.

"Miki..."

I took a shaky breath.

"Hiroshi, I, uh..."

How could I tell him I'd been having a dream about Aya and I'd accidentally sleepwalked into his bed, thinking he was her.

"I didn't mean to do that," I said quietly.

He let go of me and backed away, pulling gently on my shoulder and rolling me onto my back.  He had a perfect view of my tears, and nothing but concern played across his features.  He wiped the tears away from my cheeks, looking surprised.  He hadn't seen me cry since the summer before we'd entered high school.

"Were you awake?" he asked, his voice cracking in fear.

He desperately wanted to be told I'd been awake the whole time, but I had to be honest with him.  I shook my head.

"I was dreaming."

He moved further away from me, letting out an unsteady breath and smoothing his hair back nervously.

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered.  "I didn't mean to-"

But I brought a hand up to silence him.

"Not your fault.  Don't apologise."

A part of me did hate him, though.  How could he not have noticed that I was sleeping?  I'd done things like this a few times before - come onto him while I was asleep - but never had I gone this far.  I guess the part of him that still wanted me had denied the scepticism within his heart, and he had convinced himself that I was awake and back for more.

I saw his expression grow cloudy.

"Were you dreaming of me?"

His voice was weak and pleading.  He wanted me.  He wanted me so badly.  I was still attracted to him (these things didn't simply disappear overnight), but a sense of loyalty to Aya protected me.

"No," I replied solidly.

I didn't want him to follow up his question, although it inevitably came.

"Who was it?" he asked.

How could I tell him?  It barely made sense to me.  I could never explain it to him.

His eyes pierced me with a glare, and I grew angry.

He wanted to know?  He had the audacity to ask me after what he'd done to me while I was asleep?  Her name was on the tip of my tongue.

No! I yelled to myself.  Get a grip.

"Never mind," I mumbled.

He became visibly incensed.  He sat up and grabbed my wrist.  I fixed him with a icy look, daring him to hurt me in my own home, my protective father right next door.

"I believed you when you said there wasn't anyone else and that you broke up for your own sake."

"I told you it's complicated," I snapped back.

"No, it's not.  You're just making it out to be.  Cut the crap already and tell me.  Is he from Tokyo?  Did you meet him here?  Did he trick you into a glittery, cosmopolitan life in the capital?  Did he dangle stories of excitement in front of you just to capture you for his own pleasure?"

I shook his hand off me violently.

"Aya-chan's not like that!" I hissed.

I immediately regretted it.

"Who?" he demanded.

"Never mind," I said with a blank look, praying that he hadn't heard.

"That girl you're friends with?" he asked in disbelief.

He tried to compute, but there wasn't enough believable data.  The wires got crossed in his mind.

"Miki, tell me what's going on."

By now, our voices were at normal speaking levels.

"Did she somehow-" he started, but he cut himself off uncertainly, aware of how embarrassing it would be if he spewed out his assumptions and was chastised for thinking such naughty things.  "Are... She...  Do you like her?"

I sighed.

"Things happened.  Complicated things."

Understanding dawned on him.

"Is that where you were last night?  With her?"

I gave no reply, which of course meant a loud and clear "yes!"

"Did you sleep with her?"

I shot him a look that could have frozen Ecuador.

"I can't believe this.  You cheated on me with some girl from Tokyo, and now you want to go off and live with her?" he muttered, laughing bitterly.  "Have you gone insane?!"

I rolled up from the bed.

"Keep your voice down," I hissed.

I got off the bed and put my pyjamas back on.

"No," he snapped back.  "I think I deserve a bit more than all this secrecy."

I ignored him and stalked out of the room.  I didn't want to talk to him anymore.  I couldn't face him.  I'd cheated on him, broken up with him, and then somehow cheated on Aya, even though Aya and I had not exactly established yet where we stood with each other.  I still felt like I was cheating her heart.

I heard him jump up and scramble to put his clothes on as I made my way downstairs and slipped on my heavy jacket and a pair of warm boots.  I opened the door and left as quickly as possible, but I heard Hiroshi coming down the stairs in pursuit.  I zipped up my jacket as I trudged through the driveway and into the snowy street.

The front door to my house opened sooner than I expected, and Hiroshi raced out.  I tried to walk quickly, but his legs were longer.  He confronted me, forcing me to stop.

"How could you let some girl you barely know seduce you like that?" he demanded.

"She didn't seduce me!" I yelled back, now feeling a little less restricted.

"Then you're going through a phase," he said.  "You're just bored, but if you'd come and told me, we could've fixed it."

"It's not a phase," I insisted.  "And there's no fixing what you and I have.  It just doesn't work unless I want to get married and become a shepherd's wife."

"But... she... she's a girl!" he sputtered incoherently.

The last person in the world who I thought would be close-minded was Hiroshi.  The only reason I didn't knee him in the crotch for saying something like that was because he had a reason to be spewing nonsense angrily - I'd done him wrong.

"Don't give me that crap," I growled.  "It just feels right with her.  Okay?  I can't explain it any better than that."

That shut him up, and for the first time, I realised that it was freezing cold.  Maybe minus ten degrees.  I was shivering.

"Damnit, Miki.  I thought... I don't even know.  What the hell...!?"

He threw his hands up in the air.

"I mean... how long has this been going on?"

I crossed my arms, hoping it would make me look tough, but really, it was just for warmth.

"We've been friends for a few months," I said firmly, "but nothing happened between us until last night."

I didn't mind being honest about that much.  In fact, it was kind of a relief to talk to somebody about it, even if that somebody was slowly turning into a raving lunatic and happened to be my ex-boyfriend as of that morning.

My answer did nothing to relieve his anger and worry.

"God, Miki.  How could you?  What did you even do with her?  How-how the hell would you know?"

I uncrossed my arms and shoved him viciously.  He fell to the ground, caught completely by surprise.

"Don't be an ass, Hiroshi," I spat out.  "If you understood even a tiny bit how confused I feel over this whole thing, you wouldn't be talking so rudely to me."

He didn't get up immediately.  He sat in the snow, looking up at me.

"I hope you're happy with her.  Maybe she can give you whatever I can't."

His tone was bitter and sarcastic.  However, somewhere underneath all of that was some kind of sincerity.  In a way, he conceded that he couldn't make me happy, but that Aya could.  It made me angry, though, that he refused to see things from my point of view.

"This is not fair," I railed on.  "I can't help who I fall in love with.  It's not like I planned the whole thing or was dreaming about her ever since I met her.  I've been miserable about my situation for a long time, and you haven't noticed.  When Aya-chan came here, she noticed right away, and she made me feel better about myself.  We clicked.  So I'm sorry if I hurt you, but things happen.  Bad timing or not."

Finished with my tirade, I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and stared across the dark street.  Hiroshi sat on the cold, wet ground.  We must have stayed like that for five freezing minutes.

"And anyway," I spoke up again.  "At least I let you know as soon as possible.  As soon as I knew that my feelings had changed."

He looked down at his knees and then stood up with such speed that for the briefest of moments, I thought he was going to lunge forward and hit me.

He didn't, though.  He wiped the snow off his pyjama pants.

"Let's just end this here," he said quietly, turning away from me.  "Let's just end our association now.  I think that's best."

So much for trying to stay friends.

"You've always been one of my best friends, Saito Hiroshi."

He needed to hear that.  Or it could be that I needed to say it.  Maybe we'd drifted apart in the last few years, but we'd still gone through thick and thin together.

"It's my birthday next month, but do me a favour.  Don't call me."

His words were like an old, rusty nail hammered through my heart by a clumsy carpenter.

I deserved it.  I deserved it for every bad thing I'd done in the past twenty-four hours.  I deserved it for breaking his heart.  I deserved it for becoming one of those girls that I hated hearing about.  Those girls who seemingly let their voracious sexual appetites get in the way of every meaningful relationship they could potentially have.

But no, it wasn't about sex, I told myself.  It was so much more than that.

But then why had I had a dream like that?  A dream that had created such a desire in me that I found the closest non-family member to take it out on?

Ugg.  Hormones confused me.

But Hiroshi was not to know that I was so affected.  I walked by him and turned to face him.

"You coming back to my house?" I ask in a casual, unaffected voice.

He shrugged, a habit he'd picked up from me.

"I'll be back in a minute."

Those were the last words he spoke to me.

I nodded distractedly and turned away, walking back to my house and leaving the door unlocked so that he could get in later.  I went back to bed, numb with cold, numb with sickness, and terrified.  I had completely lost one important person that day.  The other, Aya, might very well follow if what I had done came to light.  If I lost her, too, I felt like I would lose myself.

[OTN1]

Chapter 6 of 29

The next day was full of tension.  Hiroshi left first thing in the morning.  He didn't speak a word to me, except in his general "goodbye" to everyone when he stepped out the door.  My mother had been eying me the entire time, and I knew that she wanted to ask me what was going on.  She must have heard the commotion the night before, and only a fool wouldn't have noticed the distinctive atmosphere the house had been thrown into.  The second Hiroshi stepped out of the door, my mother started to turn to me, but I ran up the stairs before she could catch my eye.  I got ready and ran back down, claiming that I had a lot of errands to run before the next day.

I walked slowly through the streets and found myself at a Gusto.  I thought nobody was going to be at a family restaurant on the morning of New Year's Eve, but there was a crowd.  Not packed, but not deserted.  I went in and got myself a booth with a window seat, ordering the all-you-can-drink deal.  I started sipping oolong tea and thinking.

I would see Aya tomorrow, and I didn't know what to say or when to say it.  First thing when I got to her apartment?

"By the way, I sleepwalked right into Hiroshi's bed, took of his clothes, and had sex with him two nights ago," I could say to her.

Or should I not say anything to her?  It's not like she'd find out.  We didn't share the same friends, and Aya and Hiroshi had never met before.  All he knew was that her name was Aya.  He didn't even know her last name, which turned out to be a good thing.  I wouldn't want him to get nasty ideas of going to the press with a juicy story, or some other such nonsense.  Not that he'd do that.  He had a little more class and intelligence than that.

I gulped down a big mouthful of cold tea and grit my teeth.  Was this even worth getting worked up over?  Aya and I didn't even have a definition.  We'd had one night together.  One.  And it had been a moment of infidelity for me.  So technically, she shouldn't get angry because she already knew I was cheating on my boyfriend at the time.  Not only that, but I'd also been asleep when I had been with Hiroshi.  I had had no control over my motor functions.  What's more, I'd been dreaming about her.  How could that not make her happy?

Even with all these justifications and defences, I still felt guilty.  I still felt like she'd murder me if - when - I told her.  And I had to tell her.  I wanted to.  Some crazy part of me wanted to be completely honest and upfront.  There was no other way to proceed with her if I wasn't truthful.  There'd be no point being with her if I lied and covered up big things about myself.  My parents had always emphasised honesty, taking responsibility, and admitting my mistakes.  If I couldn't own up to my mistakes in front of Aya, then there were few people beyond my family that I could trust.

Various scenarios played through my head as I started to drink coffee instead of tea.

In one of them, I'd get to Aya's home and sit down.

"Listen," I'd say seriously.  "Two nights ago when I was asleep, I accidentally walked into Hiroshi's room and slept with him."

She'd look at me in disgust.

"What?!"

"I didn't mean to," I'd say.  "Can you forgive me?"

"Get out."

I'd try and reason with her, but she'd haul me out of her apartment and throw my bag after me.

No, that was a little extreme.  Aya would be mad, but she wouldn't be that unreasonable.  I restarted from my first line.

"Listen.  Two nights ago when I was asleep, I accidentally walked into Hiroshi's room and slept with him."

She'd stare at me long and hard.

"Do you want to get back together with him?"

"No."

"Then why'd you do it?"

"I was asleep.  I was having a dream about you.  I couldn't control it," I would reply sadly.

She'd shake her head in disappointment.

"Dream or not, how can I trust you if you go around doing things like that?"

"But I promise I won't do it again!" I insist.

"You just said you can't control it."

She'd win like that.  She'd tell me that I could stay at her place, but she'd put a futon out in the living room for me.  I'd have to find a new place to live after that.

No, telling her was no good.  Too depressing.

If I didn't say anything...

"Hi, Aya.  I missed you," I'd say, walking in.

She'd lock the door behind me and lead me into her apartment.

"I missed you, too," she'd say back, and she'd pull me into her bedroom for round two, leaving the grand tour of her residence for the next day.

And I would live with my guilt for the rest of my life.

No!  No good.

While I sat and imagined my scenarios, I lost track of time and my surroundings.  I didn't notice someone walk in and sit across from me until she waved a hand in front of my face.

"Micchan," she called out.

I blinked, looking up.  Only Hiroshi and a few other close friends called me that anymore.

"Nakanoko-chan!" I mumbled in surprise.

I hadn't seen her in about three months.  She worked in Asahikawa and didn't have much time to visit home.  We kept in touch through mail, but even those had been sparse, especially in the past two months with Aya being around and the holidays approaching.

"What are you doing here all alone and with that long face?"

Nakanoko Yuu was one of those people who simply embodied the words "cheerful" and "cool" in a breathtakingly perfect mix.  She was hip and had everyone fawning over her, trying to be her best friend, and she was happy, always sparing a smile for her friends and even strangers.  We'd met at the beginning of high school and had taken a liking to each other immediately even though our personalities didn't seem compatible at first.  I considered her one of my closest friends.

I ignored her question.

"What am I doing?  What are you doing?  I haven't seen you in months!" I laughed to soften the statement.

"I brought my boyfriend home for the holidays," she replied. 

So Nakanoko finally decided to introduce him to the family.  I suppressed an amused smile.  Her conservative parents would be in for quite the surprise.

"Your parents will be thrilled," I said innocently.

She smirked.

"I need to show them that I'm living in the world, not a convent," she quipped.  "But what about you?  What's your deal?  What's wrong?"

Oh, what an interesting predicament.  To tell the truth or not.  That was the question.  I hadn't told her much about Aya, other than the fact that I'd made a new friend from Tokyo.

"I broke up with Hiroshi," I blurted out.

That much I had to tell her.  She knew him, too, and would find out anyway.  Her face broke out into a distressed expression.

"Oh no.  What happened?"

I sighed and tried my best to explain.

"I've just been getting really antsy living here, and he and I were in a rut.  I was the one who broke it off with him."

She looked sympathetic, but she was smarter than that.  She knew that wasn't my big news.  I couldn't keep things from her, and it troubled me.

"Anything else?"

"I'm moving to Tokyo tomorrow."

"Wow!" she cried out, and then quickly slapped her hand down over her mouth, continuing in a quieter voice.  "Tokyo?  Micchan... why?"

I sighed again.

"I need a complete change of pace.  And, uh, I have this friend there who'll put me up for a bit."

"Guy or girl?" she quizzed.

"Girl."

She breathed out a sigh of relief.

"For a moment I thought you'd met some Taro off the street and let him trick you into moving in with him."

I stayed silent, in pain.

"You didn't," she gasped, seeing my look, and I turned red.

"No way, Micchan," she said in disbelief.

"I, uh, I didn't mean to..." I stuttered.

"So you did meet a new guy after all.  Who is he?  How'd you meet him?  And how do you know this friend, by the way?"

So she hadn't quite figured it all out.  That has half a relief.

"No, it's not like that exactly," I denied calmly.  "And I met that friend here."

Nakanoko let it go through her mind.

"I can accept that," she said.  "But why so sad?  You're the one who broke things off with Hiro-kun, right?"

I nodded.

"But last night I accidentally, uh... I kind of..."

"One last time together, huh?" she finished for me.

"But I was sleepwalking," I added hurriedly.

She gave me a disbelieving look, but she must have believed me in the end.  She knew I did weird things like that.

"Okay, so you guys had sex one last time.  Big deal.  You did that with Nakajima-kun, right?"

"That was different.  This time I feel guilty," I said uncomfortably.

"Guilty?"

She tasted the word, rolling it around on her tongue before continuing.

"One often feels guilty about something like that when there's another guy involved.  Another new love or crush."

I took a gulp of coffee.

"I..."

I had no idea what to say.

"Oh my god!" Nakanoko exclaimed.  "You slept with someone else!"

The entire family restaurant must have turned around to look at us.  On the outside I remained calm, but on the inside I spazzed out.

"I can't believe it.  And you didn't tell me," she scoffed.

Shut up, Nakanoko.

"And how was I supposed to tell you when you'd freak out?" I asked.

"Why would I freak out?" she laughed.

"Because it wasn't a guy," I mumbled.

Dead silence.

Somewhere in the back of mind, I thought Gee, I hope she doesn't announce this, too, the restaurant.

She studied me, presumably to make sure I wasn't pulling her leg.

"Micchan, I know that your life is boring and this town really lacks entertainment besides that silly animal history museum you like so much, but were you so desperate that you had to go and score with a girl?" she asked me.

I flared up, insulted, disappointed.  I was about to speak my mind when Nakanoko put a hand on my arm.

"I'm joking," she said in a monotone, a twinkle in her eye.

I relaxed a little.  It seemed like she was going to take it in stride.  I could always trust her to remain cool about the weirdest thing, especially when I told her about the time this strange friend of mine licked the sole of my foot, claiming that he thought it was a friendly gesture.

Nakanoko resumed with a serious expression.

"I have no clue how you got yourself into that one, but here's my advice: do yourself a favour and don't get in way over your head with something you don't understand."

What?  Did she mean give up on Aya?

"And what I mean by that," she clarified, "is that if you're confused about your feelings and don't know what you want, don't do anything drastic like moving halfway across the country."

Just then, her phone rang and she picked it up to read the message.

"Aoki-chan's arrived," she announced.  "You want to join us?"

Aoki Yuka was almost the spitting image of me.  Cool, collected, honest, kind of plain, and fairly easygoing around friends.  If something wasn't funny, she wouldn't laugh.  If she was bored, she wouldn't hide it.  She and Nakanoko had been friends since elementary school, and I'd become friends with her after meeting Nakanoko.  We got along fairly well, but we usually needed a third person there with us to move things along.  Otherwise we'd just sit there and be content to pass the time in silence, staring at the television for hours.

As much as I liked Aoki, I didn't want to be in a group situation.  Having her around would complicate matters.  We didn't share secrets.  Nakanoko had heard about every person I'd slept with before (not that I had a huge list or something), but Aoki had not.  That was just the kind of friends we were.

"No, thanks," I declined politely.  "I need to do some more thinking."

"Don't worry yourself to death," she said with a wink, standing up to leave.

"Wait," I said before she could go.  "You're not grossed out, are you?"

She snorted.

"I'm surprised, I'll give you that.  But grossed out?  No.  You do what you want.  And come on, I'm a little too mature and open-minded for something like that to gross me out."

I sighed in relief on the inside.

"When did you grow up?" I asked with a mock sneer to hide my gratefulness.

"While you were off exploring home team territory," she retorted.

I rolled my eyes and gulped down the last of my coffee.

"Go meet Aoki-chan," I shooed her off.  "Say hi for me."

"Will I see you before tomorrow?" Nakanoko asked, turning serious.

I shook my head.

"Probably not."

"Then good luck.  But think about it carefully.  Only if she's worth it.  Only if you know what you feel is actually a feeling for her and not just the overwhelming need to get out of this lovely hometown of ours."

Her words echoed in my head long after we said goodbye.

I had to decide what I felt for Aya.  Maybe it really was just my desire to get out of town.  But I had told Hiroshi that I couldn't help who I fell in love with.  Had I meant that in a deep, love sense, or just in the general way of having feelings that went just a step beyond normal friendship?

No, it couldn't be just my desire to leave town.  I really did like her and want to keep spending time with her.  There was love potential.

Right?

If there was that potential, then I had to figure out what I was going to do about this "last night with Hiroshi" issue.  That could throw a wrench in the works and make everything grind to an untimely halt.

I got up and went to pay my bill.  Thinking alone wasn't helping.  I needed a revelation brought on by a lightning bolt.  Skies were clear, though, so no chance of that.  I'd have to wait.  I prayed for a miracle before the next day.

I went for a two hour walk in the hills while contemplating life, and then spent the remainder of the day doing what I was supposed to do.  I picked up my final pay from Baachan, said goodbye, and then went home. 

To my relief, my mother was out when I got home, so I went directly to my room and sat down with a magazine.  I flipped through it mindlessly.  I was still wondering what to do.  My phone lay right beside me.  I hadn't had any contact with Aya so far, and it was already four in the afternoon.  I wondered if she was being grilled by her manager.  It was a holiday, but the entertainment world never seemed to sleep.  I wondered if she was okay.

Of course she's okay, I scolded myself.

The girl had an iron will, and she'd been in the business for so many years.  She'd have had to have built up good defences against harsh words.

As if knowing I was thinking about her, she e-mailed me.  When the phone rang, I simply knew it was her, and I checked to see what she had to say.

I just got back from a meeting with some of the top executives of my company.  They're furious with me and they're probably going to fire me.  No final decision yet, though.  But you know what?  I don't care.  It was worth it to meet you.  What are you up to now?  Have time to talk?

I froze up in fear and guilt.  She'd lost her job because she spent two months hanging out with me.  I was going to be moving into her apartment for an unspecified amount of time.  She wanted me there.  She wanted me by her side and, presumably, for her only.  Nobody else.  Not Hiroshi.  Nobody. 

What I had done last night had been out of my control.  I had been asleep.  But would she see it that way?  And on second thought, had it really been beyond my control?  What if a subconscious part of me had wanted it?  A last time with Hiroshi just to make sure...

All I knew is that what I had to say couldn't be said over the phone or in an e-mail.  I had to stand in front of her and tell her.

I raised my phone and typed.

I'm sorry.  Don't do anything crazy.  Try to save your job.  I don't want you to lose it 'cause of me.  I'm at home now.  Go ahead and call.

I sat there with a icy fear growing in my stomach.  I waited for the phone to ring, but it was taking a long time.  Maybe she didn't want to call.  Maybe I was supposed to call.  I was about to dial her number when I received another message from her.

Ug.  Got to go again.  Boss called.  Sorry!

I breathed a sigh of relief.  I'd been temporarily saved.  But this safe haven that was her ignorance wouldn't last forever.  I would either reveal everything to her and get chewed out, or I would hide it and be eaten alive by my guilt.  Either way, there would be a lot of gnashing teeth.

I wrote her back.

It's okay.  I'll contact you tomorrow when I land.  Good luck!

I felt cheap adding a little heart and a smiley face, but I did it anyway.

I continued to look at my magazines and do idiotic love quizzes until my mother came home an hour later.  She came straight to my room and didn't bother to knock.  She whipped the door open and glared at me.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" she asked.

I liked being friends with my mother, but sometimes there were things I didn't want to talk to her about.  Details about sex were some of those things.  Now added to that was all talk pertaining to me looking at Aya in a different way.

I closed my magazine.

"It's complicated, Mom.  Hiroshi and I aren't friends anymore."

She looked dismayed.

"Miki-chan, he's such a nice boy."

"I know," I huffed and then calmed down, deciding not to take things out on my mother.  "He's just not right for me."

"What did you argue about last night?" my nosey mom ploughed on.

I grew irked, but kept my composure.

"About me moving.  About breaking up with him.  My reasons and all that."

I could tell that my mother wanted to ask me more, but she could sense my genuine discomfort, and for once in her life, she towed it in and let her daughter be at peace.

"Well, I hope your spirits aren't too dampened for tonight.  We'll be heading to Grandma's house soon.  You're still coming, right?"

New Year's celebrations would go on forever and ever no matter what crises I faced.  Holidays were so reliable that way.  Always there, only changing once in a blue moon.  I could choose to skip it and spend my time here, but what good would that do?  I'd accomplish nothing but scaring myself.  I nodded at my mother.

"Of course."

My final duty to the family before I flew off into an unfamiliar land.

But, oh, what a crappy way to end a year.  With a heavy set of chains weighing me down.  When I went to the shrine on New Year's morning, I would pray for a good start to the year.  I would pray for Aya's forgiveness.  Even Hiroshi's forgiveness.  I'd pray to stop making mistakes and become the kind of adult that Aya would appreciate.

[OTN1]

Chapter 7 of 29

Things always got interesting at my family New Year gatherings, and that was a very mild way of putting it.  Some of my family members held onto opinions as if they were clutching hard-earned gold medals at an Olympics award ceremony.  As I sat there and watched them cheerfully bicker away that evening, I thought about myself and my own views.  Going to university must have opened up my eyes and allowed me to develop a mind with broader horizons.  I was a small town girl, but I wasn't completely set in my traditional ways.  I could see what was out there and I wanted to taste it.

I wonder what would have happened if I had moved to Tokyo liked I'd wanted to when I was a teenager.  Maybe that would have been the equivalent of going to university.  I would have been thrust into a whole new different world.  A cosmopolitan city full of variety.  A completely new and different education.  Maybe one that was much better than the one I got sitting in a lecture room and taking notes on a piece of paper.  Although to my university's credit, it allowed an unusually high number of foreign students to enrol, so while economics did little to expand the scope of my cultural understanding, talking to those foreign students did.

All "could have been" and "what if" statements pushed aside, the undeniable fact now was that I was about to move to the big city.  I was about to become re-educated.  A new chapter of my life was beginning.  Or maybe it wasn't a new chapter.  Maybe it was a whole new book.  A whole new life.  That's how it felt.

At around half past eleven that evening, I was getting another drink from the kitchen when I decided to check my phone for messages.  I flipped it open and saw that I'd missed a call twenty minutes ago.  A call from Aya.  In addition to the missed call, I had a new e-mail.  It was from her.

Just wanted to hear your voice one last time this year, but I guess it's okay.  Have a Happy New Year!!

And that was how this girl made my heart melt.  Forgetting my worries, and having had a few drinks and feeling fairly relaxed, I called her up.

"Hi!" she exclaimed into the phone.

Was she drunk?

"Hi, Aya-chan," I said quietly in a vague and stupid voice.

"I called you just now but you didn't pick up," she stated.

"Yeah, I didn't hear the phone.  I was with family.  Thanks, though."

There was a bit of a silence as we both waited for the other to continue.

"What are you up to tonight?" she asked finally.

"I'm at my grandmother's house with my family.  We're doing the usual.  Eating, drinking, arguing, and watching TV," I grinned.  "What about you?"

"Lucky," she whined, and I could imagine her pouting.  "I didn't have time to go down to see my parents so I'm just out with a couple of friends."

It sounded like she was in a busy place.  I could hear a lot of buzzing going on in the background.  I wondered what friends she was with.  She had mentioned her friends from time to time in the past few months, and of course I knew some of their faces because some were her fellow singers and stars.  I had an idea of which ones she was close to and which ones she simply hung out with, though.

"Shiba-chan?" I asked, calling to mind a picture of the former Melon Kinenbi member.

In the media, they always claimed to actually be good friends outside of work.  I had found out that this was true.  Aya spoke about her as one would a close friend.  It was nice to know that not everything in the newspaper was faked.

"Yeah, among others," Aya replied perkily.

Well, at least she was in good company and having fun.  Let her end the year on a happy note.  I just hoped that tomorrow, the start of the New Year, wouldn't be a big disappointment for her.

"That's good," I said, lacking anything better to say.  "And how'd things with work go?"

"My boss calling was a false alarm.  Still no decision yet.  It might take a few days, so I'm not thinking about it 'till then," she replied in good spirits.

There was that optimistic side of her.  I really liked it.

"Good to hear," I said with a smile in my voice.

"Anyway, I'd better get going because we're off to go... haha, somewhere.  I'm not sure where," Aya laughed a contagious laugh that made me chuckle.

"Okay, you go do whatever it is you have to do.  I've got to get back to my family and make sure they don't kill one another."

"See you tomorrow?" she asked in a voice that reverted instantly from loud and jittery to shy and hopeful.

I swallowed hard, pushing my guilt back down into the pit of my stomach.

"I'll contact you when I land," I said quietly.

"Can't wait.  Bye-bye."

"Bye-bye," I mumbled after she'd hung up.

With a sigh, I closed my phone, put it in my bag, and then gathered up my energy to make my re-appearance in the living room, trying to forget all the bad and focus on the good.

I slept at my grandmother's house that evening.  After we brought in the official start of the New Year with our traditional jump and then a silence where we all e-mailed our friends, my two cousins and I went off to go to bed.  We were similar in age and got along pretty well, so we were able to chat and laugh a bit before turning out the lights in our shared room.  A little crowded, but it kept us warm.  It was exactly what I needed to relax after a tense day and to forget about my worries.

In the morning, we woke up bright and early and went to the local shrine to open up the New Year.

As I stood there, my eyes closed, my hands clapped together, I wondered what to wish for.  I could do what I did every year and ask for happiness or success during the year.  But this year, I felt like I owed Aya something approaching gigantic, so I prayed for her.  Of course I included myself in my wish, but it was mainly for her sake.

I hope that whatever happens with me, Aya's happy.  If she's upset by what I've done, please let her get over it quickly and find happiness.  Let this year be a good year for her.

It was all superstition.  I didn't believe there were great powers in the rocks and trees making sure I had a wonderful life.  But there wasn't much else I could do.  Not for another few hours.  At least praying at a shrine calmed me down, surrounded by family and friends and the natural tranquility of the shrine grounds.

The morning passed by quickly, and suddenly it was time to leave.  I finished packing in a hurry, positive that I'd get to Tokyo and find that I had forgotten to bring my favourite jeans or skirt.

When I went downstairs, my mother went on about how she was going to miss me.  She gave me a big, smothering hug, and then pushed me away, telling me to leave quickly or she'd start crying.  My father remained stoic the entire time.  He would be driving me to the train station, so there was no need for him to say goodbye yet.  I said goodbye to my mother, smiling to prove to her that I really was happy and that this was really what I wanted.

The ride to the station was quiet.  We didn't speak, so I flipped on the radio and listened to some oldies from the seventies and eighties.

When we got to the station, my father lifted my bag out of the trunk and put it beside the car.

"From here on, you're on your own," he said.

Superficially, he meant that I'd have to find my own way to the airport, but in a deeper sense, he was reminding me that the moment I stepped off this island, he wouldn't be able to come and help me in a jiffy if need be.  I'd have to find someone else to come and fix the clogged up sink pipes and spent light bulbs.

"Take care of yourself," he finished simply.

No big speech, no angry words, no sad words, not a hint of emotion on his face.  That was my father.  I knew that he really did feel a whole slew of things and that he would miss me terribly, because I took after him.  I often hid what I felt, too, if I thought it would cause a scene or was too exaggerated.  The complete lack of emotion meant that there was lots of emoting going on inside.

"Thank you," I replied.

Thank you for driving me to the station.  Thank you for letting your baby go off into the world without (too much) objection.  Thank you for taking care of me for almost twenty-six years.

Words left unspoken.  Words that I meant.  Words that he knew already.

I smiled at my father one last time.  He didn't smile back, but for a moment, his eyes weakened, and I could see all the worry and hurt, but all the happiness and curiosity that he felt for me, reflected in them.  I picked up my bag, turned around, and didn't look back as I walked off.

The airport was easy to get to, and the crowds were mercifully thin, so while my bag became tedious and heavy, at least there was enough room for me and it to travel side-by-side.  The entire trip to the airport I spent thinking about what I was going to say to Aya.  As I checked in at the airport and sat waiting at the gate, I began to wonder what I thought about the whole thing.

What was my opinion about what had happened the previous night with Hiroshi?

I had been so consumed with worry over what Aya would think that I had barely had time to really decide what I thought.

What happened with Hiroshi was, simply put, wrong.  It had been a mistake - an accident.  It wasn't supposed to mean anything, and in fact, it meant very little compared to what I'd been dreaming about.  Of course I still cared for him, but it was quickly fading as other feelings started to take over my heart.  So in the end, what had happened had been out of my control, and not something that Aya should worry about or blame me for.  The fact that I wanted things to work out with her - work out in what way, I didn't yet know, but if we were going to be living together for at least a small passage of time, I didn't want there to be bad blood between us - clearly made The Hiroshi Incident an unimportant issue.

And that was what I thought.  If only Aya would see it that way.

For the plane ride, I reverted back to worrying about what she'd think and say, and dozens of new scenarios ran through my head, ranging from her slapping me to her pretending not to care and then sabotaging my life to get revenge.

Dozing off for the last half hour of the flight brought me a brief respite from my worries.  I woke up just in time to watch us land.

In Sapporo, it had been snowing lightly before taking off, causing a slight delay until it was deemed safe to fly after the twenty minute flurry session had brought itself to a close.  In Tokyo, there was not a hint of the white fluff.  By the time the plane landed it was dark, but still noticeably warmer than back home.  I concentrated on the disembarkation procedure and didn't let my mind wander until I had my luggage in one hand and was safely waiting for a train that would get me out of the airport area.  It was then that I sent Aya an e-mail telling her that I'd arrived and was waiting for a train, followed by a quick e-mail to my mother to tell her I had arrived safely.

Aya's reply was a little delayed, and I laughed inwardly as I wondered if she was suffering from the night before.  She sent me detailed directions to her apartment, and I committed them to memory.  Then, once the train had arrived and I'd found a seat, she sent me another e-mail saying she'd meet me at the station.  I sent one back insisting that I could find her place on my own, but she sent yet another e-mail back telling me to shush up and listen to her.  And so I relented.

Hey, since when do I give up that easily? I asked myself as the dark Tokyo scenery sped by outside the window.

The question remained unanswered because I didn't bother to give it a second.  I was merely following my instinct when dealing with this girl.  It was simply the way it had to be.

It took just a little over forty minutes to get to her station from the airport.  It would have taken less time, but I got a bit confused at one station and ended up missing the train and having to wait for the next one.  I wasn't completely inexperienced in the ways of the Tokyo train system, having been to the city several times before, but I was generally bad at directions, so I never trusted myself to be right, and that's what caused my delay.  It was one of the silly complexes that I'd have to work on fixing now that I had dozens of train lines to choose from in daily life.

As I was walking down the platform to find the station exit where I would meet Aya, someone came up from behind me.

"Hi!  Long time no see!" he said happily.

I looked at him, a man perhaps in his late thirties, my mind racing to find out what thirty-year-old men I knew in Tokyo.  When I studied his face, though, I didn't recognise him.

"I'm sorry?" I asked politely.

I looked at him in confusion, and his face slowly fell, matching my expression.

"Oh, sorry," he mumbled in confusion, taking a closer look at me.  "I thought you were someone I knew.  Sorry."

He bowed his head quickly and peeled away from my presence in embarrassment as I tried not to burst out laughing.  Well, at least my first real human interaction since landing hadn't been dangerous, rude, or a sleazy pick up attempt.  Just an honest case of mistaken identity.  I supposed the back of my head looked very much like many other girls'.

I reached the exit and immediately started scanning the crowd, looking for Aya.  I couldn't find her, so I went to a wall and stood there, waiting nervously.

She appeared a minute later, her hair wet from what I assumed had been a recent shower and wearing a hat and sunglasses, making me smile secretly in amusement.  Her disguise wasn't all that bad since it covered most of her face, but the fact that nobody else was wearing that much head gear made her stand out even more.  I saw her walk towards me, so I saved her some of the trouble, picked up my bag and met her halfway.

"Welcome to Tokyo, Miki-chan," she smiled underneath her "disguise".

"Thank you, Aya-chan," I replied cutely.

"This way."

I followed her out of the station and down the street.

I'll tell her when we get to her place.  That way we can have some privacy so that she can yell and scream and throw me out without causing too much public embarrassment, I decided.

It took about ten minutes to walk to the front of her apartment, during which she asked me how my flight had been and what I felt so far about being in the city.  I answered honestly that the flight had been nerve-wracking and that the people seemed nice enough in Tokyo so far.

I looked up when we stopped in front of a set of doors that would lead us to her place.  From what I could see of it, it was a new building, and it did not look cheap.  Not by a long shot.  For a second - just a tiny second - I wondered what I was doing walking into this rich idol's fancy Tokyo condo when I came from an average-sized house in a small town in the middle of Hokkaido.  I waved the thought off, however, because it was not conducive to making me feel better.

"Like it?" she asked, obviously seeing that I was impressed.

"It suits you," was my reply.

She smirked and took my bag from me, letting me wander in with nothing to weigh me down. 

The lobby was a quiet and pleasant affair, spotless and homely.  The elevator that we stepped into was in pristine condition, boasting trendy paneling, large, clean mirrors on the back wall and ceiling, and a smooth, turbulence-free ascent.

"Seventeenth floor," Aya said as we got in, and I obediently pressed the appropriately marked button.

We rode in silence, and when the doors opened, Aya gestured for me to get out.

"To the left.  Number forty-seven."

I stepped out into a neatly-carpeted hallway.  The lighting was soft and delicate, somehow urging all who passed through to relax and be at peace.  The walls seemed so soft that if I fell against one, I thought that I might feel like I was sinking into warm butter.  This place did everything to make its residents want to stay permanently.  I was already getting the feeling that I didn't want to leave.  I hadn't even seen the inside of Aya's room yet, but I knew that if I lived here for the rest of my life, I'd be content.

I led us down the hallway, counting the numbers as we walked by the doors until we reached number seventeen-forty-seven.  I stood at the door while Aya put my bag down, took her key out, and opened the door.  All I saw was darkness.  I picked up my own bag, and after she indicated for me to walk in, I did so, slipping into the darkness.  She followed right after.

The darkness disappeared promptly.  Aya flicked a switch up, and we were bathed in a bright, warm light, it alone starting to take away the chill that had crept into our bones from the cold winds outside.  I took off my shoes, not even bothering to arrange them neatly, and walked around the living room slowly, inspecting everything briefly.

Her apartment was clean, and so utterly "Aya" that I just let out a laugh.

"What?" she asked.

"It's so you!" I cried out in delight.  "I mean, it's exactly what I expected."

From the pictures on the wall to the plants to the books and magazines she chose to leave on her bookcase, it all matched what I knew about her from the time we'd spent together.  Her small laptop computer sat in a corner beside her television set and DVD player, all dust-free and brand new models.

This place was a home, not just a temporary residence that she was using until she decided to move back to her hometown.

"I hope that's a good thing," she said with an uncertain laugh from behind me.

I heard her walk up beside me.

"Definitely," I assured her with a smile.

This place... I could live in forever.  I forgot about Hiroshi.  All I could think about was waking up every day in this room with her and going about our daily life in peace and harmony.

"Come on, there's more," she said, linking her arm around mine and pulling me along.

I let myself be taken on the tour.

"This is the kitchen," she said in a childish way.

I huffed out a laugh, as it was quite obviously a kitchen and I had no need for her to tell me so.  It was clean, a few recently-washed dishes sitting and drying beside the sink.  She pulled me over to a door and opened it.

"Bathroom," she announced, pointing to the invitingly large bath in the room that called out for me to fill it up with hot water and sink into it in order to warm my bones.

She pulled me past two doors.

"Toilet," she said, "and a closet full of cleaning junk beside it."

She didn't need to open those up as neither would be very big nor impressive.

"And last, my bedroom."

She slid open a door, and in the tatami room that lay behind it was her Ayaesque bedroom.  A few bookcases, a nice poster of some landscape, a large closet presumably stuffed with her mounds of clothes, and a chest of drawers that doubled as a vanity, makeup and other accessories neatly lined up on it.

"It's usually very messy.  I just cleaned it up to impress you," she admitted after seeing that I was surveying the types and brands of makeup she had.

I could imagine it becoming awfully cluttered, but she struck me as the kind of person who would clean it up before it got too bad.

She hadn't lied before when she had said the bed was big enough for two, but I tried not to keep my eyes on it for too long because I didn't want her to get the wrong idea.  Not that that would be such a bad thing.  It just didn't feel right.  Not yet.  Nonetheless, the bed looked comfortable and warm, and I wondered if I'd ever be allowed to sleep in it.

I instantly remembered what I had to tell her, but her arm encircling my waist and pulling me close to her made me hesitate, and then it was too late.

"So, do you like my place?" she asked.

I nodded, starting to sweat a little, and it wasn't just because of her proximity.

"It's really nice, Aya.  Like... really nice," I said.

"You don't mind living here?"

Why would she ask something like that?  Of course I wouldn't mind.  The question was more appropriately directed at her.

"I think I should ask you that.  You don't mind if I stay here for a few weeks 'till I find my own place?"

I chuckled to myself, imagining what kind of place I could afford.  Nothing as glorious and clean as this place.  I would have to start small and work my way up.

"You can stay longer," she said, not specifying how much longer.

"How much longer?" I asked curiously.

"As long as you can tolerate living with me," she said, squeezing me gently.

That was it.  I had to tell her now.  She would be the one not able to tolerate living with me once she knew.  I opened my mouth to speak when she interrupted me.

"Did you eat dinner?"

It was half past nine in the evening and I hadn't eaten, but I was so nervous that I wasn't a bit hungry.

"No, but I'm not hungry," I claimed.

She looked at me, doubt strewn across her face like a veil, but she ended up believing me.

"Want to take a shower then?"

Oh my god, I thought.  With her?

I didn't let my terror show, but I think she sensed it, and she let me go, pushing me to the bathroom she'd shown me earlier.

"I have to make a phone call, so go ahead and get cleaned up.  Sorry I didn't fill the bath up earlier, but you can try that out tomorrow since it takes forever.  And don't worry, I'll be here when you get out and we can just stay in this evening."

I let out an inward sigh of relief, and I thanked her, grabbing some things from my bag and letting her provide me with a clean towel. 

As I let the magnificent high-pressure shower wash away my sweat and urge some more warmth into my muscles, I started to decide on the best way to tell her about the incident.  I came to the conclusion that short and to the point was best, and so once I got out of the shower, I would talk to her right away.

I was in there for twenty-five minutes, washing my hair and body carefully, stalling and running up a bill with all the hot water I was using.  When I finished, I put on some neutral pyjamas that could double as a quick getaway track suit in the event that she threw me out suddenly, and feeling quite a bit refreshed, I left the bathroom.

Aya was still on the phone when I went into the living room, and she looked up at me, holding up a finger to indicate that she'd be done soon.

"So Tuesday at eleven?" she asked, confirming some sort of plan.

I sat down on the couch, and leaned back, pretending not to pay attention.

"No, I hate that one.  Oh, come on, we went there last time.  Can you choose another place?" she whined

She paused to listen to the response.

"Ah, that's much better!" she said, her voice reverting to its cheerful state.  "You're the best!"

She said goodbye to whoever was on the line, and then apologised to me, getting up from the floor and sitting beside me on the couch.

"So, how'd you like the shower?" she asked.

"It's great.  Much better than the one I have at home," I laughed, finding it cute how she kept checking to make sure I was enjoying everything I encountered.

"Good," she said happily, and she snuggled into me.

I tried not to groan.  How could I start to talk to her when she was being all close and cute?

"Are you actually happy you came here?" she suddenly asked with uncertainty in her voice.

"O-of course," I stammered in surprise.  "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just seem a little quiet."

There I had gone making her feel like a bad host.  I put a hand on her leg comfortingly.

"I'm just a little overwhelmed," I said, which was the truth.  "But I like being here very much."

I just don't like keeping things from you, I finished in my mind.

"Good."

Now I really couldn't say anything.  Not in this situation.  Maybe I'd wait a few minutes until she moved away, but she didn't move away.  She started to ask me what I wanted to do the next day and the next weekend, and she had all sorts of suggestions of what we should do together.  I tried to follow her fluctuating topics, but I found myself clumsily flailing about, hiding my distraction behind the guise of being overwhelmed.  She sensed my tension.

"Bedtime," she said cutely when I tried to stifle a yawn.

Oh brother.

She showed me to her room again, and while she got changed, I inspected her bed, checking the thickness of the blankets, the bounciness of the mattress, and the position of the window, trying to judge whether it would impede efforts to sleep in by letting in the sunlight too early.

"The window faces west, so don't worry too much about the morning sunlight," she informed me, reading my mind.

It had the effect of relaxing me, and I slipped in under the covers without invitation, curling up on my side and facing the wall.  She soon followed after turning out the light, and things got very uncomfortable again for me the minute that happened.

"You're really tense, huh?" she said, crowding me and treating me like a teddy bear, speaking with her mouth a few centimetres away from my ear.  "I know this is all really new and weird for you, but try to relax.  I'm not going to bite your head off or do anything bad to you.  And if I do, you can hit me and yell at me for being a moron."

I giggled despite myself, and she hugged me even more tightly.

"Yeah, I'm just, um..." I mumbled, trying to find some way to lead into what I had to say.  "I-"

But she pinched my side.

"Maybe you should give your brain a rest.  It seems fried."

She put her hands on my shoulders and started to massage them, and somewhere in the back of my mind, some crazy statistical information about the high percentage of massages that led to wanton behaviour danced about.

And we did not put that statistic to shame, for what started as a massage indeed led to more, and before I could say "stop, I need to tell you something important", hormones usurped the throne from reason in my brain and I became my hungry old self around her for the second time in our lives.

A good deal later, it was no longer cold in the room, and the sweat on my body wasn't from my nervousness, but from the heat we had generated.  However, as the hormones slowly cleared out and reason inched its way back to its rightful seat at the head of my brain's central functioning centre, a cold fear swept through me and I felt like I had to say something as soon as possible before the chance slipped away.

But how could I say anything when neither of us was wearing a stitch?

Then again, I'd argued with Hiroshi while in the nude.  But we'd been going out for two years and we'd known each other for longer.  It was a bit more normal.

I sucked in a huge breath until my lungs felt like they were going to explode, and I let it all out until I felt my lungs would collapse.  Then with one more medium-sized breath, I spoke.

"So..." I started awkwardly, pulling the sheets over my body a little more and backing away an infinitesimal distance.

"Mmm?" Aya uttered, stretching out on her back in a languorous, teasing way under the thin sheets that covered us.

"Two nights ago I, um..."

I stopped, my heart beating like wild, my arms tensing up to defend myself when she inevitably started hitting me.

Aya closed her eyes, a sated smile on her lips, and I wished she didn't look so happy.  I wished we hadn't done what we'd just done.  I wished that I had had the courage to bring the subject up the moment I saw her at the station, not now in bed at midnight.

I steeled myself and ploughed on through my nervousness, chastising myself for being such a wishy-washy wimp around her.

"Two nights ago I sleepwalked and I kind of went to Hiroshi's room and slept with him."

I said it quickly, purposefully, matter of factly, and with grit teeth.  It was the moment of truth.

Aya, however, did not change her position, her eyes remaining closed.

"Is that so?" she asked conversationally.

Her mind must have been wandering and not listening to a word I was saying.  Not that I could blame her, but I wondered if all pillow talk with her would be like this - words going in one ear and immediately exiting out the other.  If so, there would be no point talking in bed, and there would go my opportunity to do something I really wanted to do with her.

"Are you paying attention?" I asked testily.

"Mmmhmm," she replied in the same way, dragging out the mumble.

"I slept with him.  As in sex.  Naked.  Skin-on-skin.  Hot and passionate.  In the guest room in my house," I continued, rolling my eyes at being ignored.

"Yeah, thanks.  I heard it the first time.  I don't need the details," she said surprisingly sharply.

Oops.  So she was paying attention.

"Ehhg... I- uh-" I stuttered

She opened her eyes and pierced me with a look I couldn't read.

"Two nights ago?  The day I left?"

Her voice revealed nothing either, but angry or not, I had to tell her the truth, so I nodded.

"And you were sleepwalking?" she asked, and this time I could have sworn she sounded almost amused and perhaps inclined to question the possibility of my doing such a thing while remaining asleep the entire time.

I nodded again, this time embarrassedly.

"And?"

Details.  She wants details.  Not about the actual act, but about the after part.

"He misunderstood.  He thought I was awake, and he apologised after, and then, um, we got into a fight outside and I kind of told him a bit of what happened between you and me, and he got even angrier..."

She seemed to latch onto something I said, because she lost the neutral expression and looked at me with interest.

"What did he think about that?  About your situation with me?"

I squirmed uncomfortably, sweating profusely under the scrutiny of her gaze.

"He thinks you're just a phase for me," I said in a voice that barely made it past my lips.  "He was really angry.  He felt really cheated."

She remained silent, no reaction.  I didn't like grovelling, but considering the mess I'd gotten myself into, I had to do something to repent.

"I'm really sorry.  I didn't want it to happen, and I couldn't control myself.  A-and it didn't mean anything.  I was actually having a dream about you," and here my face must've turned red at my unplanned admission, "and it kind of transferred into a real life, ah, situation, only you weren't there.  And I've been killing myself with worry because I hate what I've done and I don't want to upset you and-"

A cool hand touched my overheated arm, and I stopped talking.  Aya was looking at me with a look of pity.  Maybe she thought I was a pathetic excuse for a human.

"Miki, it's okay," she said quietly.

But it couldn't be that simple, so I waited until she spoke again.

"Somehow, it's okay," she sighed.  "You're here now.  Your heart is here.  Right?"

I nodded, unable to form words.

"And you were asleep then when it happened."

But why isn't she upset?

"So you're not upset?"

She shook her head.

"Of course I am," she said clearly, and my heart plunged.  "But things happen that we can't control.  Like I said, you're here now.  And it's not like I had any right to demand anything from you before.  I can't be completely upset with you."

My heart floated back up slowly to its normal resting spot.  What she said made sense, which stunned me.  She was being very sensible here, thinking hard with her head.  Maybe I was important enough to bust out the logic and reason.  The head was a useful tool when used properly, and while I believed matters of the heart should be left to the heart, there were some situations where a broad mind was required.

"Now that you live with me, however, you'd better not be going off and doing that with just anyone."

She spoke mostly playfully.  A bit serious, but softening her words with a joking tone.  I let out a sigh, my body feeling like it was a parched victim of a shipwreck finally tasting sweet, spring water after days of thirst and hunger.

"I'm really sorry," I said, my apology gushing out of my mouth uncontrollably.  "I don't have a habit of doing that.  I really don't."

"And you say you were dreaming about me?" she asked, the twinkle in her eye increasing tenfold.

I closed my eyes and made a pained face.

"Don't ask," I muttered.

"You're so shy around me," she laughed, stroking my hair in adoration.

"Give me time," I mumbled.

We exchanged silly banter for a few minutes until she told me to stop worrying and to get some rest.  We could talk more in the morning.  We lay there silently, each of us trying to go to sleep, but with some sort of uptight anticipation in the air.  Maybe she wanted to talk more but had decided to wait until the morning.  I definitely wanted to talk more.  I wanted to tell her that I was happy about the way things had worked out.

A perfect resolution.  Life could not possibly be this good.

But it was.  Sometimes it simply was.  Good things happened, and there were no bad effects to counteract them.  This was one of those lucky breaks in life that few people got.  With an inward chuckle, I wondered it some tree god had been listening to my thoughts at the shrine that morning and had decided to grant my wish.

Happiness bubbled up in me, and it came pouring forth in the form of words, again words that I could not control.

"Thank you, Aya-chan," I said, breaking the silence that had settled over us.  "And I promise you that from now on, I'm yours only.  Okay?"

My life was so strange.  Saying these words to a girl I had only met two months ago, a girl whose music I had listened to so many times on the radio.  A strange, strange life indeed.

She shifted a centimetre towards me and rubbed my arm.

"Okay.  And just so you know, I've been yours since before the first evening I met you."

Ug, how romantic, I thought sarcastically, yet still embarrassed.

There she was again saying how she felt like she'd known me long before she met me.  But that was okay.  If that was her way of telling me I was important, then I'd take every word I could get out of her.

We didn't speak anymore that night, but the tension from the air disappeared, leaving behind only the anticipation of being able to wake up beside each other the next day.

[OTN1]

Chapter 8 of 29

Aya lied to me last night in a terrible, unforgivable way.

The instant I opened my eyes - no, even before I did that - I wanted to scream at her for misleading me so maliciously. 

"Uhhh..."  heard her groan beside me as I turned to face her.

"You lied to me," I accused her, my first words of the day coming out in a scratchy voice.

"Eh?" she asked, yawning and rubbing her eyes innocently, turning onto her side to mirror my position.  "About what?"

She didn't seem particularly concerned about anything.

"You told me not to worry about the sun in the morning," I said, my voice gaining a little more smoothness.  "The window may face west, but your curtains suck."

She gave an almost unnoticeable shrug in response and didn't say a word.  She turned around onto her other side and backed into me, grabbing my arm and putting it around her, forcing me to hug her.  She then reached down and tugged one of the thin sheets up so that it covered our heads.  My protests died on my lips as I revelled in the warmth, the freezing tip of my nose quickly becoming a distant memory.  Before it could warm up completely, however, I moved my head and poked it into Aya's shoulder.  She twitched slightly, but she did nothing more to stop me.

I tried to drift off to sleep again, but I found it strangely difficult.  Everything was so new and fresh that I wanted to get up to explore it.  I wanted to see what books Aya had, the kinds of clothes she had, and what food was in the fridge.  I wanted to walk around outside and see what shops and restaurants were nearby.  I wanted to go to Shibuya and Shinjuku and window shop because it had been so many years since I'd gone to those places with my mom.  I wanted to go out and find a job so that I could become self-reliant.  For once in my life, I wanted to take the initiative to get out of bed and go out to do something.  Many things.

"Stop fidgeting," Aya demanded, shattering my giddy excitement.

I hadn't noticed my fidgeting, but I went stone still on command.

"Okay," I said obediently. 

There I went again.  Letting her order me around.  But it didn't bother me for some reason.  It felt nice.  Protective and loving, even.

"Are you asleep?" I whispered after a minute and a half.

"No," she sighed.

"Me neither."

Why did I revert to the mental age of six around her?  I wanted to ask someone that.

"Do you want to get up?  It's only seven," she asked in a sleepy voice that sounded like she needed a few more hours of slumber before she would feel human again.

Maybe one more hour wouldn't be such a bad idea.  It was a precious day off, after all.

"No, let's sleep more," I replied.

I had a feeling that Aya was a grumpy one when she didn't get enough sleep.  That won her this round.  But it was frustrating.  The one time I actually wanted to get up, I had to clamp down on my energy and relax.

It wasn't such a big problem, though, because I could enjoy this, too.  In fact, it was rather nice.  Still weird, but nice.  This was my second time spending a whole night like this with her, and it was different from the first.  Inexplicably different.  Maybe it was the setting.  We were in a real home in a real bed with real sheets.  They were her things, and she felt comfortable here, by default making me fifty percent more comfortable than I'd be in a strange hotel.  The setting was normal.

The weird thing about it all was us.  I couldn't fathom how I'd gotten involved in this situation.  One minute I was a good friend, the next some sort of sex buddy, and then from there it snowballed into a mutual promise to not look at anyone else the same way we looked at each other.  It looked like it was going to work out perfectly.  The only thing left to find out was whether or not we could live together for more than one day without driving each other up the wall.

"Hey, Aya," I said, forgetting that we were supposed to be sleeping.

"Uhh... huh?" she mumbled, already halfway to dreamland.

"Isn't this a little weird?"

I grabbed the sheet from above our heads and tugged it down so that we had some light and some fresh air.

"What?" she asked, her eyes closing tightly to block out the offensive light.

"Our whole association," I forged on.  "I mean, we met by chance in a restaurant, became good friends, and then, um, slept with each other... and then I essentially moved in with you and we suddenly promised ourselves to each other.  Don't you think it's all a little..."

I couldn't find the right word to describe it, and she opened an eye.

"So?  That's pretty much how it works with people and things like this," she mumbled sagely.

"But... I mean, after two months?" I pointed out uncertainly.

Aya opened her other eye.

"Then think of it as being destiny."

I couldn't believe in that.

"How can you be so sure about something?  Why do you have so much faith in your idea of me?"

She rolled her head up a bit so that I got a good view of her contemplative expression.  She seemed to be weighing her answer carefully in her head, deciding what the appropriate thing to say was.  It looked like she was ready to start a speech.  A monologue of epic proportions.

She opened her mouth to speak.

"I just do," was all she uttered.

All that preparation for three measly words?  I wanted to know what happened to the other million words in her head, but I couldn't ask.

"Okay..." I conceded softly.

She looked up at me and smiled comfortingly, telling me not to worry about things like that and to just go with what felt right.  When she closed her eyes to get that extra hour of sleep, I wondered what felt right.

Being here felt right.  Being beside her felt right.  Discovering a new world in Tokyo felt right.

What did not feel right was that it all seemed a little too perfect.  I didn't think Aya was lying about her feelings, but I did think there was more to our relationship than I could see.  I just didn't know what it was.

I stayed awake for an hour thinking about this while Aya drifted off to sleep and rolled away from me, almost falling off the bed.  I caught her before she tumbled over and tugged her back to safety, somehow not waking her up.

That hour passed by slowly, and when eight o'clock rolled around, I impatiently shook Aya awake.

"Ah... ah...?"

"Come on, let's get up," I urged her, pulling on her hand.

"Ahh... hug," she mumbled.

Was she asking me for a hug?

I was jolted out of my thought by an arm being thrown around me.  I think she misjudged the force with which she threw that arm, because it hit me hard and made me wince in pain.  The pain was swept away, though, by her rolling into me and hugging me tightly

"You forgot," she mumbled.

"I did?" I asked in an amused tone.

"Mmmmm.  No," she said after some thought.  "But... every day.  Okay?"

"Uh, okay," I replied at this sudden request.

She rolled away and got up, putting her pyjamas back on before walking out of the room as if completely forgetting me.  I scrambled to follow suit.  When I left her room, I saw her in the kitchen starting to boil water for tea.  I went to the living room and spotted the heater.

"Can I turn this on?" I asked.

The apartment was quite cold.  She called out that it was okay and that I didn't have to ask next time, so I put the machine on the highest setting, standing in front of it to warm my shins as I looked through the balcony window.

"We never did decide what we're going to do today," Aya said, making her way over to me after having finished making the tea.

She put two cups on the table and we sat down.  I was eager to stop being a parasitic presence in Aya's life.  I'd only been there for half a day, but I was already starting to feel guilty for being a burden.  Two cups of tea instead of one wasn't a big deal, but things would only get bigger.

"I need to look for a job," I said, taking a sip of the tea.

It was bitterer than I expected, but it warmed me up.

"I know you're all keen about that, but why don't you take a few days off and get to know this place a little more?  Hang out with me a bit."

Was that her ulterior motive?  To spend more time with me?  I laughed in response.

"Am I really that fun to be around?"

She looked thoughtful for a few moments.

"No, not really," she said seriously, and my mouth dropped open.  "But I'm bored waiting for my bosses to make a decision about my future."

She looked at my surprised face and started to laugh as if she'd just made the funniest joke in the world.

"Of course I think you're fun," she inserted in a scolding voice.  "Since when did you start taking me so seriously?"

I laughed along and took another sip of tea.

"Fine, I'll take a rest for a few days."

"Now that we've decided that, what do you want to do today?"

Because many stores were closed and the streets would be packed with holidaying people, we would hold off on anything like shopping or sightseeing.  Aya told me she hadn't been to the shrine yet this year (I didn't ask, but it was probably because she slept in yesterday and then scrambled to get her apartment ready for me), so we came to the decision to go together.

"But to one far away," she said.  "It's too crowded around here."

I wondered if that was because she didn't want to be randomly approached by fans, or if it was simply that she liked to visit shrines in peace.  I didn't ask.  Instead, I asked her what we were going to do for the rest of the day after that, and she gave it some thought.

"You like hot springs, right?"

I nodded.  Of course I did.  She gave it some more thought.

"Bring a change of clothes.  I'll take you to a nice one."

I wondered if "nice one" was code for "super expensive".  Again, I didn't ask.  It probably wasn't.  She knew I was on a tight budget.

I was excited, though.  A hot spring visit was exactly what I needed.  The tension I'd been feeling non-stop for the past few days had drained, but it had left behind actual physical pain in my neck and shoulders.  Nothing serious.  A twinge or two now and then, but it was an unpleasant reminder of my paranoia.

We got ready once we knew what we were doing, ate breakfast quickly, and made off to the train station.  The weather was beautiful.  Clear, not a cloud in the sky.  It was chilly, but the sun would eventually warm everything up once it was at its peak.

We ended up riding trains for over two hours.  So much for trying to save money.  We talked animatedly during the first two short train rides, but we fell asleep, rocked into a shallow slumber by the steady vibrations coming from the third train's engine.

At some point while I'd been dozing off on Aya's shoulder, four university-age boys had gotten onto the train.  They sat opposite to us and a few seats down, and they kept looking over after I woke up.  Amused, I nudged Aya awake.

"Those boys are staring at you," I informed her in a hushed tone.

Aya's eyes shifted over to the bunch for a split second, and then she looked forward with an unaffected air.

"Oh."

But it was too late.  I'd seen a satisfied light grace her eyes.  She liked the attention and would have been perplexed if she hadn't attracted the attention.  I turned my face slightly away so that she didn't see my amused look.  I put my head back on her shoulder in a territorial way and closed my eyes.

"Mine," I declared to the boys in my mind.  "Look, but don't touch."

I drifted off to sleep with a smug smile still on my lips as I imagined the four boys watching, wishing they were me.  I awoke not long after.  I sensed a change, and I was right.  I had leaned over to the other side, but head now resting against a pole.  Aya was awake, and I could see half of her face.  Curiously, I followed her gaze and found that she was looking at the four boys.  Every time one looked over, she'd casually refocus her line of sight slightly to make it look like she was staring out the window.  It was a well-practiced move, which made it obvious she'd had years of experience.  I wondered if she'd looked at me like that in the past two months without my realising it.

I noticed something just then.  The boys weren't staring at her.  They were staring at me.  One looked smitten, the other looked somewhat puzzled, and the other two had unreadable expressions on their faces.  I imagined they would have spared me some glances, me being "the famous girl's friend", but to continually stare at me was a bit strange.  I knew that I could turn heads sometimes, but beside Aya, I would have expected less attention.

My eyesight locked with one of the boys' by accident, and he immediately averted his eyes.  This alerted Aya, and she looked over at me.

"They're staring at me," I said, not really meaning to say anything.

"I was just noticing," Aya replied, sounding neutral.

I wondered if she would get jealous that I was stealing her spotlight.

"You shouldn't question why, though," she continued.  "You're the cutest girl on the train."

I rolled my eyes to get her to stop from saying anything more, but deep down inside, I had a feeling she wanted to say something more serious but was holding back.  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.  I leaned my head back, too, and closed my eyes after a last look at our audience.  I fell asleep.

Aya shook me awake when we got to our station.  The boys had gotten off before us, and I found it amazing that we would probably never see each other again.  The world was full of people you saw only once in your lifetime.

We got out in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  It reminded me of home, and I wondered why I'd come all the way to Tokyo only to return to a place like mine minus the snow.  We left the train station and I followed Aya.  She seemed to know exactly where she was going.

"How do you know this place?" I asked curiously.

"I used to come here with a friend," she responded with a smile and no more information than that.

I laughed inwardly at how mysterious Aya could be.  Sometimes I had the feeling that she expected me to be able to read her mind.  While I'd been getting used to her pattern of thinking, I couldn't quite read her like an open book yet.  Nakanoko-chan was still easier for me to predict.  Not a surprise since it was two months of friendship versus eight years.

We chatted about New Year's Day as we walked, and I found out just how busy she usually was.  She was always performing on New Year's Eve, so she hadn't had a real chance to spend that holiday in her hometown for many years.

"But it's okay.  My parents sometimes come up to visit me, and there have always been friends nearby for me to celebrate with."

I told her about my New Year celebrations with my family, but they were all the same every year, so there wasn't much variety.  Sometimes something crazier than usual happened, but the overall format of the get togethers each year was the same.

I wondered where I'd spend my next New Year.  In Tokyo?  Or would I go home?

It's January second and I'm already thinking three hundred and sixty-odd days into the future.  Oh man.

As I spoke about my family gatherings, Aya was all ears.  She listened intently to every word I said.  So intently that it made me shake.  It made me self-conscious about the words and phrases I used because I wanted to sound like I knew how to speak naturally.  Several people had complained to me that I didn't speak well.  It wasn't lack of intelligence, but just the way I phrased things.  It was plain and not very expressive.  I wanted to change that for her, however.  She was just the kind of person that made me want to speak from the heart.  From the evening I'd met her, I'd been open with her.  I wasn't quite spewing out poetry yet, but if someone could make me want to, it was her.

I was talking about my cousins when we arrived at the shrine.  There were people milling about, but it wasn't half as busy as the one I'd gone to the day before.  We walked in and bought fortunes.  As I was about to read mine, Aya took it out of my hands and held it up in front of her face

"I'll read yours and you read mine, okay?"

I nodded, wondering if this was a bit of Matsuura family tradition as I took her paper from her.

"I'll read yours first, though, since this is your first of the year," I said.

Yesterday, I'd gotten a fairly good reading.  Not the highest, but I was guaranteed average success throughout the year.  When I opened up Aya's, I laughed.

"Going a day late was lucky.  You've got the best luck," I told her.

She grinned happily, and I read out the predictions for her future.  Work, money, and love would all go smoothly for her.  If the fortune was true, she wouldn't have to worry about her job.  Even if she lost it, something good would come.  As for love... I had no concrete thought.

Aya opened up my fortune and smiled.

"One down on the luck-o-metre from me," she announced.

One step down from her top luck, but one step up from what I'd gotten yesterday.  Not bad.

She read about how spectacular my year was going to be, but how there'd be a delay in starting with the good things.  I gave her a lopsided smile when she suggested that I'd find my dream job next month as opposed to next week, and then live happily every after.

We tied our papers to the board with everyone else's and left the shrine grounds.

"What do you think?  We're going to have a really lucky year?" she asked me as we stepped over the threshold of the shrine.

"Mm," I thought aloud.  "Looks like we'll both have jobs, money, and each other."

She liked my answer because she took my hand and swung it in an exaggerated way.  We walked down the street like that as she hummed one of her own songs.

We found a warm shop for lunch and ate piping hot bowls of spicy noodles before continuing on to the hot spring.

"This place is great.  They have a natural outdoor hot spring," Aya said, launching into an explanation of the place we were going to.  "The service is great, and the massages I've gotten there have been better than most of the super-elite ones I've had in Tokyo."

The more she talked about it, the more I wished we were there already.  I forgot all about saving money and focused solely on what sorts of things we could get done to relax us.

The place was cheap.  The way Aya had been going on about it, I'd almost expected to be putting down the price of a small car.  It turned out that seven hundred yen was enough to grant us access, and that was what I was used to paying.  The massage cost quite a bit more, but I indulged myself.  We booked them for forty-five minutes later and went off to undress.

Maybe someone would have expected us to feel awkward stripping down and bathing together with people all around us considering what we'd done before when we took our clothes off in the same room, but there was none of that.  The bathwater was far too inviting.  We washed up and then sunk into the hot indoor baths to wait for our massages.

"Do you come here often?" I asked, feeling sleepy from the heat.

"Not often enough," she mumbled in a similarly sleepy voice, closing her eyes in satisfaction at the water's temperature.

"Who introduced you this place?" I asked, wondering if it was someone I had heard of from her before.

"Shiba-chan," she replied without missing a beat.

Shiba-chan.  The best friend.

"I'd like to meet her," I blurted out.

She was spoken so highly of that I felt the need to meet her.  I wanted to know more about Aya, and meeting her friends was a very good way to do that.  Seeing the kind of company someone kept could tell you a lot about that someone.

Aya opened her eyes and smiled at me.

"I'd like you to meet her, too."

I nodded and smiled, wondering if she would suggest a time and place to do that, or if it was one of those things that would be left up in the air until an opportunity spontaneously presented itself.

"I'm supposed to go out for lunch with her next week.  Want to come along?"

It seemed like my first option had been correct.

"If I don't have a shift at the convenience store at that time, then sure," I joked.

Working at a convenience store would be horrible.  I'd have to wear one of those monkey uniforms with those hats and be nice and polite to rude people, telling them to please come again to our lovely store.

Aya chuckled at my joke.

"I'll let her know you're coming along.  She's interested in meeting you, too."

"What's she like?" I asked curiously.

Aya crossed her arms and looked up in thought.

"She's really easygoing.  Well-spoken, friendly, helpful.  Brilliant, too.  She has a brain like you wouldn't believe."

She sounded pretty much perfect, which made me nervous about meeting her.

"Did you, uh, tell her anything about me?" I asked.

As in "me", I meant "us", and Aya knew that.  She shook her head.

"I've talked about you, but I haven't had a chance to go into much detail yet."

"But you would?" I asked in surprise.

"Sure.  She's one of my closest friends.  If I can't tell her anything, then the world is hopeless," she laughed.

I hated jealousy, but for a second, I felt jealous.  I wished that I had known Aya for as long as Shiba-chan had.  I wished I was her closest friend.  I wanted that title for me and me alone.  I didn't want to share it with some other girl.  Besides, I had more than Aya's friendship.  Or at least I thought so.

"What did you say about me?" I asked, trying to get out of what could become a miserable mood.

"None of your business," she shot back with a sly look.

I harrumphed, and then she turned serious.

"But actually, I've been meaning to ask you about Hiroshi."

I turned serious, too.  Maybe even glowered.  I was still sore and a bit guilty over the whole thing.

"Yes?" I asked, trying not to sound upset or angry.

"How much did you tell him about us?  About me?"

I sighed.  I could see why she'd be worried.  An offended ex-boyfriend intent on revenge would not be the greatest career booster.  But she was just worried because she didn't know Hiroshi like I did.  No matter how angry he was, he would never ever do such a  malicious - and I'd even call it childish - thing, whether he knew of her fame or not.

"He doesn't know which of the thousands of Ayas in this country you are.  I told him we spent the night together and that I was going to move here.  And that, uh, I really like you..."

That was enough for now.  There was no need to start going into that while in public.

"I hate to ask you this, but can you trust him to keep his mouth shut?  Because it wouldn't take long for him to figure it all out if he ever saw a picture of us together."

A picture of us together?  When would he see one?  She was just being paranoid.

"I trust him with my life," I said truthfully.  "He may have acted like a jerk that night, but he's the kind of guy that will think things through eventually and is not afraid to change his opinion.  He won't stay stuck on one viewpoint - that I'm evil or that whoever 'seduced' me away from him is evil."

Aya breathed out in mild relief.

"Sorry to ask," she said.

I shrugged.  As long as she didn't ask anything more about that night.  I felt so stupid.

"One more question."

Oh no... I thought, but I nodded for her to go on.

She scooted in a bit closer to me and leaned sideways so that her words wouldn't echo in the room.  She had a look on her face that could only be described as hopeful and enthusiastic.

"Do you usually do naughty things when you're asleep?"

I growled and pushed her under the water while she laughed and inhaled the water, resurfacing with sputtering snorts and coughs.

"Ahem!" came a voice from behind us.

We froze and looked up.  There was an elderly woman walking by, and it looked like she was one of those disgruntled types that did not appreciate a little rowdy laughter during her bath.  We both apologised and settled down, shooting each other looks until the lady had disappeared, at which point we burst into fits of giggles.

"I hope I don't turn into an old woman like her," I sniffed.

"I hope that if I do, I won't encounter any young, noisy girls like us in a bathhouse," Aya retorted cleverly.

I laughed at her reasoning, and we settled down.  Aya looked pensive, and just as I was about to ask her what she was thinking, she turned to me.

"Since chocolate is like an aphrodisiac, if you eat it right before going to bed, do you think that you'll have vivid dreams that'll make you want to-"

"Aya!" I hissed, putting my hand on top of her head and shoving her down under the water.

In the past few days she had shocked me with the extent of her sexual appetite.  It seemed limitless.  We'd never really spoken of such things, but suddenly, after spending one night with her, our conversations were laced with innuendos, and suggestive looks spilled out from her like waterfalls at every opportunity.  I wondered if she'd undergone some sort of transformation over the days, or if it was simply that she'd hidden this layer of her personality from me.  Either way, it took some getting used to, but it was definitely a fun thing.

She struggled under the water, and I let her come up for air.  She was still laughing, not at all showing that she was perturbed about being drowned twice by me until she spoke.

"You are so dead after this.  I'm going to do something so horrible to you that you'll wish you could not just work but also live in a convenience store.  When I'm through with you..." she said with an evil chuckle.

"When you're through with me?" I asked, this time inserting my own suggestive look into the mix.  "Please, bring it on."

She looked surprised that I'd finally raised my fists and started to play her game, but she quickly replaced it with a satisfied smirk.

"Fine, I will."

We nodded at each other in a businesslike way, and I snuck a glance at the clock.

"But not till after our massages.  It's almost time," I told her.

We got out of the bath and got dressed again, making our way down the hall and into the massage room.

We were able to get two cots side-by-side, and after we were asked what parts of the body in particular we needed treated, we lay ourselves down and relaxed.  Sometimes our heads were turned towards each other, and we'd lie there exchanging looks or just staring at each other with no purpose.

After the best hour-long massage I had ever received in my entire life, we stumbled wearily back to the baths and sat outside.  The winter air kept our faces cool, but the water we were submerged in kept our bodies pleasantly warm.  We sat there, chatting and occasionally splashing water on our own shoulders to warm them up.

Before we knew it, the sun began to go down.  Early sunsets in the winter were useful because they indicated that there was still a little more time before one had to go home.  We wouldn't miss our last train.

"Did you have a good day?" Aya asked me as we sat for the final moments of our bath.

I nodded.

"Thanks for bringing me here.  It's just what I needed."

I felt even more relaxed than I had the night before when Aya and I had talked.

"I feel refreshed, too.  Thanks for coming with me."

We watched the sun's light diminish a slight bit more, and with satisfied but slightly melancholic sighs, we got out of the bath and went to get changed.

We took our time getting ready (well, Aya took more of her time, which also meant she took up my time, too, since we were there together), and found our way back to the train station.  It was very cold outside, the temperature having dropped along with the sun, but we were warm from the hot spring and from being together.  We distracted each other from the unpleasant coldness.

When we got on the train, a hush settled over us.  We sat in peaceful, meditative silence before dozing off all the way to our train transfer.  We somehow found our way back to Aya's place without too much trouble.  We didn't oversleep on any of the trains, which was a miracle.

When we got into the apartment and as if by telepathic agreement, we both dragged our feet into her bedroom, changed into pyjamas, and collapsed onto her bed in two exhausted heaps of flesh and bone.  We pulled the warm covers over our bodies and fell asleep.  The combined effects of heat and a massage had beaten the life out of us in a pleasant way, and our journey into the next day passed with no grand statements or actions.

[OTN1]

Chapter 9 of 29

The following few days passed by eventfully.

The next day - a Sunday - Aya was ordered to her boss' office.  She got a call early in the morning, and she'd reluctantly dragged herself out of bed and into suitable meeting clothes.  In the short time I'd spent with her, I'd grown attached and didn't want her to leave.

"Go find a job," she teased me as my hand weakly tried to grab a hold of her skirt and pull her back to me before she left.

I was successful in pulling her over to stand by the bed, but I did nothing else.  What could I do?  I was half asleep and she had to leave.  She bent down and kissed my forehead.

"I'll leave an extra key by the door.  Don't forget to use it," she said, and with that, she was gone.

I got up half an hour later and sent her an e-mail, to which she didn't reply.  She was probably in a meeting.  I got ready for the day and quickly dropped by the convenience store to buy a newspaper.  When I went to pay for it, the cashier gave me a friendly smile, as opposed to the robotic acknowledgement most people at convenience stores gave customers.

"Hi," he said as he began to ring up my purchase.

"Hi," I greeted him politely, wondering if all Family Mart employees in Tokyo were required to treat their customers like old mates from junior high school.

I paid, and with a "thanks", I left the store feeling good.

I got back to Aya's apartment, sitting down on the floor and spreading the newspaper's classified advertisements out in front of me.  There was nothing suitable available for me.  Nobody wanted someone with a partially finished degree in economics.  Nobody wanted an ex-waitress to work for them.  Also, I didn't want to work as an office lady at some second rate company office (which would probably be an easy job for me to get if I played nice in the interview).  I wanted something challenging.  Something that didn't have me doing the same thing over and over every minute of the day.

I sighed and grabbed my things.  It was time to go out into the field.

I wandered around the neighbourhood.  I spotted one "help wanted" sign, but I didn't have the qualifications to be a hair stylist.  I had to forego it.  I sighed and skipped over to Shinagawa on the train, wandering around the shopping centres.  There was nothing.  I couldn't even find a "help wanted" sign for a waitress job, which I would take to at least tide me over until I found something better.  I was pulled out of my bad mood by my phone ringing.  Aya had sent me an e-mail back.

That fortune slip was right.  I get to keep my job!  More details when I see you.  Where are you?

I smiled, happy for her, and incredibly relieved that she didn't lose her job because she was off having fun with me.  I wrote back.

Good.  At least one of us is having luck.  I'm job hunting nearby.  Nothing so far.  Know any places that want to hire a university dropout?

Her reply came quickly.

Have you tried offices?  I've found that a lot don't advertise that they need help.

I sighed.  Not the kind of job I wanted, but it was useful to know that there might be something out there that I just couldn't see.

I'll try that.  Thanks, I wrote.

Aya sent one last e-mail.

I'm going home now.  I'll see you later.  Let's go somewhere for dinner!

That wrapped up our communication for the time being.  At least I had something to look forward to - dinner.  It was hardly anything new, but she would probably take me to some tasty place or her favourite hangout, and it would be my first real meal in Tokyo since getting there.

I spent the afternoon wandering around Shinagawa, but not just searching for work.  I did a bit of browsing around the shops and the department stores.  I found no job, but I did see a shop I wanted to inspect further once I was settled and had a source of income.  It looked like it had been constructed for me personally.  Anything I would ever want to wear was hanging on the hooks in the small establishment.  So although I went back to Aya's place unemployed, I at least found yet another incentive to find a job.

I rang the doorbell when I got to Aya's.  I had a key, but I felt weird just walking in.  She came over and opened the door, rolling her eyes the minute she laid them on me and muttering something about how spare keys weren't just for show and were useful for something.  When I tried to give it back, she insisted on my keeping it.  She didn't specify how long I should keep it, but I put it in my mind to give it back once I moved out.

We sat down, and she explained what had happened.  Her boss had fought hard for her and had had the rest of the top heads of her music label admit that they needed Aya no matter what.  They had said she could stay, but they slapped her with a heavy warning that if she ever pulled any silly stunt like that again, they'd have no second thoughts about dumping her from their label.  She had received yet another stern lecture for an hour about the rules of the company, and she'd been made to promise to apologise to all the people involved in the Italy project that had not gone through.

"They were probably so lenient because the public didn't know about this project.  It was going to be one of those surprises that caught everyone off guard and then sucked them in.  If the country had known that Matsuura Aya was going to Italy to train, I would have been shot for deserting," she laughed.

Amused she may have been, but the idea of Aya being shot (even just metaphorically) made me sad.

"I'm glad you got to keep your job," I said quietly, not laughing along, and she smiled gratefully.

"What about you?" she asked.  "Any luck since we last talked?"

I shook my head.

"I checked some offices, but it's a little hard to just walk in and say 'hey, need help?'"

She nodded sympathetically.

"Well, it was only your first day," she said a little unnecessarily.  "Maybe you'll have more luck tomorrow."

She put a comforting hand on my shoulder and kept it there as we sat in silence, thinking about our own situations.  Maybe she was right.  Maybe her extremely lucky fortune slip had assured her that she'd get her job back with hardly any problems, while my own job would take some time to find.

"But now, let's go out to eat and celebrate."

We got up and went out for dinner.  She took me to an extremely expensive Thai food restaurant that she said she loved and ate at whenever she had an excuse to.  She told me in a confident tone that I'd enjoy it.  As we sat down and looked at menus, my heartbeat quickened when I saw the prices.  This was no place for me to be eating.  I didn't say a word, though, because I didn't want to ruin her thought-out dinner plans.  I chose the cheapest thing on the menu and asked for water.  Aya eyed me curiously.

"Water?"

I nodded.

"Water."

When she placed her order, she ordered cocktails for us, and I smiled cautiously, thanking her for thinking of me.

"And by the way, this dinner is free of charge," she said.

I wondered how that was possible.

"Do you know the owner or something?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"I don't know him.  This is from me."

I sighed and was about to tell her not to start doing this kind of thing, but she raised a hand for my silence.

"I wasn't able to give you a Christmas present," she said, reminding me both that I'd spent Christmas with Hiroshi and that I'd given her the stupidest gift.

I groaned inside and winced.  I wondered if she would even use the gift.

"Oven mitts don't equal dinner at the most expensive restaurant in this region," I mumbled, accidentally letting my opinion of the restaurant slip out.

She slapped my hand a little harder than I thought she would, and she gave me a sharp look.

"It's not supposed to be an equal trade," she reprimanded me.  "It's the thought that counts."

She sounded so angry.

"But..." I started, and her look hardened as if daring me to say something to oppose her opinion. 

I shrunk back and shut my mouth.

"If you don't want to be here, then you can go, but then you'll also be short one living space."

"If I don't let you buy me dinner, you'll kick me out of your apartment?" I asked in disbelief.

She nodded and then laughed.

"Do people usually have to threaten you before you'll accept a gift?"

"No," I sighed, "but I just don't want you to feel like you're obligated to give me anything or help me out with money.  I don't want to be a burden or a moocher."

"You're not a burden," Aya said quickly.  "You're really not.  I'm always here to help you.  Don't let your pride get in the way of common sense.  If you need help, you can always ask me.  I'd much rather you do that then suffer and get into situations that are hard to solve."

Drop the pride.  Ask for help.  Trust her.  She was asking a lot, but I had to try.

I thanked her, apologised, and thanked her again.  I made sure to relax and enjoy every bite of the delicious and late Christmas present.  We made a toast to Aya for getting to keep her job and to me for moving to a new city in pursuit of a new life.

When we got home later that evening, we were all partied out.  It was rather ridiculous that two young people like us would have gotten exhausted from dinner, but we couldn't stop ourselves from going to bed by eleven o'clock.  My eyes drooped shut as we lay there on our backs, side-by-side under the covers.  Aya seemed restless, however.  She started tapping out a rhythm with one finger on the back of my hand.

"What?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she replied quickly.

Who had given her coffee before bedtime?  She couldn't stop tapping out the rhythm.

"Uh..." I started.

I didn't mind her being restless, but tapping my hand repeatedly like a drum was a little weird.

"Sorry."

She stopped tapping and turned onto her stomach, breathing quietly, apparently calm.

My mind started to slip down a slide, descending into a pillowy bed of clouds...

Aya coughed and cleared her throat loudly.  My eyes snapped open, and she shifted a bit, her elbow brushing my shoulder.  When I closed my eyes again, she flipped onto her back.  When I opened my eyes, she rolled onto her side and faced me.  I turned my head to look at her, but her eyes were closed, so I looked back up at the ceiling.  As I was staring up and trying to imagine a starry sky, I noticed her eyes open, so I looked towards her again.  She closed her eyes quickly before she could be caught staring, and I thought that she was either dying to tell me something important or having some sort of strange, prolonged seizure.  I kept my eyes on her until she opened her eyes again, looking at me sheepishly.

Was she playing a game?  Was she not tired?

"What's up?" I asked, putting sleep on hold.

"I can't sleep," she said like a child.

"I noticed that," I snickered.  "Why?  Are you cold?"

I pulled the blanket up a bit more.

"No," she said with a shake of the head.  "I'm excited.

I raised my eyebrows.

"I'm just glad you're here," she admitted.  "I don't want you to go back to Hokkaido."

For reasons unfathomable to me, she cared so much.  It gave me so much hope.  I couldn't ever doubt what she felt when she went along saying things like this out of the blue.

"Me too."

I have to find a job tomorrow, I thought.

Even if it was just waitressing, I needed to show her that I was serious about staying in Tokyo.  I thought that part of her might grow worried if I did nothing to start finding my niche here.  If I got a job, an apartment, and made friends, she would see that I really wanted to stay.

"Tomorrow I'll find a job," I promised her.

Maybe she'd be able to get to sleep with that promise.  I took her hand and squeezed it.

"Mmm," she acknowledged.

We spoke no more than night, and we went to sleep.

The second eventful day passed by.  Aya woke me up by drying her hair.  Now that she was back, she had a job to do, and that meant waking up early in the morning.  I figured I may as well get out of bed and join her in getting ready for the day.

She launched into a list of things she had to do, but I didn't pay attention.  I was busy using her computer to look at a map of the neighbourhood.  I caught the words "filming" and "conference", so I assumed she'd be off doing some sort of "I'm Ayaya and I'm alive after these two months!" TV appearance.

She came by to say goodbye to me, but I only gave her a wave over my shoulder, too engrossed in what I was looking at for it to click in my mind that I wouldn't see her until late that night.  She pulled me back into the world literally by grabbing me and hefting me up awkwardly to stand in front of her, twisting me around and then hugging me.  It all happened in a blur, so I reacted instinctually and hugged back.  She pulled back and then leaned in to kiss me, at which point I deftly slipped out of her grasp, avoiding her and her poisonous lips, sitting back down on the floor and returning to scrutinising the map.  I hoped she hadn't noticed how shy and embarrassed I felt.  Of course she did.

"I estimate seven more days till you stop freaking out every time I get close to you," she announced.

"What?  I don't freak out," I said defensively, looking up at her.

She suddenly crouched down right beside me and stuck her nose against mine, making me pull back in surprise.

"Yes you do.  See?"

I rolled my eyes while trying to put some distance between us.

"Whatever's holding you back, though, cut it off.  It's not getting you anywhere."

She grinned, stuck her tongue out, and licked my nose.  I scrunched it up.

"You have a strange way of expressing your love," I stated with a glower.

"Oh, come on.  As if you wouldn't do that," she laughed.

Funny, she was right.  I would do the same kind of thing... if I'd known her longer than two months.  It was too early, though, to do that kind of thing and expect her to find it endearing.  But maybe I was wrong.  Maybe I could be my normal, weird self.  Maybe I should.

Aya patted me on the back, said goodbye, and left.  I sighed and hoped I hadn't offended her too much.

I went job hunting for the entire day.  I faced failure after failure.  I even went into a restaurant and offered my skills as a waitress or a chef, claiming that I could mix a mean cocktail and whip up the tastiest Hokkaido-style nikujaga.  The elderly owner gave me a wary send-off.

I took a break for lunch at a convenience store, sitting outside and eating quickly to keep from freezing.  It may have been warmer than Hokkaido, but cold weather was still cold weather.  To me, winter had only two settings – unbearably cold and even colder, each as bad as the other.

The afternoon was a flop.  My feet began to hurt from all the wandering and standing in one spot.  I couldn't find a job.  I headed back to Aya's apartment, completely dejected.  Before I crossed over to the main road, I dropped in at the 7-Eleven to pick up a snack to tide me over until dinner time.

As I stood in line, I read the various posters on the walls.  Nakashima Mika had a concert tour coming up in the spring, and I intended to go.  I hadn't listened to her latest album, but I'd spied it on Aya's shelf that morning.  I would definitely have a listen when I had a spare moment.  There was also an advertisement for some sort of winter illumination festival happening in Ebisu, and I wondered if it would be a good thing to go to.  I'd never seen the winter illumination in Tokyo, which was supposed to be world famous.  Then a help wanted sign caught my eye.

Wanted: Cheerful, enthusiastic youths for part time jobs.  Reasonable hours.  Great pay.  Start immediately.  Become part of the 7-Eleven team!.

It was my turn to pay.  I put my things down on the counter, and before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth and asked, "What would I have to do to get a job here?"

I pointed to the sign.  The cashier, a girl who looked around my age, looked at the sign and then looked back me.

"Um, bring your resumé and talk to our manager," she replied helpfully.

Simple.

I thanked her, paid for my snack, and left.

No.  I can't get a job at a convenience store, I scolded myself.  I can do better.

And yet I found myself going back to Aya's, printing out a copy of my resumé from the disc I'd brought, and walking back to the store I'd seen the sign at.

I'd worked at a convenience store when I'd gotten out of high school, so I had a good idea of how things worked in such stores.  My store had been a Family Mart, but they were all the same in the end.

I went back into the 7-Eleven.  The same girl wasn't surprised to see me, and she called the manager upon my request.

The manager, Fukuda, was younger than I'd expected.  I guessed he was in his mid-thirties.  He studied me carefully as I spoke, and he glanced at my resumé as I explained that I'd just moved to Tokyo a few days ago and had free time on my hands.  He listened some more and asked a few questions about my experience and whether I'd feel confident adapting to 7-Eleven after having worked at a Family Mart for almost two years.  What kind of fool searching for a job would say he wasn't confident?  I assured him I'd be okay, and I suddenly had a job without any check of credentials.  Fukuda told me that since I knew how to work the till, I'd probably only need a day or two of training to accustom myself to 7-Eleven's particular system and procedures.  He asked if I could come in the next day, and I said that I could.

An hour and a half later, I was walking back to the apartment with my new uniform shirt, a folder full of papers related to procedure, and a mind full of "are you stupid?!" thoughts running around.

I got back just past six and e-mailed Aya to tell her I was waiting.  She said she'd be back in about an hour, so I decided to run a bath and relax.  I sat in it for about half an hour, letting the hot water cure me of my aches and pains.  Before I could fall asleep, I got out, dried myself, and went off to get dressed.  Spotting my work shirt, I decided to quickly try it on to make sure it was the right size.  I went out to the entrance to look in the mirror, and while I stood there making sure I looked all right, the door opened and in walked Aya carrying a bag of groceries.  She noticed me right away and stopped in the middle of kicking her shoes off, staring at me.

"It's just a temporary thing until I can find a real job," I explained quickly.

She studied me and then walked over slowly.

"It's cute," she said finally, and she moved off to the kitchen.

Cute?  The uniform was cute?  No it wasn't.  It was hideous.  And didn't she have anything else to add?  An opinion?  A question as to how I'd gotten the job?

"Hey," I said, following her to the refrigerator, where she paused in putting away her recent purchases.

"Mmhmm?"

"Don't you think it's dumb?  Like, me working at 7-Eleven?"

She shook her head.

"I know you'll keep looking for something else," she smiled.

"I will," I reinforced.  "It's just that I saw the help wanted sign, and I used to work at a convenience store..."

Aya stood up and traced the company's emblem on my shirt, making me blush.

"I know it's not your dream to work at 7-Eleven for the rest of your life.  I don't think you're any less cool because you've got a part time job there."

I smiled and sighed.

"There you go lying and making me feel all good about myself."

She punched my arm in an ungentle way, and I rubbed it.

"Now go change!" she barked.  "You're going to cook for me!"

I laughed at her order, but I went to change into my pyjamas, folding my shirt carefully and putting it with my clean clothes.

Seeing that the bath was full, she decided to take a bath while I cooked.  We each took our sweet time.  By the time I finished preparing the nikujaga I claimed to be so good at making, Aya had gotten dressed in her pyjamas.

Pyjamas at eight pm and before dinner?  How very geriatric of us.

We sat down, turned on the television set, and chatted as we ate my delicious meal.  She loved it more than the Thai food we'd eaten the day before, or so she said.

"If you can cook for me every night, you can stay with me as many years as you want."

I laughed giddily, tempted to take her up on her offer.  We were interrupted an hour later by a phone call.  Aya took it, and for five minutes she sat there scheduling.  When she hung up, she told me that Shibata had had to cancel her Tuesday plans, but that that we'd meet up with her next weekend.  That worked perfectly for me since it turned out I was going to have a shift at the convenience store.  My joke had turned into reality.

We spent the rest of the night talking on the couch, where we fell asleep.  We woke up soon and dragged ourselves to the bed, where we proceeded to fall into it in a messy pile of limbs, falling back asleep almost instantly.


My new part time job was easy.  My training lasted only three hours.  I was quick on the uptake and was ringing up customers' purchases by lunch time.  Fukuda was full of praise for me.

On the day of my first real shift, I found myself working with Kuniko, the girl who had helped me the other day.  She ended up being very friendly.  We became instant friends - or at least we mutually agreed in thinking that the other wasn't bad.

Kuniko was two years younger than me, born and raised in Chiba, and was currently doing an MA at Waseda University.  A true brain with a pretty face and a pleasant, outgoing disposition.  She had been working at this particular 7-Eleven for a year, this part time job preceded by a year at Lawson.

I told her the basics of myself, and she was surprised to hear that I'd moved all the way from Hokkaido.

"Have you got a decent place to stay?" she asked while we stood at the cash register, the manager in the back office and the store empty of customers.

"My friend's putting me up until I can find my own place," I explained.  "It's a nice place, but I feel bad because she's really busy.  There I am hanging around with all this free time."

Kuniko nodded sympathetically and then clapped her hands.

"You need a welcome party!"

"I'm not really into..." I trailed off, but stopped.

If Kuniko could become my friend, that would be perfect.  And a party meant I could make more friends.  Then I'd be able to reassure Aya that I would stay here.

"Nothing big.  We can go out for dinner and a few drinks.  We've got an awesome team at this store.  We're lucky.  And we've got some other friends we can invite.  Kind of like a 'welcome to the neighbourhood' party!"

One thing led to another and suddenly I'd made plans with Kuniko to go out on Friday night.  We exchanged contact information, and before I knew it, I'd made my second friend from Tokyo.  We ended our shifts at the same time that day, but she went on ahead of me because I had to talk with the manager.

Fukuda praised me some more, telling me I was doing an excellent job.  He told me to keep it up, and then he sent me off.  I left the store feeling happier than I ever thought I could working at a convenience store.

I got home that evening and cooked before Aya came back.  When she did, the first words out of her mouth were: "That smells delicious!"

We sat and dined.  I told her all about my day and how Fukuda had praised me and how nothing had tripped me up, even the French couple that had come in trying to buy stamps without understanding a single word of Japanese.  When I told her about Kuniko, I became shy because I realised I sounded like an elementary school student gushing to her parents about her first day at school and her first friend.  I finished up quickly by saying that my welcoming party was on Friday night.

"I'm glad you made a friend," Aya smiled, and I felt like even more of a child.  "And good thing you made plans for Friday night.  I was feeling bad before I heard that because I'm being dragged to some formal dinner event by my boss."

I wondered how many of these events she had to attend and whether I'd ever be able to go with her to one.  Probably not.  But maybe she could get me on the invite list one day.  I was so curious what she was like when mixed with all those celebrities.  To me, she wasn't a celebrity like them.  The thought that she was famous made me giggle.  She was a regular girl.  No, not regular.  Of course not regular. She was special.  But not a snobby celebrity.

"I don't envy you," I teased her, sticking my tongue out.  "I'm sure my event will be much more relaxed."

She sighed.

"You're right.  And they'll probably give me glass after glass of champagne just to knock me down and make me do silly things they can talk about for months to come."

Aya drunk?  I wondered what that was like.  I hadn't seen her get anything beyond a little tipsy, which just meant she was extra giggly and silly.

"That's okay.  They'll probably give me glass after glass of beer in order to see how long the tough Hokkaido girl can hold out."

Not as long as they might have expected.

"And then the next day we're supposed to meet Shiba-chan," Aya groaned, suddenly remembering.

"Not till one o'clock, right?  We'll make sure to get to bed early and to have some good painkillers close at hand."

Planning for our hangovers was a new thing for us.

"Always thinking about the future," Aya said, ruffling my hair, de-aging me yet another year.

"Anyway, what about you?  How was your day?" I asked, remembering she'd mentioned filming.

"There was a big meeting in the morning where we all got our stories straight about my absence, and then I had a press conference with the media.  They all wanted to know where I'd gone."

"What did you tell them?" I asked, in awe of how entire companies could pull together to make up a huge story about one girl.

"Mostly the truth.  That I'd gone up to Hokkaido, but that it had been for an inspirational retreat.  Getting in touch with nature and all that."

It sounded appropriate.  We had done a lot of hiking.

"And what did you film?" I asked.

"Oh, some stations did a bit of interviewing.  Nothing big.  If you wake up early tomorrow morning, you'll see it on the news," she shrugged.

We stopped talking about work because it simply wasn't as fun as talking about other things.  We kept busy until bedtime. 

Later at night when Aya was fast asleep, I remained awake, shivering from the cold, covers pulled up to my nose.  I was squeezed between the wall and Aya's back.  Ever so carefully, I latched onto the sleeping form in front of me, trying to steal some of her body heat.  She shifted a bit as if trying to shake me off but then stopped as though it wasn't worth the effort.  I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the cold, listening to her slow heartbeat and cursing why I felt perfectly at ease when she was asleep and couldn't witness my affectionate nature.  When she was awake, it was much more difficult.  She was almost intimidating.

As I lay there holding this living, breathing human being, I had a revelation.  I had to get over this other complex of mine.  My fear of Aya.  She'd proven countless times that she wasn't being wishy-washy with her feelings.  It was time to start really trusting her.  I looked down at her peaceful face.  Starting at that exact moment, I'd let go of my fears and inhibitions.  When she woke up in the morning, she'd see a relaxed, natural me.

[OTN1]

Chapter 10 of 29

It took me a little more time to fully let go of the things that prevented me from being entirely close with Aya.  Several days passed, and on Friday morning we woke up and went about what was becoming our usual routine of getting ready together.  Like most days, Aya had to leave first.

"See you tomorrow," I teased her, reminding her that whoever got home first would probably pass out before the other arrived.

"Be careful with your new drinking buddies," she shot back, reminding me that I didn't really know what my co-workers were into.

Soon after she left, I bought another paper, reading the classifieds as usual to see if anything better than 7-Eleven would rear its head.  As usual, nothing caught my eye.  As I browsed, I listened to Mika's new album, and I was quite impressed.  I wondered if Aya had ever met her.  They must have met several times at some of those TV shows they did.  Their new releases must have overlapped at some point in their long careers.  I daydreamed about what it would be like to meet all of my idols.

At ten, I headed to work.  I was teamed up with an older man named Hasegawa, who I'd worked with twice already.  He hardly spoke to anyone younger than him, he was rude, and he ignored me in an almost aggressive way right from the first day.  I wanted to pound his stupid, 50-year-old face into the ground.  I retained my cool composure, however, and ignored him back.  He may have been the more experienced one, but at least I was nice.  Waitressing had opened me up to a whole variety of types of people ranging from rude to overly friendly, shy and reserved to loud and obnoxious.  This 7-Eleven got an overload of weirdos, but I was more than capable of taking care of them.  An armed robber would have caused me less grief than Hasegawa did.

During my break, I sat back with a can of coffee and curry bread, and I e-mailed Aya.  I said nothing important.  "Hi.  How are you?"  That kind of thing.  She replied just as Hasegawa's voice interrupted my giddy excitement.

"Fujimoto!  At the till!"

I rolled my eyes, hastily (and stupidly) stuffed the remains of my bread into my mouth, and while chewing ferociously, cursed the rude man and hoped that he'd trip and fall into the oden stand.

I sauntered out of the back and opened up the other counter to help more customers, the first being a girl with bright (and tacky) purple and green hair.  I sighed, wondering why we didn't get more people like her in Takikawa.  Life was far more interesting in Tokyo.

I helped straight through my break and worked non-stop until my shift was over.  When I went into the back to collect my things, Hasegawa ignored me, so I made sure to leave the little stool in the back pulled out from the table in hopes that he'd trip over it.  So maybe I wasn't the nicest person.  But he deserved it!

I went back to Aya's, took a shower, changed, and called Kuniko.

"Seven o'clock sharp, Fujimoto.  Don't be late!" she warned me.

I regretted having told her that I had a habit of being late for social events.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, hanging up.

Of course, as tradition would have it, I was ten minutes late arriving at the restaurant.  From the look in Kuniko's eyes, I knew I'd get hell for it later.

The impudence of that girl to assume such familiarity! was what I thought on the outside, but on the inside I was grateful to have made a friend like her.  She'd taken on the role of "annoying little sister", which I secretly really liked.  I'd always wondered what it would have been like to have had a younger sister.  Aya was too mature to play that role.  Kuniko was childish like me (or even more so) and fit it much better.

Most of our co-workers and some of their friends were already at the long table, so we began our celebration.

"Here's to a convenience store career!" cried out Oshima, who took on our store's role of team spirit leader.

"Career?  This isn't a career.  We're all in it for the money," laughed twenty-year-old Momoko, the youngest of our group that night.

"Here here!" came cries of agreement.

"Except for Hasegawa," someone snickered.  "He's a lifer."

"I hate that guy," Kuniko groaned.

I agreed inside, chuckled outside, but didn't pipe up with my agreement.

They finally wrapped up the extended toast with a heartfelt "Welcome, Fujimoto!" and ordered food.  We had a merry time, the fifteen of us, all of us under the age of thirty. 

Throughout the night, I heard strange stories from those unlucky enough to be saddled with night shifts, and I shared some of my own convenience store stories from back home.  They seemed fairly plain to me, but the group had some terrific laughs at my former Takikawa customers' expenses.

At ten o'clock, we decided to move to another place.  Some sort of bar or club, but nobody was sober enough to give me any more details.  Apparently, it was a place that they liked to frequent.  We hopped on the train, and seven of us brave souls headed over to Shinjuku.

Kuniko had forgotten all about my previous tardiness, and she came by as we were walking through the crowded district, slinging her arm around my neck drunkenly and almost strangling me.  She wouldn't let go until I'd confided in her the number of people I'd slept with.  Talk about intrusive!  But I was feeling friendly with drink (that was always my term for "tipsy", which I don't consider even close to drunk), and so I whispered the answer in her ear.

"Six?!  You've slept with six people?!" she yelled out, and I put my hand over her mouth.

"The point of whispering it was for everyone else not to hear," I hissed with a murderous look.

"But... wow... six?  My answer's two.  Your town's really boring, then, huh?  You've got to find other ways to have fun."

I rolled my eyes.  Six didn't seem like that big of a number to me.  I wasn't running around rampant like some of my friends.  It just so happened that six people had sufficiently moved my heart.  Okay, five.  One had been a one-night thing with a friend, but the next morning we'd realised our big mistake and remained friends, nothing more.  Plus, we never drank together again.

But I supposed compared to Kuniko, six was a lot.

"Yup," I agreed exaggeratedly.  "Nothing much else to do around there."

"What about now?  Got a boyfriend?"

Oh, there it came.  Wonderful.

"Just recently broke up with him," I explained briefly.

"You need a rebound!" she practically screamed.

I wondered if she realised all of Shinjuku ward was staring at us and now knew that I'd slept with six people and needed a rebound.

"No, I'm all right," I said quietly.  "Right now I'm happy."

I didn't need a rebound because I had Aya, and she was not a rebound. 

"Come on Miki," she said, dragging out her vowels.  "You're so hot!"

Even better, now the friendly folk of Kabuki-cho could assume that drunken Kuniko had the hots for me.

"Yeah?  I didn't notice," I scoffed.

Kuniko stopped walking and yanked me back as our group continued.

"Ya kidding me?!" she yelled in my face.  "When I first saw you, I thought you were a celebrity, or something.  Jeez, girl.  Don't be so modest!"

She shook my hands to emphasise her words, and I blushed.

"Thanks, but, um..." I mumbled.

She took no notice of my discomfiture and pulled me after the group.  We dropped our conversation because we had arrived at our destination.

"This is the wickedest club in the city," Koda declared.

He was the one who had suggested we come here.  He was tall and quiet, but it looked like he was about to explode with excitement now that we were standing outside of his approved hangout.  It looked a bit flashy on the outside, and I groaned in my mind, hoping the place wasn't as tacky on the inside.

We bypassed the line that stretched around the corner and we went in.  It was surprisingly good.  Excellent music and fast service at the bar.  The crowd was also of a slightly higher calibre than the usual club.  I assumed Koda must have had some really close contacts to get us in, because we weren't exactly the richest bunch of youths.

We found a table and crowded around it, ordering drinks to continue our descent into madness.  Kuniko and Momoko grabbed each other and went to find strangers to dance with.  I watched them get started from the corner of my eye, envious of how talented they were, their bodies flowing naturally to the beat and attracting a circle of men in no time.

I focused on my companions and chatted with the ones I hadn't worked with yet and had only just met that night.  Maybe it was just the alcohol, but they all seemed like amiable people, and I must have been having an incredibly good personality day because they all liked me immediately.  I received lots of offers, from help to finding an apartment when the time came, to phone cards for calling my parents (one girl worked part time for a phone company and received lots of freebies from the office).

It was approaching midnight when I left the group to go to the washroom.  On my way back to the table, I decided to pick myself up a glass of water because my head felt hazy.  The bartender was on the other side of the bar taking care of a huge order, so I waited patiently, standing a bit back and letting my mind wander.  The music changed, and something at the back of mind tried to tell me something about the song.  That's when I accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation going on just behind me.

"Fake?  She's more than a fake.  She's a fucking retard."

The voice was a girl's, but it sounded vicious.  This was no regular gossipmonger. She sounded as friendly as a gang boss ordering her goons to rub someone out.  I felt sorry for whoever she was talking about.

"Too bad he sampled her for this track.  Stupidest thing Nakao ever did," another girl's voice said.

Nakao.  Nakao... That was it!  A small, unassuming man from Aomori known only by his last name - Nakao - had recently made a splash in the hip hop scene.  In the past year, he'd skyrocketed to popularity that must have made pop queen Ayu insane with jealousy.  The song playing at the club was the song that had made his popularity soar, and one of the reasons why it had been so popular was because of the singer he had sampled.  Matsuura Aya.  It was an older one of her songs whose name I couldn't remember, but it struck a chord within the population, this new man reviving this young girl's old image.  It was one of those things that just became popular for no one apparent reason.  Kind of like that annoying "Mai-a-hi, mai-a-hu" song from so long ago, but less annoying and more high quality.

But wait, backtrack.  These girls were talking about Aya.  They were insulting Aya.  I sighed angrily.  Everyone was entitled to their opinions, and I knew that celebrities were easy targets for jealous or disgruntled people, but I didn't like it.

"She never graduated from high school, you know?" a third girl piped up.

Everybody laughed.  There seemed to be a small group of them, but I didn't dare turn around to look.  I was starting to fume. 

What difference did it make if someone graduated from high school or not?  As long as he or she was a good person with a good heart, it didn't matter if he knew when the Battle of Sekigahara had been or how to conjugate the verb "to sleep" in English.

"Have you ever seen any of her interviews?" the first girl who had spoken asked.

She seemed to be the leader of the group.  Her voice was the cruellest and most authoritative.

"No, I wouldn't waste my time on that sort of shit," said the second girl.

She seemed to be the "second in command" of the group.  The leader's sidekick.  The one who was allowed to speak directly to the top girl.

"Same old rhetoric.  Flakey beyond belief," Leader confided in them.  "She makes my ten-year-old sister look brilliant."

I grew angrier and angrier.  It was one thing to call Aya a name or two, but it was another to go on and on about it.  How dare they?

"I've heard she has no friends because she's so prissy and demanding."

"Who'd want to be that bitch's friend anyway?  She has nothing to offer.  Hah, except for, you know, service."

I'm her friend, you horrible people!

"Hah, not even that.  She's a prude.  And fuck, look at her.  She dresses in drab clothes and goes on about being an adult.  It's like she has to convince herself she's grown up."

"Yeah.  She's trying way too hard."

Enough.  I'd heard enough.

I turned around and spotted the table that the four girls occupied.  They were dressed to the nines, obviously not lacking in money (or sugar daddies to buy them fancy schmancy stuff).  They were sipping martinis, and they looked like they thought they owned the club.  I could immediately pick out which one was Leader.  The others seemed a bit stupid, but she looked sharp.  Her eyes were bitter.

They noticed me studying them, and Sidekick called out to me in a threatening way.

"What?"

It didn't occur to me that I had a chance to walk away and avoid getting hurt.  Nothing but confronting them made sense to me.  It was my only option.

"Excuse me," I said, making my way over to stand by the table.  "Want to stop that?"

I looked directly at who I suspected was the leader.  The girl flashed me a disgusted look one might spare when encountering a slug in an expensive shoe.

"What?  Were we talking to you?" she asked.

I had been right.  Her voice confirmed that she was the girl who I thought was the leader.
 
I turned my body to address the whole table of girls.

"No, but I don't like what you're saying."

The girls exchanged looks and they simultaneously stood up, almost surrounding me.  I could see right away that these were the kind of girls who bullied the weaker students all throughout junior high and high school.  The ones who had money and flaunted it.  The ones who had messed up home lives.

The unfortunate thing was that while these girls looked like they would snap if I raised even just a baby finger against them, it was just an image.  Girls like this were deadly because they looked like they couldn't hurt a fly, but really could.  Because they had tempers shorter than a smoked cigarette.  Because the rage in them was such that it gave them the extra strength they needed to do damage at the most crucial of times.  If I wasn't careful, I might end up seriously hurt.

Surprisingly or not, the leader of the pack had a dirty mouth even when talking to strangers.

"To hell with what you think, you bitch.  Get the fuck out of our club."

At the back of my mind, I pondered what would happen if I left the club as recommended.  Leader was probably the manager's girlfriend.  Or well-paid sex slave.  Same thing in these parts.

My thought only lasted less than half a second.

"I don't want to start trouble with you.  I just don't like hearing you talk about her like that," I said in a reasonable but firm voice.

"You don't like the way we talk about that princess?" Leader asked with a laugh.  "What are you, her personal spokesperson?"

The girls burst out into high-pitched, annoying laughter that made me grit my teeth.  Why couldn't they laugh in tune with their hearts?  Nasty, dark, loveless.  It would be easier to tolerate.

"Just don't go assuming things about people.  You don't know her at all."

"Oh, and you do?" Sidekick snickered.  "Are you fucked in the head?"

I squeezed a fist, but kept my face expressionless.

"She's my friend."

"Oh no," groaned Sidekick Junior.  "Don't tell me you're one of those gross fans that think her idol actually gives a shit about her."

The other girls called out "amen" to her statement.  I could barely keep calm with all the rage that bubbling inside me.

"Believe what you want.  Just don't talk about my friend like that."

"Okay, first of all, I don't think she'd keep company like you," Sidekick snorted.

"What do you mean company like me?" I demanded in a low, dangerous tone.

"Some hick whose accent is so thick that what she's speaking is hardly Japanese?  Famous snobs don't go for that," she laughed.

For a second I forgot where I was and wondered if I really had that much of an accent.  I'd never really noticed before.  But Aya had a definite one, too, and I'd heard her slip in and out of it once in a while.  If these girls claimed to know so much about her, they surely must have noticed that.

"And second of all, obsession doesn't look good on anyone," Sidekick Junior grinned, jabbing at my arm with my hand.

I almost pounced on her for touching me.  If she did it again, a million policemen wouldn't be able to hold me back.  I remained calm on the outside, though, because my policy was one of indifference.  Show indifference, and things would eventually sort themselves out.  Lose your cool with people like this, and you either became a joke or got into serious trouble.

"I'm not obsessed.  I'm just asking you to-"

"Listen," Leader interrupted, grabbing the front of my shirt and forcing me look at her as I shut up and remained still.  "Last I checked, my man fucking owned this club, and as far as we're all concerned, you're nobody.  Whatever we think is how the rest of the club thinks.  You obviously don't fit in, so get the fuck out before I beat your stupid face into a pulp."

A girl in a very pretty dress and beautifully-done makeup speaking those words would have made me laugh in any other situation, but the look in her eyes convinced me that she wasn't bluffing.  I had to get out of there as quickly as possible.  I had to accept a defeat and come out of it with my life and my face intact.

But nobody talks about Aya like that in front of me, I thought angrily.

I opened my big mouth to protest.  Leader saw it, and she started to raise her other hand - perhaps to hit me - when things got even more interesting.

"What's going on?" a voice asked curiously.

Leader stopped and looked over her shoulder.  There was a handsome young man (he had to have been younger than me) standing there with a drink and a cigarette. 

Oh great.  Is this her man? I wondered dismally.

But Leader didn't react in a way that would indicate this young (was he even of legal age?) man - boy - was anyone she knew.  She ignored him.  He obviously didn't like being ignored, because he strode over and grabbed her hand in a move that surprised me.  She'd be screaming lines about sexual harassment in no time.  Sidekick and the Juniors started to crowd him, but he pushed them away.

What the hell is he doing?  You can't just rough girls up at a club like this! I thought.

On the surface I was criticising his crude methods, but deeper down, I was slapping myself for not taking the same initiative as he was.

"Why don't you girls quit messing around with people every night and try to fix your own screwed up lives?  I'm sick of seeing this kind of crap every week," he hissed.

So he did know them.  Maybe that's why they weren't screaming out for someone to call the police.

"And stop throwing out the manager's name as if he's your boyfriend.  His wife wouldn't be very happy to know that his personal prostitute is so vocal about her job."

Leader's eyes turned murderous, but she backed away.  Her group realised the situation had turned against them.  Leader's standing with the manager was obvious a sore point for her.  Without another word, the girls walked off, and I stood there wondering how I'd come to be involved in a nightclub power struggle.

"S-sorry," the boy stammered once the girls had left.

"Uh..."

I couldn't speak, not because of the shock of almost being beaten up by a gaggle of girls, but because this tough boy had reverted into a bumbling, soft mess.

"I've been wanting to say that to them for a long time," he said, this time sounding a bit more confident.

He gave a small, satisfied smile that warmed me up and gave me back my voice.

"Thanks for the help," I said with a slow nod of the head.

"I saw them getting in your face and I had to help you," he admitted.

He seemed to study me for the first time, and his face was overcome with a strange look that I couldn't identify.  It's not like he was instantly in love with me, but he seemed to want to be protective over me.

"I appreciate it," I repeated.

"Umm..." he started.

The boy needed to grow a spine.  He was turning into a fool and quickly losing cool points with me.

"I don't usually do that kind of thing, though.  I just saw you and felt really... like... like I owed you something big.  Like it was my duty to protect you."

Oh brother, I thought, suppressing a roll of the eyes.  I get to Tokyo, and some boy who barely needs to shave suddenly installs himself into my life as my personal saviour.

But when I looked at him closely, there seemed to be something in him that went past all the cheesiness.  He was sincere, no doubt, but also...

I couldn't quite place it.  But whatever it was, it was genuine and it felt nice coming from him.

"But I'm not trying to pick you up or anything!" he quickly exclaimed, waving his hands.

This time I rolled my eyes, unable to hold back.

"Oh, man.  Relax," I told him, and then not caring if he thought it was an abrupt question, I asked, "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two," he replied with a shrug.

Younger than me.  Just as I thought.

"And your name?"

"Sekiguchi," he said, fumbling for a business card and sketching a brief bow as he handed it to me.

I pretended to study it, but I actually didn't read a single word of it.

"Nice to meet you.  I'm Fujimoto," I said, holding my hands out to indicate that I had no business cards of my own, "and I'm practically jobless."

We stood there awkwardly, music playing in the background.

"Well, I'm with some friends, so I'd better go find them.  Thanks again for your help.  See you," I said quickly.

"Hey," he said quickly before I left.  "My company's looking for a secretary.  If you're jobless..."

He gave me a smile, gestured to the card to indicate that the company's contact information was written on it, and then said goodbye.  A sweet boy, but me working as a secretary?  Not my cup of tea.

I wandered off to find Kuniko and the group.  The girls had stopped dancing, exhausted and dehydrated.  They were re-energising themselves with mugs of beer, of all things.  It looked like they were going to be spending the whole night out. 

I told them I had gotten a call and that I had to go and meet my friend.  They offered to walk with me, but I insisted that I would be all right and that I didn't have to walk far.  Momoko told me in an airy voice to call her if my friend wanted to join the party, and I assured her that I'd call if we were in the area.  I chose not to tell them about my encounter with Leader and her girls.  That was best left a quiet interlude in my new life.

I got out into the crisp air, which had the effect of clearing my head and giving me back a bit of my sobriety.  I walked to the train station, messaging Aya along the way, asking her if she was home.

Five minutes later while I was just boarding the last train to her station, I got a response.

"almost hoam. s'good Niite" was what she wrote.

Oh great, I thought.  They got her plastered.

At first I felt annoyed because I barely felt tipsy anymore.  But then I remembered that this was Aya, and that I'd never really seen her get beyond a little giggly.  This could be interesting from a sober point of view.  I wrote back that I'd be at her place in less than twenty minutes.  A few minutes later, she sent me a one-word e-mail.

arrived.

As long as she wasn't falling all over her feet and throwing up all over the place, it would be a fun night.  Sour moments of the evening completely forgotten, I smiled to myself and willed the train to go a bit faster so that I could get to her place soon.

[OTN1]

Chapter 11 of 29

I slipped into the apartment quietly in case Aya had gone to sleep (which I hoped she hadn't).

"I'm back," I whispered carefully into the dark entrance that greeted me.

I slipped my shoes off silently and took a look beyond the entrance.  I could see that a light was on in the living room, so I headed to it.  There Aya sat on the floor, the TV on at an insanely low volume as she seemed to be watching it intently.

"Hi," I said to get her attention.

She rolled her head back slowly and saw me, a huge smile gracing her lips.  A huge, silly smile.

"Hiiii," she drawled.

I smiled and walked over, standing beside her and trying to tell just by looking how far gone she was.  She reached up and tugged my hand to pull me down beside her.  I made it easy for her and sat down.  She started to grope at my leg, trying to pull me closer (or on top of her.  I wasn't sure which).

"How much did you drink?" I laughed, pushing her hands away easily.

She let go of me and started counting on her fingers.  My eyes widened as she passed ten and then fifteen.  At seventeen, she stopped and looked up at me with watery eyes.

"I don't remember," she mumbled.

More than seventeen?  That was excessive and dangerous.  Anxiety gripped my heart.

"You had more than seventeen alcoholic drinks?" I asked gravely, trying to get across to her that she'd better answer seriously.

She shook her head.

"I counted backwards from twenty-five.  Or twenty-four...?" she trailed off happily.

I sighed in relief.  Aya with seventeen drinks in her, I couldn't handle.  I'd have to take her to the hospital.  Aya with eight drinks in her might be a challenge, but not impossible.  I put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed briefly.

"Good, good," I told her, and she smiled proudly.

"Where did you go tonight?" she slurred.

Now was definitely not the time to tell her about Leader and her insults.

"After dinner, some of us went out to a club in Shinjuku.  We just listened to music and talked," I said slowly.

"I wanna go!" she said.

Too late, you dummy.  Trains have stopped.

"What about you?" I asked.  "What did you do?"

She grabbed the front of my shirt as if threatening me, and I remembered Leader's earlier actions.

"They made me stand around and drink lots of stuff for hours!!  And then they did boring speeches, so Nemoto and I snuck off and drank together in the girls' washroom."

Oh dear.

"Who's Nemoto-san?" I asked, unsure where to start with my questions.

"You know!  He has his own TV show on Thursday nights that I watch all the time.  Duuuh, Miki!" she giggled.

Nemoto was a guy?  And they drank in the girls' washroom?

"Er... How drunk were you guys?  I mean, if he's a man, and you drank in the washroom together, that's a bit..." I trailed off, not really expecting Aya to listen to reason.

"Oh, he's totally gay!" she screeched with delight, clapping her hands.

That didn't really answer my question, but I saw how it might be more of a comfort to the women walking into the washroom and seeing a man.

"Good for him," I said with a wary smile, and then it hit me.

Nemoto.  Nemoto Ryu.  He had a television show on Thursday nights.  It was some sort of jazz music corner, but apparently he was a riot.  A very funny man.  I hadn't watched the show myself.  I only knew who he was because Aya was completely in love with him and wouldn't shut up about him around the time his show aired.  If we hung out on a Thursday, all she did was wonder what that evening's episode was going to be like.  If we hung out on a Friday, all she could do was recap everything that had happened in the previous night's episode.  Frankly, it didn't even sound that interesting, but Aya worshipped the ground that man walked on.

Wait... He was gay?!

Oh, man.  The things you never expected.

"So don't worry.  I wasn't flirting with him or anything," she babbled, pulling me closer to her by the shirt (which she hadn't let go of in all this time).

"I wasn't worried," I sniffed.

I had been too surprised that they'd been talking in the washroom to get worried.  But if I had clued in to who he was, I probably would've been a tiny bit jealous in a completely unreasonable, unjustifiable, and good-humoured way.

"No, I can tell when you get worried.  Your forehead gets extra furrow-y.  Hee hee hee," she said, poking the bridge of my nose annoyingly.

"It does?" I asked worriedly, brushing her hand away and feeling my forehead.

That kind of thing brought on permanent wrinkles quickly.

"Jooooke!" she giggled, and I growled.

"Don't do that!"

"Anyway, we drank there, and he got all silly, and we flushed my necklace down the toilet by accident."

I didn't ask for details.  All I knew was that if for some reason I ever got it in my head to buy Aya a necklace, I'd pass.  No point saving up to buy something that would get flushed down the drain in a foolish moment of inebriation.

"And then this woman came into the washroom, but she was happy, too, so we all laughed together."

Right now, happy equals drunk in Aya's mind, I thought amusedly.

I took a look at her grinning face and her sparkling eyes.  Not even news of her family pet's death could have brought her down from the high she was on.

It was adorable!!

I hugged her and felt something akin to what I felt when I looked at pictures of mind-meltingly cute cats and dogs and felt like and eating them up or squeezing them to death.

"You are so cute!" I exclaimed as she laughed and hugged me back, completely oblivious to the crazy effect she was having on me.  "Who would've thought?"

"I'm cuuuute, I'm cuuuuute," she sang, her voice going over my shoulder and probably right into her next door neighbour's ears.  "I'm so cuuuute, Miki thinks I'm cuuuute!"

I squeezed her and laughed.  The serious Aya that intimidated me, the mature Aya that made me feel like I was thirteen, the lascivious Aya that made me blush and move away shyly, the thoughtful Aya that made me feel like I was wild and unorganised when I really wasn't... All these images dissolved that night and let me see the true scope of the silly Aya.  I'd seen it before, but never to this extent.  It was what was missing from my view of her.  I hadn't seen her throw down her dignity like that and let loose completely.

It was a key piece to the jigsaw puzzle.

It was what finally made me relax around her.

I held her tightly, listening to her nonsensical ramblings, smiling, my heart soaring until she grew drowsy and started to fall over.  At that stage, I carefully helped her get to bed, not letting her hands distract me from my task, even when I had to help her undress and put on something more suitable for bed (oh, the way she giggled when I helped).  I took my job seriously, though.  I was responsible for her well-being.  I was the friend that had to take care of her in her weakness and hold her head up over the toilet bowl (although thankfully she wasn't in that kind of state).

Right before going to bed, I made her take some painkillers.  I always did that, and it helped me feel better the next morning.  She protested at first, but then she liked the fact that I was physically feeding her the pills and holding the glass of water up to her lips, so she grinned and drank the entire glass agonizingly slowly.  Then, it was time for bed.  I got in first and let her have the side closest to the door just in case her stomach rejected so much alcohol.  She hadn't shown any signs of feeling sick, but I didn't know her level of tolerance and didn't want to risk anything.

"Good night," I said in a singsong voice, turning the light off.

"Don't wanna sleep," she replied stubbornly, drowsily.

I allowed myself to snuggle up to her.

"But you have to," I said in a cute voice as though talking to a five year old.  "We have to go see Shiba-chan tomorrow and you won't feel well if you don't sleep."

"But I'm having fun," she whined.

"What?  Fun?" I asked in mock surprise.  "Me having to dress you, feed you, and drag you around like a baby is fun?  More like a pain in the neck."

"Rrrgmgmrrr," she muttered and I laughed silently.

"Go to sleep," I repeated.

"No," she insisted.

"Sleep."

She shook her head.

I raised my head so that it was in line with hers and I started to sing.  One of those old children's songs that everyone knew by the time they were four.  I sang quietly, just for her, until her eyes started to droop shut.

"I'm not going to sleep," she mumbled.  "No matter how hard Miki tries, I won't..."

Her protests grew weaker, and within a minute after her last words, she was off in dreamland.  I broke off my singing and closed my eyes, set on reviewing the entire evening.  However, I didn't get far.  When I closed my eyes, my own exhaustion took a hold of me, and all I could do was let myself fall into the inviting arms of sleep.

[OTN1]

Chapter 12 of 29

The next morning, I woke up to Aya groaning.  I opened my eyes to see her lying there holding her head, a look of pure pain etched on her face.  I smirked knowingly, but didn't tease.  I rolled up, jumped over her, and went to fetch a glass of water and some more painkillers.  We'd slept a good eight hours, so the effects of the medicine from the previous night had worn off.  When I got back to her room, she was sitting up, nursing her head in her hands.  I tapped her on the shoulder and handed her the pills first, which she put in her mouth without a word, and then I handed her the glass of cold water.  She drank the whole thing down and handed me back the glass, which I dutifully returned to the kitchen.  We worked smoothly like a well-oiled machine.  When I got back to her room again, she'd laid back down, her hands massaging her temples gingerly.

I walked over her carefully and slipped in beside her, latching on gently and snuggling my face into her neck.  She groaned in protest.

"Kill me," she mumbled in a pathetic voice, and I snorted.

"No," I laughed out softly so that I wouldn't cause her head any more grief.

"Let go."

"No," I repeated, and without looking, I brought my hands up and took her hands away from her head, continuing her soothing massage myself.

"Thank you," she mumbled grudgingly, too lazy to bring her hands back down and leaving them up above her head.

I lifted my head to look at the situation and my heart quickened.  It almost looked like I'd tied her hands up that way and she was lying there submissively, eyes closed, waiting for me to do what I wanted.

Damnit, I thought, cursing my mind for turning dirty on its own when Aya was not in any condition to humour me.  Stop thinking like that, you pervert, I reprimanded myself.

I continued to massage her aching head for several minutes.

"It's ten o'clock," I told her gently after a while.  "Think you'll be okay in a few hours?"

She didn't answer, so I looked up at her face.  She hadn't replied because she had fallen right back asleep.  I smiled a self-satisfied smile.  I had some sort of magic touch.  But her hands were still above her head, wrists crossed over each other.  I carefully moved her arms to her sides so that she no longer looked like she was posing for a dirty magazine.  Then I held onto her and lay there not thinking about much, waiting for her to wake up again. 

She woke up in half and hour, this time without any exclamations of pain.

"How are you feeling?" I asked when she opened her eyes.

She looked groggy, but not like she was about to keel over.

"Eh..." she mumbled.  "Better."

She sounded a lot stronger.

"Can you get up?"

She nodded her head.

"Do you want to eat something?"

She looked positively green at the mention of food.

"Ug..."

"You should eat," I suggested.  "You need something in your stomach."

She looked at me with those sad, pathetic eyes that said "I'll leave it up to you" and shrugged.  I took this as a sign that I should make her something easy to stomach.

"Why don't you take a shower while I make breakfast?" I said.

She looked at me reluctantly.

"Or do you need help with that, too?" I added with an idiotic smile.

She cracked her own first smile of the day, and something told me to go with it and continue.

"You really want me to help you?  Because I don't mind, but that means you'll have to wait extra long for breakfast, and your stomach is going to start growling and-"

I continued to babble.  Frankly, I got a little nervous and excited, but she gripped my arm with a tight hold, making me squeak and cut off my words.

"Just get me to the bathroom in one piece and I'll think about it," she mumbled, looking both amused and in pain.

I helped her get up, and once sure that she was steady on her feet, followed her like a little puppy dog to the bathroom.

"I can stand, you know," she laughed at me, her strength returning to her gradually.

"I know, but..." I trailed off.  "Are you sure you're okay?  You can make it on your own?"

She rolled her eyes and then winced as that caused her a bit of pain.

"Go make me food.  You're right.  I am hungry."

I nodded.

"Well, okay..." I said hesitantly, sticking around and waiting...

"What?" she asked me.

"Huh?" I asked back, giving her a confused look.  "What?"

She looked at me slyly.

"Do you need something?"

I shook my head vigorously.

"No, not really.  Nothing at all!"

But I didn't move off.  She grabbed my hands.

"If you want to take a shower with me, just tell me.  I didn't think you were serious," she said in a quiet and smiling tone, her hangover seeming to no longer exist.

Hiroshi, I lied.  She totally did seduce me.  Completely.  I don't know how she managed to, but she did, and right now, I've just realised that I have to take advantage of every naughty bone in her body.

She was right.  It was true.  I wanted to.  What had filled me with fear before filled me with desire now.  In a show of bravery, I grabbed her wrists.

"I'm serious," I said, staring at her as if to bore holes through her skull.

She seemed to forget the pain she was in, and she shook my hand off one wrist, using it to open the door to the bathroom and then pulling me in.  She closed the door behind us.  We brushed our teeth and ran the water, getting undressed when the shower spray was sufficiently hot.  Then under the warmth of the water, we took a long, forty-five minute shower together in the small cubby-hole of a space, details of which we would commit to memory only and not write down or tell a soul about.

Once dried, dressed and ready to go, we ate a few bites of plain rice each just to tide us over until we had lunch with Shibata.  Aya seemed to feel even better after that.

My phone rang while we were walking to the door.  Impeccable timing.

"Fujimoto-sama!" Fukuda cried out as if the apocalypse was upon us and he was alerting the empress.

"What is it?!" I asked in alarm.

"Hasegawa broke his ankle on the way to work and we can't find a replacement.  Can you please come in?!"

He sounded like he was about to cry.  And me?  I was in an excellent mood.  Nothing could worry me or make me feel bad.

I shot Aya a look and then said to Fukuda, "Sure, I'll be there as soon as possible."

He thanked me a million times, and I hung up to face Aya again.

"That was my manager," I said slowly, playing with the zipper of my jacket.  "He needs me at the store 'cause Jerk got into some accident and unfortunately only broke his ankle."

Aya was also in such a good mood that she didn't mind.  She'd gotten her forty-five minutes of fun, and that seemed to have cured her of her hangover.  At least temporarily.

"You'll have to meet Shiba-chan some other time, then," she laughed.

"Yeah, she's becoming this mythical figure.  It's like everything in the world is trying to prevent our meeting," I laughed along.

I got changed again, this time wearing something appropriate for work, and we left together, splitting up on the sidewalk.

"I'll tell my mythical friend that you say hello."

"You do that!"

I skipped over to work, giddy as ever.  I had surprised Aya with my forthrightness.  Inviting myself to take a shower with her and then actually carrying through with it.  She'd liked it, and I could tell that things were only going to get more interesting between us.  We had something deeper than I had thought before.

I worked with someone I'd never worked with before - a man named Shiroshita who hadn't been at the welcome party.  He seemed nice.  A little on the quiet side, but he didn't ignore me.

While I was wiping up a mess from a spill on the counter (honestly, sometimes customers can be so messy!), a girl walking in slipped and did a faceplant on the floor.  I dropped my cloth and went to help her up.  She was embarrassed as she sat there trying to re-arrange her skirt so that her legs weren't completely exposed.  I looked up at the counter to see where Shiroshita was, and he was staring like a zombie at the girl's legs, the proverbial stream of drool coming from the corner of his mouth.

You perv, I thought, rolling my eyes and helping the girl get up.

She thanked me, bought a pack of gum quickly, and then left.  I'm sure she'd come in to buy more, but was too humiliated to browse around for longer.

My shift ended at five that evening.  Kuniko came to replace me, and we chatted for a few minutes, leaving the store to Shiroshita.

"There's a party going on next Wednesday at some other club that Koda-kun visits once in a while.  Are you in?"

I sighed.  Was Tokyo going to turn me into a party girl?  Maybe.  I didn't really want to go, but I liked Kuniko and Koda and their group of friends.  Aya was also going to be monstrously busy in the next week, so I may as well distract myself. 

"Yeah, give me the details and I'll be there," I said.

Kuniko cheered and started rambling on about the details, all of which I'd never remember if I didn't write down.

"Oh my god, stop," I cried out, waving my hands at her.  "Send me an e-mail with everything you just said.  You talk too fast."

"Don't worry.  We'll just come pick you up at your place."

And see that I live in a trillion-yen condo?  No way...

"It'd be better if you gave me the details," I said, thinking quickly.  "I'm not sure what I'll be doing before, and I might be a bit late."

Vague and not entirely a lie.

"Okay.  I'll e-mail you details during my break," she said, thinking nothing suspicious of my excuse, quickly adding, "since you're too dumb to keep up with my intelligent speech patterns."

I hit her hard on the arm.

"Shut up and get to work before I smack you even harder on the head."

She snorted at me, and I walked off laughing, leaving the store and going back home.

Aya was home when I walked in.  She was sitting in the living room and writing something.

"Hi!" I called out from the entrance.

"Hi," she mumbled back, not looking up from her work.

I snuck up behind her, knelt down, and tickled her.  She jerked up, brushed my hands away, and kept writing.

"Whatcha doing?" I asked, sitting beside her and sticking my head over her shoulder.

She pushed my head away and then slammed her book shut.

"I'm finished," she declared, finally looking at me.

"Yeah, but what is it?"

"It's my agenda book, you dummy," she said, turning the book over for me to see the word "SCHEDULE" written on it.

"Oh," I said uninterestedly.

I had thought she'd been writing in her diary or something private that I wasn't supposed to see.  To test it out, I took the book into my hands and flipped it open.  She didn't try to stop me as I turned to this coming week's page.  It was full of neat red and black scribbles indicating what time and where she had to be for various events.

"Holy crap," I muttered.  "Is this the amount of work they make you do?  No wonder they pay you so nicely."

She took the book out of my hands and hit me on the head with it before I grabbed it back.

"It looks like a lot on paper, but it's really an average week," she brushed it off.

I opened the book and again read through everything she had to do, wondering if I would ever be able to handle the amount of work she did.  Probably not.  I'd get sick of having to listen to people telling me where to go and what to do twenty-nine hours a day.  It was admirable of Aya to be able to do it all and not complain a single bit.

"Can't you take some time off?" I asked, closing the book.

"What do you think I was doing the past two months?"

Right.  I had already forgotten she hadn't been working that entire time.  I gave her a sheepish look and she raised a hand, making me wince in anticipation of sharp pain.  Instead of hitting me, though, she stroked my hair.

"Although it would be nice to take some time off and go somewhere exciting with you," she said wistfully.

"Once I get a real job and make some real money, you're on," I winked.

"Hmmm," she sighed.

As she daydreamed, I opened her agenda book and looked through it some more, assuming she'd stop me if she didn't want me to know what was on her schedule.  Next month was already filling up.  I checked and saw that my birthday written in hastily with pencil.  Under it, she had written in some sort of social event.

"What's this?" I asked, pointing to a name I wasn't sure how to pronounce.

"I have to go to another one of those dinners," she said, sticking her tongue out presumably at whoever had organised the event.

"Another one of those drunken washroom nights?" I teased.

"No," she sighed.  "This one's a little more serious, which means far more boring.  I'm going with some colleagues to represent our label.  We have to be on our best behaviour because some important guy is hosting it."

"But you're going to miss my birthday..." I whined.

"Oh, that's your birthday?  I didn't notice," she said breezily.

"Of course it is, you doofus.  You've got it written in right here!" I said angrily, pointing at her handwriting and shoving the page in front of her face.

"Oh, so I do," she said in surprise.

I realised she was just messing around with me, so I dropped the book back on the table.

"Why do I get the feeling that the longer I stick around, the meaner you'll get?"

She began to laugh so hard that I was afraid she might flatline from lack of oxygen.  I watched as she threw herself down onto the floor, clutching her stomach and letting out hoots that would have frightened ghosts.

She never answered my question, and she dragged me out for dinner after I insisted we could cook.  She said she didn't want to buy groceries, and heaven forbid I argue with the master of the house.

"So what did you and Shiba-chan get up to today?" I asked before a bite of okonomiyaki.

"We went out for lunch.  Just our usual thing," Aya replied after she took a sip of water.  "She says 'hi', by the way, and wonders if you exist, too."

"When is she free next?  I'm starting to become obsessed with the idea of meeting her."

"She'll call me and let me know.  Looks like things'll be busy for her, too, this week."

I made a mental note to ask Fukuda to give me some extra shifts.  I'd bore myself silly all alone. 

"What am I going to do without you around?" I asked in a sad voice.  "I may as well still live in Hokkaido for all I'll see you next week."

"Aren't you supposed to be looking for a real job?" Aya snickered, picking up a piece of cabbage with her chopsticks and sticking it in my mouth.

I obediently took the strip between my teeth and chewed.

"Oh yeah," I chuckled.  "I guess I could always go to that guy's company and be an office lady..."

"What guy's company?" Aya asked curiously.

"Huh?" I asked.

I thought I'd told her, but then I remembered that we hadn't seen much of each other today.  Shower time didn't count.

"Oh, last night I- well, it's a long story," I started, remembering Leader and her bunch, "but this boy gave me a card and told me they need a secretary at his office."

The card was still in my wallet, and I took it out to show Aya.  She read what was written, and for some reason, began to smile in awe.

"He said his company needs a secretary?" she asked for confirmation.

"Yup."

She handed me back the card.

"That's perfect.  You have to do it!"

"But Aya," I whined.  "Can you see me as a secretary?"

She took a full look at me, and somewhere during this examination, I suddenly felt very naked.  Her gaze seemed to strip me of not just my clothes but also that shield that most people put up to protect themselves when in public.

"Yes, I can," she said unfalteringly.

"But-"

"Do it.  Call him.  Or even better, just go to the company on Monday morning.  This is your chance to get a real job."

"But... Office lady?  I'm not that kind of girl."

Aya sighed.

"Do you realise what kind of company this is?" she asked.

I took the card out again and read it.

"No," I mumbled.  "Paid escort service?"

She scowled at my sarcastic joke.

"It's a record label, for crying out loud!" she exclaimed.  "So if you want to have any chance to break into the industry, I suggest you get your butt down to Ikebukuro bright and early on Monday morning and get yourself a job serving coffee to the people that can make your dreams come true."

A record label?

It was the first time since the previous night that I seriously considered taking Sekiguchi up on his offer.

We talked about it a bit more, Aya urging me on and on until I agreed to at least go and look at the office.  We finished our dinner and decided to walk home instead of taking the train.

As we strolled down the dark, cold streets, I kept thinking about the girls from the club, and all I wanted to do was tell Aya about them.  However, I didn't want to see her feelings get hurt.  I didn't want to be the bearer of bad news.  Finally, I took her arm and pressed my shoulder against hers.

"You know, last night I met this group of girls," I started tentatively.  "They were saying some pretty rude things about you."

She slowed down a bit and looked at me questioningly.

"Who were they?  And what kinds of things?" she asked.

I shrugged.

"Some rich, stuck up girls.  Nobodies, really.  And just... rude things that aren't true."

Her face showed no sign of emotional reaction, so I ploughed on.

"I kind of jumped in and tried to stop them, but they were tougher than they looked and were about to hurt me when Sekiguchi - the guy who gave me the card - jumped in and made them run.  So the only reason why I met him and got this chance at a job is because some girls thought it would be satisfying to make fun of you."

I felt a load taken off my shoulders.

"You defended me?" she asked.

I could practically hear the hearts in her voice!

"Yes," I mumbled shyly.  "And I lost miserably."

"No, you won.  My heart!"

I groaned and pushed her away from me, speeding up my walking pace.

"Don't say things like that.  That's unbearably cheesy and... just... ug!"

She quickened her own pace and was at my side in no time.

"Hey, what happened to the Miki I woke up with this morning?  What'd you do with her?" she teased me, her hand finding mine.

"She's on a seventy-year coffee break," I muttered.  "But seriously, I'm not into mushy crap like that.  I like things cool, not cheesy."

"Oh, you liar!" Aya almost shouted.  "You have a mushy streak longer than the Nile."

The rest of our walk home was full of her teasing me as I tried to defend myself.  No more was said about Leader and her gang.  Once we got to her apartment, she tried to prove to me that mushy was good, while I tried to prove to her that being grown up and cool was good, and while we were both obstinate and refused to see each other's points, it all ended in a good way.

[OTN1]

Chapter 13 of 29

We both had Sunday free, so we spent the entire morning in bed sleeping, and then the afternoon cleaning up the apartment and making some room for my things.  I'd be staying for at least a few more weeks, and it was becoming bothersome to live mainly out of a bag.  We ended up having an impromptu fashion show as we tried on all of Aya's clothes and tried to see what looked best on each other.

The next morning I woke up at the same time as Aya, and we set about our usual routine. I made sure to look extra good (although Aya assured me that I could have worn a potato sack and looked stunning (I didn't believe her for one second because nobody would look good in a potato sack)), and we caught the train together.

"Are you nervous?" she asked as I sat there falling asleep.

"Eh?" I asked, straightening up.  "No.  Why would I be?"

Getting nervous about a job interview that didn't even exist?  What a waste of energy that would be.  I returned to my snoozing, and received a ferocious jab in the ribs when Ikebukuro station was announced.  With a hasty "bye", I ran out the doors before they closed.

Following the map Aya had printed out from the internet for me that morning, I found the building easily.  I looked in a reflective window and did a brief hair and makeup check before riding the elevator up.

The doors opened and I walked into a moderately-sized reception room, a desk just a few steps away.  I walked to it and saw a head bent down over a book.  It was a boy, and I had no doubt in my mind which boy it was.

"So what were you trying to do?" I asked.  "Quit your job and give it to me?"

The head bounced up in surprise, and sure enough, it was Sekiguchi.

"Uhh..." he said stupidly, his eyes then lighting up in recognition.  "Fujimoto-san!  You actually came!"

"A friend convinced me to give this a go," I shrugged.  "So, am I right?  You're the company monkey boy and you want to pass the job on to me?"

He blushed and stood up so that we were on even ground.

"No.  It's just that I can't work all the time because I've started taking a course at a local college.  I need to find someone else to share the job with," he admitted.  "But yeah, I'm just a secretary here."

At the club he'd sounded like he was a regular employee of some company when he was really the guy who made tea?  Regardless, there was something nice about him that didn't seem stuck up.

"Hey you!" bellowed a voice.  "Stop flirting with your girlfriend and get back to work!"

"Yes, sir!" Sekiguchi cried out, sitting in his chair and starting to type furiously on a computer.

I wouldn't date this baby here in a million years, I thought sourly.  Maybe if he grew up a decade...

I turned around to see who had yelled at him, and I saw a huge man come striding towards the desk.  He was tall and built like a refrigerator.  Absolutely massive and muscular.  He could beat Arnold Schwarzenegger to the ground.  The man took one look at me and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Who are you?" he asked abruptly.

I was so surprised at this man's entrance that I'd lost my voice.  Sekiguchi answered for me by standing up.

"She's here about the secretary job, boss.  Stop scaring her."

"Scaring her?" the man repeated, and then addressing me, asked, "Am I scary?  Do you find me scary?  Am I a scary man?"

It was then that I realised this man wasn't angry and that Sekiguchi wasn't actually afraid of him.  This man was a joker.  Maybe a bit on the gruff side, but not an irate man by far.

"No, you're not scary," I said.

"I like her!" he cried out.  "My god, you simply must work for us."

"But you haven't even asked her for her name yet," Sekiguchi whined.

I wondered whether he really wanted me to get the job.  I supposed it was just part of the playfully argumentative relationship he had with his boss.  The boss pierced Sekiguchi with a glare.

"Would you act your nineteen years of age?  I didn't hire a fifth grade elementary school student."

Nineteen?!

"You're nineteen?!" I blurted out, glaring at Sekiguchi.

He grimaced, hanging his head down.

"Oh, did the boy play that old 'I'm twenty-eight' crap with you?  He likes to pretend he's so old.  It'll do him no good once he passes thirty.  Right, Tsuyoshi-kun?"

Sekiguchi's head remained bowed.  And as it should have been!  He'd lied to me.

"Anyway, when can you start?" the boss asked, turning serious.

"Uh... Isn't Sekiguchi-kun here right?  You don't even know my name..."

It was my turn to sabotage my own job opportunity.  There must've been something in the air that day.

"I have a good feeling about you, little lady.  I want to see you here smiling every day.  I think you can help a lot around our humble U-Con headquarters."

I was at a loss for words.

"I can start tomorrow," I said simply.

"Great.  Come by at the same time tomorrow.  Tsuyoshi-kun'll show you the ropes."

And with that, the boss turned on his heels to leave.

"Wait!" I called out, and he turned back around.  "My name is Fujimoto.  Can I ask for your name?"

"Just call me 'Boss', and I'm sure our work relationship will be a fruitful one."

He gave me the most enigmatic of looks and then walked off. 

Tokyo people... are so weird.

I turned to face Sekiguchi.

"You little runt.  You lied to me on Friday.  You're not twenty-two.  What's up with that?" I asked, glaring at him.

To his credit, he rose to the challenge.

"Hey, you'd lie to a stranger if you were drinking and smoking underage in an exclusive club like that," he defended himself.

He had an excellent point.

"Since you saved me from getting my eyes scratched out, I'll forgive you this once."

"I knew I could count on you to see the light side!" he cried out happily.

I rolled my eyes, but spared him an approving smile.

And so started a very interesting relationship.

I left soon after finding out the boss' real name from Sekiguchi (or Tsuyoshi, as he boyishly insisted on being called).  It was decided that for the next few weeks, we'd work together, Tsuyoshi passing on his wisdom to me while I got used to the routine.

In the afternoon, I had a shift at 7-Eleven, and I explained to Fukuda that I'd gotten a part-time secretary job, but that I still wanted to work for him.  Being so friendly and helpful, he told me that he'd make sure to arrange my schedule so that there were no conflicts.

That night, I told Aya about what had happened at U-Con, and she was tickled by my tale of the boss.  As we lay in bed later, she reassured me that this was the lucky break I needed.  She told me some things about the label, and I had to admit that it seemed like a nice organisation to work for.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early, a little sleepy because we'd stayed up too late talking, and we repeated the same routine as the previous day.  Aya jabbed me awake at my stop, and I ran out the closing doors of the train.

Tsuyoshi turned out to be a solid, bright fellow.  He was nineteen and yearning to be a music producer, which was why he'd taken up a job at a record label.  He had recently signed up for a course at college to study some sort of musical programming.  I didn't have a clue what he was talking about when he explained it, so I nodded and smiled politely.

By noon, it felt like we were old buddies.  We got along very well and could relax around each other.

During lunch break, we were sitting together at the front desk eating our respective lunches (his mother had gone all out and made him a proper boxed lunch, while I'd had to run out to the convenience store because I'd forgotten to bring my lunch) when I had my first taste of the people who worked at the label.

First to walk by was a woman coincidentally named Kuniko.  I learned her name from Tsuyoshi, not from her, because she took one look at me, sneered, and walked out of the office.

"What's her problem?" I asked Tsuyoshi.

"I don't know," he said with a frown.  "Her name's Kuniko and she's one of the performers on our label.  She's usually not that much of a bitch.  She gives most people at least one chance..."

From what it sounded like, Kuniko wasn't the nicest girl on the block, but she wasn't aggressively rude right off the bat.  Maybe she was having a bad day.

Next came a man name Ohashi, and as if Kuniko giving me a dirty look wasn't enough, Ohashi glared at me.

I put aside my urge to glare back and figured being nice first would make him realise how childish he was being.

"Hi, nice to meet you," I said, standing up and on the verge of telling him my name.

He stopped and faced Tsuyoshi.

"Who's the chick?"

Tsuyoshi stammered for a minute before letting out some noncommittal answer that I was new here, and without any further comment, Ohashi turned his back on us and left the office in the same manner Kuniko had.

"The hell?" I growled.  "Is everyone at this place like those two?  I quit."

I stood up and started packing up my half-eaten lunch when Tsuyoshi grabbed my arm.  I glared at him, and he let go with a thousand apologies about not meaning to touch me inappropriately.

"Really, I don't know what's up with those two, but not everyone's like that.  Please trust me!" he appealed to me desperately.

I sat back down, but I refused to continue eating.

Tsuyoshi was proven right when the next employee walked by.  I didn't notice her because I was studying an event schedule on the computer screen while muttering comments to Tsuyoshi, who was still working on his lunch.

"Oh, a new person," said a voice, and I looked up to see a beautiful foreigner with flawless ebony skin and hair tied neatly in a perfect bun standing there.

"Uh, can I help you with something?" I asked, wondering what this woman was doing here.

"No, not really," she laughed.  "I'm Katherine and I'm working here for the next few months.  I come from the United States."

Oh...

Well, her Japanese was perfect.  I wouldn't have guessed she wasn't one of us without looking at her.

"Katherine-san is our temporary dance genius.  Her company in Michigan-"

"Washington," she groaned, butting in.

"Washington," Tsuyoshi corrected with a pointed look that made me guess it was some geeky joke between the two, "sent her over to us because we were desperate for some good dance instructors."

Katherine nodded and looked at me.

"Except for the whole 'genius' thing, yeah, he's right.  But I'll be leaving in May, so don't get too attached!"

She winked and I couldn't help but laugh.

"It's nice to meet you," I said.  "I'm Fujimoto."

I stood up and bowed, and she bowed back.

"You're cute," she stated as if it was written on my forehead and she was reading it back to me.  "Are you one of the new ducklings?"

"Ducklings?" I asked, confused and embarrassed.

"Er, one of the new kids signed up on the label?"

I shook my head emphatically.

"No no no.  I'm just here to help this runt with his work.  I'm no singer."

She eyed me carefully, giving my body the whole up-and-down and making me feel a little nervous.

"A little on the lanky side, but you're short, so it looks okay..." she muttered under her breath as if evaluating a cow at the slaughterhouse.

Great.  Tokyo is just one big bucket of judgemental fun, I thought caustically.

"Come down to the training room sometime," she told me.  "I wouldn't be surprised if you could dance as nicely as you look."

What was this woman on?  She must have had too much coffee or chocolate because nobody before in my life had ever looked at me and said "hey, you look like you'd be an okay dancer!"

"Sure," I said casually.  "But you'll probably be disappointed."

She clucked her tongue.

"You've obviously never seen Tsuyoshi-kun trying to shake his stuff," she chuckled, going right through the boy's protests.  "He doesn't have any rhythm or sense of style.  If only he did, he'd have all us girls lined up to marry him."

She gave him a teasing look, and he sat there with a pout, making him look even younger than he already did.

A phone started to ring, saving Tsuyoshi from further humiliation.  Katherine reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone.

"Hello?" she asked,

A reply came, and she launched into a string of English words that was too fast and too colloquial for me to understand despite having taken several English courses in university.  Katherine gave a quick wave and walked out the office talking non-stop.

"Wow," I said to Tsuyoshi.

"That pretty much sums her up," he agreed with a smile.

Working at U-Con was going to fun.

[OTN1]

Chapter 14 of 29

After my first day on the job, I went home and told Aya all about it.  I went on and on about Tsuyoshi and Katherine and their wonderfulness, and about Kuniko The Lesser and Ohashi the Ass and their horridness.  Aya told me several times to shut up (in those exact words), but I paid no heed to her and kept talking, resulting in her falling asleep and me getting angry and shaking her awake in a way that could not be described as gentle.

Two weeks passed.  I balanced my convenience store job and my secretary job skilfully.  After the first week and a half, Tsuyoshi cut his work hours in half so that our work times would coincide only three times a week.  On the other hand, Kuniko The Greater and I got to work together a lot, which was nice because she kept me sane.  Sort of.  She'd do and say childish things and I'd ignore her or badmouth her, and then we'd laugh.  If one didn't know, one would think we really were sisters.  She made working at a convenience store not as terrible as it could be.

Back at home, my parents complained about missing me.  They called me and told me the house was quiet without me, and that even Baachan had been around complaining that her new hired help wasn't half as good as I had been.  But they were happy to hear that I was finding my way, although I could hear the disappointment in my father's silence when I told him I was working as a secretary at a record label.  "My daughter can do better than that," he probably thought.

My mother gave me an update about everyone I knew, including Hiroshi, who I surprisingly hadn't thought of in weeks.  His birthday had passed, and I had, as he had requested, not phoned or e-mailed him.  My mom told me he had come by to the house twice just to chat with my parents, and my mother's evaluation was that he missed me like crazy and wanted me to come back.  I stood firmly on my decision, though, and told my mother that if he wanted to contact me, he could go ahead.  I'd be glad to talk to him.  But I wasn't going to go back to the way things had been before.

Several mornings after that phone conversation, I was called in on another emergency shift at the store.  Aya had the morning off and only a meeting to attend at lunch, so we'd slept in a bit and then stayed under the warm blankets, neither one of us daring to brave the cold that had enveloped the apartment overnight.  That was okay.  We kept occupied.  Until, of course, my phone rang.  I grumbled as I rolled over the side of the bed to grab the little machine.

"Don't answer it," Aya whined, trying to pull me back.

But we both knew it could be important.  Although how important it could get for a part-time secretary, part-time convenience store worker was a mystery to both of us.

I checked the display and there was Fukuda's name.

"Boss," I mumbled aloud, clearing my throat and answering.  "Hello!"

"Fujimoto-sama-sama!!" he cried as if the world was ending.

I wonder what part of the body Jerk broke this time, I thought with a laugh.

Hasegawa had returned to work several days after breaking his wrist, although his duties had been limited.  I wish he'd taken a longer break, but such was life.

"Yes, Fuku-chan?" I said cheekily.

I'd learned over the weeks that Fukuda didn't mind joking around, so when he praised him, we lowered his status.  I'd never heard of a boss as easygoing as him, but I thanked my lucky stars.  Fukuda was particularly fond of the double sama, especially when talking to me and Kuniko.  I was pretty sure we were his favourites.  We never made any mistakes.

"Hasegawa-san has caught Avian Influenza.  Can you please come and do his eleven-thirty shift?"

I almost burst out laughing.  Avian flu?!  Since when did Jerk hang around sick poultry?  How the hell had he managed to catch a chicken disease?  Despite the threat to Jerk's life, I couldn't help but be amused.

"Sure thing.  Let me get out of bed and I'll be right over," I said, stifling my laughter.

"Are you with your boyfriend?!" Fukuda demanded suddenly.

He was young, but he seemed more like my father than a jealous suitor.  He was married, after all, and he was extremely loyal to his wife and his one year old daughter.

"No, I am not with my boyfriend," I said loudly and clearly into the phone, looking at Aya pointedly.

She smirked back at me.

"Good.  You're too precious of a girl to go around getting knocked up by random strangers from this city," he huffed defensively.  "Tokyo men are all pigs.  You hear me?  All of them.  So be careful!"

"But aren't you from Tokyo?" I asked sweetly.

There was a stiff silence.

"With a few exceptions," he amended weakly.

I rolled my eyes and laughed.

"Whatever.  I'll be over in an hour.  Okay?"

"Much appreciated.  The shift is until five-thirty.  Thank you!"

We ended our conversation there, and I burst out laughing.

"Jerk got the bird flu and I have to go in to replace him!"

Aya stared at me.

"You're a horrible, horrible person to laugh at something like that," she stated.

"Oh, come on.  This means he'll be away for a while and that I won't have to put up with his rude behaviour.  It's great!  Besides, Hasegawa's a beast.  He'll threaten the virus to get out of him.  He'll live."

Aya decided to agree silently with me.  I could tell because she tugged me back under the covers.

"I have to be there in an hour," I reminded her.

"Come on.  The day I have the most free time, you get called away.  That's not fair."

"Sorry," I said in a cute voice, poking her nose.  "But duty calls."

I slipped out of her hold and out of bed, far too happy for my own good.  My relaxing morning with Aya may have been interrupted, but I'd gotten plenty of sleep and plenty of cuddling (which I still refused to admit that I liked) and was thus in an excellent mood.  As Aya lay in bed occasionally calling out to me, I took a shower and got ready.

Only when I was completely ready to walk out the door did I jump onto the bed to hug her.

"You should get ready, too.  Don't you have that meeting?" I reminded her as I squeezed her tightly.

"Blah," she replied.

"Don't be such a grump," I smiled.  "It's unbecoming."

I let go and left before she could latch on and not let go.

"My shift ends at five-thirty.  I'll be back soon after.  Bye bye!"

I ran out the door before she could entice me to be later than I'd promised Fukuda.

I got to 7-Eleven right at a busy moment at twenty-five past eleven, said hello to a grovelling Fukuda, and then went out to take care of customers.  Kuniko was also working that day, and she had given me a surprised look when I walked in.  When I joined her at the counter, she smiled a hello as she rang up a customer's purchase.

We didn't get a chance to talk for another hour.

"So Fukuda called you, huh?" she asked conversationally as two customers stood at the magazine stands reading.

"Mmhm," I replied.

"I hope Jerk stays in the hospital for twelve years.  I wouldn't mind never seeing him again."

"He's going to hate me even more when he finds out I'm the one covering for him again.  He's not the type to feel like he owes anybody anything, right?" I snickered.

Another hour passed during which we were busy as ever.  It was an unusually active day at our store.

Things quieted down for fifteen minutes, during which I took a quick break, and then everything was busy until three.  After that, the shop became a ghost shop.  No customers entered, and I wondered why they had to come in huge, unmanageable clumps.

Despite how busy we had been, I was perkier than usual.  I stood there stacking containers of salad up in the fridge and almost humming aloud.

"Someone's happy today," Kuniko called out from the counter.  "And I'm sure it has nothing to with lettuce."

I put the salad down and turned to face her.

"You know when you wake up in the morning and you're just in a good mood for no reason?  Like... when you feel like you're on top of the world?"

Kuniko nodded.

"That's how I felt this morning," I told her.

I went back to my job.

"Are you sure nothing else happened?  Like last night or anything?" she pressed on.

I shook my head.

"Life is generally good now.  I have a place to stay and Aya-chan's really easy-going.  She lets me do what I want.  And you guys are all fun to work with - minus Jerk.  And my other job is much better than expected."

"Hey, when am I going to meet this Aya-chan of yours?  You know we love to party.  There are lots of opportunities to bring her along."

I couldn't pretend not to have heard.  I had to answer.

I didn't think Aya would want to hang out with a bunch of part-time convenience store workers.  Her schedule was so full, and she had to think of so many more things.  Consequences.  Hanging out with a group of unknown people, taking pictures, talking openly... These things were all potential risks for her.  One dishonest person and her secrets might be spilled and spread around the city.  It was then when I wondered for the first time how many non entertainment industry friends Aya had made since moving to Tokyo.  How many besides me?

"Ah, maybe sometime.  She's really busy," I replied evasively.

"Okay.  Fine.  Where does she live?  I'll drop by one day," Kuniko insisted.

"Eh?" I asked, surprised, then quickly going into annoyed older sister mode.  "You can't do that without an invite, you rude girl."

"Fine," she said.  "Invite me."

"No!" I exclaimed.

"Why not?" she whined.

"Because," I said, my tone telling her to stop.

"Come on, Fujimocchan," she whimpered like a puppy.

"Welcome!" I called out desperately as a customer walked in.

Kuniko turned around, putting on her professional air and rushing to the counter.

I finished with the salad as Kuniko took care of the customer.  I moved to the back where the drinks were and did some pointless busywork there, arranging the bottles and cans neatly so that the labels all faced forward.

"So how about tomorrow?" Kuniko called out as she closed in on my position again, finished with the customer.

"No!" I barked.

She skipped up right behind me.

"Day after that?"

"No!"

"And after that?"

"For the last time: no!"

"Oh, come on.  You're being so difficult.  It's like this Aya-chan doesn't even exist."

"She exists!" I cried out defensively.

"Then why won't you let me meet her?"

"Because," I groaned.  "She's busy."

"She's a mirage!" Kuniko sang off-key.  "A mirage!  A hallucination.  An imaginary friend!"

"No she's not," I growled angrily.

"Then prove it.  Show me a picture of her."

"I don't have any," I sighed.

"Come on.  You guys live together and you haven't taken a picture together?  What kind of friends are you?  What's in your mobile?"

"No pictures of her!" I exploded.

"You're no fun," she deadpanned, walking back to the front.

I huffed out a sigh.  I didn't want her to become genuinely angry or anything.

"Maybe next week," I said because I could stop myself.

I was too nice.  Her face lit up brilliantly.

"Really?  You mean it?"

"Maybe," I repeated with a glower.  "She's busy."

"Ahhh, thank you!  Thank you, thank you!" she squealed, running up to me and tackling me with a hug.

"Why do you want to meet her so much anyway?" I grumbled as I tried to shake her off.

"Because she seems really nice, and you seem to get along with her very well.  I want to see what kind of person you look for in a best friend so that I have a shot," she giggled.

Of all the...

How could I be annoyed with her if she thought a sweet thing like that?  The way she worshipped me like her idol was not invisible to me or the people around us, but wanting to be my best friend was just too cute.  My exterior softened tenfold to this girl who I could honestly call my little sister.

"Okay, okay," I conceded.  "You can come over next week and hang out with us."

What am I doing? I thought.  I hope Aya's okay with that.

She probably would be.  Kuniko was a friend of mine, and if I could trust her, then Aya should be able to trust her, too.  Then again, I hadn't known Kuniko that long...

We heard the door open as a customer walked in, and Kuniko detached herself from me (she was still holding me in a very awkward bear hug that had seriously begun to annoy me), and I pushed her away towards the drinks as I made my way down the aisle to go and greet the customer and man the front.

"Welco-" I started and then pulled back in surprise, a huge smile gracing my lips.  "Aya-chan..."

Aya smiled and walked further into the store as I walked up to face her.

"I wanted to see you in action," she laughed.  "And I got hungry and needed a snack."

She began to walk to the display fridge where I'd recently been arranging salad, and I followed her, standing in front of the display area as she tried to look behind me.

"You're a liar.  You just wanted to laugh at me wearing this stupid uniform."

She looked at what I was wearing and raised an amused eyebrow.

"Okay, you got me," she said with an exaggerated defeated air.

"You shouldn't make fun, though.  I'm earning money here.  Money that'll get me out of your hair by next month."

"Aw, but I don't want you to move out.  I'm having too much fun with you around," she said cutely.

I hoped she was being serious because I didn't want to move out either.  Besides moving all my things being a pain in the neck and wanting to avoid that, I had grown enormously fond of living with her even though she was very busy and rarely at home.  I'd be lonely and depressed if I went to live in some shoebox apartment all by myself.

"Thanks," I grinned.  "How was your meeting?"

"I almost fell asleep," she groaned, and I giggled at the mental image of Aya nodding off into a bowl of salad.

"Fujimocchan, friend of yours?" Kuniko asked, suddenly walking up from behind Aya.

"Kuniko," I muttered under my breath.

She had noticed us chatting and had come along being her nosey self.  Aya smirked at the nickname and turned around, making Kuniko stop in her tracks.

"Er..."

She obviously recognised her.

"So you're this Kuniko I've been hearing about every day, non-stop through e-mails, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations," Aya said, smiling pleasantly.

I winced in my head. 

Way to lay it on thick, Aya.

"You're Aya-chan?!" Kuniko blurted out in surprise.

Aya raised an eyebrow and looked at me.  I shrugged.

"On the outside she seems like a quiet, cool girl, but Miki-chan really likes to talk about her friends, doesn't she?" Aya said to Kuniko.

"Oh my god, she doesn't shut up about you!" Kuniko laughed, suddenly seeming to be completely at ease with the megastar.  "Aya-chan this, Aya-chan that."

"And about you, too!" Aya agreed, and they shared a laugh.

I was bewildered, angry, surprised, and delighted.  They got along instantly, but they had bonded over teasing me.  I groaned, hoping that they didn't exchange numbers or anything.

"I bet you have some great stories..." Kuniko hinted.

Oh, don't you dare, I thought, shooting daggers out of my eyes at Aya.

"Did you know Miki-chan simply adores sheep?"

I grabbed her wrist.

"Thanks.  She's heard enough," I interrupted forcefully.

Aya brought a hand up and squeezed my cheeks, making my mouth pucker up like a fish's.

"Look how she gets all shy.  Isn't she adorable?" she asked Kuniko.

I shook her hand off my face.

"Absolutely!  But she's also got a huge mean streak," Kuniko agreed.

"Watch your mouth!" I snapped at the youngest girl.

"Aw, she gets so grumpy when she doesn't get her way," Aya said, beaming at me.  "What a spoiled baby."

"You too.  Quit it," I glared at her sharply.

Her eyes sparkled.  She was enjoying this far too much.  Revenge would be had.

"I thought she just got angry at me, but now that I see the way she glares at you..." Kuniko snickered.

"Yeah, you have to be nice to her once in a while or else-"

"-she'll never smile!"

They burst out laughing as if it was the funniest thing either had ever heard.

"Girl, where have you been my entire life?" Aya asked dramatically.  "Your way of thinking is on par with mine."

"Hello!" I yelled at the two of them.  "I'm right here!"

But they continued to chatter on.  I walked off and they didn't notice.  What a couple of nimrods!!

I went to the back room, picked up my phone, and dialled Aya's number.  Three rings later (and I heard the music from her ringer coming from the store), she picked up.

"You are in so much trouble when we get home, Aya.  I'm going to tie you up and make you scream.  I'm going to drown you next time we take a bath together.  I'll never let you kiss me they way you like to again," I threatened, letting loose before she could say a word.

There was a deathly silence on the line, and I wondered if she'd taken me seriously.

"Um, let me hand you over to her," said Kuniko's quiet voice, all traces of joking gone from it.

Crap, I thought, gripping my phone tightly.

I'd completely blown it.  How come Kuniko had answered Aya's phone?  They must have been trying to annoy me even more.

I bit my lip.

"No, that's okay," I mumbled, ending the call, my finger lingering over the power button and turning the phone off.

I gripped the table hard.  Absolute silence.  The shock created a vacuum in my head.  A big, empty space that hurt my ears.

What in the world had just happened?

What was I going to say to Kuniko by way of explanation?

First I shocked her by living with a celebrity, and then I said things to that celebrity that one didn't say to regular friends.  Even if we were just friends, what I'd just said and the way I'd said it would have been crossing some sort of line.

I couldn't stay in the back.  I had to start some major damage control.  I had to get Aya out of the store and I had to talk to Kuniko.

I walked out of the back room.  Aya was putting away her phone and Kuniko was studying something on the shelf.  Aya saw me and called out.

"Hey, our hero's back.  You hung up on Kuni-chan here," she smirked.

Obviously, Kuniko hadn't told her what I'd said.  I nodded warily and almost kissed the customer that walked in.  Kuniko rushed off to help him as I took Aya aside.

"Listen, things are about to get really busy here.  Maybe we should continue this later," I told her in a serious tone.

She had no clue what had happened.  No clue that I'd essentially let Kuniko in on a lot more than she needed to know.  Aya was going to kill me later unless I found some excuse to make Kuniko believe my words had been a complete joke.

"Are you mad?" she asked in horror, and I shook my head vigorously.

"No!" I reassured her emphatically.  "But I want to talk to you later."

She looked worried, and I mentally slapped myself.  What a frightening thing to hear.

"But no, no, no, I don't hate you.  Love you, etcetera," I told her, and she smiled.  "I'm not moving back to Hokkaido, I'm not pregnant, I'm not sleeping with my bosses, and so on."

She frowned at my words, and I winced again because I wasn't doing such a great job comforting her.  I grabbed her hand.

"Just trust me.  Go home.  I'll catch up with you later."

She smiled in relief and I winked at her.

"You've gotten really weird the past little while.  I love it," she said quietly.

"Go," I ordered her, and I let go of her hand.

I looked back briefly at the counter to see Kuniko looking at us, but she quickly turned her head away when she saw I had noticed.

Aya left, followed by the customer, and then it was just me and Kuniko all alone.  I turned around to head over to her, but she dashed off to go and arrange bread.  I lost my nerve and went to the oden stand, fumbling around with the tongs and counting each piece of food.  Finally, after gathering my courage and with much hesitation, I approached her.

"Listen," I started awkwardly.  "That was-"

"None of my business," Kuniko said curtly, cutting me off and continuing with her task without a single glance at me.

"No.  I mean... it wasn't what it sounded like."

She stopped harassing the bread and looked over at me, slightly bewildered.

"It wasn't?" she asked in disbelief.

I shrugged weakly.

She returned her attention to the bread.

"I don't care what that was about.  I'm just going to forget about it because it was obviously not meant for me to hear."

I wanted to protest and tell her to hear me out, but the problem was I had nothing to say.  There was no point saying "Listen to this great argument!" and then staying silent.  I drew my head up and went back to my task of fixing drinks.  We barely spoke three words to each other over the next few hours.  Things became busy again, and all we did was apologise twice for bumping into each other while scurrying around behind the counter looking for stamps and so on.

My shift ended at five-thirty, and whether she planned it or not, Kuniko was in the back refilling drinks in the fridge, so I didn't see her on my way out.  My replacement had arrived and he had greeted me sleepily, probably having just woken up from a nap.  I said goodbye to him and went home feeling irked.

Why couldn't Kuniko just not freak out?  And why did Aya let her answer the phone?  The more I thought about it, the more the image of those two began to aggravate my mind.  They had gotten along so well by teasing me, and then before I knew it, everything had gone out of control and the entire world had swerved and hit a tree, leaving behind smouldering mess of misshapen metal and a driver in critical condition.

I dragged my feet all the way to Aya's, not wanting to have to face her and tell her about what had happened right in front of her without her knowledge.

Her place was dark when I walked in, and for a moment I feared that she was trying to surprise me somehow.  However, when I turned on the lights, nobody jumped out at me or slinked up behind me, no music started playing, no changes came to the atmosphere of the room.  I was alone.  I was relieved but also curious. 

It was after I put my things down and sat down on the couch with a huge sigh that I noticed a note on the table.

I've had to go to the studio because they messed up my recordings for tomorrow's release.  I'll probably be there until very late, so please don't wait for me.  I tried calling you on your phone, but you've been out of service all afternoon.  Bye bye!

I took my phone out and groaned.  I'd forgotten that I'd cut the power after that dreadful incident.  I turned it back on and read the note again.  It was a godsend because I didn't really want to talk about what had happened, but it was at the same time bad because I had to talk about it.

I fell into a morbid mood all evening, and I shuffled around morosely, fixing myself some dinner, taking a bath, and planting myself in front of the television to watch dramas.  All I could think about was the look on Kuniko's face.  I'd never seen her so serious in front of me.  She'd looked at me as though we'd just met and she was keeping her distance.  I'd managed to completely freak her out.  I guess nobody was as understanding as Nakanoko-chan, who I started to miss dearly.

I got it in my mind to call my friend of eight years, so I spontaneously dialled her up.  Her phone rang eight times until the voice mail picked up. 

"Just calling to say hi.  You don't have to call back or anything.  Just drop me a message some time and tell me how things are going.  See you."

I didn't want to worry her with my problems, although maybe by leaving that kind of message, she'd know something was wrong.  I didn't usually leave messages like that.

Before going to bed, I wrote Aya a little note saying good night and that we'd talk in the morning.  I placed it on the pillow beside me so that she'd see it.  Then by ten-thirty, I was in my pyjamas and trying to fall asleep.

But all I could still see was Kuniko's serious face in my mind.  I could imagine what she was whispering to her friends and our colleagues.  I felt terribly helpless.

An hour later I still hadn't fallen asleep, but I was saved from my mental torture by my phone.  It was ringing.  I shot up and grabbed it, checking the display before answering, hoping it was Aya or Nakanoko.  But it was neither.  It was Kuniko.  I answered it immediately.

"Hello?" I mumbled, my voice a bit foggy from not having been used for several hours.

"Hi, Fujimocchan," came the uncertain greeting from the other end.

"Hi."

I wondered what she was calling about.  Maybe to ask questions.  Maybe to tell me she didn't want to be my friend.

"I'm, uh, sorry for today," she said quietly.

She was sorry?  For teasing me?  For picking up Aya's phone?  Or treating me like she didn't know me afterwards?

"Don't worry about it," I replied automatically.

"No, I kind of, um, freaked out, but I shouldn't have.  You just... uh, you surprised me with what you said."

Well, that was nice.  It was nice of her to call and apologise for treating me like a nobody.  But where did we stand?

"I..." I trailed off, not sure what I was supposed to say.  "I shouldn't have been saying those things while at work."

The hell??  That has nothing to do with it.  But if it helps smooth things over...

"I just didn't think that, er, you were friends with a celebrity," she jumped in again strongly.  "And I didn't think that she and you, uh, would have, like, that kind of, er, association..."

She ended weakly.

"Uh, you know... Kuni-chan.  She and I are just, uh... we're really good friends.  And we kind of took it to another level.  Kind of by accident.  I never even considered it before.  Seriously.  It's this weird thing between us."

I tried to explain, but I couldn't.  It just didn't make any sense.

"No, that's okay.  I mean... yeah, you don't have to explain," she said nervously.

"But I do," I insisted, thinking that by explaining, she wouldn't be so weirded out.  "Like... Imagine your soulmate happens to be your best friend.  That's what it's like."

I couldn't believe I had said something like that.  It was so stupid.  So unbelievable.  Soulmates didn't even exist.

"Yeah, I get it," she said hastily.

I could tell she was uncomfortable talking about it.

"But really... Just think about it," I encouraged her.

"I will.  Um, anyway, that's all I wanted to say.  I'll let you get back to sleep, or, um, whatever," she finished hastily, and I almost felt like rolling my eyes at her.

"Don't worry.  I'm alone right now and I was sleeping," I reassured her unnecessarily.

"Oh..."

Awkward pause.  Awkward pause.  What to say...

"Oh, and, uh, you won't, um..." I trailed off.

"I won't go spouting off about the latest gossip, if that's what you're about to ask," she said firmly, reading my mind.

"Thanks, Kuni-chan," I said gratefully.

"It's pretty cool, though.  One of these days you'll have to tell me how you of all people met someone so famous.  I wouldn't have guessed it in a million years."

Things were starting to sound normal again between us, for which I let out a grateful mental sigh.

"A story that's not at all interesting," I confided in her.  "Not one bit."

"Well, one of these days.  Anyway, take care.  Good night."

"'Night.  See you later."

We ended the call.

Somehow, when things in my life started to look down, they'd perk right back up.  A few hours ago, I'd thought I'd lost a friend.  It turned out that it was not so.  Maybe there was something lucky about me deciding to come to Tokyo.  Maybe it was my lucky year.  Either way I looked at it, I was starting to believe more strongly in the power of New Year fortunes.