We each took a shower and then we stayed in bed until he had to get back to work. His body was still slightly damp, and his hair smelled like the cheap hotel shampoo.
I was playing with his fingers and staring at our clothes, where we tossed them onto a chair, when he suddenly said, ‘Oh you know, the other day when I came back late from work, there was a girl in my bed.’
‘No way!’
Surprised, I sat up in bed and my head slammed into his chin.
‘Ow! . . . I . . . I bit my tongue,’ he said.
Tomohiko stuck out his bright red tongue and I pinched it. ‘Was this girl a fan?’ I asked.
‘I gueth tho . . . I mean, thee didn’t haf any clotheth on.’
I was still pinching his tongue as he spoke and then he started to gag.
‘So what did you do?’
‘Huh? I slept with her, of course.’
I could tell he was rolling his tongue around inside his mouth.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ I glared at him.
‘No, it’s true. She was a fan after all.’
‘She might be, but come on – she snuck into your apartment and got into your bed nude.’
‘Saved me time undressing her.’
He burst out laughing and I realised he was pulling my leg. I thought he should bite his tongue one more time and tried to butt his chin again from below, but he dodged me.
In a low voice, so as not to disturb his mother, who was asleep in the next room, Tomohiko had spoken to this fan girl. She’d broken into his apartment and lay in his bed, totally nude, for some two hours, until he returned and then tried to convince her to leave. Fortunately for him the girl was pretty calm. Tomohiko told her she was too pure and needed to become more calculating, that if she likes a guy, ignoring him may be the best way to get him interested. ‘I hate any kind of manoeuvring when it comes to love,’ she said, but after two more hours, she took his advice and left.
Tomohiko laughed and said, ‘I bet she’s at home now, in front of the TV, ignoring me on purpose.’ He went on, kind of proud of himself: ‘I know everything about her now. The kind of food she likes, her favourite colour, her favourite film . . .’
‘What’s her favourite film?’ I asked, grouchily.
Tomohiko tensed up a little. ‘Bambi,’ he murmured. It would have been much easier to deal with if she’d liked Misery or something. He laughed it off, but I think he was equally put off by it.
It was getting time for us to leave the hotel, but his penis was hard again. ‘I have to be back in the studio in twenty minutes,’ he laughed. ‘What part should we skip?’
‘Just don’t skip the first and last kiss,’ I replied.
In the end, that’s all he gave me – a first and last kiss. ‘Isn’t that kind of pretentious?’ I kidded him.
‘That’s how I make a living,’ he said, his nostrils flaring, which sent me into stitches.
As we took the lift down to the lobby he turned serious. ‘As I explained,’ he said, ‘this is the way things will have to be for a while. I’m new at this work and I want to give it everything I have. So I can’t make any promises now about the future. Is that okay with you?’
I told him what I’d told him last time. ‘That’s fine with me,’ I said.
‘What do you do at home all the time?’ he asked, and I was about to say Wait for you to call but then he’d wind up saying You have a mobile, right? So you could go out. If I told him Well, there’s nowhere I want to go to then that would make him feel guilty, so I lied. ‘Remember how I told you the girl I live with is an illustrator? I help her out.’
‘How do you pay the bills?’
‘I’ve got some money saved up from my old job.’
‘That won’t last for ever.’
‘When I run out, I’ll get a job.’
We left the hotel and luckily there were two empty taxis parked outside. We pretended not to be together, and got in separate cabs. My driver was studying Tomohiko as he got into the taxi in front of ours and said, ‘Isn’t that guy on TV?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, shrugging.
‘I’m certain of it. Ryo Ekura jilted him in the last episode.’
The driver finally pulled away from the kerb. Now it wasn’t just girls recognising Tomohiko, but even taxi drivers! I wondered for a minute about Tomohiko’s penis, which seemed harder than usual. It had me a little concerned.
I mulled over Tomohiko’s words. That won’t last for ever. Actually, I’d already used up all my savings. What won’t last for ever is the allowance from my parents. I’m the daughter who has always begged for a little more – the one pleading with them to trust her since there were things she wanted to do. My mother knew I’d left home to follow an old boyfriend, so sometimes when we talked on the phone, she’d give me advice like, ‘You know the more you chase a person, the more he’ll run away.’ But still, at the end of each month, she managed to convince my father to send me money, no doubt hoping that if things go well she might get married. There was no way I’d ever let on that the guy I was chasing was an up-and-coming actor. If my parents heard that, not only would the allowance stop, but the next day there’d be an emissary from my hometown on my doorstep, ready to drag me back home.
Truth be told, I don’t know what I want. I meet up with Tomohiko in a hotel when he calls me like this, but I know that living together is out of the question, let alone walking down the aisle. What I dread most is being asked Well, what do you want to do? If someone asked me that, I’d be forced to play dead. ‘There’s no future in it,’ Naoki warned me, about Tomohiko. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Mirai said. Ryosuke was the only one who said, ‘I know exactly how you feel.’ Sadly, though, this didn’t cheer me up. A clueless college student was not the ideal confidant.
It was after eight p.m. when I got back to our apartment in Chitose Karasuyama. I was surprised to find everyone gathered in the living room. They all stared at me and then Mirai asked, pointedly, her expression stern, ‘Are you the one who brought that guy here?’
‘Which guy are you talking about?’ I said. I was still thinking about Tomohiko, the afterglow of him welling up below my abdomen. I had no idea when I’d see him again, but was hoping that this warmth would stay with me until then.
‘See, I told you Koto didn’t see him,’ Mirai said.
‘You mean when Koto got up he was already gone?’ Ryosuke asked.
‘I even let him have some of my banana protein drink.’
The three of them completely ignored me, their faces serious as they leaned closer and compared notes.
‘I was totally sure he was one of Ryosuke’s friends from college,’ Naoki said.
‘Me too,’ Mirai piped in, the two of them turning to Ryosuke.
‘I told you I have no idea who he is,’ he said. ‘I never even saw him. I was sure that Mirai had got drunk and brought him home . . .’
Ryosuke looked flustered. He tried to refocus the blame on Mirai, but she and Naoki had already moved on to the question of whether the guy had stolen anything.
At some point, I decided it was time to descend back to planet earth. It was only at this point that it dawned on me that they were talking about Satoru.
‘Hey, are you guys talking about Satoru?’ I said and the three of them looked up at me in unison. Come on, their impatient faces told me, spill it.
‘You mean Satoru, right?’ I asked again, hesitantly.
They all started talking at the same time.
‘You brought him here?’
‘I get it – so he’s one of Koto’s friends.’
‘You, with a young guy like that? I did not see that coming.’
And then I realised that they totally had the wrong idea. ‘Hold on a second. I don’t know him,’ I told them.
‘But didn’t you just call him Satoru?’ Mirai asked.
‘You’re talking about the guy who was here this morning, right?’ I asked.
‘That’s the one.’
I was hoping Ryosuke would come to my rescue, but he didn’t. ‘I told you I don’t know him!’ he said and looked away.
‘Hang on. What’s going on here?’ I said. ‘Who is that guy? I made breakfast for him, and took him to play pachinko.’
‘Pachinko?’ all three of them shouted, dumfounded.
All four of us were in an uproar after that, screaming, flinging insults back and forth about who had been the lazy idiot who came home last and forgot to lock the front door. We all kept talking about how we’re way too cavalier about security and how we need to be more alert since we’re living in Tokyo, and obviously, there’s lots of crime. Every once in a while someone would say, ‘Are you sure nothing was stolen?’ and then we’d all race back to our bedrooms to check. ‘Nope, nothing’s missing,’ someone would say; ‘My piggy bank of ¥500 coins is still here,’ someone else would say. And then we’d filter back into the living room. Before long we decided to sketch the guy, so that we’d have a picture to give to the police, just in case we discovered later that he had indeed robbed us. Since I was the one who had spent the most time with him – and since I pretty much felt like I was being branded as a criminal too – I described him in detail so that Mirai, a professional illustrator, could try to draw him. Once the drawing was done, Naoki looked at it and said, ‘He reminds me of someone. I had the same thought when I saw him this morning,’ which launched us into an extended discussion of who exactly he resembled.
Mirai went first. ‘You know that guy in the film Melody? Doesn’t he remind you of him?’ Now that she mentioned it, there was some resemblance, though he wasn’t the same age as the guy in the film. That much we all agreed on. So just how old is he? we wondered aloud. After batting this around for a while, we decided that Satoru, if that was really his name, was probably around seventeen, and maybe a junior in high school.
Once we’d decided his age, we rehashed the question of what he’d been doing here. Naoki and Mirai went to open a bottle of wine but Ryosuke and I grabbed it away from them.
‘You’d expect him to have run away while I was in the bathroom,’ Naoki said.
‘Yeah, it doesn’t add up. If he’d come here to rob us, why would he go back to sleep, and then wait around until Koto woke up?’
‘Didn’t Mirai get drunk and bring him back here?’ I asked. I mean, it’s not like it would be the first time.
I said this several times, but Mirai emphatically denied it. ‘Now why would a seventeen-year-old guy come back with me?’ she said, a little haughtily.
‘Where did you go out drinking last night?’ I asked her. Mirai screwed up her face, as if the events of last night were in the distant past, and she could hardly remember them. ‘I had the late shift so I was there till the end,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t leave the shop until nine. That was when the boss suggested we should go out for some dinner so we went to that Okinawan restaurant in Akasaka – you know, the one I went to with Naoki once?’
‘The place where the bitter melon wasn’t so bitter?’
‘How can bitter melon not be bitter?’
‘Come on! That’s beside the point. So you went to the Okinawan restaurant, then what?’
‘Let’s see . . . I know we drank a lot there. Awamori. That stuff is strong! Then the boss and I went to a bar in Shimokita – the one where Ryosuke’s friend works part-time.’
‘Brodsky?’
‘That’s the place. I drank vodka there, a ton of it. And Mariné Mama showed up and said Hey, what are you up to? Haven’t heard from you in ages, and we went straight to her bar in Shinjuku.’
‘And then?’
‘And then it’s a little unclear . . . What I mean is, I can’t exactly remember . . .’
‘That must be where you met that guy and brought him home.’
‘I told you that didn’t happen. I just called Mama and she said I don’t think anyone like that was there. You left after two, with Laula and Silvana propping you up.’
‘Is Laula the one who looks like Mudo Oda, that chunky ex-priest who’s on TV?’ Ryosuke asked.
‘Don’t say that!’ Mirai scolded. ‘She’s very sensitive about her looks.’
‘You’re telling me I went to play pachinko with a thief?’ I was slowly beginning to get scared. Had I really invited him to drop by again sometime?
We went round and round. In the end, someone mentioned the tradition of childlike ghosts – zashiki warashi – appearing out of nowhere. At this point we were tired of talking about Satoru and settled on this topic for a while. Then we called it a night and everyone decided they needed a bath. And at that very instant, the doorbell rang.
At the same time, we all started to stand, then sat down again, then anxiously looked at each other.
‘It can’t be him again – can it?’
‘No way.’
It struck me that it was lucky to have some men who lived with me. ‘The door’s locked, right?’ someone asked, and when we realised it was, Naoki, the most courageous of the bunch, went towards it, followed by Ryosuke, and then Mirai and I, as we held on tightly to each other.
Naoki squinted out of the peephole and turned around. ‘H-he’s here. It’s him,’ he hissed. Ryosuke grabbed a nearby umbrella while Mirai and I, who had no weapons and nothing to grab, stood there uselessly, our hands hilariously poised in a karate-chop pose. I’m not sure why we decided this was a good idea.
‘Should I leap out and grab him?’ Naoki whispered and Ryosuke signalled him Go! And just then we heard, from the other side of the door, Satoru calling out ‘Mirai—!’
‘Huh? Me?’ Mirai took up the karate stance again.
‘Is anybody there?’ Satoru called out again. ‘Kotomi—? Ryosuke—? Naoki—?’
Naoki was the first to make a move. He opened the door, keeping the chain on. ‘How the hell did you get in here this morning? Was the door unlocked? Or did you break in?’
From outside the door, we could hear Satoru say, hesitantly, ‘What do you mean? Mirai unlocked it for me and let me in.’ We all turned and glared at her. She and I had been holding on to each other, but I shook my arm free.
‘It’s a lie! A damn lie!’ I’ve never seen a play staged live in a theatre, but Mirai was doing a good job of acting like she was in one. We shouldn’t have been surprised, though. Mirai always got drunk and then dragged someone home with her from the bar.
At this point, Naoki had unlatched the chain and opened the door. ‘Prove it! Show me some proof!’ demanded Mirai, like she was still in some crummy play.
‘I’m not sure how I can . . .’
Satoru was still standing at our entrance. His face lit up as he suddenly remembered. ‘That’s right! Someone named Laula was with us.’
‘What kind of person is Laula?’ Ryosuke asked.
‘She’s like Mudo Oda, with make-up,’ Satoru replied.
‘Wh-where did you meet us?’ Mirai wasn’t giving up.
‘You remember – I was standing in a park last night and you said I found him! and gave me a hug. I was all Who are you? Let go of me and then you dragged me to some bar.’
‘And Laula was with us?’
‘Part of the way.’
‘And I brought you back home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I made you come?’
‘You said if I didn’t get in the taxi with you, you’d scream. Right in the middle of Yasukuni Boulevard.’
The rest of us, disgusted, filtered back to the living room. ‘So who’s taking a bath first?’ Ryosuke asked.
‘Satoru,’ Naoki said, motioning to him. Satoru hesitated. ‘It’s okay – come on over.’ I left Mirai standing at the door, with an innocent look on her face.
‘She’ll be practising her acting for a while, so just leave her alone,’ I said to Satoru and showed him into the living room.
MIRAI SOMA (24)
3.1
IF YOU HAVE two weeks to spare nowadays,
taking a trip around the world isn’t impossible. If you’re a backpacker, you can take one of those popular trips and travel by bus through Vietnam, observing the farmers toiling away, all for the purpose of finding yourself. I have no idea who this real self is that people discover. I couldn’t care less if what they find is a surprisingly pathetic self and they slink back to Japan in defeat.
I really think I’m a snide, disagreeable sort of woman. If you ask me, as long as there are backpackers going off to observe Vietnamese farmers, that’s the kind of woman I’ll continue to be. Actually, they’re the ones who made me like this. And while I’m at it, speaking for the simple peasants of Vietnam, I’d like to say this:
‘You guys are an eyesore, hanging around our fields while we’re working.’
The only way I can be a true humanitarian in Japan today is to be snide and disagreeable. That’s the truth.
At any rate, if you have two weeks to spare, there are all kinds of things you can accomplish. At bookshops you see titles like Regain your Vision in Two Weeks; Easy Two-Week Danish Egg Diet; Even You Can Knit Your Boyfriend a Jumper in Just Two Weeks; Two Weeks to Passing Pre-Level 1 of the English Proficiency Exam. There’s even one that boasts that Through Character-Building Medical Science, 90% of Children Refusing to Attend School Will Begin Attending – In Just Two Weeks!
So it’s amazing, but in two weeks, you can do almost anything! Give me two weeks and I might turn into a famous artist, another Niki de Saint Phalle.
Two weeks . . . It’s going on two weeks now since Satoru – the guy I drunkenly brought home – began living with us.
3.2
Towards morning I suddenly remembered that I needed to defrost the fridge and as I was taking care of that, Ryosuke popped up, standing right behind me. I was so into the defrosting that I didn’t notice him come out from the men’s bedroom. ‘You’re creeping me out!’ I told him. ‘At least say something so I know you’re there!’
‘You’re the one creeping me out,’ he snapped back, ‘so I couldn’t say anything.’
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