“Come on, let me take your picture.”
Yuichi tried again, vaguely, to persuade her, but Yoshino just laughed at him. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. She seemed more concerned about the wrinkles on her shirt.
“Just one photo. I won’t take your face.”
Yuichi sat up formally on the bed and made his request. Yoshino glanced up at him for a second and said wearily, “How much are you willing to pay?”
Yuichi only had on underwear. His jeans lay discarded on the floor, the wallet in his back pocket bulging out.
When he didn’t reply Yoshino said, “I’ll do it for three thousand yen.” She no longer hid her chest with the shirt, and her shiny bra was visible, her breasts straining against the fabric.
Yuichi pushed the button with his thumb, the shutter snapped, and he was left with a photo of a half-naked Yoshino.
Yoshino leaped onto the bed and pestered him to show her the photo. After making sure her face wasn’t in it, she said, “I really have to get going. I have curfew.” She got up off the bed and buttoned up her shirt.
From the parking lot of the love hotel they could see Fukuoka Tower off in the distance. Yuichi was craning his neck for a better look, but Yoshino said, “I’m kind of in a hurry here,” urging him to get going.
“You ever been up to the observation platform on the tower?” Yuichi asked.
“When I was a kid, yeah,” Yoshino replied, as if she couldn’t be bothered. She motioned with her chin for him to get into the car. “It looks just like a lighthouse,” Yuichi was about to say, but Yoshino was already in the passenger seat.
“If Keigo and I do go to Universal Studios during New Year’s break, we probably should stay two days, don’t you think?” Yoshino said, picking up an already cold gyoza from the pan.
Her date with Yuichi was scheduled for ten p.m. and the clock on the wall showed it was already past that.
“You ever been to Osaka, Yoshino?” Mako asked, her face flushed from two draft beers.
“Nope, never have,” Yoshino replied.
“Me neither. But I have a cousin who lives there.”
Mako was usually the quiet one, but she became talkative when she was drunk. Generally she lisped a bit, but when drunk she talked in a syrupy sort of voice. At parties with guys, she was always kind of a pain.
“I’ve never been abroad, either…” Mako said, seated casually on her cushion, elbows splayed on the table.
“Me neither,” Yoshino said.
“Sari’s been to Hawaii,” Mako said, eyeing the cushion where Sari had been sitting before she got up to use the restroom. Mako didn’t seem particularly envious.
Yoshino sometimes found Mako’s indifferent attitude frustrating. Mako never said things overtly, but she always spoke about herself in a self-deprecating way.
Yoshino, Mako, and Sari were a tight threesome at the apartment building. Sometimes they’d gather for dinner at one of their rooms, or take over the arbor in the courtyard and sit there laughing until dark. Their poor sales records also bound them together. In the beginning Yoshino and Sari competed to see who could close more deals, but once they started turning to relatives to improve their sales figures, they quickly lost interest. Now, after attending the morning meeting at their head office, they more often than not joined Mako in skipping out on pointless cold calls and going to see a movie instead.
Mako, the easygoing one, was like a buffer between Yoshino and Sari.
“Hey, if Keigo and I do end up going to Universal Studios, you want to go with us?”
Sari hadn’t come back from the restroom yet.
“Me?” Mako was resting her head in her hands on the table, and raised her chin in surprise.
“I’ll get Keigo to invite one of his friends and the four of us can go together. At a place like that, the more the merrier, don’t you think?”
Keigo of course hadn’t promised he’d take Yoshino to Universal Studios at this point, but including others in her fantasy plans made the whole picture seem more real and gave her a small thrill. Even if she was deceiving Mako, when the actual time came to go, she could always claim that something came up and Keigo couldn’t make it, and then she and Mako could use the tickets instead of letting them go to waste. Going with Keigo, just the two of them, would be amazing, but if it didn’t work out and she had to settle for Mako, Yoshino still wanted to go over New Year’s.
“But shouldn’t you invite Sari, too?” Mako looked forlornly into Yoshino’s eyes.
“The thing is, Keigo doesn’t get along with her,” Yoshino said, deliberately keeping her voice down.
“You’re kidding. But they seemed to get along so well at the bar.”
“Don’t tell Sari, okay? It’d hurt her feelings.”
Mako nodded solemnly at Yoshino’s mock-serious warning.
Of course it was an outright lie that Keigo disliked Sari. Mako was so gullible that sometimes Yoshino liked making something up and seeing how she’d react.
Mako was from Hitoyoshi City in Kumamoto Prefecture. Her father owned a used-car lot, where her mother had worked part-time, and Mako was their only daughter. As might be expected of a daughter from a good family where the parents got along well, Mako Adachi saw work as a stopgap and wanted, soon after she graduated from junior college, to get married. She was generally pretty passive: since childhood, she had waited to be chosen by others rather than choosing her own friends. After she graduated from high school she decided to go to the junior college in Fukuoka affiliated with her high school, a move that eliminated any worries about entrance exams. She didn’t care if she knew anybody there or not, and as it turned out, she didn’t. After college she was hoping to return home to Hitoyoshi, but couldn’t find a job there. So with no other alternative, she took the job at Heisei Insurance, moved into the company apartment building, and eventually made two friends, Yoshino and Sari. They were flashier than her friends in high school, but she was relieved to have someone to keep her company until she found a man to marry.
“You know, the other day Suzuka Nakamachi called out to me in the courtyard,” Mako said, as if suddenly remembering it. With her chopsticks she skillfully peeled a slice of cucumber stuck in the potato salad from the side of the bowl.
“When was this?” Yoshino made a face, remembering how Suzuka liked to hang out in the arbor in the courtyard, letting everyone hear her Tokyo accent.
“Like-three days ago? She goes, ‘So I hear from Sari that Yoshino and Keigo are going out. Is that true?’ You remember how one of her friends goes to the same college as Keigo?” Mako didn’t seem all that interested in the topic as she chewed the crunchy slice of cucumber.
“So what did you say to her?” Yoshino asked, pretending to be calm.
“I told her I thought so.”
Startled perhaps by Yoshino’s severe tone, Mako stopped chewing for a moment. Just then Sari came back from the downstairs restroom.
“So, what’re you talking about?” Sari said, taking off her boots. Restaurants like this with tatami rooms provided clogs and slippers for customers to use when they went to the restroom, but Sari, a stickler for cleanliness, claimed she felt uncomfortable using communal slippers and always wore her own shoes. Yoshino had her doubts about this explanation.
Yoshino watched Mako reach into the potato salad again with her chopsticks. “I think Suzuka likes Keigo,” she said. “So she sees me as a rival.”
This was another lie, something that just popped into her head, but it might help keep a lid on things. If indeed Suzuka found out more from her friend who went to the same college, Yoshino’s lie could turn anything Suzuka said into a simple case of jealousy.
“No kidding?” Sari said, leaping at this bit of gossip as she stepped up into the tatami room. Yoshino again thought about Sari and her boots and couldn’t believe that fastidiousness had anything to do with her wearing them to the restroom. Yoshino recalled a time when she was eating bread in her apartment; Sari had said, “Give me some,” and then grabbed a bite. She used the same handkerchief every day. Sari also insisted that she had a serious boyfriend when she was in high school, but Yoshino had once told Mako that she thought this was a lie, and that Sari was still a virgin.