Ren'Ai Rensa: Hatsukoi Part 22

"What! How can she be the most popular? I'm blond!"

While Anna and the manager bickered about "foreigner appeal," Shizuka shoved Reina's shoulder and asked, "Don't you know where she is? You were the last one with her last night."

Reina shrugged and wiped a tissue over her eyes. The liner Aiko loved so much disappeared under a heavy smudge. "I don't know. When we parted she was fine." Michiko had been more than "fine." After going out to dinner together, she asked Reina back to a love hotel for an hour. To say they made short work of one another was an understatement. She acted like it was the last time she would ever have s.e.x. Their parting at the train station almost ended with Reina handing her letter over, but Michiko left before even seeing it. The call in earlier mentioned she was sick but gave no details.

"She better be here Tuesday. Otherwise Anna will slaughter us all."

Shizuka left to talk with the manager. Reina finished cleaning herself up and changing into her street clothes before handing her costume over to the dry cleaning lady. She noticed Michiko's on the hangar in the corner and handed that one over too.

Normally she would go to Ni-chome, either alone or with Michiko, but for once Reina was still satiated from the night before. She said her goodbyes and wandered into the alley. A frost covered the ground, reminding her of the night she stumbled out to see Michiko with her "friend."

Something in her gut rumbled.

Reina didn't buy her normal ticket at the station. Instead, she got one forcing her off a few stops earlier, in Michiko's neighborhood. I have to know. Late on a Sat.u.r.day night wasn't the best time to make a house call, but if Reina didn't put her mind at ease she would stay up half the night worrying about her friend.

Walking down Michiko's neighborhood in the dark of night was another trip in the head. As one of the oldest northern Tokyo neighborhoods to survive the air raids of WWII, it was safe to say none of the buildings had been updated since the restoration. Generations of families operated and lived in all sorts of traditional businesses, from pottery, to carving, and even to eclectic tea sellers. During the day the neighborhood would bustle with aunties in kimono and uncles smoking cigarettes on the corners, but at night it was boarded up and dead. No place in Tokyo is this still at night except for this place. Everyone was in bed, destined to awaken at the p.i.s.s crack of dawn.

The only house with lights still on was Michiko's.

The little cramped building sat between a streetlight and a dry cleaner's, its aching eaves a dull gray from the frost and its front gate crooked in the moonlight. Shadows moved behind the front window, although neither looked nimble enough to be Michiko's young frame.

A middle-aged woman with crow's feet and curling gray hair answered the door after Reina buzzed it. "Ara ara, who's this?" She shivered beneath two layers of robes. "Mi-chan's friend?"

Reina said h.e.l.lo and apologized for dropping by so late. She explained she wanted to check on Michiko to make sure she was okay. The old woman hurried Reina inside and closed the door behind her.

This house is older than dirt. Reina didn't visit often, since Michiko's mother was borderline abusive. As Reina climbed the creaking stairs she smelled the hanging stench of cigarette smoke coming from the sitting room. Is this what my house smells like?

Michiko's bedroom was in the middle of the upstairs hallway, a cramped but long room overlooking a tall steel fence next to the neighbor's. Reina stood in front of the sliding paper door and knocked, noting a dim light coming from within.

"Hai, douzo." Michiko's voice grated in her throat when she told her caller to enter.

Reina slid the door open.

Michiko looked up from her futon on the tatami floor, her puffy eyes growing in shock. "Reina-chan!" She struggled to get up but was tangled in her comforter. "What are you doing here?"

"You didn't come to work tonight." Reina slid the door shut and knelt at the end of the futon. Without the light from the hallway, the bedroom turned into a cave of the invalids. Reina could vaguely make out Michiko's figure still staring at her. "Are you okay? What's wrong? Your period?"

Michiko cleared away a pile of tissues and smoothed out her dark comforter like a skirt. "No. I just don't feel well." She sniffed.

"A cold? The flu?" Reina wondered if she should get out of there before she was infected. If I'm not already after last night.

"No, nothing like that." Michiko's legs kicked beneath her blankets. "I just don't feel well today. I'll be back at work Tuesday, I promise." She nodded. "Let's go out tomorrow and do something."

Dirty liar. That was the same tone of voice and fake smile Michiko always used when she tried to hide something, such as her awful friends' behavior or her mother's latest abuses. Reina placed a hand on Michiko's foot beneath the futon cover. I wish I could take her out of here and solve all her problems for her. "Mi-chan, you don't have to hide anything from me." I care about you. But she couldn't say that out loud.

Their hands found each other in the darkness. A tender moment pa.s.sed in which Reina considered confessing, even if the situation was less than romantic.

But then Michiko faltered, her hand shrinking away and her body cowering over in tears. She slumped against her futon and reached for Reina, who met her halfway with receiving arms.

"What's wrong?" She held her like a child discovering its favorite pet dead. Michiko folded her arms against Reina's chest and released a single sob into the black m.u.f.fler around her throat. "Is it your mom? What did she do?" Is it that friend of yours? Reina would kill that stick of a s.h.i.t human.

"No." Michiko burrowed further into Reina's arms, hot tears burning through layers of winter clothing. "I'm just..."

"What?" Flashes of reasons took over Reina's mind. She's pregnant. She's dying.

"I'm lonely."

"Eh?" Reina ran her fingers across Michiko's scalp. "I'm right here! How can you be lonely?"

Michiko picked up her face long enough to clear her nostrils. A hand poked between the two of them so she could wipe the tears from her eyes. "A piece of me is missing. I've been living without it for a long time."

Nonsense. Reina couldn't fathom it. How could Michiko be lonely? She was never alone! Women found her just as interesting as they did Reina, if their times in high school and then Ni-chome meant anything.

"I can't go on like this." Michiko sat up, head turning away. "I've been wasting my time trying to find the person I lost a long time ago."

Reina finched. "You mean your dead girlfriend?"

"Something like that."

She'd prefer a dead girl to me. Reina didn't know much about the dead girlfriend from America, other than she died a long time before Michiko came to j.a.pan. The way she described this girl as "the first and only woman I ever loved" pa.r.s.ed as ludicrous considering she had to be, what, thirteen? Fourteen? Twelve? Reina barely knew what s.e.x was at those ages, let alone love. But she supposed that was why Michiko was the more empathetic one.

"You aren't making any sense. How can you find somebody that's dead?" Reina imagined Michiko with a shovel and a ski mask, digging up cemeteries all across America.

Michiko dabbed her face with a tissue, her jaw trembling from both tears and laughter. "I don't expect you to understand. But I need more from my life than just work, partying, and s.e.x." She pulled a hair tie off her wrist and put her hair in a tiny ponytail. "I want to be in love again."

This is it. Although Reina didn't understand what was wrong with a life of partying and s.e.x, she liked to think she was still capable of romance deep down in her bachelorette bones. She reached into her bag and extracted the folded letter, her hands shaking.

Reina tried to speak, but her mouth was drier than hot sand. The letter fell into Michiko's hands; Reina turned around and wanted to hide beneath the ancient tatami.

The papers rustled behind her. When Reina thought she would die from the embarra.s.sment filling her conscience, Michiko said, "You wrote this for me?"

She braved a look over her shoulder and met sad eyes. "Who else would I write something as gross as that for?" She turned again. "If there was anyone...if I could have those sorts of feelings for anyone...it would be you."

"You said as much in this letter."

"I know." What else could Reina say? Talking wasn't her strongest suit, but neither was letter writing. But at least the latter allowed her time to formulate her thoughts without clamming up and deciding against it.

"Oh, Reina." Michiko put the papers aside and hugged her from behind. "Thank you."

"Thank you?" Reina didn't know a lot about love confessions, but she had a feeling that wasn't the correct response. She took one of Michiko's hands into her own and pretended she had heard "I love you, too" instead.

"Mi-chan," she said, her voice strained, "please be my girlfriend."

A gurgled laugh rippled into her shoulder. "Will we celebrate our anniversaries? Go on romantic vacations? Buy each other tokens of affection? Move in together? Get married?"

"If you want."

Michiko withdrew her embrace, prompting Reina to face her. The desire to hold her friend emerged, and for the first time in her life Reina thought she knew how intense something as obnoxious as "love" could get, if it meant it could wipe away Michiko's pain and make her forget her dead girlfriend.

"I can't." The sniffing increased until Michiko ran out of tissue s.p.a.ce. "I can't be your girlfriend."

A blow to Reina's solid gut. "What do you mean by that? Why the f.u.c.k not?"

"Because..."

"Because why?"

When Michiko looked up, her eyes were as clear as that breathless moment in the center of a storm. The torrential beginning had pa.s.sed, and the last, stronger a.s.sault was still to come.

"I'm moving back to America."

The words glided into Reina's ears, but didn't take. "Huh?" All she heard was "Moving back to America," and that couldn't be right.

"I said I'm moving back to America. This April."

As if a hand had reached into her chest and squashed her heart. Reina glimpsed at the papers scattered dormant on the floor, like her words, her feelings, and her thoughts. "But...but why? Is it our jobs? We can get new jobs!" Reina grabbed Michiko's arms. "Is it your mother? My mother sucks too! f.u.c.k 'em both and we'll get our own place together!"

Michiko laughed at her pa.s.sion. "I'm sorry, Reina. I've figured that my goals for my life can't be achieved in this country. So I'm going back to America."

"And do what? University? You can get a degree here!" Michiko was the smartest girl Reina knew...if anybody could make it into a top Tokyo university, it was her.

"I'm going to join the military."

That made about as much sense as putting jam on two pieces of bread and slapping the dry sides together to make a sandwich. "The military?" Like combat boots, machine rifles, and Vietnam? "Whose brilliant idea was that? Yours?"

"A friend recommended it to me. It made sense. I want to do it."

"Oh, a friend? Is this the same friend making you carry her cocaine and giving you cuts on your face? What else does she do to you?" Reina's heart wept as much as it did when her father died. "Tell me."

She expected defensiveness, but what she got was a heavy sigh and a pat on the leg. "There are many things I've never told you. But please trust me when I say I am making the best decisions I can."

"So this is what it feels like to be rejected."

"I'm so sorry, Reina. I wish I could say yes, but you and I are not compatible in the right ways." Michiko cleaned up her tissues again. "I don't think we're suited for that sort of relationship together."

Reina continued to sit and stare at the spinning world around her, convinced if she stared long enough it would stop and make sense again. How could Michiko say those things? What did they even mean? n.o.body would want a romantic relationship with me. All those women who feigned anger after Reina refused to become their girlfriend were all liars to begin with.

Yet the biggest pain wasn't the rejection, but the impending loneliness. Reina resumed trying to get Michiko to change her mind about returning to America, only to find herself smacking her head against a concrete wall. It seemed Michiko was firm in her decisions, as ridiculous as they sounded. You can't leave me. Reina wanted to lay that guilt trip as much as she wanted to lay most women crossing her path. You can't leave me alone.

She knew she couldn't stay the night not with Michiko's mother rumbling around the house. Reina didn't even think she wanted to hang around anymore. So before the midnight hour and the last trains from the station could arrive, Reina gave a soulless farewell and left. The air outside was colder than when she walked through it earlier, but her resolve was already frozen.

Tears swelled behind her blinking eyes as the last train home pulled into the station. She wiped them away and refused to collapse into a sobbing mess. Starting from that day Reina would become impermeable to all emotions pertaining to the heart.

She couldn't believe her best friend had rejected her for a dead girl, of all reasons.

On Tuesday Aiko hurried home after cla.s.ses to change and hop on a train again. Shizuka had told her about a special discount performance at the theater that night, and Aiko took it as a blessing to finally see both her cousin and her would-be girlfriend on stage.

For the first time, Aiko entered the theater via the front entrance. She joined a large crowd of men, some of them young enough to be university students while others were middle-aged men still in their business suits and carrying briefcases. The few women purchasing tickets or showing their theater pa.s.ses either looked like supportive family members or utterly lost.

Aiko bought a standard ticket for a middle row and wandered to the side of the reception area. Hanging on the wall were portraits of all the acts, from solo artists, to dance troupes, and other small groups like the one Shizuka and Reina were in. When Aiko finally found them, she had to clasp her hand over her mouth so she wouldn't laugh out loud Shizuka's smile was so large and phony while Reina glared at the camera as if she wanted to bust the photographer's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Next to her was the blond foreigner, who tried so hard to appear s.e.xy she almost looked like she was in pain instead. Michiko was the only one who looked natural at all.

A pile of pamphlets lined the table beneath the portraits, and when Aiko flipped through it she laughed again. "MARS," it said, in big, bold, and red lettering. "The Michiko, Anna, Reina, Shizuka experience." Aiko wondered how her cousin took to being last on the list. She recalled a conversation with Shizuka about her group name, in which she explained that Anna threw the biggest fit about being second and insisted the group be renamed "ARMS." Aiko agreed it made more sense, lead and backup singers' names wise, but she didn't know what kind of person would go see a girl group named after a limb.

An announcement played through the reception hall, alerting spectators that the first show would start in ten minutes. Aiko shoved the pamphlet into her bag and handed her ticket to an usher at the inner theater entrance.

Her seat was squeezed between a young man wearing a bag around his waist and a businessman eating a bag of peanuts. Neither of them paid any interest to Aiko, but kept their reverent eyes on the stage fifteen rows away. Aiko checked the pamphlet again and saw she had to sit through three other acts before getting to see MARS perform.

The first act the curtain rose on was a spirited female duo wearing white tennis uniforms and singing in high-pitched vocals. As they twirled, jumped, and sang with grandiose vapidity, groups of men stood up to chant and wave their arms around in tune to the beats. Upon further inspection, Aiko realized the young women were teenage girls, barely out of middle school, and the men around her shouted encouraging words by the earful. What kind of show is this? Aiko sank into her seat. These men are perverts! They reminded her of the creepy men who hung outside her high school and asked underage girls on dates.

She thought she got a break after three songs and the retreat of the over-cute duo, but the next act wasn't any better. Six girls in pink hot pants, white tank tops, pigtails, and roller skates came onto the stage and performed a show focusing more on their skating acrobats than any singing talent. New groups of men stood up to cheer these girls on, including one of the men next to Aiko. She gawked at him as he and his friend waved their arms in circles and shouted awkward encouragements.

Her reprieve from this odd display came with the next act, a single young woman wearing a long red dress who sang old enka songs set to poppier music. Not as many men stood up for her, but plenty of applause erupted after every song. A man in front of Aiko commented to his friends that he loved the singer's "rugged innocence."

Aiko hoped the show would be over before she threw up.

When the final applause for the updated-enka singer died and the curtain came down, Aiko thought about the possibility of Shizuka and Reina's group having the same kind of creepy followers. Could she handle a bunch of men in business suits and T-shirts doing obnoxious dance moves while her cousin and lover attempted to work? No wonder neither of them talk about their jobs. The mere thought of standing on that stage, singing like a chipmunk and shaking her rear, made Aiko's sympathy create a shield around herself. Now she knew why few women were in the theater.

An announcement came introducing the next act, MARS. Aiko sat up in her seat and put a cap on so n.o.body on stage would recognize her. If her presence threw Shizuka off, she would complain about it forever; if Reina found out, she would probably never speak to Aiko again.

The curtain rose on a dark stage swarmed with four shadows. The moment before the music cued, two men started cheering in the front row, followed by a wave of hands with fans lifting into the air. Tossing his leftover peanuts on the ground, the man in the business suit also stood with his hand up. Oh G.o.d, not this uncle!

Dance beats erupted throughout the theater, to the cheers and excitement of all the men around Aiko. She had to stand to see the stage: spotlights poured onto the four figures, the one marching up front and catching every man's attention belonging to Anna, the blond American. Her white disco dress glittered in the light and her hair shone like a badly made wig, but her voice as she sang was low and powerful. She rarely cracked a smile on her stoic face.

Aiko's nerves fluttered when the woman spinning from behind Anna turned out to be Reina, in her drab blue dress that turned out not-so-drab when drenched in a hundred lights. Her voice picked up where Anna's left off, stunning Aiko. She knew Reina's speaking voice was low, but it often sounded forced, making the sudden tenor bellowing into the hall a complete surprise to Aiko's senses.

She was disappointed when Shizuka and Michiko never sang more than the backing vocals during the choruses, but their kind faces and smooth dance movements balanced out the harsh demeanors coming from Reina and Anna. Every time one of the performers had a moment to either sing or dance by herself, a torrent of men whipped themselves into a fury chanting names and count offs. The businessman next to Aiko shouted Reina's name above the crowd when she had a last solo Aiko almost had the gall to tell him, "Sit down and shut up, because I'm the one sleeping with her!" He'd never believe me.

After three non-stop dance songs featuring four women strutting around a stage while singing about "burning nights" full of "f.u.c.k off romance," the group took a final bow and escaped off stage before an avalanche of letters and plastic flowers fell on them. The men in the audience chanted for an encore, but the curtain came down and the announcer mentioned the next and final act: a girl wearing a dress decorated in candy and sneaking views of her panties whenever she pivoted on her schoolgirl heels.

Aiko thanked any deities roaming the sky when it was all over. She took off her cap and ran out of the theater as fast as her feet would allow, for the stank of man sweat was fast encroaching.

However, she did not go home.

She pa.s.sed into the alley beside the theater and tiptoed to the staff door, the same one she hung around whenever visiting Shizuka. Before she could step inside, however, the duo from the first act spilled out wearing sweats and bemoaning the cold weather...with deep voices. A second glance confirmed the girls Aiko originally thought were middle schoolers were probably in their late teens, at the youngest.

Aiko entered just in time to see Anna stalking Michiko, chastising her in English about missing Sat.u.r.day's show. The two of them continued their one-sided argument in another room Aiko didn't see Shizuka or anyone else aside from a couple stage hands pushing brooms.

Except for Reina, of course, who sat at her dresser, removing her make-up.

"Hey!" Aiko scuttled across the room and stood beside the dresser. "How are you? Long time no chat." A whole week, at least.

Reina dropped her hairbrush and whipped her head around; her dark eyes lit in surprise. "What are you doing here? Come to see your cousin? She's off somewhere else."

Aiko kept a respectful distance from Reina. A whole week since I last talked to her! Longer since we were last together! The weekend she spent at Reina's house...the best weekend of her life.

"Well, I came to see you, too," she said.

A tissue fell off the dresser and landed at Reina's foot. "Here I am." She bent down to pick it up. "See me."