Japanese has two syllabic alphabets in addition to Kanji (which is not a syllabic alphabet): hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used to spell out loanwords, typically—words borrowed from another language. Normally if you saw the words Velvet Rose written in Japan it would be in katakana.
All alone I fall to pieces.
Fall to pieces
In fact, within thirty of leaving the hotel, the only three people still awake in the car were Rei, Sei, and Yumi, who quickly decided to consolidate and fend off boredom. Rei was personally surprised that Yumi wasn’t asleep herself—she seemed as hung over as the rest of them.
Sei, on the other hand, was not surprised.
After they had clustered around the driver’s seat (they had to relocate Shimako to the back, which was less of a problem than they had anticipated) the first thing Sei asked was, “Are you feeling better, Yumi?”
“I still have a hangover,” Yumi mumbled.
“We’ll pull off soon enough for some breakfast, and I’ll order you a prairie oyster,” Sei said.
Rei gave her a look of disbelief. “You’re not serious. Those things are terrible, and they don’t work.”
“Like hell they don’t,” Sei said. “You just have to make them right.”
“What is it?” Yumi asked.
“Pray you never find out,” Rei said firmly. “I think it makes you feel worse than the hangover.”
“That seems hard to believe,” Yumi grumbled.
“Aw, come on,” Sei chided. “Where’s my perky Yumi and her adventurous spirit?”
“I think she’s sleeping off a hangover,” Rei pointed out. “She’ll be sleeping off a stomachache too, if you feed her one of those.”
“I’m already sleeping off a stomachache,” Yumi said.
“See? What harm can it do?” Sei said.
“Have you actually tasted one before?” Rei asked. “It seems to me as though you wouldn’t be asking that question if you had.”
“You’re just a cynic,” Sei said.
Yumi thought, very privately, that they were both just noisy. She and sound were still not quite on speaking terms. She wouldn’t say such a thing, of course—if nothing else, the shame it would cause Sachiko might
you didn’t change into your own pajamas
Yumi sank a little lower in her seat, feeling heat creep up her face. Rei noticed, as did Sei, but a look from the latter silenced the former before she could say anything. Instead, Sei just put her hand on Yumi’s head and gave her a grin.
“Cheer up, Yumi,” she said. “You’ll feel better as soon as…” they passed a road sign which informed them that food was five kilometers away. “Five kilometers elapses, apparently.”
“I’m a little afraid,” Yumi murmured. At the time, she wasn’t sure what she was referring to, though Sei had a pretty good idea, and Rei was starting to develop her own.
“Nothing to be afraid of.”
“You’re driving with only one hand,” Rei said. “That’s something to be afraid of.”
“Sei driving with both hands is something to be afraid of.” Yumi said, and laughed, in spite of herself.
Sei huffed in mock indignation and put her other hand back on the wheel. “I feel as though I’m being unfairly persecuted,” she said. “I am not that bad of a driver.”
“You are if I’m not sugarcoating my words,” Rei said.
“Oh, really? I’d love to see what it sounds like when you are,” Sei said, and then dropped her voice low in a halfway decent imitation of Rei’s. “Um, excuse me for being rude, but you’re not really a fan of driving, are you?”
Rei snickered. “My voice doesn’t sound like that, but I’ll give you credit for trying.”
“Your voice sounds exactly like that,” Sei said, not yielding an inch. “Doesn’t it, Yumi?”
But Yumi wasn’t paying attention anymore. They had been driving through a section of road enclosed entirely by pine trees, but as Sei spoke, they rounded a curve and the lake came into view again. The sun was at their backs, and all at once, it looked as though the water was not really water, but rather a million sparkling diamonds, rocking back and forth gently.
Though a logical person might have said that it was all just water, Yumi suddenly felt as though maybe she understood the difference between a lake and the ocean. Certainly the ocean was beautiful, vast and clear, seeming to stretch out to infinity, but the lake held a certain something that an ocean could not touch; something to do with its closeness. The way the water reflected the light onto the trees behind it, causing the forest to appear as though it had come to life, moving with the sway of the water; the look of the short beach on one side, flanked by trees, and the way it made the lake fit in like just another piece of nature, instead of some giant, independent entity.
Yumi could grasp perhaps half of these thoughts coherently in her present state, and so the best she could muster in appreciation of the beauty which overwhelmed her all at once was a deep sigh.
A sigh, and, in spite of the confusion that the previous night had brought her, a single thought:
Maybe someday I can come here with just Onee-sama.
As it turned out, Sachiko, who had awoken only a few moments before, had precisely the same thought as she sleepily glanced out the window, and one more, though it was more of a vague idea than a coherent thought. She thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be nice if she could share this scene with somebody, somewhere, so that they could feel the same sense of peace that she felt.
Peace, however, was on nobody’s plate that day.
“That’s…” Yoshino blinked. “Rock music.”
Rei glanced at her watch. “But it’s not even noon yet,” she said. Apparently, rock music was very much like alcohol in that there was a time of day before which playing it was considered unsavory. Had this been commented on to Sei, she might have remarked that rock music was like alcohol in many ways, not the least of which being that it could serve as a remarkably strong incentive for attractive women to take their shirts off in public.
“Well, at least we know the joint is going to have prairie oysters,” Sei said. “Maybe even on tap.”
Yoshino snickered. Rei looked as though she disapproved, but in reality, she couldn’t help but agree.
Sachiko was not sure how to react to this. On the one hand, she found immediately that she didn’t mind the crunchy, rhythmic sounds of a genre of music which she had always been informed promoted only loose morals and looser talents. On the other hand…
“On the other hand,” Sachiko said, “I believe that all of us may just die if that music is as loud as it seems.”
“Prairie oysters on tap,” Sei said again. “I’m telling you.”
The inside of the building wasn’t really abnormal. It was empty save for a solitary man behind the counter of a long bar towards the back, which Sachiko also did not find to be abnormal.
And the music was louder inside. Oh, how it was louder. The one saving grace was that it was coming from a jukebox in the corner, which meant that it was likely that after the song ended, there would be no more unless the waiter slash barkeep got free songs off of it.
As they entered, the man nodded and gave an obligatory “welcome!” but did not move to seat them. He felt that the please seat yourself sign towards the front justified this, as did the music, one of Mongolian Chop Squad’s best; he did not feel like moving until it was over.
Rather than lingering near the door, absentmindedly considering where they ought to sit until one of them made an arbitrary decision, all of them immediately went to the bar and sat. A bit annoyed, as it meant he would be distracted from Ryuuske’s astronomical guitar solo, the man, whose name was also Ryuuske, approached the bar from his side and said, “What’ll you have? Do you need a menu?” to the group—all women, which he did not mind, but most nonplussed by the music, which he did—as a whole, rather than any one of them.
One of them spoke up, a tall drink of water with sandy blonde hair and tits that demanded his attention (though he refused to give it—working at a joint like this, just far off of Kyoto to attract the disenfranchised Kyoto rock underground, you got a lot of women with tits out to here, and you got used to it…sort of) said, “We’ll have…” she took a second, probably counting, “six prairie oysters if you’ve got ‘em.”
Another one, an even taller drink of water who probably could have passed for a pretty boy if she’d had a mind to, said, “Hey, I don’t have a hangover.”
The first woman said, “No, but if we’re all going to do it, we’reall going to do it.”
The man blinked in astonishment. He knew what she was talking about—it was a local folk remedy for hangovers—but he had never been asked tomake one. He wasn’t even sure if he should—after all, serving raw eggs was a liability issue. “Are you serious?” he asked.
“Completely.”
It occurred to him that if they were ordering a hangover remedy (which, he believed, was nothing but a crock of shit) that they probably had hangovers, and that he should probably turn the music on the juke down—son of a bitch, I missed the solo—before it killed them.
“Just a minute,” he said. He was the owner of the joint, so he couldn’t exactly excuse himself to ask a manager, but at the very least he could take a moment of congress with himself. He went into the back, and, for some reason that he could not understand, opened the giant walk-in cooler and checked his egg stock. It was, of course, full—this had been a slow morning on a day that was usually packed for breakfast.
It’s a load of shit, but if they think it’ll help, then why not? If it’ll make them feel better, if only as a placebo, there’s no reason why not, is there?
Well, except for e-coli. That’s a decent reason why not.
Come on. When was the last time anybody got sick off eating raw egg? There are like, twenty cases a year in Japan due to raw eggs.
And just think how your fine establishment would benefit from being party to one of them.
Aw, fuck it.
There was nobody else in the restaurant, and, in the end, he was bored.
Besides, that sandy-blonde girl was pretty attractive. And—he glanced out the door to the kitchen and took a good, long look at a tall, classy-looking girl with dark hair speaking quietly with a short, brown-haired girl—that tall one was a fucking knockout. The rest of them were cute—the girl with the braids, in particular, looked like she had some hot sauce in her, just by the way she spoke with the boyish girl, and besides, it looked like she was absently tapping her finger to Chiba’s staccato voice—but this girl looked like she had some honest class to her, even through the only thinly applied makeup and the wrinkled clothes. She looked like she didn’t belong here, and something about that was attractive to Ryuuske.
So why not.
A few minutes later, he had turned the music on the speakers down, and he had a fresh carton of eggs on the bar, a glass in front of each girl.
“So, how’ll you take ‘em?” he asked. “You want the tail of the dog that bit you?”
“No thanks,” the sandy-blonde said. “We’re driving today.”
“Oh yeah?” he said as he began cracking eggs into glasses, forcing himself to relax after he broke the yolk of the first one and had to replace it. “Where to?”
“Kyoto,” the classy girl said, and his heart nearly fell out of his ass. Her voice, though ragged from a night of what could only have been heavy drinking, was still smooth as butter.
“For anything in particular?” Even though he understood that he had about as good of a shot at this girl as the egg he was cracking into her glass, he found himself silently hoping she didn’t say,visiting my boyfriend.
“You know,” she said a little thoughtfully, “to be honest, I’m not certain. Sei, what are we going there for?”
“It’s farther away from Kashiwagi than Tokyo is,” Sei, the sandy-blonde, apparently Sei, said, immediately, as though she had rehearsed it. “And it’s pretty there, or something.”
This made Ryuuske smile. It looked like Sei had some hot sauce to her too. Maybe they made ‘em different down in Tokyo. Maybe he should find out some time.
“Well, if you’re headed down there, try and catch a show at Taku Taku. It’s got a lot of big-name crap there, but on weeknights you can still catch some up-and-comers if you’re lucky.”
“Taku Taku?” the classy
oh god I think I might be melting
one asked.
“It’s a live house down in Kyoto. A lot of big bands hop through there, but a lot of really good underground bands do too, so it’s an interesting place.” Ryuuske thought that he had indeed chosen the right profession—to service a restaurant, one needed to be able to keep his cool even when speaking to somebody who made you want to stutter just to be thought of as cute.
Somehow, though, he couldn’t quite envision this
lady
woman in a live house.
“A live house, huh,” Sei said. “You know, to be honest, I think it might kill you, Sachiko.”
Sachiko. That’s her name. I wonder how it’s written.
“Have you been to one?” Sachiko replied, a touch contritely.
Sei gave a small grin. “You know, they’re not very ladylike,” she replied, evading the question. “They’re all smoky, and half of the people are drinking and the other half are sweating it off. And a lot of the time, the music is so loud you can’t hear yourself think.”
Sachiko chewed on this for a moment, and then said, “I think that if it’s possible to get into one, it would be an interesting experience.”
“If you want…” Ryuuske pitched in, a little hopeful, “I could help you get in.”
“Oh?” Sachiko said, and Ryuuske thought privately that he would like to get her in a room by herself and change the inflection on that oh.
“Yeah,” he said. “I get a lot of folks from Taku Taku in here, so if I write you a note and sign it, they’ll probably jump you to the head of the line if there is one. I mean, if there’s not it’s no big deal, you just buy a ticket, but…” For some reason—no, notsome reason, a very specific reason—Ryuuske just wanted these girls to remember his name. Even if it meant calling in a favor or two.
“Oh, no,” Sachiko began, “we couldn’t ask you to—”
“We most certainly could,” Yoshino cut in, an excited look on her face. “And we’ll thank you for it graciously, won’t we?” She gave Sei a prompting look which she did not need.
“We most certainly will,” Sei said.
“Oh.” Sachiko said, taken aback. “I suppose we will, then.”
Ryuuske smiled and then grabbed a sheet off of his order booklet. “So how do you write your name?”
What he did not see at this was the shorter girl with pigtails give him a queer glance, something mixed between concern and an almost animal territorialism.
“TheSachi is from luck, and the ko is from child,” Sachiko said. “Do you need my last name as well?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
The look given to him by this pigtailed girl was now leaning more towards the territorial side.
“Ogasawara. Small umbrella field,” she said this one more quickly, as though she was trying to brush over it. It took him only a moment to figure out why—the Ogasawara Group was, after all, the company that had loaned him this land and had sold him most of his tables. He kept it to himself, though, and acted as though he didn’t recognize the name. It was obvious, after all, that she didn’t want him to, and he understood something of not wanting to be associated with one’s family, for whatever reason.
In the next few minutes, as he wrote their note out and they all counted to three and downed their prairie oysters in unison, laughed, and then sat through a spell in which the pigtailed girl rubbed Sachiko’s back as she struggled to keep hers down (something that Ryuuske might have told them might happen) while the tomboyish one slowly mopped her brow with cool water, he thought privately that maybe she had done better with distancing herself from her family than he had—after all, she seemed to have a whole family sitting right here in front of him.
Well, but that’s not true and you know it. Chiharu and Tomitake and the rest of them would come and drink with me even if they had to do it in my basement. Maybe it’s because I’m a male, or maybe it’s because of Chiharu and I, whenever we are Chiharu and I, but maybe I don’t always associate it with family like that. Maybe just because we don’t act like that. Maybe it’s just a matter of being grown up, and having to pick myself up when I fall to pieces.
If that’s what being grown up is, I’d rather skip. How many times have Chiharu and Tomitake dragged you out of here at three in the morning?
Maybe that’s why I noticed Sachiko. Sure, she oozes class like Chiharu does when she tries to, but she acts like Chiharu did before she got into trouble with booze. Like maybe she’s just a little invincible.
Fuck it.
“So what’ll you girls have today?” he asked. They were his only customers, and besides…
hemight have appreciated a nice gesture on a hard hangover, especially after being force-fed (via peer pressure) something as disgusting as a prairie oyster.
"Prairie oysters are on the house.”
“Onee-sama, are you sure you’ll be all right to go do something as strenuous as seeing live music tonight?” Yumi asked, and then spooned some egg onto a piece of toast and took a bite. How she was able to eat a fried egg was beyond Sachiko. “It’s very…noisy.”
“That’s kind of the idea,” Yoshino said. “If your music was quiet nobody’d hear it and everybody would go home.”
“But, I mean…doesn’t your head hurt?”
Sachiko didn’t know if it was the prairie oyster (it seemed unlikely) or the food, or maybe just the pleasant conversation, but now that she thought about it, it did not hurt so bad as it had before. A little advil, and
god damn it wheres my advil
sachiko would you just calm down and talk to me
no my head hurts just go away
Sachiko gave her head a sharp jerk. There was no reason to start thinking about that now.
Especially not after she had just done
that
with Yumi.
Whatdid we do? she asked herself. Surprisingly enough, herselfanswered.
Do I need to draw you a picture?
Did we have sex?
No, or if you did, you were so drunk that I don’t think it can count. I think you might have if you had been a little more sober.
…Why?
Why what?
Why did we almost have sex?
She felt almost awkward thinking this. As though if she had spoken it aloud to anybody, whether or not she knew them, she might feel a bit stupid just after.
“You know, it’s not that bad.”
Yumi smiled. “That’s good. We really did overdo it las…” she trailed off.
Sei gave her a look out of the corner of her eye, and Yumi did her best to shrink back into her stool.
Yoshino had no idea what was going on, though she had a few guesses, but she did feel the air of awkwardness begin to descend over this, and so said, “Does anybody else have any ideas of what to do in Kyoto?”
“I would very much like to see the temples,” Shimako said, her voice a little raspier than usual. (What they did not see when she spoke was Ryuuske slumping just a little in his seat as he drank coffee, giving their obligatory ten minutes before he checked on them. Sachiko might have acted like Chiharu, but god damn if this girl did not sound exactly like Chiharu did after a long night of rum and sex. What a bunch of girls were these, who had wandered into his store on this quiet morning.)
“Of course you would,” Sei said. “If nobody else wants to be bored out of their blasphemous boots, I’ll even escort you.”
“I’m a Catholic as well,” Shimako reminded her. Sei braced herself for the inevitable stinging follow up, but it didn’t come. Perhaps Shimako couldn’t think of one. Perhaps she didn’t care enough.
Or maybe she’s not in the mood to banter with you. Could you blame her?
I know it’s a little too late to be realizing this, but I probably should not have said that to her.
But what the fuck was I supposed to say? No, it was great, let’s do it again whenever would be nice, but that would be a damned lie and we’d both know it. Shit on that. Shit on that big time.
“I’d kind of like to see them,” Yumi said. “I think it would be interesting. In spite of what our teachers say, I’m kind of interested in other religions.”
“Straight to hell with her,” Yoshino said. “And don’t forget your bathing suit, you could get yourself a tan for once.” She cracked a grin.
“Will you come with us?” Yumi asked.
“Of course,” Yoshino said. “The view from the top of some of those temples is amazing.”
“We could all just pick a tall temple to hike up to and have a lunch,” Rei suggested.
“Yeah, and you can bring your whistle and stopwatch and give us lashings if we climb slowly,” Yoshino said, and the group laughed.
“Onee-sama,” Yumi asked, “is there anything you’d like to do?”
Again, she brings me into the conversation before I even realize that I’ve excluded myself, Sachiko thought. Without her I would be an ornament. Without her, everything I did would be akin to a family function.
“I…” Sachiko thought for a moment, but it only took her that moment to think of something she rather would like to do. “I’d like to see a castle, I think.”
“Surveying your domain,” Sei jabbed, and Rei and Yoshino chuckled.
“Perhaps,” was all that Sachiko said. For some reason, though, this comment hurt her more than it ought to have, which was not at all. She wondered if Yumi noticed.
As they all turned back to their meals, Yumi touched Sachiko’s shoulder gently and murmured, “She was just joking.”
Sachiko very nearly cried. Nobody noticed but Yumi.
Sei and the girl whose voice could have made pornography in its present condition were acquaintances, but he had noticed several times this latter girl looking at Sei for confirmation or unspoken advice—this is a good idea, isn’t it. Isn’t it? Isn’t it. Sei seemed to have some affection for her, but she held it back for some reason. He had counted no less than four separate instances of Sei moving to pat this girl’s head, only to stop halfway through. Additionally, he had noticed this girl would sometimes avoid eye contact with Sei—not uncommon among the Japanese, something he had noticed acutely after going to America and having people ram their gaze down his throat for six months, and then coming back to Japan, in which eye contact wasn’t always considered terribly polite. What was strange was the way it would happen—Sei would crack a joke, or perhaps this girl (who was amazing at jabs) would knock at Sei a bit, and then they would take a glance at one another, obligatory among friends who joked quite a bit to make sure nothing had gone too far, but the glance would only be for a moment, and then they would break their gazes, almost simultaneously. It was almost as though they were friends who had dated at one point not so terribly recently.
The tall drink of water and the French-braided girl who liked Chiba were friendly as hell. Touch between them was almost constant, be it a small pat on the arm or a touch of the hands. He had heard them say that they were Catholic, and if it were not for this, he would have sworn with his hand on whatever holy text was available that they were lovers in private and associates in public. It may yet have been the case. Additionally, the French-braid seemed to be Sei’s accomplice in many jokes, and a close friend of the pigtailed girl, as the two of them would occasionally end their sentences with some obscure reference to something he had never heard of and then crack up.
It was this pigtailed girl that interested him the most, though, because of her relationship to Sachiko. Things between them seemed to be in theweird state that followed many different sorts of events, but most notably a night of misplaced sex between friends. They avoided looking at each other altogether save for in sidelong glances, and conversations between the two of them which had nothing wrong with them were often cut short midway with a short, awkward cool orinteresting.
He could not help being concerned about Sachiko. Misplaced sex was a huge problem between friends. Lord knew it had not helped him and Chiharu the first time around. He could do precisely nothing about it, he knew, but even so…he wished suddenly that it was night and he was operating a bar instead of a restaurant, so that he could dish out his own advice to her. Not for her sake, of course—advice was the easiest thing in the world to give, and consequently the stupidest thing in the world to take—but for his. Because he was concerned.
Concerned. Funky word for it.
Instead, he struck up a conversation with Sei and the French-braid (whose name turned out to be Yoshino) about music.
“I noticed you grooving to Chiba,” he said to Yoshino as he gave her a cup of coffee and took her plate. “You a Beck fan?”
Yoshino nodded. “They’re pretty good.”
“This from a girl who likes to listen to choir music, you should be amazed,” Sei said.
Ryuuske laughed. “Oh yeah?”
“I think it’s a prerequisite for going to a Catholic school,” Sei said. “You have to like gospel.”
“Do you?”
“Absolutely. Sometimes.”
Ryuuske laughed, and then took Sei’s plate as well and said, “I’ll be right back.” He brought the small load of dishes into the back, rinsed them off quickly—it didn’t take much, since the girls seemed to be remarkably neat people—and dropped them into his dishwasher.
When he got back out, Sachiko was fishing through her purse.
Ah, damn it.
“How much do I owe you, sir?” she asked, and for a moment, their eyes met. He flashed her a charming smile.
“I’d like to say nothing, but I don’t think I could afford it. Your hangover cures are on the house, anyway.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, and he held his grin. “But thank you.”
Rei began fishing around in her purse as well, but as she opened her mouth to stop Sachiko, presumably, from picking up the entire tab, Sei took her arm and said, “Now, why would you do that?”
“There’s no reason for Sachiko to pay the entire bill,” Rei said.
“Except for that successful conglomerate with her name on it,” Sei said. “Besides, while none of you were looking, I paid the hotel tab, so it’s even.”
Normally, Sachiko might have been bothered by this. The mention of the Ogasawara group; the connection between it and her; the use of it to separate her in some way.
This time, it seemed…okay. Because Sei was being funny, in part, but for some other reason, as well. Maybe because Sei picked up the hotel tab. Or maybe…
What?
She paid the bill in cash, and after thanking Ryuuske, they left.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Sei was too devious for that. She had seen the look that Ryuuske was giving her, and on top of that, she had seen the look that Yumi was giving Ryuuske.
It was too perfect. And Sachiko had left the restaurant in a considerably better mood for it, even if she probably would never catch onto why.
Sei thought that in spite of the remnants of a headache and the sleepy faces all around, it might be a very good day.
He spotted the hot-shit car and frowned. Out of it stepped two black-suited hot-shit toughs and one beige-suited youth, about Sachiko’s age, who didn’t look quite like he belonged.
They walked in and stepped up to the counter immediately. He did his best not to look like he noticed their effort to look like hot-shits.
“Excuse me,” the youth said. “I hate to bother you, but did a group of six girls about my age pass through here this morning?”
Looking back on it, Ryuuske could see no reason not to tell the truth, but he did not. “Dunno. Maybe. It was a pretty busy breakfast hour, I didn’t have a lot of time to tally faces.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, if you do happen to see them, please give me a call.” From the inside of his jacket, he produced a piece of paper. Pictures of each of the six girls from this morning. Underneath, a phone number.
The man turned to leave.
“Hey,” Ryuuske called. “Who’s asking?”
The man considered for a moment. “Suguru Kashiwagi.”
(It’s farther away from Kashiwagi than Tokyo is)
Ryuuske nodded. “You got it, buddy.”
“Thank you,” the man smiled politely.
Suguru leaned into his seat as the car started in motion again. “He was lying,” he said.
“I know,” the man to his left, whose name was Wantabe, said. Wantabe was a close friend of Suguru’s. “It was coming out of his pores.”
Suguru shrugged. “I suppose I can’t blame him. I would have done the same if Sachiko came in and asked me to.”
“You think she asked him to?”
“No. She’s not that kind of a person.”
Wantabe nodded. “You know, you could probably just let her come back on her own.”
“I know. I probably will. But I need to talk to her first.” Even as it came out of his mouth, Suguru didn’t like the way it sounded. He hoped it didn’t sound that way when he said it to her.
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