The Koto Satsuki Kronicles:
Season 1
“ARE YOU SURE you’re not hiding anything?” the girl walking alongside Satsuki asked.
Satsuki glanced at her. “What makes you ask?”
“I dunno. Detective’s intuition, I s’pose.” Terusawa Youko gave Satsuki a grin that belonged on a mask.
Satsuki sighed. “Why does it concern you if I’m hiding anything? I may be working with you to break up Amaori Renako and Oduka Mai, but that’s the extent of our partnership.”
“I guess, but I dunno. Seems like there’s more to it than that. Like, you stopped me from inviting Renako-kun to a mixer, y’know? I was gonna get proof of her cheating and turn it in to the big boss. Are you suggestin’ that’s a bad thing?”
“No, that was on you. You slipped up,” Satsuki insisted. “If you keep being so forceful, you’ll make Amaori more wary of you than ever.”
The two girls walked into the elevator of Queen Rose HQ, and Youko pressed the button for the fifth floor. As she watched the numbers tick up, she said, “You know Renako-kun inside and out, don’tcha?”
“Your point being?”
“Nothin’,” Youko teased. “Still. I may not be world’s best detective, but I know a thing or two about gathering intel. I might have some dirt on Lover Girl that you don’t.”
“Good for you.”
“Oh? Even if it’s not good for you?”
Youko leaned in close to peer at Satsuki before Satsuki shooed her away with a flap of a hand. “You’re awfully flippant,” Satsuki said.
“Hm?”
“I can never tell how much of what you say you truly mean. It makes you untrustworthy.”
That stunned Youko into silence for a few seconds. Then she scratched the back of her head, pursed her lips, and sighed. “Yup. Occupational hazard of being a detective, I guess.”
“How so?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry ’bout it. Just ’cause we’re working together doesn’t mean we have to be best buds. I’ll be good from now on, ’kay? Besides, I already did my part.”
“That you did. Either way, Amaori is still too wary of you for you to be of much use. That invariably leaves the rest to me.”
“I guess. I wish I coulda buttered her up faster, but oh well. I didn’t realize it’d be so hard. Renako-kun’s kinda shrewd, don’tcha think?”
More like she was debilitatingly socially anxious, to Satsuki’s mind. Still, Youko had a rather unusual assessment of Renako’s qualities, which made Satsuki feel slightly unsettled.
“Anyway,” Youko went on, “I’m gonna let you handle the Renako-kun part. The big boss asked me to watch over a special guest.”
“What guest?”
Youko giggled in a manner that suggested there was more to this figure than such an innocent mention warranted. Satsuki was rankled, but she refused to ask.
Presently, the elevator door opened, and the two girls walked down the hall toward their destination. Satsuki’s phone chose that opportunity to ring. Mai. Satsuki did not want another person listening in on her conversation with Mai, doubly so if it was a sensitive topic.
Which Youko knew all too well. Yet she persisted in playing dumb and said, “Oh, don’t mind me! Answer your phone.”
“…Fine. Just go on ahead, and I’ll catch up later,” said Satsuki.
“Sure thing.”
Satsuki waited for Youko to step away before she took the call. “Hello?”
“Is that you, Satsuki?” asked Mai.
“This is my phone, so one could assume as much.”
“Well, your mother has been known to pick up if I call when you’re in the bath,” Mai explained.
Satsuki’s tongue moved on its own to click in annoyance. “Noted. I’ll start bringing my phone with me to the bathroom. Thanks for informing me.”
“But of course. It’s my pleasure.”
Mai sounded composed, which suggested this phone call was nothing more than idle chitchat. “What are you up to?” Satsuki said.
“Oh, not much. I just have a bit of spare time, you see. I’m enjoying my day off over a cup of coffee. Canned coffee is rather flavorless, wouldn’t you say? I’m a much bigger fan of the coffee you make.”
“The cheap instant coffee?”
“Cheap it may be, but I find it delightful. Perhaps love is the secret ingredient.”
“I’ll be sure to buy you a can the next time I’m at the supermarket,” Satsuki snapped.
Mai laughed on the other end of the line. In any other situation, Satsuki would have hung up the moment she heard Mai didn’t have any reason to call. But this was perfect timing. Satsuki had questions that needed answers.
“Incidentally,” she asked, “have you noticed anything…odd, shall we say, in your daily life?”
Satsuki detected no shred of suspicion when Mai answered, “Odd? Yes, I suppose so.”
“And that would be what?”
“A childhood friend of mine—not you, that is—called me recently. She said she was concerned for me.”
Satsuki frowned. “That is strange.”
“Isn’t it? For a moment, I thought another awful rumor about me had crossed the ocean without my knowing.”
“It must be tough to live in the public eye.”
Satsuki started walking. She’d heard enough to answer her suspicions, and she was about to end the call when Mai spoke up again.
“Satsuki, hold on. I just received a message.” Satsuki could hear the tension in Mai’s voice. “A, ah, bolt out of the blue, as it were.”
“What happened?”
Bewildered, Mai reported:
“It appears that a person has arrived in Japan claiming to be my fiancée.”
Satsuki fell silent. She stared straight ahead at the office door before her. In front of it stood Youko and a tall girl with silver hair. The latter of the two was so gorgeous that, even among Queen Rose’s lineup of models, she stood out, as dazzling as a piece of platinum.
The girl noticed Satsuki’s eyes on her and broke out into a broad smile. She waved, delighted.
Satsuki kept her face perfectly still and asked her phone, “Is it who I think she is?”
“Yes,” Mai said. And she repeated the name of the girl standing directly in front of Satsuki. “That would be Lucie Lefebvre.”