Jinya saw Akemi crouching against a wall and called out to her. Together, the two went to eat.
“The Dove District hasn’t been around long, but the nightlife is thriving. There’s plenty of spots to eat even this late,” Jinya commented.
They passed a street of brothels and came to a shopping district. There were many bars here, some specifically open late to cater to sex workers getting off work. Though these were places mainly meant for drinking, they still served basic meals.
The bar they entered was lively, but Akemi remained stone-faced as if she was not too pleased with what was going on. She mused out loud, “Why the hell am I eating here with you…?”
“Because I invited you?”
“No, I get that. Ugh…”
Jinya recalled their exchange back at Sakuraba Milk Hall, where he had jokingly turned down her advances and hurt her pride as a woman in the process.
He ordered an appetizer to go with his drink, then took a sip. The manager of the milk hall had said Akemi was nineteen, but Jinya thought the way she wore her heart on her sleeve made her seem younger.
“Why’d you invite me, then?” she asked. “It’s not like you want to sleep with me, right?”
“Just because. It seemed like you’d come along if I asked.”
She frowned distastefully at his ambiguous answer.
He explained, “You’d probably have refused me as you were before, but you don’t have the energy to even bother doing that now. That’s why I invited you.”
Even a stranger like Jinya couldn’t leave her alone when she looked so down in the dumps.
She clicked her tongue. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
“No, but your boss did.” The manager of the milk hall had asked Jinya to check on her if he could, and Jinya just so happened to spot her. That was all.
Akemi tried to keep glaring at him but eventually gave up, her shoulders going slack. “Is that so?”
“And with this, I’ve fulfilled my obligation to him. I’ll leave you alone after this.”
“You’d better.” Akemi began to eat. Her first impression of Jinya had been bad, but she was warming up to him. Turning down his kindness would reflect poorly on the manager of the milk hall by extension, so she let herself indulge.
Seeing her eat, Jinya started drinking again. The mood was peaceful. Akemi started to talk more as she got drunk and her guard lowered. “Oh yeah. Was it your niece, or something? The one who’s here in the Dove District.”
Jinya’s brow twitched. She hadn’t been in the milk hall when he talked to the manager about that. He gave her a look, and she indifferently told him that the other waitresses were talking about it.
“Isn’t gossiping about stuff like that generally taboo?” he asked.
“Who cares? If you were trying to hide it, you wouldn’t have brought it up at a place like ours.” It might’ve been because she was drunk, or it might’ve just been her nature, but Akemi was quite ill-mannered. Women like her would’ve been rare in the pleasure districts of old, but here in the Dove District, these kinds of sex workers who lacked business sense were the majority. Traditional ladies of the night like Hotaru were few and far between.
“So, tell me: What do you think of that niece of yours?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know… What did you think when you heard someone in your family became a sex worker?” She put on a show of indifference, but her gaze was serious. The atmosphere stiffened, and her eyes seemed almost fearful of his reply.
“I didn’t think anything in particular,” he answered. He could have changed the topic, but he didn’t. He had no reason to. He felt nothing about the fact that Nanao was a sex worker. In fact, his biggest worry concerning her involved Aoba.
Nanao was his niece in name only. Just thinking about her mother made hatred smolder inside him. A man with such hate in his heart had no right to tell others how they should be, not that he cared enough to say anything to begin with.
“What the heck?”
“Unfortunately, my relationship with my sister isn’t the best. I met her daughter, my niece, for the first time here in this place. We have too little to do with one another for me to feel anything toward her. So I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the answer you’re seeking.”
Akemi frowned in annoyance.
She had asked what he thought about a family member becoming a sex worker. From that alone, he could guess what her circumstances were: She was probably a runaway. She wanted to hear what Jinya thought of his niece, who she presumed was in a similar situation to her. Perhaps she wanted him to say he still thought of her as family even if she were a sex worker.
“You saw right through me, eh?” she said.
“Did you have some issue with your family?”
“Duh. I wouldn’t be here selling my body if I didn’t, now, would I?”
Jinya knew what words she wanted to hear, but he couldn’t give them to her.
Akemi scoffed, then returned to eating. There was shishamo smelt, croquettes, fried tofu, rolled omelet, and some pickled vegetables. They had gone through five decanter bottles of liquor already.
Since this was a bar, the food only played second fiddle to the liquor, but the flavor was still passable. The speed of Japan’s recovery after the war had been spectacular. It was hard to think people had even been eating the vines of sweet potatoes just to get by only a decade earlier. As young as she was, Akemi probably thought nothing much of it. She bit into a shishamo smelt and wolfed it down.
“But I can’t really complain,” she said. “I make good money, and sleeping with men is, like, the easiest job in the world. So long as I make enough to eat well every day, I’m happy.”
Perhaps such callousness was typical of youth. There wasn’t a shred of sadness in her sunny voice. She was a lady of the night who could not lie. To Jinya, who was already over a hundred, her way of being was an incomprehensible thing.
But what was wrong with that? The times had changed. No matter what Jinya said, he would just be a preachy old man complaining about how things weren’t the way they used to be. He had no right to tell others how to be. So instead, he took a sip of his drink and let her words pass by. One little thing did bother him, though. “Was it not to your liking?”
“Huh?” Akemi didn’t get what he meant at first. She followed his gaze, then grinned. “Oh, no. I just don’t like croquette to begin with. Never have.”
It was about time to go, since they had been there for a while. Their bottles were nearly empty, and the plates were picked clean. Only the croquettes Akemi had ordered were untouched.
He let the matter go. “I see. Shall we be off, then?”
“Right. Sorry for the trouble today.”
“I didn’t mind. The drink tasted better with you around.”
“Well, of course it did. Any drink would taste better when it’s shared with a beautiful woman.” She kept things light, perhaps to thank him for not prying too deeply just then.
She stepped outside while he paid. Jinya looked back over his shoulder at the plate left untouched on the table. If this Dove District were formed from lingering regrets, then the thing Akemi had to confront likely involved those croquettes.
“What’s wrong?” Wondering what was taking so long, Akemi peeked back into the bar.
“Nothing. Let’s go,” Jinya replied. She responded with a smile.
“Thanks for treating me today. Eating with you wasn’t half bad.” Her smile, like everything else about her, was genuine. She was young, a sex worker of the ripe age of nineteen. But she too was stuck in the Dove District that shouldn’t exist, trapped by her lingering regrets. He had no obligation to help her, but the manager of the milk hall had asked him to. What’s more, he sympathized with her. He felt the two of them weren’t so different. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it.
“Would it be all right if I invited you again sometime?”
Her eyes went wide. Neither of them had expected him to suggest such a thing.