Kogure Kawanami: Running Away to Osaka Part 2
“Hot!” I cried as soon as the takoyaki entered my mouth.
Minami giggled from next to me. “Of course it is! Come on, you gotta blow on it first,” she said, demonstrating.
As I blew on it, suddenly Minami’s mouth was right by mine, blowing on it too.
“Wha—”
Our mouths were so close together, they could touch. I panicked and leaned back. Seeing this made her giggle again.
“Bet it’s cool enough now.”
“You could’ve made me drop it...” I complained before eating it, blowing air out as I did. “It’s good...”
“I totally understand why it’s in the Michelin Guide.”
“This tastes so Michelin-esque. Way to go, Michelin Guide.”
“Are you even tasting the food yourself or are you just eating the experience someone else fed you?”
“Oh, that’s from a manga, right? I think I read it online.”
Minami began eating her takoyaki too, blowing air out as she did. “So good!” she said, her eyes sparkling.
“It tastes so much better than the frozen ones or the ones sold in chain stores.”
“I wonder how they make them so fluffy. No matter how much I try to make them this way at home, they never turn out like this.”
We spent some time talking about the takoyaki. In the triangle-shaped park we were sitting in, there were concrete benches. Around us were other tourists, street performers break dancing, and tons of other young people.
I felt like the two of us stuck out. Not only were we high schoolers, but we’d also come dressed in the same clothes we’d worn for our reunion, and had come from Kyoto. But I was sure that was all in my head. Nobody seemed to give us a second thought at all and instead were focused on the stalls around here. Nobody was looking at me. Nobody had feelings for me. Every time I thought about that, it felt like my heart got a little lighter.
“So where to next? You’re still hungry, right?” Minami asked after eating, taking out her phone.
“How about we try other takoyaki places? There are a bunch around here, right?”
“Oh, good idea! Let’s do it!”
After that, we went around eating takoyaki, octopus crackers, and other snacks. We went to secondhand clothing stores and even played a crane game in the basement of one of the malls. I didn’t have to think about anything. I didn’t have to be afraid of anything. It was like I’d returned to being a kid and time just flew by, but eventually...the sun set.
The sky turned a shade of orange and I suddenly began to feel a sense of desolation and unease welling up inside me. We...have to go home soon, don’t we. We’d come here without telling anyone. We probably needed to apologize to our reunion group.
“Don’t wanna go back yet?” Minami asked, judging what I was thinking from my expression. “That’s fine. We can stay here longer. That was the plan from the start anyway.”
“Huh? But we need to get going or else it’ll be the middle of the night. We’re obviously high schoolers. We’ll get caught immediately for staying out this late.”
“We’ll be good, don’t worry. I already thought about that,” she said while looking at her phone. Then she took me by the hand and started leading me somewhere. “This way.”
We moved from the American Village to Namba. We walked past a freakishly large Takashimaya and after that, the number of people began to decrease.
“Should be around here...” Minami muttered, looking around.
This seemed to be a kinda sketchy area. There were signs for “Rest,” “Lodging,” “Stay,” “Hourly Rate,” “Bachelorette Party,” “2900 Yen,” “8000 Yen,” and... “No Minors.”
“W-Wait, is this—”
“So I heard from a bit of a ‘bad’ upperclassman about this.” Minami grinned as if she’d successfully pulled off a prank. “I asked her if there were any kind of ‘bad’ hotels where minors could stay, and voilà.”
We were in a love hotel area. There were as many as far as the eye could see, lined up right up against each other. They were even closer together than the ramen shops on the ramen street in Kyoto.
“I think it’s not too far away now,” she said.
I nervously followed Minami. After passing by a completely pink building that looked like a castle made of candy, which really felt like a stereotypical love hotel, there was suddenly a building that looked like it was the home of a midsize company’s office, but it had the words “Rest” and “Lodging” flashing on it. I might have never noticed it if we’d kept walking. We passed by the signs that people of our age shouldn’t have been used to seeing, and when our surroundings changed, Minami stopped.
“This is it.”
It was like it was disguised to blend into the city. At first glance, I never would’ve thought it was a hotel. It looked like a normal building’s normal tenants secretly put up a board with rates on it. It was made in a way that the entrance wasn’t visible like with public bathrooms, but it practically screamed “shady.”
“Are you serious about this place?”
“Don’t be so freaked out. It’ll be okay as long as we act like we belong,” Minami answered, much more enthusiastic than I, who was having second thoughts.
Minami wrapped her arm around mine and forcefully dragged me toward the entrance. It was a little dark here, and as we entered, there were some lit-up buttons like the ones you saw on vending machines in the middle of the night. There were about twenty or so buttons, each with a different room and rate on them.
“Which one should we go to?”
As she casually browsed the list, I felt frozen in place from nerves. There were some buttons that were lit and others that weren’t. The ones that were lit were the ones that were vacant, which meant that the ones that weren’t lit were the ones being used.
“A-A cheap one’s probably good enough, right?” I said, trying to hide my nerves by acting unfazed.
Calm down. Calm down. It doesn’t look like anyone works the front. We won’t run into anyone on the way to the room. There’s nothing to worry about. We’re just sleeping here. It’s not any different than a normal hotel, so calm down. Calm down.
“’Kay, then let’s do this one.”
Minami used her slender fingers to press one of the buttons to confirm the room we wanted. It then printed out a receipt with the room number and dropped a key. I guess you pay later? Minami took the receipt and the room key and we walked deeper into the dimly lit entrance hall.
We got on the elevator at the end; it hummed for a little bit as we moved up, and once it stopped, the doors opened to an empty hall. Heading in, I could tell how stiff my joints had gotten with every step I took. I tried to quiet my breathing so Minami wouldn’t notice.