Yuuji replied that he hadn’t.
Une went to the bathroom to wash her hands, and while she was watching Yuuji in the mirror, she saw him pick up and smell her powder puff and handkerchief with the lingering scent of her perfume. She knew he was doing this, but she pretended like she didn’t notice. Granted, with her split personality, she could’ve teased him and asked, What are you doing? if she wanted to embarrass him. She could have pointed out plenty of perverse things young men did and made him feel so ashamed that he wouldn’t even know what to do with himself. She could’ve been blunt and said, Why do you come over so often anyway? Expecting me to do something for you? I see that look in your eyes to startle him.
Just imagining these situations delighted Une. She felt like the old witch who lured Hansel and Gretel into her house in the woods, and she took pleasure in the silly things Yuuji did like secretly smell her belongings, thinking he was being sneaky.
After passing through Mount Kabuto, she was suddenly met with cooler, more refreshing temperatures. Une opened the car window, stopped in a forest of Japanese cedar, and deeply inhaled the fresh mountain air. The nature parks in the area were usually packed during summer vacation, but hers was the only car in sight this time of year.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when she arrived at the hotel that afternoon on the mountain’s summit. Une spent a few days here every year at the beginning of September, and the man at the reception desk remembered her, politely welcoming her in. Hotels in the mountains sometimes underwent remodeling or construction work during the off-season, which could be disappointing, but this place was usually quiet when Une visited. With the chaos of summer already over, this felt like an actual vacation.
Une reserved a twin room every year. Rooms were still at peak season pricing, which was more than she could really afford, but there was no way to put a price on the view. The scenery was beautiful at night, and during the day, she had a sweeping vista of the entire town along the coast with the horizon blurred from all the fog.
There was complete silence, and Une was overwhelmed with a feeling of neither exactly satisfaction nor boredom. She’d had her slightly off-season vacation at this hotel last year and the year before, but nobody ended up coming, much to her disappointment. Not that someone would come, since she never told anyone where she was going. She didn’t even have a man she could tell, for starters. She’d gotten to know only two men following her divorce, neither of whom were particularly exciting people to be around. Une believed all men were different, and these two were disposable after she had her fun with them. They’d both worked for her employer’s parent company before getting transferred. Une couldn’t even remember what they looked like. All of her coworkers—save for her boss—were extremely young. While many men sneaked looks at her while she was at work, she gradually got used to the attention and decided to focus on herself: being the freckled, beautiful woman with a sweet smile who was passionate about her job as an interior designer and good at it, too.
That was why she decided to splurge once a year, when she would book an expensive hotel in the mountains during the off-season. She would eat dinner alone every night. Most people who came to resorts were either couples or families. The only people who would talk to her were basically the bellhop and the manager. Une liked it this way, though. There was a time and place for picking up men at hotels in the city, like when she was riding high on her work successes. But she wanted to stay at this hotel to get away from her job and have some genuine rest and relaxation, which meant staying away from men. The fact that Une was able to take time off during the off-season was proof that she was working hard. And she would pick up men at hotels in the city from time to time when work was going well, which made her both mentally and physically fulfilled.
Une took her clothes out of her suitcase and tossed them on one of the beds, then changed into her white cotton pants and cotton sweater before leaving her room. She decided to go for a walk through the foothills. It was hot outside, but the mountain breeze already had the crisp bite of autumn. The pine trees near the hotel were beautiful and lush, not yet soiled by car exhaust. Une took off her sunglasses and basked in the pine trees and Japanese cedar. After walking straight ahead for a while, she found herself at the Tenguiwa cable railway station. There wasn’t a single soul out for a walk like she was, and when she finally reached the station, it had just one employee. It was an extremely lonely sight.
From this high up, Une could see the ocean and city situated among the mountains as well as the exposed mountain peaks. Standing alone at a place like this made her face the days past. She usually didn’t get this way until the third or fourth day of her vacation, but this year, she was already feeling incredibly empty the moment she got here. Nevertheless, Une was used to that, and it wasn’t painful in the slightest. She was lonely, but she liked being alone; without work on her mind, she could finally relax. And yet she couldn’t help but think about the quotes she needed to come up with for her customers when she got home. She imagined how she would tell them that they’d save 20 percent if they used this new, high-quality vinyl wallpaper instead and how she would offer them a new price quote to demonstrate that.
Guess my split personality even comes out when I’m alone, she thought.
It was a foggy night. A fine, misty rain fell on the open-air dining hall, rendering the world completely invisible. Une finished her traditional Japanese meal, then downed an entire bottle of sake by herself. She had a habit of catching up on all the reading she’d been meaning to do during this vacation, so she’d brought four or five books with her, but she was far too tired that night to read.
When she woke up in the middle of the night, the fog had already cleared. A nippy breeze blew outside the window, and both the sky and the earth were bathed in radiant light. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the starlight and the lamplights were violently bright, even. It was absolutely stunning.
After returning to the hotel that afternoon from her walk on her second day of vacation, she found Yuuji awkwardly sitting in the quiet hall, dressed in a suit and a tie. He tried to play it cool.
“Yo,” he said with a wave, but he was so nervous that each movement was awkward, and his soft, childlike lips were pulled into a sulking frown. He looked like a kid on the verge of tears, fidgeting and anxious that Une was going to scold him.
Une could have gone either way with this due to her split personality:
What are you doing here? Go home.
Or even…
I’m glad you’re here. Enjoy your stay.
However, she used the dangerous weapon she had been secretly carrying with her: kindness.
“You look good. Is that yours?” she asked, nodding at him.
“It’s my brother’s,” he replied. “I didn’t tell him I was borrowing it, though. Told my family I was going to an overnight seminar.”
It wasn’t foggy outside that day. The sky and sea seemed even closer than usual. Back in Une’s room, Yuuji stared out the window, seemingly at a loss for words. He’d come with a single duffle bag.
“You must have sweated a lot in that suit. Go take a shower,” Une suggested while undoing Yuuji’s tie. “Why did you twist this so much? Do you still not know how to tie a tie?” she added. Yuuji’s eyes slowly lit up with joy; he must’ve felt light-headed as a result. He almost looked mad as he pushed Une’s hand away.
“Why are you facing that way to take off your clothes?”