“You think the way to seduce a teenager is to bring her to your workplace? Are you out of your mind?”
“What normal person jumps straight to that conclusion?! Shouldn’t you ask if she’s my cousin first?!”
They passed under an archway with the venue’s name etched into it, then took the basement stairs down to the front desk, where a woman was seated. She and Ai bickered back and forth while Akane watched meekly.
“What? She’s your cousin?”
“No.”
“Well, waste my time, why don’t you!”
They shared a laugh, and then Ai turned to Akane. “This is my coworker Fujino. We’re the same age,” he explained, gesturing to the woman. Then he turned back to her and gestured to Akane. “This is Itobayashi Akane.”
“Um…h-hi…” Nervously, Akane pulled out her student ID and handed it to her.
“Perfect, thank you,” she replied with a smile, comparing Akane to her picture. “Here’s your ID back. But yeah, frankly, I know you have friends of all different flavors, so I’m not surprised at least one of them is underage. Oh, but I should warn you, dear: this man has a history of hitting on our performers, so don’t let your guard down—what? It’s true! Okay, fine, I’m sorry!”
Ignoring Ai’s beautiful, sharp glare, the smirking woman took his money: two 1,000 yen bills and two 100 yen coins. Then it was Akane’s turn to hand over 1,000 yen. Ai had informed her ahead of time that tonight’s tickets would be cheaper, since the slated performers were all relatively unknown, and by reserving them in advance, they’d save an extra 500 yen.
Furthermore, Ai had decided he would cover their drinks and contribute 500 yen toward her entry ticket as an “investment in attracting a future regular.” She should have known a guy as protective as Ai would find an excuse to pay for her. Regardless, she was more than happy to let him cover the difference. Once she took her drink ticket, Fujino waved goodbye to her, and she headed in to achieve her goal of visiting Ai’s workplace.
It was her first time at a live music venue, and the stage felt a lot closer here than it had at the event space underneath the record store. Ai had warned her about this, too: the wide seating area was practically empty. It was just past 5 p.m. on a weekday, and since she was more interested in the venue itself than any particular concert, he had kindly suggested this timeframe.
The two of them traveled deep into the dimly lit space. Only the drink counter was brightly illuminated, as if to serve as a meetup spot. There, visitors could exchange their drink tickets for drinks.
“Whoa. What are you doing here, Ukawa?”
“Gimme a beer, Keiji-san.”
“I thought you stopped coming by on your days off after we went no-smoking.”
“Me and everyone else, right?”
To Akane, this barely sounded like a comprehensible conversation, but neither Ai nor the man behind the counter seemed confused. Perhaps they were speaking in code like teenage girls. Naturally, even the most mundane of small talk was stressful for Akane.
“And you, Itobayashi Akane?” Ai prompted as he picked up his golden beverage in a plastic cup.
“Oh, uh, is it cool if I also get a beer?”
“Like hell it is, you moron.”
The tacked-on insult carried the scent of sweet poison.
“I thought maybe I could get away with it.”
She pretended to hand over her drink ticket to complete the joke, but Ai handled it respectfully, with an exasperated smile. “As if!”
“Okaaay. I’ll stick to orange juice.”
“I seem to recall you started smoking two years before you came of age,” the man named Keiji remarked to Ai with a matching look of exasperation as he poured Akane’s sunset-colored liquid into a cup. It was that classic “adult dealing with a kid” expression.
“But I didn’t try to do it right in front of the grown-ups!”
“Mmm…pretty sure I was a grown-up by that point…”
“No you weren’t! You’re misremembering!”
Ai took a sip from his Solo cup; to Akane, it looked like he was intentionally cutting the conversation short, but most likely he was just thirsty. He wouldn’t act like a teenage girl who was starved for approval. Likewise, Akane took her orange juice and sipped it along with him. It tasted sugary, just as the law intended.
“As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this is the bar. When I’m scheduled to work, you’ll usually find me here. And needless to say, I don’t serve booze to minors.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
In response to the implication that she drank on occasion, Ai donned the expression of an accomplice turning a blind eye and added, “You wanna smoke or drink in your free time, that’s your business.”
“Is she looking for a part-time job or what?” the bartender asked idly, leaning forward over the counter.
“No, I’ve just never been to a place like this, so I asked Ai-san to bring me.”
For this question, she answered with the dull, unvarnished truth. This man simply nodded without teasing Ai like Fujino had, but that suited her just fine. In order to curry favor with Ai going forward, she intended to inquire about his romantic relationships, so she couldn’t afford to recoil from the mere mention of the subject.
As they moved a few steps away from the bar, Ai pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s called the PA. Basically, it controls the acoustics and stuff. I’ve been working here as PA staff to learn the ropes.”
“What do you mean?”
“On-the-job training, I guess?”
Though she didn’t know much about the job, she could tell from his word choice that the path ahead of him was a long one. But she didn’t put too much weight on details that were unrelated to the story.
“I also man the front desk, from time to time, on a rotating shift.”
“Is that when you hit on the performers?”
He burst out laughing, and it didn’t sound forced. “Look here, brat,” he snapped, probably on reflex, and she took this more aggressive term of address as proof that she had successfully crossed a line.
“I’m just curious!”
“That’s my business as a grown-up.”
“A grown-up who does do crimes.”
He seemed to quickly realize that she was referencing their conversation at the cafe, and didn’t even try to hide his annoyance. Of course, her desire to be liked would normally never let her provoke that kind of reaction from a friend, so she convinced herself that she was merely laying the groundwork to be loved. She further distracted herself from her own fears by reminding herself that the root of his annoyance was Fujino, the front desk lady.
“Listen—the world is complicated, all right? Timing and all that. You may be in high school right now, but you never know if someday you might…I dunno…date a guy or girl who already has a family. Once you turn eighteen, you’re responsible for those life choices, get it? If you don’t, you’d better learn fast.”
“Okie-dokie!”
With another exasperated smile, he spoke their special code word: “Brat.”
Truthfully, she had zero interest in his love life. Again, this was because it wasn’t depicted in the story. Her true goal was just to get a step closer to him. More crucially, there was another comment made by Fujino that had drawn her attention. She had simply reordered the topics of interest to better suit the character of Itobayashi Akane.
“Oh, also, does ‘friends of all different flavors’ mean, like…all over the world?” That was what she actually cared to know.
“Uhhh, I mean, sort of…Canada, Korea, Brazil, to name a few…but I don’t think she was just talking about nationality. More like different categories of people.”
“Okay, so tell me about them.”
Gazing up at the ceiling, he took a sip of his beer. “Well, let’s start with the people I’ve seen today. First, there’s the friend I live with. Female friend.”
“Oh really…?”
“Don’t look at me like that. There’s nothing between us, all right? She’s a lesbian. We just so happen to have the same height and body type, so we turned one of the rooms into a walk-in closet and share each other’s clothes. This cardigan? Borrowed it from her.”
“You have a walk-in closet the size of a whole room?!”
“It’s not that special. Anybody can rent a house with a friend who shares their interests. Though maybe the key is to make sure it’s someone you have no risk of getting romantically entangled with.”
“Ugh, that’s like my biggest dream!”
Akane’s admiration was genuine. In Girl’s March, Ai had a great number of friends, and he described his home life as “living with a close friend who’s like family to me.” She decided to see what would happen if she revealed this fact to the real Ai.
“Seriously? Even that’s in the book?”
“I’d love to see that closet someday.”
“Fine, but it’ll have to wait until you’ve graduated. No well-meaning grown-up brings an alcoholic high schooler to their house.”
He smirked at her like he was getting revenge for earlier, and she could feel that their friendship had progressed. She could also feel herself measuring their connection in points, and it made her want to die.
But if she was following Girl’s March, and she wanted the same outcome, then she would need to establish a close bond with Ai, be it with points or otherwise. To that end, a surface-level acquaintanceship was not enough—not when she would ultimately need him to accept and understand her in her entirety.
“What other friends do you have?”
“Let’s see…”
He might have been about to say something, but a loud sound erupted from the stage, cutting him off and distracting him from the conversation. It sounded like a chime, and she suspected perhaps it was a signal to silence the audience.
By the end of the day, she still hadn’t found out what information he’d been about to volunteer regarding his friends.