“Suzume, can you come down here?” Rumi shouts, and I head downstairs. She’s waiting in the little kitchen behind her shop. She has on a bright-red dress, and her hair is curled and pinned up to reveal the nape of her neck. Her white skin is tinted subtly with blush, her eyelashes are curled, and her lips are liberally coated with brilliant gloss.
“You look gorgeous!” I say, gaping.
“Bet you hardly recognize me.” She giggles. “Are the little tykes okay?” she asks, pointing upstairs.
“I tired them out playing, and now they’re passed out.”
They were snoring when I left, each still gripping one side of Souta.
“Great, then maybe you can help me out down here. It doesn’t get this crowded very often.” She sighs before slipping through the curtain into the shop. I scurry after her.
“Whoa!”
The shop is about thirty square meters, and it’s packed. A group of older men are chatting at the bar while a red-faced guy with his tie loosened is belting out karaoke with some friends in a booth. A glittering disco ball on the ceiling tosses colorful streaks around the room. I’m looking at a karaoke bar for the first time in my life. And Rumi is the owner and proprietor of this establishment located in the corner of the shopping arcade.
“This is the new help, Rumi?!”
“Yep!”
“You’re kidding me!”
Rumi dashes over to a customer, leaving a younger woman with long black hair alone behind the counter. She looks at me with deep unease. I’m clearly not wearing any makeup, and I still have on the culottes and faded jean jacket Chika gave me. Your typical teenage girl, weekend edition.
“…You can stay back here,” she says.
“…Okay.”
Despite this kindness, my eyes are spinning with everything I have to do. I’ve never had a job before. Rumi, the long-haired woman, and I are the only employees serving the packed room of constantly changing guests. I frantically wash the glasses and plates, which keep running out, and desperately pile dried tuna cubes and squid shreds on plates to make the side dish combo. I almost burn myself on the hand towels as I take them out of the warming machine and nearly break down crying when the long-haired woman asks me for wineglasses but I can’t figure out which ones they are. The trips I have to make between the bar and the back room three meters away seem infinite. I feel like I’ve been tossed into a washing machine to be spun around and around until the end of time. Meanwhile, the customers sing zillions of songs, and I don’t recognize a single one. I think they’re all pop songs from a bygone era, but I’m shocked by lines about laser-beam gazes meeting in the night sky to draw pictures of love (What on earth kind of romance is that?) and confused by the story of a man who wants to leave his boring old village so he can raise dogies in Tokyo (What does that even mean?). When I hear a lyric claim “I had too much to drink. And it was all your fault,” I can’t help feeling the singer should take a little more responsibility for their decisions. I have no idea what karaoke bars are all about, but I can tell that the people singing their hearts out at Rumi’s place are genuinely having a ball.
“What’s a kid like you doing here?!”
I’m efficiently folding hand towels at the far end of the bar when a middle-aged woman in a leopard-print blouse starts talking to me.
“How about having a drink with your auntie?” she suggests.
“No, sing a duet with your uncle instead!” the middle-aged man sitting next to her breaks in. He’s got a shaved head.
“Chasing schoolgirls as usual,” the woman snaps.
“Go easy on me,” he says with an evil cackle. They sound like some kind of married-couple comedy duo. As I’m trying to decide how to get myself out of this sticky situation, the black-haired woman walks jauntily back to the bar with a glass in each hand.
“Why, thank you, I’d love a drink!” she says, clinking the glasses.
“You’re so pushy, Miki—how can I say no?” the man grumbles.
“I guess you’ll do,” sighs the woman.
“I’ll do? What’s that supposed to mean? I’m tempted to keep this bottle for myself!”
Miki, Rumi’s sole employee, smiles and throws me a wink. It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s just saved me. I’m starting to understand the loose rules of this grown-up social world. They get drunk; they sing; they shout and blow off steam; they pretend to be thoughtless. But in truth, they’re looking out for one another. I think I like this place.
“Mr. Daijin, you’re so generous!”
There’s a sudden burst of applause from the booth at the back. “Drinks all around!” a chorus of men and women cry happily. I glance over—and can’t believe my eyes.
“What a thoughtful fellow!”
“I knew it the moment I saw you!”
Sitting calmly in the center of this uproar is none other than the Daijin.
“Won’t you have a drink yourself, Mr. Daijin?”
“Your company must be doing well!”
Everyone is talking to the white kitten. “I must be seeing things,” I mutter to myself. I sidle up to Miki, who’s sitting at the bar.
“Um, excuse me, over there…,” I whisper into her ear, referring to the cat.
She turns in the direction I’m looking.
“Oh, that gentleman’s a first timer.”
“G-gentleman?” I repeat. Miki smiles.
“He’s a little quiet, but the regulars sure have taken to him. He seems wealthy, but he’s got class, too…”
“Um, uh, um… Doesn’t he look kind of like…a cat?” I ask timidly. The white kitten is sitting in the middle of the booth with one leg up, licking its crotch exactly like a cat.
“A cat? You think so?” Miki says, flushing slightly, like she’s captivated by the handsome stranger. “I think he looks refined. Quite the catch, even!”
Refined? A cat grooming its crotch?!
“—Ah!”
Daijin looks up, and our eyes meet. For a second, we both freeze. Then the door opens with a jangle, and Daijin leaps up. As Rumi melodically welcomes a new customer, the white cat slips out.
“I’m sorry—I have to go!” I cry.
“Suzume, what’s wrong?”
I run out the door after Daijin, shouting “Sorry!” as I go. I stand in front of the bar’s facade and glance around the dim arcade. A white form is trotting briskly into the shadows of an alley.
“Souta!” I shout at the second floor of the shop. “It’s Daijin!”
Souta’s face pops into view in the window of the kids’ room. Without waiting for him, I run down the alley after Daijin. The abandoned arcade with its burned-out streetlights feels like a foreign country. Suddenly, I have the impression I’m running through an unfamiliar dream. The little white figure flickers in and out of view at every turn. Eventually, I leave the covered arcade behind and come out onto a wide-open street under the night sky.
“What are you doing here?!”
A few meters ahead of me, Daijin is sitting on the asphalt, licking its fur. I glare from a distance, unsure what the kitten is up to.
“Suuuzume,” it purrs in its childish voice, looking up at me. “How arrre you?”
“What?!”
The kitten rolls onto its back like it wants me to pet it. Then it rolls onto its belly, looking quite comfortable, and raises one paw toward the sky.
“Look!”
“At what?”
I look up. You already knew, my heart says. That sweet, festering smell. The disgusting sensation coming through the soles of my feet, like something has started to move underground all at once.
“The worm…!”
Beyond rows of low-eaved houses, on a mountainside that doesn’t look very far away, a glowing blackish-red worm is beginning to rise. Against the night sky, it shines even more ominously than last time. I hear the clatter of wood hitting asphalt.
“Daijin!” Souta screams as he hurtles toward us. He looks almost like a dog running at full speed. Daijin takes off toward the worm.
“Suzume, we have to go!”
“I know!”
I’m moving before Souta finishes his sentence.