The Tenderness Mojikō-Koganemura branch was always understaffed. This was because so few people could withstand Shiba’s charms. After Nomiya resigned—a friend had begged him to rejoin the wrestling team—the burden of covering the various shifts at the store had fallen largely on Mitsuri and Shiba.
“Ugh, I’m beat. Mr. Shiba, please hire someone quickly!”
“I wish I could. Lots of people show up for the interviews, but it’s not that easy to find someone who can actually do the job.”
The staff room was empty except for the two of them, who had been working without a day off for who knows how long. Resting her face on the table, Mitsuri heaved a deep sigh. Shiba sighed, too, as if in reply. When Nomiya left, they had hired a middle-aged gentleman who had taken early retirement, but somehow the man’s wife had fallen for Shiba, and after one thing led to another, it ended in a divorce. To avoid a crisis, they had to let the man go. The staff had been running themselves ragged trying to do their jobs while also stopping to mediate fights between the wife, who had turned into Shiba’s stalker, and her furious husband.
“Manager, can’t you wear a horse mask or something like that while you work?” Mitsuri asked in despair. “We need to hide that face of yours.”
“Mrs. Nakao, if I do, you’ll have to change the name of your manga to The Horse Manager, okay?”
“Yuck. On second thought…”
The two of them sighed. Then there was a knock on the door, and Hirose’s head popped into view. “Manager, the Whatever Guy’s here and he’s asking for you. He’s waiting in the dine-in space. Is that okay? Should I tell him you’re not here?”
“No, tell him I’ll be there in a moment,” Shiba replied. He pulled himself together and stood up.
“Oh! Excuse me,” Mitsuri asked, “but is it okay if I come, too?”
“That’s fine, but…Mrs. Nakao, why do you look so pleased?”
“Well, I haven’t seen him since that night.”
After Nomiya had settled down that night, Mitsuri had thought it would be a great opportunity to ask Tsugi a few questions, but a work call came in and he had to rush out. After that it was like the line had gone dead somehow, and he stopped coming to the shop. She wondered why.
“Well, you know me. I was worried about him.”
“Hmm…I see ‘new material’ written all over your face. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No! That’s not it, at all.” Mitsuri gulped. She’d been found out, she thought, but tried to cover it up anyway. “Um, look—I never had the chance to pay him back for the food that night.”
“Oh, I’ve already paid him, so you’re fine.”
“Huh?” she said, involuntarily. Were they meeting outside the shop somewhere, then? Mitsuri’s imagination was already percolating when Shiba said, “I guess it’s probably time I came clean.” He paused. “Mrs. Nakao, you are the shop’s senior employee. It’s been four years, hasn’t it? That’s a decent stretch, wouldn’t you say?”
“What?”
“There’s something I’ve been hiding from you.” With a sigh, Shiba left the staff room. Head spinning in confusion, she followed him to the dine-in space, and there was Tsugi, wolfing down a bento lunch. It was the same pork cutlet bowl slathered with kimchi as the other day, and for some reason Shōhei was sitting opposite him.
Tsugi was wearing the usual coverall, but this time it was caked with mud, as if he had been wandering around in a mountain forest. Green leaves protruded from his unkempt hair, and the strong arms jutting from his rolled-up sleeves were covered in scratches.
“Hey. Sorry to pull you away.”
“It’s not a problem, but what have you been up to? You’re a mess.”
“Am I? Oh, on the way here, I was helping a few woodsmen. In return they gave me some wild boar meat. Need any?”
“No, I don’t,” said Shiba, but Shōhei grinned. “I’m partial to boar, myself,” he said.
“Then you take half. Or maybe we can have it all at your place? It’s good for grilling.”
“Ah, that’ll do!”
“Oh? Shōhei knows Tsugi?” Mitsuri piped up in surprise from behind Shiba, where she was standing. She didn’t know they knew each other that well. Seeing Mitsuri, Tsugi said, “Ah, hello,” and bowed his head in greeting, then added to Shiba, “Sorry, I thought it was just you.” Shōhei, too, hurriedly said, “Oops, sorry,” and lapsed into silence.
“No, it’s okay. It’s okay. I decided I couldn’t keep it from her forever, so I brought her in.”
Shiba glanced back at Mitsuri.
“So here goes, Mitsuri. This man,” he said, gesturing toward Tsugi, “he’s my older brother.”
“Huh?”
For a moment, the word “brother” failed to compute.
“My second-oldest brother, Nihiko.”
She looked back and forth between Shiba and Tsugi. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Shōhei grinning widely. No, wait a second, the two of them looked nothing alike. Nothing alike at all. Could the walking pheromone factory and this gruff, disheveled man be brothers?
“Uh, but he said Tsugi…?”
“That’s his nickname. There are five of us. Ichihiko, Nihiko, Mitsuhiko, Yohiko. Using the Japanese for one, two, three, four. But adding hiko this, hiko that all the time got too complicated, so we just call each other Ichi, Tsugi, Mitsu, and Yon. I guess our parents got lazy,” Shiba said, looking a little embarrassed. Mitsuri’s mind was swimming. It was too much for her to take in.
“Wait a minute. Um, you said five brothers? Are any of them like you? Uh, if it’s five, then who’s the fifth? And what’s he called?”
“The fifth is a sister. Her name is Jewel.”
“I’m sorry, that’s a lot, isn’t it? I’m still trying to put it all together.” Mitsuri staggered over to the table and took a seat opposite Tsugi. So that was why he had called her Mitsu earlier, wasn’t it? It was a family habit. Behind his hair, his eyes flickered with amusement. Mitsuri noticed something in those eyes. The true nature of the discomfort she had felt earlier. His eyes were the one way that Tsugi really resembled Shiba.
“They surprised you, didn’t they, Mitsuri? Me too, when I first heard.” Shōhei laughed, and rumpled Tsugi’s leaf-strewn hair. “It seems like a story someone made up, doesn’t it now? That Mojikō’s most suspicious man is brother to its most mysterious.”
“Although he always says that he realized it right away,” Shiba noted.
“Anyway, why did the three of you keep it a secret from me?” Mitsuri puffed up her cheeks and pouted a little, despondent over her lack of observational skills.
“Because it’s a real pain,” Tsugi replied. “I can’t tell you how much trouble I’ve gotten into just because I’m this guy’s brother. Once a woman chased me around with a razor—just because she thought I might look a little more like my brother if she shaved my beard!”
“Yipes.” Mitsuri shivered in spite of herself. But it wasn’t impossible. She had seen Shiba’s fans go too far like that every day.