“Hey there,” Tsuzuki greeted me casually when I showed up at his house the next night. Almost like it was no surprise whatsoever. This pissed me off.
“My beef bowl,” I replied brusquely. “Left it here last night.”
“Oh yeah, I ate it. It was stone cold, but still really good.”
“You thief!”
“Like I said, I’ll buy you another. Now quit hurling accusations at me on my doorstep, would you?” He slung an arm around my shoulder and guided me inside. Normally my body would recoil violently if another person tried to touch me without warning, but for some reason, I didn’t mind it. Then I realized that I didn’t mind it…and smacked his hand away roughly.
“Whoa.”
“Just so we’re clear… I don’t swing that way.”
“What?”
“I saw online that you…‘identify as bisexual’ or whatever.”
“Wait, really?”
“Don’t play dumb with me!”
“I’m not, I’m not!” He fell silent for a moment, then hit upon some sort of realization—“Oh!”—and looked up. “It must’ve been the stuff I said in that one magazine interview I did. Huh…I didn’t think anyone would make a note of it.”
“So you are bisexual!”
“I never said that. I just said that I have a very specific type, and I don’t really care about their gender as long as they check off all the right boxes. I really don’t think it’s the same thing as identifying as bi or whatever. What, did you think I was gonna come on to you? Please. I have very high standards. And you look like you just got back from robbing a 7-Eleven.”
“Screw you!” You have no idea how hot I am underneath all this! Rrgh, I wish I could show him exactly what he’s missing!
“Come here,” he beckoned.
I walked over into his workshop area. He gestured to a box full of pale gray humanoid figures, each of them less than ten centimeters tall.
“What are those, GI Joes?” I asked.
“What? No! They’re not soldiers, genius!”
I squinted down at them. Sure enough, there were men in business suits, pairs of young college students… The only facial feature they had to speak of was a little nose sticking out—no eyes or mouth. Yet somehow, they each seemed unique in their own right.
“You made all these?”
“Yeah. It’s what I do for a living.”
There were so many of them, I couldn’t begin to count.
“I’m going to use them to create a title sequence for a news program.”
Yeah, I know.
“So I’m thinking I’ll recreate a busy intersection. You know, like the Shibuya Scramble Crossing or something.”
“Wow. You must really enjoy making yourself suffer.”
Each of the little clay figures had their own custom outfit, hairstyle, and accessories. My mind reeled at the thought of how much time and effort it must have taken to craft all these.
Wait… Is this what I think it is…?
“Please don’t tell me you want me to make a bunch of these.”
“No, no!”
I let out a sigh of relief. Good, because that would be insane—
“I just want you to paint them.”
“No way!”
“You’ll be fine! If you mess up, you can just paint over it! To be honest, I want them to have a sort of ‘imperfect’ or ‘amateur’ touch to them. But if I tried to paint them badly on purpose, it would end up looking really obviously fake, y’know? So I honestly need your help with this. Anyway, the paint’s over there, so go ahead and take a crack at it. Paint ’em however you want.”
“And what if I want to paint their skin green? What then?”
“Well, you’ll probably want to exercise some level of judgment. Think about it—this is going on national TV, so you’ll get to brag to your friends, like, ‘See that? I painted that!’”
“I don’t want your stupid bragging rights.” I’m already on TV enough as it is.
“Dude, it’s really not that hard. What, are you bad with your hands or something? Or are you just chicken?” he smirked.
“Say that again, asshole?”
“Aagh! If only my hand didn’t hurt so bad!” he sighed melodramatically. “I went to the doctor and they told me it’s a sprain! It’ll take two to three weeks for a full recovery!”
“Oh boy…”
“What if I don’t recover in time? This gig’s for a major TV network, so if I screw it up, I might get put on some kind of blacklist and never work in this field again! Plus, not only will I not get paid, but I might have to pay damages for breaching my contract!”
“Fine! Fine! I’ll do it, okay?! Are you happy now?!”
It would’ve been all too easy to wriggle out of this even with his guilt tripping, and yet, here I was. Honestly, I was screwed from the moment I showed up on his doorstep. Damn it, what’s gotten into me?
This was my first experience working with acrylic paint, but fortunately, it wasn’t that different from any other paint. Squirt it out of a tube, dilute with a bit of water, and there you go. To start with, I grabbed ten figures at random—Let’s call this Group 1, shall we? Then I picked up my fine-point brush and gave all ten of them the same color of skin, hair, and clothing.
While I worked, Tsuzuki was mostly on his computer, but after about an hour, he wandered back over. Then he picked up one of my finished pieces and furrowed his brow.
“What?” I asked, recoiling slightly. “Just so you know, I’m not redoing a single one of these. You said I could paint them however I want, remember?”
“No, that’s not it.” He shook his head softly. “They’re really good, actually. I’m impressed—I wasn’t expecting you to actually try.”
Then don’t come over here and give me a heart attack, I thought. And what do you mean, “actually?” Of course they’re good. I’m the kind of guy who can pick up just about any skill with a little practice. Everyone says so.
Meanwhile, Tsuzuki looked around at the rest of the figurines and let out a small chuckle.
“What?” I demanded.
“You can learn a lot about someone through this kind of manual labor. More than you might think.”
“What…?”
“Let me guess: this one was your first attempt, and this is your most recent, right? You’ve improved dramatically in a very short time frame. Thus, I can infer that you’re a quick study when it comes to new things.”
Damn right I am. But I didn’t have time to get smug about it—his assessment wasn’t finished there.
“And yet…you seem to have a better eye for color than you initially claimed. Surprisingly enough, you’re sensible to a fault. No sense of adventure.”
“You’re the one who told me to ‘exercise my best judgment’ or whatever!” I snapped back, annoyed. And why was I annoyed, you ask? Because he was absolutely right about me.
“Even then, someone with bad judgment still would’ve done badly, since they wouldn’t know any better. But you, on the other hand—for better or worse, you’re extremely levelheaded. Which is funny, since my first impression of you was a lot more selfish.”
Oh yeah? We just met yesterday, and already you think you can psychoanalyze me? That alone was enough to raise my hackles…and worse still, he wasn’t even that far off. I was struck with the impulse to plunge my current work in progress into a bucket of solid black paint, but I resisted. After all, I got the feeling it would only create more work for me in the end.
He thinks he’s got me all figured out, but he doesn’t even know my true identity, I reminded myself, willing my mind calm. I still have the upper hand.
Then, once precisely two hours had elapsed since my arrival, I rose to my feet. “All right, I’m leaving.”
“Okay then, I’ll head out with you. Gotta buy you your beef bowl, after all.”
As we walked down the street, Tsuzuki pushing his mostly fixed bike, I once again found myself wondering: Why? Why was I still hanging out with this guy when my moral obligation to him was already fulfilled? Was it because he ate my beef bowl from yesterday? If so, then…what the hell was I doing, harping on about a mere 500 yen? Sure, he wasn’t questioning my identity as of right now, but every additional minute I spent with him only further increased that risk…
“So what do you do for a living, Owari?”
“Not telling.”
“Do you live by yourself?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
But no matter how curt I was with him, he never took offense. Almost like he’d somehow analyzed my personality after just two days’ worth of extremely short conversations. God, that pissed me off. Luckily for me, he was walking on my right-hand side…so I balled my right hand into a fist and (lightly) brought it down on his left wrist as he steered the bike.
“Ouch! What was that for?!”
“For trying to pry into my personal life. Just shut your mouth.”
“Are you like this with everybody? Seems exhausting.”
It is exhausting, actually. But only because I’m not like this with anyone else. “Just leave me alone, man.”
When we got there, he ordered two beef bowls to go. In separate bags, of course.
“Wanna eat back at my place?”
“No, I’m going home. Obviously.”
“Okay, well, you should come by again sometime,” he replied as he set his to-go bag in his bike basket. “My deadline’s at the end of March, so I’m in crunch mode.”
“Oh, please. You’ll be all healed up in two measly weeks.”
“The doctor said two to three weeks.”
“Yeah, well, doctors exaggerate.”
As I turned to go, I heard him call from behind me: “Thanks for your help today.”
I took a handful of steps down the street, then casually paused and glanced back over my shoulder, but Tsuzuki and his crooked cruiser bike were nowhere to be seen. Just dim, cold, empty pavement. I tugged my mask down and let out a foggy sigh.
I was half-worried he was going to follow me home, you know, since he was such a nosy little rat—and I really didn’t want him knowing where I lived, thank you very much—but apparently not. Apparently, he actually was on his way back home, same as me. Good. What a relief.
So why was I standing there in the cold, searching for him?