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I stood in front of Ari’s room a few days after the party, wondering whether I was finally ready to knock. Our days had been full ever since, but that was just the excuse I’d been using not to have the talk I felt we should. And the feeling had been mutual; Ari was definitely avoiding me. Through the last five days, three I had done exactly this: walked up to her room and frozen. On one of these, I had already applied all my nightly creams and just couldn’t sleep. Still, no matter how many times I had come all the way here, I was surely never going to complete the task looking like someone’s aunt. Today was a little improvement—I was wearing an old shirt I loved with printed pictures of my 95ki douki on it and even had a hoodie over.
Sighing, I tried again to imagine exactly what I needed to tell her. It was that it was too much. Mayu had filled me in with so much information… What tone was I even supposed to use? Of course, I wasn’t here to slut-shame her. My limited number of past relationships did make all the rumors about Ari overwhelming, but that was on me. Then again, what if they were all rumors? Just like Ari thinking I’d been lovesick about Rurika-san and like I myself had thought she’d wanted to make Miki-san jealous at the party, Mayu could have just assumed a lot of things.
Because of that, I had called Aasa on that same night. First, I had tried coming here to this door, straight to the source, but Ari had probably been asleep. Walking back to my room, I looked at my bed and pushed aside the hard-to-forget memories of the story we had created earlier.
“…keep that bed warm and smelling like that lotion I love?”
Then I tried messaging her, just in case she’d been in the shower or something, but she didn’t read it for more than an hour. Finally, I caved to my curiosity and called the one friend we had in common, Aasa. The two had been for years in the same Moon Troupe. Back when my transfer was announced, while I asked Aasa to take care of my kakyuusei, she had reassured me she’d also asked Ari to take care of me. I’d thought it was a joke and maybe it was, but that had been just what Ari had done as soon as the whole troupe had been reunited for All For One.
“She did what?” Aasa didn’t seem to take more than a second to breathe as she continued to laugh and repeat inaccurate parts of my retelling of the misunderstanding. Calming down at last, she commented, “So Mayupon is still the overbearing mom, huh?”
“And I can’t reach Ari tonight… I’m not sure what to think.”
“That Mayu wasn’t lying, though.”
For some reason, I had expected to hear the opposite. Again, not because I was mentally slut-shaming Ari; it was just weird.
“You still there, Reiko?”
“Hm,” was all I said.
“But you’re old enough to deal with her, and she definitely won’t touch you.”
“Yeah, Mayupon said she doesn’t get involved with people in the troupe. Like… never?”
Aasa was just quiet in words for a moment, because I could hear something like a mumble? A grunt? Sat on my bed, I changed my weight from a leg to the other because I really had no idea how to word this. “It was just a joke, Aasa. It’s just that it’s a bit odd… Mayu said she’d been with many people in other troupes and all. Did anything happen?” As I asked, I was already shaking my head in self-reprobation. “You shouldn’t be the one to answer me that, I know. I just can’t stop thinking, and Ari is probably sleeping already.”
She snickered, but I didn’t ask if it was at Ari being asleep or at the former affirmation. “You’re still seeing her tomorrow, you know?”
I nodded to myself and quickly added a “Hm” for Aasa. “I’m still a little… astonished.”
I heard her probably change her phone from hands. It was late and I was taking too much of her time for nothing. “Well, I’m more than astonished, for one. That you wouldn’t know it already, that is. I’d risk that you’re the last to know.” She chuckled.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Days passed since my talk with Aasa. After missing Ari that night, it got harder and harder to express my confusion. This wasn’t about me, to begin. Aasa had finished that conversation saying I should still ask her. I hadn’t talked about this with Mayu again, in fear of how she’d (over)react. The long talks with myself hadn’t been helping and became cyclical.
“Ah.”
I turned to my right upon hearing that sound, already knowing I’d been caught behaving like a stalker outside Ari’s door. “Hey there.”
A bag in one hand, shoulders slumped, head bowing too deep for casually seeing a friend, Ari surely looked more like she’d been the one off-guard. “Good evening,” she said quietly.
We walked inside in silence. She’d left the heater on before going to the convenience store, so the room was almost summerish.
“We never really talked about that misunderstanding,” I started, though that wasn’t exactly the reason I’d come. “Thank you for trying to do that for me.”
Ari was heating water and taking the groceries out from the bag. “Mayu-san told me everything. She was freaked out, I’m sorry for that. I’d forgotten she was around, actually, or I would have taken extra cautions.” Maybe it was too cold outside now that winter had started, but her voice sounded hoarse. Just making it all the more uncomfortable. “Just sit, Reiko-san. And I’m sorry I didn’t think to buy you anything.”
“I’ve eaten, don’t worry. Go ahead, though.”
She nodded, while preparing tea for us two. “It’s true, what you want to ask. I fool around a bit.” The red from the cold on her cheeks intensified.
“And you mustn’t be ashamed,” I added as fast as I could. “Was that why you were avoiding me?”
She denied with her head. “Mayu-san asked me to give you some distance.”
“What?” I’d unconsciously taken my phone out and was ready to message her for explanations.
“Don’t. She was just… freaked out.” She laughed after not finding better words than the one used before.
“So why didn’t I ever hear about any of this? It’s not that it’s my right to know, but it does seem everyone else does.” I didn’t add that the day following the party, the troupe kept questioning me what had happened. No one but Mayu had seen the kiss, but it didn’t mean they hadn’t added it to the rumor mill. They understood it had been just a joke by now, but each of them had delivered me a new story about Ari.
She shrugged. “I’m not the only one who doesn’t tell things.”
It was true I’ve never told her about my past relationships, or even that I’m bisexual. And I may have dodged the topic because it had been so many years since my last kiss that didn’t involve some bad positioning on stage—or a misunderstanding during a party—, I felt it was better not to be reminded. Many of us had boyfriends, even if it was always hard to make it last. In addition, albeit my dry spell not being that uncommon, the length of it was. I blushed just thinking how to defend myself. “There are no things to tell, Ari. I haven’t been with anyone for as long as we know each other. Longer, to be frank.”
“What about your feelings for Rurika-san?” she asked so fast I wondered if she’d even heard me.
“No feelings other than friendship. She’s my type only to admire, not to fall in love with,” I answered honestly, unable to imagine myself with someone like Rurika-san. “I’m also sure I’m not her type.”
“For real?”
I nodded and smiled. “It’s also been a long time since I even liked someone.”
Then I went on to tell her about my last girlfriend. And the ones before.
“Is it your rule?” she interrupted me to ask. “No one from the theater?”
More than that, they hadn’t even been musical theater fans, I noticed when Ari asked. But I shook my head. “It’s not a rule, just never happened.”
“But it’s so easy to be with someone who gets us?”
“Your turn now.”
She bit her lip. “I haven’t had a boyfriend or a girlfriend for some time now too. It never reaches that point lately. And I probably stopped trying when I started using the app.”
“The app?” I raised my eyebrows. “You mean those apps to hook up?” I felt alarmed, headlines about date rapes or worse running through my head.
She chortled. “You can’t be angry with Mayu-san if you’re going to be just like her. It’s all safe, don’t be like that.”
Ari told me how she’d started using one of those apps on one day off in Tokyo some years before and had found a really funny guy who’d taken her to this new restaurant for the night of her life. She’d been really stressed about her Shinko performance and for the first time she was able to just relax. Without him knowing who she was, she could just forget stuff. Back in Takarazuka, even now, she was more cautious about using apps, so she’d just go on blind dates or goukon with friends or relatives of friends, as she and the whole theater had been doing in the era before dating apps.
“Or of course, I just call one of us,” she added. “The old-fashioned way works better there. Imagine meeting someone online and she’s, I don’t know, the manager of your fan club? Osaka might not be small, but sometimes it feels everything revolves around Hankyuu there.” She shivered. Then, motioned for my tea. “You’re waiting for it to go cold?” She had long finished hers, but I couldn’t even remember having mine served so entranced I’d been.
“I feel bad that I never paid attention.”
“There isn’t anything to pay attention to, though. I just fool around a bit. Maybe more than average, but I didn’t have any actual girlfriends or boyfriends in the last few years, either. What was there to announce?”
“But you’ve been giving hints for me to open. Even when I thought you were meaning to come out to me and tried to show I was open to it, I never questioned further.”
“And now you know my dark secret.” She smiled. “I’m surprised you aren’t more grossed out.”
“I’m not. At all!” My voice had been too loud and we both fell in a laughter together. “Now you’ll tell me everything, right?”
She confirmed. “Also, don’t worry. I don’t do troupe mates.”
“I-I heard.” But shook my head. “I’m not worried.” Although the person who’d told me about it had been so the opposite way. “But what if she changed troupes?”
“Like you?”
I shook my head so hard I felt dizzy. “I meant after, like, if the person is transferred out of the Moon Troupe, would she be game?”
She skewed her head, pressing her lips together. “I guess so.”
“And it’s okay to tell me those things from now on. Especially when you’re out to meet with strangers. Someone has to know your whereabouts!”
“Reiko-san!” Her admonishment gave a start. “In what era were you born? That’s so Showa!”
“All right! Let’s go to what matters most, then.” I made my best to show my seriousness. “Spill the juicy bits right this moment.” And I winked.
Ari faked a gasp. “All yours.”
For the first time, I kind of understood Mayu’s worries. Ari had been just a friend to me, nothing romantic or sexual had ever crossed my mind; not that I could remember at least. Until that point, with those words, her smiling face, the shimmering of her eyes struck something in me and I lost breath for a microsecond. Which is euphemism, because all seconds last the same thousand milliseconds, thus a second couldn’t be micro or tiny or even long. But it was what I had to call it, a microsecond, before I browbeat myself to recompose and listen to all about her latest fling with Kazuki Sora, from the Cosmos Troupe. Someone I’d known from my Music School says but wasn’t really among the people I talked much with ever since. Nevertheless, I’d grow to think constantly of her from then on.
To be continued…
Anita
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