Please Be So Kind as to Become the Other Woman

At that time, the school Mirai attended was formally called Private Meishu Academy. Like most private secondary schools, it was divided into a high-school division and a middle-school division. Since saying “Private Meishu Academy High School Division” or “Private Meishu Academy Middle School Division” in kana produced a very long string of syllables, everyone abbreviated them on their own as Meikō and Meichū.

In the words of Ayanokoji Mari, who had graduated from Meikō more than two years earlier, Meikō was exactly the kind of school shōjo manga artists would never want to leave once they arrived. It was said that when Kamio Yōko created *Boys Over Flowers*, she used Meikō as the background. This old aristocratic school beside Tokyo Bay—whether in the gravel path near the library, the rows of cherry trees beneath the classroom building, or even the old warehouse behind the swimming pool—radiated at every moment a strange romantic air that combined vigorous youth with ambiguous melancholy. Therefore, one could easily imagine that in such a beautiful and wondrous environment, the yearly production of two or three even more beautiful and wondrous campus celebrities was only natural.

During that overheated summer when Mirai was seventeen, the two most famous figures at Meikō were Iwasaki Kazuto of Class 3-A, then student council president, and Morisawa Kaoru of Class 2-A, then head of the publicity department. At that time, the four characters of Iwasaki Kazuto’s name meant nothing more to Mirai than a kanji symbol. The symbol represented the eldest legitimate son of the Iwasaki family, a diplomatic dynasty in Japan. It represented the glorious privilege of attending school only two or three times a semester and still advancing smoothly to the next grade. That was all. Apart from knowing that the symbol’s gender was male, she basically had no idea whether he was round or flat in appearance. On this point, we may pretend to be merciful and place all blame upon the innocent Iwasaki Kazuto—his probability of appearing normally on the Meikō campus was simply too low. However, the fact that “Morisawa Kaoru-kun had stolen nearly all of Mirai’s attention except the part reserved for painting” was also, to a very great extent, a reason that should not be filtered out.

Fortunately, one week before the municipal-pool banana-peel incident, Morisawa Kaoru-kun—the shōjo manga hero with brains, looks, elegance, and athletic talent—and Ayanokoji Mirai-kun—the shōjo manga villainess with brains, looks, elegance, and athletic talent—had already broken up in a perfectly genuine and amicable fashion, becoming each other’s regrettable past. Later, when Mirai summarized that green first love which had died halfway, she even sighed with great melancholy: “Clearly, girls of the Mashimaro-bunny type have no market in this conservative society that enrages gods and humans alike.”

In short, it was not something one could treasure as a beautiful memory.

Therefore, at present, Mirai had no idea why she was obediently sitting on a ladder, a bucket of paint in her left hand and a large brush in her right, selflessly painting the backdrop for the cultural festival play—especially when she fully understood that the male lead in the play was Morisawa Kaoru-kun and the female lead was his current girlfriend, Nakajima Yōko. As the injured party, should she not be holding two little straw dolls in her left hand and a tennis shoe in her right, smashing and smashing with all her might? She had once considered this question quite seriously.

What she had to render on the white canvas, in the deepest dark green, was an ancient pine tree full of weathered dignity.

Mirai felt that staging *Romeo and Juliet*, that most standard Western medieval romance, while placing in the background an old Japanese pine tree in a meditative trance was an offense against her conscience as a future artist. Yet according to Sakurai Sayuri, the year-round neurotic female president of the Meikō drama club, the purpose was to borrow the quiet, ethereal atmosphere of traditional Noh theatre to heighten the sorrow of Romeo and Juliet’s deathless devotion and eventual, indeed mutual, death.

Mirai thought: she is talking nonsense.

Because the auditorium windows were set with the kind of stained glass usually found only in churches, the light refracted through them in varying degrees of anti-primary color. At first glance, the effect was rather romantic. Mirai raised the hand holding the brush to shade her brow and looked out at the gradually sinking sun, judging that it was about time to finish for the day. She turned carefully, preparing to climb down from the ladder. She had absolutely not expected to see Iwasaki Kazuto again at such a time, in such a place, and from such a strange, high, neither-up-nor-down angle. In fact, at first glance she did not even realize that the creature in casual clothes standing beneath her feet and looking up slightly had the same face as the fellow who had thrown her directly into the water at the municipal pool.

Still, her reflexive response was fright.

It is worth mentioning that Mirai was not, by nature, especially brave. Moreover, this was an old, dim auditorium of the kind that could easily rank among the top ten favorite settings for horror novels. Moreover again, Iwasaki Kazuto, standing against the light, was wearing a pure white tracksuit without a trace of any other color—the very clothing most beloved by ghosts.

The grave consequence of all these objective factors was this: our poor Miss Ayanokoji Mirai trembled directly off that not particularly sturdy wooden ladder. The unfortunate Iwasaki Kazuto, once again an innocent fish caught in disaster, served as the cushion beneath her body.

Fortunately, in the process of catching Mirai, Iwasaki-kun—who had clearly studied physics rather well and possessed sufficiently developed athletic reflexes—forced himself several steps backward to reduce the impact, barely avoiding giving himself a concussion.

Under the pull of gravity, the dark green paint fell straight down and landed on the rosewood floor with a splat, spreading across the center of the stage into several highly poetic little polygons. Mirai stared in horror and personally witnessed her own lips, utterly disobedient, approach Iwasaki’s step by step. Clack. Their teeth struck together painfully, followed by a faint taste of—well—blood.

Iwasaki Kazuto’s brows were tightly furrowed. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze was profound beyond measure.

Although Mirai was a girl of the Mashimaro-bunny type, before she could be a hooligan, she was at least still a girl. Therefore, to say she felt no embarrassment, shame, or awkwardness over having, for no reason, taken liberties with someone—or been taken liberties with—would be an absolute lie.

Subjectively, our adorable Mirai-kun wanted to climb up at once and kowtow in apology. Objectively, however—her upper body rose, but her right leg below the waist would not obey her at all. Thus, the current Mirai presented the complete posture of someone straddling Iwasaki Kazuto, cheeks flushed, body awkward and stiff. The pose was, without question, extremely, extremely suggestive.

Outside the old auditorium, more than half the sky had been dyed by sunset clouds into colors as fierce and vivid as winter roses, turning even the air an orange-yellow like tangerine peel. Vast sheets of sunlight plated in brilliant gold sauntered openly through the high, glassless windows on both sides of the stage, scattering over the glass chandelier hanging in midair, the half-painted old-pine backdrop, and the soft white fabric of Iwasaki Kazuto’s tracksuit.

Time seemed to vanish all at once. The whole world was light, and only light.

Mirai suddenly remembered an old film, the black-and-white kind: beneath pale cherry trees, their colors dimmed by time, a beautiful geisha with her hair piled high wore an elaborate kimono patterned with double cherry blossoms and played a battered shamisen with a sorrowful expression. She found it funny, and so she really laughed.

The tightly shut auditorium doors suddenly gave an eerie creak, the kind that made one’s teeth ache. Mirai and Iwasaki turned their heads at the same time. The boy standing in the doorway with his schoolbag slung over one shoulder was clearly shocked. Natural light passing through the gap in the door stretched his body into a long, narrow shadow between the rows of seats, like *Daddy-Long-Legs* from childhood reading. Mirai managed to straighten up and greeted him with great cheer. “Oh, Kaoru. Long time no see. Come look at the backdrop I’m painting for you—doesn’t it look magnificent?”

The other party, however, very obviously did not appreciate this kindness. He merely remained silent. Because the lighting in the old auditorium at that hour was far too complex and magical, Mirai had no way of seeing the rich variety of expressions on Morisawa Kaoru’s face as he stood by the door. From the center of the stage, all she could see was a bright blur.

“Iwasaki… you two…” The few syllables seemed forced completely through his teeth, and were at once swallowed by a suffocating silence.

Mirai watched Morisawa disappear behind the door into that dazzling orange-red evening glow. Then suddenly she lowered her head, buried it completely in Iwasaki’s chest, and after a long while sighed listlessly. “Honestly, even after breaking up, he still has to be so messy and unclear about things. What a jerk.”

But of course, those were not the words she truly wanted to say. She only hated, without reason, the version of herself that deliberately pretended to be so carefree and magnanimous. So she let herself take it out on someone else in speech, just for the small satisfaction of it. Endurance is exhausting too. There is always some trigger that draws out all the restlessness accumulated inside and makes it burst forth in an instant.

“I didn’t want to come help them paint this damned backdrop at all. But Sayuri kept saying, Mirai, you must help, you must help. I dislike Nakajima Yōko so much—why couldn’t she be considerate of me for once? I hate this. I really, really hate it.”

Iwasaki Kazuto felt something wet seep through the thin cloth of his tracksuit and soak all the way to his chest. Still lying on the floor, he lifted his right hand as though to stroke Mirai’s freshly cut short hair. In the end, however, he did not touch her.

The two of them remained in that tightly pressed position.

One minute.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Iwasaki shifted his aching body slightly beneath her and squeezed out a few words, almost through bitten lips. “Could I trouble you to move your plump little self off me?”

The girl on top of him, however, remained quietly motionless.

Because—

she had fallen asleep.

…