Chapter 3 So What if I’m High-Maintenance Potato Salad #2
Having regained his composure, Iori decided to take action. “We’ll start searching the places she could have gone.” Turning to the three men, he continued, “It looks like you’re all a little drunk, so it’s probably best if you went home. We’ll deal with this.”
—
After walking the tipsy men back to the shopping district, the three of us split up to search. An hour had passed when the news came from Hozumi.
“I found her. We’ll be at her bar.”
Iori and I hurried back. Wherever she had been, she was now plopped down outside, barefoot.
“What a relief. How did you find her, Hozumi?” I asked.
She had lost her shoes, and her makeup was melting down her face, but she didn’t look injured in any way.
“I remembered that thing people say about drunks always finding their way back.”
“Impressive detective work.”
“She has turned into the Destroyer, though,” Hozumi said. “Look.”
I glanced at Makiko to see her scraping at Kisaragi’s signboard. I watched her strip off the black paint bit by bit, going from corner to corner. Like a child peeling a sticker off a chest of drawers, she dug her nails into the paint and scratched away.
“Her destruction methods aren’t as harmful as I imagined,” Iori said with a sigh of relief.
I tried to get her to look at me a few times, softly saying her name and offering to get her a bottle of water, but Makiko showed no signs of moving from the stoop. Perplexed, Iori gave a shrug.
“Come on, Makiko, I was looking forward to hearing your story,” I coaxed.
As I crouched down next to her, she finally seemed to acknowledge my presence and raised her eyebrows, as though she was genuinely surprised to see me.
Ugh, her breath! Exactly how much did she have to drink?
“Why don’t we go inside?”
“Momo-kichi, you’re here! Momo-kichi.”
“It’s Momoko, not Momo-kichi.”
Momo-kichi was a nickname she had once drunkenly given me.
Her normally lively eyes looked dull and tired, as if someone had colored them in with a black crayon. Although I was staring directly at her, it seemed impossible to lock eyes with her.
“Men,” she said. “All men are just jerks. Aren’t they? Don’t you think they’re jerks?”
Makiko grabbed me by the collar of my sweatshirt, swaying me back and forth. Then, distracted, she promptly turned back to her signboard and resumed destroying it. Uprooting her was going to take some effort—it didn’t help that she was pretty tall.
What are we to do?
We stood by the bar entrance debating our options. The worst-case scenario would be utilizing Hozumi’s muscles to haul her off the ground and push her inside.
Suddenly, Makiko spoke. “You guys are pros at breakups, right? So tell me something.”
“Yes?” I asked.
“What do you think were his intentions?”
Despite her beautifully gel-manicured nails, Makiko continued to scratch the signboard recklessly. Bits of picked-off paint descended to the ground.
“What do you mean ‘his intentions’?”
“The guy that I lived with for a year suddenly stopped coming home. Then one day he contacted me and said, ‘Could you mail me my stuff? Don’t worry, I’ll pay for the cost of delivery.’ And the addressee he gave me was the name of a woman.”
I felt a chill.
Did she just say the addressee was a woman?
“Then I googled the name and a young, cute girl comes up. Tell me, does that mean…”
Makiko stopped destroying the signboard.
“…that we were not even in a relationship? Is that what this means?”
Bending down to sit next to her, Iori quietly handed her a glass of water.
“What emotion am I supposed to feel as I’m writing that name on the address label? Tell me, what is the correct emotion to feel when I’m sending off the belongings of the person I love to the house of another woman?”
Makiko’s shoulders were shaking, just a little.
“Go inside and make yourselves some drinks,” Makiko said. “I’ll be right there.”
With her back still turned to us, Makiko waved her hands exaggeratedly as she spoke.
Is she crying? She must be crying.
Droplets must have been trickling from her eyes and hitting the ground. I couldn’t be certain, though, because Makiko kept her head lowered.
She was totally hammered. She’d been betrayed by the person she loved. Seeing her like this, I felt my chest squeeze, as if my heart were shriveling up. I wished that she would let herself have a real cry. What was pushing her to play the role of a woman who never shows her feelings?
After somehow carrying her inside, we relaxed a little. Makiko locked herself in the bathroom for a moment, but when she reappeared, her face looked fresh, as though she’d returned to her usual self, and she joined us where we were sitting at the bar.
“I’m so sorry for all the trouble. I’m the worst bartender, aren’t I?”
She’s trying to revert to the bubbly and high-spirited Makiko, I thought to myself.
The emotional mask that she’d been wearing had started to peel off, and she had fixed it up behind that bathroom door.
I noticed that her hair, which had become all disheveled, was now neatly gathered with a hair clip, and the black mascara smeared below her eyes had been wiped clean.
Her wrists and the cuffs on her shirt were damp, probably from splashing water on her face.
“I’m fine now. You can go home. God, I’m sorry you had to see me in such a state.”
Makiko let out an embarrassed laugh and started to clear the bar counter, pretending the last hour hadn’t happened.
“Do you want to talk more about what you were telling us earlier?” I asked her softly.
“Oh, sorry, it’s nothing worth talking about. I thought I’d taken a feral cat in, but it turns out it had an owner all along! It’s the kind of thing you hear all the time, which makes you go, ‘I can’t believe I considered letting that cat live with me for good—am I an idiot or what?’ ”
“Isn’t that what you wanted to vent about?”
Without stopping her hands from rinsing a glass, she replied, “Don’t worry about it. It’s past midnight already. Sorry again; it’s my fault.”
She must have done this over and over again. Whatever life threw at her, she must have prioritized not worrying others and instead busied herself with work.
I need to stop her, my intuition told me.
If she doesn’t vent the feelings that she’s bottling up now, her thick skin that makes her the Makiko that people love will grow even thicker.
Though she has the ability to live life without showing her weaknesses, and sometimes I find myself aspiring to be like her, I need to make this a night where she doesn’t play the role of “Strong Makiko.”
“Makiko.”
I grabbed her wrist as she reached out to wipe down the bar countertop.
“Why don’t you stop acting like the low-maintenance woman? Just this one day—no, this one night.”
Makiko turned to look at me.
“Once in a while, you’ve got to embarrass yourself and let yourself be the needy, high-maintenance woman.”
She smiled slowly, sighing.
“All right, Momo-chan. Can I get anyone a drink?”
Makiko’s story went like this.
About a year and a half ago, a young man walked into Kisaragi and soon became a regular customer.
He was a memorable client because of his distinctive looks—he wore head-to-toe black and a pair of round sunglasses.
He would arrive just after ten o’clock at night and would always sit at the end of the counter.
The man would then spend an hour drawing in his sketchbook while sipping a gin and tonic.
Printed on the business card in rustic type was his name, AKIRA NAGAYAMA, and profession, Artist. Still in his twenties, he was an exciting up-and-comer with a number of well-received exhibitions already under his belt.
Akira began to spend more and more time at the bar, gradually seeping into Makiko’s life and eventually moving in.
She and Akira cohabited for about a year until one day, suddenly, he stopped coming home.
Makiko worried that he had been involved in an accident, but two weeks later, she heard from him.
“So that’s when he said, ‘Post my stuff to my girlfriend, I’ll pay for delivery’? What the hell is that?”
I was so infuriated, it took all my energy to keep my hands from shaking.
“He hadn’t even talked to you about breaking up! That is not okay. What kind of jerk ‘offers’ to pay for delivery when he hasn’t even apologized to you yet?”
“Well, Makiko has always been a compassionate person,” Iori said with a bitter smile. “Certain types of men take advantage of that.”
“You think so? Do I seem like the type that men take advantage of?”
Makiko covered her blushing face with her hands.
“I guess…” Makiko began, “…Akira never thought of me as his lover or anything of the sort.”
Hozumi took a sip of his tomato juice and asked, “How did you two become a couple in the first place?”
“I was hoping that question wouldn’t come up.” Makiko furrowed her brow and let out a long groan.
“Makiko?”
Biting her lips, Makiko was motionless.
“Did he ever say ‘Will you be my girlfriend?’ or anything along those lines?”
“No…he didn’t.”
“Then did you ask him?”
“I…didn’t.” Makiko’s voice had grown so hoarse, she sounded as though she was in excruciating pain, as if her arm was being squeezed and twisted by a gigantic humanoid or something.
She got up, and with the speed of a ninja, she lifted a bottle of whiskey from the shelf.
“Makiko, wh-what are you—you can’t have any more to drink!” I shouted.
“No! Let me! Please! I can’t deal with this without drinking!”
With practiced hands, she pulled the lid off the bottle, swiftly filled a glass with ice, and poured whiskey over it before garnishing it with a wedge of lemon. I gazed in awe at her bartending technique, but this was no time to be impressed.
“Stop right there!” Iori grabbed Makiko’s arm just before her first sip and took her glass away. In exchange, he produced a bottle of soda water from the refrigerator.
“You have this, Makiko, and I’ll enjoy the whiskey.”
“Iori, brutal as always,” she said.