Baring All

It was the end of January, and Miyako, free from her end-of-semester exams, was over at Itsuki’s place.

“…Hey,” he greeted her after she rang the doorbell.

“Oh, Itsuki! I, um, I wrapped up the last of my exams today, so I got a lot of free time! So I just thought I’d stop by and tell you! And, um, if there’s anything you need me to do, I’m open to whatever, so…”

Her voice seemed to be speeding up midsentence as she blushed at him. Then she noticed what Itsuki was wearing. It made her do a dubious double take.

“Um, are you going somewhere?”

Itsuki had a coat and a scarf on, looking ready to leave at any moment, but he shook his head at Miyako anyway.

The explanation for this was provided by Nayuta’s shouting from inside.

“Itsukiii! Shut the doooor! You’re letting the wind inside!”

“Just come in,” he prompted.

“Um, okay,” Miyako meekly answered.

It was just as cold inside as out, with Nayuta lying half-covered by the blanket of the kotatsu table, dressed in as many layers as Itsuki and reading a manga magazine. “Congrats on finishing your exams, Myaa,” she said, turning only her face to greet her.

“Thanks, Nayu. Man, it’s kinda cold in here! Why don’t you have the heat on?”

“…Because it broke this morning. It just had to be today, too… Brr,” Itsuki said as he threw himself under the kotatsu with a shiver, taking a moment to glare at the air-conditioning unit above his head. “I’m deeply disappointed in you…”

“Did you call anyone about it?”

“Yeah, but they said they can’t show up for three days. This kotatsu’s keeping us from freezing to death, at least, but I can’t do any work like this.”

“Why don’t you just go to the store and get a cheap room heater?”

“Mmm… Well, there’s one other option left…,” Nayuta said, sitting up and showing Itsuki an advertisement from his magazine. “Itsuki, what about this?”

It was a two-page spread showing a group of swimsuit-clad beauties screaming “The beach!!!” in unison.

“…? You want us to go take the polar plunge somewhere in this weather?”

“No! This manga’s set around a school trip in Okinawa.”

“Okinawa…! We could do that!”

“We could, yes!”

Seeing Itsuki and Nayuta relate to each other over this unnerved Miyako a bit. “Wait a sec, guys,” she interjected. “What are you suggesting? I mean, I guess Okinawa’s warm during the winter, but you aren’t gonna go fly there right now, are you?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Itsuki instantly agreed.

“You should come along with us, Myaa!”

“Huh? Me?!”

“You just finished up your tests, right? I could pay for your ticket!”

“Whoa, Nayu, I couldn’t… I mean, money wouldn’t be the issue, so…”

“Great, so we’re all set! Me, you, and Itsuki in Okinawa!”

“We’re what? Already? Huhh?!”

Faced with Nayuta’s supremely joyful grin, Miyako found it impossible to say no.

And thus, that was that.

It being the off-season, securing plane tickets and hotel reservations turned out to be the easy part. All three of them were on the island of Okinawa by nightfall.

“I can’t believe we’re really here… I mean…is Okinawa really the kind of place you just zoom off to because it feels a little nippy out?” Miyako whispered as they walked down the airport hallway, carrying only a small bag with her.

“Hah-hah-hah! I’m finally back home, Okinawa!” Itsuki bellowed, twirling his long black coat like a medieval cape.

“Huh? Were you born here?”

“…No. But I did visit around two years ago.”

“Oh. Where did you go then?”

“To the hotel.”

“Well, yeah, but what kind of sightseeing did you do? Any activities?”

“No, nothing, really.”

“Um…”

“It was August, so everything was friggin’ packed with tourists, and the sun was so hot I felt like I was melting. So I wound up spending all three days in the hotel.”

“Wow, are you an idiot?”

Itsuki blushed at Miyako’s frank and honest impression. “What do you mean, ‘an idiot’? It’s my vacation! I can do whatever I want!”

“Sure, but…that is stupid, you know.”

“N-no it’s not… You’re stupid for thinking it’s stupid…”

Itsuki himself regretted the memory of that trip enough that not even he bothered to put up a vigorous defense.

“…Th-this time, though, I’m gonna learn from the past and take in everything Okinawa’s got to offer! …Sure is hot, though. I’m startin’ to not wanna go outside.”

“True… I can’t believe this is January,” Nayuta said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

“They said it’s in the low sixties here,” Miyako added. “That’s Okinawa for you…always warm… You know, guys, maybe you wouldn’t be so hot if you took off a layer or two.”

“Oh, right!”

“Good point.”

They took off their coats, only to reveal knit sweaters underneath. They wound up buying T-shirts and underwear at the souvenir shop before taking a taxi to their hotel in Okinawa’s capital city of Naha. Itsuki took up a single room, while Miyako and Nayuta shared one with two beds.

“Hey, Myaa, you wanna trade rooms with Itsuki?”

“No! We can’t do that!”

“Aww… I look forward to staying with you, though, Myaa.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Miyako said, patting the smiling, undulating Nayuta on the head.

After quickly freshening up in their rooms, the trio headed to a nearby izakaya for dinner. This was Okinawa, after all, and a ton of local cuisine was served family-style—taco rice (Tex-Mex-style seasoned beef over rice), goya champuru (bitter melon stir-fry with pork or Spam), rafute (pork ribs), sea grapes (a type of edible tropical seaweed), and fried gurukun (the most common fish in Okinawa), one of the island’s most well-known saltwater fish species.

Itsuki and Miyako toasted the meal over a couple of jugs of beer seasoned with hibiscus extract. The light, refreshing sweet-and-sour flavor couldn’t be beat in hot weather. (This extract is available on the Net, allowing you to create your own anytime you’d like. It’s best mixed into lighter varieties, such as a nice Belgian white or Okinawa’s hometown Orion beer.) Nayuta, not quite being the legal age to drink yet, had to make do with hibiscus juice instead.

“…Mm. This is nice.”

“Yeah. It goes great with the goya champuru.”

Nayuta puffed her cheeks out at the sight of Itsuki and Miyako savoring all the flavors they were taking in.

“Aw, I want some, too…”

“Nope. Wait until you’re twenty years old.”

“Yeah,” Itsuki added, “just enjoy your little-kid juice for now.”

“…Is that why you won’t look at me as a romantic partner, Itsuki? Because I’m not of drinking age?”

“Bpph!!” Itsuki spat out the beer in his mouth. As he furiously wiped the table and his mouth with a washcloth, he added, “Um, what was that? I didn’t hear you.”

“…Isn’t it a lot more painful to pretend you didn’t hear me after that insane overreaction? So am I too young to be of any romantic interest to you, Itsuki, or not?” Nayuta said, staring at the barefaced liar before her.

“Oh, did you say something? Geez, they’ve got the music up so loud in this place, you can barely hear anything.” Itsuki kept up the wooden-doll act as Nayuta doggedly pursued the issue.

“I need you, Itsuki.”

“You need a Jew? Sorry, I’m not that religious.”

“We’re driven together by destiny.”

“Oh, did you buy a car?”

“Let’s have sex.”

“Mmm, I like the trumpet more than the sax, myself.”

“…Now I’m wondering how long you can keep this going. You can cop a feel whenever you like, y’know.”

“Cop? Did someone commit a crime?”

“Fuck me now!”

“Hockey? On a tropical island? Yeah, right.”

“…This is getting painful.”

“And you’re kinda stretching the definition of romantic confessions.”

“I want your cummies!”

“E. E. Cummings? Boy, some of his poems were pretty off the wall, weren’t they? And that’s still not an admission of love.”

“…Okay, let’s class it up a little. It’s a beautiful moon, isn’t it?”

“It sure is.”

“Huh? Um, that was the way that Natsume Soseki translated—”

“I know! I was just stringing you along!”

It was how the great author Soseki had famously translated the English term I love you into Japanese, his reasoning being that the term love didn’t have a direct counterpart in the rarefied literary language of nineteenth-century Japan.

“Well, I adore you for it, Itsuki.”

“……A durian? Nah, those things smell… Hey, can we knock this off? It’s starting to tire me out.”

“Sure, if you let me have some beer.”

“Go suck on an egg, kid,” Itsuki replied, stabbing at one of the full-size boiled eggs by the rafute with his chopsticks and offering it to her. With a soft “Glom,” she took the whole thing into her mouth, chopsticks and all.

“Mpph…mmm…psshht…”

“Would you stop licking your lips like that?”

He took the sticks out of Nayuta’s mouth while she clearly made a spectacle out of licking her chops as loudly and moistly as possible. The edge of one chopstick was connected to her lips by a low-arcing line of spittle.

“Wow, Itsuki. Planting one of your balls right in front of my face? Maybe you are a little too kinky for me.”

“Would you cut it out with the lewd phrasing?”

Cheeks ablush, Itsuki refocused on his dinner as Nayuta grabbed one of the fried fish bits with her own chopsticks.

…And as they were tossing bon mots at each other, Miyako was in a miniature panic, eyes darting back and forth between the two, wondering when—or if—she should finally intervene.

Back at the hotel, Itsuki turned on his laptop and got to work. He’d had only one round of beer, so he wasn’t drunk enough to be knocked out for the night, and the filling tropical meal and gentle evening breeze through the window—in January, no less—did more than enough to refresh his mind. Work proceeded quickly as a result. It almost made Itsuki consider wintering in Okinawa from now on, before he finally got tired out after almost two hours.

Just as he considered turning in, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to find Miyako on the other side. Her hair was a little wet, and she had a FamilyMart convenience store bag in her hand.

“They had all kinds of booze I’d never seen before,” she said, “so I bought some. Wanna join me?” Her eyes were a bit glazed over, her cheeks flushed, and her voice oddly bright for this late in the evening, convincing Itsuki that she had gotten a head start.

“…Where’s Kanikou?”

“Nayu took a bath and went straight to bed.”

“Oh.”

Inviting herself into the room, Miyako took a few cans out of the bag and lined them up on the table. From the Nangoku Chuhai to the Orion Southern Star and Special X beers, Itsuki hadn’t seen any of the brand names over on Japan’s main island.

“The convenience stores in Okinawa are crazy! They sell taco-rice bentos and rice balls with pork meatballs inside them—and, like, limited-time burgers and snacks and stuff. And they were selling soba noodles in the oden food display, too. Oh, and tons of regional juice and stuff in the vending machines!”

“Yeah, I know. I got all my meals out of the convenience store last time I was here.”

“Wow, can’t say I can praise you for that,” a stunned Miyako replied as she pulled the tab on the Southern Star and began sipping it. Itsuki, for his part, was tackling the shequasar-and-pine-flavored Nangoku Chuhai, another Okinawa-exclusive flavor combo. He hadn’t had anything to drink while writing, so he realized for the first time that he was pretty thirsty.

“How is that?”

“Oh, not bad,” he replied after glugging it down to quench his thirst.

“Yeah? I guess this is just okay. Wish I had some of that hibiscus extract to pour in it.”

The two of them continued chatting as they turned to their second cans, Miyako unsure which one to go with.

“Hey, Itsuki?”

“Mm?”

“What do you think about Nayu, anyway?”

“She’s a pervert,” he immediately replied.

“Yeah, um… Well, yeah, I guess so! But being told she loves you all the time like that… I mean, have you ever thought about going out with her, a little?”

“…Think about it, huh…? I already turned her down. Like, ages ago.”

Thanks to the alcohol, Itsuki was having a bit of trouble focusing his eyes.

“R-really? When?!”

“…”

He opened the Special X and took a swig, letting out a quick burp that sounded oddly cute to Miyako along the way.

He explained to her that Nayuta had come back to his apartment three days after her first visit to ask what he thought of her debut work and of her love confession. Apparently, he replied, “I can’t be that way with you,” and that was that. Nayuta burst into tears on the spot, and Itsuki, as he put it, still recalled what an ass he felt like, watching her fall to her knees and cry in his apartment. Even if it wasn’t particularly his fault, he felt completely worthless, unable to do anything to help.

When Nayuta turned to leave, head hung down low, he heard her whisper, “…Will you still talk to me, Mr. Hashima?” Itsuki was so racked with guilt that he hesitantly said, “S-sure, of course. I mean…I’d always love to have another novelist friend or two.”

…He didn’t expect that would mean Nayuta would visit his apartment again the very next day.

Still, after just claiming he’d “love” to have another friend, he found it a bit too cruel to summarily kick her out. So he invited her in, and they started playing some game or another together. Then she visited again and again, which brought them to their current relationship.

“Ohhhh…”

“‘Ohhhh’ what?”

“Mm. I just felt kind of guilty. All this time, I had pictured you as this bastard who kept dodging any actual commitment with this cute girl hanging around you but giving her just enough positive reinforcement so she stuck around.”

“…You did?” Itsuki gave her a bleary glare.

She grinned apologetically. “Why don’t you two just become a couple? I mean, she’s cute, and—wait. Never mind. I take that back.”

“?”

Miyako took her eyes off the perplexed Itsuki.

Why aren’t you a couple?

She remembered one of her friends asking her the same question multiple times and how it had always put her on the spot. It wasn’t as if she minded hanging with people she didn’t like just because they were handsome or smart or captain of the soccer team or rich or had a bright future ahead of them or whatever. Maybe she’d start to like him over time if she kept it up. It’s just that people kept assuming that they’d get together—that it’d be weird if they didn’t—and Miyako resented that.

“…So you really don’t think anything about her?” she ventured again.

“Well, that’s a stupid question.” Itsuki turned his face away from her. “…I don’t think nothing about her, no. And that’s what makes this so shitty.”

Seeing his shockingly reddened profile almost made Miyako want to cry on the spot.

“…Have you ever read Kanikou’s books, Miyako?” he whispered, eyes still downturned.

“…No,” she replied.

“…You should, as long as you have no writing aspirations for the future. If you don’t, you’re seriously losing out. You had the free time to read my stuff; you should really devote it to Nayuta Kani’s instead…”

He delivered it almost like a monologue, then capped it off by falling to his side and instantly starting to snore. Hearing this unfamiliar, amazingly unarrogant side of Itsuki came as a shock to Miyako.

“…Guess you got a lot on your plate, too…”

The next morning, the three of them were discussing the day’s itinerary over breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

“This is our first trip to Okinawa,” Miyako began, “so we gotta hit up Shuri Castle and the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. Beyond that, you guys got any recommendations for the island in the winter? Anything you wanna do?”

“Um…”

“Meww?”

The responses from Itsuki and Nayuta, both of their eyelids still heavy from fatigue, were rather sluggish as they chewed on their grilled fish.

“I said, do you have any place you wanna go?”

“…Ooh, not so loud. It’s ringing in my head…” Itsuki winced.

“What, are you hungover?”

“…Don’t be stupid… Who gets hungover after a single can of beer…?”

“One can…? Do you even remember what you did last night?”

“Um… I was writing late at night, and I must’ve dozed off sometime…”

Miyako sighed at Itsuki. He really didn’t remember. And she wasn’t much in the mood to clue him in. After their deep conversation, she’d spent a while longer drinking as she’d enjoyed the sight of Itsuki sleeping like a baby. It’d be a little weird if that got out.

“So you wanna go somewhere, or what?”

“Mmngh… Desert island.”

Miyako raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“…In the next volume, I have this event where the hero and his little sister get marooned on a desert island. I wanted to get some material.”

“Hmm… Well, maybe there’s an uninhabited island we can check out nearby. I’ll do some research.”

And so, just a bit after noon, the three of them arrived at one of Okinawa’s outlying islands.

Chatting with the hotel staff and a guy who worked at the place where they had lunch, Miyako had tracked down an island that, at this time of year, was unlikely to have anyone on it.

“Thank God we have Myaa with us, huh, Itsuki?” Nayuta chirped.

“…Yeah,” Itsuki replied.

When it came to hotels, flight reservations, and other things he could buy as part of a prearranged system, Itsuki could handle that, no problem. Actually talking to live human beings and getting info out of them, meanwhile, was an ordeal. Having Miyako and her superior communication skills handle that was a godsend for him.

Just as her contacts had suggested, there were no tourists on the island today besides the three of them. It was a small one, too. They had been walking down a narrow path, snapping pictures on their phones, and all too soon they were on the opposite beach from where they’d started, the blue ocean spread before them.

“Wow…,” Miyako sighed.

“Iiiit’s beach time!” Nayuta intoned as if they were in a poorly acted anime scene, flipping off her shoes and mincing her way across the sand.

“Ooh, it’s cold! Guess I should’ve expected that.” Miyako joined her, removing her shoes and planting her feet into the crystal-clear waters.

“We should swim in it anyway, Myaa! We’re here and all!”

“What are you, crazy? We don’t have any swimsuits.”

“What do we need those for?” countered Nayuta calmly. “There’s nobody heeeere…”

“Huh?” Miyako blankly asked as Nayuta began to wriggle out of her T-shirt. “Whoa! What’re you doing, Nayu? Itsuki, look away!”

“Y-yeah, I know!”

He had reflexively turned around, not needing what Nayuta was doing spelled out for him. Without a moment’s hesitation, Nayuta had her shirt and skirt off, flinging her panties into the air before falling straight into the water, not a stitch on her.

The way she shouted “Splassssh!” only added to the bizarreness. Some of the resulting spray landed on Miyako’s clothing.

“Hey! Come on! Put your clothes on!”

“It’s so cold, Myaa!” Nayuta opened her eyes wide, as if this came as a surprise to her.

“Of course it is!”

“I, um, I think it’s fine, though. You come in, too, Myaa!”

Nayuta stood up and began splashing more water in Miyako’s direction. Every time she swung her arms, she drummed up some remarkably wide-ranging sprays, considering her small size.

“Agh, that’s cold! You’re getting me wet!”

“C’mon! You too, Itsuki!”

“You dumbass!” Itsuki shouted as he ran off, taking pains not to turn toward Nayuta.

“Knock it off, Nayu!”

“We were in the same public bath together last night, Myaa!”

“So what?!”

In the waters, which were painted a dazzling array of sparkling colors by the sun, the way Nayuta spun her silver hair and pale limbs around in her torrents of water made her look like some kind of demented water spirit. It was even starting to make Miyako’s heart race, despite her preference for the opposite sex. It was a portal to an alien world out there in the sea, and if she waded in there, too, she might just become part of the fantasy realm unfolding inside.

It was oddly exciting. Oddly irresistible. She had to follow those emotions.

“Ughh! Itsuki! You keep an eye on the beach! You peek, and I’ll break your collarbone!”

Without waiting for a reply, Miyako tore off her clothes and followed Nayuta into the sea. She ran as if she were trying to traverse the water’s surface, shrieking “Ahhh, it’s collld!!” all the while.

“Over here, Myaa.”

“All right! You happy now?!”

“Nyaaah!”

Nayuta splashed more water her way, enjoying every moment. Miyako fought back.

“Oh Godddd, what am I even doooing?!”

Even this far south, the sea in January wasn’t exactly warm. Going into it buck naked really was pretty stupid. I’m doing something right now I wouldn’t even dream of doing. If my college friends saw me, what would they even think?

“Nya-hah-hah!”

And this girl in front of her, carrying on like a child, hanging around her and giving her affection as if they were sisters, was apparently this genius-level writer who made Itsuki Hashima—someone Miyako already found impressive—say de facto “forget about me” by comparison.

Ever since she’d met Itsuki, she had fallen into the habit of reading novels, making occasional inroads into manga, games, and anime as well, but Nayuta Kani’s work was still unfamiliar to Miyako. She had avoided it, in fact. She had the vague impression that somehow, if she read her stuff, she wouldn’t be able to interact with Nayuta the way she did now.

But the Landscape series was enough of a bestseller that most bookstores gave it prominent positioning. Whenever Miyako ordered a book on Amazon, Nayuta’s stuff would show up high in the “Customers who bought this item also bought” section all the time. She couldn’t help but notice it. Every volume of hers had several hundred reviews, most of them fawning—almost into the realm of worship sometimes, with people claiming this book “changed [their] life” or “saved” them.

It made Miyako wonder, Have I ever changed someone’s life? Or saved them?

As the guy on the 10,000-yen bill wrote, “It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. But that doesn’t, like, mean everybody’s equal in real life, either.”

That made sense to Miyako. People aren’t equal. Nayuta Kani was more valuable than her. And she was less valuable than Nayuta Kani. And, she thought, someone like herself had no right to interfere in her love affairs.

The tears came rolling down. They were quickly washed away by the plumes of water Nayuta was splashing at her, impossible to notice.

Meanwhile…

“I’m the one who should be saying that. What am I even doing?”

Itsuki was seated behind a boulder and staring at the sky. Two naked women were shouting at each other just on the other side of it. If someone asked whether he wanted to look or not—hell yeah, he wanted to look. And he probably wouldn’t get caught, either, if he peeked out from behind the crag.

But Itsuki boldly resisted the urge. He was here on this desert island for research purposes. The captain of the boat they’d taken had warned him to watch for poisonous vipers, so he couldn’t go exploring by himself. Vipers sounded scary.

“Talk about a snake in the grass…”

And as time continued to crawl, second after anguishing second, he couldn’t help but wish he had been smart enough to bring his computer along.

After taking the boat back to Okinawa’s main island, they toured Shuri Castle and bumped around International Avenue, Naha’s largest thoroughfare, picking up some souvenirs as they did.

They spent most of their second full day at the Churaumi Aquarium, gawking at the whale sharks, then had a fast-food dinner at A&W. The four root-beer refills Nayuta enjoyed there laid so much waste to her GI tract that they almost missed their flight back home.

But make it back to Tokyo they did, later that night, although they almost froze their asses off all over again returning home before snuggling back around the kotatsu. The HVAC guy came to fix the system the next day, and then everything was back to normal.

Itsuki had dug the whale sharks so much—even buying a bunch of cheap merchandise at the aquarium before he’d left—that he quickly whipped up a new book proposal centered around the tale of a little sister who lived naked on a desert island with her brother, who was cursed and turned into a whale shark.

“Hey,” his editor Toki said, “that might actually work. Kind of a fairy-tale fantasy love story. It could be a new Itsuki Hashima frontier to explore.” But he rejected it anyway. Itsuki was adamant that the man must be doomed to be a whale shark forever and united with his sister underneath the churning waters, and Toki just couldn’t wrap his head around the feel-good climax.