6

Saturday morning, while I was playing on my phone in my room, I heard a faint knocking on the door.

“Aren’t you ready yet?” Kokoro called nervously from outside it.

“There’s still more than half an hour left before we have to leave...” I said, opening the door.

Kokoro was already ready, with her hair, makeup, and outfit perfectly prepared.

“You’re still in your pajamas?!” she asked, incredulous.

“Thirty whole minutes are going to be more than enough to change.”

“Have you forgotten all those times we went to other events, or when you went on dates with Gojo?! Getting ready properly takes almost a full hour! Do you think there aren’t going to be any girls there today or something?!”

She was right, but I just didn’t have the motivation after everything that had happened.

“I thought it’d be better to keep expectations low, you know... I just want to do something fun. If I do meet any girls, that’d be great too but...”

“Ugh... Listen! Even if you say that, do you know what will happen if you meet a girl and you look like that? She won’t even look at you! What if you find a girl you like even more than Gojo?! You have to put in some effort!”

“I-I guess you’re right, but—”

“No buts! Come with me!” she said, dragging me downstairs by the arm. “Take a bath! And then get ready!”

“But I already took a bath last night.”

“Didn’t I tell you?! On special occasions, you have to take a bath in the morning too!”

Still unconvinced, I did as she said. As I shampooed my hair, I strangely started feeling slightly better.

She’s right. It’d be a waste to go to an event like this and not be prepared, I thought. This helped me find the motivation to do all those things I hadn’t had the energy for lately: trimming my eyebrows, plucking my nose hair, cutting my fingernails, and so on. I noticed with disappointment that my hair was getting a bit too long, since I hadn’t cut it in a while.

I changed into the only fashionable clothes I owned (which, at least, made it easy to choose my outfit) and carefully blow-dried my hair so that it looked somewhat decent.

“Are we running late?!”

“Don’t worry!” Kokoro said. “It’s better to be a teensy bit late and look one hundred percent perfect! This isn’t work, and we haven’t promised to meet anyone at a specific time, so it’s fine!”

“O-Okay!” I replied, and started setting my hair with wax.

When I was finally ready, I found Kokoro sitting on the couch, doing something on her phone.

“Whew... Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said.

My roomie had definitely put in one hundred percent—her makeup was natural-looking, her hairdo was fashionable, and her clothes, which I’d never seen before that day, were the cute kind of outfit that otaku boys liked, which surprised me.

She looked me up and down before giving me her approval.

“Very good. Let’s go!”

In order to avoid running into customers, the event was being held in Shinjuku, instead of Akihabara.

Underage employees could attend too, but of course they couldn’t drink alcohol. Since the seats weren’t assigned ahead of time, we didn’t know who would be sitting at the tables next to ours.

“You know the people we’re gonna meet today?” Kokoro said while we rode the train to Shinjuku. “We’re probably never gonna see them again. So, if you find some girl you like, you have to go talk to her! And if she seems nice, ask her for her LINE! That’s what I’m gonna do, so make sure you do the same!”

“O-Okay...”

She sounded even more serious than she usually was about this kind of thing, probably because this was her first chance in a while to find a boyfriend.

I should follow her example... Maybe—just maybe—I’ll run into someone I like even better than Mashiro.

“Please tell me your name, age, and the name of the café you work at,” the lady at the reception said. After we’d given her our names, we were free to sit wherever we wanted.

“Let’s see... Oh, there’s Iroha!” Kokoro said, finding her friend.

“Oh, Heart-chan! And Ichi too!” Iroha greeted us.

“Are you two joining us?” Mikoto, who was sitting next to her, asked.

Kokoro and I sat at the same table, facing them.

A waiter approached us and asked what we wanted to drink.

Kokoro, Iroha, and I all asked for soft drinks.

“I’ll take a beer. Why don’t you all drink too? We aren’t working today, come on!” Mikoto said.

“We’re all underage...” I told her.

“Ah! Th-That’s true, right...” she said, looking completely shocked by the reminder.

“Aren’t you two kinda... different today?” Iroha asked, eyeing me and Kokoro.

“Huh?”

“Your hair and makeup look even better than usual,” she said, pointing at Kokoro, “and you set your hair, like, for the first time ever,” she continued, pointing at me.

I took care to look nice on days when I knew that Mashiro would be on the same shift as me, but, since I usually went to the café right after school, my hair tended to get all messed up. On days when Mashiro wasn’t working with me, I usually didn’t even bother.

“Aren’t you both waaay too enthusiastic about being here?” Iroha asked.

Kokoro and I held our breaths.

“Ahaha... What are you talking about? Th-There’s nothing different about us,” Kokoro lied as best as she could.

“Yeah, it must be your imagination,” I said.

“Hmm I get it... You’re trying to score today, huh?”

“N-Not at all!” Kokoro nervously rebutted.

“I thought Ichi was into Mashiro though.”

She knew that much...?

“N-No. There’s no way that’s true,” I said, trying to remain calm.

“Hmm? Really?”

“Well, our drinks are here, so... bottoms up, huh?” Kokoro swiftly changed the subject.

“Haaah,” Mikoto breathed after downing her drink. “The first beer after work really brings me back to life!”

“You destroyed that beer. Were you working before coming here?” I asked her.

“Yeah. I have to go to the office on Saturdays too, once every two weeks.”

“You have another job?!” Kokoro gawked.

“Oh, didn’t I ever tell you?”

We went on chatting over our drinks, and continued as we ate. I realized that this was the first time that the four of us had had a chance to talk and relax together like this. Even though I’d agreed to come to the event to meet girls, I was having a good time just chatting. My last day on the job would be next week and I was glad I could have a proper conversation with my colleagues before then.

“Another beer, please!”

“You’re really, like, going to drink another one?!” Kokoro asked with wide eyes.

“Aren’t you drinking too much?” I added.

“Oh, leave me be! I’ve worked for six days straight! I need this!”

Kokoro sighed. “Having a full-time job is tough, huh...”

“Now that I think of it, our contracts with the café will be up soon,” Mikoto said.

All four of us had all attended the same interview and had the same kind of contract, so we would finish more or less at the same time as one another.

“Shame... It was a pretty cool job,” Iroha said, pouting with disappointment.

So she can act adorable when she wants to....

“It was nice being able to chat with you two and poke fun at Ichi...” she went on.

“Don’t single me out like that!”

Am I your monkey or something?!

“Hahaha, I’m kidding! It’s just funny because you react like that. I don’t really like talking with boys, but I enjoy talking with you,” she said with a small smile.

Hearing Iroha say something so uncharacteristically cute, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, caught me off guard.

“O-Oh... You’re just poking fun at me again, aren’t you?!” I said.

“No, I’m serious,” she said.

I-Iroha?! You can’t turn sweet at the last second! That’s illegal! I-I guess you do have a cute side after all...

She didn’t like talking with boys, but I was an exception. Hearing that made me happy. Before starting this job, Kokoro had told me that I should try to be natural and chat with all my colleagues... That was probably why Iroha thought of me this way.

“It was certainly fun while it lasted for me too,” Mikoto said. “I could forget all the stress of my day job when I was at the café. And I’m grateful to you all for being so nice to a woma— to a girl like me.”

The work was hard and seeing Mashiro again would have been awkward, so I was relieved it would be over. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t see Kusumi or these two again. Iroha and Mikoto may have been the first girls I’d been able to have a normal conversation with apart from Kokoro.

“I know!” Kokoro said. “Let’s all get each other’s LINE and Twitter details! That way we can keep in touch, and maybe we can meet up again in the future!”

“Right, that’s cool!”

“Yes, that sounds lovely.”

Everyone agreed to her proposal, and we added each other to our contacts. I liked the idea too, since it’d be a lot of fun to meet again once the job was over.

Despite how entertaining our conversation had become, nature called, and I got up to go to the restroom. When I came back, I found someone else in my seat. It was a guy I’d never seen before. Another guy was standing next to the table, and the two were talking to Kokoro, Iroha, and Mikoto.

Judging from how attractive and flashy they looked, they were probably staff from that male-employees-only café that Kokoro had mentioned.

You can’t even leave for one second to go to the toilet! Where am I going to sit now?! And those girls... They look like they’re having fun chatting away over there. They must have forgotten all about me! Ugh! Girls!

I was slightly mad, but Kokoro had said that she wanted to meet that café’s employees, and they’d approached our table themselves. It wasn’t really that surprising, since she was an extremely beautiful girl; Iroha and Mikoto weren’t half bad either.

Aren’t you lucky? You got what you came here for. But... what am I going to do now? Should I look for someone else I know? But the only other employee I’m familiar with is Kusumi, and I can’t see him anywhere...

“Huh...?!”

My thoughts stopped dead as I noticed something very strange on the ground in front of me. A girl wearing a frilly white dress—this is what they call “lolita fashion,” right?—was crawling around on her hands and knees.

“A-Are you okay?” I asked her, worried that she might be feeling sick.

“Oh, s-sorry... I’m in the way, aren’t I?” she said, staring up at me without getting up.

Her dress looked like a doll’s, and so did her face. She was stunningly cute, with her curled hair divided into twintails and draped over each of her shoulders. Her skin was clear and pale, except for her pink cheeks, and her two big eyes glistened with tears.

Which café does she work at? She’s stunning!

“N-Not at all. Is something the matter?”

“I dropped my phone charm...” she said with a voice so feeble that I feared she might burst out crying at any moment.

“Oh! What does it look like?” I asked.

“It’s a teeny stuffed bunny... It’s pink, and it’s so cute...”

If she was trying so hard to find it, it must have been really important to her—a day shall never come when Kagetora Ichigaya ignores a damsel in distress.

“I’ll help you look for it,” I said, heroically.

“What...?”

“Pink bunny... Pink bunny...”

I crouched down and started looking around the floor for a while, until I eventually found the lost phone charm in front of the women’s restroom.

“Oh, this must be it!” I said, standing up and handing it to her as quickly as possible—also because I didn’t want people to see me crouching down in such a weird place.

“I...! Th-Thank you... s-so much!” she said, unable to contain her joy as she took her stuffed bunny.

“This is my best frie— I mean, my cutest phone charm... So, thank you, really!” she said, looking to be, once again, on the verge of the tears.

“I’m glad we found it then,” I said.

“...”

“...”

The conversation stopped dead.

I remembered that Kokoro had told me to make sure to talk to girls I liked and to ask for their LINE, or else I might never see them again. I definitely liked this girl. She looked cute and sweet... I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want her to think of me as some kind of jerk who goes around picking up girls or something.

In any case, it wasn’t like I could go back to my table, since my seat had been taken.

I’m going to talk to her! I don’t care if things go wrong!

“S-Say, which café do you work at?” I asked her.

“Maid-Tale Café...” she nervously replied, avoiding my eyes.

“O-Oh, that sounds interesting! I’m assuming the outfits are fairy-tale themed?”

“Yes... we have Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, and more like those... And we can choose which one to wear from them,” she replied.

“That must be fun! I-I work at Meow’d Maid Café, where they do, like, cat ears...” I said.

I was so intent on keeping the conversation going that I’d told her where I worked even though she hadn’t asked. What if she thinks I’m a narcissist who can never shut up about himself? She looks like the type to get nervous easily, so I should be more careful...

“I’ll come visit,” she said.

“Ah... Excuse me?”

Did she just say she’s going to visit the café where I work?

“I want to thank you for today...”

“What?! No, I didn’t do anything! You don’t need to, really!” I replied.

“But I’m really grateful... and—”

“I-I’m flattered, but actually I’m going to be leaving next week,” I explained. Even if she did visit, she wouldn’t find me there. It’d be much better if we had a way to contact each other; or rather, I wanted a way to contact her. But how could I steer the conversation to a point where it’d be natural to ask her?

“I see...” she said. “I-In that case... w-would it be fine for you to g-give me a way to contact you?”

“Ah, what?! O-Of course! I’d love to!” I said, shocked by the turn of events.

Why would she ask to contact me? Even if it’s just to say thanks, wow... She’s really polite. I can’t believe that a girl that cute would ask for my contact. I mean, after what happened with Mashiro, I’m a bit skeptical, but...

“Would LINE do?” I asked her.

“Y-Yes! And a-also, if it’s not a problem with you... could I have your Twitter handle?”

“Yes! You could!” I said, immediately telling her both.

When I added her on LINE, I saw that her name was set to “Yume”—dream—the perfect name for such a dreamy girl.

“Ichigaya... Such a beautiful name...”

“R-Really?! Thanks...”

“I was actually supposed to come with a friend today, but she had to cancel at the last minute, and I felt so alone, since I don’t know anyone... So I’m very happy you came and talked to me,” she said, looking up at me shyly.

I was worried I’d annoyed her, but now she was telling me she was happy about me chatting with her. That was a pleasant surprise.

“Ah, I have to leave now... Thank you so much, I hope I’ll see you again!” she said.

“Oh, me too! See ya around!”

She excused herself with a bow before walking toward the exit.

I managed to get a cute girl’s LINE! And she was actually the one who asked me first! I didn’t feel like coming here, but I’m so glad I did. Thanks, Nishina.

I looked over at my table, and the two men seemed to have left. Relieved, I went back.

“Ichigaya! Where were you? You took your time!” Kokoro asked me as she saw me return.

“That’s not my fault! There was someone in my seat,” I said. Since I’d scored a girl’s LINE because of it, I wasn’t even annoyed.

“You were waiting because of that?! Ugh! If you’d come back earlier, maybe these two creeps would have left us in peace!”

“Huh? Weren’t they from that café with all-male all-handsome staff you talked to me about?”

Didn’t she actually, you know... want to talk with those guys?

“Yes!”

“So weren’t you happy they came to talk to you?” I asked her.

“I was at first, but they were totally insufferable! They had this annoying, like, womanizer aura, you know? They kept asking questions without any delicacy, and then when I told them, like, ‘My friend’s coming back from the restroom and he’s gonna sit there,’ they didn’t even listen and one of them parked his ass! And they were sooo stubborn, asking for a way to message us, and... Look! They’re going for another group of girls already!”

I looked at the table that Kokoro was pointing to, and the two handsome dudes from earlier were indeed attempting to chat up more girls.

“I went full snark on them, but they just wouldn’t take the hint,” Iroha said. “Mikoto had to step in and just straight out tell them, ‘We don’t want to talk with you so please leave.’”

“They were terrible, yes,” Mikoto agreed. “No matter how desperate I may be, I’d rather die alone than date someone like that.”

“D-Die alone?! Is there no gray area?!” I exclaimed at Mikoto’s exaggerated comment.

I was honestly surprised by all three of their reactions. I thought that they would be enthusiastic about being able to talk to two handsome dudes, but, as it turned out, girls didn’t like annoying men, no matter how good they looked. I was actually relieved to find out that they weren’t having all the fun while I was away.

Shortly after, the event was over.

Kokoro and I split up with Iroha and Mikoto at the station, and we rode our train home together.

“Another event without getting a decent guy’s LINE...” she said with a sigh. “It figures, since most of the people there were girls. We both didn’t have any luck, huh?”

I pressed my lips together.

“Wh-What’s with that grin on your face? You’re creeping me out!”

“Tsk-tsk, what made you think I didn’t have any luck?” I asked her.

“What?! Do you mean that... Huh?! You got a girl’s LINE?! When?!”

“You remember when I went to the toilet? On the way back, I met this girl who was having some trouble looking for something...”

I explained what had happened to Kokoro.

“For real?! Aww, c’mon! That’s not fair!” she said, disappointed.

She was the one who really wanted to go to this event, and I ended up getting the most out of it...

“But, hey... aren’t you glad you came, after all?” she asked me with a smile. She looked genuinely happy for me.

“Yeah. Thanks for inviting me to come with you.”

Kokoro had helped me get back on my feet after the Mashiro incident. She’d scolded her, comforted me, and even convinced me to go to the event with her when I couldn’t find the motivation myself. Thanks to Kokoro, I was able to meet another girl. And also thanks to Kokoro, I’d found the courage to talk to her. I owed my roommate a lot.

“Our job ends next week. So we’ve still got to look for more places like this,” she said.

“Yeah!”

I wanted to help her, just as she had helped me. And that meant looking for new opportunities to meet new people.

When we got home, I unlocked my phone to find two new LINE notifications from two not-so-surprising senders: the first was from Yume, the girl I’d met earlier, and the other was from Elena.

I started by reading Yume’s.

“Thank you very much for today!★ I owe you a lot. I was very happy to be able to meet you ♪”

After the message, she had also sent me a cute sticker. I couldn’t tell whether she was being polite or if she actually liked me.

Since she was the one who asked to exchange contacts, she probably likes me... Or it could just be like Mashiro all over again... I thought, deciding that I’d reply to her later.

I looked at the other message, the one from Elena. Receiving a text from her was a rare occurrence in itself.

“Sorry for the sudden message. I wanted to thank you for the advice you gave me the other day. I reached out to my company to let them know what I think, and they organized a meeting so that we could discuss things further. I don’t know for certain how things are going to go, but I feel that, thanks to your advice, I was able to take a very important first step forward. Thank you.”

She actually talked to her company about the kind of video she really wants to make! I’m so relieved that Emily Saionji’s videos have a chance of going back to normal...

I then replied to both texts, one after the other. To Yume, I simply wrote that I enjoyed our chat as well. To Elena, I wrote a slightly longer message about how I was happy for her, and to feel free to come talk to me if she ever had anything on her mind.

As for Mashiro, things had gone somewhat sour—or, rather, they were never really sweet to begin with. But, surprisingly enough, here I was texting two other girls. Neither of them was my girlfriend, of course, but I’d have been a fool to complain.