I used Akio's keys and let myself inside Vaunted. Hot and stuffy. My nose immediately picked up what Nagisa had said she smelled on Tsuki and me at the cafe. I burrowed my nose impulsively under my shoulder and sniffed; sweat, alcohol, perfume, and maybe turmeric. A shock tingled down my spine and my attention fixated suddenly on the kitchen door. We closed the kitchen door that morning before we left, Tsuki or I had. Facing the bar, that door should be out of view when closed. But now fully open, the kitchen door was partially visible behind the bar.
Maybe we were not the only guests Akio was permitting to use his bar as their love hotel. Although the hour was mid-afternoon, perhaps a salary affair. A lunchtime tryst. The sofa looked as we had left it, unlikely that the bed had been drawn after us. I wondered where they had done it.
I stepped towards the bar; to collect my things from the office I would need to go through the kitchen, which also led to the shower. I felt a draft behind me and realized that I had not fully closed the front door. My hangover all of a sudden came fully into consciousness. I felt a sharp burn and throbbing on my head where I had caught the keys. My jaw stung. I needed to vomit.
A skip to my right, I pulled the restroom door but the door was locked. My body tingled almost as wretched as the heaving convulsion when I grabbed my knees and breakfast fire-hosed out from my mouth.
Apparently, bone can sting. My skull rattled like I had hit my funny bone but felt the buzzing ice all over my head. My lungs recovered and I inhaled deep until I caught my breath. Click.
The restroom door unlocked.
Puzzled and immediately panicked with embarassment I said “Wait! There’s fucking vomit all over, all over the floor here. Let me just—I’ll clean this up real quick.”
Hunched over, I looked up at the door. No other sound had come from the restroom. No flush. No movement. I didn't recall hearing any reaction from the toilet to the vomit fire-hosing that had just fire-hosed against the door. No reaction to my presence at all. Only, persumably, now the door was manifestly unlocked. Is someone in there? I noticed that I had not asked out loud.
“Hello?” I said.
The restroom door felt infinitely thick. And cosmically, un-acknowledging. I reached for the doorknob when from the landing outside I heard the elevator doors opening. Footsteps and a shadow cautiously approached the bar. The front door already ajar.
Akio slowly pulled the front door wide open, and stepped inside.
“Euh? You. What happened?” He said.
“I’m really sorry. I just came to get my luggage.”
“Where is Tsukiko?”
“She’s at work. At her cafe. I was just there.”
Akio appeared less suspicious of me as I felt he ought to be. When I answered his question about Tsuki, he glanced away from my face and carefully took in the scene, then back to the scene on my face, and the splatter pattern at my feet just outside the restroom.
“You had too much to eat,” he said.
“Yeah. I guess I did.”
Akio laughed out loud with a tinge of what I took as dismissive although sentimental pity. He told me I could find cleaning supplies in a closet in the office; but to wash myself first; that I look like shit; that my smell harrasses him.
Feebly I said, “There is someone inside.” I reached towards the restroom door and Akio hissed. I would spread the vomit, he said. Then he repeated his instructions to go wash myself and find the cleaning supplies so I can leave his bar clean. I sensed his patience waning.
Rounding the bar towards the kitchen, I saw Akio lean over the drying vomit towards the restroom door. He knocked and he called, “Ohayou! Risa? Hello!”
No sound came from the other side. Akio fondled the door knob, but he did not bother to pull.
Cold cold water on my face. I closed my eyes and let a wave of nausea settle in my stomach. Before another night like last night, I thought, I needed a couple of days to restore; and wondered how Tsuki was feeling, and thought of how her perfume and hair lingered in basements and boutiques alike, dives and dungeons, and yet some of the most whimsical and light-hearted bars and cafes anyone had ever shown me, her hands and her stomach and whether she had had her nap, how she and Nagisa were handling the afternoon rush, if there was one, and that I will message her after I attempt to fix my reputation with Akio.
“Please," Akio said. I had cleaned the floor just outside the restroom then immediately opened the door. The restroom was empty. Only a waft of lavender air freshener besides the commode and washing supplies for guests.
Akio continued, "You need to sleep. Please go. I need to make the bar ready. You and Tsuki are welcome again. But please take care. Of you, for Tsuki. If you become an idiot I will interfere.”
I needed to take a shit but sensed I should wait. I thanked Akio, and apologized unsure whether to bow, or whether a bow from me would come off as insincere, but he seemed to wait for it, so I bowed watching him until his face seemed to approve of my depth.
Outside while I felt like I could lean against the sunlight, I waited at the elevator thinking I would prefer to get a proper hotel room than a capsule. And recover for a couple of days. I would proabably see Tsuki tomorrow, I thought, in Tama where she said she would stay with her sister for a few days. The bar door was propped open, and I heard Akio from inside say Here!
Akio emerged from the dim and aerating bar to give me a plastic bottle of water. I said thanks and he laughed. No no, he said—your tab.
“The first time I told a girl I liked her she started crying," I said. She didn't cry from joy. And since then I second-guess the compulsion I may feel to confess romantic feelings.
Tsuki smiled into her hand and covered her mouth and yelped. She had aborted a sip of coffee, and gently landed her cup on its saucer.
We sat in a cafe garden in Tama. A choir of cicadas shifted the ambient pitch up around us like an amplifier with a loose ground. Tsuki herself appeared to audibly scintillate in a controled, reserved manner. Her words came out like a smooth bassline. She wore light touches of make-up. But a deeper, rebalance perhaps seemed to have given her spirit a fresh charge and an embodied glow. In her voice something had noticeably resolved, or restored. She was calmer than I had seen her in the two months we had known each other. Not inhibited as poised in her manner. An orchestra felt within each gesture and intonation. After we had been seated, for almost twenty minutes I thought that she had withdrawn; that perhaps her sister, or Akio, or abstinence and sobriety, had changed her feelings about me and our curiosity towards an a priori connection and having messages from the future for each other. Perhaps common sense had prevailed over the spells we had cast on one another.
Then after a pause to finish laughing and take her sip of coffee she said, “I have no problem to say my feelings. But to say my feelings in a direct way—is not common for Japanese people.”
"Personally, I appreciate the restraint.”
“Restraint? No, not restraint. Feelings that are not yours can be a burden to the person you are sharing with. Harmony is a higher value. You manage your feelings privately. Not restrain them.”
“How do you choose?"
“Euh? What do you mean?”
“When to express yourself, or not? To be direct or—”
“Ah! I feel the difference. For you, you have that openness in your culture. Maybe it's always the same. Although you are shy. For me, the difference is like feeling drunk and feeling sober.”
“And right now. Are you drunk or sober?”
“Ehhh. Wasted.” She laughed. Her perfume alighted the breeze in scent particles like spores.
"Me too. And I was just recovered from the other night."
Tsuki put a hand on each breast and said her stomach was so messed up the day after. I never asked her why she grabbed her breasts whenever she mentioned her stomach.
I said, “Oh, by the way—Vaunted.”
For the past two weeks, Tsuki and I had crawled over central and west Tokyo, all-nighters consuming each other and whisky and beer and konbini bento boxes, and 'turmeric power,' indulging the reveries of the ecstatic chemistry between us, loving like bandits in Akio's bar, yet not before that moment when I said 'Vaunted' and for the first time did I hear her laugh out loud; no hand over her mouth, and no yelp. A luxuriant percussive ballad that skittered evenly against the atmosphere around her.
She laughed for a good minute. I was flushed with serotonin.
“Sorry,” she bowed slightly and said. Then she asked what I was about to say.
“Vaunted. Is haunted,” I said.
“Vaunted,” red-faced Tsuki said giggling. “Is haunted. In English that sounds funny.”
“You knew about the Vaunted haunting? The Vaunting?”
Sweeping tears from her eyes, she said, “Akio sent me a message to tell me what happened to you. How he found you. He said you are fine. Just you were hungover and confused. Because of the ghost. Hungover from our crawl. Confused from the ghost.”
“We’ve been sleeping in that bar. You knew. Akio knew. Why did no one mention the fucking ghost?”
“I did not think about it. Sorry. And probably she watched us fucking.”
“She?”
“Hhm. Naoko-chan.”
“I regret telling you that story. So much.”
“Hanii. You overthink what I mean."
"I know, I know you're joking. Of course. I was really embarrassed though. And the Vaunting made me feel even more foolish."
"I understand. But—I want to know, were you direct with her? Naoko-chan?”
I paused, noticing Tsuki's U-turn from the ghost conversation, and said, “Not as direct as she was. About what she wanted.”
“So. I want you to be direct with me. For the time we have together. Two months. Or two lifetimes.”
“I am direct with you. But, I sense I should probably tell you something. Now. At least, better now than later.”
Tsukiko smiled and said, “Hhm. I have a feeling you do.”