Amon awoke toppling headfirst to the right and stiffened all his muscles to catch his balance on the chair. Last he remembered, he had been reclining on the backrest and had closed his eyes for just a second. Now he could hear the muffled hum of a blow-dryer. Soon it stopped and a few moments later Mayuko came out. With her comet hair tied back in such a way that a strand of her bangs dangled along each cheek, she wore a smaller version of the same yukata as Amon, the liquid ripple of two curving forms beneath the fabric announcing she was bra-less.
“How about a drink?” she asked, drawing the tall bottle from the bag in the kitchen. Amon nodded, so she tonged some ice cubes from the freezer into two whiskey glasses and brought them to the table along with the bottle. The label said it was a kind of shochu called awamori.
“Since when did you start drinking awamori?” Amon asked, “I thought you were a wine girl.”
“I’ve grown fond of awamori in recent years,” she said, filling the glasses to the brim. “It’s much lower in calories than wine or sake.” Amon frowned. The Mayuko he remembered never used to worry about such things.
She placed the glasses on opposite sides of the table and sat down across from him with the black and white roses between them. They said cheers, clinked glasses, and brought their lips to the rim. The cool Okinawan rice liquor tingled Amon’s tongue and went smooth down his throat before rocketing warmth from his belly to his head. They put their glasses down on the table simultaneously and Amon saw that hers was more than half empty. He had only taken a sip. They sat in silence for a moment while Amon stared at her and Mayuko down at the flowers. Her upper body above the table was a silhouette against the window and he gazed behind her into the night. The glass was fogged and he could make out nothing but distorted light and blurry shapes. Faint screams and rumbling wheels whispered in the background.
“What a nightmare this all is,” Mayuko said eventually, still looking at the flowers.
“Yeah. Unbelievable.”
“I want to be positive about this, you know. I mean you’re safe and we’re spending time together for the first time in ages. So I’m trying to tell myself it could be worse. But then I remember that someone is after you. And then I think about Rick…”
Amon said nothing. He stared at her as she absentmindedly fingered the loose bang dangling along her right cheek.
“We’ve known him pretty much our whole lives,” she said, “and… what happened—it still hasn’t sunk in, you know?”
Amon nodded. “Everything happened way too fast. Yesterday he didn’t show up for work and today… Suddenly he’s just gone.”
“Do you think it’s really true? Was Rick… murdered?”
“I don’t know. The seg did say train suicide, but—”
“What?”
“Well, like you said in the car earlier, Rick was bad with money, but he was happy.”
“How come you’re so sure?” she said taking another sip of awamori. “I thought you two hardly talked anymore.”
“We don’t… didn’t,” Amon flinched slightly with a twinge of sadness when he corrected himself. “But even still, I picked up on little things, like the way he was always in a good mood when he showed up late in the morning. He’d be panting as though he’d just sprinted from the station. Then he’d bow a thousand times looking all embarrassed, and his hair would be digimade tousled as though he’d been too hurried for morning hygiene. But I could tell it was just an act. When he should have been feeling guilty, he seemed relaxed, almost carefree. I never understood why until that night at Self Serve.”
“What? Did he say something?”
Not thinking about what he was saying, Amon had let something slip. And realizing that now was not the time to bring it up, he backtracked, “N-no. Nothing in particular. It was just… this feeling I got, you know? That his attitude kind of made sense for him. That’s all.”
“A feeling?” Mayuko didn’t look up from the flowers, but she frowned, appearing unconvinced. Her hands seemed to have minds of their own. As her right index finger looped and unlooped her hair around itself, her left one ran around the rim of her glass, which Amon found odd as it wasn’t a wine glass. He took another sip of his drink while the muffled theme park racket infiltrated their silence. Something was gnawing at him. He had to get it out.
“Listen Mayuko,” he said staring straight at her eyes, which remained focused on the flowers, “I want you to know how grateful I am.”
“For what?”
“For coming to get me from that yard.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s not like I could just, you know, twiddle my thumbs and watch idly while you went bankrupt.”
“No. Really. I don’t know how to thank you enough. I mean, like, I know we didn’t end things on the best of terms. And I know I wasn’t there for you and Rick these last few years. But you came when I needed you the most. You saved me.”
“Just forget about it,” she said with a wry smile, which disappeared as she took another big draught of awamori. Her right hand still working her strand of hair, she shifted in her seat.
Taking another sip of his drink, Amon said, “So what do we do now?”
“Let’s talk about that tomorrow. You look exhausted.”
“I am. But the sooner we work this out the better, don’t you think? Obviously we can’t stay here forever.”
“I’ve rented this place for a week, so there’s no need to rush. Where else could you go anyways?”
“I have no idea, but… I don’t want to burden you any longer than I have to. I mean, it’s not just my actions. You’re covering the interest on my loans too.”
“It’s okay, Amon. I just got a raise last spring and I’ve got a bit put aside. I’m totally fine to cover the both of us.”
“That’s not the point. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve saved. That’s money you earned. It’s your freedom, not mine. Asking you to sustain an extra person is just too much. I feel like a mooch already.”
“A mooch? That’s ridiculous,” her eyes still averted. “Have you thought about what’s going on right now? You’ve been tricked into assassinating the CEM. Then you were hacked and attacked. Now people with lots of freedom to spend are hunting you. With Rick gone, I’m the only friend you’ve got, right? What are you going to do? Become one of those attention panhandlers, spending all day trying to get people to look at you just to buy a few rice balls? The interest on your debt would bankrupt you in seconds. And I don’t care how much it costs. Not everything is about money in this world. So please, just accept that you’re going to have to stay under my care for a while. At least until we can be sure you’re not in danger.”
She finished her glass and poured herself another. Amon still didn’t feel right about the situation, but he couldn’t think how to respond, so he joined her in looking at the flowers. The petals looked fragile but restless, as though eagerly awaiting the slightest draft to float into the air, drift away, and dissolve into nothing, like poised springs formed of the thinnest ice. Amon put his hand over his mouth and stifled a yawn. The effervescent warmth in his head and two sleepless nights worth of exhaustion had crept into the back of his eyes, turning everything in the room faint and unreal, as though color itself had been injected with a sedative.
“So what did Rick say about me at Self Serve?” Mayuko asked, looking up at him at last. Under the gaze of those incisive eyes, Amon was laid bare and knew there was no hiding anything.