Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Aisawa, 1/3
Title: Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Aisawa
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Kurata Kenta/Kandori Asuka (Yokoso Wagaya e)
Summary: As part of an assignment from her magazine, an investigation into the current state of Japanese marriage, Asuka’s all set to go undercover at a couples retreat. But to best blend in, she’s going to need a husband for the weekend. Who could she possibly recruit?
Notes/Warnings: This is a sequel to And The Winner Is..., so it will help to read that first. Spoilers for the entire series. This silly story is mostly an excuse to utilize my very favorite fanfic trope - pretending to be a couple! I guess I got a little carried away LMAO.
“…for the Best of Shizuoka festival,” Nana was explaining, waving her hand rudely in Kenta’s direction. “Pass the sauce, would you?”
Kenta bit his tongue, obediently passing it along as ordered.
“…and it’s going to be an all-week thing, with local interviews with the businesses who are competing.”
“Well, that all sounds very exciting,” his mother said, squeezing her hands together, probably to keep from applauding like a little kid. “You’ll have to make sure you get plenty of rest.”
“I sleep in the location bus sometimes,” Nana said. “Cat naps, you know.”
“It sounds like so much fun,” Asuka butted in, waiting just until Nana had passed the sauce back to Kenta before fluttering her fingers for it. Shooting her a dirty look, he handed the dish across his sister and her wildly gesturing hands and into Asuka’s grasp. She inclined her head in thanks.
“It is fun, although I have to try different foods at each shop.” Nana looked down, patting her stomach. “The camera adds weight, you know!”
“Nana-chan looks perfect on TV,” Asuka insisted. “I could never be in front of a camera like that.”
“What, don’t say that,” his father said. “You’d do just fine, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s more like what I have to say may not be what the viewers want to hear,” Asuka said, offering his dad a sly wink.
Nana patted Asuka’s shoulder. “Oh, I feel that way every day! I have to bite my tongue so much!”
“Which is why you’re so direct at our dinner table,” his father teased her.
The conversation at the table continued on mostly without any need for Kenta to contribute. His sister’s position in Shizuoka seemed to grow week by week, and though he was super proud of her and all she’d achieved, he wished she’d leave some of it a surprise. He already knew what would happen when they turned on the TV in the morning, saw Nana chatting cheerfully with vegetable farmers, interviewing school kids about what the best treats in their cafeteria were.
Though he supposed he’d miss her chatter, soon enough. Nana’s “morning” commute was painfully long, waking just after midnight to get to the TV station or to her location shoots in the Kurata family car. She was just about to the end of her ‘trial’ period and had so impressed her employers that she was going to be kept on permanently. With this came an offer of company housing, a private apartment in Shizuoka City, which would cut her commute time from three hours each way to maybe twenty minutes. His parents were worried sick about her moving out there on her own, especially after everything she’d been through, but Kenta had never seen his sister happier than she’d been since starting her job. Plus, she’d be living in the same building with the other young announcers from the station and had already become fast friends with them, seeing as how they were all on such odd schedules.
Nana ought to have been in bed now, but since Asuka had come by for dinner, she’d stayed downstairs, talking and talking and talking to probably keep herself awake. She had already made plans with their mother and Asuka to go shopping for ‘apartment stuff’ soon, and Kenta was just glad he hadn’t been roped into it. He’d do anything for his sister, so long as it didn’t involve looking at bedding and fluffy pillows for hours.
When Nana’s thorough explanation of the Best of Shizuoka festival wrapped up, she turned to Asuka beside her. “And what about you? Any exciting stories in the pipeline?”
“Well, it’s nothing like a festival,” Asuka said, having a sip of beer. “But I am doing my own version of a location assignment soon.”
“On location?” his father asked. “How exciting!”
Kenta’s dad thought taking the car across town to a different location than his usual for an oil change was exciting, but Kenta kept that sort of mean-spirited thought to himself.
“It might be,” Asuka said, her eyes bright. “I’ve been asked to help out with one of the magazine’s ongoing lifestyle series.” She held up her hand, as though she was placing each word on a TV screen. “Japanese Marriage - An Ongoing Crisis!”
“Crisis?” his mother gasped. “Oh no!”
Kenta snorted into his cup, earning a giggle from Nana. Asuka continued.
“We’ve done things on the usual already. Delaying marriage or staying single. Couples staying childless and the declining birthrate. But we’re shifting focus for the next installment,” Asuka explained before pausing for emphasis. This lured in the non-Kenta members of the Kurata family hook, line, and sinker, the three of them leaning forward to hear what she had to say. “I’ve been asked to cover the ‘crisis management’ aspect. How Japanese couples who are going through troubles are working to resolve them.”
“Like renewing their vows? I saw that on this American program,” his mother said.
“Sure, things like that,” Asuka agreed. “I’ll be attending a couples retreat in Yamanashi this weekend. Married couples go for a weekend, doing activities together, talking, working through problems they have. I’ll be writing about what that’s like.”
An odd feeling made itself known somewhere in Kenta’s stomach, and even though his mother had cooked some strange and spicy Indian dish for dinner, he was fairly certain that wasn’t what ailed him.
“A couples retreat? Huh? By yourself?” his father asked, and when Asuka’s smile grew all the more mysterious, that was when Nana’s face lit up.
“You’re going with someone!” Nana exclaimed, shaking Asuka by the shoulder. “Who? Who is it?”
Kenta could feel his mother suddenly turn her eyes on him, a hawk-like stare that made him shiver a little in his seat. She could be so weird sometimes. He reached for his glass of beer, clutching it in his hand. This dinner had taken a very drastic turn. He suddenly wanted to go back to what Nana was talking about. He’d endure a hundred stories about local businesses in the middle of nowhere Shizuoka before he willingly learned more about Asuka’s weekend plans.
“It’s an undercover assignment, sort of. I’ll be attending with my colleague, Mitsuyama-san. I figure that going solo to a place like that, they’ll know I’m a reporter and they won’t be honest. They’ll be careful with their answers, you know? So we’re pretending that we’re married, there for the same reasons.”
“Ahhhh, that’s so cool!” Nana said, leaning back in her chair wistfully. She brought an overdramatic hand back against her forehead. “Undercover investigative reporting, Kandori Asuka!”
“Pretending to be married!” his father said, chuckling. “Sounds like a tall order.”
“Sounds like a movie!” his mother declared.
“Sounds wonderful,” Nana moaned, probably not too interested in her own work any longer.
Asuka nodded, and Kenta was a little annoyed by how lackadaisical she seemed about the whole thing. Marriage was a big deal, at least Kenta thought it was, and Asuka was just going to fake it? With some…some co-worker?
“Who is he? What does he look like?” Nana continued, stealing the question right out of Kenta’s mind, where he had intended to keep it.
“Huh?” Asuka asked.
“The mystery man! Your husband!” Nana replied, jostling Asuka with her shoulder.
“Ah, right, of course.” Asuka didn’t even look at him as she excused herself from the table, heading for the loveseat where she’d left her bag, rummaging around until she unearthed her phone. “Just a moment, please.”
His mother took his glass from his hands, filling it almost to the brim with more beer, and without saying a word, he drained half of it while Asuka and Nana, heads together, looked at the glowing screen.
“Uwaaaa!” Nana cried, far louder than Kenta thought was necessary. “He’s cute!”
Asuka shrugged, holding out the phone so his mother could see it. Kenta looked over, narrowing his eyes as he watched the struggle cloud his mother’s sweet, gentle face. Because it was pretty obvious that whoever this person was on Asuka’s phone, he was apparently very good looking, because his mother’s eyes widened but she otherwise couldn’t bear to speak.
Because if she agreed with Nana, it probably betrayed everything she stood for, seeing as how she was the president, chief executive, and biggest fan of the “Asuka should be my daughter-in-law someday!” society. Kenta raised an eyebrow, daring her to say something. Meanwhile, his dad was helping himself to some more of the spicy rice and sauce, oblivious to the events happening around him.
“Handsome!” his mother blurted out before scurrying away to the kitchen to start putting away the leftovers. Kenta finished the rest of his beer and set his glass down with a harder thud than he’d planned.
Asuka merely shrugged. “He’s nice. He usually covers sports.”
“Well, if you’re going to be married, maybe you should know more about him than that,” Kenta said, astonished at how bitter his words sounded.
Finally Asuka turned, looking at him with confusion in her eyes. “I’m not…huh?”
Something wicked gleamed in his younger sister’s eyes, and before she could say something incriminating, Kenta got to his feet, hands on his hips. “Nana, you should go to bed.”
She merely smiled, inclining her head. “Roger that, boss.”
The women reaffirmed their plans for shopping, and then it was time for Asuka to go. She put her purse over her shoulder, thanking his parents for the meal. “You’ll have to let us know how everything goes,” his father said. “In case this crisis is something we ought to know about here!”
“There’s no marriage crisis in this house,” his mother insisted, holding out a plastic tub full of leftovers for Asuka to take. “We believe in firmly communicating what we need to say, don’t we, dear?”
His dad blinked. “Hmm?”
Asuka smiled, holding the leftovers up in gratitude. “I ought to profile the both of you. How to overcome the marriage crisis!”
“Have fun,” his father said. “Get home safely, tonight and this weekend.”
“I will!” she assured them, heading for the genkan with Kenta at her heels. She slid into her shoes, eyeing him curiously. “Did I forget something?”
“It’s dark,” he mumbled. “I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”
“Oh? Thank you.”
He usually walked her back, anyhow, but on most nights, he wasn’t so quiet and grouchy about it. On most nights, they chatted like nothing had changed. He asked her opinion on things at En-Suta, feedback on what he was writing. She talked about what she was working on. But things had changed, lately.
Since the night of the magazine awards, Asuka had been a little aloof toward him. Well, she was usually difficult to read, blunt and self-assured about some things and quiet and withdrawn about others. Then again, it wasn’t like Kenta had been all too open and honest with her either. The last few weeks, his growing feelings for her had been flooding his mind, distracting him.
Sitting at work, remembering how different it had been when she’d still been there, at the table by him with her colorful, sticker-adorned computer, typing away. Contenting himself with her comfortable presence in his house, at least once a week for dinner. Replaying moments they’d shared, just the two of them, and convincing himself that they’d been signs that he ought to make a move already.
The thought of confessing to Asuka, though, it freaked him out. Because what if she didn’t want anything like that, something more? Even though sometimes he thought that maybe she did. He’d talked himself out of saying anything to her for a few weeks now, and she was bound to notice eventually that he was being weird.
Tonight had only made things worse.
“I don’t like it,” he mumbled, slowing his strides so she could keep up with him.
“You don’t like what?” she asked, and he wondered if she really hadn’t figured him out yet, considering how sharp she could be about other things.
“The lying,” he said, knowing full well that that was a lie, too. “You’re going to lie to those people.”
“Ah,” she said, her sneakers dragging a little as they continued together. “So that’s what you’re mad about, I get it.”
She really didn’t.
“Kurata-san, do you have so little respect for my methods?” She chuckled quietly. “Yes, I know it’s lying, pretending to be someone else to get the story I want, but let me also tell you that I have no intention of exploiting these people. At the retreat, I mean. Even if they tell me personal things or I learn personal things about them in passing, it’s not like I’m going to put their names and addresses in my story. It’ll be perfectly anonymous, A-san said this or B-san said that. I’m not even going to name the resort. It’ll just be one reporter’s experience in the world of couple retreats.”
“You won’t feel guilty? At all?” he asked, shuffling his feet. “Pretending to be something you’re not?”
She was quiet for a while, and he thought that he’d upset her, but when she spoke again, her voice was just as light and unbothered as usual. “I think it’s kind of exciting, actually.”
She would feel that way, he reasoned. When they’d first met, Asuka had always been a little too excited about investigating Nameless-san, rather than annoyed and wary as Kenta had been. Well, at least until things had truly gotten out of hand, and she’d been thoughtful enough to keep any thrills and joys about playing amateur detective to herself.
They reached the bus stop, and they had a seat while they waited. Asuka tapped her fingers on top of the tub of leftovers.
“Marriage is very serious,” she said, out of nowhere. “And since I’m not married myself, I can only think about it in abstract terms. Maybe I’ll learn something.”
“Like what? Why couples fight? I could name a dozen things. Cheating. One person wants to have kids, the other doesn’t. Money. Work…”
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “When a problem gets bad, really bad, I want to know why people still want to make it work. Why that impossible thing between them is worth compromising over. Or why it might not be, so they get a divorce. I want to understand what those make or breaks are. Not the problem itself, but what makes people decide if a marriage is worth saving or not.”
He looked over at her, confused. Wasn’t the answer simple? That they loved each other?
She was staring at the curb, pondering. So maybe Asuka wasn’t just doing this to ‘have fun’ impersonating a married person. She genuinely wanted to know what married life was like, although Kenta didn’t know why she had to do all this weird method acting with some guy she worked with.
The bus came around the corner, and they got to their feet. “Well,” he said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” When she turned to look at him curiously, he cleared his throat. “For your article. I hope you get what you need for the article.”
Her lips parted slowly, as though she wanted to say something, but then she turned away, digging in her bag for her transit card. “I hope so too,” she said before giving him a little wave and boarding the bus.
It pulled away, leaving Kenta alone.
--
He was just getting on his bike Friday morning when his phone rang. When he pulled it from his pocket, he frowned.
“Asuka-san, good morning,” he answered, wondering if she was calling to let him know she was off for her fake marriage.
“Come to Hamamatsucho bus terminal, I need you!”
“Huh?” he asked, balancing his phone between his ear and his shoulder, undoing the lock on his bike. “You forget something?”
I don’t have any spare wedding rings lying around, he thought angrily.
“Mitsuyama-san is sick, and he can’t come.” Her voice was a little more desperate when she spoke again. “I need a husband, right now.”
He nearly dropped his phone, fumbling with it in his hand. “You’re joking!”
“I’m not!” He could hear station announcements in the background of her call. “Please, just pack a bag. I can book us on the next one that goes out in…hold on.”
He stood there in the driveway, unable to move.
“…in two hours. Please, Kurata-san?”
He finally found his voice. “Hold on, I can’t go away for the weekend! I have work to do and…”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I already called Editor-in-Chief.”
“To be your husband?”
“No!” she replied, sounding repulsed. “I called him so he could excuse you from work. You are hereby excused.”
Kenta held his phone away from his ear for a moment, wondering if he was dreaming. But the impatient “Kurata-san, are you there?!” that came shouting out of the phone confirmed that he wasn’t.
“I can’t ditch work!”
“It’s not ditching. I’m serious, I called him. Wait, you know what? I will hang up, and you can call Editor-in-Chief and confirm it yourself. Hanging up in three…two…”
“Why me?” he asked, shutting his eyes and hating how his heart was racing over something so stupid. He wasn’t really agreeing to this, was he? Did Kanie-san just want to get rid of him for the day? “Why do you need me of all people?”
“The magazine already paid for it,” she explained. “I may as well still go.”
“Get a refund,” he shot back.
“Kurata-san!”
He heard the front door of the house open and close behind him, his mother coming out with her watering can to tend to the flowers by the front gate. Seeing him there, on the phone and not already off for the day, brought a very curious look to her face that he didn’t much like.
“What do I have to bring?” he whined.
“Just yourself and whatever you’d pack for a weekend trip. Maybe a light jacket, since apparently this place is at a higher elevation and they have some outside activities.” Her voice sounded a little more eager. “Are you considering it? Please say you’re considering it!”
“I’m considering it,” he mumbled, knowing he was going to give in. Because as much as it horrified him, this entire stupid set-up, at least he had no reason to be jealous if he was going with her in place of her dumb, good-looking colleague who wrote about sports.
But a whole weekend alone? With Asuka? He wouldn’t entirely be alone, if there were going to be other couples on the retreat, but still…no meddling Mom, no meddling Nana…hell, maybe it would be the boost he needed. That if he confessed to her someday soon (maybe), Asuka would remember what he’d been willing to do for her, attending her undercover lie of a weekend so she could write her story.
“Hamamatsucho?”
“The bus leaves in an hour and fifty-five minutes,” she said, and he was a bit cheered to hear how happy she sounded. But it was most likely because she could still carry out her plan, not because he was the one going along.
“Alright, I guess I can come.”
“Ohhhh!” she cried noisily, probably enough to turn heads at the bus terminal, and he couldn’t help grinning. “Oh, Kurata-san, you’re the best. The best, thank you! Thank you! Thank you, ahhhh, this is such a big help, thank you!”
He finally managed to hang up after Asuka’s ninth enthusiastic thank you, turning to inform his nosy mother of what remarkable thing had just been decided over the phone. He wasn’t surprised at all when she let her watering can drop to the concrete and flung her arms around him, not caring at all what the neighbors might think about it.
--
As soon as he arrived, duffel bag in tow, she immediately held out her hand. “You owe me for the bus ticket.”
“Huh?” he complained, staring at her. “I thought the magazine was paying for this trip.”
“Well, they paid for the tickets Mitsuyama-san and I would have used over an hour ago had he shown up. But since he didn’t and that…that devil woman at the ticket counter wouldn’t let me exchange them, I had to buy them myself.” Asuka stopped her complaining to glare somewhere past his shoulder, at the ticket queue behind them. Somewhere, at one of those ticket windows, she had been gravely wronged. Or so she seemed to believe.
“Are there any other hidden costs I should know about?” he asked grimly, pulling his wallet from his pocket. Besides the cost it would have on his brain, knowing they were going to be sharing a room the entire weekend.
“I don’t think so,” she mused, handing him the bus ticket and gesturing emphatically to the fare on it. Steeper than he’d have liked. “Room is covered, food is covered. I suppose if you want to buy snacks or drinks from the vending machine, you have to pay for that, but otherwise, you get to enjoy a nice vacation courtesy of my employer.”
“It’s not really a vacation,” he pointed out. “I have to lie, just the same as you.”
“And I’m sure you’ll do just fine. Look, we already know each other, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. The more truth there is when you answer something, the easier it’ll be. So when they ask us how we met, you say…”
He stared at her blankly.
“You say?” she tried again, nudging him in the shoulder with her fist.
Was this a trick question? “On…on a train? Well, on a train platform?”
“On a train, that sounds romantic, doesn’t it?” she said, and sometimes he wondered if she even thought before she opened her mouth sometimes. Their very first encounter had been anything but romantic. “Yes, we met on a train. We took the same one every day, and then one day you…”
“Me?”
“You asked me out, of course. And things progressed from there.”
He had an itchy feeling on the back of his neck. Maybe the tag from his shirt, and he scratched at it nervously, moving away to have a seat while they waited. “Are we going to tell people about Nameless-san?”
She sat beside him, hands on the straps of her lavender overnight bag. It had seen better days, was patched up with little bits of unmatching orange cloth in some spots. “I suppose we should skip that. We shouldn’t be the most interesting couple in the room, having stories like that.”
“I guess not,” he agreed, and as they sat there, side by side, he found his heart racing at how easily she’d referred to them as a ‘couple.’ Although he probably shouldn’t read into it that much.
As the minutes passed, as they were called to board, and as the bus pulled out of the station, Asuka taught him their backstory. Or, at least, the backstory that had apparently been agreed upon by Asuka-san and her co-worker. Kenta had never before been so happy for someone’s illness, sitting at Asuka’s side on the bus. She sat by the window and Kenta on the aisle, and she had a whole folder full of information about the weekend.
They were en route to a resort in Yamanashi, not far from Mt. Fuji. It had an onsen, an extensive menu to try, and Asuka casually pointed out that it was Japanese-style when it came to sleeping arrangements, a more traditional feeling with futons on the floor instead of a bed. Kenta was almost grateful for the safety a futon would bring, allowing him to encase himself in his bedcover, keeping them separate. If they had to share a bed, he’d probably have a heart attack at this rate.
To his disappointment, however, they were going to be using false names. Kenta had been Kenta for going on thirty years now, and the thought of properly answering to another name made him nervous. He was going to screw all this up, screw Asuka’s story up. But she had picked him to go with her, so he had to at least try and get along, much as it all weirded him out. They weren’t even dating, and now they had to pretend they were married, had been married for over a year now (at least according to Asuka’s plan of attack).
Married for over a year, Aisawa Masaki and Aisawa Erika, from Tokyo. He was a graphic designer, Asuka had decided, being nice to him and crossing out ‘lawyer’ on the little “Couple Overview” document she had typed up herself. She’d picked their names out of a phone book, but had fancied herself the wife of a lawyer while she was a fiction writer. She certainly would be spinning tales this weekend. The more truth there is, Kenta thought.
And their problem, of course? A lack of time for each other, a lack of communication. Aisawa Masaki worked long hours, which Kenta didn’t think was all that strange. Most people in Japan did, so what warranted the couples counseling? “Having to ask your wife a question like that is exactly the reason why!” Asuka snapped at him, elbowing him before rustling through her ‘Couple Overview’ again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, almost automatically, and it made her laugh.
“Keep asking infuriating questions, and we won’t need to do that much lying, in the end,” she said, tapping her paper with a smile. “Now back to practice. Once again, Masaki-san, please tell me when our wedding anniversary is.”
-
To Kenta’s surprise, they didn’t have to lie to every single person that weekend. A manager at the Mountain View Resort was in on Asuka’s little game, meeting them as soon as the taxi dropped them off in front. Tadahara-san was a petite woman with a clipboard and a firm expression, greeting them with even firmer handshakes.
Since the magazine was paying for their enrollment in the weekend program and because there really wasn’t an Aisawa Erika (or her husband Aisawa Masaki), Asuka had disclosed her true intentions upon making her booking. Tadahara-san whisked them over to the front desk, her managerial seniority keeping the other staff from requiring them to show identification or to run their non-Aisawa credit cards. In a manner of seconds, Tadahara-san had gotten them their room key, and then escorted the two of them discreetly through the lobby to her office in the rear.
She then made Asuka and Kenta both sign documents stating their intentions clearly, that neither Mountain View Resort or any of its guests or staff members would be mentioned by name in Asuka’s article, and that any failure to comply would result in legal action against Tokyo Talker magazine. Kenta was happy with how seriously Asuka took this, assuring Tadahara-san politely of everything they intended to do, presenting the woman with the details of her fake existence.
“I will also forward my article to you prior to publication,” Asuka informed her, “so that if I’ve written anything that might be offensive, I can make proper changes.”
“And you, Kurata-san?” Tadahara asked, looking at him sharply.
“Oh,” Asuka interrupted, waving her hand dismissively. “He won’t say anything.”
Kenta had signed the documents too, but he got to his feet a bit awkwardly, bowing his head to the resort manager. “I…I won’t do anything! I swear!”
When he looked up again, he could see Asuka and Tadahara exchanging small smiles. “Good to know you have our best interests in mind,” the manager said. “Well, please be on your best behavior. Our partnership with Marriage Matters is very important to us here.”
“Of course,” Asuka said, getting to her feet. She grabbed her bag and thrust it out, smacking Kenta in the stomach with it. “Honey, if you don’t mind?”
He groaned a little in pain, but dutifully added the rather heavy weight of Asuka’s bag to his existing burden. “Anything for you.”
With that they were dismissed. Kenta had to admit that it was a pretty nice resort. The cluster of buildings had lots of dark wood and glass, nestled into the midst of tall trees. It was down a narrow, two-lane road, far back from the highway, deep in the forest. Cell phone reception was very spotty, and he barely managed to fire off a “got here safely” message to his mother while he and Asuka took in the lobby.
The lobby was kind of like the central hub of a wheel, with a few spokes radiating out that contained wings with a few floors of rooms while some of the other spokes led off to meeting rooms, a banquet hall, a restaurant, and the baths. By the large stone fireplace at the center of the lobby, there was a sign posted welcoming couples to “Marriage Matters - Let’s Talk! Weekend.”
“This isn’t in English, is it?” Kenta asked nervously, seeing as the sign had “Let’s Talk!” written out in big English lettering. That was way beyond his capabilities.
“I think it’s just their gimmick,” Asuka said, examining the little resort map Tadahara had handed her. “The program facilitator trained in America. Probably why there’s so much emphasis on talking and meeting other couples. I picked the program for this reason, to see if a Japanese audience is receptive to this sort of counseling.”
Kenta shuddered. “How much talking do I have to do?”
She turned to him with a cheerful smile. “Well, since talking is your weak point in this marriage, probably not that much.”
The handles of her bag were digging into his palm, and he tried to focus on that irritation instead of how easily Asuka kept chatting away about their “marriage.” She gestured on the map to which “spoke” housed their room. They were in the ‘Forest View’ wing, which Asuka said was probably resort shorthand for “this side is cheaper because there’s no Mount Fuji view from here.” Her magazine had decided that Aisawa husband and wife were committed to fixing their marriage, but wouldn’t break the bank to do it.
They headed down the corridor that separated the main lobby building from the building housing the Forest View rooms, tinted glass walls to either side of them with a view of trees and plants. He was kind of glad he’d packed bug spray. They were pretty far from civilization out here.
An elevator brought them up to the second floor, and the signs pointed them all the way to the end of the hall. Asuka sure had packed a lot for a weekend, and by the time they made it to the door, he was exhausted.
She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “No need to carry me over the threshold like in those romantic movies,” she announced needlessly, and he struggled his way in after her, biting his tongue to keep from asking her to stop saying things like that because they made him uncomfortable. She’d only do it more if he told her not to.
Though the hall’s exterior gave the impression of a regular hotel, things were considerably more traditional within. They took off their shoes, and Kenta dropped the bags onto the tatami flooring inside the small, but cozy room. It was simply appointed, with a dark, lacquered table, a tea tray, and two cushioned zaisu chairs serving as the only furniture.
No TV, no radio, Kenta thought darkly, knowing that he and Asuka would have to pass their free time in the room either sleeping or, even worse, making small talk. And Kenta was already so nervous about this whole set-up that he feared he’d blurt out something he hadn’t wanted to say to her just yet.
Asuka padded across the floor in her socks to slide open the cupboard. “I’ll have a nap!” she decided, looking thoughtfully at the bedding housed inside.
“You’re kidding,” he complained, dragging his bag to a corner of the room and unzipping it. “We just got here.”
But she ignored him entirely, tugging out a futon and pillow for herself, arranging it haphazardly on the floor. Without a thought for her bag or for the other person in the room, she snuggled inside, still wearing her jeans, and got comfortable.
While she lay on her back, eyes shut and arms thrust out at her sides to take up even more space in the room, Kenta awkwardly stepped around her, going into the small bathroom attached to the room. Small sink, small toilet, and a shower with a glass door. There wasn’t much room for his toiletry bag, which he set down on top of the toilet, figuring Asuka would have far more items with her and would end up dominating the sink area.
He closed the door quietly, and put the toilet seat down, sitting on it. He shut his eyes, rubbing his temples and wondering why he’d been so stupid to agree to this. Jealousy, that was the key to his stupidity. As he sat there in the bathroom, knowing Asuka was just on the other side of the wall taking up more than her fair share of the allotted space in their room, he really was glad that this Mitsuyama-san hadn’t come along. But at the same time, he would now be spending the night with her, two nights, in this tiny space.
Maybe she was the type who fell asleep quickly. But what if she wasn’t?
He got to his feet, frowning, opening the bathroom door to find that her nap was rather short-lived. Somehow, in the few minutes Kenta had been panicking in the bathroom, she’d managed to turn the room into complete chaos.
She was sitting up, still in her futon, and had her sticker-covered laptop open in front of her. Her bag had moved a few feet, and already she’d thrown t-shirts and socks around without a care, having dug through everything to retrieve her computer. She was scowling at the screen.
“Let me guess,” he said, hovering in the doorway. “No Wi-fi.”
“I didn’t think they were serious about that,” she grumbled, tapping on the computer’s trackpad repeatedly. “Aaaaahh, I can’t get online at all!”
“It’ll help you focus on writing, perhaps,” he said, stepping around a pair of neon green shorts on his way to the side of the room he’d somehow managed to claim for himself.
“Perhaps,” she said.
She’d dropped the Marriage Matters - Let’s Talk! itinerary and her folder full of Aisawa nonsense on the floor, its contents strewn every which way just like her clothes. Kenta wondered if Asuka was really a slob or if she only was on vacation. She was always very neat and tidy when she stayed by his house, as far as he knew. The only evidence proving she had even slept in his bed (without him) being the scent of her perfume gently lingering on his sheets, near his pillowcase. He’d fallen asleep happily to that scent a few times now, much as that would probably creep her out if he admitted it to her.
He opened up the folder. “The welcome dinner is at 6 PM.” He glanced at his phone. “So we’ve got a few hours.”
She was ignoring him, her face contorted into a rather ugly, rage-filled expression at her inability to get online. Asuka was usually calm, but he was seeing a new side of her. An Asuka without the Internet. He watched her for a few minutes, feeling just as discarded as the pair of penguin socks that had somehow skittered all the way across the tatami to the sliding glass door beside him.
“Asuka-san?”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Asuka-san?”
She finally looked up, pouting. “It’s Erika. You better call me Erika!”
“I’m not calling you that inside this room,” he fired back, shoving the papers back in the folder, setting it on the table. “You can’t make me.”
She rolled her eyes, and he really wasn’t used to her being this grumpy. It was cute, but only slightly. If they had more room, it would probably not annoy him so much. “Fine. Masaki-san.”
“Can you really not live without the Internet?”
She slammed the laptop lid down, flopping onto her back. “No, I don’t believe I can. Perhaps this was a mistake, Masaki-san!”
It weirded him out the more she used his fake name, and he was getting claustrophobic, having only the corner of the room to himself. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I’m going to go for a walk.”
“Be my guest,” she muttered before putting her pillow over her face.
“I’ll be taking the key,” he decided, getting to his feet and leaving her grouchy self behind. But not before forcing himself to look away from the blue polka-dotted bra that was sticking out of her bag, taunting him.
--
His walk had allowed him to clear his head considerably, walking up and down the hallways of their wing of the resort as well as the others. He’d poked his head in at the baths, seeing a handful of other couples heading inside. He wondered how many were here for Let’s Talk and how many were simply here to relax. With how small the rooms were, at least in the Forest View wing, he wondered if people paid more for the isolation and the baths than for the comforts.
His one good find, though, had been in the resort’s small souvenir shop. Inside he’d found a package of mini-suckers, a variety pack with a handful of flavors he knew she liked. It had cost more than it ought to, being just a bag of suckers, but he figured it was worth the cost. It would at least quiet her complaining a bit.
He knocked before entering, and he found Asuka had changed into a knee-length skirt and a casual top, clothes he’d never seen her wear before, but there was still a hint of “Asuka” to the outfit, since she’d worn her favorite feather necklace. He couldn’t help wondering if she was wearing the blue polka-dot bra too. She was typing madly, so he decided not to disturb her, stepping over even more of her flung around clothes to get to his bag. He left the bag of suckers on the table.
She’d made no efforts in his absence to tidy things up, but she had gone to the trouble of pulling out the other futon and arranging it neatly beside her own. She could have moved it closer to the sliding exterior door, keeping them separate, but for some reason she hadn’t.
He wanted to ask what he ought to wear for dinner, but he didn’t want to disturb her if she was in the “zone” with her writing. Perhaps after finally giving up on searching for Internet access she’d just decided to start writing her article. He was curious how she was planning to write about him. Would he be “Kurata-san” or “Kenta-san” or…
“Masaki-san, no tie.”
He looked at the pile of clothes in his arms, was just about to close himself up in the bathroom. She hadn’t even been looking at him, but he pulled the tie out of the pile and flung it into his designated corner.
He emerged in a long-sleeved green button down and khaki pants, and she was already on her feet, laptop shut and using the small mirror on the cupboard to put on some lipstick. “Nametags please,” she said, giving a little smack of her lips that sent a wave of heat through him.
He turned his back on her, dumping his clothes by his bag and fumbling through the folder for the tags. They each had a clip, and he picked them up. Aisawa Masaki, Tokyo. Aisawa Erika, Tokyo. They were really going through with this.
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and he turned, finding her with her hand out. “Masaki-san, being late for dinner would make for a poor first impression.”
“Right,” he mumbled.
She took the nametag from his hand and clipped it to her shirt. Before he could do the same, she had taken it from his fingers, stepping close to clip it to the pocket of his shirt herself. She patted it gently with her hand.
“There. Perfect.”
She looked up at him and smiled, and he couldn’t look away.
“Asuka-san, I still think this is a bad idea.”
“I know you do,” she said. “But you get a free meal out of it! And everybody loves free meals!”
They left the room, heading for the resort’s restaurant. There was a private room in the rear that had been prepared especially for the attendees of the Let’s Talk weekend. Within, there were several low tables set for four with zabuton cushions. Staff were already going around with trays to set down small plates and equipment for a hotpot meal.
They hesitated near the entrance for a moment. About half the couples were already in attendance, maybe half of them in the comfortable resort yukata, having already visited the baths. The rest were dressed casually, as he and Asuka were.
He felt her hand come around his forearm, and he leaned down to hear her. “I need a good vantage point, to observe and…”
“Hey there, why don’t you come sit with us?”
Kenta and Asuka both jumped, her hand tightening around his arm. He wanted to yelp from her strong grip, but he didn’t. They turned, finding a couple who looked to be close in age to Kenta’s parents. The husband was balding, with a thin little mustache, while the wife was rather round, dressed in a Hanshin Tigers t-shirt and some odd tiger-print pants. She was the one who’d come up behind them and had spoken so loudly.
“Sakai,” the woman said, jostling her husband. “Sakai Haruko and my husband Teruyuki. Hello, you’re both awfully young to be here.”
“Aisawa Erika,” Asuka said smoothly, finally letting him go and inclining her head. “Nice to meet you.”
“Masaki,” Kenta said stiffly, looking down quickly to see indentations from Asuka’s fingernails in the soft flesh of his arm.
“Let’s grab that table over there, it seems lucky, how about it?” Haruko-san said, leaving her husband in the dust to grab hold of Kenta by his upper arm, dragging him toward one of the tables. He looked over his shoulder, panicking, and found Asuka, eyes wide, at a complete loss for words.
Haruko-san almost shoved him down onto a zabuton and to his surprise, sat beside him. Soon, her nearly silent, non-entity of a husband sat across from her, Asuka beside him. He met Asuka’s gaze, and she only smiled.
Within minutes, they had the entire history of the Sakai couple, though Sakai Teruyuki had not said anything, just pouring some sake into Asuka’s cup. Haruko was from Nishinomiya, where the Tigers played, but when she’d married Teruyuki five years earlier, she had moved to western Tokyo for him. Theirs was a third marriage for Haruko and a second for Teruyuki, and things were “on the rocks” Haruko said, without any sense of embarrassment.
Haruko positively dominated the table, waving over the staff to make sure they got things bubbling up in their pot first. Thankfully, because of her personality and seeming need to talk constantly, she didn’t ask about the Aisawa couple at all. But Kenta had a strong sense of why things weren’t quite working out for Mr. and Mrs. Sakai, because as dinner carried on, Haruko sat closer and closer and closer until he felt like his arm was brushing against her every time he lifted his chopsticks to his mouth.
Asuka found all of this incredibly amusing, watching his discomfort with a gentle smile and nearly sparkling eyes. Haruko’s husband didn’t speak once, merely letting out a pathetic grunt when he thought he ought to refill Asuka’s cup for her again. As the meal carried on, there was eventually an interruption. A rather jolly, rotund fellow held a microphone at one end of the room, introducing himself as Kagawa Junichi, the “facilitator” for the weekend. He encouraged them all to have a pleasant evening, to enjoy their meal and the baths because the following day would be “non-stop rebuilding and repairing!”
When Kagawa-san stopped speaking, Haruko leaned over, resting her hand on his thigh. “Can you believe how much this all cost?”
He nearly choked. “It’s…it’s worth it though, isn’t it?”
Her rather meaty hand gave his leg a squeeze. “We’ll see about that,” Haruko said, and Kenta heard the thump of Asuka’s water glass as it hit the table.
“Teruyuki-san, what is it you do for a living?” she asked curtly, and Kenta used the interruption to lean further away from the scary woman beside him. He tried to offer Asuka a thankful look, but she couldn’t even meet his eyes.
“This and that,” the befuddled husband mumbled, and then Haruko took over once again, complaining about the size of the room, given the cost. Money was not a vulgar topic as far as Haruko was concerned, so she had no trouble complaining about the cost of the weekend and then asking Kenta and Asuka both how much money they made.
They both politely declined to share that information, although when Haruko’s continued complaints turned to the Forest View wing in particular, he and Asuka were both stunned into silence upon learning that the Sakai couple was staying in the room just next door.
“Well how about that,” Haruko said. “Neighbors!”
Dinner wound down around them, and before Kenta could even finish the rather tasty pudding the staff had just brought around, Asuka was on her feet and coming around to tug on his arm.
“I want to go to the onsen,” she said emphatically.
He looked up, slurping down a bit of pudding, and from the look in Asuka’s face, he could tell that Sakai Haruko was severely impeding Asuka’s ability to write about her weekend experience.
“Yeah yeah, sure,” he said, letting her hoist him up.
“Well it was a very lovely evening,” Asuka said, “and…”
“The onsen sounds so good right now!” Haruko was saying. She set her chopsticks down, waving her hand in the sake-sloshed Teruyuki’s face. “I said the onsen sounds good!”
Asuka, a little sake-sloshed herself, nearly clung to Kenta’s arm. “On second thought…”
“Erika-chan, we’ve barely chatted. I want to get to know you! Let’s say we meet back in fifteen, how about it?”
Kenta felt Asuka’s grip on him tighten, and much as he liked her sort of possessive clinging, especially after Haruko’s overly friendly touchiness, he could sense that Asuka was really pissed off and trying desperately to hide it.
“Fifteen minutes then,” Asuka gritted out. “That sounds lovely.”
They bypassed the other tables, most of which had been much quieter than theirs, on account of there being nobody else as obnoxiously loud as Sakai Haruko. Asuka was warm, really warm, as they left the dining hall.
“Let’s hurry,” she begged him, dragging him down the corridor, around a slower-moving couple. “I’m not sharing an elevator with them.”
When they got back into the room, Asuka sat down heavily on her futon, sighing. “She’s going to ruin everything,” Asuka moaned.
Kenta chuckled. “You should just write about her,” he said. “She’s…she’s quite a character.”
“She’s unbelievable,” Asuka said, punctuating her sentence by angrily kicking her legs in the air, and Kenta looked away before her skirt ended up riding up her thighs. “She sits herself down next to you, and my god, she is old enough to be your mother, and then she’s all over you!”
“Hence the marriage counseling,” Kenta pointed out, pushing open the cupboard to find the matching yukatas left for them. White with blue stripes, with rather soft fabric. He dropped hers beside her. “I’ll change first.”
But by the time he came out of the bathroom, Asuka was already tying the sash on her yukata, a sucker in her mouth and her hair tied up and out of her face. “Why would you come for marriage counseling if you clearly don’t care about your marriage?”
Kenta felt himself blushing, tying his own sash tighter as he moved to put his clothes away. “Maybe it was his idea.”
“Ugh, I don’t understand them. I need to be able to talk to the other couples. People who aren’t horrible.”
He smiled, grabbing the room key. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to get all the information you need.”
If anything, the arrival of the strange Sakai couple had loosened Kenta up a bit. Seeing such bizarre people made him feel far more comfortable around Asuka. She had her quirks, of course, but Kenta felt as though she was at least normal and not a bizarre, adulterous, handsy caricature in tiger-stripe pants. It might not make sleeping in the same room any easier, but he wanted to thank every deity in the universe that they were here under false names and Sakai Haruko would never see them again after this weekend.
part two
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Kurata Kenta/Kandori Asuka (Yokoso Wagaya e)
Summary: As part of an assignment from her magazine, an investigation into the current state of Japanese marriage, Asuka’s all set to go undercover at a couples retreat. But to best blend in, she’s going to need a husband for the weekend. Who could she possibly recruit?
Notes/Warnings: This is a sequel to And The Winner Is..., so it will help to read that first. Spoilers for the entire series. This silly story is mostly an excuse to utilize my very favorite fanfic trope - pretending to be a couple! I guess I got a little carried away LMAO.
“…for the Best of Shizuoka festival,” Nana was explaining, waving her hand rudely in Kenta’s direction. “Pass the sauce, would you?”
Kenta bit his tongue, obediently passing it along as ordered.
“…and it’s going to be an all-week thing, with local interviews with the businesses who are competing.”
“Well, that all sounds very exciting,” his mother said, squeezing her hands together, probably to keep from applauding like a little kid. “You’ll have to make sure you get plenty of rest.”
“I sleep in the location bus sometimes,” Nana said. “Cat naps, you know.”
“It sounds like so much fun,” Asuka butted in, waiting just until Nana had passed the sauce back to Kenta before fluttering her fingers for it. Shooting her a dirty look, he handed the dish across his sister and her wildly gesturing hands and into Asuka’s grasp. She inclined her head in thanks.
“It is fun, although I have to try different foods at each shop.” Nana looked down, patting her stomach. “The camera adds weight, you know!”
“Nana-chan looks perfect on TV,” Asuka insisted. “I could never be in front of a camera like that.”
“What, don’t say that,” his father said. “You’d do just fine, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s more like what I have to say may not be what the viewers want to hear,” Asuka said, offering his dad a sly wink.
Nana patted Asuka’s shoulder. “Oh, I feel that way every day! I have to bite my tongue so much!”
“Which is why you’re so direct at our dinner table,” his father teased her.
The conversation at the table continued on mostly without any need for Kenta to contribute. His sister’s position in Shizuoka seemed to grow week by week, and though he was super proud of her and all she’d achieved, he wished she’d leave some of it a surprise. He already knew what would happen when they turned on the TV in the morning, saw Nana chatting cheerfully with vegetable farmers, interviewing school kids about what the best treats in their cafeteria were.
Though he supposed he’d miss her chatter, soon enough. Nana’s “morning” commute was painfully long, waking just after midnight to get to the TV station or to her location shoots in the Kurata family car. She was just about to the end of her ‘trial’ period and had so impressed her employers that she was going to be kept on permanently. With this came an offer of company housing, a private apartment in Shizuoka City, which would cut her commute time from three hours each way to maybe twenty minutes. His parents were worried sick about her moving out there on her own, especially after everything she’d been through, but Kenta had never seen his sister happier than she’d been since starting her job. Plus, she’d be living in the same building with the other young announcers from the station and had already become fast friends with them, seeing as how they were all on such odd schedules.
Nana ought to have been in bed now, but since Asuka had come by for dinner, she’d stayed downstairs, talking and talking and talking to probably keep herself awake. She had already made plans with their mother and Asuka to go shopping for ‘apartment stuff’ soon, and Kenta was just glad he hadn’t been roped into it. He’d do anything for his sister, so long as it didn’t involve looking at bedding and fluffy pillows for hours.
When Nana’s thorough explanation of the Best of Shizuoka festival wrapped up, she turned to Asuka beside her. “And what about you? Any exciting stories in the pipeline?”
“Well, it’s nothing like a festival,” Asuka said, having a sip of beer. “But I am doing my own version of a location assignment soon.”
“On location?” his father asked. “How exciting!”
Kenta’s dad thought taking the car across town to a different location than his usual for an oil change was exciting, but Kenta kept that sort of mean-spirited thought to himself.
“It might be,” Asuka said, her eyes bright. “I’ve been asked to help out with one of the magazine’s ongoing lifestyle series.” She held up her hand, as though she was placing each word on a TV screen. “Japanese Marriage - An Ongoing Crisis!”
“Crisis?” his mother gasped. “Oh no!”
Kenta snorted into his cup, earning a giggle from Nana. Asuka continued.
“We’ve done things on the usual already. Delaying marriage or staying single. Couples staying childless and the declining birthrate. But we’re shifting focus for the next installment,” Asuka explained before pausing for emphasis. This lured in the non-Kenta members of the Kurata family hook, line, and sinker, the three of them leaning forward to hear what she had to say. “I’ve been asked to cover the ‘crisis management’ aspect. How Japanese couples who are going through troubles are working to resolve them.”
“Like renewing their vows? I saw that on this American program,” his mother said.
“Sure, things like that,” Asuka agreed. “I’ll be attending a couples retreat in Yamanashi this weekend. Married couples go for a weekend, doing activities together, talking, working through problems they have. I’ll be writing about what that’s like.”
An odd feeling made itself known somewhere in Kenta’s stomach, and even though his mother had cooked some strange and spicy Indian dish for dinner, he was fairly certain that wasn’t what ailed him.
“A couples retreat? Huh? By yourself?” his father asked, and when Asuka’s smile grew all the more mysterious, that was when Nana’s face lit up.
“You’re going with someone!” Nana exclaimed, shaking Asuka by the shoulder. “Who? Who is it?”
Kenta could feel his mother suddenly turn her eyes on him, a hawk-like stare that made him shiver a little in his seat. She could be so weird sometimes. He reached for his glass of beer, clutching it in his hand. This dinner had taken a very drastic turn. He suddenly wanted to go back to what Nana was talking about. He’d endure a hundred stories about local businesses in the middle of nowhere Shizuoka before he willingly learned more about Asuka’s weekend plans.
“It’s an undercover assignment, sort of. I’ll be attending with my colleague, Mitsuyama-san. I figure that going solo to a place like that, they’ll know I’m a reporter and they won’t be honest. They’ll be careful with their answers, you know? So we’re pretending that we’re married, there for the same reasons.”
“Ahhhh, that’s so cool!” Nana said, leaning back in her chair wistfully. She brought an overdramatic hand back against her forehead. “Undercover investigative reporting, Kandori Asuka!”
“Pretending to be married!” his father said, chuckling. “Sounds like a tall order.”
“Sounds like a movie!” his mother declared.
“Sounds wonderful,” Nana moaned, probably not too interested in her own work any longer.
Asuka nodded, and Kenta was a little annoyed by how lackadaisical she seemed about the whole thing. Marriage was a big deal, at least Kenta thought it was, and Asuka was just going to fake it? With some…some co-worker?
“Who is he? What does he look like?” Nana continued, stealing the question right out of Kenta’s mind, where he had intended to keep it.
“Huh?” Asuka asked.
“The mystery man! Your husband!” Nana replied, jostling Asuka with her shoulder.
“Ah, right, of course.” Asuka didn’t even look at him as she excused herself from the table, heading for the loveseat where she’d left her bag, rummaging around until she unearthed her phone. “Just a moment, please.”
His mother took his glass from his hands, filling it almost to the brim with more beer, and without saying a word, he drained half of it while Asuka and Nana, heads together, looked at the glowing screen.
“Uwaaaa!” Nana cried, far louder than Kenta thought was necessary. “He’s cute!”
Asuka shrugged, holding out the phone so his mother could see it. Kenta looked over, narrowing his eyes as he watched the struggle cloud his mother’s sweet, gentle face. Because it was pretty obvious that whoever this person was on Asuka’s phone, he was apparently very good looking, because his mother’s eyes widened but she otherwise couldn’t bear to speak.
Because if she agreed with Nana, it probably betrayed everything she stood for, seeing as how she was the president, chief executive, and biggest fan of the “Asuka should be my daughter-in-law someday!” society. Kenta raised an eyebrow, daring her to say something. Meanwhile, his dad was helping himself to some more of the spicy rice and sauce, oblivious to the events happening around him.
“Handsome!” his mother blurted out before scurrying away to the kitchen to start putting away the leftovers. Kenta finished the rest of his beer and set his glass down with a harder thud than he’d planned.
Asuka merely shrugged. “He’s nice. He usually covers sports.”
“Well, if you’re going to be married, maybe you should know more about him than that,” Kenta said, astonished at how bitter his words sounded.
Finally Asuka turned, looking at him with confusion in her eyes. “I’m not…huh?”
Something wicked gleamed in his younger sister’s eyes, and before she could say something incriminating, Kenta got to his feet, hands on his hips. “Nana, you should go to bed.”
She merely smiled, inclining her head. “Roger that, boss.”
The women reaffirmed their plans for shopping, and then it was time for Asuka to go. She put her purse over her shoulder, thanking his parents for the meal. “You’ll have to let us know how everything goes,” his father said. “In case this crisis is something we ought to know about here!”
“There’s no marriage crisis in this house,” his mother insisted, holding out a plastic tub full of leftovers for Asuka to take. “We believe in firmly communicating what we need to say, don’t we, dear?”
His dad blinked. “Hmm?”
Asuka smiled, holding the leftovers up in gratitude. “I ought to profile the both of you. How to overcome the marriage crisis!”
“Have fun,” his father said. “Get home safely, tonight and this weekend.”
“I will!” she assured them, heading for the genkan with Kenta at her heels. She slid into her shoes, eyeing him curiously. “Did I forget something?”
“It’s dark,” he mumbled. “I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”
“Oh? Thank you.”
He usually walked her back, anyhow, but on most nights, he wasn’t so quiet and grouchy about it. On most nights, they chatted like nothing had changed. He asked her opinion on things at En-Suta, feedback on what he was writing. She talked about what she was working on. But things had changed, lately.
Since the night of the magazine awards, Asuka had been a little aloof toward him. Well, she was usually difficult to read, blunt and self-assured about some things and quiet and withdrawn about others. Then again, it wasn’t like Kenta had been all too open and honest with her either. The last few weeks, his growing feelings for her had been flooding his mind, distracting him.
Sitting at work, remembering how different it had been when she’d still been there, at the table by him with her colorful, sticker-adorned computer, typing away. Contenting himself with her comfortable presence in his house, at least once a week for dinner. Replaying moments they’d shared, just the two of them, and convincing himself that they’d been signs that he ought to make a move already.
The thought of confessing to Asuka, though, it freaked him out. Because what if she didn’t want anything like that, something more? Even though sometimes he thought that maybe she did. He’d talked himself out of saying anything to her for a few weeks now, and she was bound to notice eventually that he was being weird.
Tonight had only made things worse.
“I don’t like it,” he mumbled, slowing his strides so she could keep up with him.
“You don’t like what?” she asked, and he wondered if she really hadn’t figured him out yet, considering how sharp she could be about other things.
“The lying,” he said, knowing full well that that was a lie, too. “You’re going to lie to those people.”
“Ah,” she said, her sneakers dragging a little as they continued together. “So that’s what you’re mad about, I get it.”
She really didn’t.
“Kurata-san, do you have so little respect for my methods?” She chuckled quietly. “Yes, I know it’s lying, pretending to be someone else to get the story I want, but let me also tell you that I have no intention of exploiting these people. At the retreat, I mean. Even if they tell me personal things or I learn personal things about them in passing, it’s not like I’m going to put their names and addresses in my story. It’ll be perfectly anonymous, A-san said this or B-san said that. I’m not even going to name the resort. It’ll just be one reporter’s experience in the world of couple retreats.”
“You won’t feel guilty? At all?” he asked, shuffling his feet. “Pretending to be something you’re not?”
She was quiet for a while, and he thought that he’d upset her, but when she spoke again, her voice was just as light and unbothered as usual. “I think it’s kind of exciting, actually.”
She would feel that way, he reasoned. When they’d first met, Asuka had always been a little too excited about investigating Nameless-san, rather than annoyed and wary as Kenta had been. Well, at least until things had truly gotten out of hand, and she’d been thoughtful enough to keep any thrills and joys about playing amateur detective to herself.
They reached the bus stop, and they had a seat while they waited. Asuka tapped her fingers on top of the tub of leftovers.
“Marriage is very serious,” she said, out of nowhere. “And since I’m not married myself, I can only think about it in abstract terms. Maybe I’ll learn something.”
“Like what? Why couples fight? I could name a dozen things. Cheating. One person wants to have kids, the other doesn’t. Money. Work…”
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “When a problem gets bad, really bad, I want to know why people still want to make it work. Why that impossible thing between them is worth compromising over. Or why it might not be, so they get a divorce. I want to understand what those make or breaks are. Not the problem itself, but what makes people decide if a marriage is worth saving or not.”
He looked over at her, confused. Wasn’t the answer simple? That they loved each other?
She was staring at the curb, pondering. So maybe Asuka wasn’t just doing this to ‘have fun’ impersonating a married person. She genuinely wanted to know what married life was like, although Kenta didn’t know why she had to do all this weird method acting with some guy she worked with.
The bus came around the corner, and they got to their feet. “Well,” he said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” When she turned to look at him curiously, he cleared his throat. “For your article. I hope you get what you need for the article.”
Her lips parted slowly, as though she wanted to say something, but then she turned away, digging in her bag for her transit card. “I hope so too,” she said before giving him a little wave and boarding the bus.
It pulled away, leaving Kenta alone.
--
He was just getting on his bike Friday morning when his phone rang. When he pulled it from his pocket, he frowned.
“Asuka-san, good morning,” he answered, wondering if she was calling to let him know she was off for her fake marriage.
“Come to Hamamatsucho bus terminal, I need you!”
“Huh?” he asked, balancing his phone between his ear and his shoulder, undoing the lock on his bike. “You forget something?”
I don’t have any spare wedding rings lying around, he thought angrily.
“Mitsuyama-san is sick, and he can’t come.” Her voice was a little more desperate when she spoke again. “I need a husband, right now.”
He nearly dropped his phone, fumbling with it in his hand. “You’re joking!”
“I’m not!” He could hear station announcements in the background of her call. “Please, just pack a bag. I can book us on the next one that goes out in…hold on.”
He stood there in the driveway, unable to move.
“…in two hours. Please, Kurata-san?”
He finally found his voice. “Hold on, I can’t go away for the weekend! I have work to do and…”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I already called Editor-in-Chief.”
“To be your husband?”
“No!” she replied, sounding repulsed. “I called him so he could excuse you from work. You are hereby excused.”
Kenta held his phone away from his ear for a moment, wondering if he was dreaming. But the impatient “Kurata-san, are you there?!” that came shouting out of the phone confirmed that he wasn’t.
“I can’t ditch work!”
“It’s not ditching. I’m serious, I called him. Wait, you know what? I will hang up, and you can call Editor-in-Chief and confirm it yourself. Hanging up in three…two…”
“Why me?” he asked, shutting his eyes and hating how his heart was racing over something so stupid. He wasn’t really agreeing to this, was he? Did Kanie-san just want to get rid of him for the day? “Why do you need me of all people?”
“The magazine already paid for it,” she explained. “I may as well still go.”
“Get a refund,” he shot back.
“Kurata-san!”
He heard the front door of the house open and close behind him, his mother coming out with her watering can to tend to the flowers by the front gate. Seeing him there, on the phone and not already off for the day, brought a very curious look to her face that he didn’t much like.
“What do I have to bring?” he whined.
“Just yourself and whatever you’d pack for a weekend trip. Maybe a light jacket, since apparently this place is at a higher elevation and they have some outside activities.” Her voice sounded a little more eager. “Are you considering it? Please say you’re considering it!”
“I’m considering it,” he mumbled, knowing he was going to give in. Because as much as it horrified him, this entire stupid set-up, at least he had no reason to be jealous if he was going with her in place of her dumb, good-looking colleague who wrote about sports.
But a whole weekend alone? With Asuka? He wouldn’t entirely be alone, if there were going to be other couples on the retreat, but still…no meddling Mom, no meddling Nana…hell, maybe it would be the boost he needed. That if he confessed to her someday soon (maybe), Asuka would remember what he’d been willing to do for her, attending her undercover lie of a weekend so she could write her story.
“Hamamatsucho?”
“The bus leaves in an hour and fifty-five minutes,” she said, and he was a bit cheered to hear how happy she sounded. But it was most likely because she could still carry out her plan, not because he was the one going along.
“Alright, I guess I can come.”
“Ohhhh!” she cried noisily, probably enough to turn heads at the bus terminal, and he couldn’t help grinning. “Oh, Kurata-san, you’re the best. The best, thank you! Thank you! Thank you, ahhhh, this is such a big help, thank you!”
He finally managed to hang up after Asuka’s ninth enthusiastic thank you, turning to inform his nosy mother of what remarkable thing had just been decided over the phone. He wasn’t surprised at all when she let her watering can drop to the concrete and flung her arms around him, not caring at all what the neighbors might think about it.
--
As soon as he arrived, duffel bag in tow, she immediately held out her hand. “You owe me for the bus ticket.”
“Huh?” he complained, staring at her. “I thought the magazine was paying for this trip.”
“Well, they paid for the tickets Mitsuyama-san and I would have used over an hour ago had he shown up. But since he didn’t and that…that devil woman at the ticket counter wouldn’t let me exchange them, I had to buy them myself.” Asuka stopped her complaining to glare somewhere past his shoulder, at the ticket queue behind them. Somewhere, at one of those ticket windows, she had been gravely wronged. Or so she seemed to believe.
“Are there any other hidden costs I should know about?” he asked grimly, pulling his wallet from his pocket. Besides the cost it would have on his brain, knowing they were going to be sharing a room the entire weekend.
“I don’t think so,” she mused, handing him the bus ticket and gesturing emphatically to the fare on it. Steeper than he’d have liked. “Room is covered, food is covered. I suppose if you want to buy snacks or drinks from the vending machine, you have to pay for that, but otherwise, you get to enjoy a nice vacation courtesy of my employer.”
“It’s not really a vacation,” he pointed out. “I have to lie, just the same as you.”
“And I’m sure you’ll do just fine. Look, we already know each other, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. The more truth there is when you answer something, the easier it’ll be. So when they ask us how we met, you say…”
He stared at her blankly.
“You say?” she tried again, nudging him in the shoulder with her fist.
Was this a trick question? “On…on a train? Well, on a train platform?”
“On a train, that sounds romantic, doesn’t it?” she said, and sometimes he wondered if she even thought before she opened her mouth sometimes. Their very first encounter had been anything but romantic. “Yes, we met on a train. We took the same one every day, and then one day you…”
“Me?”
“You asked me out, of course. And things progressed from there.”
He had an itchy feeling on the back of his neck. Maybe the tag from his shirt, and he scratched at it nervously, moving away to have a seat while they waited. “Are we going to tell people about Nameless-san?”
She sat beside him, hands on the straps of her lavender overnight bag. It had seen better days, was patched up with little bits of unmatching orange cloth in some spots. “I suppose we should skip that. We shouldn’t be the most interesting couple in the room, having stories like that.”
“I guess not,” he agreed, and as they sat there, side by side, he found his heart racing at how easily she’d referred to them as a ‘couple.’ Although he probably shouldn’t read into it that much.
As the minutes passed, as they were called to board, and as the bus pulled out of the station, Asuka taught him their backstory. Or, at least, the backstory that had apparently been agreed upon by Asuka-san and her co-worker. Kenta had never before been so happy for someone’s illness, sitting at Asuka’s side on the bus. She sat by the window and Kenta on the aisle, and she had a whole folder full of information about the weekend.
They were en route to a resort in Yamanashi, not far from Mt. Fuji. It had an onsen, an extensive menu to try, and Asuka casually pointed out that it was Japanese-style when it came to sleeping arrangements, a more traditional feeling with futons on the floor instead of a bed. Kenta was almost grateful for the safety a futon would bring, allowing him to encase himself in his bedcover, keeping them separate. If they had to share a bed, he’d probably have a heart attack at this rate.
To his disappointment, however, they were going to be using false names. Kenta had been Kenta for going on thirty years now, and the thought of properly answering to another name made him nervous. He was going to screw all this up, screw Asuka’s story up. But she had picked him to go with her, so he had to at least try and get along, much as it all weirded him out. They weren’t even dating, and now they had to pretend they were married, had been married for over a year now (at least according to Asuka’s plan of attack).
Married for over a year, Aisawa Masaki and Aisawa Erika, from Tokyo. He was a graphic designer, Asuka had decided, being nice to him and crossing out ‘lawyer’ on the little “Couple Overview” document she had typed up herself. She’d picked their names out of a phone book, but had fancied herself the wife of a lawyer while she was a fiction writer. She certainly would be spinning tales this weekend. The more truth there is, Kenta thought.
And their problem, of course? A lack of time for each other, a lack of communication. Aisawa Masaki worked long hours, which Kenta didn’t think was all that strange. Most people in Japan did, so what warranted the couples counseling? “Having to ask your wife a question like that is exactly the reason why!” Asuka snapped at him, elbowing him before rustling through her ‘Couple Overview’ again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, almost automatically, and it made her laugh.
“Keep asking infuriating questions, and we won’t need to do that much lying, in the end,” she said, tapping her paper with a smile. “Now back to practice. Once again, Masaki-san, please tell me when our wedding anniversary is.”
-
To Kenta’s surprise, they didn’t have to lie to every single person that weekend. A manager at the Mountain View Resort was in on Asuka’s little game, meeting them as soon as the taxi dropped them off in front. Tadahara-san was a petite woman with a clipboard and a firm expression, greeting them with even firmer handshakes.
Since the magazine was paying for their enrollment in the weekend program and because there really wasn’t an Aisawa Erika (or her husband Aisawa Masaki), Asuka had disclosed her true intentions upon making her booking. Tadahara-san whisked them over to the front desk, her managerial seniority keeping the other staff from requiring them to show identification or to run their non-Aisawa credit cards. In a manner of seconds, Tadahara-san had gotten them their room key, and then escorted the two of them discreetly through the lobby to her office in the rear.
She then made Asuka and Kenta both sign documents stating their intentions clearly, that neither Mountain View Resort or any of its guests or staff members would be mentioned by name in Asuka’s article, and that any failure to comply would result in legal action against Tokyo Talker magazine. Kenta was happy with how seriously Asuka took this, assuring Tadahara-san politely of everything they intended to do, presenting the woman with the details of her fake existence.
“I will also forward my article to you prior to publication,” Asuka informed her, “so that if I’ve written anything that might be offensive, I can make proper changes.”
“And you, Kurata-san?” Tadahara asked, looking at him sharply.
“Oh,” Asuka interrupted, waving her hand dismissively. “He won’t say anything.”
Kenta had signed the documents too, but he got to his feet a bit awkwardly, bowing his head to the resort manager. “I…I won’t do anything! I swear!”
When he looked up again, he could see Asuka and Tadahara exchanging small smiles. “Good to know you have our best interests in mind,” the manager said. “Well, please be on your best behavior. Our partnership with Marriage Matters is very important to us here.”
“Of course,” Asuka said, getting to her feet. She grabbed her bag and thrust it out, smacking Kenta in the stomach with it. “Honey, if you don’t mind?”
He groaned a little in pain, but dutifully added the rather heavy weight of Asuka’s bag to his existing burden. “Anything for you.”
With that they were dismissed. Kenta had to admit that it was a pretty nice resort. The cluster of buildings had lots of dark wood and glass, nestled into the midst of tall trees. It was down a narrow, two-lane road, far back from the highway, deep in the forest. Cell phone reception was very spotty, and he barely managed to fire off a “got here safely” message to his mother while he and Asuka took in the lobby.
The lobby was kind of like the central hub of a wheel, with a few spokes radiating out that contained wings with a few floors of rooms while some of the other spokes led off to meeting rooms, a banquet hall, a restaurant, and the baths. By the large stone fireplace at the center of the lobby, there was a sign posted welcoming couples to “Marriage Matters - Let’s Talk! Weekend.”
“This isn’t in English, is it?” Kenta asked nervously, seeing as the sign had “Let’s Talk!” written out in big English lettering. That was way beyond his capabilities.
“I think it’s just their gimmick,” Asuka said, examining the little resort map Tadahara had handed her. “The program facilitator trained in America. Probably why there’s so much emphasis on talking and meeting other couples. I picked the program for this reason, to see if a Japanese audience is receptive to this sort of counseling.”
Kenta shuddered. “How much talking do I have to do?”
She turned to him with a cheerful smile. “Well, since talking is your weak point in this marriage, probably not that much.”
The handles of her bag were digging into his palm, and he tried to focus on that irritation instead of how easily Asuka kept chatting away about their “marriage.” She gestured on the map to which “spoke” housed their room. They were in the ‘Forest View’ wing, which Asuka said was probably resort shorthand for “this side is cheaper because there’s no Mount Fuji view from here.” Her magazine had decided that Aisawa husband and wife were committed to fixing their marriage, but wouldn’t break the bank to do it.
They headed down the corridor that separated the main lobby building from the building housing the Forest View rooms, tinted glass walls to either side of them with a view of trees and plants. He was kind of glad he’d packed bug spray. They were pretty far from civilization out here.
An elevator brought them up to the second floor, and the signs pointed them all the way to the end of the hall. Asuka sure had packed a lot for a weekend, and by the time they made it to the door, he was exhausted.
She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “No need to carry me over the threshold like in those romantic movies,” she announced needlessly, and he struggled his way in after her, biting his tongue to keep from asking her to stop saying things like that because they made him uncomfortable. She’d only do it more if he told her not to.
Though the hall’s exterior gave the impression of a regular hotel, things were considerably more traditional within. They took off their shoes, and Kenta dropped the bags onto the tatami flooring inside the small, but cozy room. It was simply appointed, with a dark, lacquered table, a tea tray, and two cushioned zaisu chairs serving as the only furniture.
No TV, no radio, Kenta thought darkly, knowing that he and Asuka would have to pass their free time in the room either sleeping or, even worse, making small talk. And Kenta was already so nervous about this whole set-up that he feared he’d blurt out something he hadn’t wanted to say to her just yet.
Asuka padded across the floor in her socks to slide open the cupboard. “I’ll have a nap!” she decided, looking thoughtfully at the bedding housed inside.
“You’re kidding,” he complained, dragging his bag to a corner of the room and unzipping it. “We just got here.”
But she ignored him entirely, tugging out a futon and pillow for herself, arranging it haphazardly on the floor. Without a thought for her bag or for the other person in the room, she snuggled inside, still wearing her jeans, and got comfortable.
While she lay on her back, eyes shut and arms thrust out at her sides to take up even more space in the room, Kenta awkwardly stepped around her, going into the small bathroom attached to the room. Small sink, small toilet, and a shower with a glass door. There wasn’t much room for his toiletry bag, which he set down on top of the toilet, figuring Asuka would have far more items with her and would end up dominating the sink area.
He closed the door quietly, and put the toilet seat down, sitting on it. He shut his eyes, rubbing his temples and wondering why he’d been so stupid to agree to this. Jealousy, that was the key to his stupidity. As he sat there in the bathroom, knowing Asuka was just on the other side of the wall taking up more than her fair share of the allotted space in their room, he really was glad that this Mitsuyama-san hadn’t come along. But at the same time, he would now be spending the night with her, two nights, in this tiny space.
Maybe she was the type who fell asleep quickly. But what if she wasn’t?
He got to his feet, frowning, opening the bathroom door to find that her nap was rather short-lived. Somehow, in the few minutes Kenta had been panicking in the bathroom, she’d managed to turn the room into complete chaos.
She was sitting up, still in her futon, and had her sticker-covered laptop open in front of her. Her bag had moved a few feet, and already she’d thrown t-shirts and socks around without a care, having dug through everything to retrieve her computer. She was scowling at the screen.
“Let me guess,” he said, hovering in the doorway. “No Wi-fi.”
“I didn’t think they were serious about that,” she grumbled, tapping on the computer’s trackpad repeatedly. “Aaaaahh, I can’t get online at all!”
“It’ll help you focus on writing, perhaps,” he said, stepping around a pair of neon green shorts on his way to the side of the room he’d somehow managed to claim for himself.
“Perhaps,” she said.
She’d dropped the Marriage Matters - Let’s Talk! itinerary and her folder full of Aisawa nonsense on the floor, its contents strewn every which way just like her clothes. Kenta wondered if Asuka was really a slob or if she only was on vacation. She was always very neat and tidy when she stayed by his house, as far as he knew. The only evidence proving she had even slept in his bed (without him) being the scent of her perfume gently lingering on his sheets, near his pillowcase. He’d fallen asleep happily to that scent a few times now, much as that would probably creep her out if he admitted it to her.
He opened up the folder. “The welcome dinner is at 6 PM.” He glanced at his phone. “So we’ve got a few hours.”
She was ignoring him, her face contorted into a rather ugly, rage-filled expression at her inability to get online. Asuka was usually calm, but he was seeing a new side of her. An Asuka without the Internet. He watched her for a few minutes, feeling just as discarded as the pair of penguin socks that had somehow skittered all the way across the tatami to the sliding glass door beside him.
“Asuka-san?”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Asuka-san?”
She finally looked up, pouting. “It’s Erika. You better call me Erika!”
“I’m not calling you that inside this room,” he fired back, shoving the papers back in the folder, setting it on the table. “You can’t make me.”
She rolled her eyes, and he really wasn’t used to her being this grumpy. It was cute, but only slightly. If they had more room, it would probably not annoy him so much. “Fine. Masaki-san.”
“Can you really not live without the Internet?”
She slammed the laptop lid down, flopping onto her back. “No, I don’t believe I can. Perhaps this was a mistake, Masaki-san!”
It weirded him out the more she used his fake name, and he was getting claustrophobic, having only the corner of the room to himself. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I’m going to go for a walk.”
“Be my guest,” she muttered before putting her pillow over her face.
“I’ll be taking the key,” he decided, getting to his feet and leaving her grouchy self behind. But not before forcing himself to look away from the blue polka-dotted bra that was sticking out of her bag, taunting him.
--
His walk had allowed him to clear his head considerably, walking up and down the hallways of their wing of the resort as well as the others. He’d poked his head in at the baths, seeing a handful of other couples heading inside. He wondered how many were here for Let’s Talk and how many were simply here to relax. With how small the rooms were, at least in the Forest View wing, he wondered if people paid more for the isolation and the baths than for the comforts.
His one good find, though, had been in the resort’s small souvenir shop. Inside he’d found a package of mini-suckers, a variety pack with a handful of flavors he knew she liked. It had cost more than it ought to, being just a bag of suckers, but he figured it was worth the cost. It would at least quiet her complaining a bit.
He knocked before entering, and he found Asuka had changed into a knee-length skirt and a casual top, clothes he’d never seen her wear before, but there was still a hint of “Asuka” to the outfit, since she’d worn her favorite feather necklace. He couldn’t help wondering if she was wearing the blue polka-dot bra too. She was typing madly, so he decided not to disturb her, stepping over even more of her flung around clothes to get to his bag. He left the bag of suckers on the table.
She’d made no efforts in his absence to tidy things up, but she had gone to the trouble of pulling out the other futon and arranging it neatly beside her own. She could have moved it closer to the sliding exterior door, keeping them separate, but for some reason she hadn’t.
He wanted to ask what he ought to wear for dinner, but he didn’t want to disturb her if she was in the “zone” with her writing. Perhaps after finally giving up on searching for Internet access she’d just decided to start writing her article. He was curious how she was planning to write about him. Would he be “Kurata-san” or “Kenta-san” or…
“Masaki-san, no tie.”
He looked at the pile of clothes in his arms, was just about to close himself up in the bathroom. She hadn’t even been looking at him, but he pulled the tie out of the pile and flung it into his designated corner.
He emerged in a long-sleeved green button down and khaki pants, and she was already on her feet, laptop shut and using the small mirror on the cupboard to put on some lipstick. “Nametags please,” she said, giving a little smack of her lips that sent a wave of heat through him.
He turned his back on her, dumping his clothes by his bag and fumbling through the folder for the tags. They each had a clip, and he picked them up. Aisawa Masaki, Tokyo. Aisawa Erika, Tokyo. They were really going through with this.
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and he turned, finding her with her hand out. “Masaki-san, being late for dinner would make for a poor first impression.”
“Right,” he mumbled.
She took the nametag from his hand and clipped it to her shirt. Before he could do the same, she had taken it from his fingers, stepping close to clip it to the pocket of his shirt herself. She patted it gently with her hand.
“There. Perfect.”
She looked up at him and smiled, and he couldn’t look away.
“Asuka-san, I still think this is a bad idea.”
“I know you do,” she said. “But you get a free meal out of it! And everybody loves free meals!”
They left the room, heading for the resort’s restaurant. There was a private room in the rear that had been prepared especially for the attendees of the Let’s Talk weekend. Within, there were several low tables set for four with zabuton cushions. Staff were already going around with trays to set down small plates and equipment for a hotpot meal.
They hesitated near the entrance for a moment. About half the couples were already in attendance, maybe half of them in the comfortable resort yukata, having already visited the baths. The rest were dressed casually, as he and Asuka were.
He felt her hand come around his forearm, and he leaned down to hear her. “I need a good vantage point, to observe and…”
“Hey there, why don’t you come sit with us?”
Kenta and Asuka both jumped, her hand tightening around his arm. He wanted to yelp from her strong grip, but he didn’t. They turned, finding a couple who looked to be close in age to Kenta’s parents. The husband was balding, with a thin little mustache, while the wife was rather round, dressed in a Hanshin Tigers t-shirt and some odd tiger-print pants. She was the one who’d come up behind them and had spoken so loudly.
“Sakai,” the woman said, jostling her husband. “Sakai Haruko and my husband Teruyuki. Hello, you’re both awfully young to be here.”
“Aisawa Erika,” Asuka said smoothly, finally letting him go and inclining her head. “Nice to meet you.”
“Masaki,” Kenta said stiffly, looking down quickly to see indentations from Asuka’s fingernails in the soft flesh of his arm.
“Let’s grab that table over there, it seems lucky, how about it?” Haruko-san said, leaving her husband in the dust to grab hold of Kenta by his upper arm, dragging him toward one of the tables. He looked over his shoulder, panicking, and found Asuka, eyes wide, at a complete loss for words.
Haruko-san almost shoved him down onto a zabuton and to his surprise, sat beside him. Soon, her nearly silent, non-entity of a husband sat across from her, Asuka beside him. He met Asuka’s gaze, and she only smiled.
Within minutes, they had the entire history of the Sakai couple, though Sakai Teruyuki had not said anything, just pouring some sake into Asuka’s cup. Haruko was from Nishinomiya, where the Tigers played, but when she’d married Teruyuki five years earlier, she had moved to western Tokyo for him. Theirs was a third marriage for Haruko and a second for Teruyuki, and things were “on the rocks” Haruko said, without any sense of embarrassment.
Haruko positively dominated the table, waving over the staff to make sure they got things bubbling up in their pot first. Thankfully, because of her personality and seeming need to talk constantly, she didn’t ask about the Aisawa couple at all. But Kenta had a strong sense of why things weren’t quite working out for Mr. and Mrs. Sakai, because as dinner carried on, Haruko sat closer and closer and closer until he felt like his arm was brushing against her every time he lifted his chopsticks to his mouth.
Asuka found all of this incredibly amusing, watching his discomfort with a gentle smile and nearly sparkling eyes. Haruko’s husband didn’t speak once, merely letting out a pathetic grunt when he thought he ought to refill Asuka’s cup for her again. As the meal carried on, there was eventually an interruption. A rather jolly, rotund fellow held a microphone at one end of the room, introducing himself as Kagawa Junichi, the “facilitator” for the weekend. He encouraged them all to have a pleasant evening, to enjoy their meal and the baths because the following day would be “non-stop rebuilding and repairing!”
When Kagawa-san stopped speaking, Haruko leaned over, resting her hand on his thigh. “Can you believe how much this all cost?”
He nearly choked. “It’s…it’s worth it though, isn’t it?”
Her rather meaty hand gave his leg a squeeze. “We’ll see about that,” Haruko said, and Kenta heard the thump of Asuka’s water glass as it hit the table.
“Teruyuki-san, what is it you do for a living?” she asked curtly, and Kenta used the interruption to lean further away from the scary woman beside him. He tried to offer Asuka a thankful look, but she couldn’t even meet his eyes.
“This and that,” the befuddled husband mumbled, and then Haruko took over once again, complaining about the size of the room, given the cost. Money was not a vulgar topic as far as Haruko was concerned, so she had no trouble complaining about the cost of the weekend and then asking Kenta and Asuka both how much money they made.
They both politely declined to share that information, although when Haruko’s continued complaints turned to the Forest View wing in particular, he and Asuka were both stunned into silence upon learning that the Sakai couple was staying in the room just next door.
“Well how about that,” Haruko said. “Neighbors!”
Dinner wound down around them, and before Kenta could even finish the rather tasty pudding the staff had just brought around, Asuka was on her feet and coming around to tug on his arm.
“I want to go to the onsen,” she said emphatically.
He looked up, slurping down a bit of pudding, and from the look in Asuka’s face, he could tell that Sakai Haruko was severely impeding Asuka’s ability to write about her weekend experience.
“Yeah yeah, sure,” he said, letting her hoist him up.
“Well it was a very lovely evening,” Asuka said, “and…”
“The onsen sounds so good right now!” Haruko was saying. She set her chopsticks down, waving her hand in the sake-sloshed Teruyuki’s face. “I said the onsen sounds good!”
Asuka, a little sake-sloshed herself, nearly clung to Kenta’s arm. “On second thought…”
“Erika-chan, we’ve barely chatted. I want to get to know you! Let’s say we meet back in fifteen, how about it?”
Kenta felt Asuka’s grip on him tighten, and much as he liked her sort of possessive clinging, especially after Haruko’s overly friendly touchiness, he could sense that Asuka was really pissed off and trying desperately to hide it.
“Fifteen minutes then,” Asuka gritted out. “That sounds lovely.”
They bypassed the other tables, most of which had been much quieter than theirs, on account of there being nobody else as obnoxiously loud as Sakai Haruko. Asuka was warm, really warm, as they left the dining hall.
“Let’s hurry,” she begged him, dragging him down the corridor, around a slower-moving couple. “I’m not sharing an elevator with them.”
When they got back into the room, Asuka sat down heavily on her futon, sighing. “She’s going to ruin everything,” Asuka moaned.
Kenta chuckled. “You should just write about her,” he said. “She’s…she’s quite a character.”
“She’s unbelievable,” Asuka said, punctuating her sentence by angrily kicking her legs in the air, and Kenta looked away before her skirt ended up riding up her thighs. “She sits herself down next to you, and my god, she is old enough to be your mother, and then she’s all over you!”
“Hence the marriage counseling,” Kenta pointed out, pushing open the cupboard to find the matching yukatas left for them. White with blue stripes, with rather soft fabric. He dropped hers beside her. “I’ll change first.”
But by the time he came out of the bathroom, Asuka was already tying the sash on her yukata, a sucker in her mouth and her hair tied up and out of her face. “Why would you come for marriage counseling if you clearly don’t care about your marriage?”
Kenta felt himself blushing, tying his own sash tighter as he moved to put his clothes away. “Maybe it was his idea.”
“Ugh, I don’t understand them. I need to be able to talk to the other couples. People who aren’t horrible.”
He smiled, grabbing the room key. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to get all the information you need.”
If anything, the arrival of the strange Sakai couple had loosened Kenta up a bit. Seeing such bizarre people made him feel far more comfortable around Asuka. She had her quirks, of course, but Kenta felt as though she was at least normal and not a bizarre, adulterous, handsy caricature in tiger-stripe pants. It might not make sleeping in the same room any easier, but he wanted to thank every deity in the universe that they were here under false names and Sakai Haruko would never see them again after this weekend.
part two