The Ace Maiden

“Why do you think I need your help?” I accepted the revelation in seconds; maybe part of my unconscious mind had already surmised that Uwabe-san was the Ace Maiden.

She closed her laptop and slipped it into her tote bag. “Before we talk about that, let’s walk. I don’t want to get in the way of the store’s closing.” A playful wink was sent the barista’s way, but the worker must have been too tired to have noticed.

The crisp, refreshing air pressed on us as we left the gloomy sanctuary behind. Uwabe-san pulled her brown trench coat closer to herself, and a faint puff of fog wafted from her lips. “Can you believe it’s almost summer?”

Her attempt at small talk only brought the date of my expulsion to the forefront of my mind. There were a few seconds of silence where I contemplated whether to bring it up, or even to challenge her decision in dry, bitter hostility. “Yeah, I can. It’s not up to our beliefs, anyway.”

Her smooth lips curled into a smirk, and she turned to lead the way through the streets with no words but the clanking of her loafers against the concrete. Against my better judgment, I followed her like an imprinted duckling.

“Where are we going?”

“On a walk.”

“I know that. But to where?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does, actually. I don’t want you to lead me somewhere shady.”

“You went to Kabukicho with Mamie-chan. You will be fine.”

Aha! I knew it! Kabukicho was dangerous. After my quiet celebration of my fears being validated, I gave up asking more questions, since the Ace Maiden was sure to deflect them with ease. Instead, I tried to take in how abandoned this area was. The night had receded human presence to mere hints—lights on the second floors, conversations too faint to be decipherable, hung clothes swaying in the breeze.

Our walk came to a halt in front of a high-rise apartment complex. Uwabe-san turned to me and showed me a smile that felt too sweet. “We’re here.”

“And where is ‘here’?”

“My home, of course.”

The answer was by no means surprising, but my heart rate still took it as a cue to climb towards its summit. My rational mind caught up soon after. Oh, a beautiful woman is inviting me to her home. Just the two of us.

“Do you live alone?”

“What? Are you going to rob me?” Uwabe-san took out her wallet from her coat and used it to tap the keycard reader. The automatic doors slid open.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll ask directly. Are you hitting on me?”

“You can interpret this however you want. Just know that I charge double outside my working hours.”

Her answer brought the silence back, just in time for the elevator to arrive. We stayed this way throughout the ride, but my mind wasn’t calm in the slightest. Not because I was anticipating sex; I had long tossed that possibility out of the window the moment the words ‘charge’ and ‘double’ came up (a reflex honed by being broke). Instead, non-lewd thoughts were swarming my consciousness, strict questions that demanded responses. If not for a hookup, with what intention did she invite me into her home, and moreover, why was I following her? Did I fall this deeply for her charm? No, it was desperation. I needed answers to something. To my life, maybe.

With a click, her key unlocked the front door, and the two of us made our way into her apartment. As the lights flickered on, a bizarre scene bombarded my vision. It was the definition of sensory overload, akin to an online video that tried to hold viewer attention with multiple split screens of happenings.

Her apartment had been segregated into sections, each decorated in its own way. Death metal posters in one corner and J-pop ones in the other. A swarm of cute, handmade chimes hung from one patch of the ceiling and esoteric charms from another. The mess of dog toys to young adult novels to cardboard boxes to board games, each contained to its area on the floor.

Ok, this is where a serial killer lives.

The place even had an artificial scent of vanilla to lull my senses, telling me that everything was fine, but I could still detect something rotten masked underneath. There had to be a dead body.

I turned around, only to find the front door shut and the Ace Maiden smiling at me.

“I’m sure you think I’m a psychotic killer about now. But I can assure you that the only body count I have doesn’t involve stabbing. Not the stabbing of a weapon, at least.” She winked at me, as if the cheap innuendo would magically melt away my fear.

“Right, right. I saw security cameras at the front. I should be fine.” Murmuring, I turned back to the horrifying sight, which went from PG-13 mascot horror level to trauma-inducing indie project level within seconds. Thanks to the slight movement I had spotted.

A C-O-C-K-R-O-A-C-H.

A deep understanding welled up within me, of why they would blur this creature in anime. Paired with the realization was a sense that all the hair on my body stood up, and the pure essence of panic coursed through my veins. A shriek ripped through the air, only to be muffled mere seconds later. Uwabe-san had covered my mouth.

“Pipe down. The neighbors are sleeping.”

I retook the reins from my instincts and nodded slightly. With clear hesitation, she freed my lips. Averting my gaze from the heinous demons (yes, that included Uwabe-san), I scanned through the rest of the room again to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated the mess of the century. “I’m surprised that the neighbors didn’t complain about the smell.”

“It’s simple. I bought the whole floor.” My slight guilt from labeling her as a ‘demon’ vanished without a trace.

“And yet you can’t hire a cleaner.”

“I did.”

“Where are they?”

“Here.” Her finger lifted and pointed straight at me.

My protest only lasted less than a minute. She easily got me to start cleaning, using the threat of “you’ll leave without getting your answers.” For good measure, she even added, “Don’t even think about exposing my identity. The agreement you signed before we had sex last time also acted as an NDA.”

That would have been enough to get me groveling, but she still sat down at the dining table and typed up an email. “Dear National College of Sexual Arts, I’m writing about the immediate expulsion of Kuronuma Shuntaro…” she read aloud as her fingers ran through the keys.

I let a frown run across my face as I organized a bunch of novels from disarray into a neat pile. “I’ve already surrendered. Are you a child?”

“Only if you are into lolis, oni-chan,” she raised her pitch for the last word.

This woman’s mind and soul also needed to be cleaned, but I didn’t say this thought out loud. The Expressive Arts practicals had trained me to be tactful, after all. Instead, I asked the most pressing question in my head. “Is expelling your mentees also one of your entertainments, bitch?”

Oops, my true thoughts leaked out. Well, the only thing I regretted was that I didn’t add ‘sadistic’ in front of ‘bitch’. Although, I was shocked by how comfortable I was with expressing my anger. Perhaps her semi-playful pettiness had rubbed off on me.

“That’s not true. Ayu-chan is also my mentee,” Uwabe-san said, while her attention had never once left her screen and the tapping had intertwined with her speech.

It took a blink for what she had said to sink in, but after that, not an ounce of surprise emerged in me. Honestly, I could see the resemblance between these two. No matter how much I wanted to dwell on their similarities, I didn’t let my thoughts linger there for too long, because this was clearly her strategy to steer the conversation away from my question.

“I’ll ask directly. No more dodging. Why did you expel me?”

She actually stopped typing in response. “Do you really want to know?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

A soft sigh, and her fingers jolted back to life again. “What do you think about the industry?”

Another diversion, but she seemed to be leading up to an answer, so I indulged her. “It’s a way to make us less lonely.”

“Did it?”

The question brought back memories of my encounters since I had enrolled in the college. Every flashing recollection inevitably led back to Mamie, to how the two of us felt connected, not just when we were in bed, but when we spoke too. Anything we did together gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling, as if I was constantly embraced by a cloud of presence. This persisted up until the Dating Show Competition, when the world felt cold again. So, did the industry or the college help me at all? Or was it Mamie?

“What do you think of me?” Uwabe-san interrupted my thoughts, not waiting for me to give her an answer, as if her question was rhetorical all along.

“I think you are an asshole.” Yep, I answered without needing to think about it.

“Fair. But just to spite you, from now on, I’ll switch to a caring older sister persona.” It might have just been my imagination, but her expression became gentle. She rested her chin on her palm, staring at me with a sweet smile.

That lasted for a few seconds. When she was certain that her delicate pose had given me a false sense of safety and kinship, she abandoned it in favor of her typing.

“I hate you.”

“But seriously, whatever you think of me isn’t the real me.”

“Then who is the real you?”

“There isn’t one anymore. Whatever you think is me is only how I want you to see me. All for some agenda, and there is always an agenda.”

What she spoke resonated with my soul, bringing me back to my high school days, when all I could be was a vessel for words that people wanted to hear. “How is that different from real life? Who would really show their real self?”

Even now, though I had been hurling hostility and insults towards the Ace Maiden, I wouldn’t show her all of me, nothing of the emptiness that my heart was fading towards.

“Perhaps, but in our industry, we take it to the extreme. All the connections between two people exist only in the brothel and the client’s memories. Nothing is resolved or relieved; nothing has developed. Only illusions of a narrative. Do you want to live like this? To live like there is nothing left inside you but a bunch of fake personas? Or worse, with nothing linking you to other people but lies and deceit?”

I swallowed, unable to address any of the things she had thrown my way. “Do you hate the escort industry this much?”

Her hands paused for a second time. “No, actually. I love what I do. That’s why I don’t want my coworkers to be miserable.”

“Then why are you shit-talking it so much?”

“Because, being a romantic in this industry won’t last you a month.”

We didn’t talk anymore after that. She slogged through her documents and spreadsheets, while I organized her atrocity of an apartment, at least trying to. For multiple times, questions surfaced in my mind, asking why I bothered to continue with this menial task, since she had already given me what I wanted. But, as I turned to look at the woman who had devoted all her focus to her laptop, I just couldn’t bring myself to break her flow.

The vanilla scent lost its novelty, and the foul smell lingered, even though I had found and gotten rid of the rotten piece of salmon hiding away under a rug. Nope, Uwabe-san didn’t explain how it got there, but the stench wasn’t too unbearable.

“It’s close to midnight already. You can continue cleaning another time,” she declared as she shut down her laptop. I shuddered at my mental estimation of how much longer this would take, as I had only gotten one-fourth of the living room cleaned, and by cleaned, I only meant stacking things into presentable piles and stuffing the empty closets full. She was adamant that I must not throw away anything that wasn’t ‘obviously garbage’.

“Maybe you should stay the night, but remember, I charge five times more after midnight.” The hoarder’s lips curved into an amused smile.

“No thanks. Having sex here would definitely give me an STD. And sleeping here? I don’t want a… you-know-what crawling into… you know.”

“In fact, I don’t know. But if you are so scared of whatever you are scared of, you can sleep in one of my other empty apartments on this floor. There are sleeping bags.”

Wait, then why does she still stay in this dumpster?