Would Smell as Sweet

“Sayu…Midorikawa?”

Ayasa’s eyes had been drawn to the box on form A1044-B just as mine had been.

“Where’d that come from, Touma?”

Miho was there too, reading through some more dense government websites on Hiroki’s laptop. Hiroki had stepped out of the apartment to help a neighbor with carrying a heavy package up the single flight of stairs. It was still nominally his apartment and his neighbor, though at this point Ayasa had been living alone in it for a few days now.

“Just a suggestion. I’m not really good at names.”

Miho narrowed her eyes.

“It’s a bit showy, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. It was believable enough.

“That isn’t my name, though.”

Ayasa’s gaze had finally broken free from the chains that bound it to that little box on the page. She was looking at me, now.

“Well, they say you shouldn’t use your real name.”

“Why not?”

Ayasa had asked it as a question, but the consternation in her eyes told me that she knew damn well why it was a bad idea to use her real name. Why ask, then? Did she want me to justify it?

“Higashiyama. If you’re living this close to the North, don’t you think it could be dangerous to go around using your real name?”

Miho had answered for me, but her eyes hadn’t moved from scanning the laptop screen. Government websites had a knack for slamming all the details in one unbroken paragraph.

“This is the South, isn’t it?”

Yes, we were in the South. We were supposed to be out of any of that danger. Despite that, we were still close enough to the North that we couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Ayasa was asking questions she already had the answers to. Maybe she was hoping that the answers would change if she asked again.

“Higashiyama. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay here. Look, they offer stipends for emancipated minors from the North. You could move to Osaka and attend school there.”

Miho lifted the laptop from her lap and set it down on the table to show Ayasa. It looked like there was a program run by the education ministry for children in “special circumstances.” The nature of what “special circumstances” qualified one for this stipend had been diplomatically glossed over, but it was clear from the text that it was meant for Northerners who had arrived in the South as children. There couldn’t be that many of them, but they had to exist. Every few years one made an appearance on TV to talk about their life story.

“Osaka? I don’t know anyone in Osaka.”

Ayasa spoke this with a firmness unlike her earlier queries to nobody in particular. She wasn’t going to leave Tokyo. It was a bit surprising- she had lived in North Tokyo, but that was a world away from South Tokyo. Compared to that, the differences between South Tokyo and Osaka were negligible.

No local would ever admit to it, but unless your family had called that city home for generations, there really weren’t many differences outside the famous landmarks. In 80 years serving as the country’s surrogate capital, Osaka had picked up so many transplants that one couldn’t really point to any one thread of locality binding its people together. It was the capital and the center of the Republic. If your chosen career couldn’t be done in your hometown, you moved there for work. Tokyo had been like that too, once, but now its proximity to the North and uncertainty around its special status made it less attractive than the de facto capital.

“Well, I don’t have any right to stop you if you want to stay here, Higashiyama. If you are gonna stay here, though, I really think you should use a new name… Just maybe not one that he made up two seconds ago.”

It was a lot more than two seconds ago, Miho.

“Oh, like you’ve got any better ideas?”

Miho winced at my unexpected jab.

“I do so have better ideas for a name.”

“Like?”

Miho didn’t have anything ready to go.

“Kanoko…or Sayoko… or maybe Kumiko…”

“Are you naming your grandma?”

“Those are nice names!”

“Oh? What about the family name, then?”

“...Tarou.”

“You might as well call her Ms. Sudo Nym.”

Ayasa didn’t seem to be paying attention to our back-and-forth. She was staring out the window, maybe waiting for the farce to finish.

“Anyway, if she’s gonna pick a name she’s gonna be stuck with it the rest of her life. It’s not something we should decide.”

Miho crossed her arms, the valiant defender of the moral high ground.

“I’m just offering suggestions. I think Sayu Midorikawa’s a nice name.”

“It’s too Idol-like.”

“What’s wrong with Idol-like?”

“People will think it’s a fake name.”

“Faker than Sayoko Tarou?”

“Yes. There are probably more Sayoko Tarous out there than Sayu Midorikawas.”

“And they’re all eighty years old.”

Miho glared at me. Ayasa still wasn’t offering any thoughts on this. Miho decided to coax it out of her.

“Higashiyama. Who would you be if you weren’t Higashiyama?”

“Eh?”

Ayasa really hadn’t been listening at all.

“If you could pick any name for yourself, would you still be Ayasa Higashiyama?”

Ayasa took a moment to think about this.

“Does it matter?”

Miho threw up her hands in defeat.

“No, I guess not. Fine. You can be whatever he thinks is a cute name.”

“Sayu Midorikawa is a cute name?”

Ayasa seemed perplexed by this idea.

“I guess it’s a bit idol-like. In a kind of Junko-Miyamoto-for-the-modern-era sort of sense.”

My reference bounced off her as usual.

“Who is Junko Miyamoto?”

“You would have known her if you went to those U-discos twenty or thirty years ago.”

“Oh.”

Ayasa waited for me to say something. Miho was sulking in her chair, pretending to be reading the laptop screen again, twirling her shaggy ponytail around her index finger. I didn’t have any good way of following this up.

“So Sayu Midorikawa is like a name a singer might have?”

Ayasa broke the silence, unsatisfied by my failure to produce a meaningful reference.

“Kind of. It’s also a name a normal girl might have.”

“And how did you come up with it?”

Urk. This was not the time to admit to the fact that I had been fantasizing about it since the beginning of the semester. I don’t even remember where I got it from- it just popped out of my head, fully formed, like Athena.

“I don’t know.”

“Do I seem like a Sayu Midorikawa?”

No. No, Ayasa didn’t. The two had been drifting apart from each other since the first time I met Ayasa. She was distinct from the theoretical Sayu Midorikawa of my fantasies by now. And yet, despite the fact that Sayu Midorikawa was not a real person, she lingered on in my head.

“A little bit.”

Ayasa looked at me, wordlessly.

“You could play the part.”
I felt like my elaboration was just making things sound more suspicious.

“I’ll think about it.”

Miho stood up from the table.

“Don’t think about it too long, Higashiyama. Even if you can’t decide on a name, you need to file that paperwork soon. You’ll be in a lot of trouble if you don’t.”

“Yes. Thank you, Saijou.”

Miho grabbed her bag.

“Tell Shinji thanks for letting me borrow his computer.”

“You’re welcome, Saijou.”

Hiroki was standing in the doorway.

“Oh, you’re back. Don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry. Neighbor had some trouble getting her new TV through the door.”

Shinji sat down at the table.

“Oh, leaving already, Saijou?”

Miho nodded and started back towards the door. It flew open and closed with a bit more force than seemed appropriate - although, it was a pretty heavy door.

“Nishizawa. Go after her.”

Hiroki didn’t whisper. Ayasa gave him a funny look.

“Huh?”

“You’re really bad at this, aren’t you. Something’s obviously getting to her.”

Miho didn’t seem all that disturbed earlier.

“And you think it’s my fault?”

Hiroki tapped on my chest with his finger.

“Nishizawa, you never learn. It’s always your fault with Miho.”

Good point.