Yuuto was using his usual aloof strategy just waiting at his table for someone to join him, whether it was a new customer or a regular client.
But there was a slight problem… the problem was the girls that normally joined him were a bit… odd. Maybe he should think about changing his tactics sometime later.
He watched as new people came and went from the room. After some time went by, he saw someone he knew from before his time as a host enter the club room.
She was wearing a completely black dress and looking around the room as if searching for someone.
Yuuto instinctively slouched down in his booth, but it seemed she had noticed him and started to walk over to him with a smile on her face.
Yuuto stood up and greeted her with his gentlemanly host voice when she stopped at his booth.
“Hello, my name is Yasuo. Nice to meet you,” He gave a half bow and offered his business card to her.
She took it and placed it inside her bra.
“No pockets,” she explained after seeing Yuuto’s puzzled expression.
Yuuto helped her sit down. After asking to join her, he sat next to her.
“May I ask you your name?” Yuuto pretended to not know her name.
“My name is Rinako,” she replied.
“Is this your first time or have you come here before?” asked Yuuto.
“It is my first time,” she answered.
“Okay, regular drinks are free for your first visit. You will only have to pay if you buy a non-regular drink,” Yuuto explained.
He offered the menu to her, after skimming through it, she chose a beer. Yuuto placed the order and made small talk while waiting for the drinks. As time passed and they drank more alcohol, the topic changed.
“You know I saw you some weeks ago, out on the streets gathering people to come to club Winter Night. I wasn’t sure if it was you so I decided a few days ago to come and see if you really did work here. How exactly did you start working as a host?” asked Rinako.
Yuuto thought for a moment before answering, “It’s complicated. A lot of things happened and now it’s as you see, I’m working as a host.”
“I see,” she said disinterestedly now that she couldn’t hear any more details.
For a short time they just quietly drank while watching the TV at the booth, then Rinako grabbed his shoulder getting his attention and began to speak.
“You know, I have been thinking about this for a long time now. We should get back together.”
This caused Yuuto to choke on his drink and start loudly coughing from her unexpected words.
“What are you talking about? Didn’t we both agree that it wasn’t working out?” asked Yuuto
“Yes, well I have thought about it since then. After seeing you again it started me wondering if we should try and work it out and see if we can start dating again,” she said in a straightforward manner.
“I don’t know. I think we should stay friends for now. Maybe in the future, we can talk about it then, if things change,” said Yuuto.
“Fair enough,” she replied.
They spent the rest of the night talking about people Yuuto used to know, along with small talk about things happening in the world while they drank.
The two hours quickly flew by and so Yuuto led her to the register to pay her first time fee as well as the host registration fee if she wanted to come back to the club.
When Rinako was finished paying, Yuuto escorted her to the front door of the building.
She stopped before exiting and said, “You know I’m serious about this. It could work.”
“Well, we will just have to wait and see how it all turns out. It was a pleasure to host you tonight,” replied Yuuto in his gentlemanly host voice.
She looked at him for a few seconds before leaving the building.
Yuuto sighed and thought, ‘What am I going to do with that woman. She’s a handful.’
Over the next week, Rinako kept coming to club Winter Night and choosing Yuuto as her host.
On one of the nights they were drinking, she kept forcing him to drink until he passed out.
Yuuto woke up and looked at his watch and let out a moan, he had slept through the whole night and it was now already past work hours. He decided to walk to the boss’s office and report in. But was stopped by the head manager before he left the club room.
“I have a message from the boss. Since you passed out and were not able to work for the whole night. You lost the club some potential money it could have made, thus the rule states you will be fined 30,000 yen for passing out and not being able to work. You can get out of your work suit and go to your room. No need to report to the boss,” said the manager.
Yuuto was stunned and cursed himself. He had been doing well lately. Slowly paying off the debt while not adding any new cost other than his rent.
30,000 yen wasn’t a lot compared to his current debt but it could add up quickly if it happened too often. The fine was two or three nights worth of average earnings, depending on the customers he had.
‘Never again will I pass out,’ thought Yuuto as he made a sacred vow to himself.
On a separate night, while hosting Rinako, she was drinking a lot and seemed very drunk as she was getting loud and acting crazy. She tried to dance on top of the table but Yuuto was able to stop her. When he offered to take her to the dance floor so she could dance she said, “Don’t wanna.”
Yuuto was forced to babysit her for the rest of the night while she was his client. He had to repeatedly pull her off the table as she kept trying to dance on top of it.
While he was embarrassed for her as she complained that it was too hot and tried to strip out of her shirt and skirt she was wearing. He was successful in stopping her. When the time was up, he called a cab for her and escorted her into it, helping her put on her buckle before closing the door.
On the night before his day off, he was again hosting Rinako. Tonight she was not acting crazy.
“So have you thought of going on a date with me?” Rinako asked.
“Yeah, I guess we can try it out and go on a date,” said Yuuto after thinking for a while.
Rinako gave a screech of happiness and hugged Yuuto and said, “Thank you, thank you so much! This will be great, you’ll see.”
***
Yuuto had got up an hour before he normally did and put on a pair of his best clothes. He had only gotten a few hours of sleep just so he could arrive early to the designated area that Rinako had asked to meet up at the night before. He had a little trouble finding the meetup place but eventually found it.
He found an empty bench and sat down, then began watching people go by, searching for Rinako while drinking a coffee.
The time for the meet up came, he got up and began searching for her. After some time had passed, he gave up and decided to sit back down and wait.
Three girls came up to him while he was waiting at the bench. It wasn’t who he was expecting. It was Misa, Kana, and Niko.
Yuuto then remembered Niko saying something about the three of them hanging out together on their next day off.
“What are you doing here Yuuto?” asked Kana.
“I’m just waiting for an old friend. They are a bit late though,” said Yuuto, a bit worried.
“You want to hang out with us since they’re late?” asked Misa.
“No, I promised to wait here so that’s what I will do,” said Yuuto.
“Well, I hope you are able to have a good time with your friend. We’re off to do some shopping, ” said Niko.
They left and Yuuto waited… and he waited some more. Seconds became minutes and minutes became hours. Soon it was lunchtime, his stomach began growling in hunger. He had skipped breakfast for coffee earlier. Thinking that they could get a snack along the way while on their date.
‘I’m so hungry’ thought Yuuto.
He decided to go to a vending machine nearby and buy a canned soup to eat. He picked up the can and popped the tab. As he was about to drink the soup, the familiar voices of the trio called his name.
He turned around and saw three girls standing behind him. It was Misa, Kana, and Niko again.
“You’re still waiting here?” asked Niko.
“Yeah they’re a bit late,” replied Yuuto.
“You still don’t want to come with us and hang out?” asked Kana.
“No, I think I’ll still wait for them. You guys can go ahead and keep having fun without me,” replied Yuuto.
He went back to the bench. Where he drank the soup.
When he was finished, he put the can into the can recycle bin that was next to the vending machine and waited a few more hours back on the bench.
His phone started to ring in his pants pocket. He stood up so he could get to it easier and pulled it out.
It was a text message from Rinako. She had to go to the hospital because her grandmother broke her hip and so she went to support her for the time being. She wouldn’t be able to join him today for the date.
Yuuto gave a huge sigh and walked back to the club. ‘Great my day off was wasted sitting on a bench.’ thought Yuuto.
***
The next night at work Rinako showed up and apologized.
“There wasn’t anything I could do. Please let me make it up to you. We can go on another date, and I will come to the club every day.”
During the whole week of work, Rinako kept her promise and kept coming to the club and drinking a lot, earning him a good sum of money.
In a happier mood at the end of the week, Yuuto accepted her invitation to go on a date again but told her to contact him sooner if something happened.
The same location was picked as the meetup place, so Yuuto was able to get there faster than before because he knew where it was.
He was kept waiting again until he received an excuse in the form of a text saying she had to do urgent errands for her family.
Yuuto placed his head in his hands and wondered why he even tried to do this a second time.
It was nearing lunchtime so he decided to go to a nearby fast-food restaurant.
As he entered a random burger fast food restaurant, there was a burst of loud laughter coming from the tables on the far left. He looked over and question marks appeared over his head.
What was she doing here? Wasn’t she supposed to be doing errands?
“I bet he would have still been waiting if I hadn’t texted him with an excuse,” said Rinako.
Her friends all began laughing loudly again. Yuuto’s face grew red with anger.
“There won’t be a third time,” he said to himself.
“Sir you’re blocking the door,” said a cashier behind the counter closest to Yuuto.
Yuuto mumbled “Sorry,” and exited the place, nearly running into a group of people. He again mumbled the same thing, not bothering to look at who it was this time.
“Hey it’s Yuuto, did you finish eating lunch?” someone asked him. He looked up to see it was the trio of girls again.
“Jeez, are you guys stalking me or something? No, I decided not to eat there. I’m going to find someplace else to eat,” said Yuuto.
“Want to come with us?” asked Kana. “We were going to get some food from here. But I guess you don’t want anything from here. We can go somewhere else if you want.”
“Sure why not,” He agreed.
He spent the rest of the afternoon with the group eating lunch then going to all types of different stores.
It seemed they enjoyed embarrassing Yuuto by taking him to the women section of the clothing store and talking about bras and underwear.
They then had him act as the judge on the many clothes they tried on which lasted forever. After they had tried on everything the store had to offer Yuuto became a glorified bag holder.
When the sun was setting, he handed the bags back to them and they parted ways after saying their goodbyes.
The trio went to a package delivery store and dropped off their bags and wrote the address of where to send them after paying for it.
They still had business to take care of. They went back to the burger restaurant. Luckily, the people they were looking for were still there and they were still making a lot of noise.
The trio walked up to their table.
“Which one of you is the one that Yuuto was supposed to meet?” asked Niko.
That’s right, they had in fact been sneaking around watching to see who Yuuto was meeting.
Niko didn’t want to go but was dragged along by the other two. Because they had followed him secretly they were able to see the look of anger on his face when he looked at the loudmouth girls during lunch. Which told them all they needed to know.
How dare they mess with Yuuto.
“Who are you? And why do you want to know,” asked the girl who seemed to be the leader.
All three of the girls zeroed in their attention on her.
“Stop messing around with Yuuto,” Kana said sternly.
“What are you guys? His babysitters?” asked one of the girls at the table.
“I’ll do whatever I want, and toy with whoever I want to toy with,” Rinako shouted.
In a flash, Misa picked up a glass filled with pop and dumped it on top of Rinako’s head.
Everyone was shocked into silence, the only sound was Rinako sputtering and trying to wipe her face.
“What did you do that for? Now we have to leave… and quickly too,” said Niko in an urgent but hushed voice.
“Whoops,” said Misa.
Kana burst out laughing as they quickly exited the restaurant.
“I guess we might have gotten our point across to her. Hopefully, she can take a hint,” said Kana.
They all parted ways after getting to the train station and agreed to meet up again the next time they all had a day off.
***
A group of girls were sitting at a burger restaurant quietly talking with angry faces filled with hate.
“Those beeps. Think they can beep with us. It’s not over yet.”
***
Yuuto was quite relieved and somewhat happy when he did not see Rinako show up even once over the next week. He didn’t know how he would handle it if she showed up and pretended nothing was wrong.
‘Got to be more careful with who I date,’ Yuuto thought to himself.
