My first instinct was to rage about not being a whore who would sell herself for money. Then I rampaged about how insulted I was and how nepotism was wrong on so many different levels. I railed against the “corrupt capitalistic society selling their souls for a few pieces of paper.” But…those were quite a few pieces of paper and in the end all I could muster to save what small amount of pride I had was a promise to give them an answer at Ojiisan’s the next week.

I threw myself into the job search like a woman possessed. There were a few positions at anime studios, but they paid only marginally more than I was making at the game studio. With AI taking over most things, artists were becoming an endangered species.

Shifting gears I began searching for jobs in Karate. Maybe teaching positions or something would work. I had a job at the dojo in Shibuya, but it barely paid for the train ticket and a bottle of water while I was there. Certainly not enough to pay for electricity and food. Unsurprisingly there were no jobs to be found.

I put my battered laptop on the milk crate end table I’d made and sat back on my hands, most of my body safely under the kotatsu. I shook my head sadly. 22 years of life. A high school diploma. Hell, even a college degree which I had just begun paying the loans back for, and the reality was that I had a grand total of zero marketable skills.

How was that even possible? I marveled at my own worthlessness. Short of selling my organs on the black market I would be destitute in two months’ time. Well, I corrected myself, two months’ time provided I didn’t eat anything. If I factored in eating, I estimated I had enough in my savings for maybe a month and a half. I briefly thought about looking up the going rate of a kidney. I was a relatively healthy person who didn’t drink in excess very often and didn’t smoke.

Which, of course, then begged the question of where one would even go to sell something like that. I would assume, again, the black market. But where did someone find it? Where was it? Somehow, I doubted there was a warehouse down by the docks with a sign saying, “black market”. I scowled. How did they figure those sorts of things out? Black market and street values and crap I saw on the news all the time seemed like mostly made-up numbers to make whatever arrests and seizures the police did seem very impressive.

“Ugh!” I groaned, sitting up and rubbing my eyes as the warm air of the kotatsu pushed the cold in my apartment away. I grimaced slightly and slipped my hands under the table. Whenever it got cold my right hand ached painfully, yet another gift from Tottori by way of Aria. Why did so many things circle back to there? Circle back to her.

I shook my head to clear it. No! I chastised myself. There was no way I was going down that particular rabbit hole. Not when I had other, far more pressing things on my mind. After doing some rudimentary math in my head since I was never good at math and rudimentary was the only type I could manage, I figured I would need about 3,000,000 yen a year to maintain the lifestyle I had. That would pay all my bills, buy food and supplies, and maybe even have a few thousand yen to go out from time to time.

Certainly, that salary wouldn’t let me live extravagantly, but I wouldn’t go without, either. I had made less than that at the game company and managed to make ends meet. I didn’t need to be a manager; I just needed a halfway decent line level employee type job. However, poring over the help wanted ads made me realize that I was, in a word, screwed. My limited skill set lent itself to nothing except part time jobs and to get even close to what I’d need I’d have to find like eight of them.

“300 million…” I groaned as I laid my head on the kotatsu, the slight vibration the fan beneath the table had developed causing my head to shake slightly. I could buy a new kotatsu, I thought to myself. One that didn’t sound like a defective jet engine when it first started. Hell…I could buy a central heating system with that much money.

On one hand the idea of getting a position based solely on nepotism grated on me. I had no qualifications to do the job. I had no skills necessary to follow through with the duties that would be required of me. Being gay would eventually lead to questions that would only prove troublesome later down the line should there be any incident. Even something as simple as a disagreement between the girls which I might have to intervene in, or a girl not being chosen whose parents took exception could lead to a scandal.

On the other hand, 300 million yen a year was a lot of money.

I certainly wasn’t worried about me actually doing something inappropriate. Yes, I found girls attractive, but not all girls. And even if I did find a girl or two attractive, it wasn’t like I was going to force myself on them. I wasn’t going to act like I was a tourist at a smorgasbord. I could be professional.

There was, of course, no crime against the occasional glance. Provided the glance was surreptitious. I could absolutely keep my baser urges in check. I scowled. Despite what was plainly intimated at the meeting with Kunoichi. A surge of annoyance welled up. The gall of them doing a background check on me without my knowledge.

“Oh, God!” I whispered. “Did they talk to my exes?” My cheeks burned with embarrassment. No, I shook my head. If they had I never would have been offered the job. I had no doubt most of my previous girlfriends had little nice to say about me. Maybe with the benefit of time it wouldn’t be that bad. But even with time it couldn’t have been that good.

Why was I even thinking about that? My love life or, more importantly, lack of “love” as a concept, life was not the issue in this situation. The issue is whether to become that which I despised more than anything. The person sitting in an office who had no business being there except they happened to be related to the owner.

In college I had a part time job in a convenience store and the “manager’ as such was a disgusting cretin who only had the job because his parents owned the chain. It had started out as a decent job but had quickly degenerated into a tightening spiral of sexual harassment ending only when he decided the female employees were to wear skirts so short the bottom of our asses would have been fully exposed. One girl had been angling for her trip down easy street and had been quick to accept. The rest of us quit. All the while he had sat in his office and stared at us on the cameras.

Of course, I reasoned, past experience didn’t mean I had to be that way. I didn’t have to be a revolting toady. I could be different. I could create a welcoming, inclusive environment. I could be the change I’d wanted working at the convenience store.

That sort of thing also required me to embrace taking a position because of who I knew not who I was. I scowled again, my thoughts locked in a cycle of rationalizing taking the position and raging against it all within about 3 seconds of each other.

“GAH!” I exclaimed, grabbing my hair in frustration. This was getting me nowhere. I flopped gracelessly backward and inch-wormed my way fully under the kotatsu so only my head and shoulders were sticking out, the rest of me coiled in the warmth.

The answer was simple, of course. My reluctance to take the job stemmed almost entirely from my fear of being shoved into the limelight in any way whatsoever. Why? Was I afraid Aria would show up on my doorstep and…do what? I hadn’t wronged her. I’d embarrassed her, yes. But I hadn’t been the one who cheated and at the end of the day, what I’d done was certainly no worse than her fucking my own brother in a dingy love hotel.

Was I afraid my parents would suddenly show up and out me? Hardly. They wanted nothing to do with me and the feeling was decidedly mutual. Even if they or any of the other people in Tottori who knew about my sexuality told the world I was gay, what difference did it make? Kunoichi knew I was gay and was prepared for it.

Besides, I’d been gone from that shithole for years. I’d have to be a raging egomaniac to think I was so special that a brief scandal involving a nobody like me 6 years ago would be remembered. In towns like Tottori, perched at the end of the world, scandals came and went like the weather since everyone knew everyone else’s business.

Then what, exactly, was my major issue?

If I was honest, I was simply afraid. I didn’t even know what I was afraid of anymore. I just knew that as soon as I considered something outside the normal lifestyle of skulking through the alleys of obscurity, I began to feel a rising sense of panic. The worst part is I couldn’t even identify why I felt that way.

While the admission should have moved the needle rather sharply, it still didn’t sit right with me to take a job I was not only grossly unqualified for but had certainly not earned. I rolled from side to side dramatically. Angry at myself for not just making a damn decision. How was it so hard? I never considered myself much of a wishy-washy person but here I was. My psychology teacher would have suggested making a list of the pros and cons but that seemed foolish in this situation. Most probably because the pros outweighed the cons so staggeringly as to be a joke.

My phone ringing suddenly interrupted me, and I scowled at it. Why would I get a call? Especially when I was in the middle of an existential crisis of my own making. The timing irritated me. I grabbed the phone angrily and stared at the number. Tokyo it said followed by a number I didn’t recognize. Had they found my number already?

Wait, I thought. Who even were “they”? Had I become a paranoiac so soon? Maybe it was just a wrong number. I hesitated with my thumb over the cancel button before clicking accept. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t be cautious, though.

“Hello,” I said in halting English. “This is Tokyo Pizza!” I did not sound convincing. My English was atrocious, and the lack of pizza restaurant sounds in the background would immediately brand me a liar.

“You’re so funny, Sensei!” The voice on the other end of the phone giggled. “What did you say?”

“Kitashi…san?” I scowled at the phone.

“You remembered!” Takara laughed at the other end of the phone. “You were missing me as much as I was missing you, huh?”

“Huh?”

“Better be careful, sensei! You’ll sweep me off my feet for sure this way!” Takara giggled. Fucking straight girls, I thought venomously.

“How did you get my number, Kitashi san?” I tried to steer the conversation back to a safer harbor where I didn’t keep remembering the feel of the girl’s breast pressed firmly, yet gently against my arm.

“Takara, sensei!” she huffed in reply. “Takara!”

“Ah, um, yes. Takara…chan, then,” I stammered my reply.

“You gave me your number, silly! Don’t you remember?” Ah, fuck me, I thought. I did, didn’t I?

“I suppose I did,” I sighed. “Old people do old people things,” I said, leaning heavily into self-deprecation to avoid admitting that I had completely forgotten giving it to her. In all fairness a lot had happened in the time since and in the moment, I was far more focused on her creamy skin than the phone.

“Please! You’re only a year or two older than me!”

“I suppose you’re right,” I murmured. “So, to what do I owe the call?”

“Oh! Haha! I forgot for a second! We’re twins!”

“I suppose so,” I chuckled obligingly. “But I’m not sure what you’re apologizing for is the thing.”

“You wound me, sensei!” Takara gasped dramatically. “We promised to do something together this week!” I played what I recalled of the conversation back in my head and didn’t recall promising anything at all.

“Ah…” I trailed off.

“I’ve just been so busy getting things together for Saturday I didn’t have time!” She sounded rather distraught. “But Saturday will make the absence that much fonder!”

“Eh?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“We need to get an early start on things, so I’ll be meeting you at Tanaka-san’s house! I just wanted to call and remind you to bring clothes for the onsen!”

“Huh?” I stared at the phone dumbly.

“Or better yet! Let’s go naked!”

“Eh?” I was adrift and sinking in the tsunami the conversation had become.

“We have to get to know each other very well if I’m going to be your assistant!”