This couldn't be real, could it?

As Mizuhara led me to the stairs, that thought went through my mind over and over. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. I knew this girl. She wasn't like this. She once told me if I laid a finger on her, she'd see me in court. Even just a month before, she said she wouldn't do me any sexual favors no matter how much I spent on her, but everyone in that room, if they were paying attention, would come to a common conclusion as Mizuhara and I headed to the second floor: that we were going to find some privacy for one reason and one reason only.

I mean, don't get me wrong—I was stiffer than a diamond already, but who wouldn't be confused by this? Sure, I'd touched her cheek, but this was on another plane of existence entirely! Was all this part of her plan? Was it a secret side of her that she'd never dared show to anyone, so consumed with the image of a perfect girlfriend that she kept all her real desires contained?

More than that, this was not how I'd imagined things going between us. In my wildest dreams, I'd thought maybe, one day, I would confess to her, and for some reason she would say yes. We'd slowly get to know each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. We'd grow closer. We'd be intimate, and then I'd get to show her how much I loved her, how much I needed her, how much I wanted her to have only the best things in the world. Okay, sure, if I had sex with her, I'd damn sure enjoy it, but I wanted it to be something more—and to mean something more. The way things were, if we actually went that far, it felt like I'd be giving in to my most primitive desires, selfishly and with no greater purpose.

So when we got to the top of the steps, I hesitated. I didn't know what to do or if I should politely try to get out of this situation. I mean, I was in love with this girl. Could I really say no if she wanted to sleep with me?

The answer to that soon became obvious. As Mizuhara walked down the upstairs hall, her poofy dress swayed back and forth rhythmically, hypnotically, and she put one foot in front of the other, angling her legs to accentuate that swaying motion. I'd watched enough porn to know it was the blinking neon sign of a woman who wanted to get some action, and I'll be damned if that wasn't the sexiest thing I'd ever seen! If she wanted it that badly, who was I to let my insecurities and doubts get in the way? Or, that's what I'd like to think I believed. In reality, I'm pretty sure my brain switched off, like she had a string tied to my balls, and the rest of me was just coming along for the ride.

The only thing that could stop Mizuhara was someone else being around. There was a couple being real flirty with each other but not yet doing anything. They got out of the way as Mizuhara and I passed by, and all Mizuhara said was, "Don't make a mess, and don't cause any trouble." The two of them seemed shocked, but I didn't look back to see if they got back to chatting each other up. I couldn't have looked away from Mizuhara if I tried.

Mizuhara opened the door into an upstairs bedroom. "We'll just make sure there's no trouble in here," she said, and she sauntered inside. She left me at the door as she paced about the room, her back always turned to me so I could not see her face. She was totally defenseless, and for me, in that moment, the situation became real. This was happening, and the only thing for me to do was not to question it but do what I felt was right.

So as Mizuhara looked under the bed and peered into a closet, making a show of looking for signs of something irregular, I locked the door from the inside and sat down on the bed. Mizuhara didn't notice what I had done until she went to the door herself, turned the knob, and found it wouldn't move.

"Seriously?" she said initially, but then her tone changed back to the soft, sultry tone of the Sugar Plum Fairy. "I see. You've surprised me yet again, Mr. Fish." She turned around, freezing me with her knowing smile. "It seems I've underestimated you."

"Have you?" I said. "Even after I followed you up here, into this room?"

Mizuhara plopped down on the bed beside me, holding her hands in front of her. "Sometimes, it seemed like, even though we had a lot of fun, you would hold yourself back from me."

"I just…" I frowned. "I thought you would run away from me if I didn't hold back."

"It's difficult, isn't it?" she remarked, looking wistfully at the ceiling. "Sometimes, there really are no words or no answers to what's going on in our hearts."

"Or the words are dancing on your lips and just can't reach the person you want to hear them," I said.

Mizuhara laid her hand on top of mine. "If there were an answer on my lips and I couldn't speak it," she said, "would you take it from me?"

I wove my fingers between hers. I leaned in. "I would want to know what you want to say, yes. I would."

She smiled slightly, and she tilted her head to her right. "Show me."

My first kiss with Mizuhara was everything I'd dreamed of, even if the circumstances were nothing like I'd imagined. Maybe I was just trying to make sense of something incredible, but I thought I tasted a little bit of the punch, and the feel of her lipstick was noticeable—thick and distinct. It was truly a first kiss, where we only pressed our lips together. Not like I cared. I loved every second of it.

And then… I couldn't hold back anymore. There was another and another. I wrapped my arm around her waist, trying not to damage those delicate fairy wings on her costume. I couldn't help myself; I pressed my tongue against her lips, and she obliged, kissing me open-mouthed.

When we broke away from each other, I pushed gently on her shoulder, and she fell back to lie flat on the bed. She was breathing heavily, and her eyes were wide. I was reliant on those eyes to tell me something, anything. If I was going too far, I wanted to know then and there, before we did something we might regret.

But instead, she just propped herself up with her elbow, only high enough to kiss me some more. I ran my hand over her head, dislodging some of her hairdo. I don't think she even noticed. I started to kiss her on her neck and collarbone. Her breath caught every time my lips touched her skin, but just when I reached the top of her breast…

"Hey, Ka—I mean, Mr. Fish! Open up!" There were three loud bangs on the door.

"Are you kidding me?" hissed Mizuhara, who scrambled upright and straightened out her hair and her costume. She sighed and nodded at the door, and I went to answer it.

There, Iron Man Kuri and raven girl Kawanaka were at the door. Kawanaka's jaw dropped at the scene, and Kuri seemed flustered. "L–listen, Mr. Fish!" he stammered. "There's been an accident downstairs, and all the hosts are needed to help out, including Miss Sugar Plum Fairy. So, if you don't mind, you lucky bastard?"

"I'll be right down!" said Mizuhara. "Raven, will you tell them I'm on my way?"

"Are you going to tell me what all this is about later?" said Kawanaka.

"Yes, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Let me square things away with the boys, all right?"

Kawanaka nodded, and she scurried back downstairs. Kuri began giving Mizuhara apologies. "I'm so sorry to interrupt, Miss Fairy. He's a good guy, you know, and you seem nice. I don't mean to get in the way." Then, he turned his gaze to me. "But what are you going to do? You're lucky Kibe and Sasapai are too smashed to come looking for you. They think you already have a girlfriend! How are you going to keep them from jumping down your throat about all this?"

I scratched the back of my head. "Look, I admit I didn't think this all the way through, but…"

"It's not a problem," said Mizuhara, stepping in front of me. She gazed up at Kuri and put a thumb underneath the bottom edge of her mask, pulling upward. "It's not a problem," she said again, "if the girl he was found fooling around with at this party is his 'girlfriend,' right, Kuribayashi?"

I couldn't see Kuri's face through his mask, but he looked between her and me repeatedly. "Damn. Damn! I knew it! This whole time?"

"Well," said Mizuhara, putting her mask back on, "more or less?"

"Damn," he said again, and he fumbled for his phone. "I've gotta make a phone call. Maybe I still have a chance!"

I tried calling out to him, but he was already halfway down the hall before I could get him to listen to reason. "Geez, that guy," I said.

"Come on," said Mizuhara, taking me by the arm. "We need to make ourselves presentable."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Mr. Fish," she said coolly, "my lipstick is all over your face."

We stopped by the upstairs bathroom first, and Mizuhara got out some of her makeup kit to help make ourselves "presentable." That really wasn't going to happen because I didn't have any more green face paint with me, so I was going to end up with really conspicuous voids in my costume. Mizuhara wasn't much better off, either. No matter how she tried, the green paint didn't want to come off her face completely. The best she could do was hope that no one would look too closely.

Aside from that, it was awkward. I wanted to look on the bright side—a man and a woman standing in front of a mirror was like a husband and wife getting cleaned up together—but the silence was weighing on me, and I felt like something needed to be said.

"Are you busy next weekend?" I asked.

She blinked, still partway through reapplying her lipstick. "I can make some time, why?"

"I think there's something I'd like to say to you," I said, looking away from the mirror. "You know, the right way."

"That so, huh?" She capped her lipstick. "Seems like you said a lot already. I mean, your tongue was halfway down my throat, so I think I heard you loud and clear."

I about had a heart attack. I was not prepared for the real Mizuhara to come out.

"But sure, if you like," she said with a wink, "we can make it official next weekend. That's what you want, right?"

"Is that what you want?" I asked. "I mean, I know what we just did, but it still almost doesn't feel real to me."

"What, you need me to kiss you again? Because we can do that—I don't mind. I'm happy to make the idea abundantly clear."

I was so startled I half laughed and half coughed. "I don't mind that, but no, that's not necessary right now!"

She looked a little disappointed at that. Man, I had no idea she had this kind of cuteness in her arsenal.

"I mean," I went on, "I'm gonna leave here tonight wondering, was everything that happened tonight real?"

Mizuhara frowned, and she looked pensively at the mirror for a moment. "Of course it was," she declared. "It was a real performance."

"A performance?"

"Yeah. Even though it's a performance, it's still my performance. I put something real into it, and it was written to reflect something real. Grandma once told me, more or less, that actors use make-believe to reflect something that's difficult to see directly. That doesn't make it any less real."

To be honest, I still had trouble imagining it: a Mizuhara who would tease me, who would laugh and giggle freely, who would work up a sweat as we danced, or who would saunter in front of me knowing I couldn't keep my eyes off her. There were so many sides of her I still didn't know, but I was looking forward to seeing them, and I hoped I could show her something new, too.

"Did it surprise you," I began, "when I locked the door?"

Mizuhara put her lipstick away and looked back at me in the mirror. "It did. Like I said, sometimes I feel like you were far away, even when we held hands on dates or were in the same room."

"Then let me make up for lost time," I said, and I hugged her from behind.

"Wha—hey!" she said. "Be careful; you could get your paint on me!"

"I'll help you fix it."

"Geez," she said with a sigh, and she rubbed my head with hand, smiling. "Geez," she said again.

Overall, the party was a great success. The accident Kuri and Kawanaka had come to fetch us over ended up being a minor one; someone had twisted an ankle while dancing but was doing fine with some bandages to help stabilize the joint.

With the party winding down, we set about cleaning up. Mizuhara and her friends would be staying the night to help perform the final inspection before turning the house back over to its owners, but we all pitched in, helping fold up chairs and put away dishes. I did my part, too, though I was pestered by a few indirect questions from Shinbo about what Mizuhara and I had been up to upstairs.

On the way home, I'd already started planning out next weekend's date in my mind. I thought maybe it would be fitting if we visited the aquarium again, for the first time as a real couple instead of a pretend one, but I'd only begun imagining it when I got a notification from my phone. "Getting home safe?" she asked me.

"Still only halfway," I wrote back. "I miss you already."

"I knew you were holding out on me!" she said. "This is the kind of sappy stuff I expected from you all along."

"Oh, are you satisfied now?"

"…maybe not just yet," she concluded, adding a wink emoji for good measure.

Mizuhara and I wrote to each other all the way home. Kuri looked at me in the rear-view mirror and grinned, even though Kibe and Sasapai kept grilling him about what happened with Kawanaka, and then with me and Mizuhara. "But that had to be Ichinose, right?" Kibe wondered aloud. "She's their friend; she couldn't have been Chizuru, right? Kazuya, how did you sneak her in there? Was there some kind of magic involved?"

More than a little magic. Though we'd said little, I felt like I was worth a billion yen. Next weekend, I'd tell her what I felt in words, but it would be a formality. We both understood what was between us, in spite of our complicated history.

"Look, guys," I told the others. "It's simple, okay? She's my girlfriend."

The End

So ends "Mr. Fish and the Sugar Plum Fairy. I hope you enjoyed this brief concept of the two of them realizing their love when given an excuse to put facades and pretenses aside.

Stay tuned for "Shadows in Moonlight," coming soon.

-Muphrid

2020-11-24