Being involved with a book drive was a lot harder than I expected. The amount of resistance I went through just trying to buy some cardboard boxes was insane. They had to be exactly the right shape, only from a certain set of companies, and I had to get an estimate on the cost before payment could be forwarded. What a nightmare!

And that was just the first task of the day. Around lunchtime, I got a message from Kawanaka saying that she wanted me to stop by the school library and go over some of the social media stuff. Apparently Shinbo was busy with the printers, and Mizuhara had other stuff to do (maybe she had to do a job?), so I was the only one available to give a second opinion.

I liked Kawanaka. She was friendly and cute. She called me "Kazuya" and even laughed at my lame jokes. I hadn't realized how stressed out I'd been about all this stuff, between the book drive and Grandma Sayuri. Kawanaka's relaxed and upbeat attitude helped me forget a little about that, and she was doing a great job, too! Just overnight she'd managed a few thousand retweets and hundreds of likes on her post about the book drive. How did she do it?

"It's all thanks to Chizuru," she admitted. "Her social media contacts helped spread the word. I had no idea she had those kinds of friends!"

Mizuhara was always full of surprises.

"Actually," Kawanaka went on, "that's the real reason I wanted you to stop by. One of her friends started DMing me and offered to meet to discuss some other things we could do for publicity."

I understood; she didn't want me help so much as backup in case we were meeting with someone sketchy. I was okay with that, though I wasn't so sure I'd be of much help if someone with bad intentions came by to prey on Mizuhara's friends. I'd probably just get my ass kicked.

"Excuse me, are you here for the book drive?" said a man wearing a beret. "You're Kawanaka, right?"

It was that guy, that actor friend of Mizuhara's. His name was Umi.

Mizuhara was going to kill me. I knew it. She would crush me like Godzilla stomping all over Tokyo. How could I let Kawanaka meet Umi and expose all of Mizuhara's secrets?

"That's right!" said Kawanaka, holding up a cat charm she'd kept on the table. "Thanks for coming." She gestured toward me. "This is Kinoshita. He's also helping with the book drive. Is that all right?"

I made a face. Umi was such a stud he could be psychic, right? That's how hot guys land hot women, isn't it? I thought, maybe, just maybe, he might be able to read my mind and see that he should pretend not to know who I was.

But no, that's not how it works. He just looked at me like I was some kind of half-rabid monkey. "We're acquainted," he said, and he nodded toward me. "Nice to see you again."

Kawanaka was confused. "You know each other?"

"We ran into each other back around Christmas," Umi explained. "Chizuru and I were doing some gift shopping—" At that point he caught himself. I was making an X sign with my arms, and since I was behind Kawanaka, she couldn't see what I was doing, but all that accomplished was to make Umi stop in his tracks.

"You went on a shopping date with Chizuru?" asked Kawanaka, surprised. "You have that kind of relationship with Chizuru?"

Umi laughed. "No, no, I have a girlfriend, but we…" I tried to make the X sign really large and visible, and Umi finally seemed to catch on. "But we know each other through some mutual friends. She needed some help doing some gift shopping for a man in her life and wanted my opinion. Maybe it was for a relative?"

"I see." Kawanaka seemed disappointed. "For a moment I thought I'd found Chizuru's secret boyfriend! That would explain so much."

"She's quite mysterious, isn't she? Mysterious, charming, beautiful—I wouldn't be at all surprised if she had a secret boyfriend. None of the guys I know can get her to look their way, even though they try."

I always thought he had an interest in her, but I still didn't expect him to talk so glowingly when I was trying to stop the conversation. I was caught off-guard and couldn't get him to shut up.

Kawanaka just seemed even more confused, trying to reconcile the inconspicuous "Ichinose" with the woman Umi was describing. I needed to do something—anything!

"Umi, you must want to wash up a bit!" I said. "You've come so far. I'm sure you want to relieve yourself before we get started."

Umi blinked. "Are you asking if I need to go to the bathroom?"

"It's right this way!"

He looked me up and down, and an amused grin came over his face. "All right," he said. "Maybe I'll go ahead, and that way we won't be interrupted later. I'll be right back."

I breathed a sigh of relief, and I escorted Umi toward the bathrooms, but once we were out of sight between two bookshelves, Umi stopped in his tracks. "All right, I've played your game," he said. "What's all this about?"

We were still too close for comfort. I motioned to Umi to come further, and I tried to explain in the lowest intelligible voice I could muster. "Look, I don't think Ichinose wants her friends to know about the acting stuff. You remember what she was like back at Christmas, right? She didn't want to just blurt it out. She's totally different here from the woman you know. She dresses down and tries to maintain a low profile. I don't think her friends even know she's pretty. You see?"

Umi narrowed his eyes, sizing me up. "Is that so?" he said. "I have to say, that all sounds a bit unbelievable. I know Chizuru is a bit private, but really?" He shook his head. "How do I know you're not playing some game with me?"

I took out my phone. "I'll send her a message on LINE right now. I know what she'll say. Don't talk about acting or any of that stuff."

Umi shot me a strange look. "What's your angle here?" he asked. "You're sticking your neck out pretty far for Chizuru. Why do you know all about this stuff when her friends don't?"

I winced. I tried to concentrate on what I was saying to Mizuhara, but the words came out with typos and all jumbled up. "Uh, look, it's a long story," I said, completely unconvincingly, "but let's just say she's done me some favors and I owe her big time."

"That's all it is?"

"That's all it is."

My phone vibrated, and I got a message back from Mizuhara. She was predictably upset, and I turned the phone toward him to show him her instructions about what to talk about and not talk about, but he only gave it a quick look. "All right," he said, making his way toward the bathroom. "I'll go ahead and wash up. You can keep telling stories if you want to."

"What? You saw the message!"

"That's not what I mean," said Umi. "I don't know what your relationship is with Chizuru, but if that's a secret she wants to keep, that's her business."

"It's not what you think!"

"Sure." He waved a hand dismissively. "Nice phone you have there. Do you like fish?"

I turned the phone over. The back was protected in a case with a fish pattern—the case Mizuhara had bought me over Christmas, the one Umi had helped her pick out.

"I do," I admitted.

"I thought so," said Umi, and he headed for the bathroom, shaking his head.

Though I was worried Umi would say something, he was on his best behavior while we worked with Kawanaka on social media outreach. I still wasn't sure about the guy, but he knew people who knew people, and that's what we needed.

After we were through, I was on the way to lunch when Mizuhara ambushed me. She must've raced back to campus because she was out of breath and still had a trace of lipstick by the corner of her mouth. She wanted to know all about what happened with Umi, and I told her the truth. All I could tell Umi was that I owed her. I didn't say we were anything more than that—not "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," not neighbors.

Mizuhara was relieved, and she started beating herself up for introducing Kawanaka to Umi in the first place. "I thought that's what we needed," she admitted, "but it's just made things more complicated. I had no ideas he would aggressively slide into her DMs like that." She recognized it had to be embarrassing to me, too, to have to try to explain my relationship with her. "We should establish a cover story," she decided. "Something of a middle ground. Maybe we could say we live near each other. I'll have to think about it."

But telling Umi the truth was not an option. If her drama school friends started snooping around her life, they might find out about her real job.

"I told them I'm an UberEats driver," she said. It explained her odd hours and constantly being on her phone, messaging clients. She even made sure to bike to drama school to help sell it.

At that point, I was wondering—was it really simpler to be keeping all these secrets? I mean, I understood why she wouldn't tell people she was a rental girlfriend, but it seemed like a lot to keep track of.

"It's what I need to do," she said, sure of herself. "So I do it. There's a path I need to follow. I don't expect anyone else to be there along the way."

"Not even a partner?" I asked.

She looked at me sharply. "Are you volunteering?"

"Me?" I laughed nervously. "I'd never dream of it!"

She didn't seem convinced, but she decided to answer openly. "I thought about it in high school, but everybody seemed so busy with boyfriends that they didn't seem to have time for themselves. I just felt like it was more trouble than it was worth. Now?" She tilted her head. "I see why people go out of their way for it. It's fun going on dates and connecting with people. Like I said before, I love this job, even if it is temporary. But a real relationship? I'm not sure about that."

My heart sank. "You, uh, have no interest in that?"

"I'm not sure I'd put it that way." She held on to one of her braids, running her fingers up and down the length of it. "It's just that rental relationships are straightforward. When you're on the clock, you're on the clock, and you give it your all. Real relationships don't have breaks or off-days. When I'm working, I support my clients 100%. If I had a boyfriend…" She looked at me. "I might be tempted to give 100% all the time, and I don't know if I can do that."

"But if you met someone who could support you, too?" I asked.

She watched me from the corner of her eye, considering what to say as we walked. "I might feel bad about that, but… maybe." Her gaze moved ahead again. "But that's enough hypotheticals. For now, I'm your 'girlfriend.' You can support me if you want—I won't stop you—but it's also my responsibility look out for you as much as I can, as much as a rental girlfriend can."

"You do more than enough."

"But I'm not a real girlfriend," she went on. "I did promise I'd find you one." She frowned. "I haven't been doing a good job of that. Maybe I've been going about it the wrong way. I wonder, what is it you want most in a girlfriend?"

I could've said I wanted her, but I couldn't have taken it back a second time. I would've been totally transparent.

"Come on," she insisted. "There has to be something. You want someone who's attractive, don't you? There's no shame in being interested in sex. Just don't be a creep about it."

I couldn't believe Mizuhara and I were going to have that conversation, but there we were, and her eyes said I shouldn't try to dodge the question. "I mean, yeah, that's part of it," I said, tugging at my collar. "Being a virgin at my age—for a guy, it seems lame. I know that's kinda dumb."

"It is," she said flatly. "That doesn't make you any less of a human being."

"And I get that," I said. "But there's another part of that, too, right? There's a part of it where you feel like you really belong with a person. That's not all of it, of course. There's still stuff I don't understand, like how a girl's shampoo can smell so sexy or how someone hot can seem even hotter when she's not dressed to kill. I don't understand any of that, but I do want sex. It's gotta be amazing, and I hope it would be amazing for my girlfriend, too."

Mizuhara couldn't even bear to look at me after that. She was stifling a laugh. "You—you're really a crude romantic, you know? It's unbelievable!"

"I'm sorry, okay?"

"No, it's fine! I like that about you." She composed herself a bit, and there was a warmth in her eyes I'd seldom seen. "I think a lot of guys are like that and just won't admit it. The fact that you can say it is good. Don't apologize for that." Her expression soured. "But I see now. A rental like me can't give you that kind of intimacy. You need a real girlfriend."

I told her not to talk like that. She'd already done so much for me. I wouldn't have been half the man I was without her. "What I really want from a girlfriend," I told her, "is someone who knows I suck but accepts that I'm trying to be better and not half-assing it. The last thing I want to do is just keep coasting through life. I've been spoiled; I know that. I won't keep sucking down money just to cope with being alive. I want to do something for somebody—for people, for myself, or for someone I love."

"That's admirable," said Mizuhara, "but you need to consider your girlfriend's feelings, too. Maybe she wouldn't want you to put everything on the line for her. You need to take care of yourself, too. From my perspective, I take a lot of guys' money and just burn through it to stay in that shitty apartment, to go to drama school where I'm good but not the best. Is all that worth it? Would I ask anybody to do more than that? No way."

I could feel my blood pressure rising. Mizuhara could think so little of herself sometimes; it was insane! "You've never wasted my time," I told her.

"That's kind of you to say."

"I mean it, though."

"I know you mean it. That's what bothers me." She looked annoyed. "I know you mean it with complete sincerity. It's like for everyone else in the world you have rose-colored glasses on, but when you look at yourself, you can only see black and white. If only you could really see!" She shook her head. "I don't think hiring me has helped you that much. When I met you, you chewed me out for being fake when really you were angry with yourself. Now, I think you've gotten over how your breakup hurt you. I just supported you now and then. You did most of it yourself."

I got over it because I fell in love with her, because she showed me what it means to aspire to something instead of just wasting away. But I could never tell her that because, even if I tried to word it carefully, it would be a confession.

"That's why I think Grandma can die happy thinking you're with me," Mizuhara concluded.

I couldn't be happy like that. Yes, we'd lied to our families for a long time, but this was different. Grandma Sayuri was dying. She deserved to know the truth. "Even if everyone knows we're not together," I argued, "I think my family would still look after you. My grandma is crazy about you. You're like the granddaughter she never had. We love you, Mizuhara."

Her head snapped around. "Excuse me?"

My mind started swimming. It was like I was in a bed of quicksand, and every grain had the words you fucked up inscribed on them a thousand times. But in quicksand, the best thing to do is stop trying to dig yourself out. Just shut up, my brain told me. Just shut up and pretend like it's normal!

She watched me for a long time, and I have no idea what I looked like as I tried not to panic, but after a while, she seemed to accept what I was saying… and that I hadn't meant something special by it. "Thanks," she said. "But you really need to stop that. You're being too kind again."

My voice came out like a frog's, croaking and irregular. "I'm not though!"

"Of course you'd say that." Mizuhara looked off into the distance, across some campus greenspace. I couldn't see her face.

I felt like I was getting through to Mizuhara, but at the same time, I felt bad about it. If I were her friend, my first priority would be to look out for her. If I wanted to be her boyfriend, it would be to get her to let down her guard a little more. I wanted to be both of those things, which meant I wasn't sure where one ended and the other began. Maybe it wasn't good for her to be more trusting. She had a surprisingly independent streak. Even if I could be her boyfriend, I wasn't sure she'd be happy that way.

"Mizuhara," I began, "do you think you'd be better on your own, then? So you wouldn't have to worry about other people getting in your way or trying to help when it costs too much of them?"

"Logically, yes."

I felt like I'd been stabbed.

"But I'm human, and humans aren't that logical or smart," she went on. "Sometimes, before you even realize it, someone can invade your life and carve out a hole for themselves that you can't fill by yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said with a slight smile, "it seems I've become used to having a good neighbor. Funny how that happens, isn't it?"

I could've hugged her right then; Mizuhara was so sweet. In times like those, I could believe we had something special, and I would be okay with it continuing just like that.