Villain a Novel (2010) Read Online Free Page B

restroom yet.
    “Me?” Mako was resting her head in her hands on the table, and raised her chin in surprise.
    “I’ll get Keigo to invite one of his friends and the four of us can go together. At a place like that, the more the merrier, don’t you think?”
    Keigo of course hadn’t promised he’d take Yoshino to Universal Studios at this point, but including others in her fantasy plans made the whole picture seem more real and gave her a small thrill. Even if she was deceiving Mako, when the actual time came to go, she could always claim that something came up and Keigo couldn’t make it, and then she and Mako could use the tickets instead of letting them go to waste. Going with Keigo, just the two of them, would be amazing, but if it didn’t work out and she had to settle for Mako, Yoshino still wanted to go over New Year’s.
    “But shouldn’t you invite Sari, too?” Mako looked forlornly into Yoshino’s eyes.
    “The thing is, Keigo doesn’t get along with her,” Yoshino said, deliberately keeping her voice down.
    “You’re kidding. But they seemed to get along so well at the bar.”
    “Don’t tell Sari, okay? It’d hurt her feelings.”
    Mako nodded solemnly at Yoshino’s mock-serious warning.
    Of course it was an outright lie that Keigo disliked Sari. Mako was so gullible that sometimes Yoshino liked making something up and seeing how she’d react.
    Mako was from Hitoyoshi City in Kumamoto Prefecture. Her father owned a used-car lot, where her mother had worked part-time, and Mako was their only daughter. As might be expected of a daughter from a good family where the parents got along well, Mako Adachi saw work as a stopgap and wanted, soon after she graduated from junior college, to get married. She was generally pretty passive: since childhood, she had waited to be chosen by others rather than choosing her own friends. After she graduated from high school she decided to go to the junior college in Fukuoka affiliated with her high school, a move that eliminated any worries about entrance exams. She didn’t care if she knew anybody there or not, and as it turned out, she didn’t. After college she was hoping to return home to Hitoyoshi, but couldn’t find a job there. So with no other alternative,she took the job at Heisei Insurance, moved into the company apartment building, and eventually made two friends, Yoshino and Sari. They were flashier than her friends in high school, but she was relieved to have someone to keep her company until she found a man to marry.
    “You know, the other day Suzuka Nakamachi called out to me in the courtyard,” Mako said, as if suddenly remembering it. With her chopsticks she skillfully peeled a slice of cucumber stuck in the potato salad from the side of the bowl.
    “When was this?” Yoshino made a face, remembering how Suzuka liked to hang out in the arbor in the courtyard, letting everyone hear her Tokyo accent.
    “Like—three days ago? She goes, ‘So I hear from Sari that Yoshino and Keigo are going out. Is that true?’ You remember how one of her friends goes to the same college as Keigo?” Mako didn’t seem all that interested in the topic as she chewed the crunchy slice of cucumber.
    “So what did you say to her?” Yoshino asked, pretending to be calm.
    “I told her I thought so.”
    Startled perhaps by Yoshino’s severe tone, Mako stopped chewing for a moment. Just then Sari came back from the downstairs restroom.
    “So, what’re you talking about?” Sari said, taking off her boots. Restaurants like this with tatami rooms provided clogs and slippers for customers to use when they went to the restroom, but Sari, a stickler for cleanliness, claimed she felt uncomfortable using communal slippers and always wore her own shoes. Yoshino had her doubts about this explanation.
    Yoshino watched Mako reach into the potato salad again with her chopsticks. “I think Suzuka likes Keigo,” she said. “So she sees me as a rival.”
    This was another