COTE : Parasite in Love.

Chapter 3 : Friend

I don’t have too much hope for you, the man said as he left.

Can’t really blame him, Ayanokouji thought.

Because this job really was a heavy burden for him. He disliked interacting with other people as it was, but he was especially bad with children and old people. The reason, of course, being “they seemed dirty.”

But that said, he couldn’t just give up from the get-go. If he couldn’t fulfill this request, Ayanokouji wouldn’t just be unemployed, he’d be unemployed with a criminal record.
Apparently, the kid’s name was Shina Hiyori.

Kiyotaka wasn’t given any information beyond that.

His blackmailer also gave his own name: Tsukeshiro. Tsukeshiro’s instructions were simple.

“At 5 PM tomorrow, go to Mizushina Park. Near the park, there’ll be a kid feeding swans. That’s shina Hiyori.”

Ayanokouji didn’t quite understand the situation, but nodded for the time being.
“Your first duty is to become Hiyori Shina’s friend.”

Then Tsukishiro appended a brief explanation of what the payment for success would be. The amount he specified was pretty big money to Ayanokouji at the moment.

Once Tsukishiro left, Ayanokouji went around his room cleaning like mad. Just thinking about the possibility that someone had been intruding in there while he was out made him feel like he was losing his mind. But as much antiseptic as he used, the thick sense of an “other” wouldn’t seem to go away.

The next night, Ayanokouji wore a coat, donned latex gloves on both hands, put on a disposable face mask, and placed disinfecting sheets and spray in his bag. Carefully checking the lock, he opened the door with a feeling of hopelessness.

It had been a long time since he’d left his holy ground past sunset. The air outside was piercingly cold, and his face and ears stung.
He chose to wear a suit so as not to make Shina hiyori wary. Most people would be, if a stranger talked to them out of the blue. Even moreso at night. At times like these, a suit could give people a sense of relief.

Ayanokouji was given this thought by taking into account his own experience last night.
He came to a stop on a sidewalk outside the train station. A small crowd had formed on the side of the road.

Peeking over their shoulders, he saw the onlookers were circled around a street performer. The performer was a man in his thirties, with a suitcase in front of him serving as a pedestal, on which marionettes danced. The man was making full use of all his fingers to control two marionettes at once. He’s dexterous, Ayanokouji admired. A nearby cassette player played background music, “The Lonely Goatherd.”

He watched the performance for a while. The marionettes had highly deformed designs, their facial features all different sizes, which took it past comical to grotesque. It seemed the male marionette chased the female marionette, or maybe the female marionette chased the male marionette, and as the two awkwardly kissed at the end, the music ended, and there was a round of applause.

With the audience feeling good, the puppeteer began to skillfully ask for payment. Once the other viewers left, Ayanokouji put a 1000-yen bill in the suitcase. The performer grinned, and said in a whisper:

May you have the puppets’ protection.

He resumed walking. Luckily, the designated park was only a 30-minute walk from his apartment, so there was no need to use public transportation.

He had imagined, albeit faintly, that  Shina hiyori was a boy around ten years old. Just the look of the name, “Hiyori” - and this was purely from Ayanokouji’s assumption of how the name was written in kanji - seemed more masculine than not, and “shina” was the word for “chrysalis,” which in his mind had more of an association with boys.