Tokyo Seduction (Book 1 Of The Gaijin Series)

Chapter 10

...End of March two months later...

Frustrated by the way she felt; Mimi lay on her bed, not really reading the manga she had in her hands. Betrayal from the incident five years ago still stabbed at her heart in a way she never thought possible. Images of her mother started to surface in her mind overwhelming her. Remembering the look of pure glee etched on that woman's face, made her stomach roil with a mixture of hurt and disgust. The force of these emotions bubbled up and clawed their way to the back of her throat. Mimi clapped a hand over her mouth, tuning everything else out, concentrating extremely hard on not vomiting.

"Hey, Mimi, whatcha you up to today?" Erika asked, wrapping her hair in a towel at the door way of their tiny en-suite bathroom, still damp from her shower.

Erika walked across the room waiting for a response. Their dorm room was one of the larger ones on campus. It had two of everything: single bed, bed side table and lamp, desk, closet, chest of drawers, and a small food cupboard. Yet it still felt cramped, mainly because Erika loved to buy clothes, wear them once, and then toss them aside. She grabbed her clothes out of her closet and walked behind the cloth Chinese changing screen to get dressed.

It had been five years to the day since Mimi had been completely cut out of her family. And it was the only day she allowed herself to feel sorry over the loss of her family. As a result, she still hadn't managed to read a single book and the two stacks of unread books lay beside her bed still untouched.

When Mimi didn't answer, Erika shook her head. "Earth to Mimi, come in, Mimi. Amelia, are you listening to me?"

Erika's voice brought Mimi back to the present. She sat up and looked at Erika's head bobbing up and down behind the screen, putting the past back into the box she kept it in. "Not much. In fact, my day is pretty much free up until five," Mimi said in her unique accent, distinctly British with a slight hint of American. Her face twisted up like she was sucking on a sour lemon. "That's when I have to go and tutor Aki." She wanted to groan but she didn't want to give her roommate any ammo to tease her with.

Erika popped her head out from behind the changing screen, catching Mimi's expression. "You know, I don't know why you don't come and work at the bar with me," she said in a joking tone. "You'd make three times as much as you do tutoring." She ducked behind the screen and hid her amusement at Mimi's annoyance.

Mimi rolled her eyes. It was the same old thing; Erika had been trying to get Mimi to work at the bar for the past three and a half years, and she was sick of it. "You know full well that I am not about to work in a hostess bar. Having drunken men paw at you while you have to pretend to enjoy it, no thank you. Plus all the bowing, scraping and ego massaging, is definitely not my thing."

"Come on, I keep telling you it's not that bad. The men behave themselves and the boss, Old Man Yamamoto, is the sweetest man you will ever meet."

Mimi knew Erika had met him when she was sixteen. She turned up at his club demanding that he give her a job. Instead of telling her to get lost he had taken her under his wing and looked out for her. Over the years Erika had grown to view him as a second father.

"You keep trying to sell it, but I'm still not buying." Mimi picked up her book and pretended to read. She understood Erika meant no harm, but she was still irritated.

"Okay then," Erika let it drop. "I was keeping this quiet until it all goes through, but the Old Man is helping me out big time." Her eyes lit up and she paused for dramatic effect, while Mimi raised an eyebrow and put her book back down. "A few months back the Old Man asked me what I wanted to do after I graduated, since this is my last year and all. To be quite honest, I just figured I'd go on working in the club for a few more years and then I had planned on getting a real job."

Erika walked out from behind the screen looking like a supermodel, even before she had put any make-up on. She was five-foot nine and had a slender body. Even though she avoided exercise like the plague, drank like a fish and ate whatever she wanted, she had a toned body that she always loved showing off.

Mimi thought the wa Lolita outfit looked great and fit Erika's playful personality. The deep red of the short, stylized kimono dress accentuated Erika's fiery, ginger hair and her stunning emerald eyes. The whole outfit suited Erika; the modern take on traditional Japanese style matched her to a T.

Erika was a perfect mixture herself; her height and hair and eye colour were distinctly European, thanks to her Irish father. But everything else, like the shape of her eyes, bone structure, skin colour and the texture of her hair were Japanese, which she inherited from her mother.

Mimi had always wished that she had Erika's confidence when it came to outrageous fashion and men. Shortly after they became friends, Erika had taken it upon herself to get Mimi to come out of her shell. Even though Erika had made great progress, Mimi still had a long way to go.

Erika turned to pick up the hairbrush that she had thrown on her bed and started to brush her long hair. To finish off the look, she put a black bow in her hair. "When I told the Old Man this, he said he could do better for me," Erika said, looking into the mirror and lightly plumping her hair up with her fingers. "He remembered that I'm getting a degree in communications and broadcasting. He said a friend of his at TV Tokyo owed him a favour and asked him to give me a job."

At this, Mimi's jaw dropped. She knew that 'the Old Man', as Erika always referred to him, was, in fact, a very nice man. But as he ran a hostess club, Mimi still thought of him as a dirty old man.

"I can't believe how lucky you are. What kind of a job is it?" Mimi was bouncing on her bed with excitement, genuinely happy, but also jealous of the way Erika had always known what she wanted to do.

Even though Mimi was also in her final year of university, she still had no idea what she wanted to do as a career. She was never given a choice when she was younger. It had been drilled into her that she would go to Harvard, study hard and then become a doctor. Every descendant of the Fairfax family had become a doctor since the family hospital was founded in 1905, it didn't matter if you were male or female. Now that she finally had a choice, she found it excruciatingly hard to pinpoint where her passions lay.

"It's an entry-level broadcasting journalism job," Erika paused. A huge grin lit up her face and she jumped up and down, like a small child getting the thing they most desired. "I can't believe that the Old Man remembered. I won't be starting for another six months while we find replacements and train them at the club. But I'm fine with it. I'll be taking a huge pay cut and the extra money will help."

"How many of you guys are leaving then?'' Mimi asked, half interested, and started to fan the pages of her book with her thumb.

"Well, some of the other girls are going back home in August and we are still looking for a bartender as good as Rin. Including me, four." Erika pivoted on her feet so that she was facing Mimi and gave her a little wink and blew an exaggerated kiss at her.

This put a huge grin on Mimi's face, she giggled. "Very cute, baka!" Mimi was going to make another comment but remembered what Erika had said. "Wait. Didn't you tell me Rin stopped working last year? Why did she quit? I thought she loved working there."