MAID IN TOKYO: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Mamiko and Yuri were performing a parapara dance with three of the customers while I busied myself slowly cutting slices of lemon cheesecake, hoping not to be noticed.  As much as I hate to admit it the otaku were pretty good, so good in fact that I had visions of them in their smelly flats practicing to DVDs in their underwear.

I shuddered at the thought.

The track mercifully came to an end and the three men flopped down into their seats to a round of applause.  Mamiko and Yuri bowed and offered ‘V’ signs and cats paw impressions.  I cringed.

Mamiko was a year my senior, twenty-five, but looked like a high school girl, especially with her clear complexion and long hair.  Yuri was just out of high school and still had that annoyingly cute roundness to her that I lacked.  All three of us were dressed in heavy French maid costumes with frilly head-bands, and I mean heavy.  This was August, hottest month of the year and we were wearing three layers of heavy material with long socks and clumpy shoes.  The air conditioning system wasn’t perfect and, while it kept the customers relatively cool, we had to retreat to the back room every so often to blast ourselves with the big fan in there.

We worked in one of the many maid cafes which had become increasingly popular at the turn of the century and were now part of the Akihabara scene.  There were five of us in La Rose: Mamiko, Yuri, Akiko and Rei… plus myself of course.

The café was up a side street not far from the biggest of the Liberty stores, meaning that we got a lot of custom, especially at the weekend.  However we did have our regulars who turned up every day.  Didn’t these people work?  How could they afford some of that junk they brought in to show off to us?

Yuri poured herself a glass of still lemonade and drank it in one gulp, giving a self-satisfied sigh as she placed the glass down on the counter top.

“That was so tiring,” she breathed.  “I haven’t done parapara since I left school.”

I glared at her.

“That was six months ago, Yuri.”

Then she did it…the face!  She stuck out her bottom lip and ballooned her cheeks.

“You’re so mean, Momo-chan.”

I bristled and looked over my glasses at her.  She was wearing those flashy contacts that made you look like you had blue eyes.  I tried them once, and ended up being shouted at by my late father for turning my back on our heritage.  So my slightly amber coloured eyes bore into hers.

“Don’t ever call me Momo-chan, you little twit.  It’s Momoko”

Yuri’s act vanished and she placed her hands on her annoyingly shapely hips and thrust her chest out.  God I hated her.

“Listen, granny, those losers out there want us to be cute and sweet.  You already have a cute name, so why not make the most of it?  And what’s with those glasses – you’re a bit old for the moe look.”

Moe was the look that seemed to drive the fan-boys wild… then again, anything seemed to drive them wild.  I wore glasses because I needed them and contacts really irritated my eyes.  I don’t think it would do for me to turn up for work looking like a vampire.  Then again I suspect there would be otaku who go for that look.  Moe was cute and virginal, and was typified by either a schoolgirl or maid in glasses, preferably with long hair.

“I need them, Yuri, not like those plain glass ones you have in your pocket.”

Miss Namikawa, our manager suddenly appeared from the inner office.  Unlike the rest of us she was dressed in normal office clothes, her hair in a loose ponytail and a stern look on her face.

“Will you two please cut it out?  We are trying to run a business here.  Momoko.”

She turned her gaze on me.  I flinched.  Despite being only thirty years old she had this aura about her that commanded respect, and yes, even fear.

“Stop being so sensitive about your name.  Now get back to work… all of you!”

Like scolded schoolgirls we went back to the floor and served our customers with smiles and cute poses.  I had to get a better job!

I left the café around 8 and still dressed in my maid uniform walked back to my little flat in Kojima, around fifteen minutes away.  It was getting dark and I walked a bit faster than I normally would do in this oppressive humidity.  I passed couples going out for an evening meal or a drink, or some other more romantic liaison. 

I envied them.  The only men who were interested in me were either gaijin tourists, dirty old men, or sweaty otaku.  I shuddered despite the heat, remembering the foreigner who had asked me to pose for a photo while I was in Akihabara handing out packs of tissues.  I don’t speak English so I crossed my arms in an ‘X’ to tell him  that photos weren’t allowed, but he took one anyway.  A few weeks later one of my regulars showed me his new pocketbook computer and cued up a maid website in English.  There was my photo, arms held in front of me like some weirdly dressed “Ultraman” cosplayer.  Apparently this American was a maid fan and had created a site to show off his photos.

These men were just not normal.

“Momoko-saaaan!”

I stopped in my tracks as the slightly nasal voice came from behind me, accompanied by the sound of running feet.  I turned and in the light from the street lamps I could see Eiji Watanabe bounding towards me.  Eiji was my neighbour and worked in one of the many collector shops in Akihabara.  His speciality was model kits, but I knew that he had a thing for the Tokyo police.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t some unhealthy obsession with girls in police uniforms (though I expect there was an element of that), he had a genuine interest in our city’s police department.  One time when we shared a meal in his flat I was amazed that he had so many models of black and white police cars on a display shelf.  He even had a real police uniform in his closet – but it was a female officer’s.  When he showed that to me I had a nasty feeling he wanted me to dress up for him, but luckily he didn’t.

As far as otaku go Eiji was pretty level-headed.  Well, he managed to hold down a job, so he had to be pretty stable.

“Hello, Eiji, “I called back, waving politely.  He stopped in front of me and bent over double, catching his breath.

“You really need to exercise more.”

He looked up at me and smiled.  He wasn’t bad looking, but he had that gormless, almost sad look that a lot of young men who worked in shops had these days.  Maybe it was having to climb two flights of stairs seven days a week that made him look like a skeleton – if he ate more he would fill out a bit.  Then again, he was only about five centimetres taller than me, and I’m only 155cm.

“You heading home?” he asked.  I nodded and pointed to a Seven-Eleven convenience store just over the road and up a little. 

“I want to get something for dinner and a drink.”

He smiled and suggested that we get the same thing and have it in his flat.  I liked the idea of company tonight and suggested we go to my flat instead.  Apart from being a bit tidier, I actually had a working TV.  Eiji tended to watch his mystery DVDs on his PC.

So, we headed back to our block of flats.  Kojima is a quiet part of Tokyo, with a fairly large population of Koreans, Chinese and Indians.  Our block was about a minute from the Hotel Villa Fontaine Ueno, and up a little side street. 

We passed through the block’s automatic doors and I inserted my key into the security box.  Visitors had to dial the room number on a keypad but those of who lived here just inserted a key.

We checked our mail boxes and headed for the lift.  I waited for Eiji to squeeze in with his bags and pressed the button for the tenth floor.  The polite voice of the lift announced that we had arrived at our floor moments later and we tumbled out.  I can only imagine what a stranger would make of a young woman in a maid costume and a young man falling out of a lift and laughing like kids.  I fumbled in my bag for the key and unlocked the metal door. 

We left our shoes and entered my sanctuary in all of its pink fluffiness.

“This is nice,” Eiji cooed, noticing a pink fluffy Pepo-kun, the mascot of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department… although they were normally yellow.

“UFO catcher?”

I nodded and placed the shopping on the single table in my humble little home.

I had a bed down one side, a small table and two chairs opposite with a laptop computer.  A space heater was currently acting as a shelf for some of my books.  There was a closet at the foot of my bed and a small chest of drawers.

At the entrance to the flat was my little kitchen: a two-ring cooker, rice steamer, fridge, oven, microwave and a sink.  Small cupboards held my crockery, such as it was.  Opposite the kitchen were the western-style toilet and a small bathroom with shower.

As flats go it was quite well appointed… if miniscule.  Just as well I wasn’t any taller – it seemed crowded with just me and Eiji. 

Fifteen minutes later and we were tucking into instant ramen with some miso soup from my cupboard and a couple of cans of something cold.  Eiji was slurping while staring intently at the TV.  His favourite drama was on: “Random Crime Squad”.  A police drama, naturally.  I turned in time to see the lead actress, Yukie Nakama slam her fist down on the table in an interrogation room, causing the housewife being questioned to jump.  Somehow an actress as pretty as Nakama-san didn’t seem right for a tough no-nonsense detective.

“Go get her, Ayumi!” Eiji cooed, using the character’s name rather than the actress’ own. 

“You really like this?” I asked, coughing as some noodles went down the wrong way.

“Of course.  You know they’re talking about a spin-off movie?”

I hadn’t seen him this animated since they cancelled “Sexy Policewoman Reiko”, and he protested outside the TV studios along with three dozen other otaku. When the real police came to move them on he got to ride in a real patrol car since he identified himself as the ring-leader.  They questioned him for about two hours then let him go without so much as a caution.  He must have thought he died and went to heaven.  It was all he talked about for a week

Nutter.

“You just want to see Nakama-san on the big screen again, don’t you?”

Eiji blushed and slurped noisily at his ramen.  I giggled and downed what was left of my soup, then stood up and walked into the kitchenette, dropping the bowls into the sink.  I caught my reflection in the mirror.

I would say that I’m pretty attractive, at least compared to some of the girls I see everyday.  I have a smallish nose and a very small mouth.  My eyes are quite narrow and are a sort of golden brown rather than almost black.  My hair is collar length and not quite black.

I looked down, sighing at the way my t-shirt didn’t stick out as far as I’d like.  My breasts were pretty small: my ex-boyfriend called them pimples.  I won’t tell you what I used to call his excuse for a manhood!  I was also pretty slim, verging on the skinny.

“Ooh!”

The pained cry came from Eiji.

“What?”  I rushed into the other half of the flat.

“They had the wrong woman all along!”  He looked genuinely disappointed.  I felt like telling him to get a life, but this was his life.  Just like being a waitress in a maid costume was my life.  My only hobby was making costume jewellery in my spare time, and I didn’t do much of that these days.

Eiji went back to his flat on the ninth floor and I locked the door behind him.  He left behind a man’s smell that my little hovel wasn’t accustomed to.  I grabbed the air-freshener and sprayed it around a bit.  I would have used perfume but I only have a bottle of an expensive French one that I can’t pronounce.  Too expensive to waste like that.

I washed the last of the dishes and flopped down onto my bed.  I picked up the TV remote and flicked through the channels: period drama, sumo, baseball highlights, a foreign movie about someone called Austen Powers, and a news show… I went back to the film.  The Powers character was being confronted by Asian twins dressed like naughty schoolgirls.  I groaned.  Yet another western image of Japanese girls.

I turned it off and picked up a magazine, leafing through the pages of scandals and fashion, my eyes growing heavier as the minutes past.  I was asleep by eleven.