“That’s the logo of the hotel where I work,” said the Woman in the Purple Skirt. “The same logo is on the boxes of all the sweets I’ve been giving you—the cookies, the Baumkuchen cake, everything. It’s on all the hotel’s products.”
“Oh. What is it? A horse?” This from the boy she had called Mok-kun.
“It’s Pegasus,” the Woman in the Purple Skirt replied.
“Ohh!” The girl staring down at the box suddenly looked up. “I remember! It’s the same as the mark on some of our towels at home!”
“Your towels?”
“Yes. It’s on our bath towels, our hand towels, and on the really small facecloths as well. They’re easily the prettiest and softest of all the ones we have!”
“Hmm. Maybe someone in your family bought them at the hotel. But I wasn’t aware that they were actually selling towels. . . .”
“No! We bought them at the local bazaar!”
“The bazaar?”
“Yes, the bring-and-buy sale at school! I went along with Mommy, and that’s where we bought them. You mean you don’t go to the bazaar, Mayu-san?”
“I have to admit, I don’t.”
“Really?” one boy asked with a surprised look on his face. “I always make sure to go, every time. They sell hot dogs and everything! And there’s also a game center. It’s a blast!”
“I see. Well . . .”
“Whenever I go, I get my mom to buy me manga and sneakers!” a girl said.
“No kidding. And when does this bazaar take place?”
“The third Sunday of every month! Next time, come, Mayu-san!”
“All right, I will. If I happen to have the day off.”
Well, it appeared they were now all on first-name terms. To me, the children’s faces were indistinguishable, but from this conversation I was able to divine that one of the boys was called Mok-kun, and one of the girls Mika-chan. As for the rest, there seemed to be a Yuji, someone else called Kanepon, and a girl called Minami-chan. The person they were calling “Mayu-san” was the Woman in the Purple Skirt. This conversation was soon followed by another in which “Mayu-san” entertained the children with a story of how she’d nearly brushed shoulders with a celebrity at work. The children hung on her every word.
The day after she completed her training, the Woman in the Purple Skirt was assigned to the thirtieth floor, where TV celebrities and idols often stayed. Each floor had specific cleaning teams, which meant I could hardly ever just pop by to see her. It was now extremely rare that I caught sight of her at work. In recent weeks, I was more likely to be able to get an idea of how she was doing from my sightings of her in the park and on the shopping street.
Ever since the groping incident, the Woman in the Purple Skirt had stopped riding the bus to work. I would see her take the bus home, so it seemed it was only the morning bus she avoided. The only other ways she could get to work were by train, foot, or taxi, but which of those she was using was still a mystery to me. Judging by her time card, for a while now she seemed to have been getting in a good fifteen minutes earlier than when she’d been taking the bus. In the mornings, by the time I got to the locker room, more often than not she had finished changing, and was looking at herself in the mirror and assiduously brushing her hair. With every stroke of the brush, that “fresh floral” fragrance wafted around the room. I’d given her only five days’ worth of samples. Two weeks passed, then three weeks, and yet her hair was still smelling of that sweet perfume. It seemed impossible. But there was a simple explanation.
Not long before, I had seen her on the shopping street buying a shampoo refill pouch at the pharmacy, which meant she had already purchased a whole bottle of the shampoo. She must have taken a real shine to those samples I’d given her. I considered all the hotel shampoo she could have availed herself of at absolutely no charge. And not only shampoo: conditioner, body wash, bars of soap . . . I knew that nearly all the cleaning staff had bottles of shampoo with the hotel crest on their bathroom shelf at home. Everybody’s hair smelled exactly the same, day after day. The only one who was any different was the Woman in the Purple Skirt, whose hair had that special floral fragrance.
A couple of days before, I’d heard Supervisor Tsukada ask her about it.
“Hino-chan. Is there a reason you don’t use the hotel shampoo?”
“Em, well . . . ,” the Woman in the Purple Skirt answered. She looked a bit uncomfortable.
“Well, why don’t you use it? It’s pretty good.”
“Hm. Really?” The Woman in the Purple Skirt sounded unconvinced. She undid her ponytail.
“And after all, I mean, it’s free. It’s one of the amenities, so we can use as much as we want. Everyone in the agency uses it. I think you should use it too, Hino-chan. Why not try it?”
The Woman in the Purple Skirt cast a doubtful glance at the mini-bottle that Supervisor Tsukada held out in her hands. “Em, I don’t know whether I like the smell. . . .”
“The smell?”
“Yes. Don’t you think there’s a kind of fishy odor to it?”
“Really?!”
“Yeah. Some sort of raw fishy smell. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean your hair smells of fish. Only the shampoo.” And then the Woman in the Purple Skirt laughed lightly.
She may have laughed, but Supervisor Tsukada did not. I felt my heart pound in my chest. Apparently noticing how Supervisor Tsukada put the bottle of shampoo away in her locker without saying another word, and perhaps realizing she had said the wrong thing, the Woman in the Purple Skirt changed the topic. “I hope we can go drinking again soon!” she said, along with some other similarly cheery
