“Okay, babe. So, arak and what else?” Sakura tapped on the keys of her portable computer, squinting at its small screen. She turned in her seat to Mei, who was still working on mopping the area in front of the stage. “Oi! Mei! Can you turn that down a little bit? I can’t hear myself think in here!” She sighed in relief as Mei adjusted the volume of the bar’s sound system.
“Sorry, Sakura!” Mei blushed, picking her mop back up from where she’d leaned it against the service bar. “It’s just my jam, and, ya know, just thinkin’ about her a lot today.”
“There’s another verse comin’, so I’m back from hell to put your shakin’ butt right back under my spell,” Ranko’s voice declared from the speakers despite the singer herself being somewhere over the Philippine Sea at the moment.
Sakura flashed her blue-haired sister a soft smile. “It’s cool, sis. We’re all thinking about her. But she’s gonna do fine.” She groaned, her hand dropping heavily to the tabletop in impatient frustration as she glared at her Apple computer. “Ugh! This thing is so slow. I knew I should’ve ponied up the extra dough for the 170 model.”
“If you were smart, you wouldn’t have bought that one, either. Those things are more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth.” Yui gave her wife a bit of an eye roll as she leaned down, continuing to scrub out her ice well.
The blonde’s wife shrugged. “Yeah, well, it was a shit time for both of us. You went on a three-month bender, and I went to retail therapy.”
“The way you shop, girl, actual therapy would’ve been way cheaper. You’re worse than Izumi. If you ask me, computers should go on a desk and stay there, so you can leave them at home and go enjoy yourself.” Yui smirked at her partner. “Honestly. Sittin’ there staring at that little screen when your wife is standing behind it in a short skirt and you don’t even notice.”
“On the contrary, Yuri,” Sakura said, sipping from her soda through a black plastic straw. She eyed her lover hungrily in her black leather miniskirt and her butterscotch-colored turtleneck sweater. “I’m staring at the computer, because if I don’t distract myself from my wife and her short skirt, everybody on the block is gonna notice what I do to her.”
Mei giggled, returning from the hallway in the back room where she’d deposited her mop in the little alcove they used to store their cleaning supplies. “I swear. First Aya, then Izzi, then Ranko, and now you guys. I am cursed to always be stuck hanging out with horny newlyweds.”
Yui tossed a damp bar towel at her sister, landing it on one of her electric blue pigtails. “It’ll be your turn soon, little sister - at least, if Seiichi knows what’s good for him - and then that’ll be all of us. Unless Mama decides to get back in the pool, that is.”
“Not holding my breath there,” Sakura said with a chuckle. “They don’t make boys that can handle her. Especially not ones her age.”
A devious giggle from Mei drew the attention of both of her roommates and sisters. “Maybe instead of a sixty-year-old, we find her two thirty-year-olds? Let them share the load.”
Yui cackled so hard she had to put down the bottle of Midori she was shelving. “You think her heart can take it?”
Sakura nodded sagely. “True. Better go with three twenty-year-olds.” She rattled the ice in her empty glass with a playful smirk. “I gotta say, the service in this place sucks. At least you have cute bartenders. Can I get a refill, babe?”
“Only if you ask real nice,” Yui said with a coy smile, walking around the bar and taking Sakura’s empty glass. She emitted a quiet purr as she turned back to the bar, propelled toward it by a hard, loud smack on her backside. “That’s better.”
Mei hopped up, resting her backside on the polyurethane countertop of the main bar in her ankle-length denim skirt. “Hey, is Izzi coming in today? I need to return a shirt I borrowed.”
Her elder sister waved her away from the bar as she returned from filling Sakura’s glass. “Get your ass off’a my counter, Mei! I just cleaned that, ya blockhead!” She shook her head admonishingly, but she was all smiles. “And as for Iz, no. She won’t be in all week. She’s buried in sewing work. She even had to call Sora in to help.” Indeed, Izumi’s work in fashion design had been demanding more and more of her time of late, ever since her celebrity sister gave her a red-carpet endorsement at the Japan Record Awards.
“Damn. And no Ranko either, and Akane’s back to half-time with her school. If this keeps up, we’re gonna have to hire again, I think - especially if we want Mama to keep taking it easy.” Mei’s fretful expression was met with a cheery snicker from her sister.
“Or, alternatively,” Yui said, swatting her sister playfully through the shoulder of her red sequined shirt, “you could get your ass off my counter and go do some work.”
Mei rested her fists on her hips with a little hmmmph. “Where’s the fun in that? Besides, I’m working! I’m… supervising.”
Sakura giggled. “The day we let you supervise anything is the day this place burns to the ground, little sister. But speaking of work… I’m trying to get this menu update finished. Yui, the Snakebite?”
“Shit! Sorry, babe! I didn’t hear ya. It’s arak, honey, mint, and a splash of pomegranate syrup.” Yui’s voice echoed in the hollow steel basin she had resumed scrubbing. “Oh, did you remember to add the salads?”
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Her wife crossed her legs at the knee under the table in her skinny blue jeans. “Of course I did. And Zoe does actually like this thing? Did they try it?”
Yui scoffed a bit at the implication. “Yes, Miss Chino, I made them one. And it’s delicious, thank you very much. But even if I didn’t, Zo’s Australian. I’m pretty sure they can handle it. Everything that lives there wants to kill them. They got poisonous spiders the size of your hand. They probably drink actual snake venom down there.”
“That’s Mrs. Chino to you, young lady,” Sakura said with a loving smile and a quiet laugh. “Unless you’d rather it be Fukawa.”
The blonde waved off her suggestion. “If either of us is gonna change their name, I will. At least you actually still talk to your family. But I don’t see the need, honestly. It’s a huge pain in the ass. I remember when Iz did hers; it took months, and that’s with an actual marriage certificate to work from.”
“Whatever you want, baby. As long as you’re wearing my ring, I don’t care what everybody else calls ya.” She tapped a few more times on the button to the left of her trackball. “Aaaaand, done! I’ll take this to the print shop tomorrow, and we’ll have new Ranko’s Rocktails cocktail menus by Thursday!” Sakura made a show of dusting off her hands over her keyboard.
Yui walked around the bar counter again, leaning down and kissing her partner on top of her head as she looked over the changes she’d made to the current menu to add the Snakebite cocktail. “Amazing as always, Sake.”
“Hey, girls!”
Yui and Mei looked up to the sound of the new voice as their mother entered through the front door. “Hey, Mama,” Yui said with a wave. “How you feelin’?”
Hana rolled her eyes, grinning softly. “I’m fine. Just like I was yesterday and every other day you’ve asked.” She handed a stack of mail to Yui, pulling off her black motorcycle helmet and setting it on the bar counter next to Mei’s backside. “What’s left to do before opening?”
Mei stuck out her leg, creating a barrier of denim between the two bar counters. “For you? Nothin’. We promised Ranko we weren’t gonna let you overwork yourself while she was gone.”
“Overwork is one thing, but no work at all? Come on, girls. Let me help you.” Hana wrapped her arm around Mei’s shoulders, giving her a little squeeze.
Yui pushed through the blue saloon door, turning right into her mother’s office. She tossed the stack of mail onto the desk, turning back into the hall before noticing one of the envelopes sliding off the stack onto the floor beyond. She returned to the bar area, where Mei had hopped off of the counter and was pouring Sakura another refill of her soda.
Laughing as she returned to the bar from Sakura’s table, Mei handed her mother an aluminum tray of lemons, a paring knife resting atop them. “Here. You wanna come back to work, you gotta start with the easy stuff, just like we all did.”
Hana chuckled, taking the knife. She added an overexcited tone to her voice, widening her eyes exaggeratedly. “I’ll do my best, Miss Hotaro. If I work really hard, maybe I can get promoted to server by Christmas!”
Her blue-haired daughter giggled. “Sounds ambitious, but I don’t know. I like your spirit, Takahashi. You just might go places in this business!”
Putting the knife back down on the counter, Hana bowed over it with a bright smile. “Thank you, ma’am! I won’t let you down!”
Mei’s laughter faded after a moment, and her face took on a mask of concern as Hana began bifurcating the lemons. “You guys think she’s gonna be okay? Ranko, I mean? She looked so scared when she left. Even worse than last time.”
It was not Yui that responded, but Sakura, closing her portable computer’s lid. She winced, having slammed the screen down a little harder than she’d meant to. “She’ll be fine. You gotta remember, when she went away last time, all hell broke loose here, between Mama and Yui.”
Hana nodded. “Plus, she had the fight with Akane. So, of course she’s just nervous. But, I think everything’s as good as it can be, and all we need to do is make sure we’re telling Ranko that every time we talk to her, so she keeps hearing it and knows she doesn’t have to worry.”
Yui leaned on her mother’s shoulder as the elder woman worked her paring knife, grinning at her little sister. “That’s right. Besides, we’re gonna keep a close eye on Mama, and Sakura’s here to help out with the bar stuff. I do think we should go ahead and put the hiring sign out again, just to have our ear to the ground.”
“Agreed,” Hana said with a nod, tossing a bruised lemon from the tray into a nearby trash can.
Mei sighed, bobbing her head in assent. “Ranko never did talk to Akane about her whole jealousy issue, though. She’s gonna be thinking about it the whole time she’s gone.”
Her elder sister crinkled her nose, shaking her head in the negative. “Naaah. I think in her heart of hearts, Ranko knows Akane’s not the type to mess around. Besides, I promised Ranko that if Sho made a move on Akane while she was on the road, I’d personally puree his balls in my blender. Honestly, the thing I’m most worried about is the Yokai stuff. I’m not sure it was the best move for her to pick a fight with them right before traveling half of Asia on their credit card.”
The blue-haired woman shrugged. “The new song is fire though, and I’m glad she got rid of Freak. That couldn’t have been fun for her to perform every day.” Mei gave a little sigh, slumping her shoulders a bit. “Honestly, I kinda feel like this is all my fault. I’m the one who picked Yokai Records in the first place.”
Hana laid her knife on the counter and squeezed Mei tight around the shoulders again, rubbing her forearm roughly in support. “Hey, come on now. Don’t do that to yourself. You got your sister her start, and she’s so, so grateful for it. Even if things go south now, she’s in a position to change course and keep going because of what you did. You don’t have a crystal ball last I checked; you can’t be blamed for what the record people are doing two whole years later.”
Sakura nodded, setting her empty drink glass back on the tabletop in front of her. “Not only that, typically predicting things involves figuring out logically what the next step is, and what they’re doing defies any sort of logic. Talk about pissing in the wind, going toe-to-toe with their meal ticket like this! They know Nabiki will eat them for breakfast anyway.”
The bar’s proprietress waved her hand as if swatting Yui’s concern out of the air. “I wouldn’t worry about the label people, truth be told. According to Nabiki, they’re basically in a game of chicken right now, where the best move Ranko can make is none at all. So, as long as she doesn’t go and do something entirely boneheaded, the situation should at least keep until she gets home.”
Yui cringed, sighing over the clink of the bottle of arak in her hand bumping the bourbon next to it in the well she was reloading. “So, everything’s fine, as long as Ranko doesn’t, ya know, pull a Ranko. And you wonder why I’m worried.”