Behind the closed sliding paper door, I could hear the rustle of the Mistress’s clothing as she loosened the obi. The very idea that it probably wasn’t the first time that day she’d loosened the obi with the patterned strip set my heart aflutter.
Suddenly, I accidentally kicked the bucket of water and knocked it over.
‘Oh my, Taki, it’s not like you to make a mistake like that,’ the Mistress said with a smile, sliding open the paper door, now dressed in a white blouse and doing up the hook of her sky-blue pencil skirt.
The Mistress went over to Mr. Itakura’s apartment twice more after that. Both times she wore Western-style clothes, and the first time she said it looked as though he had finally agreed to go forward with the marriage proposal, and that she had arranged for a photographic
