CASE 003 · Oregaonna
Content note: Exploitation through host-club debt and the sex industry, coercion, and harassment. An abusive, unreliable narrator with no redemption arc; sexual events are described briefly.
Chapter 1: Just Sit There
I lead the champagne chant.
The voice from the bottom of my gut hits the mirrored ceiling and carries all the way to the table at the back of the club. Ten junior hosts line up behind me, glasses in hand. I don't need a microphone. I haven't needed one in three years.
“A gift from our princess!”
The ten voices follow mine. I say nothing after the first call. One shout is enough. After that, all I have to do is sit there.
Women come to ROYAL to drink with the men they pay to keep them company. We call them princesses. At the club, they call me Ren. I'm thirty years old, and for three years no one at ROYAL has taken the number-one sales ranking from me.
When I return to the table, tonight's princess is looking at my arm. This is her third visit. Ryusei whispered her details to me a moment ago: Yui, twenty-six, nurse, drinks rosé.
“Can I touch it?”
“Buy a bottle first.”
She orders one. I take off my jacket, roll up my sleeve, and flex my upper arm. Her fingers settle on it.
“This arm exists for you.”
Yui laughs and presses with one finger. This is usually when a woman's expression changes. Hard, they say. Amazing.
Still pressing, Yui tilts her head.
“Are you not flexing today?”
“I am.”
I am. Harder than usual. She says, “Huh,” and takes her hand away. The pad of her finger trails down to my cuff.
“Your skin's smoother than mine. Are you using something?”
“If you're going to compliment me, compliment the arm.”
I flex again. Instead of looking at the muscle, she places her own arm beside mine. I pull my sleeve down. I didn't put mine out for comparison.
Then she leans toward my neck.
“Ren, did you change your cologne?”
“No.”
“You smell kind of sweet.”
No one has ever called my scent sweet. I've worn the same cologne for three years; clients recognize me by it. I put down my glass and wrap an arm around Yui's shoulders. That usually quiets a woman.
Outside ROYAL, promotional portraits are arranged in three rows.
Mine is at the center of the top row. Gold frame. A plate underneath reads “No. 1 for Three Consecutive Years.” We reshot it last autumn: jacket open, chest on display, two silver studs in my left ear and a thin silver chain at my neck. Chin slightly raised, eyes looking above the camera. Kasai, the owner, chose that shot.
I joined this club in the winter when I was nineteen.
After high school in the country, I spent a year in a factory. On my first night in Tokyo, Kasai looked me up and down at the interview and said only one thing.
“Don't talk. Just sit there.”
I did exactly that. I sat without talking, and on my third day a client requested me by name. In my first month, a woman cried. Because I said nothing, she talked on her own and cried on her own. I remained seated until she was finished.
Body and intimidation. That's how you win women.
Smooth talkers are everywhere. In the end, a woman leaves her money in front of the man who sits there in silence. Chest, arms, voice. That's all you need. I learned that in the winter I was nineteen.
Miyuki accounts for sixty percent of my current sales.
She's forty-one and runs a company with a hundred employees during the day. At night, she wants someone else to decide for her. So I decide. If I say, “You're ordering it, right?” she orders. If I say, “Come tonight,” she comes.
Miyuki chooses how she spends her own money. I've tried to stop her twice. The second time, I even did it outside the club. She spent 1.2 million yen that night anyway. If she paid after I tried to stop her, then it was her choice.
Ryusei and Ibuki, two junior hosts, send my messages to clients on LINE, the messaging app. I hand over my phone and by morning every woman has received a “Good morning.” Birthdays and favorite drinks are written in Ryusei's notebook. I can't name a single client's birthday. It hasn't caused me trouble in three years.
I write instructions in the club's group chat.
Yui, nine tonight. Ryusei assists. Tell her, “Ren seems to be in a bad mood today,” before I arrive.
Ryusei replies, “Got it.” When Yui arrives, he sits with her first and quietly says that Ren seems a little upset tonight. Yui worries. A worried client feels relieved when I merely sit down. A relieved client orders a bottle. All I do is sit there.
To Yuki, I sent: We'll die together. Ibuki typed it. Yuki is thirty-five, married, and brings me her husband's earnings. She got pregnant once and went to the hospital alone. We call that our secret. Sometimes I go to hotels with the biggest spenders. That's part of sales too.
At the first pre-opening meeting in December, our manager, Kishi, reads last month's rankings.
“Number one: Ren. Thirty-six consecutive months.”
Applause fills the room. I don't stand. It comes to me anyway. Ryusei, twenty-four and number two for the past six months, watches me while he claps. His applause is always the longest.
I go to the gym five days a week.
After closing, I sleep until afternoon, then go to the gym behind the station. My bench press is one hundred kilograms for five reps. That's been my routine for three years. My chest and arms are what I sell.
That day, one hundred doesn't go up.
I lower the bar to my chest and push. Normally my elbows lock at this point. They don't. The bar stops above my chest and my arms shake. Sano, the trainer, grabs it from above.
“Not your day today, huh?”
“Didn't sleep.”
I never sleep enough. Sano removes plates and lowers the weight to eighty. I lift it, but on the fifth rep my arms shake again.
I take off my shirt in front of the locker-room mirror.
I push my chest out and look at my whole body. Shoulders, chest, arms, stomach. Every day, I confirm: this is me. Shape isn't the only thing I check. I look below too. Before wrapping the towel around my waist, I look at it once in the mirror. Then I cover it. I haven't skipped that sequence for a single day since I was nineteen.
Today it's still there, the same size and weight as always.
I feel a little relieved. I don't think about why.
“Looking sharp as ever, Ren,” Ibuki says at the locker beside mine. He's twenty-two and has assisted me for a year. He follows me to the gym too, because he thinks he'll get a free protein shake if he does.
“Ibuki. Remember Akari?”
“The student from two years ago?”
He remembers. As I wrap the towel around my waist, I tell him the story again.
Akari was twenty-one, in her second year at vocational school, and had no friends. She came for the cheap first-time offer, touched my arm once, and left. The next day I had someone send her one line: I want to see you. Ryusei typed it. On her third visit, I told her she was different from the others. On her fifth, I told her she wasn't a client. Within six months she was ordering champagne. After a year, she owed the club 1.8 million yen.
She was the one who said she couldn't pay.
“And then you introduced her to Hiro, right?”
“She said she couldn't pay. I only showed her how. It wasn't my fault.”
“You'll pay it back in three months. Easy,” I told Akari. Hiro, a scout, introduced her to one of his group's businesses, a place where she'd be alone in a room with male customers. They asked for her height and weight, then quoted a minimum guarantee: forty thousand yen. Hiro paid me a referral fee. On Akari's last night at ROYAL, she cried after settling the bill. I took a thousand-yen note from my wallet and tossed it onto the table. Cab fare, I said.
“A thousand?”
Ibuki laughs. I laugh too.
“Akari still comes here, you know. She sees Ryusei now.”
“I know.”
I didn't. It didn't matter.
“I'm the only one who can make sex pay.”
I close my locker. Ibuki starts to say something, then stops.
Before the week is over, three clients say the same thing.
Did you change your cologne? You smell sweet. Nice smell.
A woman strokes the back of my hand and says it's smooth. I pull it away and pick up my glass.
At first, I blame the fabric softener. I ask the cleaner; they haven't changed it. For the first time in three years, I switch cologne, choosing something heavy and woody. The clients still say I smell sweet.
My beard grows more slowly. I normally shave in the morning and again before the club opens.
At the sink, I lift my chin and run my fingers against the grain. By evening there should be stubble. My fingers glide all the way to the base of my ear.
I return them to my chin. I am no longer checking for a missed patch. I am feeling what comes back against my fingertips.
The man in the mirror is touching his chin too. The gesture looks like something a client does when posing for a photo. I drop my hand and thrust my chin forward as usual. My eyes haven't changed.
No need to shave twice. Easier that way. That's all. I leave the bathroom without the razor.
Hair comes away from my arms in the shower. From my shins too. I once paid three hundred thousand yen for hair removal. Good, I think. Now it costs nothing.
My bench remains stuck at eighty. My right-hand grip strength drops from fifty-eight kilograms to fifty. Sano tells me to take more protein. I do.
I blame all of it on winter. Muscle drops in winter. I don't sleep and I drink every night. Once the new year starts, I'll build it back.
After work, I return to my apartment behind the station at five in the morning and find one missed call from my mother.
She lives alone in my hometown. Three years ago, when I rented this one-bedroom apartment, I borrowed three million yen from her. I said I'd repay it. I haven't. I plan to pay it all at once when I open my own club.
I don't call back. If I phone at five in the morning, she'll worry. Keeping her from worrying is part of a son's duty.
On Tuesday of the second week, I go to have a suit made for the New Year's event.
The tailor has used the same pattern for my chest for three years. As always, he winds the measuring tape around me.
“You've lost three centimeters.”
“It's winter.”
Still holding the tape, he measures again. This time, near the top of my arms, he tilts his head.
“Your shoulders too, a little. Shall I adjust the pattern?”
“No. I'll be back to normal by New Year's.”
He rolls up the tape without writing anything down.
When I put on the jacket, he pinches one shoulder. My shoulder stops short of his fingers. Three years ago I had ordered it so tight I could barely move.
I push out my chest. Even when I arch my back, I can't fill the shoulder.
“If we fit it to your body now—”
“It's not the suit. I'll put my body back.”
I pull the jacket from his hand and button it. My reflection in the glass door has its chin raised. I look only at the face and leave.
I didn't go to the hospital because Miyuki told me to.
On Friday night of the second week, she leans toward my neck at our table and remains silent for a long time. Then she puts down her glass.
“Ren. Go to a hospital.”
“Why?”
“Your smell. Someone at my company started smelling the same way. Three months later, they quit.”
Miyuki only says quit. She doesn't say what that person had become before leaving.
“If you won't go, I'm not spending anything this month.”
I laugh. Miyuki doesn't. That night, for the first time in three years, she leaves without ordering a single bottle.
The following Monday, I am at the Transformation Clinic of Shiomi Central Hospital.
I went because I decided to. Not because Miyuki told me. If I knew the cause, I could do something about it. If I could do something, my bench would be back by New Year's. I decided the plan. Me.
The waiting room is more ordinary than I expected.
It is on the same floor as internal medicine, with the same chairs. They give me a questionnaire, and I fill it out on my knee. Name: Takashi Omori. I don't write that name outside the club more than a few times a year. Under occupation, I put self-employed.
There is a section on lifestyle. Exercise frequency: five times a week. Type: strength training. Supplements and drugs: protein, creatine Sano recommended, vitamins, and two powders whose names I don't know. Alcohol: daily. Amount: there isn't enough space.
I know the name Feminization Syndrome. A man's body changes into a woman's over several months. That kind of disease. I have never thought of it as something that could happen to my body.
Across from me, a thin man fills out his form. Narrow neck, slight shoulders. That's the kind of man who gets this disease, I think. I sit straighter and expand my chest. Mine is still the broadest in the waiting room.
They call me forty minutes later.
In the examination room, a nurse measures me. Height: 175 centimeters. Weight: 72 kilograms. Right-hand grip strength: 48 kilograms.
“Take off your shirt, please.”
I do. The doctor looks at my chest and says nothing. Usually someone says something. At the gym, at the club—when I take my shirt off, people react. With the same expression as if this were a routine check with a stethoscope, the doctor presses a finger just below my nipple.
“Does this hurt?”
“No.”
It doesn't. But under the finger there is something hard: a coin-sized object buried beneath my pectoral muscle, something that isn't muscle. I've looked at my chest every day for three years and never knew it was there.
“This will change too,” the doctor says, lifting the finger.
They draw blood. I put on an examination gown. A machine scans my chest and lower abdomen. Then I spend another forty minutes in the waiting room. When I return, the thin man across from me is gone.
The second time they call me, the doctor turns a document on the desk toward me.
“Our diagnosis is Feminization Syndrome.”
I look at the clock. 3:10. The club opens at eight, and I planned to go to the gym first.
The doctor is saying something. Three to six months. Varies by patient. No treatment can reverse it.
Three to six months, I repeat in my head. Six months is plenty of time to earn. December, January, February. Valentine's Day. March is the end of the fiscal year. I have Miyuki. In six months I can move another thirty million yen.
“One more thing.”
The doctor points to the lower half of the document. Five numbered items run down the page. One, two, three, four, five.
I watch the second hand of the clock.