On the desk spread out in front of the ever-smiling receptionist is an elaborate collection of menus with food ranging from finger foods to full meals to drinks and desserts. This is definitely not what I was expecting from a karaoke club.
“Come on,” Haruka says as she grabs a couple of tambourines and walks towards the elevator at the end of the room. “We’re on the sixth floor.”
I follow Haruka and Miki along the narrow corridor, past numerous rooms, all with intricately patterned glass doors, blocking the views of the inside.
Stopping in front of a room with a big 605 on the door, Haruka turns to me. “Here we are. I’ll order us some drinks and hot chips. We have the room for at least an hour.”
The room has a table set up in the centre with couches lining both sides of the walls. A large LCD television sits at the front wired into the sprawling sound system that plays the karaoke music. Haruka moves straight over to the machine and grabs the handset and two mikes from their chargers.
A private room sounds a lot better than making a fool of myself in front of some crowd. This makes the whole karaoke ordeal a little bit more tolerable, but I still don’t like the idea of me singing. That’s just something I don’t do.
Declining her offer to go first, I drag my feet along the carpeted floor, and over to the couch. Slumping down, I still don’t look forward to the ‘having to sing’ part—which I’m sure Haruka’s going to force me to do at least once before our time is up. I dart my gaze between her and Miki as they fiddle with the console. They start bopping along with the upbeat music the second it comes blasting out from the television. A music video with lots of girls in skimpy outfits plays as kanji and kana lyrics begin scrolling across the screen. Haruka sings while Miki bounces around jingling her tambourine in time with the music.
After several minutes of watching them sing endless streams of peppy J-pop and declining all offers for me to sing, the girls stop asking, content to let me watch. For now. I flip idly through the few magazines and songbooks on the table, pretending I’m looking for the perfect song to sing when I’m actually bored out of my skull. Leaning over, something pokes me in the side and I remember the manga I have tucked into my jacket.
Turning the pages, I glance at the various images, trying hard not to turn straight to the final page again. My gaze lingers on a scene that looks eerily similar to what happened to me on the stairs. It shows my character standing at the top of the stairs when a hand reaches out and pushes her over the edge. It doesn’t show who did it, only a shadowy figure looking down. Creepy. I flip to a random page and the scene displayed makes my breathe catch. Two girls, one of them looking disturbingly like Satomi, talking in a library. Even though I can’t read the dialogue, I know what they’re talking about nonetheless. The scene plays out exactly as it did yesterday, right down to a reproduction of the image I saw in the book in the very last panel. That’s impossible.
Wherever I flip in the comic, I stumble across the likeness of someone I know. Haruka. Miki. Satomi. Myself. This isn’t real. There is no way this can be real. There’s only one conclusion I can believe. Matt has obviously gone to a great deal of effort to make this manga look real. He must have been following me in the library and drew up the new pages to fool me. Before sneaking it back into Haruka’s room and hiding it under her bed… somehow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Just as much as my imaginary friend throwing a boy down the stairs at the school dance.
I flick through the pages, skimming over the pictures, moving too fast to make sense of many of the scenes, until I come to one that makes me want to hurl the book across the room in existential horror and go huddle in the corner. A girl, one that looks disturbingly like me, sitting in a karaoke room, reading a manga about a girl sitting in a karaoke room reading a manga. Okay, this is getting freaky.
Slamming the book shut, I look up to find Haruka and Miki looking at me.
I didn’t hear the music finish, so I don’t know how long both girls have been sitting across from me, staring. A lot of things must have happened while I had my head in the manga as three drinks and a half-eaten bowl of chips have appeared on the table.
“Are you okay, Rin-chan?” Haruka has a worried look spread across her face, making her forehead wrinkle slightly.
“I’m fine.” I shove the manga under a nearby cushion, and pray the girls didn’t notice it wasn’t a songbook.
“It’s your turn to sing.” Miki is holding a mike out to me.
“Umm, I’m not that confident with Japanese songs yet.” I really don’t think my shock-addled brain could handle J-Pop right now. It just couldn’t.
“Don’t worry.” She taps something on the handset and turns it towards me. “I’ve put the handset in English for you. Now you can select an English song.”
“Okay.” I guess I have no choice but to sing something now, I don’t think they’ll take ‘no’ for an answer. I take a mouthful of my drink, which turns out to be some kind of apple soda with lots of crushed ice in it, before I take the handset and search for something simple that won’t require too much thinking. Something to take my mind off of what I just saw. I stare at the screen as the upbeat music starts to play, and follow along partly singing, partly mumbling.
After what feels like an eternity, the song finishes and I pass the mike back to Miki without hesitation. The two go back to selecting ultra-fast, uber-happy Japanese songs. When the girls’ attention reverts back to the screen, I almost unthinkingly reach for the manga and begin flipping through the story.
Unreality washes over me as I force myself to turn back to the image of the girl in the karaoke room. The one that looks so much like the room I’m in right now. What I am doing right now. I feel the insane urge to go searching for whatever hidden camera is spying on me through the pen and ink drawing. Looking closely, I can see the layers of girl and manga continuing down until it becomes nothing but a black smudge. What the hell is going on?
Chapter 12
We leave the karaoke room at the end of the hour. Walking down the crowded streets of Akihabara, Haruka and Miki chatter away beside me while I flip through the , a sense of dread building as I watch the events of the manga play out in real time. The more I look at it the more confusing it becomes. I don’t want to believe this could be real, but I’m staring right at a page that shows a pair of girls walking down the streets of Akihabara, one with her head stuck in a manga. The other girl is about to—
“Sakura-sempai,” Haruka calls out, abruptly running ahead to wrap her arms around the other girl’s neck. “What are you doing here?”
“I… um… I’m…” Sakura stutters, clearly thrown off by Haruka’s sudden tackle hug. “Will you let go of me already?”
“Sakura, sorry to keep you waiting,” a boy shouts as he comes out of a nearby building. As he gets closer I see that it’s Hiroshi, the guy who caught me after my attempt at flight.
He walks over and puts his arm around Sakura’s shoulders before turning to regard the girls standing around his girlfriend. “Oh? Rin-chan, imagine seeing you again. How’s the ankle?”
“It’s … um … better.” My cheeks redden as I catch Sakura’s sullen glare upon hearing the nickname. Is he trying to make her want to kill me? “Thank you for, ah, saving me on those stairs,”
“So, what brings you out here?” Sakura interjects, possibly afraid Hiroshi might ask to inspect my ankle himself.
“The three of us were just doing some karaoke,” Haruka happily chips in when it becomes clear that I’m not going to answer.
“The three of you?”
“Yes, Rin-chan, myself, and … Ara? Where’d Miki-chan go?”
Darting my gaze around, Miki’s nowhere to be seen. Automatically I glance down at the manga. She’s with us and then suddenly she’s not. She just disappeared with the turn of a page. Backtracking a bit, I see her look up like something off-panel caught her attention and then she’s gone in the next panel. Where’d she run off to? I suddenly have the stran
gest vision of her seeing a fluffy blue bird and running off to chase it.
“Oh, so you like manga, Rin-chan?” Hiroshi’s sudden voice in my ear snaps me back to reality. I slam the book shut and glance up to find him standing beside me.
“Rin-chan, I didn’t know you were interested in manga.” Haruka steps in trying to get a look at the title.
“Yeah, it’s become a sudden interest of mine,” I mumble, shoving the manga back into my jacket.
“Is that so? You know, I actually draw some manga from time to time.”
“Hiroshi’s really good at drawing,” Sakura speaks up as if to remind Hiroshi that she’s still here. “He’s going to be a famous mangaka one of these days.”
He chuckles moving back over to Sakura’s side. “It’s really not that good, I’ll never make money from it, it’s mostly just a hobby while I finish university.”
Sakura makes a big gesture of checking her watch. “Come on, Hiroshi, you promised to take me to the arcade and win me a prize from one of the claw machines.”
“That I did.” Hiroshi, smiling, grabs Sakura’s arm and, before they walk, he turns to face me one last time. “Nice seeing you again, Rin-chan. I’ll have to show you some of my work sometime. You might find it interesting.”
“We’d better get home soon.” Haruka looks around. “Did you see where Miki-chan went?”
I shake my head. It’s true. I don’t know where she went. I’m sure the manga could tell me though.
“Oh, well, I’m sure she’ll tell me all about it tomorrow.” Haruka glances at her phone before putting it back in her pocket. “We’d better start heading home.”
She starts walking and I follow, itching to pull out the manga and make sure I haven’t been imagining things. It just seems too unreal. Like it’ll disappear if I don’t keep checking on it.
When it looks like Haruka has returned to her usual happy chattering, requiring little more than the occasional ‘ah-ha’ from me, I reach into my jacket and pull out the book. It feels heavy in my hands. The maid on the cover, her long dark ponytail frozen mid-sway, stares up at me as if asking me what I’m even doing with this. Something about her seems familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
“Rin-chan?” I look up to find Haruka staring at me. We must have stopped walking at some point. “What is that?”
She points at the manga and I drop it like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. The book bounces open on the pavement in front of me, and the new page staring up at me makes my chest tighten.
It shows a girl in a maid costume handing out pamphlets on a crowded street. The same girl as on the cover, but that’s not what’s making my heart pound in my throat. It’s the pile of scaffolding about to come crashing down on top of her that does.
I snatch up the manga, ignoring whatever it is that Haruka keeps mumbling at me, and start flipping back through the pages, it doesn’t take long to find the image of me holding the manga frantically glancing around the crowded street. This is about to happen. Now.
I dart my gaze around the crowded area, trying to find any sign of the girl. I feel panic bubbling up from my stomach. Everywhere I look are maids, but none of them is her.
“Rin-chan, what is going on?” Haruka grabs my shoulders, forcing me to look at her.
I don’t answer, my eyes caught on the sight of four girls in identical short black and white French maid uniforms, handing out pamphlets to passing pedestrians, trying to get them to go to their café. That’s when I see her. Not the maid. Misa. She’s just standing there flickering in and out like a bad TV signal, red eyes flashing, hair blowing about in an invisible wind, looking over at one of the maids.
Following Misa’s gaze, I watch as a maid with a long ponytail hands a pamphlet to a passing tourist. It’s her. She looks exactly the same as on the cover. I glance up to see a billboard hanging from the building above her. It sways and tilts in the cold night air.
A bad feeling settles in the pit of my stomach, and I suddenly know that it’s all real. The manga, Matt’s predictions, my psychotic imaginary friend, all of it. I know that something is about to go wrong, very wrong—and very soon. That girl is going to die if I don’t do something. Now.
A metallic twang rips the air like a mechanical snake preparing to strike, and I see the billboard start to topple.
Without even thinking, I shove Haruka aside and dash for the maid. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I push her out of the way and tackle her to the ground.
The maid pushes me away and looks up at me like I’ve gone crazy. When our eyes meet, I realise the girl glaring up at me is Satomi, minus her glasses. She opens her mouth to say something when a dozen screams fill the air, seconds before a mountain of plastic and metal comes crashing down on the spot where Satomi was just standing. The fallen billboard shatters against the ground sending debris flying in all directions. I hear Misa shouting something as if from a long distance away, but I don’t know what.
Satomi stops struggling beneath me, eyes glued to the wreckage. Several of her fallen pamphlets peek out from underneath it as if to remind her how close to death she actually was. The dazed and startled crowd starts milling around the accident reaching for their phones. A few of them even calling for help.
I push myself up and glance at the crumpled manga in my hand. The pages show everything that just played out. The maid handing out her pamphlets, the billboard coming loose of it moorings, and the mountain of death about to rain down on the girl. It also shows a scene that’s not like the others at all.
The last panel on the page shows a shadowy figure lurking in a nearby alley. Smirking.
I jump to my feet. Someone’s watching us. Someone who had a part in all this. Someone who might still be here. I dart my head around until I spot the alley. It’s back towards the karaoke place. Shoving past a shocked and confused Haruka, I race back to the alley. Whoever did this is probably the same person that pushed me down the stairs. I have to find out who it is. I want to know why.
I skid to a halt at the entrance of the dark alley, not really sure what my plan is once I do catch this person. Somehow, I don’t think the kind of person who would drop a billboard on someone, or push them down the stairs, is the type that would come quietly. Squinting, I can just make out the figure leaning up against the far wall. This is a really bad idea.
I take a deep breath and step into the alley. The figure remains completely still, as if waiting for me. I swear I can feel him smirking at me. Out of better ideas, I start running. Maybe he won’t expect me to charge in screaming.
It’s only by sheer luck that I manage to stop myself from slamming into the wall at the end of the alley. The empty alley. Instead of finding a crazed psychopath hell bent on murder, I find nothing. The mysterious figure I just tried to shoulder bash turned out to be nothing but a pile of trash and some faded graffiti.
A chill runs down my spine as I look up at the spray-painted fox winking down at me, its lips parted in a lazy smirking grin like it’d just played the world’s funniest joke. I stagger away from the creepy mural, somehow afraid to turn my back on it, only to find I’m not alone in this alley after all. Standing at the entrance of the alley is Haruka.
“What the hell is going on?!” my frightened cousin yells. In perfect English.
Chapter 13
“Since when do you speak English?”
It’s the first we’ve spoken to each other since my hurried promise to explain everything to her later. Still clearly confused and pissed off, Haruka stormed along behind me while I went to check on the shell-shocked Satomi who hadn’t moved an inch from the place I’d left her. One of the other maids promised to help her get home, so we left before anyone could ask me questions I didn’t have answers to. The entire train ride home consisted of me clutching the manga while Haruka stared at me in complete awkward silence. She probably thinks I’ve gone nuts—which I’m still not ruling out at the moment.
“Grandfather told me not to speak English
to you.” Haruka stops short of the driveway and replies in clear English, “He said you need to accept that you’re in Japan, not Australia.”
I hadn’t realised how much I’ve missed being able to speak my own language until now. Having to convert everything to Japanese before I can say it is a major pain. It’s so good to just be able speak without thinking about it, but judging by the look on her face, I don’t think Haruka wants to have a conversation about linguistics right now.
“What is that?” She points at the manga I still have clutched in my hands “You were reading it before the accident. What. Is. that!”
I move to hide the book behind my back, but she reaches out and snatches it. One sharp tug and it’s torn from my grip. She steps away and starts flipping through the pages.
“This is Matt’s manga, isn’t it?” She slams the book shut and waves it at me like she found me holding a dead rat. “I told you not to listen to him. He is dangerous.”
“But it showed Satomi’s accident before it happened. The manga is real.”
“No! It isn’t! He is delusional. If you keep reading this trash, you’re going to wind up just like him.” She tosses the book to the ground in disgust and storms into the house.
I gather our friendly chat is over. I watch her enter the house without another word—English or Japanese—and turn my attention to the manga lying open on the ground. That last image stares back up at me. The one of me standing over a bloody, broken body.
Repressing a shudder, I scoop up the book and head towards the house noticing for the first time the large jagged crack running across the door. Something tells me I’m going to get blamed for that somehow.
Inside, I do my best to ignore the old woman glaring at me from the kitchen, and catch a glimpse of Haruka being called into Grandfather’s study. Not having to worry about going round two with my cousin, I stomp upstairs and into Haruka’s room, kicking at the line of ash across her door out of spite. What does everyone in this family have against me?