Page 3 of Idol Star System Generation: Season 1

  Chapter II – Sinful Blossom Season

  As soon as the door closed behind her, Naoko tossed her arms up in the air and screamed. Leaving her beaten sneakers at the entryway, she rushed up the low step that separated the small rectangular area by the entry where footwear should be left at and her shining new place.

  Truth be told, the twelve square meters room was way smaller than she was accustomed with, back in her house in Shimabara. But at the same time her room on her old residence, the place where she spent most of her time when she was actually at home, was not much bigger than that. Also, in the school dorms she had it all to herself! A small cubicle that took a quarter of her apartment led to a simple but nice bathroom, with western-style toilet and a shower. Her new place also had a two-burner stove and a microwave. There was also one on a communal area for those who lived on the more than two hundred rooms of that five-story building, also. The edifice belonged to her high school, and even though the gray tone of concrete was everywhere, she still liked it.

  She also had a sink and a minibar. Two windows gave plenty of natural light to the ambient, one for the bathroom and the other right above her futon, a quilted and thick mattress used for bedding. The futon mattress, along with the pink, purple, black, yellow and red dragon-stamped duvet Naoko brought from her parents’ house, could all be folded and put aside into the suspended white cabinets that lined up on the walls. This way it opened up space. Above the futon area there was a television attached to a wall by a retractable arm-like support that could extend back and forth. Also on the same location there was a folding table that, while up, doubled as a headboard. The moment Naoko saw it she started to make plans for the cold winter nights, where she could put her laptop or videogame and a steaming bowl of ramen on the table, slide under the blanket and play all night long without anyone to bother! Room 527 was paradise on Earth!

  Along with a cupboard below the sink, a heater and an air conditioner, the dorm held all basics for a living. Naoko knew it was nothing special, but it was her first time living alone, so she quickly fell in love for that place. Outside, on the dormitory building, nothing was out of the ordinary. It was shaped like a U, each floor consisting of three long corridors. Two formed a straight angle but the third one was somewhat crooked to the inside cavity, the edifice vaguely resembled a right triangle where the hypotenuse didn’t meet one of the legs. It was good for Naoko to remember her about geometry classes and also provided an open space where students could appreciate the breeze. A few pieces of cloth were hanged on the corridor’s parapet to dry, but it only involved shirts and pants and only out of urgency. Underclothes, along with most other garments, were dried on the communal washhouse.

  There was an elevator on the building, but it was mostly for disabled people and cargo transporting. Also, during the morning and immediately after the end of the classes there was so much traffic it was quicker to go by stairs, which was a hassle since the girl was transferred one week after the start of classes, and thus was assigned to one of the last unoccupied rooms, on the fifth and topmost pavement. On the flip side, the view outside her windows was top-notch and her floor only had nine of the thirty-nine rooms filled, meaning fewer annoyances and no adjacent neighbors to disturb her – or, more likely, be disturbed by her: she got easily carried away when playing games and cursed a lot, and she hated to listen to music on a low volume.

  She still felt the necessity to drop by her nearest neighbors, including the one immediately below her room, to introduce herself and bring a few cheap cookies she bought out of the nearest konbini – a convenience store. She grabbed the nearest discounted item she found and gave no thought about it, so once she presented herself and said the most commonplace of sentences, that such present was just a silly thing, she felt good because, for once, it was the truth. People usually went to bothersome degrees to find presents for others only to downplay it, but Naoko was true to her words! If she was going to say it was nothing special, it might as well not be!

  Since it was Saturday morning, she wasn’t hoping to find anyone, and true to her expectations, both neighboring rooms on her floor were empty. Only at night was she able to find their occupants, a boy and a girl. Both seemed fine folks, though the boy below her, whom she did encounter holed in his crib by 11 a.m. of a sunny Saturday was a smiling creep resembling a snake that Naoko rapidly found she wanted distance from, so she didn’t feel as bad showing how inconsiderate she could be by throwing some cookies at neighbors. The guy didn’t say a word for the most part and the way he whispered his name was so low that the girl, uninterested and still wanting to explore her own room, only barely heard “Fukuda Katsuro”, didn’t know if that’s really it and merely nodded as if she had fully understood it.

  Aside from that, no words from him, as the grinning guy just stared her without blinking from the top of his vertiginous one meter and forty something centimeters high, more or less. The more she saw him, the more she had the impression it was probably less. But then again, the boy appeared to gradually lean forward as if growing a hump, so his real height was a mystery. One Naoko had no interest in solving.

  As the girl, having introduced herself and that she was enrolled to 2-5 out of cordiality was about to leave, the boy from room 427 let his hissing voice be heard for the first time, mentioning he was then her senpai while letting his grin grow bigger, revealing his teeth. If at first he could pass as a slightly weird student who just tried too hard to appear friendly despite being too shy to speak, it was no longer the case. It was already hard enough to believe that a guy who obviously wasn’t a dwarf but almost as tall as one was in high school, but he was her senpai, or senior, too. Naoko stood still for a moment, looking at the boy while she reflected on what to say next. The way he sounded happy, a little too happy, from below his collected exterior when he stated his senpainess as if it was a trump card sounded the girl’s alarms to control her naturally cheerful attitude not to seem too friendly. She responded:

  “Oh… that’s… good. So you won’t be in school next year, right? Nice.” After a second, thinking about what she said, Naoko quickly added, “I mean, nice for you, of course! You’ll be in university, right?! That’s awesome! I’m rooting for you! Okay then, bye!”

  Despite not having looked back anymore as she “walked” away (with the speed as someone running), she could almost feel him still glaring at her. In her imagination he would’ve been closing the door slowly, while a portion of his big smile and one of his eyes would still be seen from the gap, gazing intensely.

  So alright, the dormitories weren’t perfect, but it was still nice and her room was a lovely place. Also the sun-soaked city was marvelous at the beginning of April. The cherry blossom period was already over, which was a shame, though. Sure, she had watched it with her cousin, but although Hayato was nice, she’d very much prefer to see it again by herself, without hurrying. During the week Naoko stayed at her hometown she went flower-seeing too. Then again she did that for all her life, so seeing the pink-leafed sakura trees in full-bloom, albeit arguably gorgeous, wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary.

  The flower-watching could be over in Tokyo, but spring was just starting and she had lots of new things to do. Studies, work, hobbies… For starters, she has not only enrolled in a new school, but also had to present herself on a new dojo. When she explained she was moving, her master got her in touch with an old acquaintance of him that held a training center in a ward nearby. The only thing Naoko knew was that, just like her first master, the chief instructor she was assigned to also followed the Shotokan style, which didn’t mean much as “Shotokan”, even though being itself a school among many in Karate, was more of an umbrella term to encompass many different sub-schools.

  Naoko couldn’t get more information, though, as it happened one day before the trip, the reason being she didn’t even know if things would work out until the last moment. Her parents, especially her father, gave the girl a lot of trouble to convince, like she expected. Duri
ng the three days after her return she tackled her old school and life went back to normal as if her days in the capital had been nothing more than a dream. She couldn’t even tell others she was moving because her parents, for the first two days, were resolute not to let her go. Naoko used every minute of her free time to try and persuade them otherwise, and had her own resolution tested by arguments such as the already beaten risk of scam, the prohibitive cost of living there, themes related to honor and humility, her own inexperience in living by herself, the dangers of the most populous area of the country and one of the most of the world, so on and so forth. Luckily, the girl was headstrong, and the singing and dancing tests made her for some reason calmer than before. As such, Naoko was able to keep rational conversations for longer, which ultimately led the firm conviction of her father to crack. Naoko had faith in it, or so she shown.

  When the contract arrived she and her parents spent almost four hours reading every single line of it and searching the internet for help whenever necessary. They read and reread it numerous times, looking for any legal traps, but to no avail. Fifteen percent of every source of revenue for the idol, reasonable work hours and performed functions, well-explained and acceptable copyright information, rights and obligations…It was A-Okay and coincided with everything the I.S.S.G. website stated to be mandatory. The only compromising part which made Naoko’s father worried regarded a paragraph about early contract termination and contractual penalty. Since the document was valid for two years and should be renewed after expiration, the girl would be tied to the agency for that period. If any of the involved parties were to terminate the contract before its expiration date without reasonable explanation, it was imposed a penalty equivalent to five months’ worth of revenue or compensation, depending on the side rescinding the document. The month of reference would always be the last one. The problem was that Naoko’s payment wouldn’t be fixed, but was expected to fluctuate following the fifteen percent of total revenue accrued every month by the company. So if she wanted to walk away for whatever reason, it would cost her a sum she didn’t know if she could afford to pay.

  Then again, it was standard fare among contracts, so her own father wound up calming Naoko. Everything looked acceptable, and after that night, however unwilling, he and her mother gave her the greenlight. Only then, on Thursday, she began to spread the news of her departure, all the while managing all the official procedures for the agency, the Idol Star System Generation, the bank on which she was going to open an account, her old and new school for the transfer process and her dorm room, the dojos and finally booking her flight in time. For a teenager who has never had to tackle so much bureaucracy before it was overwhelming, and her father, in order to evaluate her daughter’s capacity to live by herself, did the absolute minimum to help, just signing what he was required to. But Naoko, obstinate she was, did all she could in record time, locking herself in her room as soon as she returned from the karate classes and getting a medical examination as required on Thursday, and staying up until 2:30 a.m. of the next day filling forms.

  Only by Friday evening, having just barely protocoled the last tidbits of bothersome papers for the bank, the air company and her new education institution, the girl finally managed to have time to spread the news to those she didn’t met until then. Most of them were friends from different schools and random people from shops and spots across the city. She didn’t even see some people, merely texting them farewell just so she had time to spare to talk to more important people, like her grandparents.

  While Naoko loved her parents, the constant fights with her father Yoshirou and the irritating attempts of her mother, Natsuko, to conciliate the two undermined her desire to be close to them. If there was one person in her family that Naoko regretted a little to leave was her grandfather. Her grandma, Kohaku was also a lovely person, but grandfather Akihiro was something else. Nearing ninety one years-old, he didn’t have the same vitality he used to, but was still a surprisingly funny person, contrary to his son Yoshirou.

  He was a few inches taller than Naoko, though he couldn’t stand straight anymore, and leaned over a walking stick due to a serious injury he had. He used to be a policeman. Quite the strong one, judging from the old photos on family albums that Naoko loved to check back when she was a kid. He was shot on his chest at that time. Since firearms were a rarity in Japan when compared to many other countries, this was shocking.

  Naoko still remembered the day she discovered that. She was seven and used to notice Akihiro sometimes appeared to feel pain while playing with her, and he played a lot. She was probably his favorite grandchild. Her grandfather liked her cousin Hayato, of course. Akihiro also had a daughter called Manami, younger than Naoko’s father Yoshirou and her uncle Kenji, thought Manami lived in a distant city and hardly ever visited them. Not unlike uncle Kenji, in fact, though when Naoko was seven Kenji still lived in Shimabara. Manami also had two sons, but for grandpa Akihiro, Naoko was special. She was the only granddaughter he had and was the only child of Yoshirou, who was Akihiro’s first son.

  Akihiro used to do whatever Naoko wanted. He loved her that much and liked to play with the cheerful and energetic girl a lot. She frequently rode on his back or asked to be tossed in the air and caught by him, and her grandfather did that. Naoko’s father never did that to her, and always stood close when she was with Akihiro, looking serious and boring. In Naoko’s mind her father either disliked to see Akihiro play so much with Naoko or was just envious that he had the disposition to play with the girl, when Yoshirou didn’t. Yoshirou always stood like a shadow observing the two, close to a wall, arms folded and a grave countenance from a person that apparently didn’t know how to have fun.

  In a sense, Naoko’s grandfather acted like a father to her, since Yoshirou, while arguably taking care of the girl didn’t use to play or enjoy her company. Akihiro, however, sometimes appeared to feel pain while playing, and on one of those occasions he had to stop and almost fainted on a chair in his house. After Naoko’s father, mother and grandmother tended him, Naoko started crying, fearing she’d lose Akihiro. At that time the gray-haired man explained to her, with a soothing smile, that there was nothing to fear. That he just had a wound for almost four decades and was still breathing.

  He seemed disconcerted, however, when Naoko started to ask questions about it. It was a small, circular depression on his chest, slightly to the right of the heart area. Seeing he didn’t want to explain, Naoko turned to her father, who seemed as serious and stalwart as always. From the door, with arms folded, Yoshirou quietly and severely observed his own father. Akihiro seemed a little ashamed, and reluctantly explained that it was a bullet scar. The small girl was horrified and demanded an explanation, asking if it was because he was a police officer back when he still worked.

  Glancing nervously to his wife and son, he hesitantly replied, tense in a way Naoko had never seen him to be:

  “I… Yes. It dates back to when I was a police officer.”

  Started, Naoko inquired while climbing on his legs, hugging him and passing her hand over the wound:

  “What happened, grandpa?! Did… a bad guy shot you?! Did you shoot him back?! Eh?! Did you shot the bad guy, grandpa?!”

  From his chair in the living room the disconcerted man embarrassedly glanced to his silent and judging son, possibly gauging if it’s alright to say those things to his daughter, and decided to answer as succinctly as possible:

  “No, Naoko. It’s… not a bad guy. I… handled my own gun in the wrong way… and shot myself. Let’s talk about something else, guns are not a good topic for a little girl to…” Naoko suddenly interrupted him, suspiciously interrogating “But grandma says grandpa Akihiro was an amazing and skilled cop! Did you really shot yourself?!”

  Flustered, the man simply replied, his face still showing signs of pain:

  “Even skilled people commit mistakes, Naoko. Bad ones, sometimes.” Petting her hair with his left-hand and looking embarrassed and thoughtful all
the while showing a smile, he said, “But you can learn with your mistakes. It’s part of the past, now, so let’s not dwell on it. Why don’t you tell me about those songs you were hearing. I heard from your father someone lent you some CDs. Is it true?”

  Scanning with attentive eyes his oddly acting grandfather, Naoko thought for a moment. Something seemed fishy there, she couldn’t imagine Akihiro committing such a gross mistake. She was only seven, but she wasn’t dumb. Also, he had told her once before that he and many of his colleagues hardly ever carried their guns around back when he was an officer. There was no need for it, and it intimidated good citizens. As such, she replied:

  “Yes, I got some CDs. Now why don’t we talk about your wound? Please! Tell me what happened, grandpa! How did you shoot yourself?! Why did you never tell me you had a wound?! Does it hurt?! Are you sure it wasn’t a bad guy?!”

  As her grandfather silently hugged her back, saying “Naoko, enough with this subject, let’s change…” his son’s eyes got sharp as a razor. An imposing hand pulled the girl away. Startled, the old man observed his son breaking Naoko away, but said nothing. Naoko protested and screamed as Yoshirou walked her to the door while seriously saying:

  “Naoko, learn to have respect. Your grandpa is in pain. He needs to rest and you’re bugging him. Let’s go.”

  While his daughter tried to free herself from his firm grip and cried for him to let her go, for she wanted to be close to her grandfather and help to ease his pain, her own grandmother said with a caring but hesitant voice:

  “Yoshirou, please. Your father… he’s better now. And he doesn’t have many chances to see Naoko. Please, there’s no need to go so soon.”

  The serious man, facing his concerned mother and his own silent and embarrassed father, retorted sharply:

  “He needs to rest. We’ll come back another time.”

  Not even Naoko’s mother seemed to understand why Yoshirou reacted that way with his own mother and tentatively asked why they shouldn’t stay a little longer. Getting even more serious, Yoshirou retorted:

  “I know Naoko will insist on this topic. My father needs to rest. She won’t let him. That’s why.”

  While Naoko yelled and tried to evade her father’s grip, her grandmother gestured back to the lonely and sad-looking old man as he watched Yoshirou open the door, and reminded him:

  “Yoshirou, please! Don’t do this. He’s better now! He only wants to be with his family for a while! Is it to ask too much? He’s your father!”

  Apparently not caring for his own wife’s puzzled look, Yoshirou glanced to Akihiro and resolutely replied:

  “And Naoko is my daughter.”

  Naoko never understood the context of that situation, and neither did her mother. Yoshirou just pulled the girl back to the car and, without giving any explanations, simply left. Years after, Naoko still had no answer for what happened on that day. She only knew her father abhorred violence and hated when he found the girl playing games that involved guns. Yoshirou apparently disliked everything related to Akihiro’s profession as a policeman for some reason. The only clue Naoko thought to have obtained on the nine following years about that came from her grandmother, who said that after the shot Akihiro was left with serious health problems and retired. Apparently, it wasn’t the police or the government that did it: Akihiro did that by himself. After that, their family had many financial problems for some time.

  Naoko was left with the impression that her grandfather Akihiro had lied about misfiring his own gun, though there was a problem to this logic: if he was shot and incapacitated on his duty by someone else the government would’ve probably paid his retirement. It was the main reason why the explanation of him accidentally shooting himself made some sense, despite Naoko’s resistance to accept it. Anyway, she could at least understand why Yoshirou hated guns so much. A shot had ended the career, and almost the life, of his father, after all. And seeing they faced hard times after that incident, it was justifiable that he was so afraid of Naoko’s curiosity. Even when she was seven the girl already played many violent electronic games online, including war games, and learned quite a few facts about real-life weaponry on them. Her interest on the subject probably frightened him. He couldn’t understand that Naoko just liked games, not real guns or warfare, though she could imagine Yoshirou preferred to be safe than sorry.

  The horrible incident involving the shot was never elaborated by anyone no matter how hard she tried, but to see that her grandfather managed to keep a positive outlook on life despite his pain and hardships was inspiring. His personality was cheerful no matter what. When Naoko told her grandparents she was moving to Tokyo to work as an idol, her grandfather was the only person in her family who promptly got happy for her. Though he had some difficulties to move, he insisted on giving her some money on an envelope. Despite not being much, it was what they could afford to give her. She refused it many times, not out of politeness – she wasn’t a big fan of it – but because she really didn’t want to take anything away from them. In the end, however, her supportive grandfather encouraged her to take it, saying:

  “You know, Naoko, when I was around your age and got my first job, my parents also had to support me during the first month, until I could live by my own means. I had to commute to work, to eat and had other expenses. I didn’t want to bother them at first, though I had no choice. What I did was to repay them. I used all I could spare from my first payment to buy them a fancy dinner at a restaurant and a few gifts. Well, I say “fancy dinner”, but at that time I only had money for a regular night out, really. It was already fancy enough for us, since my parents never did these kinds of things. It’s a nice change of pace, I think. So Naoko, now’s not the time to refuse help. Tokyo is an expensive place to live. First you get paid, and then you can think about repaying. Please take it. It’s not much, but all we can do to help you, we will.”

  That was the kind of thing Naoko didn’t forget. And despite Yoshiro’s flaws, her father was the only son of Akihiro and Kohaku who supported his parents. It there was anything Naoko learned with her father was about loyalty. He carried his father to hospitals, paid for remedies and treatments and much more. He was always austere, but deep down he cared for the others. And since her grandparents received hardly enough money for themselves, Yoshiro needed to also provide financial support for his parents, along with everything else he did for them.

  That was the main reason for Naoko to dislike her supposedly crazy aunt Manami and Uncle Kenji – because they practically abandoned their own father and mother in Naoko’s opinion. Of course, since Naoko was welcomed into Kenji’s home, she did her best to be a good guest. She hated his lack of loyalty to his own family, but he was not a bad person otherwise. No matter. All she cared at the moment was that for her grandparents to give cash to Naoko like that, no matter how little, was a sacrifice. One the girl recognized. Trying not to cry, she promised to repay them somehow as soon as she could.

  When she returned home she finally got the time to talk to her neighbors, including Masahiro. He was her childhood friend and the younger brother of Momoko, the girl who fell for the fake idol agency scheme and whose story made Naoko so reluctant about accepting that opportunity.

  She expected that when she told him about moving to Tokyo Masahiro would be sad, like she was, but no. He was devastated. As she explained to him that she was going away first thing in the morning, before sunrise, he sat down on the sidewalk, his eyes staring her house across from his without seeing anything. Their street was small and both vehicle traffic and foot traffic was almost nonexistent, so no one would see him get as down in the dumps as he got, but even if someone saw he’d most likely not care.

  His short, almost bowl cut hair if not for a few spiky tips, was just stylish enough not to appear completely plain. He used glasses that made his eyes look much bigger, but his black frames were tasteful. He was almost the same height as her, and not too skinny but sporting no noteworthy muscles either. When the
y were younger and bet on physical capabilities, he could defeat her on arm wrestling despite it being a tough contend, but she was slightly faster and could withstand longer distances running and swimming. He wasn’t really handsome, but neither was him ugly. He had very few friends but wasn’t too shy. He was smart, although nowhere near a genius, and liked a couple of things Naoko also did like games and manga, but unlike her, Masahiro’s interests were limited to those things. He wasn’t audacious, but followed the girl on numerous occasions, and even thought he was generally the irritating voice of reason of the pair, she knew Masahiro liked to get on adventures through the city and beyond. He wasn’t particularly funny or entertaining, but could maintain decent conversations without a problem. He was kind of a bummer sometimes, but mostly because his loyalty was too much to let Naoko do a few things she wanted that weren’t necessarily smart. He wanted to be an engineering like his father and studied for it every day, but other than this, he didn’t have a clear vision for his future so much as glimpses. Both had their discords with their parents for similar reasons, but Masahiro never got out of control, although he also hardly ever expressed his mind either.

  In other words, from a strictly ration point of view he was kind of ‘meh’, and a few of the many boys and girls Naoko knew have asked a few times why she put up with that guy when there were so many others who were stronger or cleverer, more daring or funnier, more handsome or stylish than him. Especially when Naoko received so much praise on most of these aspects – including strength, although only in a “you’re pretty strong for a girl” kind of backhanded compliment she usually received in the dojo, which meant “yeah, you were able to break two planks with a blow! If you were a man, that’d be considered subpar, but we’ll praise you anyway just because you’re the only woman here and you’re willing to try and get better”, which got on Naoko’s nerves. And although she found it hard to understand why, she liked him. Masahiro was her first friend ever, and she could confide everything to him. They could be completely honest with one another and even argue, even though he hardly ever talked his mind to her or anyone else anyway, and she was accustomed to his way of being. She knew he was ‘meh’, but she liked him for that.

  At first he was shocked, and in disbelief he asked if that was some kind of late Fool’s Day prank or something. It wasn’t a big custom in Japan, but he knew Naoko was into other cultures enough to justify some silly play like that. She loved dates like Christmas and Halloween, despite it having nothing to do with the Land of the Rising Sun. But as she explained to him that it was no joke, he kept trying to find a joke somewhere.

  “But if Naoko’s telling me this just now, when you’ll be bidding farewell to everyone else? On your way to the airport in the middle of the dawn? Stop bluffing.”

  She quickly said she had told the others since Thursday and explained how she hadn’t even left home that day making arrangements. Also, she had quickly given the news to the others on her way home that day, leaving him for last because he lived nearby and also due to the fact that there was no more rush, so they could talk as much as they wanted. She genuinely believed it was a nice thing and that Masahiro, knowing her for so long, would understand that she gave almost everyone just three or four words before going to the next person, while for her longtime friend they could spend an hour talking! He’d appreciate the consideration, and also the fact that she didn’t simply texted him a goodbye message like she did for a few people.

  He got even more miserable, his unstable voice barely audible and as if he tried to appear serene despite the frustration and resentment:

  “Wait. So you told it first to your school friends, and the karatekas you train with, and… all those thousands of boys you know who-knows-how from all across the city?”

  Getting exasperated by what she heard, Naoko reacted angrily:

  “All the thousands of…? What kind of girl Masahiro’s implying I am? They’re not thousands, and you know all of them just as well, so don’t give me this “boys you know who-knows-how” crap, you idiot!”

  “I know them because you presented them to me,” he defended himself in a higher tone, though still low, and Naoko retorted “So you know them, and you know they’re nice people, so stop acting like I’m wandering with Yakuza people or anything!”

  “I know them well enough to see some of them aren’t as nice as you make them to be!” Masahiro stated, almost not managing to hold of his anger. “That Hiro fella used to be on a school gang back on his days…”

  “He’s not like this anymore, he works with his father at the gas station now.” Naoko replied, trying to exert self-control and sensing her patience overheating and malfunctioning.

  “Oh, yeah? What about that Norio dude from near the bike shop three squares from here?” her friend, getting upset like he’d never been before, although never raising his voice against her, argued, “How many girls did he seduced to begin with?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care, I wasn’t one of them so that’s not my problem!” Naoko scold him, “Seriously, what’s the matter, man?”

  “What’s the matter?!” he replied so abruptly, standing up and turning to face her with such impetus that for once Naoko thought he’d attack her. Her friend, after a moment of fury, swallowed it and his skin turned paper pale. He once again sat down on the pavement, almost like letting himself fall, and tried to mutter something, then another thing, and finally stopping cold.

  Sensing he took the whole thing the wrong way, the girl held the green skirt from her school uniform not to let it rise as she sat down by his right side and tried to console him while explaining more in-depth her way of looking at things. She could understand he felt left for last and unimportant, but it was the opposite: she did that so she could spend with him more than a few seconds, like she did with every other person with the exception of those who studied with her – because she was forced to be with them for hours, anyway.

  Looking completely lost he faced away from her while she told him everything. From there she started talking about her last few days, and then how she’d managed to make her father comply. Masahiro himself had a few problems with his parents too, mostly revolving around how they only seemed to have eyes for his older sister Momoko. She was the most beautiful, most hard-working and most intelligent of the two, it seemed. Contrary to Naoko’s father, who was silent but at least made it obvious his daughter was less than he expected, Masahiro’s parents didn’t make that so crystal clear.

  They went as far as trying not to compare the two siblings, even if the praises were mostly given to Momoko. As much as the girl was just as good as they made her to be, Naoko always though she was also too dependent on the opinions of others. Too insecure, and even more after the scam incident. Her parents probably felt it too, and gave her the praises she desired. And it was true the woman also worked hard to deserve the approvals, so Masahiro couldn’t even argue it was ill-placed. To Naoko, Masahiro’s parents didn’t prefer her older sister so much as gave more attention to her than to him since he appeared to be more resilient and not all that reliant on compliments. But she also knew he felt as if he was half-forgotten by his own family, hence Naoko’s detailed recording of how she managed to get her father to concede: so he could learn something to use for his own benefit.

  From there she told him about her trip, the agency, why she believed it wasn’t a scam like the one Momoko suffered, how Tokyo was amazing, everything. She got so carried away that more than half an hour passed before she noticed Masahiro wasn’t reacting to anything. At first she got upset that he didn’t seem to pay attention, but when she saw his face, low and facing the asphalt in a hopeless expression, her heart hurt as if stung by something sharp. Starting to worry, she called him, but despite clearly listening and reacting with his arms, he didn’t reply at first. It took him a long time thinking, lost inside his private world, to finally mutter, disheartened:

  “Do you… still wear that anklet… I gave you?”

  T
hinking about anything she could do to cheer him up, Naoko promptly changed sides so that her right leg was the one closer to him and lowered her knee high dark gray stocking all the way down, showing him a simple anklet made of black and white-painted straws rolled together. It was a good luck charm he gave her a long time ago. In a festival, if she remembered correctly, although she wasn’t sure which one. She could barely remember receiving that present, it was too much to ask for specifics, but from what little she could recall, it had fireworks. Again, a vague description.

  She was so used to wearing it she hardly even remember it, and only took it off to go into swimming classes in her school, and only because it was prohibited to wear accessories there. Other than that, she left it on her ankle the whole time, even during baths and at the sea. It wasn’t supposed to be taken off under no circumstance for some reason, but there was nothing she could do about the classes. It was a good luck charm, after all, and supposedly made a wish cast upon it when the object was worn for the first time come true when he broke out of being too worn out.

  Naoko wasn’t a superstitious girl, so she didn’t really believe in such nonsense as good luck or wishes. For her it was the feeling of the person that gave it to her that counted, so she wasn’t scared to break any stupid spell, but she valued the thought of Masahiro in presenting her such a beautiful, even if simple, accessory. She wore it as much as possible. In reality, even her friend, who did believe in such things, took his one off every swimming class he had. He had a matching pair, and since both of them studied in the same school, the same rules applied – the difference being he was two year older than her. It was nice to know older students, being close to a senpai was really something else. But then again, she knew more boys older than her than those of her age, so it wasn’t a big deal. Initially the girls from her class were envious, but as time passed they’re able to get to know Naoko better. Eventually they started wanting to hang out with her instead of chastising her.

  Naoko’s relations with other girls were a wee bit strange. It wasn’t that she had no female friends, au contraire. She had no problems making friends with other girls, be it older, younger or the same age as her. On her school she had three very close girlfriends and many others she talked to when the situation was right. The problem was that not all things she liked, other girls did. It just so happened that she found two girls who shared her enthusiasm for music, international stuff and manga, and another one that the trio converted to their otaku cause. As the time passed they developed common themes to talk to and their friendship evolved. But many of the things Naoko liked, though not all, just happened to be stereotypically enjoyed more by men than by women, be it by some natural mechanism or just by societal pressure. When she found another girl that liked games, martial arts, anime and all things awesome she had no problems becoming her friend.

  Another, more complicated matter, was that Naoko disliked the way girls usually acted. It had nothing to do with the people itself, but rather the roles society had for them. When it came to women Naoko had nothing against, but girls… Simply put, the way they were molded by society generally made girls irritating. Boys could be direct, playful, pester others, fight, talk dirt, slide on the mud, not wear shirts on the beach and on swimming pools, get down on fours to create sand castles or to hunt bugs on the grass without someone telling them to mind their poses, and being free to catch bugs to begin with without anyone looking at them like they were extraterrestrial beings. In essence, it wasn’t about the way they could be expansive and upfront, though it was nice, or about catching insects – which Naoko did when it came to ladybugs and fireflies, but not for other creatures. On the flip side, she wasn’t afraid to touch worms to go fishing or to squish a cockroach as long as she was wearing something that covered the entire foot or which had a thick sole, and preferably both – No, it was about freedom. Boys could do a lot of things while girls were resigned to looking pretty and acting like defenseless vases.

  That wasn’t to say boys didn’t have problems too, Naoko knew many and saw their sufferings. Men were also expected to prove their masculinity in stupid ways, holding back emotions women weren’t as expected to suppress and had their own ridiculous perfection models. She knew it was expected every man to be tall, strong, brave, self-confident, have powerful voices and be able to win at many things, leaving those who aren’t like that on a limbo just like women who aren’t physically attractive. Naoko understood those things, she just preferred the liberty society gave to boys more, even though when they became men the expectations on their shoulders were just as big as the privileges they had as kids. But as Naoko was still sixteen and most of her friends were just a few years older, almost all she had experienced up until now focused on the stages of life preceding adulthood, hence her stand on the subject of men and women.

  Also, most of her female friends had at least a few characteristics that separated them from the annoying girl stereotype, meaning Naoko had no problems having female friends, she had problems having irritating friends. It just occurred that girls usually did more things that infuriated her than boys, beginning with self-centered, “you’re not worthy of me” kind of attitude that somehow proliferated in part of the national young female population. Expecting too much of others and not showing the same values themselves. Or so it was Naoko’s opinion, and it made her worry about her professional contact with idols. They rubbed her like the epitome of vanity, even though she knew nothing of them. She just so hoped to be proven wrong.

  As the airplane took off the next morning her concerns about Masahiro felt left behind, but deep inside she knew she’d have to make amends. Her childhood friend was too shattered the night before to respond, but the girl expected in a couple of days he’d have found his balance again, and then she’d be able to think of a text message that cheered him up. Meanwhile, for as much as she hated to admit it, it felt good to leave that gloomy place. Her heart was pumping full of excitement for what was to come and for leaving her worrying parents who thought she was too immature for living alone, getting away from her depressing friend who’d become abrasive and sobbing out of being left for last – and with a good reason to boot – and from other people acting as if it was her funeral. It was good to be free from that prison of bad feelings and to have space to spread like petals of a blossoming flower.

  Leaving the depths of boredom and uneasiness behind, she arrived at the airport only to be welcomed by the witty remarks and high spirits of her new producer, Aratani Kouta. The young, tall and smartly-dressed man with shoulder-long stylish hair seemed simply too good with a grin and a pair of cool shades. Just as he came under the shadows of the airport entrance to help her with her luggage and took the sunglasses off after a brief bow, the girl, also bowing and noticing an enticing cologne smell that faintly remembered wine, immediately told him:

  “Put the shades back on now. I never thought you’d look so sharp on those, Produ-San! Also congrats for the perfume! Much better now.”

  Instead of a typical, boring welcoming statement, Aratani replied teasingly:

  “Lady, please, the shades are the ones looking sharp on me, not the other way around.” Although self-promotions were frowned upon, Aratani was so over the top in his clearly exaggerated joking bravado that the girl could do nothing besides bursting into laughter out of the ridiculous one liner. On a side note, he added, “As for my perfume, thanks, but I have already put it on the last time we met. Your sense of smell just got better, I think.”

  “Wait… what? No way! Last time you just stunk like tobacco and sake.” she replied, making the man promptly protest. Eventually Naoko noticed it was probably because his room smelled so badly and her nostrils got clogged whenever she went there. Unfortunately, her producer seemed completely unaware his agency reeked that way. It wasn’t that Naoko disliked the noir detective feeling it gave to the ambient, it was just that she was very sensitive to scents and strong odors easily affected her. Even his black car, an old model that wasn
’t very impressive but was well kept nevertheless, faintly smelled of cigarettes. Aratani swore he didn’t smoke inside his vehicle and accused the girl of saying those things just to importunate him. Eventually Aratani’s complete cluelessness of smells became a recurrent joke Naoko used to pester her “Produ-San”. Also the way she’d once called him out of mockery quickly became her favored way of referring to the man when not in the presence of other people.

  He took her to her dorms, asking if she wanted help and, when the girl politely refused it, he told her she had a busy schedule for the day. By mid-day he’d pick her up again so she could get her school uniforms, textbooks and such and complete her transfer. Then, they’d have lunch. After that she’d have an appointment with a hair stylist, because at 5 p.m. she was to meet a beautician, and by 8:30 a photographer. With the photos Aratani could then start promoting her to companies that could be interested in her looks alone. At the beginning, he said, it was hard to make money as an idol, so before she got famous it was a good time to perform jobs that paid well but required no singing and performing, like featuring in ads and labels of female shampoos and cosmetics in general. Also, most advertisements were really cheap in that they presented young, beautiful women for no apparent reason, even when the products they were trying to sell had nothing to do with it. As Aratani said, if anyone wanted to sell anything that wasn’t specifically wore by men, all they needed to do was stamping a beautiful lady along.

  Naoko felt uncomfortable by the thought of appearing in such ads, but her producer reassured her he’d only accept decent ones for her. His goal, after all, was for her to become an idol, and tarnishing her reputation with anything was beyond question. Also, he promised her she’d only act as model until they had amassed her a fan base that let them survive on merchandising of their own. Though as much as ads walked a gray line when it came to ethics, ii was fair money.

  Continuing on her schedule, her day would end with a few purchases. Aratani told her it was on his tab since a few of the items were to be used on stage. And, as he pointed out, they couldn’t afford an idol to be seen roaming with a pair of sneakers so worn out their soles could fall off at any second, like the ones Naoko had with her. They would buy just the bare-minimum at that time not to strain the budget even more than it already was, but her image was a priority. Her wardrobe would grow bigger as cash started to flow in.

  Even though having to carry all her luggage up to her dorm, Naoko felt as if she was floating. After settling down and meeting the friendly neighboring weirdo from the floor below, she returned to her room to finish unpacking. Some unimportant things, like food and clothes, were put away as quickly as she could, while other, more serious matter, like her videogames, her gaming library, her laptop and a few manga she brought just in case she found someone with similar tastes, were neatly organized like they deserved.

  Also, her mother packed a few old idols CDs Naoko had since she was six or seven years old. At that time, she listened to a few bands. Mostly two anyway: the colorful and cheerful “Skip/Beat Indigo” and the dark and mature “Cross Sakura no More”. The girl barely remembered she had idol band CDs, much less that she still possessed them. Whatever had in them was almost ten years old and certainly outdated, so Naoko didn’t even bother to pick those up since they wouldn’t even serve as a reference, but her mother tucked the disks on her bags all the same. Since it was Naoko’s only thing that had to do with her new job, her mother felt it could be of some help anyway. She said the old things were not to be discarded but rather used as a model and improved upon. Naoko understood perfectly that, when saying “old things were not to be discarded”, she was also talking about her and Naoko’s father. Of course, the girl, even if relieved to be free, would never think about abandoning them. Hence she decided to take the CDs. She didn’t even look at them, but if it made her mom happy, she’d do it.

  The case with all the CDs was put aside rapidly, though, since mid-day was fast approaching. The remaining time was spent testing all electronics along with the heating and cooling systems, the TV, the minibar, the faucet, the lights, the shower and the toilet full of buttons to heat or rise the seat, activate the bidet and more.

  That year was atypically dry and pollution levels worsened at every day, despite the skies appearing generally clear and blue. Many TV newscasts reported an increase in health issue cases, notably among the elderly and the newly born, and alerts regarding prevention and minimization of the impacts of the preoccupying climate conditions abounded. The weather forecast included much needed precipitations for the middle of the next week onward, but people had to bear with the worrisome air quality until then. As Aratani caught her on the dormitory building’s entrance for their appointments, it became clear for Naoko that the number of people wearing sanitation masks on the streets had grown since the last time she was there.

  Generally the white masks that covered the nose and mouth were used more out of respect for others, by sick people trying not to spread their diseases, than for self-prevention. Though on days when the pollution, both domestic and that blown from continental Asia by wind currents, grew to unacceptable levels many wore the protection to reduce contact with dangerous substances on air. Since they could not only induce long-term health problems but also lower body immunities and heighten the risks of contracting infectious diseases, it could still be said people were taking care of the others to a certain degree by taking care of themselves.

  Through foot traffic intense avenues and streets filled to the brim with vehicles the two zipped through a few wards, gradually ticking lines on their to-do list. Some were uneventful, but for Naoko everything was new and interesting to the point where even having lunch on a simple but charming ramen shop or grabbing her new school uniform and clothes along with textbooks, notebooks and stuff was memorable. Even more so was the hair stylist.

  On a well-located and chic saloon consisting of a doubled-floor atrium where the bustling ground pavement was overshadowed by a pretty, column-supported balcony-like mezzanine with even more seats, mirrors and people, it was a lively high-end location. Many plants on vases gave the atmosphere a soothing aura, contrasting with the bright, colorless spotlights all across the ceilings being reflected dozens of times by all the mirrors across the place. These mirrors made the place appear to be even bigger. There was a Feng Shui sort of balance to the ambient.

  Many assistants, both women and men, tackled the never-ending flow of clients, but the owner of the place, a sixty-something eccentric but endearing chief hair stylist personally supervised the work on every customer. While Naoko waited to be called, she saw the owner’s doubtful but effective methods on many patrons. On an old but well-groomed man, apparently some kind of big shot on some company, the hair stylist not only asked questions about the executive’s personality and habits, but he also looked at him from many angles, as if evaluating a statue. Not satisfied, he got close to the top of the customer’s head and sniffed it hard before, in a glimpse of realization, he explained to one of his assistants what had to be done. When the cut was done, he returned to see the results and, not satisfied, gave the finishing touches himself.

  Aratani told Naoko before their arrival that the hairstylist master Matsushita Kazuhiro was famous for tending to many celebrities, including lots of top-class idols, but he was a bit odd. Seeing him in person, though, Naoko was unsure if she wanted to laugh or to run away from that man. If he sniffed her before she knew the owner was so peculiar the girl would be mortified, but as he did strange things to everyone Naoko eventually chilled out. Also the man heeded not what cuts the clients asked for themselves, instead believing in his own image of what would be best for their figure, but the results were nothing short of spectacular. The girl could imagine not every person would be comfortable there, but she was on high spirits and could tolerate some oddity for the novelty of it.

  In the end the owner was much less annoying as she made him to be at first glance. When he laid his eyes on her they g
leamed. He called a blond and young handsome man to perform her cut, which made the girl start to really enjoy it. The chief stylist began inquiring her about her hobbies, her life and her dreams, all the while running his fingers through her dark, long hairs as if stroking them. The first time the old man did that she cringed, but his firm hands were a delight, as gentle as a breeze and full of an enigmatic energy. Where they touched her hair and her nape, they left an electric and tickling feeling that lingered long after it stopped. Her neck, stiff from the initial contact, quickly loosened up. The hair massage looked more like an expert harpist playing his instrument with fondness, and undid every knotted strand. It was so good that when he finished his questions and turned to his assistance, all she wanted was for him to keep caressing her locks and sending shivers down her spine.

  When Naoko first laid her eyes on the confident, tall and pretty assistant she badly wanted the chief hair stylist to stop talking and let that stunning man take care of her, but after the owner left and his employee assumed, the girl got a little sad. The young man was dangerously attractive and all, but his touch on her hair was… normal. He knew what he was doing, and his fingers were suave too, but it just wasn’t the same thing. The old dude just had electricity running through his fingertips! Also, she didn’t understand too much the vision the owner got for her at first, but as the work got performed Naoko was astonished.

  Before her hair was just slick and fell freely. Simple and clean. After some products to increase its brightness and softness and many cuts, some to eliminate double ends and others to give it shape, things changed. She got a fringe that partially covered one of her eyes. Two bangs fell in front of her ears, and one got visible while the other was mostly concealed. Tasteful asymmetries were added all over, like a lock on the left of the top of her head that got spiked up, looking like an eternally still black sea wave crashing on the rocks and splashing all over. Spiky ends were made on one side while the other remained au natural. When the chief returned, he inspected it from all directions checking if it was reflexive like a black mirror and detailed as he wanted it. Noticing it lacked something, he further cut down a few strands on the back to slightly increase the impression of volume on the crown tail. To Naoko, it was akin to a very minor sport car’s airfoil, since she had no better way of describing it. Like most other details, it was very hard to notice unless carefully observed, but added up to the subliminal richness of the cut.

  When it was finished, the hair was cut in such a way that it naturally preserved the shape without the need of gels or other cosmetics. It was so gorgeous Naoko not only felt like staring at a princess at the mirror, albeit one with a rebel flair, but was also afraid to even touch it.

  “Well?” the chief hair stylist asked after putting the scissor to rest, “Is it to your liking?”

  “It’s marvelous!” Naoko replied, staring intensely at the mirror to absorb every detail, “I’ve never had such a beautiful hairstyle! I don’t understand it, but I love it!”

  “What part of it did you not understand, my dear?” he questioned, suddenly worried.

  Studying her own figure, she pointed out she found the half-fringe, the cover over one ear, the head top splash of hair over one side and a few other aspects to be her favorite ones, which was strange because she always thought symmetry was key to beauty. The man, hearing that, lightened up and let a beaming expression out due to her compliments.

  “Ah, the fallacy of symmetry!” the hair stylist, positioning his face over one of her shoulders to observe her at the mirror from a perspective close to that of her eyes, replied eagerly, “At first I thought you didn’t understand my cut because it didn’t reflect true feelings you harbored for yourself, which would be a horrible mistake of mine.”

  “Hm… what?” Naoko interrupted him. “Feelings?”

  “You see, I try to capture feelings on my cuts.” the man explained, vigorously, “I cut the way I feel about someone, and try to crystalize it on my work. The hair grows with the person and is in constant change, but some characteristics remain for a long time. Personality traits, or some kind of essence, if you will.”

  “And you try to capture this essence in your art?” presumed Naoko.

  “Ah, young lady, you’ve no idea how hearing you call my work ‘art’ makes me happy!” the owner stated, starry-eyed with some kind of passion that made him appear as energetic as a boy, “Indeed, I try to catch a glimpse of the soul and make it so that everyone can see it. I don’t like to dwell on what’s ephemeral. When I was an inexperienced hair stylist I was always frustrated by the fact that hairs grow back. I wanted my art to be eternal. And it pained me to see my works get slowly ruined. I always had to recreate them again and again. Until one day, I noticed that the hair cut I tried to maintain for years on one client didn’t suit him anymore. The first time he’d come to me, he was a fifteen years-old athletic boy. Five years after, he’d matured into a fine lad destined to climb the salarymen ladder till the very top. If hair didn’t regrow, he’d one day be a manager, a director, a CEO of an important company stuck with the hair of a boy. That moment opened my eyes to the beauty of life: change.”

  “But you said you didn’t like to dwell on ephemeral things,” pointed Naoko, her curiosity piqued.

  “Yes, but people mistake changes for starting anew,” the stylist, leaning against his mirror to face Naoko, told her, “To start again isn’t to change. It’s to be imprisoned in a cycle that ultimately only brings suffering, because when you start anew you throw away whatever progress you’d accumulated so far. You don’t keep anything, and soon enough you’ll be incurring in the same mistakes. That’s what I used to do before my realization. I was so blinded by my drive to keep things from changing that I discarded everything new that I saw. I did a cut, and months after I only trimmed away the new to make the old shape appear again. Trapped in samsara, in a limbo between lives, not ever growing. But to change? To change is different. A new beginning needs nothing previous to it, but if you change something, it’s implied there’s something there to begin with. A real change does not throw away the old, but rather improve upon it.”

  Naoko tried hard to follow the man’s logic, but although he looked at her, he spoke as if to himself. After a brief pause thinking, he continued:

  “When I discovered it, my heart was set ablaze! For, you see, that boy that became a man, that would become a powerful executive someday, changed, but a change was just an improvement over something previously established. It made me think: if I could see the entire lifespan of a person, most things wouldn’t be kept during their entire course, but a few things could, perhaps. An essence that was exclusive to that individual. As I started to try and unearth what it was, my fear of changes eventually subsided.”

  “So that’s why you ask questions and other… stuff to new clients?” Naoko mentioned.

  “You’re very attentive, lady. Yes, it is.” The hair stylist acknowledged, “It took me several years to hone my skills to the point where I felt confident enough to cut hairs from every kind of person, from a beggar to a Prime Minister.”

  “Have you ever cut the hair of a Prime Minister or was it just an example?” she asked, and the man confirmed. Sighing deeply, he leaned closer and started to talk in a low voice, “Yes, I have. And to be frank, it was kind of underwhelming. See, when I took on the business of my family, I dreamed of cutting hairs of celebrities, politicians and famous people in general. I hated to see the look of satisfaction on the face of my father when he cut the hair of a John Doe. I thought he was too good to be serving average people, and I thought his absence of will to open a bigger saloon and attract richer people was a flaw. It took me thirty years to understand a simple thing: that I wanted to create things people thought were beautiful. I thought beauty was only real if others praised it. And the most beautiful of hairstyles, on the head of a common folk, would only get minimum attention and, thus, praise. But when I got that there was something, an essence, that was common throug
hout the life of a person, I found that many famous people weren’t born famous. They got there. Those common peasants I disregarded could tomorrow become the celebrities I sought after. It made me question myself. Well, if the same person could make me feel antipathy and sympathy at different stages of life, what was fame? What was that thing that made me think a person was more beautiful than she was the day before?”

  His daydreams could seem confusing at first, but they also enticed Naoko’s imagination. She kept closely hearing his tale while losing herself in thoughts of her own.

  “After years of meditation I realized fame was just a motivation lot of people had to find the good aspects of someone. It was the will to see what was positive in someone who had what you want, in hopes you learn something and be able to replicate the same characteristics to achieve your own goals. I understood why my father was always satisfied cutting the hairs of random passersby: because he could see the beauty within everyone. That beauty that came from the good characteristics everyone have, but which we only tend to notice on people close to us and on celebrities. After that realization, I set my go to unearth as much from the essence all the people had, that which was not ephemeral and persisted through all but the biggest of change of hearts. In that lied the beauty I could now see all around me. A beggar being no different than a Prime Minister in that he also had qualities that could dumbfound those who took the time to notice. When I cut the hair of a Prime Minister, I finally understood he was just another person. Also full of beauty inside, but no different from anyone else. One thing I noticed was that, just like my father, whom I criticized in the past, I too found satisfaction in average people. The good aspects of a famous or an especially beautiful person are already visible, more or less, or people are more likely to try and find them, but those of a regular folk are not always that clear. I learned to prefer helping those whose qualities are not always clear.”

  Reflecting for a second and trying to remember how his speech ended up like that, he returned on a previous topic to close open ends:

  “And when I help bring that beauty out I feel at peace, because it matters not if my work gets ‘destroyed’ as hair grows again. As long as I’m true to a fraction of the essence of that person, my cuts would’ve helped to show her something good she had inside her, and as such, my work would forever live on them.”

  Snapping out of his loud thinking monologue, he found Naoko attentively listening and thinking. Glad, the man leaned back on the mirror again and, once again on a louder voice as normal, he pointed out:

  “You know, lady, maybe you’re too young to understand it now, but you seem genuinely interested in other people, so I believe someday, hopefully, you’ll come to realize it too. Not rationally, but deep within your heart. Youth, now as much as before, is easily swept by fame, and forget to see the qualities every person has. When your producer told me he’d be bringing an idol, I expected the worst. You know, in all humbleness, many famous people come here, especially idols, and with a few exceptions I always find it hard to see even the slightest glimpses of essence on them. They get so caught up on fame and on showing ‘their best side’ that they end up becoming… artificial. Their true beauty is fogged up by superficial, ephemeral beauty. Too much tatemae and not a sight of honne in those youths. To me, that’s sad.”

  Tatemae and Honne were antagonizing concepts. Tatemae meant the public image one tries to be known by while Honne, meaning “true voice”, was the conjunction of the true feelings, ideas and standings of a person. People, especially in Japan, valued the tatemae on numerous situations and employed it to create the least amount of friction on their relationships, not rarely preventing themselves to tell what they truly feel in order not to bother others. It was a persona of sorts, covering up the shadowy inners of an individual. To let his true, deep voice be heard was a temerarious thing, one which Naoko had problems to comply. She, with her sporadic impetus to tell what really crossed her mind, was a very bad example of how people acted on the society. She was the exception, not the rule, and although Naoko usually got through her honne sprees unscathed, it was mostly because other people did their best to keep their tatemae and their cool. Even then, it’s generally something to frown upon. It could, at that time, be seen, for example, that the chief hairstylist, lost in thoughts and talks, was making clients wait, but despite probably not liking it, they kept their tatemae and acted like nothing was happening.

  On the other hand, honne wasn’t just about bad things, and as much as Naoko used to express negative feelings, she was also true with the positive ones. What the hairstylist said about some young people not being true to themselves made Naoko think, though not before the man told her:

  “Since it’s generally hard to see anything at all of essence in idols nowadays, I was happy to see a girl which I had such a clear vision of a fraction of the essence for once. I have a handful of idol clients which are just like you, and I find them to be good people. Hence, when you told me you didn’t understand the cut, I thought I had fallen for a false impression.”

  “No, no! I love it, really.” Naoko insisted, “I’m just not an expert in hair styles, and I was surprised to see asymmetries looked good on me.”

  “Did you have any doubts?” the man asked her, content, “Even after all you told me? A girl that loves games as well as keeping her nails long and pretty, that likes monsters as much as cute things, that takes care ever to be with her eyeliner but stays on computer all night long when she can and ends up with reddish eyes. You’re in the middle of your teens, so it’s expected lots of duality, but yours are just out of this world. So many conflicts, it just screams to be a main theme in your hair. If only I could see more… Well, in truth, all I ever see are glimpses. The beauty inside a person is always infinitely better than any attempt to recreate it. Such is the main source of pain for every artist, but it’s also fantastic to see that reality is always much bigger than we can comprehend. I gave you a fringe only because it represents the air of mystery that surrounds all the questions I still have left about you, and all the things about yourself that still seemed unclear even for you. It’s frustrating, actually, but even that frustration is a marvel in itself, like life is.”

  It was something she kind of knew, but never thought of her conflicts as a part of herself. And to think a hair stylist would notice it was beyond all of her expectations. That man, whose touch appeared to reach deeper than others and leave that lingering electric feel, was really something else. Seriously impressed both by his work and by his keen senses, she inquired, on a bit of a hurry after noticing their conversation was making everyone else wait:

  “It seems Matsushita-San has gone to such great lengths to understand everything he said that I’m about to start calling you Matsushita-Sensei. But, if you allow me one final question, what drives you to try and make the essence of people surface like you say? If you understood beauty is something that exists on everyone, why the need to take a peek at it and make it show up? I mean, it’s an awesome art, but if you already know beauty is there, why the frustration?”

  The master looked down, puzzled. Slowly, he answered, uncertain:

  “That’s a very deep question, young lady. I… don’t… think I’ve ever meditated about it before.” As a beam of excitement shone on his face, he began to mutter “Perhaps I still want to show something. Maybe not me, this much is clear, I think. But...” After a pause, he confessed in a low voice, “You know, not everyone’s born as you. Not everyone’s considered to be drop-dead gorgeous, and like I’ve said before, the physically attractive and the famous doesn’t nearly entice me anymore as it did in the past. When I was a kid I got under the impression I was really ugly, and it persisted throughout my life. I knew I had qualities, but people couldn’t see them, and thus they acted as if I had nothing good at all. The girls in my school acted as if I didn’t exist, if it means something to you. And since my family was poor, I blamed my father for cutting hairs of common people instead of aiming
higher, making us rich and so on. I thought money would make people start noticing me more, and thus, increasing the chances they’d find what I was capable of. This much I already knew. Eventually I too started to believe I didn’t have any qualities at all, and I suffered a black, deep sadness for more than a decade and a half, even though my work helped me giving a reason to get out of bed every day, and little by little I fought to understand myself and get through it. Life went on, I discovered I had good aspects just like everyone else, but… thinking now, I… think I’m still trapped on the past on this aspect. Maybe… maybe I’m trying to help people not suffer the things I did. Like… showing them… they have qualities. They… and perhaps the others even more, since hair is something that’s easier for others to see than you, anyway. Hm…” Getting more excited by the minute, he concluded, “I’m very grateful for your insightful comment! No one, not even me, has ever noticed it before! I’m now eager for my nightly meditation like I wasn’t for a long time!”

  Just when Naoko was getting sad by Matsushita’s story the man got even happier, causing some mixed feelings on the girl. She walked out of the saloon having only understood that what people called “oddity” in his way of being was just because the master hairstylist was self-conscious and true to himself. But all he’d said was just too much for the girl. She understood a few things, got very interested in the man’s past and noticed a few things he said resonated on her for some yet unknown reason, but it was too much information for her. Still, it was the best hair saloon experience she’d ever had! Oh, and she also got a stunning haircut to boot, which seemed more like a bonus than anything else. Talking with Aratani about how was the experience, the producer joked that he’d sent her there to get a new haircut, not to be the stylist’s psychologist, but if she did that again she should at least charge him as well.

  One thing Naoko noticed was that for such a cramped, one-man company like The Paragon Idol Agency, Aratani was investing heavily. Just like the hairstylist’s saloon, the beautician clinic also screamed “poor people need not apply”. The girl always got mixed feelings about such places, and unlike the hair saloon where the owner was actually pretty humble, the beautician one had no such balancing grace. It was just a beautiful location full of people with noses pointed up high in the air. For as much as Naoko liked to experience everything at least once in her life – or at least “experience everything with some exceptions”, which made no grammatical sense but was totally comprehensible otherwise – a few things just repeatedly annoyed her. She loved astounding locales and high-quality products and provided services, and to be frank it was good to be pampered sometimes, but Naoko felt much better in simpler places. Mostly because she hated stuck-up people, like the ones these venues usually attracted. The girl actually felt bad every time she thought what other people would think about her if they saw her on such high-end places. Just as she disliked formalisms, she also couldn’t endure that kind of glamour, though Naoko didn’t know why exactly. It just occurred every time, a reason why she frequented small ramen shops, grocery stores and tiny, cozy family businesses in general.

  Still, it was another probably pricey location with equally good results. The girl always took care of her appearance despite her happy-go-lucky nature, like going for a walk between the trees and the dirt in the mountain range but not without her makeup, and thought a beautician would not do much for her. Partially because she considered her skin and nails were already good enough, and also because Naoko didn’t have the habit to go to beauty centers, which she regarded as tossing money on the drain. Actually, her father was very critical of any behavior of her which showed esteem for her body. He considered it vanity, and was so strict that when Naoko started to apply makeup from her mother he got angry and made her brush it off with detergent. Then the stubborn girl reapplied it one hour later, and repeated the process, determined not to let the punishments get to her, until her father gave up.

  The girl left the beautician clinic bored and annoyed by the chic and stuck-up atmosphere, but had to admit the results were excellent. Her skin was softer than a peach, cleaner than soap and felt even younger. Stray strands on her eyebrows were plucked off, every semblance of body hair on arms and legs was removed, all traces of dead skin and irregularities were eradicated from her lips and so on. Her nails, especially feet nails – to which the girl didn’t pay as much attention as that of her always exposed hands – received an overhaul and, while maintaining the natural color, got spotless and glossy like a pure snowflake. It wasn’t showy, both because Naoko would feel awkward and because school girls were prohibited or heavily discouraged, depending on the institution, to put on anything too extravagant, be it painted nails, colored hair, lipsticks and such. Naoko was just barely within tolerable limits using light eyeliners and almost non-perceptible makeup, if she used any more cosmetics she’d probably have problems when she went to class. On a side note, piercings and tattoos were taboo things and off-limits not only to school girls, but to every respectable and law-abiding member of society, with next to no exceptions – earrings being the most glaring one, a no-go to school girls but still accepted among adult women. Even foreigners, who generally weren’t expected to understand every nuance of the arguably complicated Japanese customs, were required to keep tattoos and body piercings as low-profile as possible. On more recent times a few taboos started to be questioned by newer generations, but it was long before any of those became unobjectionable.

  The most awkward situation of the day was posing for a photographer, though. Since it wasn’t a photographic essay, but rather the production of a photo book to be sent to companies looking for a model for their ads, it was nothing more than a compilation of shots from different angles. She found herself in the middle of a room with a scenario covered in silk and nothing but a white sofa in the middle. On the outside of the set many reflectors, light bulbs and lenses focused on her, making Naoko immediately nervous. True to what Aratani told her, she was to wear everyday clothes and the poses, for the majority, were nothing she wouldn’t perform on stages anyway, but Naoko still felt tense.

  The face and regular standing full body shots were simple enough, but initially the girl was so concerned that the photographer, while not announcing it, wasn’t even recording the images. The camera flashes were hollow in that no photos were being taken, and the first ten minutes just involved a warm-up. He started to amp the audacity level of the shots by requiring Naoko to perform gradually bolder poses. The girl was initially resistant to simply step on the couch with one foot or to sit down while looking away, wanting to believe in her producer but fearing the essay would get out of hand. She only gained confidence when the photographer, after asking her to lay down on her tummy, told her that was the most extreme pose she’d be asked for.

  When the girl finally got comfortable, the man revealed her he didn’t take any photos due to her anxious facial expressions, and that they’d have to do it all again. That time Naoko let herself loose and, with the exception of the only two lying down poses, one on her back and the other facing down, all were natural and enticing enough to be taken in one or two tries. When the essay finished Naoko was just starting to have fun and regretted not having trusted in Aratani and enjoying the opportunity sooner. Sure, until she knew if her producer was really going to pay her up or attempt any last minute coup, she wouldn’t fully put her loyalty on him, but the more she knew that young man, the more she liked him.

  It was past 9 p.m. when he took her to a shopping mall. The dazzling lights of the city by night slid over the black car hood and on her starry eyes as they approached downtown of some ward. The girl couldn’t quite tell which one of the many that compounded the Great Tokyo Area it was. The air was cool and the wind that blew through her open window caressed her hair. By Saturday night the city was brimming with the energy of people and beaming signs everywhere. Illuminated skyscrapers, car lights and street lamps glistened everywhere as far as one could see. It was a marvelous sight
to behold, all those intense colors whirling as the car sped up or turned, leaving behind momentary, phantasmagorical tails made of pure light on her retinas.

  Old-school neon lines fused with next-gen spots to illuminate towering facades, signboards abounding with manga-like drawn characters that announced products and establishments that had nothing to do with manga at all, subway entrances, vending machines on every corner, windows lit from inside and the silhouette of a million human forms. The radiance danced as haphazardly as odd, luminous kids playing. Naoko loved those spinning lights, way-out games and dizzy heights around her. It was so hypnotic that the girl could barely blink, thus making her eyes compensate the dryness by way of non-rolling tears that blurred her view, giving the surroundings an almost ethereal nature.

  A huge digital board that covered the frontage of an enormous building reflected on the windshield flipping advertisements, most of them presenting dazzling women. Deviating his eyes from the road as the car came to a stop due to intense traffic, Aratani pointed it out to the girl:

  “As much as our main goal is not to be a modeling agency, but rather to make you shine on the stages, we’ll have to put your face out there and at the beginning those kinds of ads sounds about right. Good dough and a decent promotion to make people familiar with you. And since we have to make it anyway, might as well go for a homerun. Who knows? Maybe next time you’ll be looking at yourself up there.”

  Intimidated by the huge signboard and the prospect of being there, Naoko cringed.

  “No way! People would see me there! I mean, lots of people!”

  “Hm… that’s the point of ads, y’know?” Aratani, accelerating again, mentioned, “So?”

  “So… it’d be very awkward! No, please don’t.” Naoko, suddenly getting cold feet, begged, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable at that.”

  Her producer, raising an eyebrow, inquired why, but Naoko didn’t know the reason. She was just too afraid to let herself be seen up there. Thus, Aratani began to create hypothetical situations to test out scenarios and get why she was so terrified at the idea:

  “Okay, figure this situation: a lot of people saw your image up there and everyone loved it. Every single one. Not loving the ad, but you specifically. Would Yano-San still be afraid?”

  The girl gave it some thought. The idea of having a sea of people liking her made Naoko blush as a heat wave expanded through her chest. It was soothing. Her stomach still felt faintly cold, though, but many of her worries were taken away for a moment, before reality returned and brought concerns back with it:

  “Yeah. If I somehow knew everyone loved it, I… think I’d be much more at ease.”

  “How much more?” her producer insisted, “From zero to one hundred percent, where one hundred means you’d have no more grips whatsoever.”

  “About…” Naoko dug into her feelings and her memory, pondering the warm sensation she experienced but also the small knot in her stomach, “…ninety percent, I think.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” Aratani told her with a smile, “because then it’s probably just fear of rejection. Don’t worry, it’s only natural to be uncomfortable at the beginning when you’re still unsure how the public will react. Let’s solve this and then tackle that final ten percent, ‘k?”

  “How’re you planning to solve this, anyway, Produ-San?” Naoko asked.

  “By gradually making you understand people already love those ladies up there, and that you’re nothing short of them in any aspect.” Aratani replied. Naoko, blushing heavily, ordered:

  “Why, you! Stop passing lines on me, at first it was funny but now I’m getting worried.”

  With a cool but serious face and voice, her producer assured:

  “No, Yano-San. First of all you know I only ever pass you pick-up lines as a joke. I’ve no intention of compromising our professional relationship, you have my word on it. And, secondly, this time I’m not joking with you. When I told Yano-San is on par with those girls, I meant it.”

  Stopping the car at another intersection, he faced her, and by his eyes she could see the producer actually believed that. Getting shivers about the possibility of having a producer that overstated her beauty, Naoko replied doubtfully:

  “I… don’t know what to say. I’m… grateful, but for once… I think you’re exaggerating. Those women have no visible flaws! Perfect legs with absolutely no cellulitis, and their lips…”

  Laughing, Aratani stopped the daunted girl mid-sentence.

  “Oh, I get it now! Listen, Yano-San, those girls are certainly marvelous, but they’re not like that in real life, I guarantee you. Every photo receives overhauls on image editors before getting spammed to the public eyes. On computer they enhance proportions, eradicate small flaws and such. Nowadays experienced photo editors can take any image, even that of an orange, and transform it into a drop-dead gorgeous lady, and I’m not even joking. I’ve seen videos of people doing this before, search the internet if you don’t believe me. They just use real women as models because it takes less time to give final touches and also because they exist on the real world. People can see them on signboards and then find photos of her on the web, see her on TV or get a glimpse of her on a catwalk or stage. They see how attractive that woman is on the ads, discover she’s real and think, ‘well, that product might actually work if there’s a real woman with those cellulitis free legs or dangerously welcoming lips. I’ll buy it!’ and bam! Products fly off the shelves. But in reality those girls have flaws, they have tiny accumulations of fat on unwanted points of her bodies and such. They’re people that bleed red just like you and me.”

  Pointing with her open hand, palms down, to a big facial cream sign presenting a brunette beauty, he told her:

  “Marketing nowadays sells illusions of perfection. If you’re not careful, you end up believing you’re forever inferior and in constant need of products to try and become like those eye-catching ladies and gentleman that populate the boards and labels. That’s how they sell their stuff: they want you to feel inferior. As if imperfections were a sin. You either believe in yourself or in the marketing of companies, and if you do the latter you’re screwed for life. They don’t care if you think you’re not worthy of others, or if you start believing you’re ugly, and they’re certainly not concerned if you develop a depression or worse.” Resting his arm on the door by his right side and his jaw on the corresponding hand while steering with the other, Aratani pleaded “I can show you how ads are made, and I can assure Yano-San is at least just as beautiful as any girl up there who is loved by every single soul on the masses, but I can’t believe in you on your place. Yano-San will have to trust me on that.”

  The producer quickly glanced over to the girl. To his disbelief, she appeared sadder than before. As the man was about to try again making her believe in herself, Naoko told him:

  “I understand. Thank you, Aratani-San.”

  “Yano-San still seems preoccupied, though,” he noted, “Be frank with me, what’s bothering you, diamond girl? Still not convinced you’re as sweet as a peach?”

  Forcing a smile, she denied it, declaring, actually feeling slightly better, but sensing the knot on her stomach get more painful:

  “No, not anymore. Thank you, I understand now. It’s only that… I’m thinking. You know, hairstylist master Matsushita told me about his childhood. Those girls in his school didn’t even look at him, and he thought he was ugly. And that he faced a decade and a half of great sadness. People, even boys… and I think girls even more, take beauty very seriously. Those ads with unrealistic people, like you said, can really make a dent on everyone’s self-esteem. Not to say we start expecting a lot more from others too. I… can imagine many people suffer comparing themselves to those models. I… don’t want to be up there even if I can. Even if people would like me, I… wouldn’t feel right if I was responsible for making them sad. Depressed. Or worse.”

  Sighing, Aratani told himself before proceeding:

  “I should
’ve kept my mouth shut. Yano-San, listen: it’s not you who’s going to make anyone sad. It’s the way marketing works. If you’re not up there, others will be.”

  “Let them be,” she replied. “At least I’ll not be the one responsible for the suffering.”

  “Like I said, you’re not responsible.” Aratani insisted, grave, “You’re doing your job. Other people have theirs. Don’t be like me: don’t be stupid. Don’t try to solve the problems of the world. Others are responsible for themselves. And, as I promised, you’ll only be doing it until we manage to create you a fan base. Then you’ll not be a model anymore, but an idol.”

  “What’s the difference?” Naoko, disheartened, asked. “I’ll be just another 2,5D, unreal person in a real world, will I not?”

  “You’re correct on the 2,5D part,” her producer said, while thinking feverishly for a way to lift her spirits again, “but there’s a major difference between being a model and being an idol. It has something to do with how they use their talents. Can you figure out what’s it?”

  After thinking for a minute, the low spirited girl took a guess:

  “That a model is nothing more than a pretty face while an idol puts a little bit less emphasis on beauty due to the dance and singing?”

  “Well, that’s also true, but also not the main difference,” he insisted, “Naoko, think about all the idols you know. About their songs, their performances, what they do!”

  “I… don’t know any idol.” The girl admitted, “I told you before. I never dreamed to be one, I… I’ve no idea how an idol’s supposed to be.”

  With eyes wide open in disbelief, Aratani countered her argument:

  “Wait, I thought that was just a hyperbole! If you never watched an idol or anything, how were you able to dance like that during the tests?”

  Thinking for a second how to respond that, Naoko cautiously told him:

  “I… Actually, it’s kind of a hyperbole. After I was… eight, I believe, I lost my interest in idols, but until then I… sort of liked it. There was I think two idol bands I liked. My mother actually found the few CDs I had of them and made me bring it. I vaguely remember seeing a few video clips and shows of them on TV. Of a band dancing at a sunny park and all. I believe that’s how I knew a move or two. As for the song I chose, I just like songs in general and knew it was from an idol, but I’ve no idea how to actually dance it.”

  Driving into the parking lot of a colossal shopping mall, Aratani whistled in incredulity.

  “Okay… Huh… Well, that explains why your choreographies were so different from what’s expected. But then, try to remember those bands. What you felt when listening to them?”

  Closing her eyes, Naoko tried to find long forgotten memories. She got a few foggy glimpses of the past, about her watching on TV bands of girls in multicolored attires jumping and cheering big crowds in sunlit concert halls inside of parks. Naoko vaguely remembered herself lying down in front of the screen, loving the positive energy and wanting to be on a presentation like that one day, jumping with the crowd and having fun. As far as the girl recalled, the songs ranged in themes from romantic ones to those that reproduced the hardships of life and, the ones she liked the most, the crazy, fun and uplifting ones, but in general every song was amusing, light-hearted and made the audience enjoy the show.

  Her memories, even if distant and fragmented, soothed her heart and made her feel some faint happiness. As she told it to her producer, he replied:

  “That’s it. See, idols don’t exist to be another oppressive perfection model to follow. I’m not gonna lie, a few of them really lean on this road, but the majority keep true to the reason why idols, and anyone that sings, for that matter, exist: to make people happy. Even sad songs ultimately help people express their feelings, and it helps them overcome whatever burdens them. Yes, I know you can think there’s an idol industry whose objective is to make money, but people don’t listen to them because they like to give mega corporations their hard-earned cash. They do it because they like music, and idols can make them happy.”

  Listening to Aratani and checking up her memories to see if it was true, Naoko’s eyes regained their gleam and hope. Her producer, finally finding an open lot, parked the car and turned the engine off before finally facing her. Being met with a high-spirited smile, he nodded.

  “That’s my girl. Yano-San, I know you don’t like it, but we’ll need to cash in on ad revenue at the beginning. But I swear to you, I’ll do everything I can to make you leave it behind as fast as possible. Also, the people that’ll see you on whatever sign or product will be more willing to listen to your songs when they know you’re an idol, so you’ll be able to right any wrongs you think you’ve helped to create, and cheer huge crowds up. People can use some happiness, and Yano-San is a ticking positive energy bomb!”

  Opening the door and leaving the car along with the upbeat girl, her producer summarized:

  “You can’t cheer anyone up if you’re not happy too, so remember it well, Yano-San. People will be counting on your high spirits for joy. Let’s do our best to make it happen, alright?”

  “Roger that, Produ-San!” Naoko agreed loudly.

  Recovering her joyfulness, the vibrant girl combed the shopping mall like there’s no tomorrow. Aratani had trouble keeping up with the ecstatic teenager, marveled as she was to be in such a big place. All the shopping malls she’s been before paled in comparison to that one, with never ending corridors aplenty with the most varied stores. Apparently, it was too much to ask Naoko to focus on buying clothes, as she wandered inside bookstores, window-shopped every videogame store there was, got stuck in front of the cinema entrance and more.

  Seeing the girl escape inside a game store, her producer followed her. Naoko’s sparkly eyes ran through every shelf, prompting the suit-clad young man to state:

  “Yano-San appears to like videogames a lot. A little too much, actually.”

  “What, is there a problem with it?” the girl reluctantly asked, suddenly getting worried “Don’t tell me… it’s something I’m not supposed to do, is it?”

  Crossing his arms, Aratani dismissed it with a witty half-smile.

  “Only if you play it for hours straight, and only not to destroy your eyesight. If Yano-San asks if there’s any problem from a business standpoint, the answer is no. Tomorrow at the office I’ll go in greater details through the dos and don’ts in order for an idol to maintain her public image, but playing games or be seen buying them bears no repercussion as far as I’m aware. Though, seriously, I know you told me you liked it, but I though girls had better things to do than waste their lives away in front of a TV.”

  “Yeah, yeah, thanks for the reminder, dad.” Naoko sarcastically retorted, “I used to stay away from home for the entirety of my days, if you want to know. But when I came back, I liked to listen to music while watching a movie or playing a game for a few minutes. Like… three hundred or so.”

  “That’s not a few minutes, that’s five hours!” Aratani argued, “You played that much?”

  “More or less, depending on my disposition. And only on weekdays, at night,” Naoko answered, while running her glossy fingernails through the many boxes of games piled together on bins, “On weekends it wasn’t rare to make it double or so. I usually stayed out until late, and when I returned I stayed up all night playing or watching videos of people playing. Of course I didn’t do it every weekend, but it wasn’t rare either. Especially during winter. When I wasn’t with my friends, I was commonly locked up in my room, playing. What about you, Produ-San? Do you like videogames?”

  Looking away from the shelves, the young man scratched his chin, replying:

  “Nowhere near as much as Yano-San does, apparently.”

  “Why?” she asked, teasingly “Surely you liked it when you were young.”

  “I am young!” Aratani corrected her and rebut, pestering, “Twenty six is young by all standards except by those of stupid manga and brain-damaging videogames. You?
??ve spent too much time on virtual worlds, Yano-San, might want to go get your head checked by a doctor.”

  Slapping his arm, Naoko protested:

  “Videogames actually help develop many mental and brain abilities, you know!”

  “Brain cancer’s not an ability, it’s a disease.” Aratani acidly remarked, prompting the girl to slap his arm again. Laughing, she insisted, “Really. Produ-San does like videogames, right?”

  Thinking for a moment while looking at the shelves, the man stated:

  “I never had a videogame of my own. I was raised on…” pausing for a second, he redid the sentence, “I grew up doing other things, playing sports and such. My family also didn’t have money to spare, so the only times I played games was on my friends’ houses. And, on rare occasions, on those… machines where you sit and pilot cars, or mash buttons and tilt a stick…”

  “Arcades,” Naoko named it and tried to cheer him up, “That’s kind of sad, I never though a guy like Produ-San was poor once, but don’t worry! Naoko got you covered! I brought all my consoles, I can lend you one! Let’s find a game you like and you can play it when you’re bored!”

  Despite telling her it wasn’t necessary, the girl started asking questions about his tastes, explaining the plots and mechanics of many titles to see if any piqued his interest and exploring the store after games she liked and though he’d too. She was so accustomed with her favorite local game stores in her hometown, where she knew everyone and talked freely about that pastime that Naoko didn’t even notice she was doing the same on a place no one knew her, and as such could be bothering someone. In reality, the customers weren’t really bothered as much as startled to see one of the few girls on the place actually knew very well what she was talking about. Aratani decided not to cut Naoko’s lecturing spree about one of her passions, she seemed far too content for him to spoil her fun.

  “Hey, look,” the producer, suddenly getting interested about something, took on his hands a box he’d found and showed it to the girl. It was a game called “Idol Star System Generation V”, bearing the official logo of the I.S.S.G., a yellow five-pointed star with its tips rounded up, with one leg overlapped by three progressively smaller planets that appeared partially on top of each other forming a tail-like pattern. The biggest planet was blue, the second red and the smallest green. At the same time the astounded producer told Naoko that, the amazed girl excitedly shouted “Wow, look, Produ-San!” while presenting a game with a bad looking dude in leather garments, sporting a chainsaw-meets-rocket launcher kind of weapon over a gory background.

  The sides of Aratani’s mouth twisted in disgust, and the man turned his attention back to the game he’d found. The cover art was divided in many small, tall hexagonal shapes, not unlike crystals, each one presenting a girl or a young woman. As he was reading the texts from the back Naoko suddenly appeared out of nowhere, startling him. The man, after recomposing himself, told her with a semblance of interest:

  “I knew the I.S.S.G. licensed innumerous products, but it’d never occurred me they’d have an official game. And it’s already on the fifth edition! It appears many of the higher class idols make an appearance here somehow. Can you control their digital characters or what?”

  Taking a glance at the game, Naoko explained:

  “I never played this series before, but it’s clearly one of those dancing simulators where prompts appear on screen and your performance is based on your rhythm and precision. You don’t really control the characters, although by the looks of it they react depending on your inputs. Like fumbling or getting a step of the dance right. Seems boring if you ask me, but it’s just because I don’t really like this kind of games. Not enough gratuitous violence, you know?”

  “But if they’re on the ninth edition, it must be a commercial success, right?” Aratani asked. “People probably buy those games, I assume?”

  Taking the copy from his hands and reading the bullet-point listing on its back, she said:

  “Probably. Let’s see… ‘Test your mettle on five difficulties’… ‘more than fifty licensed songs and fifteen real stages’… ‘seventy-five world-class idols to choose from’… yada-yada-yada… Ah! Yup, I imagined it. ‘Customize your favorite idol with more than two hundred pieces of clothes and accessories’. Turns out you get to dress the girls.” Naoko’s eyes became unimpressed and half-open. On a cynical voice she retorted “Yup. You can bet this series sells pretty well.”

  “Dress them? That’s… unexpected.” Aratani commented, shocked, “I… thought at first it’d be a good idea for you to appear on it should we get to reach the higher levels in the star system, but… yeah, no way. I wonder, in legal terms, how they were able to circumvent graphic issues, especially with minors on the cast… I know there’s a legal loophole about it when it’s related to fictional characters, but… I wonder if a virtual representation of a real person counts as fictional. Hm… I wonder.”

  “To be fair it’s probably not as extreme as I made it seem…” Naoko disclaimed ,“Games like such tend not to allow players to completely undress the characters, and this game is rated for ages ten and up, so it clearly shows nothing extreme. Knowing what these kinds of games are capable of, I’d still bet a good number of clothes are kinky costumes ranging from sailor suits to bunny attires, but nothing else. Though I’d definitely pass on featuring here even if I could.”

  “Oh. Still, that’s a relief to know there’s nothing over the top here.” Aratani told her. Suddenly he got a small grin, one that Naoko already knew it meant the guy was about to tease her. Just as he started to say “But wouldn’t it be a treat if…” the girl quickly sent him flying with an uppercut and interrupted him, yelling “Shush!”

  In the end, no games were bought that day, keeping true to the producer’s budget, but it didn’t detract from the fun in the slightest. After that teasing talk Naoko got wary of buying clothes with her producer, but the man left the choices of attire for presentations and two for everyday life up to the girl. As long as it attracted attention, looked tasteful and didn’t blew his bank account it was good. The girl started to visit stores for casual wear and costume stores looking for something that would cut.

  The problem that soon became clear to Aratani was that Naoko’s choices of attires were completely nonsense. Going in and out of fitting rooms, every time was a veto from the young man. On one instance, she appeared wearing comfy navy-blue pants and a shirt with a happy panda, prompting Aratani to ask her “Are you going to the stage or to bed?”. Next it was happy, unmemorable girl next-door wear. After that, unmemorable ten-year-old brat time. Then, Naoko appeared wearing a full green bipedal, dinosaur-like monster costume with just her face appearing out of its tooth-riddled mouth and a pair of eyes looking at opposite directions. Giving himself a face palm, her producer interjected “The fuck is this?”

  “It’s Kamijira!” explained Naoko, beaming, while parading with arms flailing and spinning its long tail around. “Or Kamizilla, if you’re the international type! It’s an old-school lizard-turned-monster by radiation that destroyed cities and stomps people, but also poses as a guardian against other radioactive creatures that…”

  “I know what a goddammit Kamijira is!” Aratani exclaimed, “What I want to know is why’s my idol wearing a stupid Kamijira costume when she was supposed to find a stunning, attention drawing wear! And not this kind of attention! Get back there already and grab something nice for once!”

  With puffy cheeks, the disappointed, crestfallen Kamijira girl slowly dragged her thick, alligator-like tail back to the fitting room while mumbling “Kamijira’s not stupid, I like Kamijira…”

  All her attempts to choose a garment invariably ended in failure. All the clothes she chose were too plain, despite the joyful, lively colors. Eventually Aratani called her out:

  “Yano-San, what’s going on? It’s as if you’re trying to dress to blend in the crowd rather than to make your presence be noticed.”

  “What? Really
?” Naoko asked. Looking down to her stripped t-shirt and blue denim skirt, she mentally revised all outfits she’d chosen, mentioning “I… haven’t thought about it. I…”

  The instant she imagined herself standing out on the crowd, her heart pumped faster. She experienced both a surge of excitement, as if she’d been looking for it for long, and fear, imprecise to the point where it was almost impossible to tell what she’s scared of. By her blushing, smiling and breath-taken reaction, though, her producer could more or less risk a hunch:

  “Let me guess, Yano-San would love to catch the eyes of all around but fears it as well?”

  Though not verbally agreeing, Naoko slowly and timidly nodded. Sighing, her producer tucked his hands on his pocket and told her:

  “Alright, let’s give it a break. Wanna grab a bite somewhere and call it a day?”

  Looking surprised, Naoko asked him if it wouldn’t compromise their schedules, but the man told her it’d be just a minor setback to go shopping some other day. Besides, it’d be bad to try and force a garb on her that Naoko wasn’t still comfortable wearing.

  Eventually settling down on a table in the food court, Aratani changed subjects to others, unrelated to work, like her expectations for school, but the girl couldn’t forget her producer’s words about her choices of vestments. With a few exceptions just for kicks, she actually thought the dresses and clothes she’d chosen were provocative, but when the young man mentioned she was trying to blend in the crowds rather than stand out, she immediately noticed it was true.

  To complicate matters, every time she’d walked past a shop window with appealing, detail-rich and boldly designed multi-tiered miniskirts and faux leather shorts, high-heeled boots, vest-blouses, high-cut tops and slim tees, skinny jeans, knee-high and up stockings, platform sandals and shoes, frilled bonnets and such her heart accelerated. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to wear those articles, she noticed. On the contrary, it was clear for Naoko the urge to see how she’d look like wearing those things, but it required far too much bravery for such.

  Returning to the old topic and telling Aratani that, the man laughed it out:

  “What? The girl who have no qualms talking her mind out to strangers, facing her father, moving to Tokyo alone, owning the hairdressing saloon and every game store she enters doesn’t have the courage to wear a bonnet? That’s rich, Yano-San.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Produ-San? It’s okay to call me Naoko if you want,” she casually allowed, smiling from what she’s heard. Putting things that way, it was ridiculous. It obviously wasn’t a lack of courage that prevented the adventurous and impulsive girl from choosing high-profile dresses. Maybe it was because…

  “I don’t know why I’m so afraid. Like Produ-San said when we’re talking about the ads models, maybe… maybe I’m just not confident that I can… be kind of… okay.”

  To praise oneself was a hard thing to do and one Naoko was awful at, but the euphemisms were clear enough to Aratani, who not only understood it but keenly remarked in his common, unabashed, matter of fact, poker faced straight way:

  “You don’t need to be humble on this subject, Yan… I mean, Naoko-San. You’re not “kind of okay”, you’re hotter than hot. And no, I’m not joking, teasing you or anything now. Like I told you the first time we met, you’d be a bad liar if you told me you’ve never noticed other people mentioning your beauty. No, my bet is that you’re fully aware of that, only you don’t feel comfortable about it. Deep down, you probably like to be praised, and this isn’t a flaw. Everyone likes it, admitting or not. And I’m not talking just about looks here. People like when others notice they’re smart, or how hard they worked on something. Actually, looks are something people are born with, so it’s not really a merit of Naoko to be pretty, or at least your merit is just not screwing up what your parents gave you. But on the other hand, it’s no shame being beautiful either. It’s not like you chose to be born like that, or you stole another person’s beauty or anything. At least not if don’t believe in religions, and even if you do, for example, follow Buddhism’s conception of existence, your prettiness would still be chalked up to good karma, so in one way or another you deserved it. But let’s chance focus: what if instead of admiring your beauty, I praised something you actually worked for and earned, like your incredible skills and ample useless knowledge on those brain disabling videogames? How would you feel about it?”

  Caught unguarded by Aratani’s ironic speech, Naoko burst in laughter. Irony wasn’t that much of a commonly employed comical resource in Japan, and it showed the girl her producer was well-versed in international standards just like her. Since the national culture emphasized non-attrition with others and sarcasm was based on flashing out negative characteristics with a twist, not only it was a foolhardy art but people, not usually accustomed to it, would not always understand it, much less appreciate it. But as Naoko have told him during the job interview she liked international movies, games, stories, videos and such just as much as she liked those of her home country, the young man presumably knew she could understand and appreciate it, and took a chance. True to his gut feeling, the girl found the eventual use of irony as fun as him.

  After some consideration and laughing over the producer’s question, Naoko told him:

  “Produ-San’s right. I liked when my friends noticed I was good playing my so-called ‘useless, brain disabling’ games. In fact, it was a common thing to hear, but maybe not because I’m so good at it. More often than not it was because of that misconception that women don’t play games, or at least not games with adventures, violence and such. Or, when they play, the guys immediately assume they’ll perform horribly, so anything you do right grant you lots of praises, as if you’ve completed a sixty-hour long game in ten minutes using just your left foot, while blindfolded and upside down.”

  “You said they usually praise your skills because your friends expect nothing from a gaming girl,” Aratani highlighted, “but are you sure of it or you just believe so?”

  Not comprehending what he’s trying to say, Naoko exemplified her point of view. She and two male friends used to meet on the living room of the house of a boy to play. It was common to do it back then, since one of her friends was the son of a small game store owner. She met him because of the frequency she went there to play videogames and trading-card games. Since his house was in the back of the store, she and a few people sometimes dropped by after purchasing something. For as much as the boy liked games, his father was the real enthusiastic there.

  Still, the trio had the habit of watching internet videos related to the gaming community, both national and from abroad, especially speedruns – a kind of modality of e-sports where people generally aimed to complete a game in various categories in the lowest possible time. Speedrunning events were a blast for Naoko and the other two, many involving people meeting on a room or theater to watch a few speedrunners getting together on a couch and tackling the games like Chinese Kung-Fu masters, with moves as fast as lightning, expert timing and employing a mind-numbing arsenal of carefully trained techniques to bend the laws of the virtual worlds and achieving seemingly impossible times. Many of the international players, especially, commented and made jokes during the presentations, generally making the experience even more enjoyable than just watching a person zipping through a game. It was so fun that when her two friends introduced Naoko to the speedrunning community, she immediately proposed they got together from time to time to play and have fun like the professional speedrunners seemed to have. Though at first it felt awkward to meet a couple of guys on the house of a boy to play, it soon became second nature. When rainy Sundays occurred, they often hanged out there.

  One day, while they were playing a gory fighting game, another friend of the store owner’s son arrived at the shop, and was promptly invited to the gaming party. Naoko didn’t know that boy three years older than her, and no sooner he saw her there he became as pale and rigid as ice. Her two friends, already knowing how Naoko played,
just for fun pitted her against the newly arrived boy. At first he seemed skeptical, though not trying to show it off, and out of courtesy let her choose her fighter first. By the time Naoko had forsaken the female, pretty characters in favor of a badass, fiery ninja from hell the boy should’ve noticed something was amiss, and two rounds later, after a massacre, he watched dumbfounded as his character fell flat before managing to get more than two hits on the opponent.

  The guy was so ashamed when he turned and found her bright smile it was like he’d disgraced his family’s name on a public scandal, rather than having simply lost a match. It took him three hours to recover his speaking capabilities, and only after everyone on the room told him repeatedly it’s okay, that they knew she was as good as anyone else there. From there on, though, the new acquaintance started to overdo it, praising every minor thing she did right and trying to find ways to put the blame of her multiple failures on adverse conditions and buggy game mechanics.

  “For as much as I like it when people acknowledge my skills, it gets annoying after a while if they constantly do it for everything. It’s as if they didn’t expect me to be able to jump a stone, even after seeing me do it numerous times before. Things they wouldn’t praise if it’s a boy playing. I know they mean well, but it just screams that they act as if I’m a baby or something. And even my friends that already know well how I play sometimes fall back to this pattern. Now that I think of it, the people on other activities I do, physical ones mostly, also act like this from time to time. I think to be praised is kinda cool, but being overpraised gets old quickly.”

  Grinning, Aratani honestly told her:

  “Heh, you’ve no idea how much I’d like to be praised so easily. But back to the subject of attires: it still feels good to be praised as long as you think you deserve it, right?”

  “Hm… right,” Naoko agreed, “Perhaps that’s why I feel uncomfortable thinking about using those kinds of clothes. Maybe… I don’t feel like I… deserve it somehow?”

  “Or maybe you’re afraid of being overly praised and getting too much attention,” her producer hinted, as if he more or less knew what was going on the girl’s mind even though she did not. “Did anything Naoko-San really disliked used to occur when you’re admired back then?”

  “Something I really disliked?” Naoko repeated, “No. Nothing that I can recall. There’s no harm in being praised for playing games well, I think.”

  “Yeah, but try not to focus on games anymore. When you’re overpraised about anything, be it a skill, your beauty, something you did, school grades, whatever, did anything bother you?” Aratani insisted, and this time the girl fell into deep silence, chowing down her food as she pondered. While skills, acts and grades rang no bells, the moment Aratani mentioned again the subject of beauty, a few memories crossed her mind. The first time she put on eyeliners was one, as her father rebuked her, and her repeatedly rebuttal of his authority happened at a time when she was fed up with his censorship.

  The first time she showed him how cute she was on a school uniform, before her first day in school, he forced a smile but seemed preoccupied. When Naoko found out beaches were fun and decided to buy swimwear in accordance, he had a long, night argument with her mother on why had she allowed Naoko to buy what he considered to be an overly-revealing bikini instead of a plain swimsuit (even though the bikini was nothing out of the ordinary). The only clothes she knew she could wear without making her father sour were pants and t-shirts made of materials that didn’t easily accommodate to the body shape. Since summertime was usually blistering hot, pants were out of question, and when Naoko gave up the long skirts in favor of shorts her father protested. Mini shorts were another pain to be marginally allowed. If someone told him during a festival how beautiful his daughter was he usually looked less than happy than other girls’ parents appeared to be when receiving similar compliments. Yoshirou eventually accepted every one of those things, but not without resenting, worrying and making his daughter feel bad.

  Just like a non-operational analogic watch with a dislodged tiny gear that, when put in place, makes the whole machine jump back to life, something suddenly clicked in Naoko’s mind. Naoko was complimented a lot based on her appearance, and every time she was praised, it hurt the girl to see her father begrudge her for never explained reasons. Instead of feeling good, every sign of another person’s admiration became unbearable. As if it was something to be ashamed of, as if Naoko did something wrong. Sinful. And since the more she grew up, the more compliments her father received or noticed other people wanted to do about Naoko, the worse the tension escalated.

  Thinking like that, it was no wonder her attrition home increased year after year. Also, Naoko had no control over it except to wear the most unassuming clothes she had to try and make people stop looking at her. Even then, the first opportunity she had to go to Tokyo, she picked in her wardrobe just her best outfits. It was a delight to be able to walk in shorts without her father censoring her, and the warm feeling she had on her chest when she saw a mesmerizing set of clothes could be nothing different from freedom and desire. It started to make even more sense to the girl why she wanted to be as far away from her parents as possible, too: her father not only used to censor her about a supposedly positive trait she had, but an uncontrollable one, meaning she was at fault simply because she existed. It was the same as hating someone’s guts because of race, skin tone or country of origin, things over which people had little or no possibility to alter, and which even if they could, they’d be going against who they were just to please someone else. It was racism. In her case, a strange form of it.

  To reproach someone because she was deemed beautiful had the increased effect of being unorthodox and hard to tell. As such, it’s also hard to fight against. Why would someone dislike his own daughter because she had a positive trait? It was the opposite of the hairstylist master’s supposed ugliness, because he felt isolated from others whereas people actively tried to get on the good side of Naoko, but since at home she felt just as lonely, it was just a matter of how many people was being mean. Maybe being considered ugly could still be worse, she thought, but the one person that silently admonished her was also her own father, one of the two most important figures in her life. The more Naoko thought about it, the more she relived her rages at Shimabara that earned her rebellious fame, even though she was far from the anarchist her father probably painted her out to be.

  She couldn’t buy nice clothes because she was afraid of what her father would say, and most of the time she was seen with boys – which was often – Yoshirou was displeased. Her only two boots were a yellow rubber one, to be used on mud and water, and an ankle high one with a small, squared heel that she bought on a rebel splurge. Not only was the boot plain and much less impressive than usual footwear her female friends had, but her father cut her allowance for four months because of it. He only receded when the girl threatened to find an arubaito at a local konbini a friend of hers worked (also, remembering this made her understand why she had high hopes of finding a part-time job at convenience stores during spring break at the capital).

  Even her short pajamas, used during scorching summer nights by her inside her own house while locked up in her room, fazed him beyond what would be reasonable. He was so strict with the girl, and she received so much more acclaim based on her looks than on her smarts, that her father probably thought she was nothing more than a pretty face, to the point where her high grades, computing skills and all the knowledge the curious girl have amassed meant little or nothing to him. If she got a good grade on a test, he dismissed it to the possibility some boy have given her the correct answer. The more Naoko thought about it, the more she began to notice how paranoid her father was sometimes, even if on the surface he seemed an everyday guy.

  Initially that thought hurt her a great deal. To put her own father under such a perspective was something no child who loved their parents would willingly do without having suffered a lot beforehand. But that
also broke some invisible chain that tied her to a big burden. For the first time she could really think the problem was not on her, but on her father’s view of her. That people like Aratani existed, people who didn’t act as if her beauty was essentially sinful or wrong, since the girl was quite modest about it. Looking back, Naoko could actually have acted like the sexy and devious lady her producer once joked about. Of course, being a teenager, she’d have only gone so far anyway, but she’d numerous opportunities to shatter hearts if she’s into it and could do so even with only words. She could, but it wasn’t something that made sense to her personality and to her own heart. She wasn’t an angel, but neither was she a demon. She just wanted to be herself without feeling guilty. Was it to ask too much? For her father not to understand it, he had serious issues believing in his own daughter.

  That was eye opening. Thinking back, it suddenly made sense to Naoko why she didn’t want to be featured in ads. The thought of hurting others due to her beauty wasn’t something out of the blue. That was what happened in her old home, she frequently tried not to upset her father until she could bear it no more. Then she’d go berserk, only to later feel guilty about it, try to mend things she wasn’t really responsible for breaking and restarting the vicious cycle. But Naoko knew many boys and girls. She knew everyone had their problems, just not exactly that kind of paranoia her father presented. Naoko also wanted to believe her father was a good person too, and that he didn’t want to feel that way about his daughter. He blamed her, yes, and didn’t notice he was the one creating the issue, but certainly no one wants to suffer and he wouldn’t, of course, do such things if he could avoid it. For all of the mistrust and pain he caused her – and prompted her to pay him back and feel guilty about it – the girl found she could forgive him.

  At the same time, though, understanding the problem was on his eyes, not on her, made Naoko lighter than ever. Freer than ever. Wasn’t it the whole point of moving to the capital in the first place? The “ten percent” block that seemed more like ninety-nine percent of the fears that kept her from allowing herself to get on ads and wear non-Kamijira costumes and boring attires subsided. Aratani seemed already to have that conviction when he told her it wasn’t her fault, just her job, and that the others were responsible for themselves. Her producer told her not to be ‘stupid’ like him and trying to solve the problems of the world, which the girl understood just now it meant that the only one capable of changing a person’s mind and solving its issues is him or herself. Just to understand she wasn’t a walking sin was a huge relief.

  Snapping out of her trance with the answers she sought after, she found herself back on the gradually emptier, but still huge and fabulous mall, in front of her already cold leftovers and of her producer who silently stood by her, respecting her need to dive into herself.

  “So?” Aratani finally spoke “Back from Wonderland, I see. Let’s go, Alice?”

  “I want to resume shopping!” Naoko stated with a determination she hasn’t shown before.

  In a half-smile, Aratani congratulated her decisiveness, though mentioning:

  “Now I like the look in your eyes, Naoko-San! But I hate to break your fun. Mall’s closing.”

  “W…wait, what?!” the girl abruptly stood up and examined her surroundings, getting disappointed. Her producer, keeping his cool, got up too and suggested:

  “Now, now, remember what I told you about keeping your high spirits. Tell you what: why don’t you go thinking about what you’d want and tolerate wearing, and we come back tomorrow after our morning meeting?

  Raising a fist and smiling back with conviction, the girl happily nodded.

  She hadn’t noticed how tired she was until she reached her dorm room. She had woke up three and a half by dawn, made her way to another city to take a flight to Tokyo, settle down in her new place and went to many appointments, all in one day. Aratani had previously mentioned, while he took her back to the dormitory building, that the first few weeks would be intense due to how many new things she’s supposed to get used to, but despite feeling drained, Naoko was happier than she ever remembered being. In the capital she felt free to go wherever she pleased. After getting the cookies to her not yet known and kind of nice fifth floor neighbors, she closed the door, briefly called her parents to tell them everything was okay and free she was.

  Her room was her sanctuary. She found pure harmony in the fact that no one could disturb her there. If she wanted to play videogames all night long, provided she had the energy to it, she could. If she decided on subsisting on a diet of instant noodles, she’d do it until the day she died of high blood pressure and lack of nutrients. But she’d die a happy and free girl. If she wanted to wear anything, or kick back just in panties, or wear nothing at all, it’d be totally okay – as long as the windows were closed. If she wanted to masturbate on the shower thinking on nothing but how she should’ve moved way before there’d be no need to do so silently, worrying others could hear her, because there was no annoying other there.

  The only recollection she had of when she was three or four years old was the first time she discovered that touching certain parts of her body or rubbing it against her teddy bear’s muzzle felt indescribably good. As a teenager Naoko’s only unreasonable fear was of wrapped gifts and teddies, with their beaded, pursuing eyes, but at that time she wasn’t so. And when the innocent kid went to show her discovery to her father, like children love to do whenever they find something good, he was horrified and scolded her in such a harsh and terrifying way, his face so red and his voice so loud, that she got afraid even to see him for a few days. Kids see no evil in such things and genuinely believe they need to share nice discoveries with those they love, and to be faced with an overwhelming act of censorship, as if it was evil incarnate, made for a cruel welcoming to society’s arbitrary codes. It’s so traumatizing she remembered nothing but his severe reprimand. Yet another example of a practice considered sinful by social standards despite being a natural drive probably everyone had.

  Of course, it was an absurdly taboo topic, but it wasn’t a fairy tale she lived in. She was a person like anyone else and no matter how well this secret was kept, it was still part of her. Living alone for the first time, she couldn’t imagine a single person, male or female, that wouldn’t eventually think about this kind of freedom. It was just as vital as, say, the freedom to let dishes accumulate on the sink for days until it became unbearable to watch! Or the one about letting unfolded clothes all over the entire place. Or not cleaning the floor religiously every day. Things that kids learned in school and with their parents, and that they followed. But there’s a time in everyone’s life where it’s a must to go against such rules, even if just once. And for many, that time’s when they finally get to live by themselves. Naoko didn’t want to live in an unclean and messy place, of course, but it wasn’t about actually letting dishes accumulate. Rather, it was about being able to let it happen if she so desired. That was awesome!

  As the girl came out of the bathroom, smelling soapy and checking on the mirror if her hair could still regain the stylish shape of when it was cut, she tucked herself under the dragon-stamped duvet and clung to the wall, like she always did. It gave a sense of protection and well-being that was too good to pass on. Interestingly, she also felt more relaxed and guarded there, on a dorm room surrounded by a huge metropolis full of people she didn’t know, than she felt on her parents’ home. Also her dorm’s shower was better, since the one from her old house was old and some of the holes from where water should pass got clogged. Repeatedly cleaning it with a needle bent them, meaning the water jets fell randomly around instead of straight down. On her parents’ home the walls took better baths than the girl, a thing that didn’t occur on her dorm.

  So exhausted she was, there was barely no energy left to flip lights off. When she got on the plane, she told herself the first night in Tokyo she’d spend awake, enjoying her new room and playing with impunity, but reality was different and Naoko, h
ugging part of the duvet, immediately crashed down into a deep slumber, unconsciously smiling in peace.