The response was wildly off the mark from the reaction I expected. She wasn’t pursuing me? So if she’s not a fan of mine, then… I felt my anxiety ease off a little bit before tightening once more. If she wasn’t a fan, then was she here to kidnap me or something like that? Does she want to take me for ransom?! I don’t have anywhere to run! This is really, really bad! But the woman didn’t attack me. She simply stood there, hands thrust into her pockets. She then took out a cell phone, no cover, completely unadorned. “It’s still a bit before the appointed time. I guess it’s just an accident that you showed up here, but this actually works out great. We’re right nearby, too.” “Huh? The appointed time…?” “Hmm? I’m pretty sure I was told one p.m. Or did I get that wrong?” I took out my own phone and looked at the screen. The amount of missed calls and messages waiting for me on the standby screen was getting a tad out of hand. The reality facing me was now exposed in plain, digital form, making me feel like I had taken a heavy ball of iron and swallowed it whole. The readout notified me that it was exactly half past ten. One p.m…The appointed time… “Oh…” Now it all made sense to me. This woman was part of the film crew for the TV drama. That would explain why she followed me all the way from the initial chaos, even though she swore she wasn’t part of the crowd. The fact that she was aware of the one p.m. meet-up time with my manager made it all the more likely. The agency probably sent her over once they heard about the chaos to make sure I would make it to shooting on time. Still, I was no longer in any mood to say “Oh, sure, no problem, I hear you loud and clear.” I had just clearly told this woman that I had decided to quit. Yet she was still intent on taking me with her…which was her job, yes, but I was no longer interested in blindly following orders. I forced myself up to my feet and spoke to this woman, already walking toward the alley exit. “Um…I decided to quit my job. And I don’t want to go back home for a while, either, so…like, do you understand what I mean?” This time, I was calmer, more collected with my words. Surely she would get the message this time. “…Sure, sure, I know you’ve made up your mind. So would you mind just following me for now?” Her expression was gentler as she looked me in the eye and began walking again. I could see the wisdom in fleeing from this woman and finding another hole to hide in. But I couldn’t. She seemed to understand me. She knew my mind was made up, and her expression made her seem trustworthy enough. If I went to the studio, my manager would be waiting for me. She would be absolutely livid, no doubt about that. Imagining the all-time mother of lectures looming in my future, I could feel my tear ducts loosening up already. But I had to tell her. I had to make it clear. I wanted this to end today. I would explain everything about how I felt, I would accept all the rage that I’d get for it, and that would be that. My resolve fully regained, I followed in the woman’s footsteps. Once I was by her side, I realized that the segment of my face I had pushed into the bag was a wet mess of tears and sweat and…whatever else. “Ugh…” “Mm? Something wrong?” “No, uh…It’s nothing.” “…You sure? I mean, you’ll definitely want to wash that bag and your clothing later.” I could feel my face burn like fire, as if someone had taken a match to it. “Y…yeah…” Her perception was sharp. Whoever she was, she was no doubt gifted in her job. After spending what seemed like the entire day running from this, running from that, I wanted nothing more than a cold shower. I let this desire occupy my brain as I walked, keeping a little distance behind the woman in the jacket. We made a right out of the dead end, then a left at the second intersection afterward. Next we took the first small pathway on the right, followed it to the end, made a left… I followed the woman as she silently kept walking, not exchanging a word of conversation. It felt like we were diving deep into the far reaches of town. I’d had no idea any of these streets existed. If I recalled correctly, the scene we were scheduled to shoot today involved me visiting the house of a “less-than-wealthy” friend. It made sense. The multifamily units and apartment buildings that lined the streets were not exactly breathtaking. The crew was no doubt busily preparing for the shoot right now. I was unsure how I would broach the subject of my decision. My stomach hurt terribly. “Over here.” Without warning, the woman in the jacket stopped and changed direction. She was pointing toward a narrow, dimly lit corridor, one that made the twisty passages we were navigating up until now seem like opulent multilane boulevards. The pathway, just barely wide enough for a person to travel through, was lined on both sides by thin wooden fencing and the walls of apartment complexes. “Wow, this is pretty narrow…” Without answering, the woman plunged down the path, inducing me to reluctantly follow her. A shortcut to our shoot location, perhaps? It was starting to seem a bit odd. Once inside the corridor, the sensation of being a lab rat in a maze was overwhelming. If I turned a corner and a giant insect or something was waiting to attack me, where could I escape to? I was carefully advancing forward, taking care with each step, when I came to an abrupt halt. The sneakers of the woman I was following were stopped in front of me. “Here we are.” She pointed to a door, the number 107 on it, nearby the halfway point of the corridor. The wooden fencing stopped just long enough to allow for the door. “What? Here?!” Before I could finish, she opened the door and went inside. “H-hey, wait a…Hey!” The door closed, leaving me completely alone outside. Taking a more careful look at the building, I saw nothing but a sheer wall of concrete above the wooden fence. No windows, no nothing. It looked like no residence I was aware of; it was more like a warehouse or aboveground fallout shelter. And yet there was the number 107 on the door, its purpose an enigma. “This…this really isn’t my ‘friend’s house,’ is it?” If this was my friend’s house in the TV show, her parents must be moonlighting as mad scientists. A trip to my friend and her dad’s illegal human-experimentation lab wouldn’t have been completely out of the question for episode two of the series, but given that this was still the premiere we were shooting, you’d expect at least a little more background plot first. The building obviously looked sketchy, but for some reason, I was gripped by the urge to try opening the door. There were no other entrances to the building, no other nearby addresses, and yet this was 107. It piqued me, somehow. “Well…not like I know how to get back anyway. Guess I got no choice.” Unable to bottle my curiosity, I took a breath and opened the door. As I expected, this definitely wasn’t the house of my teen girlfriend. The moment the door was opened, I was greeted by a long, rectangular space, around the size of a roomy living room. Bare pipes ran across the ceiling, and the room was lit by a large number of unadorned lightbulbs hanging freely below the piping. Otherwise, the space was well adorned with fancy furniture—a table, a sofa, a small wooden armoire with a globe on top of it. For all the world, it looked every bit like a secret hideout was supposed to look. I could see all the usual home appliances around the complex, from the TV and microwave to the computer and refrigerator. The air conditioner was on, and the place certainly felt lived in. The atmosphere was still odd, however, what with the old, plainly non-Japanese volumes that lined a beat-up bookcase. It might be more accurately described as a witches’ coven, assuming the witches didn’t want to give up their modern conveniences. Four doors were spaced evenly across the far wall. The idea that there were more rooms to discover deeper inside made me ponder what kind of structural plan this building had. The woman from earlier was standing in front of the kitchen next to the entrance, fully stocked with an array of cooking tools. Taking another look around, I once again failed to find any TV staff or filming equipment. The sense of foreboding I felt ever since we arrived slowly began to take center stage in my mind. “Er…Could I ask where we’re…?” “Hey, Kano, here she is. You mind giving her the whole spiel for me…? Hey, wake up!” The hooded woman, just as uninterested in my questions as before, prodded the figure lying on the sofa. His body shuddered slightly, and I heard a slow, drowsy voice respond. “Mmmnghh…Mmm? Whudda you mean, ‘she’?” Moving his face away from the magazine that was covering it, a tired-looking man with narrow, catlike eyes revealed himself. “The new girl. The one you said would be showing up today? You’re the one who made all the arrangements.” “Oh, uh…Yeah, but…like, why is she…?” “You mind shaking the cobwebs out for me, man? Just give her the story.” “Huh. Well, okay. Whatever.” The man she called Kano sat up on the sofa. He took a look at me and flashed an eerie smile, as if just remembering something. “Um…Can I…um…?” “Welcome, newbie, to the Mekakushi-dan! Thank you very much for helping us out with our operation!” Standing up and giving me a brisk, gentler smile than before, he began to energetically regale me, talking over my stilted question. “Currently, we’re involved with things like evading the ‘eyes’ of the police as we infiltrate really dangerous places and, you know, borrow a couple things. Stuff like that. I’ll fill you in on all the details later…Well, okay, not all the details, maybe. You know what I mean. Like, I want to fill you in on everything I can, though. Anyway, this is our hideout. Maybe you guessed this already, but you thank that lady sitting there with that death stare of hers—oh, don’t give me that look! Yeah, yeah. Kido, then. She’s our boss. But don’t let her scare you—it’s real comfy in here, once you get used to stuff. Anyway, all this decor is her doing. As far as our member roster goes, there’s her, there’s me…Oh, I’m Kano, by the way. Us, and around two others…well, maybe three, if things turn out. That’s about all of us. We don’t usually do much in, like, the public eye, so to speak, but, you know, we like to keep things loose around here. Uh, what else…?” “W-wait! Wait a second! Um…the meka-what? Dangerous places…? We’re, we’re still talking about today’s drama shoot, right? Where’s the director? I…I came here to tell you I’m not gonna be an idol anymore! But you…You…Who are you guys?!” My mind had completely failed to catch up with this sudden turn of events. I had far too much to ask. Was this all part of some scene or another…? It couldn’t be. The script handed to me a few days ago was just your textbook high-school romance story. There was nothing in it about hideouts or “infiltration” or anything. I had to speak up because he was giving me this whole tale in the most matter-of-fact tone of voice. They’ve definitely got the wrong girl here. Help out with their “operation”…? I had entertained aspirations of trying a little part-time work for a change of pace, but nothing like this. “…Hang on a second. You’re a pop idol…? Kano, what is going on here?” The hooded woman—Kido, the boss, whatever you wanted to call her—stormed up to Kano, who did nothing but nod and smile at every question I had just asked. “What do you mean, what? She’s, like, all the rage right now. See? Look.” Kano opened up the magazine he’d shielded his head with earlier and showed the boss a page. The issue had a special feature devoted to the single I was debuting today. Oh, lord, I hated that photo they took of me. They used the pic for the two-page opening spread, and my eyes are half-closed. Awful. The hooded woman snatched the magazine away and peered at it, the color gradually leaving her face as she cycled her gaze between me and the article. “You…She…You told me you had promised to meet this new candidate today and wanted to check up on her first…You said you wanted her to join up if we liked her…” “Yep. Sure did. All lies.” “You said she had ‘potential’…! You made me drag a public celebrity over here, Kano!…And you lied to me?!” She repeatedly rapped her knuckles on my face in the article as she continued her griping. I’m right here, you know…She could have at least a little courtesy. “Yeah, I know I lied, but I didn’t think you were listening. You just sat there listening to your music. Like, you didn’t even acknowledge I was talking to you! Then you go out by yourself and bring her back here on your own volition? If you ask me, this is more your fault than mine.” “I went out by myself because I kept shaking you and you wouldn’t wake up! If you were awake that whole time, why didn’t you at least call me?!” “Because you never pick up! You’re, like, always listening to music on that thing anyway! Like some sad, friendless nerd, you know? That, and I didn’t feel like bothering.” “Oh, so instead you made me go out and—” “—Um, excuse me!” The two of them simultaneously turned toward me. The man called Kano was smiling as always, but the other woman looked far more hostile at the moment. “Um…so, is it fair to say this is all a big mistake, then…?” After I hesitantly asked the question, the woman called Kido rubbed a frustrated hand on her hooded head, sighed, and answered. “Well…it looks that way. Sorry for the confusion. You can go ahead and leave if—” She stopped midway, suddenly realizing something. The color drained from her face all over again. Simultaneously, Kano, who had sat back down on the sofa, began to softly giggle to himself. “You! You knew this was the wrong girl the whole time and you just told her everything! We can’t let her go if she knows what we’re doing, can we?!” “Ha-ha-ha…Well, come on, Kido! You kept bugging me to give her the story, right? Oh, man, what a trip this is—” Kano was sadly prevented from any further gloating by a sudden fist to the head. Kido, so calm and emotionless for most of the short time I had known her, had transformed. Her expression belied panic and rage. The casual thought came to me that she couldn’t have been too far removed from me agewise, maybe a little older. I imagine I should have been a bit more anxious, but if anything, I felt fairly serene. It was as if these people were incapable of instilling fear or nervousness in others. They were odd, of course, what with calling themselves a “dan” like they were a gang or something and living in an oddly well-decorated hideout, but I somehow couldn’t will myself to see them as bad people. “Um…” I opened my mouth to ask a question, but was cut off once again. “Ughh…Look, what’s your name?” “Huh?” Kido, sighing as she asked the question, took a seat next to her cohort. “I said, your name. Mine’s Kido. This dingbat over here is Kano.” She was female, no doubt, but her manner of speaking was more gender-neutral than anything else. It was hard to gauge her personality. The man next to her, still smiling gleefully despite the “dingbat” evaluation, looked fairly mature at first glance, but upon further review, he couldn’t have been that much older than me either. “Oh, uh, my name’s Momo Kisaragi. I’m sixteen years old, and…” I instinctively gave my age alongside my name. It was not something I would call a habit per se, but she reminded me of the judges I dealt with during my auditions. Ugh. I did not need to be reminded of that. I fretted over the idea they would treat me like some bubble-headed idol, all too ready to flout her fame around others. “Kisaragi, huh? You sure are an idol, I guess, what with giving your age alongside your name and all.” See? This is awful. “No! I didn’t mean that! It was just an accident! I’m not in the habit of doing that or acting like this is an audition or anything! I mean, I don’t have any friends or anything, so when I get talking, I kind of get carried away and say weird things sometimes! Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha…” —The silence was painful. I wanted to crawl into a hole and have someone shovel dirt over me. “Yeah? Hmm. Must be pretty tough.” “Y-yeah…” Now they’re taking pity on me. Kano began snickering again. Kido silenced him, this time with a shot to the stomach. “I’m not really sure what to do…Really, to be honest, I’d love to just send you back home right now, but now that we’ve revealed all of this to you, that would be kind of bad for us.” “I guess so…now that I’ve heard all that…” “Thanks to this idiot here.” “Ha-ha-ha! I told you, Kido, this is all your fault by this…Okay! Maybe not!” The moment Kido turned her head, Kano immediately began to backpedal, arms held to the side to protect his stomach. “You know, though, maybe this isn’t as terrible as you think. I was looking at this live feed on the net earlier, and, like, that ‘trait’ you have is amazing.” The net…? Live feed? Video from that horror show out on the street? I had no idea so many people saw that. “Amazing? Her?” “Oh, for sure. Hey, did you always have a tendency to attract attention to yourself? Like, even before you started being an idol?” “Huh? Uh…yes. Yes, I did.” Something about way he used the word “trait” agitated me. Noting my response, Kano lightened her stare, her attention diverted to this new discovery. “Judging by the scene out there, it’s a pretty strong trait, too, right? I’m impressed you decided to be an idol at all.” He acted like he knew everything about me. I drew my eyes downward, feeling like he had a direct link to my heart. “My mother was having a lot of trouble workwise for a while. I thought I would help out a little. But why…?” “Hmm? Oh, just a hunch. ’Cause, like, even by celebrity standards, that’s not normal. How much people are drawn to you, I mean. It’s like the total opposite of Kido. Man, if Marie were anything like you, I bet she woulda offed herself by now. Ha-ha-ha!” “Marie’s special. Anyway, that’s a whole different thing.” “Yeah, true. Speaking of which, where is she? Do you think she’s still angry?” “Um…I think I’ve kind of lost track here…” That was understating it. I was in a state of utter confusion. They didn’t seem like bad people, but I still had no idea who they were, no idea what would happen to me next. “Oh! Sorry, sorry. Um…well, just have a seat, all right?” “Okay…” The two of them pointed me to a sofa between themselves and the table. Sitting directly across from Kano, I began to feel like this was turning into a very unexpected intervention. “To put it as simply as possible…like, how Kido mentioned earlier too, letting you go home right now would present us with a few problems. So I want you to stay with us for a little while. I know that’s, like, an enormous inconvenience to you, so in exchange, you could say, we have a proposal.” “A…proposal?” “Yeah. To sum up, we can cure you of your body’s, uh, tendencies. More like ‘suppress’ them, maybe? I think we can help with that. If you need us to, of course…That’s about all we can offer, right, Kido?” “Looks like it, yes. But either way, right now, we can’t let you leave.” This was the most unbelievable thing I had heard all day. It was the first time I ever met someone who offered to do something about my “tendency.” But it went without saying that I couldn’t easily accept it. Judging by this conversation, it was entirely possible they were just trying to get on my good side. How could they “cure” me of anything in the first place? It’s not like I was sick, exactly. If I could have done anything about it, I would have long ago. But I didn’t have a clue. “Well…um…If you could cure it, that’d be great, but…” “Yeah, see? I figured you wanted to be rid of it. You sure can’t control it, I can tell that much. Everybody’s got their own natural traits, of course, so we’re gonna have to test out a few different approaches as we go, but…” “Test out?” Could I really place my trust upon these people? I had just met them, I knew nothing about their backgrounds, and they were definitely into something bad. But at the same time, I had never met anyone before who understood what my body was doing to me. That faint hope—“if I could ever get to be normal”—was now so strong, it drove me to rely upon these perfect strangers at my time of need. “You know, though, this kind of brings back memories. Remember that conversation we had, Kido?” Peering into my face, Kano closed his eyes, as if trying to remember something. “Yeah…I do, maybe.” “You were still pretty cute back then, Kido. All, like, ‘Oooh, I’m gonna disappear if this keeps up, help meeee’ and—ow ow ow!” Before he could finish, Kido grabbed Kano, taking a firm grip of his side. I wondered if he would be all right. She did seem to like hitting there the most. “I shoulda made you disappear first.” Despite the death grip on his side, Kano kept smiling. “Heh-heh. All sweet memories now, aren’t they…? You know, though, she isn’t gonna believe us if we just, like, say we’ll cure her. You mind showing her, Kido?” “Why me? You do it.” “Yeah, but mine isn’t as obvious as yours, right? It’d be easier if we had Marie here to show her, but I ain’t gonna poke a stick in that hornet’s nest yet.” “Ugh…All right. Guess it’s my fault too, a little.” With that, Kido rose with a sigh and walked to the doors on the far side of the room. Opening the second one from the right, I could see something shaped like a cot inside. “Um…what are you gonna show me?” “Well, you know, some evidence to show why we might be able to cure that trait of yours. You’ll see what I mean once she gets started.” Evidence? What kind of evidence? Is she going to cart out someone more captivating than even I am before he got these guys’ treatment or whatever? Come on. This isn’t a late-night ad for some diet plan. It’s not like they could show me some before/after pictures. As I pondered this, the door closed as Kido disappeared into the room. Kano was beaming as always. Presumably he was waiting for Kido to bring someone (?) out from the room. I decided to wait with him, wondering what I should be expecting. …But, after more than a minute of silence, Kido failed to return. I turned my eyes toward the cuckoo clock on the wall, then a modern digital one nearby. Really, there’s nothing that makes time go slower than waiting for something when you have no idea what it is. His smile nailed to his face, Kano began reading a magazine as if nothing was amiss. The door stubbornly stayed shut. What was I even doing here? “Um, could I—Ahhhhh!!” I had just turned to Kano, ready to ask him what we were waiting for, when an unbelievable sight shook a scream out of me. Next to Kano, as he flipped through the pages, was Kido, sitting just as she was before. There was nothing she could have hid behind between us and the door. I didn’t move out of my seat the whole time. “Wh…wha…huh? W-why? When did you…?!” I had leaped out of the sofa, almost sending both it and myself toppling backward. Kido looked at me coldly, telling me with her eyes that I was a tad out of line. “Well, there you have it! Quite a surprise, huh?” Kano, watching me grip the sofa’s backrest tightly, looked like he couldn’t be enjoying this more. Kido sighed. “That was kind of over-the-top, wasn’t it? Stop looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost or something.” “That wouldn’t be far from the truth, though—oww!” Kano’s smile held steady against yet another punch in the side. It made me wonder if he took pride or something in his ability to keep a smile painted on at all times. “So…so what was that?” Sitting back down on the sofa, I asked about the phenomenon I had just seen. To be honest, the sense of lingering fear made me reluctant to look directly at Kido. “Well, Kido…You know, she’s the same as you. Okay, more like the exact opposite, but her thing was that, ever since she was a kid, she couldn’t ‘get’ anyone to look at her.” I listened to Kano’s explanation in sheer disbelief. “I think you probably get the picture, but you, like, totally didn’t notice her, right? It’s kind of like she can keep that going forever.” She had completely escaped my notice. It was as if I had averted my gaze for one moment, and suddenly, she was there. It felt like some kind of Houdini-style magic trick. “Somewhere along the line she started training herself to control it, and that’s where we are today. So, like, that’s why I think we can help you maybe take control of your own traits a little more, so—” I shot upward, my palms slamming against the table. “I’ll do it! I’m staying here! If…if you need any chores done, I’ll do anything you need! And that…uh, “operation”? Lemme help you with that, too! So…please, please let me into the Mekameka-dan!!” There’s always hope left in the world, I guess. I had to go through a lot of bad situations with this body of mine, but never in my life had my heart been so full of hope and excitement for the future. If I stay here, I know they can cure me. I can go out shopping like a normal girl, I can talk to people like a normal girl, I can even make friends like a normal girl! “Oh, uh…well, great! Super! By the way, it’s Mekakushi-dan. That’s kind of important.” “Mekakushi-dan! Yes!! I’m ready!!” “I really wish you’d stop using that stupid name. It’s not like you’re gonna have a chance to tell the general public.” Kido’s muttered interjection stopped Kano and me in our tracks. I realized that my pulse had quickened in the excitement. “Eesh, Kido, way to pee on our parade…But anyway! Welcome to the group, Kisaragi.” “Th-thank you!” “Pretty momentous occasion, huh? Or at least it would be if the boss wasn’t here to mess it all up for—ow! Hey, that hurt!” I was reasonably certain his arm wasn’t supposed to bend that way. But he was still smiling! Kano must really be proud of that…habit. Or whatever. I cracked a smile as I watched the exchange. It hadn’t taken me long to get used to their antics. As I smiled, the rightmost door on the far wall suddenly opened. In it appeared a small girl, her hair white as snow, almost as if she had just stepped out of a picture-book world. “Mm? Oh, look who finally came out! Hey, Marie…” The girl turned toward us as her name was called. She jumped slightly, like she had seen a monster, before scurrying back into the room she came from. “…Figures.” “Just like you’d expect, huh? Marie’s so easy to predict sometimes.” “Uh, sorry about that. That was Marie just now. I’d like to get you acquainted as soon as we can, but…” “Um…Did I do something to make her hate me?” I was used to people looking at me with furtive, prying eyes, but that reaction was enough to make even me feel ashamed of myself. “Nah. Don’t worry about it. She’s that way around everyone. Kano, could you try to get her in here for me?” “Whaaa? No way, man. I don’t wanna deal with you-know-what if I end up pissing her off.” “Well, it’s your own fault she’s in a snit like that in the first place. Just because she was wearing different socks than usual doesn’t give you the right to laugh in her face.” “But they just looked so, like, weird! Besides, Kido, you didn’t react to them at all. You sat there like a rock!” “Well, that beats laughing maniacally at her, doesn’t it?! Better not to react at all than react like that.” “Yeah, but Marie was looking for a reaction. That’s why she came out wearing those socks in the first place. Same difference, if you ask me…But this ain’t doing us any good. You go get her, okay? She’s a lot more likely to come out if you do it.” “Kano, you have got to be—” “Come on. I’m right, aren’t I? This job calls for a woman’s touch. Otherwise we’d be rocking the boat too much.” “…Ugh. All right. But don’t blame me if something happens to you afterward.” Kido stood up, traveled to the far end of the room, and opened the door the girl they called Marie had peeked out from earlier. “Agh…?!” The moment the door was open, there was a dull thud, followed by a short yelp of surprise. Beyond the door, I could see the girl from before, teary-eyed and holding her forehead. She had apparently stayed right by the door after returning to her room, causing it to bang her in the head when Kido opened it. The boss, her back turned to us, pointed a thumb back toward where we were seated. After a quick peek, she shook her head, tears still welled around her eyes. “Umm…She—she obviously hates me, so…” “Nah, nah, she’s just…like, super shy around other people. Though it’s kinda worse than usual today.” Kano returned to his magazine, rapidly flipping through the pages, apparently not too disturbed at the sight. The door was still open, letting me hear bits of the muted conversation as Kido tried her best to coax the girl out of the room. I couldn’t decipher all of it, but the words I could make out from the girl—“scared” and “I can’t” being among them—all had negative connotations, each of which cut me to the quick. “Um…if you think it’s not gonna happen…” The moment I started speaking to Kano, I heard the door slam shut. In front of it were Kido with the girl they called Marie, still hiding behind her. The white hair that came down to her hips looked soft and fluffy, like the fur of some creature from the snowfields. I could image how nice it would feel if I buried my face in it. “Ooh, great job fishing her out of there, boss.” Kano closed the magazine he was reading long enough to give Kido a light round of applause. Kido returned to her original seat, the young girl sitting right in between her and Kano. Up close like this, she looked like a doll come to life…Her eyes were a light shade of pink, her skin a paler white than even Kido’s, and her long, mesmerizing white hair gave her the air of a forlorn woodcutter’s daughter from a rustic folktale. But she still tried to conceal her face from me, her eyes swiveling between random empty points on the table in front of her. She recited to herself “It’s okay…It’s okay…” over and over again like an incantation, and she must have known that I could hear it from here. “Anyway, here’s Marie. Sorry it took a while to get her out here.” The girl’s shoulders tensed up when her name was called. Gingerly, she looked up at me. “Shy” wasn’t the half of it. As the new woman in town, I felt obliged to give the best first impression I could. “G-good to meet you, Marie! I, uh, my name’s Kisaragi! I guess we’ll be living together for a little while, so…so I’ll try my best to help out, so, uh, thanks in advance!” Her shoulders stiffened once more when I began to speak, but apparently the message came through, because by the time I had finished, her expression was notably less strained. “……” But she was still frozen in place. “Uh…Ha-ha-ha! So, uh, that’s pretty much the story, so…” To avoid diving headlong into silence, I made a feeble attempt at breaking the ice further. My lack of verbal skills made me all but defenseless whenever silence fell upon a conversation. I really need to buy a book on communication skills sometime… Despite my expectations, however, the silence didn’t last long. “My…My name is Marie…It’s, it’s nice to meet you…” She spoke very, very softly. It took a moment to realize that she was attempting to introduce herself. Her eyes began to swivel around again, her white skin turning a shade of red all the way to her ears. “I, um, I’ll go make some tea!” She had apparently reached her tolerance limit. Marie got up off the couch and hurriedly skipped over to the kitchen. “Oh, um, no need to go to the trouble!” Great. Just when I thought we had something going, she runs off on me. “Man, look at Marie! What a trooper.” “I’ll say. She’s never talked that much with a stranger before, has she?” Both of them had nothing but kind words for Marie’s performance. “R-really?!” I couldn’t hide my surprise at that very unconversational conversation being so worthy of praise. “Well, you know, you’re maybe the fourth person she’s ever spoken directly to, so you probably don’t know what the baseline is.” “The fourth person?! W-what does Marie usually do, then…?” “What’s she do? Hmm…Well, to put it in a modern way, she’s kind of…unemployed, I guess.” Kano looked to Kido for support as he spoke. “Yeah. Usually she never leaves her room at all, so maybe ‘shut-in’ is more appropriate.” “Oh…I, I see.” I suppose it was my fault for prying, but I felt a little sorry for Marie being freely called a shut-in by the very people she lived with. “Though, you know, it’s probably about time Marie started, like, doing something, don’t you think? I mean, she’s in her second year of life as a full-time acrophobic.” “We’ve been through that a thousand times. You know how she clams up for a while whenever we bring it up.” “Yeah, but…Hmm? Something up, Kisaragi?” “Ah! N-no, no! It’s…nothing…” All this talk about a two-year unemployed shut-in was hitting a bit close to home. Kano probably noticed it in my helpless-looking expression.
Chapter 7
31 min read