Kira Kousuke was the quintessential idol. He possessed the trifecta of cheerful character, a warm speaking voice, and sharp looks. He was popular with everyone from teen girls to 40-something housewives. This all meant he was never lacking for work—but indeed, that was exactly his problem.
For instance, one day’s schedule would have his manager waking him up before five o’clock in the morning, at which time he’d travel from his home in Aoyama to Okutama in order to shoot on location for a drama. When that shoot was over, he’d return to the city for a live radio program. This was inevitably followed up by a magazine interview, then a variety show taping, and finally a live event that would take him into the evening.
Even when attending sponsored parties at the Akasaka Hotel, Kousuke was so busy greeting others that he never had a chance to eat himself. He ate all his meals on the go, in the car, memorizing his lines for the next job while rushing through his boxed lunch.
He had no free time for himself, of course. When he saw a rumor in a magazine speculating that he was having an affair with a certain female station announcer, he’d been halfway between laughing and crying. We just bumped into each other in front of a studio near Kojimachi, he thought incredulously, and they deduced we were having an affair from that interaction?! I wish I had time to conduct an affair! Indeed, the aloof and famous announcer had invited him to dinner, but after he’d turned her down three times, she’d stopped calling him entirely. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. He really did have work to do. But of course, she wasn’t going to believe that.
Kousuke hadn’t been able to go to his middle school class reunion, either. He’d had to turn down multiple invitations from old school friends over and over again. On the surface, they all expressed understanding about his strenuous work schedule, but during their phone conversations he sensed that they thought he’d become a stuck-up star.
But even outside of his social life, Kousuke had a feeling that his packed schedule was negatively affecting his performances. He felt himself spacing out while filming, and he’d been complaining to his make-up artists about it more and more lately. He found himself sighing a lot when he was on his own, and he wasn’t sleeping well at night.
That’s more or less how every day went for Kira Kousuke. And at last, one night...
“I’ve had enough!” he shouted, laying into his manager at the agency, from where they were shooting on location at an abandoned factory outside of Tokyo between effects scenes for an action movie. “I’m completely exhausted. I know it’s better than having no work at all, but at this rate, I’m gonna go crazy, and soon! It’s just a matter of if my brain or body gives up first. How do you expect me to live this way?! I want to go back to my normal life. I only need one day, just... just let me take some time off!”
His manager, Imura Kotomi, dithered a bit as she responded, “W-We can’t do that. We have your entire schedule booked for a whole year in advance...” Kotomi was a plain woman, dressed in a gray suit and black-rimmed glasses. She was short, had a childlike face, and looked like a high-schooler at first glance.
“Imura-san... You know what I live like every day, don’t you?” he pleaded.
“Of course I do,” she told him. “But this is an important time for you, Kira-san...”
“It always is! Every time I complain, you bring out that ‘important time’ nonsense. ‘Let’s hang in there a bit longer,’ or, ‘Just ride out this last bit.’ How long is this ‘important time’ going to last?” he demanded. “What year, month, day, hour, minute will it end?! You need to tell me! Isn’t scheduling your job?!”
“P-Please don’t be cruel. The agency really needs you right now. We’ve been in administrative trouble lately, and Lightning Troupe, our rival agency, is on the verge of elbowing us out of the market. We all just have to work together to get you out there, okay? Okay?” begged Kotomi, looking at him with puppy-dog eyes. This was her go-to move—she knew he was too nice to say no.
Realizing it was pointless to fight back anymore, Kousuke stood up. “I get it. Fine.”
“Wh-Where are you going? The shoot isn’t finished yet.”
“I’m getting some fresh air,” he said. “I’ll be back soon. Leave me alone.”
“Don’t go too far, all right?”
“For heaven’s sake, I won’t!” he burst out, leaving the greenroom and passing through the crew members rushing here and there. It was hot in there from the bright location lighting.
After leaving the factory, he walked through the dark and empty surrounding area. Coming up to a place where a few rusted cars had been abandoned, he muttered, “Maybe I’ll run away.”
In truth, Kousuke was sick of this demanding life. In his third year of middle school, he’d been chosen from an audition of three thousand and had given up on high school in order to focus on his work. Some in his life had been against the decision, and there had even been schools he might have attended while acting...
Yet his resolve—his desperate determination, one might say—hadn’t wavered. That was how seriously Kousuke had taken his work all this time. But lately, he’d begun to miss his old life, chatting with friends during break periods in school. Even for just one day, he wanted to enjoy life as a normal high school student.
Just one day, he thought. That’s all I need. If I could return for a little while to a world where no one treats me as special... He was sitting down on the hood of a nearby abandoned car, staring up at the sky with that faint wish in his heart, when...
“Who are all these people? I thought this factory was abandoned,” a sudden voice asked from out of the darkness.
Kousuke held an arm up defensively and squinted into the shadows, whereupon a man silently revealed himself from behind the dead trees.
The speaker turned out to be a young man in a high-collared school uniform. He had disheveled black hair, a sullen expression, and wore a tight frown. There was a cloth case slung over one of his shoulders, possibly for a guitar or some other instrument, and his right hand was hidden behind his back.
“Eh?” Kousuke said with a start when he saw him. It wasn’t the sight of some random teenager infiltrating a closed shooting location that shocked him, but rather his appearance—he had the exact same build and face as Kousuke himself.
The fine lines of the jaw, the tightly-drawn expression... If not for the slight harshness in his gaze and the muscular body, which suggested the practice of some martial art, they could be twins. Or at least, it was a close enough resemblance that he wouldn’t mind the comparison...
Actually... He reconsidered, calmly. They did look very similar—enough so that, at first, he really had thought he’d hallucinated himself coming out of the darkness—but this was clearly a different person. It was just that attractive men and women naturally tended to have certain things in common. He’d seen a documentary once proving that if you took facial portraits of a few hundred random people and created a computer-generated composite of all of them, the result would be an extremely attractive person. In that sense, the resemblance shouldn’t have been that big a deal, but...
But even with that in mind, he looks really similar to me!
As Kousuke stared as if he’d seen a ghost, his ‘doppelganger’ narrowed his eyes and inspected him carefully. “Should I call an ambulance?” the man asked.
“Eh?”
“You’re bleeding from the shoulders and head.”
“Oh... th-this is makeup.” Kousuke had been filming a shootout scene, so he currently looked pretty bad. His shirt was covered in soot, and there were bloody patches all over his body.
“Makeup? Curious makeup indeed... It surely can’t be for social purposes,” the stranger commented.
“The point is, I’m fine.”
“I see. Has there been an explosion or a murder there?” the man asked, looking toward the factory.
“Eh?”
“All the people coming and going.”
“No... we’re actually shooting a movie,” Kousuke explained.
“Ah. And you’re some kind of gofer?”
“No, I’m the lead actor.”
The man didn’t seem familiar with Kousuke at all, nor did he show any interest in the fact that their faces were nearly identical. He mostly seemed concerned about Kousuke, perhaps viewing him as a poor man in a daze from the shock of his injuries. “How long will you and your group remain here?” he asked.
“What? I dunno... I heard we’ll be shooting here every night for a few days, though...” Kousuke responded without confidence.
The man scowled and let out a sigh. “I see. It will have to wait a while, then.”
“Um, what were you planning on doing here?”
“I came to test fire my new silencer. That old factory is perfect for indoor shooting, and I’ve been using it frequently for a while. I’ve just acquired a new Heckler & Koch, and I was hoping to test it immediately...” As he spoke, the man pointed back at the “guitar case” hanging off his shoulder.
Naturally, Kousuke had no idea that it was actually a rifle case, or that it contained a submachine gun designed for special forces.
“It appears I have no other choice, though,” the stranger lamented. “I’ll come back another day.” Having wrapped up the discussion entirely on his own, the man turned around and moved to disappear into the dark of night.
Kousuke found himself calling after him. “W-Wait!”
“What?” The man stopped and turned back to face him.
“I know this is a strange thing to say, but...”
“Hmm?”
An idea had formed inside of Kousuke’s ragged and overworked mind. The more he looked at the teenager, the more he felt sure that their faces looked alike. Yes, the shape of the other man’s eyebrows, the faint lines around his eyes, and the musculature from his neck to his jawline were different. It was also true that his hair was disheveled and seemingly untended. His skin was tanner as well, and he was perhaps a bit broader in the shoulders. Their most distinct difference was a look of total focus in his eyes. But... wasn’t there a possibility they could work it out? Yes, Kousuke decided. With the help of that former Hollywood makeup artist I met on a job, we might just be able to fool even my most die-hard fans.