Mai’s turn ended and the stage emptied, yet most of the crowd stuck around. They were basking in the afterglow, and no one was ready to leave.
The tension in the air felt hot and heavy. It imparted an odd sense of unity to the audience.
Sakuta threaded his way through that crowd to the staff area. He lost Ikumi somewhere along the way, but he put seeing Mai first.
He showed the guards his pass and was allowed in.
He headed back to the second bus, Mai’s greenroom.
As he stepped inside, he blurted, “Mai, what was that?”
He was trying to keep his cool but couldn’t stop himself.
“Is that any way to greet a girlfriend after a show? Try ‘Great concert; you were amazing.’”
Mai was by the vanity, taking off her earrings. There was a cheery note in her voice, as if she was relieved it had gone well. Like the crowd, she was still carrying the rush of the concert with her.
The exact opposite of the desperation Sakuta brought in.
“It was a great show. Just…”
“Just…?” Mai repeated, eyes on the mirror as she took off the other earring.
“Why’d you lie?”
“What lie?” she asked, not changing her tone at all.
“About you being Touko Kirishima.”
In the mirror, their eyes met.
She glanced away, taking off the costume’s necklace and rings. Each piece went into their dedicated cases on the vanity. For the finishing touch, she took a heart-shaped ring out of another case. The ring he’d given her for her birthday. Only when it was on the ring finger of her right hand did she turn to face Sakuta.
“I feel bad for keeping it from you, Sakuta. But agency orders. I didn’t tell Nodoka, either.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“I don’t blame you for balking. I’ve told you to your face I’m not Touko Kirishima.”
“Then you really are…?”
He couldn’t finish. Something made him hesitate.
“I am Touko Kirishima.”
Mai said the words he’d been reluctant to say out loud.
Too easily.
She made it seem as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Like it was a simple statement of fact.
She had looked Sakuta right in the eye and said something he knew was wrong.
When he didn’t budge, she said it again, gently. “I am Touko Kirishima.”
She’d denied it just yesterday.
She’d given no indication of it minutes before the concert.
Sakuta’s heart showed not one sign of being swayed by this. Not one flicker of doubt.
He was drowning in a sea of confusion.
“No chance this is an April Fool’s joke?”
“If I’m lying here, I must be a great actress,” she said with a laugh, smiling.
“Mai, you are a great actress.”
He didn’t feel like smiling back.
At the least, it didn’t seem like she was deceiving him.
Mai genuinely believed she was Touko Kirishima.
She had that unnatural naturalness to her.
“Done changing, Mai?” Ryouko poked her head in the door and found Mai still in costume. “Better get out of that, or we’ll miss the Shinkansen.”
“Mai, you’ve got plans?”
“Filming in Kobe tomorrow morning. We have to get there tonight.”
“Which is why it’s time for you to head outside, Sakuta,” Ryouko said, waving to the door.
“We’ll talk more when I’m back from the shoot,” Mai said.
He couldn’t exactly linger. And talking more right now would not fish him out of this whirlpool.
“Just one more thing, Mai.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
Mai’s smile was somewhat bashful. Her expressions and gestures were every bit the Mai he knew and loved.
“Sakuta.”
“What?”
“I love you, too.”
She flashed an impish grin. That, too, was his Mai.
✦ ✦ ✦
Outside the bus, it felt instantly darker.
He could swear he was melting into the darkness, his shoes and the asphalt fusing together.
Mindful of the fuzzy boundaries, he tried walking and soon found someone waiting for him outside the staff area.
Ikumi.
Her head was down, lit from below by the screen of her phone.
Sakuta stepped over the fence and approached, calling, “You didn’t have to wait.”
“I’m invested.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“So?”
“Is this what getting bamboozled feels like? Mai seems to genuinely think she is Touko Kirishima.”
“Like Nene Iwamizawa and the other Santas?”
“Not sure. Feels different. It’s still definitely Mai, and she doesn’t have a reason to become Touko Kirishima like they did.”
“True.”
“And everyone could see her.”
That point alone was fundamentally different from Nene and the Santa Squad.
“Footage of the concert’s spreading on social media. Everyone thinks Sakurajima really is Touko Kirishima.”
Ikumi glanced back down at her phone.
“Mai did become invisible back in high school.”
“I heard something like that from the other me. The whole school was acting like she wasn’t there, and eventually, no one could perceive her at all.”
“I wonder if something similar is going on here,” Sakuta said.
Ikumi soon caught his gist.
“Everyone believed Touko Kirishima was actually Sakurajima, so that came true?”
Sakuta nodded glumly.
“Maybe that explains the red-knapsack Sakurajima you saw.”
“Does it?”
“You saw the Mai Sakurajima the crowd around you was picturing.”
That did make sense.
“Maybe I did.”
But this wasn’t the time to dig into it.
“In high school, you asked her out in front of the whole school, and that fixed things?”
“Yeah, I rewrote the students’ perceptions.”
“If you tried the same thing here…”
“I might well be forced to propose with the whole world watching.”
Minegahara High had roughly a thousand students.
But far more people believed Mai Sakurajima and Touko Kirishima were one and the same. With the news already spreading online, that number was likely in the millions. And that might be lowballing it.
“Azusagawa, you don’t think you can alter everyone’s perceptions at once, do you?”
“……”
He couldn’t say he could.
And didn’t want to say he couldn’t.
If Mai was involved, he had to.
But his long silence proved all the answer Ikumi needed.
“Sorry, that’s unanswerable.”
“If it is possible, there’s only one way.”
“Namely…?”
“Gotta get the real Touko Kirishima to step forward.”
“Then you’ll have to look for her.”
When she said that, Sakuta felt a pin drop.
“……Maybe that’s what it meant.”
“Huh?”
“‘Mai’s in danger.’”
Ikumi’s eyes went wide. It was clear she felt the same. A moment later, she let out a voiceless yelp.
Like someone had just put their hands on her.
“What?”
“……”
In lieu of an answer, she looked down at her left palm.
“Message from the other world?” he asked.
“Azusagawa, it’s for you,” Ikumi said, holding up her hand.
There was familiar handwriting in black pen.
Two short lines.
Stop Touko Kirishima.
Before reality is rewritten.
It was Sakuta’s handwriting.
But this didn’t make sense.
“What does it mean?” he asked, looking up.
“Don’t ask me,” she said as she pulled a black pen out of her purse. “Ask him.”
“You came prepared.”
“I simply carried it around in case this happened.”
“That’s what I meant.”
He took the pen and popped the cap off.
“Write away,” she said, holding out the hand with nothing on it.
What do you mean by rewrite reality?
Sakuta started writing.
The answer appeared one letter at a time, on Ikumi’s left palm.
I wasn’t able to observe Touko Kirishima.
This raised even more questions.
Before Sakuta could ask any of those, more letters appeared.
My perceptions may be revised soon.
The writing was going up Ikumi’s wrist now.
The rest is in your hands,
Unable to peel his eyes away, he watched the writing move up her arm.
phoneless Adoles
The message broke off midword.
Adolescent what?
Sakuta wrote out his question, but no answer came.
Instead…
“Sorry,” Ikumi muttered. “Feels like the connection’s gone.”
She looked downcast.
“Okay,” he said, pulling the pen away from her skin and putting the lid back on. “Right.”
All he could do was stand there and nod.