In the past, there was an Idol whose stage name did not sound like a real person’s: Hanemori Joururi. She was a legendary idol, who dominated a generation. When she sang, she could fill the Budoukan or sweep the Oricon charts. She was the subject of everyone’s gossip.
People all over Japan saw Hanemori Joururi: they talked about her, gave her attention, and loved her. She was a social phenomenon. That might be why she was the last idol to shake the world by herself.
The turnover of generations accelerated, and idols were mass produced without end. In this generation, where so many idols debut and then disappear that it would be impossible to remember all their names, no idol would be able to stand out on her own. On top of it sounding bad to call them inferior copies, it would not be completely correct. And so, Hanemori Joururi was the last Super Idol, which was an idol of an older sort, close to being a historical figure.
There was no longer any space in show business for such an antiquated existence. For show business, rather than holding up a single generation’s super idol, there was more profit in systematizing idols, constantly spawning top idols to pull along a generation. That way would be able to reap profits at any time, in any era.
The method of manually building up an idol, bit by bit, was already a thing of the past. Certainly, doing such manual labor could miraculously turn out a masterpiece that would be left in history. Just like, for example, Hanemori Joururi. But management couldn’t rely on such miracles or coincidence. It was better to mass produce goods that were cheaper, and could reliably bring in reasonable amounts of income. That was the modern standard. Rather than a work of art molded carefully by a potter pouring out his soul, factory-made mass produced products, which could be found in a convenience store or a hundred yen shop, were more sought after.
Undergoing industrialization and mechanization, the world of show business became a systematic business. Current idols were born in a factory. Inheriting that system, enhancing and improving upon it, there would be no possibility of a special work of art, a Super Idol, being born that way. No one was looking for one either; not a misshapen life form like that— an untameable monster.
As an inevitability of capitalism, as a request, such a generation took shape. One could even say it was dangerous to rely on a work of art, or a lone genius, because if she breaks, everything fails. In reality, Hanemori Joururi fell from grace due to an insignificant scandal, and the world of show business went through hell trying to fill that hole.
The modern day had probably been shaped by echoes of that past. Without relying on a single person, with everyone supporting and building up one another, walking along a sound and gentle, evenly paved road. That was probably the correct decision. The current world of show business— the idol industry— had developed and was many times, tens of times larger in scope than when Hanemori Joururi had been active.
The sun that was Super Idols had set, and everyone forgot about Hanemori Joururi. Times change, and remnants of the past get buried in the earth where no one would be able to look back at them. Sayuri, too, had almost completely forgotten the name Hanemori Joururi. Like thinking, Ohhh, that person did exist, didn’t they? It was someone else’s affair. Most young kids these days probably don’t know the name of Hanemori Joururi; she was a person of the past, a character in a story that had ended long ago.
And yet, why was that name echoing now, of all times? Hanemori Joururi died.
“Mmnnn—” Sayuri gently opened her eyes. Apparently, she had nodded off, and had an unpleasant dream of the past— a man, whom she had sort of loved, strangled her when she told him she was pregnant with his child. Rejected, she was dejected. It could be said that she was lucky that the dream ended there, as the continuation was a string of incidents that would make her pretty depressed.
Sayuri had fallen asleep on a coffee table she kept to use when writing; it was placed along a wall in her small mountain cabin. She was in the middle of writing her usual report on the results of her fixed-point observations.
She’d always been bad at using her head, and after thinking hard about various things while writing the document, her tired brain must have let go of its consciousness. She had taken a nap, and she wasn’t even an infant or an old woman. Yawning, Sayuri stretched like a cat. Her back was stiff, maybe because she fell asleep sitting. Rubbing her eyes, she heard something fall with a thump.
Startled, she looked over at the source of the noise and found a blanket. Apparently, in order to prevent Sayuri from getting too cold, it seemed that her daughter had put a blanket on her. She surprised herself a little with how happy she was at this gesture.
Sayuri grinned. Although it’s a bit late, recently, her daughter had been incredibly cute.
Well, it would have been better if she had woken Sayuri up instead of putting a blanket on her— she was in the middle of work, after all. Looking at the clock, Sayuri saw that she’d been sleeping a long time. She’d missed the timing to make dinner.
Sayuri wondered if her daughter was hungry. Thinking that, she looked around the room, but there was no sign of her daughter. It was a fairly confined cabin; if she wasn’t anywhere in sight, her daughter was probably outside.
Maybe she was out in the field again, watching that strange TV. That thing that resembled a pagan altar was creepy enough that Sayuri wanted it removed, though. Her daughter would probably hate that. It was apparent that she had really come to like the thing.
“Hyah!?” In the quiet cabin, a huge, piercing sound was suddenly heard, taking Sayuri aback. Nervously looking for the origin of the sound, Sayuri found it was the landline placed near the window. Tentatively, this cabin had a telephone line running to it, and Sayuri used it to take care of her business whenever she found it too annoying to go all the way to town. Sayuri didn’t have many acquaintances, so the phone very rarely rang.
What is it? Sayuri wondered. With her heart beating rapidly, Sayuri crawled to the phone, because she thought standing would be too troublesome. The remains of her daughter’s kindness— the blanket— had tangled around her legs and made it extremely hard to move.
She picked up the phone without checking the caller’s number. “Hello,” she asked, “who is it?”
It appeared that her daughter was dead, or so Sayuri was told over the phone.