Itobayashi Akane
“Not once had The Girl ever found a flower already in bloom. She always had to make it happen herself. ”
GIRL’S MARCH, PAPERBACK EDITION, PAGE 50, LINE 21
WHEN SHE SAW AI standing at their meetup spot, Akane ran twenty meters forward. He turned at the sound of her footsteps, and the moment their eyes met, she already knew what she was going to open with.
“Oh my gosh, I have been dying to tell you!” she blurted out, revving the engine of her excitement.
This was her third encounter with Ai. It had been a while since the last time, but nevertheless, she pushed her affability front and center. Based on a friendship nurtured through several email exchanges and exactly one phone call, she was confident she wouldn’t put him in a bad mood—and evidently this wasn’t just her ego talking, because he didn’t even bat a lash at the teenage girl who came racing up without so much as a hello.
“What’s got you all fired up today, Itobayashi Akane?”
“Trust me, you’ll get fired up, too!”
She could get away with a bit of shouting; the city would absorb the excess volume. Conversely, it was an indoor voice that was more likely to be overheard. She cupped a hand at her cheek and lowered her voice to emphasize the secrecy of the information she was about to relay.
“Julia-chan showed up at my work the other day!”
It quickly became obvious that she had surpassed his visibly low expectations. “Oh yeah?” His beautiful eyes widened, and this reaction was more than enough to satisfy her. But Akane had built her life on contradicting herself.
“What, you’re not even surprised?! Oh, right, you work at a music venue. I guess you see pop stars in person all the time.”
“No, I am surprised—I just don’t flip out like a teenager. Seems like she prowls around this district, huh? I’ve never seen her around.”
“Really? I was at work, and I came up to her all discreet like, ‘Hey, I saw you live for the first time, and you were cool,’ and she was like, ‘Thanks,’ like…” She imitated the nasally voice and the thumbs-up, making sure the performance within a performance wasn’t too perfect. “Idols are still cool even when they’re offstage, huh?”
“Well, it’s their job.”
It was the kind of response that suggested he already knew this, but still wanted to share the moment without raining on her parade. The maturity of the reaction aided and abetted her charming teenage annoyance. “Dang it, I thought you were gonna freak out with me… I met your fave and everything…”
“Well, sorry to disappoint.” He laughed, and she could feel his sincere desire not to misrepresent his own feelings. She didn’t care about freaking out—to her, this was the most Ai reaction possible.
“Bee-tee-dubs, what scored the most points with me personally was that she was buying a copy of Ogusu Nanoka-san’s new book. Oh, and a kaiju magazine.”
“Ah, yeah, kaiju.”
“She likes them, huh? I read her wiki page.”
“Isn’t Ogusu Nanoka the one who wrote the…the character Ai that resembles me or whatever?”
With an awkward smile, Ai shifted the subject ever so slightly. He probably had no idea that the teenage girl he’d just met was the type of person to pay careful attention to other people’s faces. But even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have tried to hide a thing.
“Wait, did you read it?!”
“No, I don’t read. I know it sounds dumb, but I’m not a books guy. I only learned her name because I saw on a music forum that Julia did some kind of interview with her.”
“Ohhh, okay. Wait, I don’t think I’ve read that one. Is it about music?”
“Let’s talk about it on the way.”
Ai pointed in the direction they were headed, steering her away from the monument where they’d met up. He was the one who chose this destination, since there was a smoking area nearby. A light breeze blew the smell of nicotine from his red sweater. He was also wearing an ankle-length black skirt and leggings with gray sneakers, but no overcoat—probably to maximize mobility to suit the day’s plans.
By contrast, Akane wore a pale beige duffel coat over a pleated skirt. Her legs were always bare, no matter how cold it was outside, because her need to be liked had commanded her to use every advantage afforded by her youth. Far more chilling was the thought that if she hadn’t met Ai, she probably would have kept dancing to the tune of her compulsions well into old age.
“The interview was mainly about the characters and Julia’s lyrics,” he explained dutifully as they took their first step. “Oh, and they talked about her pet cat or something. I was surprised, since I always figured novelists live in isolation like hermits. But considering I’ve seen firsthand that musicians are ordinary people, maybe that’s a weird bias to have about writers specifically.”
“That sounds like the way I feel about musicians, though.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” he nodded, facing forward. “When you’re in high school, you don’t get a lot of opportunities to… Wait, that reminds me!”
He stopped short and turned to look at her; likewise, she followed suit, her eyes wide. “Reminds you of what?”
“I heard you came asking about me the other day.”
“What?! But I told her it was a secret!”
It took a level of skill to pretend to be shocked. This had quickly become apparent to Akane whenever someone in her friend group got a new boyfriend.
Ai promptly started walking again, as if he’d only stopped to fit the rhythm of the conversation. Evidently he didn’t consider it alarming enough to need to grill her about it. Relieved, she matched his pace once more.
“If some random teenager shows up, starts digging for deets on a specific employee, then says it’s a ‘secret,’ it’s gonna raise some flags.”
“I’m not some random teen! I just swung by on my way home from work and saw that lady from last time—Fujino-san? She was cleaning stuff near the entrance, and she didn’t look busy, so I thought I’d talk to her, that’s all.”
“Look here, brat, is your common sense borked or something?” The exasperated use of brat stung bittersweetly at the back of her nose, just as it had the last time. “Normally, if you meet somebody a total of one time, you’re still strangers.”
“But we had a really fun chat!”
“Yeah, because she was bored, and her common sense is broken, too. But when you’re an adult, if something shady happens at work, you report that shit. And now it’s made me look shady.”
“What?! Oh god…I’m so sorry…”