Uemura Tatsuaki
IT WASN’T UNCOMMON for Tatsuaki to come to this district. The biggest reason was that his sister worked there; on days that both of their parents were working overtime, he was instructed to come and grab dinner with her. The other reason was the number of movie theaters. With at least a dozen scattered around the district, he was bound to find a flick that caught his interest.
It wasn’t all roses, however. Owing to the location, it was easy to run into people from his school there. In order to avoid detection, he would always wear a hat and face mask—not that he thought his peers would even recognize his face, but just in case.
He found her almost entirely by coincidence.
Tatsuaki was on his way to the subway station after a movie when he decided, purely on a whim, to swing by the arcade first…but not to play anything. As he was looking at the crane game prizes, he glimpsed through the glass the blurry figure of his childhood friend leaving the elevator, accompanied by a female he didn’t recognize. With his earbuds in, he couldn’t hear their conversation, but they were definitely talking to each other.
Careful to keep his distance, he quickly powered on the camera on his bag, then began his pursuit. This, he felt, was his sworn duty.
Outside, he trailed them slowly, turning at the intersection. In this busy district, if you lost sight of someone, you wouldn’t see them again anytime soon. Fortunately, Akane’s companion was wearing a bright red sweater.
They walked for a while, then stepped into a cafe. The cafe in question appeared to occupy the entire building, so he figured it wouldn’t be too hard to go unnoticed. With his disguise on, he merely needed to delay his entrance, then sit a few tables away.
Unluckily for him, the pair had chosen a table directly beside the stairs to the second floor. He hastily averted his eyes, but all it took was one “Oh!” from Akane to know that his cover was blown. He couldn’t simply turn around and walk back out again, so he chose to sit at a mercifully empty table a short distance away. He was too far to pick up their voices, sadly, but with his bookbag on the table, he could at least record video footage with no trouble.
Thus he sat there for a while, drinking coffee and playing on his smartphone while filming his childhood friend. She didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in him.
Then, about ten minutes later, Akane suddenly stood up. Thinking they were about to leave, he hastily reached into his bag and adjusted the angle of the camera concealed there. But as it turned out, she was just going to the bathroom. Relieved, he turned the camera back to their table—and a few seconds later, something unexpected happened.
He would have to check the footage later to see exactly when and how it came about, because from his perspective, Akane’s companion simply appeared next to him at his table.
“Huh?”
The word slipped out in surprise, but the female ignored it. Upon closer inspection, she was startlingly beautiful. But he was too quick to relax, because in the next instant, he learned how it felt to be truly startled.
“Cut that shit out.”
The woman spoke with a man’s voice. With those four words, she—he?—pointed at Tatsuaki’s bag, then turned and sat back down at Akane’s table like everything was normal. Meanwhile, Tatsuaki was left to wrestle with his confusion.
A guy? A crossdresser? No, the issue here wasn’t with his gender or appearance. The issue was that he had recognized the camera, and his words suggested he knew exactly what Tatsuaki was using it for.
If so, he was in deep shit.
Even if the guy wasn’t a hundred percent sure, one word to Akane about it and she might tell the school to search Tatsuaki’s bookbag. She was that kind of girl.
He decided he needed to get out of there ASAP. To ensure they wouldn’t have a run-in, he waited until the moment Akane returned to their table. Fortunately, the cross-dressing man headed off to the smoking area shortly afterward.
Bag in hand, he kept his gaze pointed firmly in front of him as he walked down the stairs and left the building. It didn’t seem like either of them was coming after him, but he hurried to the subway station nonetheless. Heart racing, he stepped onto the train and realized how hard he was sweating.
Panic and fear, in the present moment, were nothing more than two emotions. But with the passage of time, he started to see them very differently…and by the time he got home, he was angry. Angry at that man. Angry at Akane for treating her friendships like fashion accessories.
It frustrated him to no end that he couldn’t immediately strike back at them. He had no clue who that guy was. And even if he posted everything he’d seen of Akane that day to the school message board, everyone would quickly figure out it was him.
By the next day, Tatsuaki’s mood had yet to improve. But that night, as he was struggling to shake it off alone, the perfect distraction fell into his lap.
Pop star Gotou Julia had finally slipped up.