Fujino Mikoto
IT WAS MIDDAY on the weekend, and with no work to attend to at the music venue, Mikoto had just woken up. As she chugged a glass of water, her head throbbed with a hangover, curtained by freshly bleached hair.
Last night after work, she had begged Hashirayama Keiji to go drinking with her until morning. In a city that never slept, there were plenty of places that were still open by the time their shifts ended. When she carefully explained her desire for him to buy her drinks, he was reluctant at first, pointing out that they’d be wasted on someone who would puke them right back up again, and besides, unlike her, he had to work the next day. But it wasn’t long before they were toasting beers across a table, joined by a third coworker.
Thanks to her stomach’s most thorough rejection, she had been spared the worst possible outcome this morning. As she drank her water, she wondered how the other two were faring, since they were both scheduled to work that day. Not her problem, though.
Generally speaking, Mikoto lived her life with no hostility toward others. When a coworker brought a high schooler to their workplace, she warned the girl of his worst habit, and when that high schooler came back to ask questions about him, she willingly revealed his favorite brands. In both cases, she merely thought it would liven things up. But while her thoughtlessness had historically resulted in devastating consequences at times, she was quick to reflect on her actions. Thus, she had reported the girl’s visit to the higher-ups, just in case.
In the kitchen, she heated up some frozen rice to make green tea soup. It tasted so good, she could almost trick herself into thinking alcohol’s entire purpose was to facilitate this moment when she was freed from her suffering.
Now that she was feeling like herself again, she shuffled through the social media apps on her phone. Far down her Twitter timeline, during the time she was still at the bar last night, one of her new favorite accounts had started posting.
“That reminds me—what’s that plushie your little high schooler has on her bag?”
“Don’t call her my high schooler. Anyway, it’s called Anmanman, so it’s probably supposed to be a steamed azuki bun.”
“Is that the latest craze?”
“It’s her latest craze, at least.”
Following this conversation from a few days prior, she had searched the character’s name on Twitter and was now low-key obsessed with the official account.
“I wonder what he looks like on the inside.”
Mikoto preferred characters with their own agency, and she would regularly binge-watch videos where they were integrated into real life. In that sense, she suspected she might have similar tastes to idol fan Ukawa Ai, her coworker.
After that, she put in a load of laundry, took a shower, and decided she would spend the evening watching a web show that had invited her bassist friend to guest on it. The “road to stardom” theme was mildly cringey, but perfect for the bassist’s band, whose starry-eyed lyrics made her blush just listening to them.
She sat on the couch and set her laptop on the coffee table. When she searched for the web show, she found the stream was already live, and all four members of her friend’s band were onscreen. Look at ’em shaking like a leaf, she thought to herself idly as she bit into a Ramune-flavored ice cream bar she found in the freezer.
Alas, she had barely started listening to their serious discussion when, not even twenty minutes later, their turn in the spotlight came to an end. Having quickly lost her main incentive to watch the show, it was nothing more than inertia that kept her from closing the tab—that is, until the next guests walked onscreen and she blurted out:
“Ai’s girl!”
As she scrutinized the woman in the pastel costume, the melting ice cream bar nearly dripped onto her own clothes.
As someone with no interest in pop idols, Mikoto couldn’t identify the other two girls offhand. All she knew was that their group was blowing up lately, plus she could recognize a couple of their songs. The show host focused on the girls one at a time, until he eventually reached the one even Mikoto knew about. Apparently the production staff wasn’t given any footage of her from before her debut, and she looked really guilty about not having any material to offer them.
“Awww! You should’ve asked me, silly!”
She tossed the popsicle stick into the trash, then grabbed her wireless mouse and navigated to the Videos folder on her desktop. Most were filmed in terrible lighting that obscured the performers’ faces, but she remembered one in particular that would work, and after a few minutes of digging, she found it. Unfortunately, in the time it had taken her to locate the video, the girls had already walked offscreen. Though she knew it was probably too late, she was nonetheless spurred to action by the tiny chance that she could help them. She was, at heart, a good Samaritan.
As a precaution, she did a quick search to check if it was public knowledge first—it seemed safe. Then she took the video she had filmed a few years ago for her own collection and attached it to a tweet directed to the group’s official Twitter with the text “Feel free to use this if you want!” Lastly, just to make doubly sure someone would notice it, she added the relevant hashtags. This seemed to pay off, because the tweet quickly garnered a few likes and retweets. Some small part of her hoped they might showcase it live, so she left the stream open to play in another tab as she rewatched her footage and pored through old memories.
In the end, the show didn’t report on Mikoto’s act of generosity, but she wasn’t devastated. Since it was a live show, they probably didn’t have time to react to it. More pressing was the fact that the group’s fans were spreading her tweet farther than she ever imagined. Some of them even questioned whether the video was taken illegally.
It occurred to her now that she might have been careless. Once again, she ran through a mental checklist to make sure she hadn’t broken any laws. Then, just in case, she added a follow-up reply to assure everyone that she was given permission to film this. As a further precaution, she checked the file creation date in her logbook and was relieved to confirm that yes, the video was filmed before she was hired.
The live music venue had specific events where visitors were allowed to record performances. It was almost always forbidden when major artists were involved, and anyone caught breaking the rules would be accosted by the staff, but depending on the event and the performer, there were occasional exceptions. Prior to getting hired there, Mikoto had a hobby of filming musicians at those events and making videos—partly to get to brag that she knew them before they were famous, yes, but more often because she just wanted to scout out hidden talent. For that reason, she would often revisit their performances whenever she was bored—even the ones who didn’t initially impress her during their brief time live on stage.
The fans responded to her clarification tweet with gratitude, seemingly relieved that they weren’t going to be complicit in someone else’s crime.
“Thank you for such a rare look at Jul!”
Though it hadn’t gone exactly to plan, she had still succeeded in helping someone, and her heart was practically singing. To relive the experience she had brought to these fans, she hit Play on the old video once more.
In that moment, she hadn’t the slightest inkling that she would soon be apologizing profusely for her lack of professionalism to the boss and coworkers who had been filmed in the process. All she saw right now was a teenage Gotou Julia, singing a cutesy song with amateur lyrics she had surely penned herself, in a voice that had yet to undergo training, and beaming from ear to ear as she chatted with her favorite staff member.