Ukawa Ai
FROM THAT DAY FORWARD, the silly emails from Itobayashi Akane suddenly stopped coming.
Of course, everyone had their own lives to live, so if she needed a break from her friend Ukawa Ai, then he wanted to respect her wishes. That being said, the timing gave him pause. Last time they spoke, they discussed the book she had based her entire life upon. Had he said something that hurt her feelings? He hadn’t noticed her looking upset, unless she was just really good at hiding it.
It was possible she just needed some space to figure herself out, so he didn’t try to contact her…but still, it gnawed at him. So when he chanced across the kid from before, it was a godsend.
On this particular requested day off, he’d traveled to his usual district in unusually modest attire. Bright colors could potentially distract the pop stars during their concert, so he limited scarlet red to his footwear, which would be concealed behind the row in front of him. He didn’t normally opt for glasses, but today he wore them as an extra precaution just in case. He didn’t want to run the risk of anyone recognizing him from that old video.
That being said, his hair was shorter back then, and since it was summer at the time of filming, he was wearing a plain old T-shirt and jeans. But most importantly, he was only in the video for a few seconds, so someone would have to pause on just the right frame and look closely to identify that it was him. Really, the glasses were just a token of his goodwill.
The ticket he’d printed at the corner store assigned him a seat in the center section, closer to the back. Ignoring the survey paper, he sat down and waited for the show to start without thinking about much else.
As it turned out, the content of the movie was closer to his personal experience reading Girl’s March than it was to Akane’s. Ai was a woman, her relationship with The Girl was portrayed as romantic, and the only similarities between her and Ai himself were her brusque attitude and her nicotine addiction (or so he assumed; in the book, she was depicted as “smoking,” but tobacco was never specified). In other words, they were traits just about anyone could have. Furthermore—and this was an observation he’d made while reading, too—The Girl struck him as far more similar to Gotou Julia than to Akane. Of course, he didn’t think of either friend as an evil liar, but in terms of having two distinct sides, a pop star like Julia struck him as a better fit.
All throughout the concert and the talk show, Julia radiated a strangely intense vibe. She must have really wanted to make up for her previous mistakes. While he supported this mindset, as her friend, he felt the fans would still embrace her even if she dropped the tough-girl act and approached them as her genuine self.
When the event ended, he saw no reason to rush, so he waited for the rest of his row to file out before following suit. Then, seeing a crowd of customers lingering on the concessions floor, it occurred to him that Akane might be here, though he wasn’t going to get his hopes up too much. As he glanced around, however, he spotted not Akane but the childhood friend whom he’d caught recording her in secret the other day.
“Are you free right now?”
“No,” the boy answered timidly, averting his eyes.
Ai was thinking of buying him a coffee or something if time allowed, but since the answer was no, he didn’t question it and instead cut right to the chase. “How’s Itobayashi Akane doing lately? What’s she up to?”
“Uhhh…I dunno, same as always?”
“Anything different about her?”
He didn’t mind if the boy ended up telling Akane about this conversation. All he wanted was information, not dirty secrets behind her back.
“Well…I heard she…broke up with some guy.”
“Oh yeah? She told you?”
“She didn’t have to. Everybody was freaking out about it.”
He could easily picture Akane announcing the catastrophe to her friends at school, be it angrily, morosely, or even as a funny story. Plus, a breakup was more than enough reason for a teenager to stop messaging for a while.
“Also, I don’t know what inspired her, but…”
Ai hadn’t pressed for further details, but the boy volunteered them regardless, so he listened quietly. He could tell this kid liked to hold the reins of conversation, probably as a show of defiance against adult authority. It reminded him of younger days.
“She stopped wearing her glasses and started talking back to the teacher, skipping out on her work, even talking to a guy she normally treats like dirt.”
The boy’s voice hardened at the end of his sentence, suggesting the last part was the most important. Ai could hear the passive-aggressive jab behind his words. Put simply, he was flaunting that he could see her faults in addition to her strengths. Perhaps he even felt possessive of her and was intentionally trying to drive Ai away.
If so, well, Ai didn’t base his opinion of a friend on secondhand information. “Huh. Wonder what that’s about.”
“I’m gonna go now.”
Right as Ai looked away to think for a moment, the kid grumpily stormed past him. Though it likely wasn’t welcome, he turned and called after him: “Thanks for the help! And try to be nice to her, okay?”
The boy didn’t answer, or even give him a passing glance, but Ai wasn’t hoping he would, so he went back to his thoughts. His attention was drawn to the word choice: what inspired her. Of course, the kid probably hadn’t meant it the way Ai interpreted it, but still—what if the glasses thing was yet another imitation of Girl’s March? If so, then he couldn’t think of a single correlating scene in the book or the movie.
“Weird,” he murmured to himself.
A few seconds later, he decided to stop worrying about it. Even if he could come up with the answer on his own, he wasn’t going to interrogate a heartbroken and depressed teenager over it. No point, then, in mulling it over. Besides, he had a policy of never doubting the word of a friend, no matter what—and on the last day he saw her, right before they parted ways, she had told him:
“Next time we meet, let it be as the real deal.”