Gotou Julia
THIS WAS MOST CERTAINLY not a storyline. At the very least, Julia hadn’t thought that far ahead. She was just afraid that everyone might prefer the version of her who walked a path she didn’t take—that they would be happier if she went back to being the original Julia, the one she thought she’d long since discarded.
But the original Julia wouldn’t have gone to some girl group’s concert. Since she wasn’t a pop star, she would have rather spent her free time with a friend. Nevertheless, she agonized over making that phone call until late into the night.
If she hadn’t called, believe it or not, she might have walked onstage the next night as if nothing was wrong. But when she heard the voice on the other end of the line, everything she’d walled off over the past few years was suddenly set free.
“Aren’t you cold? If you wanna add more layers, we could go shopping.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Though she hadn’t seen him in years, Ai was just as protective as she remembered, and she was touched that he seemingly hadn’t changed. She was starting to think she might really be able to go back to those days, if he wanted her to.
“So, what’ll we do when we get there?” he asked as they were riding the subway.
Julia regarded this question seriously. She had spent so long only ever thinking of what she needed to do that it took her a moment to give voice to what she wanted. Luckily, Ai was willing to wait.
“I want some…nail polish.”
After all that buildup, this rather mundane request must have caught him off-guard, because his eyes widened.
“Remember when you gave me one a long time ago? I held onto it as a sort of good-luck charm, but at this point it’s clearly past its expiration date. So if you don’t mind, I’d like you to get me another, even if it’s a bargain brand. And I’ll get you a gift in return.”
“You still have that? Sure, I don’t mind, if that’s what you want.”
“Thanks.”
The whole time, he’d positioned himself so that the other passengers couldn’t see her face, but personally, she didn’t care if she was seen. On the contrary, if everyone was going to find out about her existing outside her narrative, then she wanted it to happen as soon as possible—hence why she had chosen a busy district as her destination. But Ai’s overprotectiveness made her smile.
When he saw it, he smiled back. “What?”
It felt almost as though the years of being a pop star had never happened.
They arrived at the usual district, merged with the flowing crowd, and walked down a street she’d never taken. It took less than twenty minutes to find a cosmetics store and buy nail polish. Outside, they exchanged small paper gift bags containing the bottles they’d chosen for each other, then set off once more.
“Where to next?”
“Good question.” Again, it took some time to answer, but eventually she figured out what she wanted. “I guess I’d like to see your workplace again after all these years.”
“It’s closed today. Some kind of inspection. But hey, you can come by anytime! The manager was just saying how we owe you for the free advertising.”
“I see. Oh well.” As she spoke, she realized she wasn’t sure what exactly those words of disappointment were a response to. “Okay then, are any billiard halls still open? I kind of want to stop by.”
For some reason, this surprised him even more than the nail polish suggestion. It wasn’t something she felt obligated to comment on, but it would have been weird not to.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s just…another friend invited me to do the same thing recently. Is it trendy with girls now or something?”
“I don’t know about that. Personally, it’s been so long since I did any non-work-related exercise that I think it’d be fun.”
As Ai scratched his head over this coincidental similarity, he got in touch with a friend who ran a darts bar. Apparently they had a pool table there.
Walking into the dimly lit space, they found they practically had the whole place to themselves. Julia felt spoiled like a little kid all over again, but Ai explained that bars were always empty this early in the evening. As for his drinking buddy who ran the bar, he didn’t seem to recognize Julia at all.
She ordered an iced coffee while Ai got a beer, and they had fun playing pool together for a while. In the past few years of industry parties, she’d always felt obligated to order green tea highballs to avoid coming off like a buzzkill, but in truth, she never cared for the taste of alcohol.
“You don’t seem rusty at all.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle.”
They played two games of nine-ball, both of which ended with Ai the victor. At one point Julia came close to winning, and though she regretted her mistakes, that was part of the fun. After they left the bar, Ai asked her yet again:
“Anything else?”
“It feels like I’m living out a story about crossing things off my bucket list.”
“Yeah, you see it a lot in books and movies…”
“How would you know? You don’t even like books or movies,” she teased.
“I still have an idea of what they’re like!” he shot back with a grin.
She fell into thought once again, searching for the next request she would make of him. But she knew that every last second of indolence that ticked by brought her closer to the concert’s start time. She had left her smartphone back at home, so she looked instead at her wristwatch. Yes, there was some part of her whose heart ached—but no part of her wanted to remain caught between opposing sides.
“Say, why don’t we take some new purikura photos after all these years? I don’t know what kind’s popular with the teens these days, but I figure they’re more or less all the same. Oh, and I’d like to go to a flower shop. I’ve never been able to buy flowers since it wouldn’t match my image… What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…I went to purikura with that other friend of mine, too. Crazy coincidence, that’s all. But hey, thanks to her, I know what the latest craze is.”
“She sounds like a real go-getter.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got friends of all stripes.”
“Classic Ai, all right.”
“You’re not talking about some other Ai, are you?”
“What other Ai?”
“Nobody. There’s just a lot of folks with the same name, so I thought I’d ask.”
Whenever she called someone by their name, her mind envisioned the way it was written, so she didn’t really understand what he was saying.
After taking purikura pics at a nearby arcade, they stopped at the first flower shop they came to. As Julia ordered a simple bouquet to be delivered to her parents’ house, Ai once again asked for her input.
“What now?”
Though it sounded similar to his past questions, she could feel it had a weight that the others had lacked. The concert would be starting soon.
“I really don’t want to go to the concert right now.”
“…Okay, well, don’t blame me if you get fired,” he sighed, with an exasperated smile that fit him like a glove: beautiful and overprotective and rough around the edges.
Then she realized that description also fit a certain someone else.
“You probably already know this if you’ve read it, but your vibe’s kind of similar to Ai from Girl’s March.”
She partly wanted to steer the conversation away from the concert—but the look on his face indicated that her randomly chosen topic had inadvertently explained her strange choice of outfit.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“You knew all along?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” His index finger pointed in her direction, but not in an accusatory way. “Let me guess. Everything you wanted to do today is the same shit they do in Girl’s March, isn’t it?”
She gave it some consideration, then replied with the same honesty he always offered her. “What are you talking about? I know there was a flower shop scene, but the rest of it?”
“It’s not in the book?” Ai didn’t try to hide his stunned expression. Like a fictional character, he was cartoonishly transparent. “Look, I don’t know if there’s actual scenes of it, but a friend of mine said you can interpret it like that. She specifically asked me to reenact the things they did together. So when you wanted to do all the same stuff, I figured maybe you were copying that, too.”
“No, not at all. I was just saying whatever came to mind, so I’m afraid it’s pure coincidence. Besides, I’d never claim to be the protagonist of a novel—that’s ridiculous.”
“If it really was all a coincidence, then maybe you’re destined to be the protagonist.”
“No, a protagonist would do it by choice.” Just then, she realized: “Wait, is that why you were asking about ‘some other Ai’?”
“Yeah, exactly. My friend’s always talking about how similar I am to Ai from Girl’s March. Not that I think she’s right.”
“Oh really. Well, I would agree that you’re a bit like the book version.”
“You sure…?”
Charmed by the confusion and displeasure on his face, she found herself casually curious. And since she wasn’t her pop star persona right now, she was allowed to ask about anything that caught her interest.
“Say, I want to hear more about this friend of yours.”
“Huh?”
“Tell me about her.”
While she was away, someone else had spent time with him and come away with the same impression. As the lyricist of the film adaptation’s theme song, Julia could only read the book through the lens of a pop star. And yet, someone outside that prison had somehow developed the same opinion of Ai—both the man and the character. Driven by faint surprise, mild jealousy, and the slightest camaraderie, she wanted to know more. Thus, it was her next request.
“Fine, but do you mind if I have a quick smoke?”
“Of course you can.”
As far as she knew, this was the first time in world history that Impatiens would hold a performance without Gotou Julia. While she was huddled in the corner of a smoking area with a friend, coughing from the drag she bummed, the concert’s start time quietly came and went.