Uemura Tatsuaki
“SORRY, I DON’T MEAN to spring this on you, but…you know who I am, right? You called me Jul.”
“Well, yeah…”
“Okay, great. I promise this won’t take too long!”
Tatsuaki matched pace with Gotou Julia as she sped down the street. In his hands, his smartphone camera was trained on her…and at her own request, no less. One minute she was talking to that crossdresser guy, and then suddenly it turned into this? He didn’t understand what was going on—it was all so surreal, his brain couldn’t keep up, and at this point he was more or less on autopilot.
For so long, he had seen her as the enemy. And now she was right in front of him. He was close enough to hit her with every insult he’d built up over the years—or hit her in the literal sense, if he decided to disregard the law and his own code of ethics. But she had chosen him of all people to be her cameraman. She wanted him to film her.
Then she began to talk to the camera.
“This may seem rather out of the blue, but I actually don’t especially like being a pop star,” she explained, her heels clacking against the asphalt. “I don’t care about other idols, unless they’re selling more than we are, in which case I hate them. In fact, I wish the other artists signed to our label would fuck off to make more room for us.” As he reeled from this sudden confession, she shot him a smile and continued, “I also never liked kaiju at all. I just thought it would add something to my persona.”
This was exactly what he had always wanted: the secrets she’d kept hidden from the public.
“So I studied my ass off in case any real fans came to talk to me about them. Over time, I’ve started to understand why they’re so popular.”
He could almost delude himself into thinking it was his activism that had finally forced the truth out of her.
“I also don’t like any of the other members. I don’t hate them, but I’ve never once felt fond of them, I guess? I only acted like I cared because I knew it would make everyone happy. Although…one girl in particular I might’ve really hated if this was an alternate universe where we met some other way. But this isn’t that universe, so it’s all good. Here’s a special message just for you, Leader: quit acting like you’re the only one who was born to do this. But then again, I respect that about you.”
She kept walking while looking straight into the camera. Her destination: the place where Gotou Julia was meant to be.
“These days, I pretty much only meet people through my work. But before I joined Impatiens, I had friends and even a special someone. Then I gave up on ever seeing them again, and I broke up with my sweetheart. In a line of work where the goal is to make people like you, it felt wrong not to put the fans first.”
Each step brought her closer to the finish line.
This should have been the day Tatsuaki had always dreamed of. So much of his time had been spent hunting down her most careless remarks and criticizing her for them. And now, for some reason he couldn’t possibly fathom, she was disemboweling her deepest truths free from the idol veneer. Desperately, he wracked his brain for some way to take advantage of the situation, but nothing came to mind. It was all too much.
“Before my debut, this was how I liked to dress. Girly, right? Back in those days, I was always in a miniskirt. But when you think about Gotou Julia as a concept, it’s the pop star persona that suits me the best, isn’t it? Am I right?”
When she posed this question to the camera, Tatsuaki nodded on reflex. Then the crosswalk light turned green, and they headed up the hill.
“I don’t really care about my haters or whatever.”
At this, a different heart inside him began to quaver.
“But I’m always obsessing over everyone who likes me. It may not seem like it, but every last word you say has an impact on me, pushing me forward, pushing me back.” At the word you, she pointed at the camera lens—at the people who, unlike Tatsuaki, actually supported Gotou Julia. “And right now, I feel so blessed because of it. I’m standing on this ambiguous threshold where it’s up to everyone else whether I live or die, and I don’t know if I even like myself, but I am proud of what I’ve achieved.”
Any minute now, they would arrive at the venue. Along the way, they encountered several passersby who seemed to recognize her; Tatsuaki suspected their shouts probably made it into the video.
“The same can be said of my relationship with everyone. This, too, is something I think will always be left ambiguous—musician and fan, idol and otaku, lover and loved, the grateful and the grateful-for, the sponsor and the sponsored…friends, comrades, partners in crime. In my eyes, we’re all of those things mixed together, and I embrace it.”
At long last, the building containing the live music venue had come into view.
“Was there anything else I wanted to say? Oh yeah—I can’t stand producers. They only ever think about how to minimize their own risk. Very helpful for my career, though! But yeah, I genuinely like tomatoes and tomato juice. I also enjoy giving it my all onstage. I like singing, and I like dancing.” Arriving at the front of the building, he thought for sure this would be where they parted ways, but instead she looked directly into his eyes and said, “Just a few more steps, okay?”
Then she dashed straight past the employee standing guard at the stairs near the entrance. Tatsuaki followed suit, lest she leave him behind. Fortunately, the employee seemed too stunned by the sight of Julia to even notice him.
“Performer and staff, coming through! I’ll explain everything later!” she shouted as she bolted up the stairs.
At the top of the landing was a spacious floor with a reception table, in front of which stood several more employees, all with looks of shock on their faces. When she saw this, she looked over her shoulder at Tatsuaki and chuckled—not arrogantly or defiantly, but mischievously, as if enjoying a little troublemaking with a friend.
“Well, we made it to the goal.”
Though he was completely out of breath, he readjusted his grip on the camera, making sure not to miss a single moment. But Julia hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Out of everything I said just now, which do you think is the real me and which is the storyline I made up?”
Tatsuaki had no answer to this. Unsure what to do with those few seconds, he looked not at the camera, but at her face directly. Their eyes met.
“Thanks for filming. I just wanted to leave some proof behind, somewhere. Is it cool if I let you decide what to do with the footage? You can upload it or forget it, whichever.”
It almost sounded as though she knew about everything he’d been doing. Normally he would have felt attacked, then converted his disgust into pleasure. But now that the perfect opportunity had been handed to him, what first stirred to life within him was not discomfort at a pop star who was flawed like any human, but a part of him he thought had long since died—the part that liked her appearance, her singing, and her dancing.
He looked deep into her eyes, as if seeking her help. In response, she grinned—and this time it was the arrogant defiance she always showed onstage. Between this and her earlier reaction, the line was blurred.
“I finally figured it out just now: there is no truth, so you get to decide.”
With that, she slipped past the stunned staff members and through the door leading to the theater seats, and then she was gone.
✦ ✦ ✦
From that day forward, a flower-themed account who used to regularly harass Gotou Julia suddenly stopped posting.
Its final message was identical across all social media platforms, with no photo or video to accompany the text:
“I thought she was trying to brainwash us.”
And unlike all their previous messages, this one never got a single like or retweet.