As we do, Julie asks, “Do you really hate people looking at you that much?”
“Yes. It’s too gross.”
“Your braces make you look like a cyborg, Yuki. It works for you. You’ll be a lot more popular.”
Great. Marie’s acting like my live stream producer again. “Noooooo,” I whine, interrupting her.
“You know, those buckteeth were one of your charming points back when you were young.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Yeah! The viewers loved it. That beaver smile.”
“I’m not a beaver.”
Beaver Smile. I liked that nickname back when I was little. I thought it was cute.
I started streaming on Curiolive six years ago, when I was still in elementary school. I knew Curiosity had a video streaming service, but it was Marie who first got me interested. “I heard that Curious Kids (the kid-oriented streaming service on Curiolive) is really popular in the US!” she said. None of us had smartphones back then, so Marie had no choice but to beg our dad for one. Dad was into the idea, too; he always enjoyed that kind of thing. Mom didn’t look too happy about it, but Marie pushed so hard that she finally said yes, too.
She started out by introducing some of the toys she’d bought with the money she got from relatives for New Year’s, and when Julie and I saw her and Dad streaming and carrying on in the loft’s play space, we asked to join in. We called ourselves the Orange Sunshine sisters, and once a week, we’d do a live video—basically just nothing but unboxing and reviewing toys, so the play space got full of them pretty quick.
Marie was popular for her hair buns; Julie for her curly hair and big glasses (that hasn’t changed at all!); I, on the other hand, was known for my big front teeth, which I got from Dad. When I smiled, lots of people commented that my front teeth stood out like a beaver’s, which made me look cute. I don’t remember who came up with “Beaver Smile” first, but eventually the “Beaver” part got edited out and “Smile” became my handle.
Julie made up the little “Smile For Me” pose that I do. I think she said she borrowed it from a girl band that was popular at the time.
Streaming as a trio was a lot of fun for me…but Marie got bored of it pretty fast. So she quit Curiolive, saying it was more fun for her to stream gameplay videos instead. Julie, meanwhile—the best student among us—began calling it a waste of time. So in the end, I was the only one left, and now I’ve been streaming solo for about two years.
Me talking by myself wasn’t enough to get people motivated to watch, so I decided to use my streams to introduce the cute stuff in my life. Once I got started with that, it was surprising how well it was received.
Most recently, I began to start really hating my front teeth—the teeth people called “cute” and “like a beaver.” It all started with a comment from Dad.
“Y’know, Yuki, if you hold your mouth open all the time like that, people are gonna yell at you to stop spacing out, like they do to me.”
I thought I was keeping my mouth closed. But ever since Dad brought it up, I suddenly got super self-conscious about my front teeth—like, if you think about it, they really are the most ridiculous buckteeth ever. What’s worse, if you look at my face from the side, it’s so obvious that they’re sticking out at an angle. Totally non-cute.
Once I noticed that, there was just no turning back the clock. I couldn’t stand how awful it looked…so I asked Mom and Dad, and they agreed to let me get braces.
Unlike a retainer, I wouldn’t be able to take these off until the treatment was done. They’d be clacking away, all messy and gross, the entire time…and having people see that is so embarrassing. So I resolved to cover my mouth with a mask—and ever since then, I can no longer take it off in front of anyone but my family.
“But I thought you liked your front teeth,” Julie says.
“I used to…but, like, they’re not cute at all.”
I’m sitting on an open three-seat sofa by the escalator; we are all taking a break.
“Puberty hit you like a ton of bricks, huh?”
“But you don’t like your braces, either?” Marie asked.
“No.”
Of course not. They’re gross.
“But they’re cute. Very mecha.”
“Marie!”
Don’t call them mecha!
“Well, I kinda get it. Sometimes, you wake up one day and suddenly you hate how you look.”
“Did that happen to you, too, Julie?”
“Yeah. And I’m sure you’ll get it, too, Marie. Like, ‘Ohhh I hate being so small…’”
“Awww, I hope not.”
The conversation between them goes on and on, but I’m in no mood to join in. I gaze off into space. There are a lot of people around today.
“…Ah.”
Across from the sofa, there is a group of old men and women passing by a clothing store. At the very back of the group is that boy with the headphones. He is wearing the same clothes he was wearing the last time I’d seen him.
“Hey, that guy…!”
“That’s the guy we met!”
Julie and Marie notice, too. For some reason, they begin to sneak behind me, as if trying to hide.
The guy stops with his head down and stares at something in his hand. He looks conflicted, somehow… Oh, he’s looking at his phone screen. The group of old people moves on, not noticing he’s stopped.
“Hmm?”
Julie and Marie both say it out loud at the same time. A woman with long, beautiful black hair approaches the guy and stops. He notices her, too, saying something to her.
“Hmmm?”
Julie and Marie lean out from behind my back, pushing me forward a little.
“He likes older women, huh?”
They seem oddly disappointed about that. Certainly, she seems older than him, maybe thirty years old.
“So he has all those problems with talking, but he still has a girlfriend?”
Huh? That’s his girlfriend?
“Maybe it’s his sister?”
“Nah, they don’t even look alike.”
They are busy swapping theories behind me, but I recall when he got a look at my front teeth. “Braces.” He’d said it in the tiniest whisper, but I’m sure that’s what he said.
Suddenly, I feel something around my mask. I realize it is my finger, held over my mouth and the mask. I look up, and I see he has just walked away with the long-haired woman.
So I get up from the sofa and follow them.
The guy, the long-haired woman, and the group of old people are gathered on a wide bridge-type thing that connects both sides of the main mall corridor. The group and the guy are sitting on a long sofa, while the long-haired woman stands across from them, talking about something. The three of us are hiding behind the stairwell railing, watching them. It is just glass between us and them, so we aren’t exactly inconspicuous…but they don’t notice.
“All right,” the long-haired woman says, “now let’s share what you’ve come up with in the midst of that excursion.”
Excursion? What’s that mean?
“Please write your work on the strips of paper I just gave you. I’ll read them for everyone this time.”
“Miyuki,” the guy in the cowboy hat says, “is it all right if we don’t write our names?”
So the lady’s name is Miyuki. I wonder what kind of teacher she is?
“I’d prefer if you did, if possible. We’ll put these up on display over at Sunnyside later.”
Sunnyside?
The people sitting on the bench start to write something on their papers. The headphones guy is joining them.
“All right, I’ll collect them as you finish up.”
Miyuki walks toward the bench and collects the paper strips—the young guy’s last. He is looking down at the floor like he doesn’t want to be there much.
“Great! Now I’d like to read them for you.”
Returning to where she was, Miyuki looks back at everyone else. I can only see her back from where I am, but with a flick of her hand, she holds the strips of paper to her chest.
“The mall mannequin, wearing a yukata at the bright shopping mall. The mall mannequin, wearing a yukata at the bright shopping mall…”
Is this…poetry—haiku or something?
“Is she a language teacher?” Marie whispers. “We’re not at school,” counters Julie.
“So the mannequins at the store window are dressed in yukata, or light kimono, and it feels a lot like summer, doesn’t it? I can certainly feel that. This is by Mr. Sasaki.”
The old man in the cowboy hat scratches his cheek in embarrassment, the people around him smiling and applauding.
“Moving on…”
Miyuki stops for a moment. She is staring at her stack of papers, shuffling from one to the other. After a while, she looks at the headphones guy and says, “Cherry?” He responds with a look of surprise. Cherry, huh? Is that his nickname?
“Could you come join me here a minute?”
“…Okay,” Cherry replies softly, standing up and starting to walk over to Miyuki. Once he arrives, she offers him a strip of paper. Cherry takes it, mumbling, “This…is mine…?” to himself. Why is he so puzzled about it?
“If you could read it for us, please?”
“Huh?!”
“…You don’t want to?”
“No, I mean… I’m just not into reading in front of people and stuff… Like, it’s not really my style…”
Cherry is clearly upset by Miyuki’s request.
“But everyone wants to hear it.”
Miyuki turns toward the bench. The old people there all nod and smile. That elicits a very obvious change in Cherry’s facial expression. His skin turns bright red—right, like a cherry. He looks more agitated than before, slumping down, sighing heavily, staring at the paper in his hand, and acting all restless. It isn’t just his face that turns red, but his entire body. His arms, visible below the sleeves of the pink polo shirt he is wearing, are the exact same shade.
“Why don’t you read it to them? You have such a wonderful voice.”
Once Miyuki says that, Cherry turns toward the crowd and holds the strip in front of them, resolved to his fate. It is hard to see his expression, but I can tell his ears are the color of red bricks. Oh, man. Just watching him makes me nervous.
So there he is, holding up this piece of paper as his shoulders tremble, but he is having trouble getting started.
“…The…”
Huh? The? He said something, but I couldn’t hear it properly.
“…The…away…rays of…”
“Ehh?”