It was snowing just like this when Ai died. Or at least, that’s how it seemed. It’s just a vague feeling. There had been a concert that day, but when I think about it carefully, people had been gathered outside the dome, but none of them had an umbrella. Actually, I do remember there was a heavy snow not long before Ai’s funeral that paralyzed the transportation network. I recall having trouble with it when I went to buy mourning clothes for the farewell service. It probably wasn’t really snowing on the day she died. But in retrospect, life gradually becomes abstract. It’s pretty common to switch the actual memory with your emotional landscape. Often, your brain assumes that the way something felt is what really happened. So much time has passed since that day that I recall its events as a mere impression, a memory divorced from the facts. Even so, what happened on that day fifteen years ago, when Ai died, felt to me like the very first time snow had fallen on the world. I pulled on the designer coat, and it looked so awful I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d decided to go down to the convenience store to buy dinner, but a cold wave had hit or something because today was particularly chilly. The garment I’d carelessly pulled out of the closet was an expensive coat I’d bought a decade ago, practically an aesthetic symbol. It was a mustard-colored trench coat, and at this point, even the texture of the fabric seemed odd to me. Peeking out from under that coat were gray sweatpants, their fabric rough with pills, and aqua-blue socks. My house clothes were warm, but that was it. They were even more hideously incompatible with the luxury coat than I’d imagined. Tossing the coat onto the living room chair, I stomped my feet into a pair of sport sandals. The sandals didn’t fit. A guy I’d lived with once had left them behind, ages ago. “I guess this’ll do.” It was just a three-minute walk to the convenience store. Nobody got dressed up for something like that. I’d left a polyurethane mask by the door, and I hooked it over my ears, feeling as if I were hiding my face. I locked both locks, top and bottom. That habit was deeply ingrained in me. Every time I looked at the door of my condo from the outside, something deep in my heart stirred uneasily. When it comes to caution, I think more is always better. I left through the building’s main door, which locked automatically, and stepped right into a strong crosswind. Gritting my teeth and hunching my already small body against the December wind, I hurried toward the convenience store. On the way, I ended up standing next to a college-aged guy at a traffic signal. I was careful not to look at him. Even after the signal turned green, I didn’t start walking right away. If I walked ahead of him, I’d have his eyes on my back all the way to the convenience store. I didn’t like that idea. My fleeced sweats were warm, but the winter wind seemed to stab into the back of my neck. Still, I knew all too well that human eyes were far sharper and pierced far deeper than even the freezing wind. I stayed behind the man, walking at half my usual pace. The convenience store was really close if I ran, but right now, it felt awfully far away. I felt awful. “Maybe I should’ve worn that coat.” From a mental health perspective, would it have been better to put on something a little more decent before I went out, instead of walking around feeling like a criminal? I felt regret seep into my heart. Still, even if the same thing happened next month, I’d head to the convenience store in these gray sweats. I could be sure of that. My thought patterns had rusted long ago. At this point, a little sentimentality wasn’t enough to change a thing. At thirty-seven, I didn’t feel like changing anything anymore. Things could not have been more different compared to when I was an idol. Seventeen years ago. I’d belonged to an idol group called B Komachi, and we were pretty popular for a while. I’d flaunted my youth, been showered with cheers and envy, and lived in the public eye. I’d had that sort of life once. The amount of care I took with my appearance back then was incomparable to what I did now. Being more stylish than other people was one of my core values, and I was the type of person to genuinely laugh at people who didn’t think that way. I thought being cute and pretty were more important than anything. The entertainment industry is the pinnacle of lookism. Women are measured by their beauty, and all the jobs go to the beautiful. That sort of thing was done without a blush, and people encouraged it as if it were natural. Be cute, they said. Be pretty. Once I was out in the working world, I realized just how abnormal that was. No matter how you thought about it, a culture that determined a woman’s value by her face was weird. If a regular company had tried that, it would definitely have turned into a huge dispute featuring words like harassment and compliance. In the entertainment industry, that lookism went unpunished because we were products. Our looks were the specs; our schooling, the need; our hairstyles, the variation; and our fashion, the packaging. Products had to be pretty. That was the minimum obligation imposed on us by our vendor. After all, it’s only natural for a ripped bag of potato chips to be returned with a complaint. When did it start? When had I started hating that world? I used to love idols. Adored them. Wanted to be one. At my first audition, emotion had welled up inside me like magma. However, that emotion had gone cold and dead somewhere along the way, turning into a large lump of rock that rolled around in my chest. The winter I was twenty-four, I left the group. I wanted to do something besides be an idol. I didn’t care what it was, as long as it was different. If there was something I could get absorbed in, I preferred that, so I played around with being a model for a while. After all, I was just a little prettier than average…and I had nothing else going for me. I didn’t act. I took acting lessons because my agency recommended it, but my hands were full with the work I already had to do. In the end, I only went a few times and didn’t show up again after that. Just after leaving the group, I got jobs thanks to my status as a former B Komachi member. I hadn’t been particularly eye-catching within the group, though, and in the end, it wasn’t enough of a weapon to let me compete with other performers. Gradually, fewer and fewer jobs came in, and around the time I was struggling to keep my head above water, B Komachi broke up. After that, I stopped getting jobs altogether. One day, when my contract renewal was coming up, President Miyako asked me, “What do you want to do?” I wondered about that. What could I do? I could sing and dance. I was young and cute. That was it. I also knew I’d reached an age that didn’t count as “young” anymore in this industry. The stylist had stopped giving me pink costumes, replacing them with more beige and navy-blue ones. Still, in the back of my mind, I was reluctant to move back in with my parents, and I knew I needed to find work. So I told Miyako that’s what I’d do. “I see,” she said. I felt like she looked a little lonely. …It was only a feeling, though. I wonder whether that was really true. I don’t remember. But that was how I’d wanted it to be. After leaving the agency, I spent a while job hunting and finally managed to land a marketing position at a web services company. As I’d anticipated, leaving the idol industry and finding work hadn’t been easy. None of the cosmetics or designer clothing companies I’d been interested in had been interested in me. I’d managed to make it to the second round of interviews a few times, but even I picked up on the fact that the questions they asked generally didn’t have much to do with the job and instead simply reflected the hiring supervisor’s personal interests. Outside the entertainment industry, the attitude toward “entertainers” was overt, and it made things uncomfortable. Being a former idol got people’s attention, but it also marked me. Some people seemed to dislike the fact that idols even existed, and they were openly sarcastic toward me, saying things like “I thought you were an idol.” Yes, I am an idol. Sorry I’m not very cute. In the end, being a former idol is also probably why I ended up in marketing. We’ll be in luck if a client happens to be an old fan of hers, they’d thought, and HR had taken care of the rest. In fact, quite a few other friends in my generation—also former idols who’d left the business—seemed to have ended up in marketing. I guess that’s just how it is. Having been popular as an idol wasn’t a major advantage in our later lives. When it came to income, going to a good university would have given us more stability. I’d had millions of yen saved up during my prime as an idol, but four years or so after I’d left the industry and started working, I’d gone through almost all of it. Long ago, toward the end of my time as an idol, my rent had been subsidized, and I’d lived on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise apartment building. Now I was renting a cheap studio apartment in the suburbs for ninety thousand yen per month. I didn’t wonder, How did things turn out like this? They just had. I’d simply realized, a little late, that money was the same. I’d realized that youth is something you only have when you’re young. That trench coat had been a purchase from my idol days. It was an afterimage from a time when I’d been pretty, young, and cute. It wasn’t as if I’d wear it now anyway. I could have thrown it away or sold it. Was it some sort of lingering attachment that stopped me? Sometimes I envied Ai. In my memories, even now, she was young and beautiful. No woman in this world was better than Ai. That was how it felt anyway. Was that also just a memory-induced hallucination? Was I the one who wanted things to be that way, or was I just selfishly forcing it onto her? When I was young, I’d had appropriately young ideas like “I’ll die before I get old.” But here I am, still stubbornly hanging on. “Now that I think about it, didn’t I sing a song about that once, a long time ago?” I’m mad. It isn’t because the photo for my birthday festival announcement was tacky or because the other members hadn’t had the choreography down during the event. Sure, those things are annoying me, too, but they’re not the biggest peeve on my list right now. I’m mad because my boyfriend dumped me. More accurately, I don’t like what he said right before we broke up. “Look, it’s a pain, okay?” He’d said it like he deeply, sincerely thought so. In the dressing room before a show, while we wait for our turn with the makeup artist, there’s nothing to do but fiddle with our phones or chat with one another. “You’d been going out for, what, two months? What a coward. Good thing you broke up.” I push the personal items other members have left on the makeup table over to the side, then thump my elbow down on it, adding a bit of drama to the gesture. “I think so, too, but there are better ways to break up, you know? You want it to end nicely, at least. I swear, this whole thing sucks! Once I get back home, I’m throwing out all his stuff!” I’m yelling at Kanan, a member who joined recently, as I cram my street clothes into my travel case. Kanan plays with her hair as she listens. It’s immaculately long, black, and neat. No matter how fiercely she dances, it stays silky and straight. Of course, it’s fixed with hairspray, so it feels all crunchy if you touch it. Kanan fiddles with her stiff bangs, combing through them with her fingers as she speaks. “But you actually did do something to make him think it was a pain, didn’t you?” I feel as if she’s got it in one. My heart refuses to be okay with that, though, and my brain tries to squeeze out an argument somehow. One that’ll make me seem like the victim. “…Well, he said we should meet up on the way back from our show in Yokohama the other day. He told me he’d made reservations at a restaurant in Chinatown, see? When I told him that wasn’t enough, he just snapped.” Kanan’s eyes go to a corner of the ceiling. “Oh, yeah…” Apparently, that had satisfied her. There’s a note of sympathy in her voice now. “Even though there were going to be a ton of customers on their way home from the show there! He couldn’t even imagine something like that.” This seems to strike a chord with Kanan as well. After tracing the corner of the ceiling, her gaze drops to her nails. “That sort of thing may be hard for normal people.” Something about that comment nags at me a bit. Normal people. When Kanan said those words, the hint of a confident smile crossed her lips. It was as if she was saying she wasn’t “normal.” That she was somebody special. B Komachi’s member turnover was pretty high. Kanan was the eleventh member since the group’s formation. Over the group’s four-year history, five girls had quit and seven had joined. Kanan had worked as a regional indie idol for a year, but her group had broken up, so she’d joined ours. That meant she was relatively familiar with the industry, and she even knew a fair bit about how to navigate romance. The members of B Komachi didn’t get along very well. Because… “Morning! ” Slender limbs. Long black hair. Eyes brimming with confidence. A maturity that makes her seem older than fifteen, with a youthfulness to match her age. Our permanent center, Ai, just walked past in the hall. “……” I notice that Kanan has suddenly fallen silent. That girl is the reason B Komachi doesn’t get along. The management openly favors Ai. She’s basically the face of our group. But she joined after we did, think the founding members. We don’t stand a chance, think the newer members. Of course, everyone thinks we need to get along, since we’re all in this together. There’s no bullying, and we don’t make nasty comments to each other behind her back. Everyone just thinks it’s not fun. The atmosphere is weirdly frosty. We’re friendly with other members as individuals, but are we a friendly group? Well… The atmosphere isn’t great. Publicly, we upload photos of the group acting like we’re close, of course. I’m pretty sure Ai is part of the reason behind our high turnover…probably. That said, it’s not as if I hate her. I put it that way because Ai doesn’t make any special effort to be friends with the other members. She’s all smiles with adults, and she knows where to draw the line with what she says and does. She never seems stressed. But all that aside, what she says sounds scripted, like model answers. It’s just lip service that doesn’t show any of her true feelings. The most straightforward way to put it is that I sense a wall between us. To me, since Ai keeps a certain distance between herself and the rest of us, it feels as if there’s no way to like or dislike her. It’s true that I feel the management’s overt favoritism is unfair, but they probably can’t help it. After all, she’s cute. She really is. Ai is the one who leads the group, and I’m grateful to her for a lot of things. An indie idol group that began at the whim of a minor agency has climbed out of the indies and made its major debut. Granted, what we do hasn’t changed much from when we were an indie group, but thanks to Ai, we definitely have more opportunities for media exposure. In online surveys, we’ve taken top place in the rankings of “Idol groups that are going to go big soon.” It feels like we’re just getting started. Not bad at all. Somewhere in there, the atmosphere in the dressing room has reverted to the chaotic mess it usually is before a show. “Maybe I’ll stay single for a while…” I’ve muttered the words as if I’m talking to myself, but Kanan answers. “How admirable… That might be a good idea, though. It would be awful if the weeklies got photos of you.” Kanan’s talking crazy. “The weeklies…? No way. They wouldn’t want photos of me. If I were somebody big, sure, but articles about nobodies like us wouldn’t boost their sales one bit.” We get that reminder from all sorts of people. However, the ones who say it are always those with a narrow view of the entertainment industry. We’re far closer to the edge of this world than our fans assume, and the world we inhabit is different from the one some stars live in. People pay far less attention to us than our fans believe they do. “Well, that may be true of the weeklies…but there’s no telling what could happen. Since you are an idol, it’s probably better to keep your relationships on the quiet side.” I knew Kanan had dated a relatively famous actor when she was in her previous group. She’s merciless about her ex at this point, calling him a pedo who’s into young girls, so she probably regrets going out with him. However, there are a whole lot of adults in this industry who take advantage of young girls’ ignorance. There are quite a few men who try to use that environment to their advantage in their relationships with women, so the people around those girls have to protect them. That said, if a girl who idolizes the adult world is treated like a grown woman and offered fancy, expensive-looking champagne, she may end up mistakenly believing she is, in fact, an adult, and get herself into a situation just like that… It wasn’t as if I didn’t understand that feeling. My ex had been twenty-one and in a band. I’m eighteen, so it was socially acceptable—barely. Still, I have the vague feeling we’d been cutting it pretty close. “You know…I’d like to have a normal romance.” “Seriously.” Even idols want love. When you work with adults, though, peers your own age seem childish. At the same time, agencies have all sorts of strict rules and do their best to isolate us from men. Naturally, we can’t talk about our love lives in front of our manager. We don’t actually have many opportunities to meet men who might develop into love interests. So when our friends introduce us to someone, or we meet a guy at some weird drinking party, we tend to cut loose. The more restrictive a girl’s agency, the harder she rebels. That’s just how it is. On top of that, most of the guys you meet at weird drinking parties aren’t decent. Dating them never ends well. The best life is one where you never know the taste of sparkling wine that’s expensive and nothing else. Spotlights illuminate the stage. The hum of the audience turns to cheers. The members bound onto the stage, one by one, and the fans respond to each of them with cries and applause. When Ai runs on and joins the rest of us, taking up her position at the center, their volume peaks. It always starts like this. In the sea of multicolored lightsticks, the ones in red—Ai’s color—stand out the most. They dazzle, dyeing the audience their color. The cheers that vary based on popularity and the colors of those lightsticks are cruel, but I no longer feel any emotion toward either. Making popularity visible is allowed in idol culture. The fans I see over Ai’s shoulder are a little scary. This isn’t the sort of place where I can just accept the cheers and be delighted. I search out yellow lightsticks—my own color—as if clinging to them, then let out a sigh. Cheers envelop the venue. B Komachi has six members right now. Ai gets the majority of the vocal assignments, but the mere fact that none of our mics are turned off means we’re better off than we would be in a large group. In groups with close to twenty members, the least popular members’ mics aren’t even hooked up. In lots of venues, due to equipment limitations, the maximum number of mics that can pick up sound is sixteen. In some places, that max is eight. Mic mixers usually have eight input channels, so the number of mics used tends to be a multiple of eight. Lots of B Komachi’s songs have love as their theme. It must be intentional on management’s part. We sing things like “I like you” and “I love you” to our fans. It makes me feel bad singing the sort of songs that could easily make them fall in love with us for real. I don’t like the whole “real love” business model, so I’d prefer to build friendly relationships with my fans. As you’d imagine, when I’ve got a boyfriend, making fans fall in love with me weighs heavily on my conscience. Since that’s so, I always feel conflicted when I sing songs like these. They aren’t what I want to be singing when I’m grousing offstage about being dumped by my boyfriend. At the end of the last chorus, I point to the audience—specifically the yellow lightsticks—and shout out, “I love you!” My heart aches a little. After the show, we leave the venue through the back door, then travel by car. I get dropped off at the train station the next town over. It’s thirty minutes back to my place. Even idols take the train. On some days, even something as natural as that feels like too much work. Of course, I’m thinking about my ex. I want to think out in the cold wind and try to find a way to clear away these melancholy feelings. I sit down on a bench in a park behind the station and look up at the sky. The moon looks as if it’s been snapped neatly in half. If I gaze at it, it seems as though I might think of something. Apparently, ideas come to me more readily when I have someone to talk to, though. The truth is, I tend to get lonely pretty easily. I constantly have a vague sense of unease, and I always want people to praise me, to acknowledge me. The fastest, most effective remedy for those feelings is a boyfriend. Why do I feel more comforted after complaining to the opposite sex than when I complain to another girl? I feel like I’m the type of person who’s bad at protecting her heart unless she has a guy. I just said I’d spend a while without a boyfriend, but here I am, wondering if there are any good men around. I think I might not be cut out to be an idol. Spending the night with a lover, then screaming “I loooove you!” at fans right afterward. If you think about it normally, that’s basically cheating. That was the type of idol I hated the most before becoming one myself. What else is there to do, though? Loving men is probably just how I was born. Even if I fell for the fans, I couldn’t date them, you know? So who’s going to hold me close? How am I, hopeless as I am, supposed to fill this hopeless emptiness inside me? As I’m thinking hopeless things like that, out of nowhere, somebody calls to me. “Hey!” The voice is cheerful, but it sounds a little mechanical. I turn to look. A girl is standing there backlit by one of the park lights, carrying a paper fast food bag that doesn’t suit her pretty face. “…Ai? What are you doing here?” That’s a shock. Ai, B Komachi’s center. I never thought I’d run into her in a place like this, under circumstances like these. The unexpected situation has me a little bewildered. In contrast, Ai’s behaving like her usual self. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. I was thinking I’d have my dinner here.” “…Dinner?” The way she’s backlit by the park light seems to clash with her oddly mundane remark. “There aren’t any places to eat near where I live. I bought a burger by the station, and I was planning to eat it at home, but…” Ai shoves a hand into the paper bag, yanks the entire yellow paper wrapper off a burger, crumples it up in her hand, then tosses it back into the sack. Holding the burger in her bare hands, she chomps into it. You’d think she’d been raised in a barn. “Then wait until you get home to eat.” I’m a little appalled by Ai’s lack of restraint, and I also feel uncomfortable. For a moment, I think our eyes meet, but Ai continues the conversation in that laid-back way of hers. “Well, I was going to. But once I bought it, I wanted to eat it right away. It’s all freshly made and hot, you know? It would’ve gotten cold. So I was wandering around looking for a good place to eat, and I saw a girl with this suuuuper gloomy expression. And then when I looked closer, it turned out she was a fellow group member.” Had Ai spoken to me because she was worried about me? “…Did I really look that gloomy?” “Yup. Like it was the end of the world.” “So you were worried about me.” Ai chews her burger, smiling, without meeting my eyes. “…Heh-heh.” …I don’t get it. Did she really just stop by on a whim? I wonder, watching Ai’s profile as she takes bites out of that denuded cheeseburger. She’s really absorbed in her meal. There’s already ketchup on her little finger, and I notice she’s dropped some bits of onion on the ground. Weirdly, it doesn’t strike me as dirty or vulgar. The first words that come to mind are innocent and authentic. If I did this, I bet other people’s impressions would be different. It does bother me for some reason, though, so I mention it to her. “You don’t have to throw the wrapper away, you know. If you keep it around the part you’re holding…” Ai looks down at her burger. She seems to think for a second. “Oh! Right…” She glances into the paper bag, looking as if the idea has struck her as novel and profoundly sensible. Ai doesn’t know much about the world. Some of the things she’s ditzy about are completely insane. She tends to be forgetful about our schedule, and she can’t remember people’s names or faces. Frankly, I think she’d have a little trouble functioning in normal society. At Ai’s level, it goes way beyond being an airhead, but when she does stuff like this, it only proves she’s a genius. It makes you think that Leonardo da Vinci would probably be doing the same things if he were alive today. Ai is enchanting as she licks the ketchup off her little finger. “Um…” Ai looks at my face and thinks for a little while. But almost immediately, she seems to give up on whatever it was and picks up where she left off. “Did something happen? What was that expression about?” …She’d probably meant to call me by name. She just hadn’t been able to remember it. Either that, or she’d remembered and just wasn’t sure she had it right. Ai had gotten all the staff members’ names completely wrong at a venue once and been chewed out for it. Ever since, she’d stopped calling people by name. Instead of using the wrong name, she just omitted it entirely. That’s the sort of person Ai is, and I know it. I look back at her as if I haven’t noticed a thing. As you’d figure, I hear she does remember the names of people she’s close to. Apparently, I’m not one of those people. She’s just shown me how shallow our relationship is. Ai’s looking straight at me. We’d run smack into each other in a random park. I feel like it’s a sort of sense that this situation is special that’s making her do that. No doubt if we’d been somewhere ordinary—in the dressing room at one of our regular show venues, say—this wouldn’t be happening. That’s all there is to our relationship. Still, there are some things we can say to each other precisely because we’re not close. “You won’t tell anyone?” The question makes Ai tilt her head in a charming way. “I can’t say for sure I won’t. I do think I’m pretty good with secrets, though. I also make a point of not saying things that don’t need to be said.” I’ve never heard Ai gossip about someone else. I’m not sure whether she’s actually good with secrets or whether people just don’t interest her. “What is it? Is it something interesting?” Ai asks, as if she’s actually intrigued. “Not at all. Me and my boyfriend just broke up.” Ai’s expression doesn’t change. “Oh… Well, that’s…” Her brows arch in a troubled way, and she puts her hands together as if to say My condolences. I can’t tell if she’s joking or serious. Maybe she’s picked up on my sullen look, because Ai sets the paper bag down on the bench, then turns to face me squarely. “Did you like him?” That’s a pretty weird question, I think. We’d been going out, so the natural answer is yes… Except when Ai says it, for some reason, the question seems deeper than that. A train begins clattering past the park. I doubt she’d hear me if I answered with all that noise, so I fall silent for a bit. Ai seems to have picked up on the reason. Her eyes go to the sign with the park rules. I spend the moments until the train passes searching for the answer to her question. After the way we’d broken up, the main thing I felt when I thought about him was anger, but it feels as if I’ve been given a chance to think about it calmly. “I…probably did like him. Yeah, I think I did.” The train’s gone. After a moment or two of silence, I say the words as if I’m telling myself. Once they’re out, I start to feel sad. Maybe people get mad because they don’t want to accept that they’re sad. Even cats sharpen their claws after they fall. “I see.” Ai’s expression hasn’t changed. “It must hurt, huh? Probably. I bet it does.” Those troubled eyebrows of hers are the exact same shape as they were earlier. I can tell she’s not making a joke out of this, though. She probably doesn’t know how to respond, and she’s genuinely troubled. Even so, there’s no empathy in her words. It’s more as if she’s looking for confirmation. She isn’t confident about calling people by name, and likewise, she doesn’t seem confident that she can pick up on their feelings. “I’m sorry… I don’t know how to console people at times like this. I can’t say anything very considerate.” I giggle in spite of myself. Somehow, I’d predicted that she’d react this way. That was why I’d told her about it. When confronted with somebody who outranks them, some people will see them as a rival and try to fight. Others will pander to them and try to identify with them. Which am I? I’m pretty sure I’m neither and that I chose not to see Ai as a human being. When people like me get jealous, we hate that person from here to infinity. It’s tiring, and I know it. Long ago, I’d taken piano. By the time I’d reached the level where I was in the running to win prizes at competitions, I was unbearably jealous of skilled players. If I looked at those people, there’d be no end to it, and it probably wouldn’t be over until I reached the very top. Even I was like that, and I hadn’t worked all that hard. For people who were better than me, it must have been even more hellish. Still, I’d liked music. I hadn’t been dedicated enough to try for a career in it or anything, but I’d clung to my work as an idol as if it was an escape. I didn’t want to fight in the haven I’d fled to. I already know I’m not the type who excels. I’m not jealous of the fact that B Komachi’s rapid progress is Ai’s accomplishment. After all, I don’t think of Ai as the same type of human being as I am. That was why I’d chosen Ai to talk through my thoughts to myself, as if I were talking to a cat or praying to a god. I’d assumed she wouldn’t hit back with something like You’re an idol, so don’t get a boyfriend or There’s something wrong with your personality. Ai isn’t one of those normal, garden-variety people. That’s what makes it okay to talk to her about things I wouldn’t talk about with a member I’m close to. “It hurts.” “I see.” Ai’s looking at me. I’m not looking for sympathy. “Getting dumped hurts. “Not having him understand my work hurt. “I hate the way I try to depend on guys. “Even if I fall for my fans, they won’t pat my head. They won’t hold me tight. “I hate the me who thinks falling for fans is pointless. “I also hate betraying my fans, though. “I don’t want to feel guilty. “‘Idols mustn’t fall in love.’ Everybody knows that, and it hurts. “I’m scared somebody will tell me ‘If you’re not cut out for this, why don’t you quit?’” I’m spitting out all the sediment that’s built up inside me. Ai’s expression hasn’t changed. She’s just looking at me. The words keep coming: “I want to move out of my parents’ place. “The walls and floor of that condo are thin, and not being able to practice at night hurts. “My big brother’s a shut-in, and he’s seriously annoying. “My parents keep nagging me to get a real job. “I dyed my hair, but I don’t like the color. “I’m not a fan of cold box lunches. “It hurts that I’m not getting more followers online. “My birthday festival announcement picture was tacky. “I didn’t win tickets for my fave’s show, which sucks. “It’s been hard to sleep lately, and that hurts. “I wish the guys on the train who perv on me would go extinct. “My phone screen’s cracked, and it’s annoying. That’s the third phone this year. “The air freshener I bought yesterday smells like some old man’s house, which I can’t stand. “I don’t have any money. “But my brother pesters me for money. “Guys who send me dirty pictures on social media are annoying. “Fans who are all ‘Pay attention to meeeee’ when we stream are annoying. “People who give me advice are annoying. “I keep thinking I should’ve gone to university. “My brother plays his games so loud. “Classmates who leak my personal information online are annoying. “I had this expensive bracelet, and I don’t know where it went. “Getting dumped right before Christmas hurts.” Boy, does it hurt. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, life huuuuuuuuuuuurts!!!” Ai is looking at me. She seems rather dazed. I’ve never seen her make that expression before. “…That’s really rough.” I giggle, feeling as if I’ve managed to get payback. I startled Ai. I made her make that face. “It really is. I have normal, ordinary troubles, just like anybody else around here.” As if I’m not an idol. Not a star. I’m an idol who’s living an incredibly normal life, and my life’s as rough as normal. “But thanks. Getting all that out made me feel a little better.” Ai’s looking straight at me. “That’s good, but…” She starts to say something, then pauses, mouth half open. She glances to the right, and her eyes wander from somewhere near the ground to somewhere above our heads. The sight makes me giggle again. I’ve never seen Ai get flustered before. So this is what it looks like when invincible girls feel unsettled? “Life’s full of all sorts of things, huh…?” The remark she finally manages to squeeze out is the sort of line that doesn’t mean much at all. “Argh. I want some time off.” I stretch, as though I’ve just finished a job. “Huh? Why?” I’d just assumed the desire to take time off was something all of humanity had in common, but maybe this girl is different? “Weren’t you listening? Any of those things would make a good reason, wouldn’t it?” Ai doesn’t look convinced, so I search through my feelings. “Lately, I feel worn down after our shows.” Ai watches me quietly. “……” I keep going. “Singing bright, cheerful songs when I’m feeling like this… I’m used to it, sure, but it takes a mental toll. When I sing about things that are completely different from what I’m feeling, it chips away at me, bit by bit. It’s like I’m gradually becoming a robot.” Idols have angst. “Like I’m getting used to lying. “Like it’s stopped bothering me. “Like I’m becoming a liar, body and soul.” Living in other people’s wishes and ideals is rough. “You think so? I don’t really feel that way.” “You’ve got nerves of steel, huh, Ai? Don’t you ever think ‘I don’t want to perform’ when something painful happens?” “……” Ai falls silent, and I retort a little belligerently. “Yeah, you don’t look like you do. You’re invincible.” I swallow down the words You don’t seem as if anything anyone could say would even affect you. It isn’t clear whether my attack hit home or not. As Ai responds, she’s tracking a cloud in the night sky out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not invincible. I get depressed, too, like everybody else. As a matter of fact, I’m currently mega-depressed.” Mega-depressed, she says, but her expression is so nonchalant. She’s looking me straight in the eye, and her tone is the same as always. “I…mentioned I don’t have parents and that I live in a children’s home, right?” I’d heard about that. She’d spoken casually then, too, as if it was nothing. “I’m going to have to move out soon, and some of my mom’s relatives volunteered to be my guarantors. But when we actually met face-to-face, they turned me down.” It’s my turn to fall silent. “What do you suppose they didn’t like? They wouldn’t tell me why…so I end up thinking all sorts of things. Maybe my personality turned them off. Maybe I look like my mom, and that’s what did it. Maybe they weren’t okay with the fact that I’m an idol.” Ai’s coming up with one thing after another, and I finally interrupt her. “It bothers you like crazy, huh?” That’s a shock. Both the fact that Ai’s talking about herself so much and the fact that the girl I’d assumed was perfect is dealing with a situation like this. “Wait, when did this happen?” “The day before yesterday.” How had she managed to get up onstage when something like that had just happened? I really do think Ai’s somebody special. “You’re incredible, Ai.” I sigh. My body seems to have decided that if I’m going to try to understand this girl, it’s going to take a few sighs. “And then there’s me… Just getting a little depressed is enough to make me say I don’t want to perform. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.” Ai falls into a “Hrrrm” pose, using the sort of gesture she’d use onstage. It’s as if none of this has really hit home for her, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. “I don’t know if that’s the problem… Maybe it’s because you’re honest.” Honest. I don’t understand what she means by that. …So I ask her. “What are you talking about?” “I’ve been a liar all along, you see,” Ai goes on, indifferently. “I bet ‘Ai’ the idol is the complete opposite of who I really am, but… How do I put this? I bet she’s who I want to be. By being an idol, maybe I’m getting closer to my ideal self.” Idol theory. Everybody brings theirs out once in a while, but what Ai’s saying seems a little different to me. “Since I started out as a liar, it’s like it’s all the same to my original self.” Ai is talking about herself. “If I keep telling lies, it feels as if they might become true. When we sing cheerful songs, it makes you feel sort of cheerful, you know? I thought it might be like that. When I’m onstage, that’s the ideal me, the person I’m trying to become.” Ai’s expression is still completely artificial. “I’m working to become her, trying hard to get close to her. But as I do that, I’m also refining that ideal. Making her cute, and kind, and brave. Somebody who loves everybody. Somebody everybody loves.” It feels as if there’s just a little of what she really thinks in what she’s saying, but it also feels rather tenuous to me. “I’d like to become that kind of person…” “We really aren’t the same. That’s not how I think about being an idol.” I’ve given a diplomatic answer. Frankly, I hadn’t really understood what Ai said. I couldn’t tell whether she was talking about some other show or whether she was just saying whatever came to mind. She’d spoken boldly, though, and it made me think, Maybe this is what girls with a serious fan base are like. “I’m not sure… I don’t think you need to put that much thought into it, really. I mean, it’s just work! We’re just idols!” “‘Just’ idols…?” If somebody normal had said that, it would have been sour grapes or their dissatisfaction with their job, but Ai seemed to mean what she said. “But, Ai, I’m not like you. I don’t have anything.” “Huh? You said you’d been playing piano since you were little. That’s not nothing.” “I’m pretty sure there are tens of thousands of people who play piano out there.” Piano tops the list of lessons people want their kids to take. I hadn’t even been chosen as the accompanist for the school choir competition. Maybe it’s a special skill, but at this point, I’m hesitant to brag about it. “Lots of people start it, then drop out. I’m just one of that crowd.” “Is that how it is? People who have a really amazing special skill always talk like that. I think you’re setting the bar too high. When you’ve got something you can do, it seems like a waste.” She’s talking like a teacher discussing my future course. “Mei wrote the lyrics for that song the other day, didn’t she?” Ai points right at the tip of my nose. “Why don’t you try that?” “You’re telling me to try writing lyrics?” My eyebrows lowered. I hadn’t anticipated a counter from that direction. “Not just the lyrics; write the music, too. Are you saying you can’t?” “That’s a tough one. I mean, I’ve done it for fun, but… Playing around is only playing, you know.” “There’s nothing ‘only’ about that. If it’s too hard to do the whole thing, you could just come up with a rough idea. I bet the arranger would turn it into something good.” “Well, yes, but… I couldn’t.” I finally give up, driven by the urge to get out of here. Ai seems to be having fun, though. Her tone’s risen slightly. “Why not?” “Why not?” she says. Ai probably doesn’t understand other people’s feelings. Her empathy circuits must be busted. I bet they actually are. Still, that’s got nothing to do with this. I’m probably the only one who understands what I’m feeling now. I mean, come on… “Well… It’s embarrassing.” Ai’s mouth drops open. “That’s it?” Had she been imagining some big, exaggerated reason? Sure, just hearing that a person who can make music doesn’t makes it sound as if there’s some big reason, but this is how reality goes. “Yes! I can’t just be all like ‘I did the music’ out of nowhere! It would sound like I was bragging… Wouldn’t I seem sort of desperate? The best way to avoid attracting haters is to not do new things! You establish an image for yourself at the beginning, and you don’t take one step outside those lines. You stay in the frame you made for yourself and behave!” “Really…? I think you’re overthinking it. You wouldn’t seem like you were bragging, and I bet the fans would have your back. I don’t think there’s anything to get embarrassed about here.” “Gnrrrgh.” I know that, too. I’m actually just embarrassed, plain and simple. I’m scared to let people see my inexperience for what it is. Afraid of failing. I know that, yet I still want Ai to take a good, solid look at my history of never, ever doing anything like this before. I’ve considered it over and over, and every time I decided not to…yet whenever that’s pointed out to me, I get embarrassed. People have said similar things to me before now. Every time, I dodged with a diplomatic smile. When Ai says it, though, I start thinking like this. “In that case…if I write the music, will you write the lyrics, Ai?” I launch my own counter. This is where she finds out what If I go down, I’m taking you with me really means. “Huh…?” Smiling brightly, I grab Ai’s shoulders. “You’ve got a unique perspective on things. I bet you could write some good lyrics.” I genuinely mean that. Ai’s not a normal person, and I bet her lyrics wouldn’t be ordinary, either. “N…no way… Ha-ha.” This may be the first time I’ve ever seen Ai self-conscious. “I only graduated from middle school, so I don’t know all that much, and my Japanese is sketchy…” “None of that! You’re the one who said there wasn’t any need to get embarrassed! No fair changing your tune just because the focus is on you now! I want to see the lyrics you write, Ai.” It’s sheer spite. There, see? Now you know how I feel. That’s what’s going through my head as I put the pressure on Ai. In contrast to my malice, Ai’s attitude is meek. “…Really?” she says slowly. “Yeah, I’m serious.” I really am. “But…writing lyrics for music is pretty high-level. I couldn’t do that.” “You can write the lyrics first. I’ll come up with a melody that fits them.” “In that case… Hmmmm…” In a park lit by streetlights and the moon, there we were, Ai and me. We weren’t close at all. Right then, though, we were almost like classmates or people who were close enough to talk about our hypothetical futures. Like friends. Something Ai said in an interview for a fashion magazine has always stayed with me. Q. Which group member are you closest to? She’d answered with my name. In the end, that night was the only time I ever had a decent conversation with Ai. Had she just happened to remember it? Or had her relationships with the other B Komachi members been so superficial that a single conversation had put me at the top of the list? A few days after, Ai brought her lyrics over. I’d honestly thought the matter would end that night. I hadn’t expected her to actually bring them. Ai uneasily handed me a notebook with Lyrics Notebook written on the cover in thick magic marker. The expression on her face right then could have belonged to any fifteen-year-old anywhere. It was really adorable. When I got home and opened the notebook, I found lines of text meticulously written out. There were conspicuous eraser marks in places. She’d only needed to write one set of lyrics, but she’d written multiple sets over quite a few pages. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but was she actually a pretty dedicated person? I felt as if I’d gotten a glimpse of an Ai no one else had ever seen. The first section of lyrics was clearly idol-esque—things about world peace and wanting to eat cake. You could tell she’d been working on trial and error. However, as I kept turning pages, the lyrics grew more polished. Then one set in particular caught my eye. She’d called it “Me, the Liar.” In contrast to the ominous title, the words were incredibly cheerful. They were lyrics meant to encourage somebody. Bright, fun… Those things must count as lies to Ai. Pain and hurt were what was real. She wrote things like this, though, which meant she really was “the liar.” That was the message I picked up from the words. I opened the recorder function on my phone and sat down at the piano. I didn’t know how professionals wrote music, so I didn’t think about anything complicated. I just recorded a piano melody and basic vocal line to match Ai’s lyrics. At the time, I was still depressed. I was sure that a lot of my fans were also feeling gloomy about something, the way I was. I wrote a fun, cheerful tune so that people discouraged by family circumstances, or their love lives, or work, would feel even a little bit better. A song written by me, in my depression, to you in yours. That was what was on my mind when I wrote the music. That song was recorded as the B-side of one of B Komachi’s singles. It wasn’t particularly popular, and nobody kept singing it as time went on. It’s just a song that the thirty-seven-year-old me hums on nights like this.
Chapter 5
43 min read