Still holding the knife, the man stood. He walked across his room into an adjoining wood-floored kitchen. Even there, the piles of video tapes and idol magazines intruded.
From the freezer of a mini fridge next to his sink, he retrieved a blackened object bundled in cling wrap. He placed it on the countertop with a thunk. For a moment, he studied the bundle, then left it on the counter and returned to his room, muttering, “Probably best to let it thaw naturally.”
Seated at his desk, he resumed gazing at the front jacket of “Innocence Forever!” From the cover, Mima looked back at him, her hair short, her eyes big and round, her clothing cute and frilly. Her smile was as innocent as a baby’s.
As he looked at the picture, his eyes began to water.
I have to protect this smile, he thought. That’s why I need to act.
He bit down on his lip.
The wrapped object gradually softened and turned spongier, and an unpleasant smell began to permeate the kitchen. The grinning man peeled apart the plastic wrap, thinking, I figured it might stink a bit. When the wrap opened, the stench immediately intensified.
The object within appeared to be a thin strip of flesh. The top side was yellowish, the underside an unnatural black.
I shouldn’t have waited so long before attempting my experiment, he thought, but it was too late to change anything. He grasped the fetid thing between his fingers and placed it on a bath towel. Grim determination replaced his smile.
He held the knife in his right hand and pressed the blade’s tip into his forearm.
He ran the blade up his arm. Red streaks of blood coursed across his skin.
The man grunted. Sharp jolts of pain tore through his brain.
But this was for Kirigoe Mima. For her, he bore the pain. The knife did not relent. When it had nearly reached the crook of his elbow, he pulled away the edge. But he adjusted his grip and cut again—first across his arm, then back down toward his wrist.
By the end, he’d made the bloody outline of a perfect rectangle.
The man slid the knife beneath the wound. He began to separate his skin from the layer of fatty tissue beneath. Sticky globs of blood oozed out from the open cut. The pain began to dull; heat surged through the whole of his arm.
A distant part of him thought that, at least where the cutting was concerned, the sensation felt similar to peeling the skin from a raw piece of chicken. As he severed the connections between skin and meat, his flesh began to lift away.
Occasional jolts of intense pain tore through his body. He wondered if that signified nerve damage.
In his mind he repeated, This is for Mima, this is for Mima, like an incantation.
At the end of this minutes-long struggle, he finally peeled off the patch of skin.
Patchy spurts of blood leaked from white fat and red flesh, both equally exposed. Droplets fell from his arm, absorbed into the towel, but less blood came out than the man had expected.
He took the thawed-out, putrid scrap of flesh and pressed it onto the flayed-open wound upon his arm. It felt unpleasantly slippery to the touch, but that sensation was immediately dwarfed by biting, stinging pain. He wrapped a white cloth around his arm, the better to keep the thawed flesh from separating from his own.
V
Blushing, Rumi came back to Mima’s green room.
“How was it?” Mima asked. Standing in front of a full-length floor mirror, the idol applied her makeup.
“Well, it’s a tough song,” Rumi said. “That part in the chorus, where the line goes ‘Oh, run away with me,’ has a tricky interval. If you’re not careful, it’ll want to go flat.”
Not pausing the makeup, Mima replied, “You’re right. I’ll have to be careful there.”
Mima always left the soundchecks to Rumi, since the pair had almost the same vocal range and ability to project.
This was the first time Mima would perform her new single, “Sexy Valley.” Mima didn’t typically fret this much over a soundcheck, but she was especially nervous today, as was Rumi.
“It’s got a catchy beat, though,” Rumi added. “It just makes you want to dance.” She started humming the rhythm. Mima moved her arms to the music and gradually her anxiety melted away.
“Thank you,” the idol said. “I feel a lot better now. I’m going to nail this song today. I can feel it.”
Standing half hidden behind an open door in the corner of the TV studio sound stage, Mima waited for her cue.
Whenever she was on standby, she liked to wait wherever she was unlikely to be seen. Her poor eyesight—probably worse than 20/200 in both eyes—meant that she didn’t always recognize people she knew, even if they walked right past her. That was all the more true in the typically dim light backstage. She preferred to minimize the risk of awkward situations before a performance.
Music Town was about to start. The show, a live broadcast, permitted no mistakes—especially when Mima’s performance topped the episode. Live performances were hardly new to the singer—yet her heart raced, and her body felt numb. You’ve got this, she told herself.
Then an intense feeling of being watched overcame her. Reflexively, she looked over her shoulder.
It was Ochiai Eri, wearing an outrageously gaudy costume. Feathers crowned her head like a cockscomb. Even larger feathers extended from her back and a tight-fitting lamé mini dress completed the cabaret dancer look. She resembled a peacock, but on Ochiai Eri the lewd ensemble completely worked.
The idols’ eyes met.
Eri scoffed and turned her head away, then spoke just loud enough to be heard. “Just how old is she supposed to be, anyway? First she put on that innocent act, and now she’s in that smutty getup? I hope I never age. Apparently when a woman gets too old she can’t pull off innocent or sleazy.”
Mima locked eyes with her rival and grinned, as if to say, Is that all you got?
For a moment, Eri’s bravado wilted, but she quickly recovered. Under her breath, the rival singer muttered, “Just you wait.”
VI
Tadokoro sat on the couch in Mima’s apartment, drinking a glass of wine.
He expected Mima and Rumi to arrive soon. Music Town finished at around 8:50. From the K-TV studio, Mima’s apartment was about thirty minutes by taxi. Tadokoro glanced at the clock on a table in the corner of the room. It read a quarter past nine.
Wine glass in hand, Tadokoro got up and walked to the window. He opened the curtains and looked outside. He’d been repeating this process about once every ten minutes, not because he was nervous about when Mima would return, but because he was watching the apartment’s front entrance for any lurking strangers. He’d been paying particular attention to the bushes beside the entrance.
The manager had remained stationed in Mima’s apartment since a little after seven in the evening, and no such stranger had come loitering. The second anyone even the slightest bit suspicious showed up, Tadokoro was prepared to run out and capture him.
Just as he was about to close the curtains, a slash of light fell upon the bushes, likely from the headlights of a passing car. Moments later, a midsize taxi came around the front and stopped beside the entryway. Mima and Rumi stepped out.
Tadokoro closed the curtain and sank into the sofa to await them. A short three minutes later, he heard their voices outside the door, followed by the sound of the key sliding into the lock. The door opened, and Mima and Rumi rushed in, their expressions elated.
“I’m home!” Mima said in as cheerful a voice as he’d ever heard.
Tadokoro met her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You did great, Mima! Absolutely fabulous!”
With a ticklish scrunching of her shoulders, the singer made a victory sign with her fingers and said, “It was great, wasn’t it? I’ve never performed a song so satisfying as that one.”
“And that was one sexy costume,” Tadokoro said. “It even got my heart beating a little faster.”
“They had the cameras at a pretty low angle, didn’t they?” Mima said. “I felt a little conscious of them at the start, but I got used to it pretty fast.” She gave a satisfied chuckle.
Rumi was busy pouring hot water into a drip coffee setup. She said, “You’re cute no matter what you’re wearing. I don’t know how you did it, but you made even that sexy costume cute, too.”
Mima looked happy enough that she could fly away. “I think this song is going to make it, Bon-chan,” she said. “Singing’s seriously never felt so amazing!”
Tadokoro thought he understood what she was feeling. She’d kept herself bottled up in her idea of what an idol was, but now this song had set her spirit free. Making the change hadn’t been easy, but he was profoundly glad he had challenged Mima to expand herself.