STORY 3
Even When I Embrace You
The rain fell without end—not just any rain, but a gloomy downpour, tinged with acidity. Moist air seeped in through the thin wooden walls of the man’s room. As it settled over his skin, he felt as if the wetness would rot him to his core.
I can’t take this any longer, the man thought sourly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a kitchen rag. He set the rag down on the table in front of him, and then leaned down and pulled out a cardboard box sitting on the floor underneath.
The box was stuffed with large wads of grimy cloth—former bedsheets, possibly. The man pushed aside the bunched-up fabric and dug out an object that just about filled his arms. He looked at the object for a moment, lifted it up to his face, then slipped it over his head.
The pungent odor of mildew struck his nostrils. The inside of the thing was so oppressively stifling that he nearly choked. The musty, stale air mingled with his exhaled carbon dioxide and, with nowhere else to go, lingered in a cloud around his face. The only ventilation came through a small rectangular opening, barely the size of his closed lips, located partway between his eyes and his nose. The opening also served as his only window to see out from within. In truth, the slit so severely restricted his field of view that he may as well have been blind. As long as the object was over his head, moving and acting freely would only be possible with great difficulty.
He kept the thing on for a while as he stood in place, muttering, “I need to get used to wearing this, as if it were a part of my own body. But there isn’t time. There just isn’t time. I have to do something. I have to…”
With hesitant steps, he staggered his way over to the wall and stood in front of his calendar.
“Damn it!” The man removed the object from his head. Without thinking, he threw it with both hands against the floor. It bounced a few times and rolled to a wobbling stop.
The man’s face was drenched with sweat, and he took in deep, shoulder-heaving breaths. His dead eyes stared at the calendar with such intensity that he could have bored a hole into it.
A large X had been marked over the square for the twenty-sixth of September.
“Only one week left,” he said. “I’m nearly out of time.” His voice rose as he repeated, “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time!”
Enough time for what?
His expression twisted into something sinister. His lips were taut and curled, trembling. His eyes, unfocused, stared off into nowhere.
The man balled his fists. He squeezed them tight and then tighter still, his joints creaking. Blood began to seep between his fingers as his nails dug into flesh. He didn’t know what it was that hastened him with such urgency. All he knew was that he felt a deep-set irritation, clawing at him from within.
He opened his bloody fists and rubbed them across his face, painting it in deep red. For a moment, he seemed to be smiling. Then a sorrowful wail escaped his throat. His voice was shrill, like some strange bird’s call. It sliced through the stagnant air, pierced the thin walls, and melded into the expanse of black, low-hanging storm clouds.
I’m happy, right? Yukiko thought. I’m supposed to be happy.
She picked up the weekly men’s magazine in front of her. The periodical led with pin-up pages featuring Yukiko herself, wearing a natural, no-makeup look with just a subtle hint of lipstick. Behind her was a quiet, wintry outdoor landscape, snow falling all around.
The scene was appropriate, and not just because of her given name, which had the word “snow” in it. The caption leading her featured section read, “In this winter for idols”—which referred to the slump in popularity pop idols were experiencing—“a single flower blooms from the snow.”
Indeed, Tsukioka Yukiko was a traditional kind of pop idol rarely seen in recent times.
How could I not be happy to receive so much attention so quickly after my debut?
Yukiko had never aspired to become an idol singer. She’d always had an interest in becoming an entertainer, but being an idol was never her one and only dream. When she graduated from high school, she had found herself without direction. She was friends with a model, and on a whim, she joined the same modeling agency that represented her friend. Yukiko viewed it as little more than just a part-time job to get her by until something else came along.
That wasn’t to say she did it with no reason whatsoever. Modeling offered substantially better pay than waitressing at some family restaurant or café, and she’d always liked the idea of being famous, even if the desire had never defined her. It was with that level of thought—and a few small pushes from her friend—that Yukiko entered the modeling world.
Yukiko was not particularly glamorous, but her face had a traditional beauty, and gigs came in at a fairly brisk pace. After a little while, the agency’s owner asked her if she wanted to give Tokyo a try. Apparently one of his business acquaintances at a talent agency there had expressed interest in her. He wanted to represent her, cultivate her career.
Yukiko took up the offer without hesitation.
For the first six months in Tokyo, she lived under her new boss’s roof and spent all day, every day, in intense lessons. She threw herself into her vocal training and jazz dance lessons, even if the exact nature and direction of her debut remained unclear.
She still hadn’t figured out what she wanted to be, but from the content of her studies, she began to suspect her new boss intended for her to become a singer. When he started bringing songwriter-types to observe her vocal lessons, Yukiko was sure of it.
Even now, she could still remember being mystified by her boss’s choice, as she knew she lacked vocal talent. Nevertheless, she ended up debuting as a pop idol of the traditional, innocent style that didn’t demand that much singing ability. That too felt like a mismatch to her, as she didn’t consider herself innocent, either.
Meanwhile, the media was saying that pop idols were in their winter. Privately, Yukiko questioned the sense in having her debut as an idol just as they were going out of fashion—but she kept such complaints to herself. She wanted to be in entertainment, and she was. If her manager decided she would be an innocent idol, then that was the path she would follow.