He followed me. He followed me this whole time, and I never even noticed.
The terror which she’d kept locked deep inside had now broken free, coursing through her body and filling her awareness. Face contorting, her swallowed-down cry came rushing back up into a wordless shriek.
She ran full speed into the TV station. So wild was her expression and so mad her charge that the front security guard couldn’t even stop her. Still screaming, she fled down the lobby stairs and into the basement floor green room, where she collapsed into the arms of a puzzled-looking Yoriko.
The manager staggered back a half step but managed to catch the distraught singer.
“What’s wrong?” Yoriko shouted. “Yukiko-chan! Get ahold of yourself. Get ahold of yourself!”
She slapped Yukiko on the check.
Yukiko looked at her in wide-eyed shock, and then her eyes began to fill with tears.
“Yukiko-chan,” Yoriko said, “look at me. Can you calm down and tell me what happened? Please, Yukiko-chan.”
Without looking away, the singer nodded her head twice. Her lips trembled, and her right cheek twitched. After an empty swallow, she forced out a tight-throated answer.
“The… the rabbit. It was the rabbit. He followed me here. He came into this building. He’s still in here, somewhere. I know it.”
Unable to manage any more, she covered her face with her hands.
The moment Yoriko heard the words “the rabbit,” she thought, Not this again. Another hallucination. This exhaustion is too much for her. She felt a heartless kind of pity for the singer under her care.
As Yoriko saw it, Yukiko was still just a kid—a kid who had been plunged into the tumultuous life that came with being in the entertainment industry. Physically and mentally, the young singer had been pushed to the breaking point.
In an attempt to put Yukiko at ease, the manager walked toward the door with exaggerated movements. She threw it open.
“Here, look,” Yoriko said. “There’s nothing out there. There’s no one in the hallway.”
Fearfully, Yukiko looked at the door. Like Yoriko said, nothing was out of the ordinary.
But—but.
The rabbit who relentlessly pursued her was no hallucination. Yukiko was sure of that. His grimy, furry hand had been about to grab her shoulder. She hadn’t dreamt or imagined that up. It had really happened.
Steeling her resolve, she walked toward Yoriko, then she pushed past the woman and into the hall.
No one was there.
“See?” Yoriko said with a bright smile. “Nothing.”
Not quite able to accept it, Yukiko shook her head and said, “But…”
Yoriko spoke soothingly. “In any case, that scary rabbit is gone. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
She’s right, Yukiko thought as her nerves slowly settled. The rabbit is gone. I don’t need to be afraid.
She felt her heart begin to slow, and her shoulders grew heavy. She sat down in a chair at a makeup table and let out a deep sigh, then absently gazed off at a ceiling-mounted TV playing a relay feed from a studio camera upstairs.
Yoriko put her arm around her and spoke softly into her ear. “Yukiko-chan,” she said, “once you get through this appearance today, take a little break, okay? You must be exhausted. And you know what—I am, too. A little rest would do us both some good.”
Yukiko took her manager’s hand and squeezed it tight. “Thank you. Your concern means a lot to me, and it’s great that you’re looking out for me. But I’m fine. I’m not exhausted. It’s that rabbit that’s upsetting me, nothing else.”
Yoriko wanted to say, Those hallucinations are proof of your exhaustion. But she sensed that saying that would only serve to put more strain on the girl’s already fragile mind, so she kept it to herself.
Yoriko squeezed Yukiko’s hand back and gave the singer a there, there pat on the shoulder.
Yukiko leaned back in the chair and looked at the vanity mirror. Her sunken-eyed face was reflected back at her.
I do look tired, she admitted to herself. Yoriko is right.
Her lips formed a wry smile as she thought of how her manager knew her own body better than herself.
She really is incredible, Yukiko thought. She turned her head to look to Yoriko.
The two women’s eyes met. They nodded to each other without breaking their gaze.
Yoriko-san worries about me like I were her own sister, and I trust in her, from the bottom of my heart.
Yukiko suddenly wanted to hug the woman. In this city of strangers, Yoriko was the only person who felt like family. Fat tears began to drip from the singer’s eyes and blurred her vision so that she could no longer see the image on the ceiling-mounted monitor.
“I can’t believe I’m crying like this,” Yukiko said, wiping away her tears. “What’s gotten into me?”
On the monitor, various crew members were constructing the set for the eight o’clock live broadcast music show. Yukiko had been on the show a few times now, and she always liked to get an advance look at the set through the makeup room’s monitor. That way, she could decide which outfit would best match the set’s design and color.
Yoriko looked up at the TV screen and said, “No matter how many times I see the sets they build for Music Standby, it’s always dazzling.”
Yukiko nodded. “If there were more shows like this one,” she said, “it would go a long way toward lifting up the idol business.”
The two women watched the bustling crew with some measure of hope in their eyes.
“Huh?” Yoriko said as the monitor went black.
Someone seemed to have moved directly in front of the camera—probably some oafish crewmember casually standing there, not realizing that anyone might be watching the feed. But soon it became evident that that someone wasn’t just standing there by chance. They were doing it on purpose.
And then the person moved, leaning face-first into the lens.
Yukiko felt the hairs over her body stand on end. Something inside her told her to look away from the screen before she saw anything else. It’s the rabbit, she told herself. It has to be the rabbit. I mustn’t look, no matter what.
But, defying her will, her eyes remained fixed on the screen.
The face came right up to the lens like someone playing peekaboo. And, as she had dreaded, the face was not that of a human.
It was round and furry.
It had two big, wide-open eyes.
It had an upturned mouth.
It had two buck teeth.
It had two long, skinny ears.