Kai and Nanaka quickly paid their bill and followed Aina out of the diner. She began by walking away from the station, taking a left at a crosswalk, and continuing straight along the sidewalk of a major road. Their path headed toward the Shinano River, which ran straight through Niigata.
Aina never once turned back as she led Nanaka and Kai down the road. At first, the large street was lined with countless buildings, but the scenery began to shift after ten minutes or so. Just before the Shinano River, there was a redeveloped commercial district called “Bandai City.” The main attractions were the department stores, which were full of fashion brands, but there were all manner of services around them: bus terminals, fast food restaurants, and even specialty stores stocking doujin magazines were all present in the area.
Aina headed into a department store and rode the escalator up to the top floor, where she entered a massive bookstore. She searched around the magazine corner for a time, and after finding what she was after, she made her purchase and instantly turned back to the downward escalator.
“We’re going to the next place,” Aina stated, and resumed her gallant stride once they’d exited the department store. Next, she led them up a flight of stairs to access a skywalk that connected to yet another set of buildings. They walked in the direction of the river and again returned to street level, where Aina entered the building across from the stairway’s exit.
It was a movie theater. The three of them climbed a concrete staircase to enter the theater and were greeted by a hallway, which was lined with posters for all the currently airing films. Aina passed by the ticket booth and picked up a flyer for an upcoming release before making her way to the waiting area in the back.
The walls of the waiting area were made of glass, and the nearby Shinano River expanded across their entire field of view. Kai thought the sunlight glimmering across the flowing water was beautiful enough to be a cut straight out of a movie.
No, wait, he thought, as Aina made her way to the glass pane and reached her hand out to the window, staring out into the river. Her silhouette amidst the incoming rays of sun—that’s what’s truly beautiful. So close, and yet so far away.
Kai’s vision naturally gravitated toward her, and he found himself reminded of how Aina had appeared in her own room. The busy chatter of a movie theater in the middle of summer break seemed distant to his ears. Aina was in a stasis, cleanly separated from the rest of the world, and the sight of her this way dominated his mind.
“Kai-kun,” Aina suddenly called out to him, turning around. Her melancholic eyes were fragile enough to break at the slightest touch, and more fleeting than a dimming ray of light. Wrapped in stillness and silence, her right hand extended toward him alongside the words, “Save me.”
Her voice slipped into Kai’s ears and reverberated directly into his heart. He felt something make its way into the depths of his brain, grasping at the most sacred parts of his mind. He took a step toward her outstretched hand, and that very instant—
“Ta-dah! ♪” Aina sang out. And with that vocalization, the quiet bubble of space around them shattered.
“The setting behind that one was, ‘A boy goes home to the countryside for summer break and meets a girl,’” she informed them. “‘Utterly alone, the girl battles against the entire world, but offers up the first and final peek into her heart to the main character. That would prove to be their last moment together...’
“It was pretty convincing, right?” she asked immodestly. There was no trace of Aina’s previous personality that could be seen now. With her hands on her hips and a satisfied look on her face, she exuded enough power to completely blow away any remaining sense of ephemerality. “Hey,” she said cheekily, “I asked you this before, but I’m super-duper cute, aren’t I?”
“Huh?” Kai tried to respond, feeling dumbfounded.
“Don’t bother answering, I already know,” Aina told them airily. “And when it comes to my acting skills, people toted me as a genius back when I was a child star. But, see—” she said, lifting up the movie flyer in her right hand and the fashion mag she had bought in her left.
Kai had done his research on Aina, so he recognized the two faces in her hands: the main star in the center of the movie flyer was Aina’s father, and the woman decorating the front of the magazine was Aina’s mother.
“—None of that was aimed at me: it was for these two, my movie star dad and model mom,” she continued to explain. “I’m either the leftovers or the result of nepotism. No matter what I do, I’m always reminded that it’s because my parents are amazing.
“For example, I went through a lot of auditions as a kid, right? When I got the role, it was because of the Yozakura name; when I didn’t, I was laughed at for having failed despite being the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Yozakura. It was worse than awful. And to be honest, there were people who tried to use me to make connections with my parents, so I couldn’t even say anything in my own defense... It really was the worst.”
Why? Kai wondered, aware that Aina’s tale brought forth an emotion in him that went beyond pity or sympathy. In fact, it felt as though someone was churning up his innards.
“But the part I hated the most... was that I couldn’t believe in myself anymore,” Aina went on. “At some point, you get confused. You ask yourself, ‘Are they looking at me, or are they looking at somebody standing right behind me?’
“...That’s why I quit on them,” Aina said, sporting a brilliantly cheerful smile. “I let go of everything that had to do with being a child star. I got a lot of hate online, with some people claiming that I only got roles because I’d brute-forced my way in with connections, but I didn’t mind all that much. It’d been that way for a long time. What I was surprised by... was the fact that my parents—my old man and woman—let go of me, too. ‘If you’re not going to join us in our world,’ they said, and off to Grandma’s I went... And that was it.”
“Why...” Nanaka spoke, as if to confirm every detail. “Why did that make you want to become a voice actress?” Her question was the exact same one which Kai had asked earlier, back in Aina’s room.
“Gosh, isn’t that obvious?” Aina asked scornfully. “There’s no way I could just let them keep making fun of me! I want to prove I’m the real deal. I won’t put out the Yozakura name, I won’t put out this face that they gave me, and I won’t embellish my voice with anything more than what I have. I... want to live as me, that’s all.”
Oh, I see, Kai finally realized. When she had said, “I quit on them,” it had hurt him. It hurt as if she had been talking about him, and now he finally knew why.
Back at Tsukigase, he’d had no friends. When he succeeded as a planner, it was because Akane had laid it all out for him; it wasn’t because of his skill. When he made the tiniest mistake, he had been mocked for having failed despite Akane’s tutelage. In truth, he’d only managed to keep up thanks to her help, and to err under her instruction certainly was his fault, so he hadn’t been able to say anything in his own defense.
After the incident that led to his resignation from the club, Kai had been relentlessly bashed on the internet. Faceless strangers who knew nothing of his situation had spread baseless rumors, lies, and words of abuse everywhere, and all he’d been able to do was watch. When Kai had looked Aina up online, the better part of the articles he’d found had been written the same way.
However, Kai had people he could trust, and those people left him with words that he’d carried with him to this day. They had told him he wasn’t wrong, and pointed him toward a path that he could firmly plant his feet on. If I didn’t even have that, he wondered now, what would have happened to me?
“H-Hey,” Aina stammered in a panic. This time, it wasn’t an act.
“Kai-kun...” Nanaka was peering at him, but at a loss for words.
“Ah,” said Kai, finally noticing the cold droplet sliding down his cheek.
“Wh-Why are you crying?” Aina questioned.
“...Because you’re not crying, Aina-san.” Maybe, he thought, she has moments that she can’t show anyone where she weeps alone, too. I don’t know if she does or not. She won’t tell me. She won’t tell anyone. I’m sure she’ll pretend to be fine, just as she’s always done, with a tough smile on her face. I can’t imagine she lets her grandmother see her weak side. And while that’s what makes her strong... there’s no way you can always be okay.
Although this was an issue of the past, there was a time when Kai would have been thrown into a fit of nausea at the mere thought of Tsukigase and the incident behind his departure, because he hadn’t been as strong as Aina. Even then, he knew it was wrong to smile and pretend like everything was fine when you were really hurting inside. Still, it wasn’t good to project his feelings onto someone else, and it wasn’t as if Aina had asked him to do so. Nevertheless, he couldn’t face her lonely smile.
“Oh... Oh, geez! You’re throwing me off...!” Aina grabbed the hood of her jacket with both hands and pulled it forward to hide her face as she looked away. “Gosh,” she mumbled. “You’re such an idiot.”
Kai caught a glimpse of her eye peeking out from under the hood for a brief moment, but she quickly turned away again and closed her hands together, once again obscuring her face.