Awaken from a Dream Page 3

  He pulled the box cutter free and touched his pointer finger to its edge. He pushed the blade into his flesh. Flecks of blood sprayed out from the wound, speckling the woman’s picture.

  Despite the pain, the man gave an enigmatic smile. He looked back and forth between his sliced finger and the girl moistened with his blood.

  Was it the forced smile of someone sad, holding back their tears? Was it one of frustration, of anger? Or was he happy?

  No one but him could understand what emotions lay behind that smile.

  With his bloodied hand, he reached for a small envelope at the edge of his desk. The paper was decorated with the kind of cutesy designs that would be right at home atop one of the desks at an all-girls’ school. On the reverse side was a hand-drawn heart.

  Suddenly, the man’s expression turned grave, and he crushed the envelope in his hand. His eyes were those of a man in prayer.

  Perhaps without knowing it, he repeated, “Never again.”

  Kawasaki Yuma entered the studio dressed in a geeky Minky Momo vs. Godzilla T-shirt and faded denim jeans.

  A slightly aged hair stylist greeted her with a high-pitched “Good morning, Yuma-chan!”

  Yuma returned the woman’s greeting with a smile. “Morning!”

  “He’s here already,” the stylist said. She patted the top of her head and showed a teasing grin.

  Yuma dropped her voice. “You mean baldy? He beat me here?” Her prematurely bald manager’s perpetually grinning face popped into her mind.

  The stylist nodded. “Bando-san is in high spirits today.”

  “Really?” Yuma said. “Is it really that surprising that I got a commercial gig?”

  “It’s the first he’s had since he started working with you. I don’t think he could help being excited about it.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Yuma gave the stylist a quick wave and went to the green room at the rear of the studio.

  Bando, Yuma’s prematurely bald manager, approached her. “Good morning, Yuma.” He beamed so broadly that the smile brought creases to his face. “You look as adorable as ever. First-class idol singers like you are in a whole different league.”

  Yuma thought, Always with the over-the-top flattery. She found his silver-rimmed eyeglasses and sweaty forehead depressing. And his hair is getting even thinner, too. Her eyes landed on Bando’s scraggly beard, and she smiled back at him uncomfortably.

  “Yuma,” he said, “this could be your big break. A commercial. A TV commercial!” Bando spoke so fast little bits of spittle flew. “Sure, it’s only going to play in Tokyo, but this is Sanshin Denki. They’re planning a huge promotional push with you representing their new line of electronics.”

  Inserting coins into a vending machine, Yuma muttered with disinterest. “I’m just there to get eyes on the ads of some local retail chain. We don’t need to get so worked up over it.”

  “Yuma-chan, don’t be like that. This is a commercial. A commercial! It’s a lucky thing the company’s president is a fan of yours.”

  Yuma took a gulp of her soda and shouted, “I hate that bald creep!” She made sure to put an emphasis on bald.

  With a hint of a scowl, the stylist said, “President of a company or not, the guy’s tastes are a bit creepy.”

  “Right?” Yuma said. “You think so, too—don’t you, Makki?” She waved a pink costume in her hand. “Look at this awful thing. It’s basically a cheerleader’s outfit.”

  The stylist, Makki, said, “Wait until you see the hair style.” She offered a photo for Yuma to see.

  The photo was of a cute girl with pigtails.

  “Seriously?” Yuma groaned. “That hairstyle, with this costume—that bald president is a total perv.”

  “Whatever the case,” Makki said, as she braided the idol’s shoulder-length hair, “his tastes are certainly…less than decent.”

  Yuma was seated in front of a full-length mirror. She watched as Makki’s experienced hands transformed her hairstyle in no time at all. Looking at her new pigtails, Yuma had to admit she did look cute.

  Makki said, “Yuma, you’re adorable. With that pink mini on, you’ll drive that old man wild.”

  “I just can’t believe I turned eighteen, and now this is the costume I have to wear.”

  “Well, think of it this way. Not many grown women who want to dress that way could make it work even if they got the chance to try.”

  “That’s a good point,” Yuma said, as she stepped behind the curtain that separated the small dressing space from the hair and makeup room.

  Alone behind the partition, Yuma smoothly discarded her T-shirt and jeans. Wearing only her underwire bra and bikini panties, she appraised herself in the mirror with a smile.

  Her body had good proportions. Aside from her breasts, which were a little on the small side, her body curved in and out where it was supposed to. She put her hands on the sides of her waist. There was more give than she would have liked. It wouldn’t do for modeling.

  Darn it, she thought. That’s my only flaw.

  She remembered her boyfriend Yukio saying, “You’re not getting enough exercise, are you? You’re starting to get some fat on you.”

  She hadn’t seen him for a little while now. Between rehearsing her new song and a string of nationwide promotional events, she hadn’t the time to get together with him. Not long ago, in her hotel room, she watched his supporting-role performance in a TV drama and realized how much she missed him.

  I think I might be falling in love, she had thought.

  Still dressed only in her underwear, she smiled bashfully at the memory. Then, reining in her distracted thoughts, she said, “All right!” before quickly putting on her pink mini dress and stepping out of the dressing room.

  Yuma twirled, sending the hemline of the pleated dress precariously high up her thigh.

  Thoroughly impressed, Makki said, “You look super cute!”

  With the nervous eyes of an herbivore, the man readied his finger on the VCR’s record button. On the TV screen, three male pop idols performed an energetic choreographed dance. According to the program guide, she would be on next.

  The trio’s song appeared to be reaching its conclusion. The music swelled, and the three struck their final poses.

  The man pushed the button.

  There were a few seconds of silence, then a young woman appeared on the screen.

  She wore a cowboy hat, wild bangs peeking down to touch the tops of her eyebrows. Her wide eyes shone, dreamlike. A cowhide vest covered her white blouse, and jean shorts accentuated her rowdy charm.

  A star-shaped brooch, placed near her shoulder, served as her only adornment. Though simple, there was something inexplicably flirty about it.

  The woman kicked up a slender leg that stretched all the way down from her high-cut shorts. Then she threw her microphone toward the camera.

  She pulled back the mic’s cord with her left hand, causing it to twirl in the air before returning to her grasp.

  The move had been specially choreographed for this, Kawasaki Yuma’s new song, “Lariat of Love.”

  As he watched her perform, the herbivore-eyed man grinned sloppily and bobbed his head up and down in time with the beat.

  Under his breath, he said, “Yuma is putting everything into this song.”

  His face said that he knew all there was to know about Kawasaki Yuma. On the bookshelves behind him stood tightly packed rows of recorded videotapes. The spines were labeled with dry-transfer letters that read Idols I, Idols II, and so on, but most bore the same name: Kawasaki Yuma.

  The wall beside the bookcase was covered floor-to-ceiling with overlapping posters. Most of those featured Kawasaki Yuma, too.

  On the TV, Yuma finished the song’s second chorus and moved on to the big finish.

  I’ll snare you with my burning love.

  Oh, my lariat of love.

  As she said the last word—love—Yuma again performed her microphone lasso trick. A
fter the mic had finished tracing its arc through the air and she’d caught it firmly in her grasp, she held it like a pistol, then gave a wink and shouted, “Bang!”

  And the song was over.

  The man stopped the recording and hurriedly turned on his radio because Yuma’s Happy Talk was to start at ten.

  As he listened to the radio, he reviewed Yuma’s schedule for the day in his head.

  Her radio show was pre-recorded today, which means her live performance on Golden Music was her last job for the day. After that, she’s free. Tomorrow, she has a live appearance on another radio show at eight in the morning, which means she should be going straight back to her home tonight.

  The man imagined her out chatting happily with some guy instead of going home on her own. The thought of her with a man, even imagined, filled him with pain, followed by incredible rage.

  She isn’t seeing anyone, he told himself. She couldn’t be. Look at her charming face. A girl that innocent, that adorable, couldn’t be seeing anyone.

  Big, fat tears dripped from his diminutive eyes.

  I love her too much for that. I devote all my time to loving her. She wouldn’t betray me with another man. Other women would, but not Yuma.

  The man picked up a photograph from his desk. It was the collectable photo of Yuma from her early days.

  He gazed into the grinning face of the yellow-bereted teen. He sighed and whispered words that came from the bottom of his heart. “Yuma, tell me the truth. There isn’t any other man. There’s only me.”

  Yuma didn’t reply. She simply kept on smiling brightly back at him.

  The man hugged the photograph to his chest. Then, slowly, he raised it up to his face.

  “Yu-Yuma…”

  He pursed his ugly lips into something uglier and gave Yuma’s face a wet, sloppy kiss.

  In the small green room of a TV station, Yuma summoned tears to her eyes. She protested, “I’ll always be a second-class idol—just a nobody in a miniskirt. That’s why I’ve had to take every job that comes in. No one listens to my songs. They all just stare at my legs. Don’t think I don’t see that.”

  Flustered by her outburst, the balding Bando said, “Y-Yuma-chan, don’t sell yourself short like that.” He put his arm around her shoulder as he attempted to comfort her. “You’re a terrific idol and a terrific entertainer!”

  Yuma brushed away his arm. “If you actually think that, you should listen to what I’m saying. Do I really have to meet the president of that company in person?”

  “Yuma-chan,” the manager said. “This is your job. Sanshin Denki is putting their full weight behind promoting you. Surely you can at least meet the president and say a few words.”

  Yuma furrowed her eyebrows sharply. Filling her voice with acid, she said, “As long as that’s all I end up having to do for him…”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course that’s all. You don’t have to worry about a thing. But I want to be clear—I’m not asking you to do this. I’m telling you, as your manager, that I expect you to do it.”

  Yuma shook her head with a “Hmph,” then threw open the green room door. “And let me guess—I’m supposed to put my hair in pigtails and wear that pink mini dress. Fine. But I’ll tell you this: I’ll meet him, we can have a little talk—but that’s it.”

  The man’s eyes were those of an elephant—an elephant, hesitant and motionless.

  The man with elephant eyes stood frozen in place as he stared at a poster of Kawasaki Yuma hung up inside the train station. The poster was a B1-sized advertisement for Sanshin Denki, which everyone knew was nothing more than a sketchy retailer hawking electronics of questionable manufacture.

  On the poster, Yuma’s wind-tossed miniskirt had lifted to reveal her slim, athletic legs in near entirety. The posters hadn’t been up very long, but they had already become extremely popular among the serious idol fans.

  The cutesy pigtail look was a 180-degree change from her previous image, but apparently those other fans liked it.

  In the poster, Yuma looked more girl than woman. The man stared into her face, his gaze intense enough to bore a hole through the paper.

  “This is wrong,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s all wrong. This isn’t Yuma.”

  Rage filled his elephant eyes as he withdrew the box cutter he’d concealed in his pocket.

  He carved an X across Yuma’s face.

  Kawasaki Yuma stepped out of her taxi and immediately felt anxious. A strange tightness gripped her chest.

  For a moment, she stood in front of her apartment building and took deep breaths to steady her nerves.

  It was eleven at night. At this hour, the upper-end residential street was empty, with not even a stray cat in sight. She told herself that the solitude was the source of her disquiet, and continued into the apartment’s entrance, where she entered her passcode on the security panel.

  The door automatically slid open.

  The building’s security system provided safety, but Yuma always thought it felt impersonal, lacking in human warmth. Tonight, it made her feel relieved. She rode the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the short open-air hallway to her door, which she unlocked with a key. Each floor of the building only had two units, and Yuma was the only one who lived on the fifth floor. She had complete privacy here.

  As she was about to enter her apartment, she heard something fluttering above her head. She turned toward the sound and saw an object wedged in the crack at the top of the door. She reached up and took it.

  It was a letter-sized envelope.

  Yuma tilted her head in confusion. Who could have come and left this here?

  A stranger shouldn’t have been able to get into the building. Had it been left there by another resident? She never really associated with any of her neighbors…

  Was it Yukio? she thought, picturing his tanned face. But he has his own key. If he were here, he would have gone inside.

  Who, then, could it be?

  Yuma’s anxious worry returned. She flipped the envelope over.

  Written in the rounded, distinctive characters that typified girlish handwriting were the words, From Someone You Know.

  She had no idea who that could be. But something about the envelope tugged at her attention.

  The rounded handwriting was cutesy, but somehow ominous. It presented an uneasy mismatch with the words it formed—adolescent characters making a formal announcement, From Someone You Know.

  If words and handwriting could reveal a person’s character, what kind of person would have written this?

  Yuma felt an indefinable worry. Someone had slipped through a hole in the building’s security system to come to her home; that much was certain. That person then put a letter into the crack of her door.

  With trembling fingers, she tore open the envelope to find out what was inside.

  The smell of sweet perfume met her nose. Inside the envelope, she found a single page of scented stationery. She unfolded it and read.

  I’m not mad at you.

  I’m not mad at you, because I believe in you.

  I’ll even forgive your thoughtless actions—

  I understand that poster was part of your job and

  that you didn’t have any choice but to do it.

  But that look wasn’t you. No, no, it wasn’t.

  I might even start to not like you anymore…

  That was a lie. Just a lie!

  I could never hate you.

  I’ll love you for the rest of my life.

  On TV, you told me you loved me.

  I won’t forget that.

  If you betray me…

  Oh, what a scary thought. So very scary.

  Because I would never betray you.

  From Someone You Know

  Yuma gulped.

  What did all that mean?

  Several letters from her fans arrived at her agency’s office every day. Some letters were quite ardent, and some were nasty and harassing. But this me
ssage was not like those letters. Something was different about it. It was bizarre. And it felt all too real.

  Maybe this is what had me feeling anxious earlier, she thought. A chill ran down her spine.

  Yuma crumpled up the letter in her hand, envelope and all, and tossed it into the dustbin inside her entryway. Then she locked the door with both deadbolt and chain, and passed straight through her living room to her bedroom, where she burrowed into her full-size bed without stopping to remove her clothes.

  She forced her eyes shut and pulled the duvet over her head.

  Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—there was something she hadn’t noticed.

  The disturbing letter had been flecked with tiny bloodstains.

  When Yuma entered the agency’s meeting room, Bando and the other staff members were already at their seats around the table.

  The sight of her manager’s face reassured her more than she would have expected. She sat in the chair next to him, leaned in to his ear, and spoke quietly. “I need to talk to you about something after the meeting. I got a strange letter yesterday…”

  “A strange letter?” Bando’s voice held a mix of curiosity and concern. But before Yuma could explain, he cut her off, saying, “We can talk about it later.”

  Bando cleared his throat, and the room went quiet as everyone turned their attention on him.

  “I want to dive right in,” he announced. “Today’s theme is hop-skip-jump, Yuma! We’re going to take this opportunity to re-examine our plans for her going forward. We’ve been fortunate that her poster campaign for Sanshin Denki has been a hit, and we can expect her to rise in popularity, as well. Her new single, ‘Lariat of Love,’ is debuting strong at number thirteen on the next Oricon chart. With everyone’s hard work, I want to make this song an even bigger hit than her first single, ‘Crossing Love.’ I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on how to promote her further. Let’s have a lively discussion—all right, everyone?”