Awaken from a Dream Read online

  For the next hour, the team came up with numerous ideas to push Yuma’s sales, several of which she thought had merit. In the end, however, the team settled on the uninspired approach of going forward with both her new Lolita look from the Sanshin Denki posters as well as her signature wild image. Yuma understood this as the typical indecisive result that came about when a group talked out ideas together.

  They would begin by nurturing the popularity of the Sanshin campaign, playing up troubles with stolen posters (even if they had to fake a few thefts). At the same time, they would try to turn the microphone lasso move from “Lariat of Love” into a fad among the youth.

  With a heavy yawn, Yuma stood up and went into the next room, where there was a kitchenette. She took a canister of instant coffee from the shelf and poured a scoopful into a paper cup, which she then filled with lukewarm water from a wall-mounted hot water dispenser. Without adding sugar or milk, she took a big gulp that left a grainy bitterness lingering on her tongue.

  She retrieved a handkerchief from the rear pocket of her culottes and wiped the corners of her mouth. When she looked up, she saw Bando hurrying her way.

  “Would you like me to make you some coffee?” she asked.

  He nodded and sat on a folding chair at a small table, wiping sweat from his brow.

  While she prepared his drink, Yuma said, “That meeting sure was pointless. We wasted all that time just to come up with the most obvious approach.”

  “Now Yuma-chan, you mustn’t say that. Even if we end up with the most obvious plan, it carries more weight when arrived at by consensus. Just you wait and see. The team’ll have better cohesion after that meeting.”

  The manager accepted the cup of coffee and began pouring copious amounts of sugar into the liquid. He dumped in four spoonfuls and then a fifth.

  Now Yuma saw where his round belly came from. All that sugar intake had given his stomach the gentle rise of a Moomin character.

  Showing her a confident smile, the manager said, “Just leave everything to me. I’m going to get ‘Lariat of Love’ into the top ten. You can count on it.”

  Mollified by his smile, Yuma said, “Thank you. I’ll do everything I can, too. How should I start?”

  “Primarily, I want you to take care of yourself,” Bando said. “Your schedule is going to be packed with appearances and events all over the country. If you push yourself so far that you pass out, it’ll all be for nothing. Your health needs to be your top priority.”

  He produced a notepad from his inside jacket pocket and began flipping through the pages so intensely Yuma almost laughed.

  “Here’s what your schedule was like as of yesterday,” Bando said. “Tomorrow, you have a short event at Shoppers Plaza in Kyobashi, Osaka. The day after, you’re in some of the surrounding cities—first a handshake event at a department store by Hirakata Station, and then in the evening, a guest appearance at a karaoke contest run by local businesses in Korien. That’s it for those two days. Nothing too tough, there. But now that the whole team is on the same page, everyone will be working hard to fill in your schedule.”

  Bando downed his sugary coffee impatiently and sprang from his folding chair like there wasn’t a minute to spare. He took two, then three steps toward the door before he stopped and belted out, “Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot what I came in here for.”

  He returned to the metal chair and angled it to face Yuma. “You said there was something you needed to talk to me about. Something about a letter?”

  When he said “letter,” Yuma’s body stiffened. Her eyes serious, she said, “Yes. A letter—a strange letter.”

  Seeing her expression, Bando sat up straight and listened.

  Yuma opened her clutch bag and pulled out the crumpled note in question.

  “This is it,” she said. “It was so creepy, I threw it away right after I read it. But then I realized I wanted you to see it. So, here it is.”

  When Bando finished reading the letter, he tilted his head in thought and said, “Hmm. You’re right, this is unusual—although, I do think it’s probably just from a fan gone overboard.”

  “I probably shouldn’t be scared, but I am,” Yuma admitted. “I know it’s just a letter. I can’t quite explain what I’m feeling, but it’s not good.”

  The idol looked over her shoulder. She thought she’d felt someone watching her.

  “But Yuma,” Bando said, “no matter how scary it might feel, it’s just a letter, right? I’ve managed several idol singers now, so I know about this kind of thing. There’s a lot of this sort of fan out there. With Asaka Ai, we got a letter that said, ‘If I can’t marry Ai, I’ll kill myself.’ But you know what? He never did. If you start worrying over what’s in every single fan letter, there’ll be no end to it.”

  Bando crumpled the letter back into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  “Yuma-chan,” the manager said cheerfully, “if you’ve got enough time to worry about something like this, I’d rather you worry about your promotional tour. To be perfectly frank, our future is riding on it.”

  Leaving the room, he stopped on the other side of the door and said, “If the person who wrote that letter tries to do anything to hurt you, I’ll give my life to protect you. Don’t you worry about it.”

  He gave her a smile and a wave.

  Yuma wasn’t entirely convinced, but she did feel a lot better.

  For the fifth time that day, the man with the elephant eyes reached into the mailbox outside his room. Inside was a postcard ad for a loan shark business and several fliers for so-called “delivery health” call girl agencies. That was all he found.

  He had gone to great efforts to find Yuma’s apartment, and a week had passed since he delivered his letter. She should have replied by now. She should have replied days ago.

  The man returned to his room and clicked his tongue in frustration.

  Why hasn’t she replied? Why?

  He had poured his heart into his letter, so why hadn’t she replied?

  True, he hadn’t written his name or address on the envelope. But the pair shared a soul bond. Signing it “From Someone You Know” should have been more than enough. And yet no reply had come.

  The man asked himself, Is she wrong for not sending me a letter? Or was I the one who did something wrong?

  No, he answered. I didn’t do anything wrong. And neither did Yuma. It wasn’t either of us. Someone else must have interfered. That’s the only answer.

  The man pulled a Yuma fan club magazine from his bookshelf. The self-published fanzine was called Yukko Club—Yukko being the fans’ nickname for the singer. He opened the magazine and searched for the fan club’s phone number.

  Once he got what he needed from the magazine, he got out his notebook and looked at the schedule he’d compiled of Yuma’s events.

  Her next appearance was in Shoppers Plaza at Kyobashi. He narrowed his elephant eyes and made up his mind.

  I’ll meet Yuma in person, and I’ll hear it straight from her mouth, with no one else to interfere. Then I’ll know how she feels about me.

  Yuma took the bullet train to Shin-Osaka Station, then by way of a couple local transfers, she reached Kyobashi Station. On the platform there, a group of male students recognized her.

  She had done everything she could to blend in as an everyday woman, with her hair in a ponytail, her makeup easy and natural, and her eyes behind black-rimmed glasses. Most of her fans wouldn’t have recognized her, but some of the particularly sharp-eyed students among the group had realized who she was, and they approached her, blabbering.

  A pimple-faced junior high schooler slapped his friends on the back as he shouted, “See, I told you it was Kawasaki Yuma!”

  A plump kid with silver-rimmed glasses stared at her agape and said, “It really is her!”

  Another boy held out his right hand and said, “Would you shake my hand, please?”

  Then, in the next instant, a number of the students thrust out their han
ds toward her.

  In a manner that spoke to her familiarity with this kind of thing, she smiled for them and started to extend her arm to meet their handshakes. That was when Bando suddenly appeared from behind her, shouting, “No! No!”

  He got in front of Yuma and spread his arms wide to keep the youths at bay.

  He told them, “If you want to shake her hand, then come to the event space in Shoppers Plaza. If she does it special for you here, it wouldn’t be fair to the other fans who are waiting.”

  The students glared at the balding interloper and hurled insults at him as they walked away.

  “Why are you such a jerk?”

  “Baldy!”

  “I don’t want her autograph anyway.”

  With a put-upon smile, Yuma looked to Bando and said, “It was just a few handshakes. I don’t mind.”

  “You can’t be like that,” he lectured. “Once you start indulging them, they’ll just want more. Shake their hands, and they’ll want autographs. Give them an autograph, and they’ll want a picture with you. There’s no end to a fan’s desires.”

  He led her to the end of the platform, where a set of doors led into Shoppers Plaza. He ushered her through.

  A few minutes later, the next train arrived at the platform. Office workers, men and women alike, crowded out from the train’s doors. The platform was suddenly filled with people.

  Lagging a little behind the throng, a single man was spat out from the train. With a slight stoop, he stood on the platform. He cleared his throat with a cough that could have come from a man twice his age. He spat out a gob of phlegm. If anyone had looked closely at him, they would have seen his unusually small, timid eyes.

  It was him. It was the man with the elephant eyes.

  A group of high school girls happened to be walking toward him as they chatted away about something or other. When he looked at them, his dark-skinned face turned a deep red. Quietly, he moved to the side of the platform so that they wouldn’t look at him.

  He must have been in a bit of a panic, because when he moved, something dropped from his pocket. He let out a small, stifled cry and quickly bent over and scooped up the object—a large box cutter.

  After greeting the marketing and promotion staff of Shoppers Plaza, Yuma went to an impromptu green room set up for her in the company dormitory. The four-and-a-half tatami mats of the Japanese-style room were dotted with stains and smudges, lending the cozy space a lived-in feel.

  While her manager was out of the room for a pre-event meeting, Yuma quickly got into her stage costume—a white blouse, cowhide vest, jean shorts, and a brown cowboy hat. It was her costume for “Lariat of Love.”

  The singer retrieved her microphone from her bag. She tested its weight in her hand and gave herself a moment to get re-accustomed to its feel.

  Her manager had been the one to come up with the idea for throwing the mic like a lasso. Since Yuma had been in the baton twirling club in junior high, she learned the technique in short order. An idol without that experience would have taken years to perfect the move. Even still, despite already possessing the fundamentals, Yuma had needed to practice extremely hard before she had it down.

  Several times, she had complained to Bando, “This is pointless. I’ll never get it.”

  Her third song, “Summer Love,” ended with a move where she had to lift up the edge of her miniskirt and stick out her butt. When she started out performing that song, she cried and cried out of embarrassment and sadness, but learning this one was even harder. The lessons had taxed her, not only mentally, but physically as well.

  When she saw “Lariat of Love” start rising up the Oricon chart, she felt truly happy. All her hard work was being rewarded.

  Yuma returned the microphone to her bag. She let down her ponytail and brushed her hair all the way back. With the aid of the mirror over the sink, she applied a light layer of makeup. Now she was ready.

  She plopped down on a floor cushion and waited for Bando to summon her.

  Yuma made her entrance onto the small stage in Shoppers Plaza’s event space.

  There among the seats was the man. His eyes were surrounded with little wrinkles, just like those of an elephant. When he saw Yuma in her cowgirl costume, he whispered, “Ah. Now this is Yuma.”

  A trio of junior high school boys occupied the seats next to the man. They each unfolded one of those Sanshin Denki posters and waved them in the air.

  Idiots, the man thought. What’s wrong with you people? You’re just a bunch of perverts lusting after little girls.

  Filled to capacity with primarily middle and high-school-aged boys, the event space crackled with excitement. The man regarded the exuberant crowd with an annoyed glare.

  They don’t understand Yuma’s true greatness, he thought. I’m the only one who understands. I’m the only one for her!

  In an effort to restrain his agitated emotions, he reached into his pocket and squeezed the box cutter by its handle. The feeling of its cold metal against his skin calmed him, as if he were a babe and the knife were his mother’s breast. The sensation of the metal traveled across his skin and through his body, reaching into the depths his mind.

  The man smiled.

  Without even realizing it, he stopped caring about the other fans around him. The only ones in the event hall were him and Yuma—at least that’s how it felt, as his fantasy subsumed all other thoughts in his head.

  When she finished singing “Lariat of Love,” Yuma returned to her green room with sweat on her brow.

  Bando was there waiting for her, a cold glass of soda in hand. “You did great!” he said. “The crowd was really into it.”

  Yuma accepted the glass of soda and downed it in a single go. Her cheeks flushed in exhilaration, she said, “That was amazing. It was like a rock concert out there.”

  Bando said, “All that’s left is the handshake session, and we’ll be done here.”

  Yuma nodded deeply and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her blouse.

  A little table and a cushioned folding chair waited on the stage. The set made for a rather dreary locale, but that was par for the course for these kinds of events.

  Dressed in her street clothes, Yuma climbed the three or four steps to the stage, sat on the metal chair, and looked out at the room. It was the same as always.

  The mostly teenaged boys who had been passionately waving their arms for her song now obediently sat in their seats waiting for the chance to shake hands with her.

  To Yuma, it was beautiful, but at the same time, absurd. She couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle.

  The shrill-voiced woman emceeing the event announced, “We’ll now begin the handshake session. Guests with tickets numbered one through ten, please line up at the stage.”

  The elephant-eyed man watched nothing but Yuma on the stage. He wondered how much it pained her to have to shake all those other men’s hands.

  But worry soon wormed its way into his fantasy. What if she was actually enjoying it? He needed to find out. He wanted to ask her, “You only shake those other men’s hands because it’s your job, right?”

  What would he do if she answered, “I don’t do it because it’s my job. I do it because I like it.”

  As his mind worked through the scenario, he felt the blood drain from his face.

  He struggled to remain in his seat. He couldn’t bear to wait another minute without knowing how she felt. He pursed his lips. He clenched his teeth. He gnashed them so hard that his molars made a sound like they were crunching on leaves.

  Yuma, please don’t betray me. Please, please, you won’t betray me, right?

  He put his ticket back into his pocket, and his fingers brushed against the box cutter.

  Yuma put emotion into each and every handshake. She held on to each fan for at least three seconds. She looked them in the eye and gave them a smile.

  After around 150 handshakes, the effort started to tax her. Her hand didn’t feel like a part of
her anymore. It was like it was someone else’s.

  She looked out at the audience. Roughly half were still waiting. Though she kept reminding herself she should be thankful that all these people wanted to meet her, deep down she was so dreadfully sick of it.

  His turn had finally come.

  When he put his foot on the steps leading up to the stage, his entire body tingled. A single word came unbidden into his head: destiny.

  This is my destiny.

  He saw each step that brought him closer to Yuma as a step toward his destiny.

  He climbed onto the stage, and Yuma was there, a few short meters away. For some reason, seeing his soul mate up close, he felt a little flustered. Just two, maybe three more steps, and they would be nearly touching.

  His composure was faltering.

  If this isn’t fate, he asked himself, then what is?

  With his eyes locked on to Yuma, he took one step, and then another, toward that which he believed was preordained.

  Just then, Yuma felt a prickling pain in her chest. Lightly, she held her right hand over her heart where she felt the discomfort. It wasn’t the pain of a physical wound or an illness. It was something more unusual.

  A premonition, she thought in realization. That’s what this is—a premonition.

  As she kept on shaking the hands her fans offered to her, dread and that unfamiliar pain swelled in her chest. She understood that her body was trying to warn her on some primal level. Something sinister was drawing near. It was the same dread she had felt standing outside the entrance to her apartment building.

  She looked into the face of the boy standing nervously in front of her. Was he the source of her distress?

  When the elephant-eyed man saw he was now second in line, he felt a rush of energy springing up from somewhere deep within, like magma racing up an erupting volcano. But at the same time, he also felt a pain that was hard for him to place. It was something akin to shame, or maybe how a virgin bride might feel as she faced her wedding night.