If Kotobuki was hurt by learning the truth later on, I would support her when it happened.
I would witness the truth about Mito with Kotobuki until the end, without turning my eyes from it.
“I’m sure Mito will be back by Christmas. She’ll keep her promise to you. Let’s try to believe that for now.”
“Yeah…okay…”
Hot tears dropped from her eyes and soaked my neck as Kotobuki nodded over and over.
“Thank you. And for giving me…your emblem. Thank you…I’ve wanted to thank you for so long…I’ve wanted to tell you I appreciated it…This whole time…I’ve been watching you.”
Then still crying, she murmured quietly, “You…were my first love.”
Where did I stray from the path?
Neither the singing that resounds to the ceiling nor the applause of the audience makes me happy; they’ve only brought about disaster.
If I hadn’t wanted something so intangible that vanished like a soap bubble, the Phantom never would have gotten the better of me.
Talent wasn’t something I needed.
That pure, kind sensation I felt when I turned the pages of Miu Inoue’s book. The peaceful warmth of the every day.
Going to school like everyone else, talking to friends, studying, eating lunch.
Waiting after school and then going home together, studying together at the library…laughing.
Exchanging presents on Christmas Eve and promising that we would be together forever…tangling our fingers together…
A perfectly unassuming life like that would have been fine…
I was content just feeling the tenderness that surged up in me like sunlight when I touched his hand and with my bounding happiness when I saw Nanase smile.
Nanase—Nanase.
What are you doing right now? What’s on your mind?
I’m thinking about you, Nanase. You’re the only thing I have left that’s important to me.
I hope you’re happy. I hope all of your wishes come true.
The truth is, I hate Miu Inoue. I’ve always hated her. No, that’s not true. It’s just when I see a world that’s too beautiful, I feel it crushing my chest and I can’t turn the pages because of the pain.
I took off my ring.
I can’t ever go back.
The light of the sun is too blinding for me.
I can’t help but loathe those who dirtied me and cast me into darkness.
I will have my revenge on them.
I’ll put on a mask and become a Phantom, chase them down, corner them, seal them up in a labyrinth of illusions, torment them relentlessly, then deliver the coup de grace.
Even if they prayed for forgiveness, it would be far too late for that. Let them be spattered in humiliation, be spattered in corruption; let them hear the dirge that spills from my lips, once those of a human being but no longer.
The angel who deceived me, the men who treated me like an animal, you’ve all made me into a Phantom.
Curse you—curse all of you!
Chapter 6—A Song of Ice and Death
That evening, Kotobuki and I went home hand in hand.
I told her about Mito as we walked slowly, leisurely down the dark road, and Kotobuki kept her eyes downcast the entire time, taking it in.
Occasionally, I felt her hand flinch faintly in my grasp. Every time I tightened my fingers around hers to reassure her, and when I did, she would timidly squeeze back.
When we parted ways in front of her house, Kotobuki said, her eyes red, “I believe that I’m going to spend Christmas with Yuka again this year. She’s still going to be my best friend for a long time.”
I still hadn’t heard anything from Mr. Mariya.
“There’s nothing to worry about. It’s Marmar, after all. He’ll just come back looking indifferent,” Shoko said with a rueful smile. I’d met up with her in the coffee shop near the academy.
“Marmar isn’t bound by things like common sense or money or honor. When he was a student, while everyone else was desperately aiming for the top, he was always standing at the pinnacle, perfectly aloof. And despite that, he threw it away like it was nothing.”
She dropped the hand that held her cigarette from her mouth, and her look turned envious.
“I…wish I could live like he does.”
She played it off with a joke about how hard it was to be a teacher, and then Shoko told me how things were going at the school.
“We’re doing rehearsals with the understudy right now. Mito is still the lead, but…if she doesn’t show up on the day of the performance, the understudy will probably go onstage.”
And then Maki showed me a video of Mr. Mariya from when he won the competition abroad. He stood on the stage wearing a black tuxedo, belting out his cheerful singing with a sunny expression on his face.
Maki rested an elbow on her crossed knees and looked absorbed in his performance.
“He’s amazing at holding the high notes. He used to sing with a choir when he was little, you know. They said he had the voice of an angel. I’ve heard CDs of his from back then, and his voice is a beautiful, pure soprano—like a little bell.”
My heart skipped a beat when she said the word angel.
A bewitching smile came over Maki’s lips.
“The art world will occasionally give rise to unprecedented monsters. That’s why I’m not interested in it…But he may have been nicknamed as an ageless, sexless angel because from the Western perspective, Asians seem not to age.”
Sexless…Something not masculine and also not feminine. It was true that there was something androgynous about Mr. Mariya. Could he also be Mito’s angel?
“In any case, if Yuka Mito is a singer who’s been selected by an Angel of Music, I would definitely expect her to be at the recital.”
Perhaps Maki knew something, but I didn’t expect someone as formidable as her to reveal anything.
Omi had been out of school all that time. Kotobuki had told me, “Omi has never been very healthy,” but of course, I couldn’t see it that way.
At the very least, I suspected he had some sort of connection to Mr. Mariya. I also still wondered how he’d known that I was Miu Inoue.
“That reminds me, Kotobuki—have you gotten any weird messages? Mori told me that when you were in the nurse’s office before you said something about the Phantom.”
Kotobuki’s cheeks reddened and she grew suddenly flustered.
“Th-that was…because I got this chain letter thing that was bad luck, and I got really scared. I just crossed it with the Phantom in my mind. People play that trick all the time, but I guess I got a little nervous. I’m fine now!”
I didn’t think that could be the only reason she’d gotten so scared, but…I admired how she pursed her lips and tried to look strong, and I wanted to protect her through everything.
Would Mito appear at the recital after all—?
Christmas was right around the corner, too.
Tohko rested her index finger on her lips and bent her ear to my story with a serious expression; then she lamented, “I have the National Center Test on Sunday.”
“Are you still trying for a national school?”
“Of course.”
“Then forget about the recital, and study your butt off.”
“Hey, why are you sighing? Geez, I’m going to get a C next, you’ll see!”
“You think that makes you safe?”
In this way, we came to the day of the performance.
The city was wall-to-wall Christmas. Christmas songs played on the streets, and even the people walking there seemed somehow excited, having fun.
The concert started at eleven, and we arrived at a hall on the academy’s campus thirty minutes early. Even though it was only a student recital, the spacious lobby was decorated with flower arrangements with placards on them, and the reception desk was piled high with bouquets as well.
Kotobuki also hugged a bouquet of bright blue roses to her chest.
“Those roses are superblue. I’ve never seen that color before.”
“They’re Yuka’s favorite flowers,” Kotobuki said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “I bought them online. It’s not their real color. They dye white roses blue. They’re supposed to stand for the blessing of God.”
Today, Kotobuki was wearing a maxi dress with a ribbon on it and a billowing coat over that. It might have been her clothes that made her look more graceful and cuter than usual.
“The blessing of God, huh? That’s a good thing to represent.”
“Yeah, Yuka said that on her seventeenth birthday, her boyfriend gave her these roses. She was so happy. She took a ton of pictures of them with her cell phone and sent them to me.”
“I’m sure they’ll make her happy again.”
“I…hope so.”
We had the receptionist call Shoko, and she came out looking extremely harried.
“Mito’s still not here,” she said in a bitter tone.
She had dark circles under her eyes, and her skin tone was muted. She looked a little annoyed. Backstage they were probably waiting for Mito’s appearance with soul-crushing anxiety.
We said we would come back after the performance, then left Shoko.
“We’ll be able to see Mito backstage once the recital is over. Then we’ll give her the flowers,” I said.
“…Okay.”
Kotobuki was probably disappointed. She nodded with a cheerless look. The blue roses she held in her arms swayed slightly each time she took a step.
Our seats were in the first row of the second level.
Was Mr. Mariya here? Or Omi?
I tried scanning the audience, but there were way too many people and I couldn’t tell.
At last the announcement to turn off our cell phones played, the hall grew dark, and a bell rang announcing the start of the performance.
The opera Turandot had begun.
The daughter of a Chinese emperor, Turandot has a cruel nature, and she presents three riddles to the men who come to seek her hand, and if they fail to answer them correctly, she cuts off their heads. The nomad prince Calaf, driven from his country by war, is present for the execution of a Persian prince, and he feels a powerful wrath at the icelike princess.
However, his heart is captured immediately thereafter by the beauty of the princess who appears in the tower, and heedless of those around him trying to prevent it, he begs to marry the princess and solve her riddles.
The man playing Calaf was a guest performer, a professional opera singer. With the emperor’s palace steeped in the light of sunset as his backdrop, his vibrant tenor rang out youthfully, like a trumpet.
“My entire body is aflame…
My every sense is violent torture!
Every string of my heart
Holds fast to one word and shouts it,
Turandot! Turandot! Turandot!”
Wow!
The acoustics might be having an effect, but I’d had no idea a human voice could scale so high. It really was like a musical instrument!
The song was in Italian, but I’d learned the story ahead of time so I could pretty much tell what the scene was. The singer made the range of his emotions almost painfully clear, and the character’s feelings rode the music and bit into my chest with overwhelming force.
Turandot’s debut was still a ways off. Would Mito appear on the stage?
I felt a pinched pain at my temples, and my impatience made the time feel longer.
Still holding the blue roses, Kotobuki’s eyes were fixed on the stage and her look was one of prayer.
When the first act ended and we moved on to the second, the backdrop changed to that of the castle interior.
There were the wails of ministers being twisted about by the princess’s whims. There were people gathered in the courtyard of the castle interior. There was an exchange between the emperor and Calaf.
When the emperor orders him to leave the palace immediately, Calaf sings out decisively in response.
“Son of heaven, I beg of you!
Let me attempt this test!”
It would be soon.
Sweat covered the palms of my hands, and my breathing grew strained.
Soon Turandot would appear.
At the tall staircase in the center of the stage.
A spotlight fell on its summit, and the chorus sang.
“Princess, I beg you, show yourself!
Let the world be radiant!”
Kotobuki leaned forward. I forgot to even blink as I stared at the staircase. I was convinced that Turandot would appear there for the competition.
But Turandot didn’t show herself.
The rest of the audience must have thought it was strange. A buzz spread like a wave.
Mito was late—!
Just then, a pure high note rang out from an unexpected direction.
Behind the seating on the first floor.
From there, a girl advanced down the center aisle toward the stage.
A majesty that frosted the very air emanated from the maiden, who wore a gorgeous thin silk robe of red and gold that trailed behind her and a large golden crown on her head over her beautiful, long black hair.
The slaughtering princess, Turandot!
The audience stirred.
The top half of Turandot’s face was perfectly obscured by a white mask.
But all confusion was soon swept away by the singing of the diva, which dominated the hall.
A voice that glistened like transparent wings, stretching out and soaring to the most distant corners of the sky!
A rich and powerful high note rang out with enough energy to break down the walls of the theater or the doors to the lobby without weakening an iota in its terrifying power.
“In this palace, a thousand years now past,
A scream of despair echoed here!”
“And that scream passed through the children and the grandchildren,
To lodge itself here, in my soul!”
It was a voice truly beyond human comprehension! It was a song of utmost superiority and bliss performed by the instrument of heaven.
The bloody princess, the princess they called death, the ice princess. But still her voice glittered transparently like light pouring down from the sky, still it had a strength like steel and raised the girl Turandot from a gory butcher to a white, unsullied position of supremacy.
A chaste, ruthless, beautiful maiden who human men were not permitted to touch.
When she reached the center of the stage, the spotlight covered her in light, and she sent out her voice—high, clear, and crazed—to every corner of the hall.
Proclaiming that in order to avenge an ancestor, a princess who was dragged away and violated by the king of a foreign land long ago, her body would belong to no man.
“I will take my revenge against them,
For the cry of that pure and stainless person,
And for her death!”
“I would that none should win me!
The animosity for the man who murdered that person
Is raw in my heart!”
“No! No! I would that none should win me!”
How high could her voice go?!
The higher the note became, the more her power increased, and her wings beat freely toward heaven.
I hadn’t studied singing or anything, and I didn’t know much about opera, but there was no doubt that this voice was dragging the entire theater into a fevered, imagined whirlpool.
Calaf’s voice tangled with Turandot’s.
The high notes of the female soprano and the male tenor coursed fiercely up to the ceiling, as if each was trying to force the other to surrender.
Even when Calaf’s voice broke off, Turandot’s voice continued stretching even higher, as if to make the difference in their power clear.
The second act was over in the blink of an eye.
Calaf gave exactly the right answers to the three questions Turandot posed.
Even so, Turandot tried to reject Calaf’s love. Calaf, therefore, posed a riddle to her in return, to guess his name by morning.
If she guesses his name, he will die.
“You do not know my name, lady!
Tell me my own name
By dawn’s light!
If you do so, I will die!”
Turandot accepted.
The curtain fell, and the hall was enveloped in explosive applause and praise.
The audience sprang up, seemingly intoxicated.
The announcement of a twenty-minute intermission was lost in a storm of applause, and I could only hear snatches of it.
Kotobuki stood up, her face ashen.
“I—I have to go backstage! I can’t wait for the opera to be over.”
With a tight sense of dread, I headed toward the backstage door with Kotobuki.
Even if they wouldn’t let us inside, if she could just find out about Mito—
But when we got there, the place was in chaos.
Staff members were running in and out of a gaping door, shouting loudly to each other.
“You still haven’t found Mito?!”
“No! She wasn’t in the bathroom or the lobby!”
“How could the lead actress abandon the stage and disappear?!”
“Watanabe, be ready to go on just in case.”
“O-okay!”
Surprised, we looked at each other.
Mito had disappeared again!
Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel Page 13
