by Chris Ward
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
20
A meeting upstairs
Banba-sensei delivered the news to Karin with croissants for breakfast.
‘We’re graduating you from Girls Chorus,’ he said, putting the plate down in front of her. The bathrobe hung open to his waist, only a loosely tied cord hiding his modesty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re leaving the band.’
“Graduation” was a blanket term for kicking out the girls who’d outstayed their welcome to bring in fresh blood. There could be any reason: a class of personalities, a girl had fallen pregnant, pissed off the management, or simply gotten too famous within the group to undermine the puppeteers pulling the strings. It was written into every girl’s contract that any intention to leave the band would be carried out with the full graduation ceremony—which, depending on the popularity of the member in question—could involve a tearful farewell concert tour, a TV show special, an advertising campaign, even an honourary CD single release. What wasn’t allowed—unless a girl had the best lawyers in the land—was to just leave.
The wonderfully gullible public bought it every time. The cat fights and backroom squabbles over money manifested into group hugs and teary goodbye interviews, because if they broke with contractual protocol they would never get a job in the entertainment industry again.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ she said automatically. She’d thought about it a thousand times and even though leaving was the one thing she was desperate to do, fear of the unknown was even more terrifying than the oppression of being a dancing, underpaid mannequin for an entertainment company.
‘You’ve grown too big for the group, Karin,’ he said, going to stand behind her and rubbing her shoulders. One hand started to slip down her top, and she gritted her teeth for the few seconds it took him to entertain himself. It had been his bed that had got her to where she was, leader of the group, face of dozens of ad campaigns, and in a position where she’d been strong enough to force rule changes in the structure of the system. She only stayed with him once every couple of weeks, but it was enough to sour what little enjoyment she still felt in the band.
And of course, there was the guilt.
Her relationship—the first officially sanctioned one for any Girls Chorus member—with O-Remo Takahashi, charismatic singer with rising metal titans Plastic Black Butterfly, had been the catalyst for the end. They had become media darlings, adorning dozens of print pages and hundreds of websites every week. Plastic Black Butterfly was selling out the same arenas that Girls Chorus was playing as part of a Livewire Entertainment showcase tour.
But the management didn’t like it, so the axe had finally fallen.
‘What happens now?’ she asked, the food suddenly unappetizing, as Banba-sensei went back around the table and sat down.
‘You still have one more album in your contract,’ he said, not looking up. ‘There will be a farewell concert, of course, either at the Budokan or Saitama Super Arena. You’re popular. We could fill both. After that we’ll put out a solo record.’
She would miss the other girls—most of them—and she would miss the adoration from the fans, the packages delivered to the company in her name, the soft toys and the love letters and the homemade gifts. The chances of a transition to a successful solo career were not high; it happened, but more often than not it was a case of diminishing returns; one decent solo album followed by a succession of failures or a branch out into another media career that would never be as lucrative. There was that girl from that massive group a few years ago. Within a year she was starring in increasingly unsuccessful horror movies, before even that avenue dried up. The last time Karin had seen her, it had been as the presenter for a daytime cable shopping channel.
Karin had the advantage, being the obvious star of the group. It was one reason for her graduation, so that Banba-sensei could seize back control before Karin got too vocal in the press about their working conditions or salaries. Her place in his bed was expendable; she was just one of a line-up of eager girls prepared to do whatever it took to get on stage.
‘I’m thankful for everything you’ve done for me,’ she said slowly, staring at her plate. ‘I’m sure the graduation will be a great success.’
‘Of course it will,’ he said, smiling. ‘How could it not be?’
And then things started to go wrong.
The concert was an unbridled success. Twenty thousand crying fans crammed into Saitama Super Arena to watch Karin Kobayashi’s graduation from Girls Chorus. Almost the same number waited outside, watching on giant TV monitors. The scene in the backroom was like something out of a refugee hospital. Everyone was shouting and crying. The other girls in the band—who got on rather better than any of them might have anticipated—talked of mutiny. Hearing about Karin’s graduation only days before the concert, they talked of quitting en masse, reforming under a different name and hiring their own songwriters.
It was a nice gesture, but it was futile. Deep down they all knew who pulled the strings, and talking up their comradeship was merely an acknowledgement of support. Karin would be fine. The rest of the band would be fine. In six months everyone would have moved on.
Karin cried herself to sleep that night, and even with O-Remo beside her, talking of their impending marriage and making those little jokes that she loved so much, she was inconsolable. A major chapter of her life was over, even if she felt able to breathe properly for the first time in years.
Under Banba-sensei’s guidance she got to work on a solo album. Now out of the band, she could fully embrace her relationship with O-Remo. Banba-sensei’s bed became a thing of the past, and their relationship returned to being solely professional. There was no talk of a further contract, but her popularity with the fans of Girls Chorus meant that one solo album at least – and its accompanying tour – would recoup all of Livewire Entertainment’s costs and set her up for the next couple of years. And if it did really well – hitting the Oricon Top Five – record companies would be clambering over each other to sign her up, even if Livewire preferred more malleable artists on their books.
And then, heading home from a brief tour of Indonesia with Plastic Black Butterfly, O-Remo tried to carry a little black bag through customs at Narita International Airport.
O-Remo was shivering when he woke up, even though he could hear the hum of the air-conditioner. He rolled over in the huge double bed and gripped the pillow, his fingers clenching tight to try to hold off the shakes. It was a mild withdrawal because his recent use had been infrequent, but it was enough to gnaw at his insides like a giant insect, eating its way out of his stomach. It would get worse over the course of the day, but if he could survive until they got down to Toyama this evening he knew a man who could sort him out.
He climbed out of bed, and the memories of the night before returned. The bird thing out in the snow, crouched at his feet, taunting him.
He fell to his knees, his cheeks burning, and vomited on the floor. As he coughed and retched, he saw blood on his hands where he had scrabbled to get into the building. For a moment he couldn’t even remember why he’d been outside in the snow.
‘Karin…’
The word came out as a croak. She was here somewhere, in this building.
She had left him at the altar, and his life had never been the same. He had a simple question for her, one he needed to ask, had needed to ask for six years.
Why?
There was the obvious answer, of course, the crutch she had leaned on when she spoke to the press, but they had reviled her anyway, ruining her career.
He’d meant to throw out the stash before he boarded the plane, but he’d woken up late and just forgotten. He’d got through with larger amounts before, but customs had been sharper than usual that day.
His lawyers got him off with a suspended sentence, a slap on the wrists. His passport had been revoked for two years, and there were a number of countries that wo
uld no longer allow him entry, even now, six years later. Not that it mattered; by the time he’d been busted Bee had started to freak out on flights anyway and as for the profits, touring overseas had never been worthwhile.
He often got blamed for the band’s sudden decline, but that was bullshit. The Method in the Madness album had bombed—taking their whole career with it—because it had sucked.
Ken, so often a factory of crunching riffs, had been misfiring for that one. The follow up, Plastic Machine Pain, had been better—much better, in fact—but the rot had set in, and the slide had begun. Still, singing was what O-Remo did. There was nothing else. The day the band broke up would be the day he put a bullet into his head.
If he could find one.
He gripped his temples, trying to ignore the throbbing, and thought back to the previous night. He had seen a light on in one of the second floor windows and tried to climb up, that was it. He’d been a little high, but not enough to really impair his judgment. The bird thing he’d seen had been real. What it was, he didn’t know, but it was out there somewhere, and Karin was in here.
He went to the door and tried the handle, but it was locked. Instead, he went to the window and peered out at the snow. From the second floor window he could see the trail he had taken into the woods yesterday, winding its way through the trees on the other side of a snow-covered tennis court.
He had very little memory of why he had ended up in this bedroom. He remembered Ken half carrying him and dumping him on this bed. Ken must have locked him inside.
He went back to the door and pounded on it, shouting Ken’s name. His knuckles ached from cracking against the hard, cold wood, so he started to kick instead.
‘Let me out!’
No answer came. O-Remo turned away from the door, looking around the room. With ancient dressers and ornate chests of drawers lining a room of antique chairs and tables, glass chess sets and stuffed birds, it could have been lifted from the British Museum, where they’d gone once on a day off during their short European tour. As he stared at all the ancient fittings and stuffy reminders of an age of upper-class snobbery, something snapped.
Screaming in rage, he grabbed the nearest dining table chair and smashed it into a large mirror over an ornately carved dresser with stag’s hooves for feet. As the glass shattered, he gripped the dresser edge and pulled it forward, spilling glass all over the floor. Next, he ripped an ivory dial telephone off a table top and flung it against the wall, where it broke into pieces. Then he heaved a chess set over and pulled a bookshelf down from the wall.
He didn’t notice that what he thought was a closet door had opened, and a face was peering through the opening, until he lifted a lamp over his shoulder and readied to throw it.
‘O-Remo?’
He paused with the lamp in his arms like a Roman gladiator about to throw a spear. The large, bright eyes he had once drowned in stared at him out of a familiar if slightly older face, her skin still pale, still flawless. She was wearing a thin lace nightgown that left little to the imagination, and memories of the sweet nights they had spent together flickered through his mind like a flipbook of pleasant photographs.
(‘I got this vid on mail order from the US,’ Dai said. ‘Let’s have a watch on Bee’s laptop.’)
(‘Ah, no, man, that can’t be her…’)
(His hands cover his face as tears burst like sun flares from his eyes)
‘Karin…’
For a moment time froze. O-Remo stared at the woman who had jilted him at the altar, and Karin stared at the man she had loved enough to ruin her career. Then lights came on, and the credits rolled. Karin screamed, slammed the door, and ran.
It took O-Remo a few seconds to register that she had gone. Then his feet were moving, bursting through the doorway into a more feminine version of the room he had slept in, still ornate and gorgeous in a musty, otherworldly kind of way, but with a more petite dresser, prettier, more colourful furnishings, pictures of beautiful landscapes on the walls instead of hunting parties and sailing ships.
A large door on the other side of the room was swinging closed. O-Remo’s feet propelled him forward, but by the time he had reached the corridor outside she had vanished. He ran to the door at the end that opened on to the second-floor classrooms, but there was no sound of footsteps, so he retraced his steps and went down the stairs to the reception area, where a girl he vaguely remembered being present the night before was peering at a computer screen with a look of frustration on her face.
‘Did you see her?’ he asked.
‘Who, sir?’
‘Karin. Karin Kobayashi.’
‘Oh, her? Mr. Forbes’s lady-friend? No, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen her since yesterday.’
O-Remo staggered as her words sank in. She couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible.
He gripped his temples and sank to his knees, screaming.
21
Trouble for the band
Ken slept better than he thought he would. When he woke up to see seven a.m. on the little digital clock beside his bed, he didn’t immediately remember that his guitar had been missing. When he sat up though, it was leaning against the wardrobe, with the case propped open beside it.
He gasped and kicked at the sheets, scrabbling up the bed until his back pressed against the wall, but whoever had stolen and then returned the guitar in the night was nowhere in the room. He thought about that shadowy figure he’d seen out in the snow and shrugged it off. It had to have been Dai.
But how had he got into the room?
Ken flinched as a creak came from the door, and saw it was standing open a couple of inches, swaying slowly back and forth. He jumped up from the bed and clenched a fist as he made his way to the door, wondering what he would do if someone was really out there. The corridor, though, was empty.
He was sure he had pulled one of the beds across in front of the door, but it was back in its original position, pushed up against the wall. He looked down at the floor, but there were no scratch marks where the bed frame’s wooden legs had scraped across the wooden boards. Whoever had replaced the bed in its original position had done so by lifting it up.
Taking another look into the corridor, he walked down to the dormitory’s front entrance and stepped out into the snow. If there had been an intruder, the tracks had long ago been buried, but there weren’t even any depressions in the snow that could indicate old footprints. It had to have been someone from inside the building, and since Bee had come in with him, that left Dai. He was sure there were no other guests.
He went back up to his room, and seeing no reason not to, grabbed some fresh clothes and went to take a shower. He was thankful for the lock on the door this time, and thankful for the fresh aspect the jet of hot water gave him.
Dai had probably picked up one of those high school girls and wanted to serenade her with some bullshit to get her pants off. Knowing Ken’s guitar would be in his room when all the other gear was stuck in the back of the van, he had decided to borrow it, hoping Ken would have stayed at the pub and not noticed. Then, finding Ken asleep and the room barricaded, he had…
No. He hadn’t just slipped inside, because those beds were heavy. If he’d pushed the door Ken would have heard the bed scraping across the floor.
Ken dried himself off and went back to his room. He stared at the bed for a few moments, then went out and knocked on Dai’s door, trying to resist the urge to storm in shouting. To his surprise, the door swung open. It hadn’t even been latched.
Ken stepped inside and stared.
The window hung open, several panes just jagged teeth of glass shards, the rest of them in pieces on the floor. The bed was a mess, the sheets damp with the kind of stains Dai always seemed to find in whatever town they had a show, and Ken could guess what had happened. Something had broken in, surprising Dai and his new friend.
Feeling a growing sense of trepidation, he walked to the window, pushed it open and peered out.
The snow
had drifted deep up against the windows. Below Dai’s window were a mess of half buried footprints, and he now knew how whatever or whoever it was had got into his room and taken his guitar.
The same mess of footprints were under his own window.
‘It played us a fucking song,’ came a voice from behind him, and Ken spun, his heart leaping into his throat, but it was just Dai, dressed in a bathrobe, with a young girl beside him in similar attire, holding his hand. ‘That motherfucker played us a goddamn song and then tried to come in.’
Ken didn’t reply. He remembered the shadow he had seen out in the snow. ‘We’d better find Bee,’ he said.
But when he knocked on Bee’s door it swung open silently, also unlocked.
Ken stepped inside, followed by Dai and the girl.
Bee’s bed was untouched and the room was empty. Of Bee or his things there was no sign.
There was nothing much they could do except carry on. Ken waited in the corridor as Dai got dressed and then together they went over to the adjacent dormitory building and waited for the girl, Kaede, to throw on some clothes. Dai was much changed; ordinarily he would have been bragging about his conquest the moment the girl was out of earshot, but as she went into her room he just stood in silence beside Ken and stared off into space. Neither spoke. Neither had anything much to say.
They headed up to the dining hall and found places set out for breakfast. There was only a small table of bread rolls, some rice, and some cornflakes. Only one cook was visible in the kitchen, and the waitress was the same girl who had been on reception the night before. She looked flustered and out of place, her apron failing to hide the business suit she wore underneath.
There were five places laid out for Kaede’s high school and four for the band. None of the other students were present, and O-Remo and Bee were also absent, so Ken, Dai and Kaede sat down together. They grimaced with embarrassment as the single waitress recited a poor speech in English about breakfast customs and about waiting their turn, when there was hardly any food or guests.
