A busload of handsome boys and pretty girls bloomed around her like a flower garden in full riot, dazzling her eyes.
The person who had called out to her paused, apparently taking issue with being answered by the word "beauty." The producer came over, urging her to get on the bus with that glittering crowd. She curled up in the farthest corner of the seat, crunching potato chips with bright, sharp snaps, wearing the air of someone who did not want to share any of them, like a rabbit nervously guarding a carrot. One of the boys leaned toward her and asked, "What's your name?" In a tone stolen straight from Stephen Chow, she answered, "Why do you want to know? I'll be history soon anyway." Guo'er, he called her then, white teeth against thin lips, giving her a teasing nickname full of ambiguity. In The Return of the Condor Heroes, Xiaolongnu calls Yang Guo by that name in a soft voice. Guo'er. A mistake. And once you liked someone, it was a mistake all the way to the end. The cameraman captured the moment. Later the post-production team would surely add some caption, something like, The first shoots of love begin to sprout. How, exactly, had she ended up on a dating show like this?
Shut-in girl growing mushrooms at home.
That summer she lay on her bed like a corpse while mosquitoes circled greedily overhead. Manga in her left hand, chips in her right, a pair of fuzzy little shorts, and an oily face she was too lazy to wash even at noon. In the trendiest vocabulary, she was a one-hundred-percent otaku girl. Her record for staying indoors was one full month, and all her friends were fictional two-dimensional characters. Other girls carried halos above their heads. Above hers hung a spiderweb thick with dust. At the time, Fuji TV was launching "Summer Japan," and the city station, determined to grow its entertainment business, borrowed the idea from a popular foreign program and planned "Youth Bus." A group of young men and women would board a pink bus, travel across Japan one stop at a time, make friends along the way, and strike sparks of love and friendship. Youth loves to roam, and true hearts wait somewhere on the road. Her father, who worked for an advertising company, had a sudden flash of inspiration at dinner and came up with the slogan. Her mother, after hearing the planned program, rounded on their daughter as if going to war. "Aya, do you still have a long vacation left?" Her mother's thinking was simple. First, the program would pay to send Fujiwara Aya around Japan, which would at least get her out into the world instead of letting her crouch at home growing mushrooms. Second, Aya's social skills were awful. Maybe if she were dropped in among a normal group of boys and girls for training, her youth might finally wake up and start to glow. There were still two months of vacation left. Aya nodded vaguely, and the next thing she knew she had been thrown into deep water and open fire alike, becoming one of the first ten participants filmed for the program. Nine of them shone. Only she alone represented the whole lonely and desolate side of youth.
Enoshima. The sea wind rises.
Fujiwara Aya was not enchanting. She was the youngest member of the group and the least striking. On the bus she did not join in, did not sing, did not dance, did not tell jokes. Her looks were ordinary, and she was not even witty enough to laugh at herself. Naturally, everyone overlooked her. Only the boy who called her Guo'er, the way Xiaolongnu calls Yang Guo, kept looking at her with eyes that seemed to hold luminous pearls in the dark. She was too timid to meet his gaze, so she turned her face to the window. Enoshima was already close, the air full of coffee and palm trees, the sound of waves breaking on the shore drifting toward them. Everyone became excited. Once they reached the beach, the first interactive game of the program began. Everyone else was chosen quickly, and Fujiwara Aya was left standing awkwardly alone in the white surf beneath the sun, trying hard to persuade herself she did not care. Then someone held out a hand. With the sunlight behind him like gold wings, he said, "Guo'er, come here." Aya kept her head deeply bowed as she went to him and took hold of one of his fingers. Then she heard him say to the camera, "My name is Kamiya Kanade. I'm from Shaanxi. I like singing. This is my partner." Kamiya Kanade gave her a firm pull. His voice was a little husky, like the Enoshima wind brushing rock. He sang "Boundless Happiness," nudging her several times to join in, but she remained dazed from beginning to end. At the line "An angel like you / should have wings and a name / should be beautiful and thorned / should belong to me for once," she turned her head away so the camera would not catch her smiling like a fool. After that came beach volleyball. He leaned in to tell her the signal for feints. She ran clumsily along the baseline, panting like an ox, while he blocked and spiked in front with effortless grace. In the end, they won.
The lights were dim and wavering. The steak on the plate was cut from the sixth to eighth ribs of the cow, the most tender and juicy part. Fujiwara Aya made endless noise with her knife and fork. Angry at herself, she dropped them and looked across the table at the pretty, elegant face of the boy opposite her, sauce still touching his lips. "I don't want to stay anymore."
On the day they were to leave Enoshima, the group gathered in the local piano museum, and the host asked if anyone wanted to confess. The rules of the program were simple: at the end of every stop, if someone had developed feelings for another participant, they could confess by offering that person a return ticket and asking if they would like to leave together. If the other person refused, then the one who confessed had to leave alone with a broken heart. Fujiwara Aya stepped out of line. She saw Kamiya Kanade's face go white as piano keys. But when she lifted her hand, she pointed instead at another boy. A stranger, really, with cool, handsome features, a student in the acting department of an arts college. He was usually as taciturn as she was, yet the girls around him were crazy about him. They called him stylishly cold, though after several failed attempts to talk to him, most had retreated in embarrassment and shifted their attention elsewhere. Hearing Aya's confession, stiff as a subtitle machine, "I like you," he looked surprised, then answered her devotion with silence. She was secretly delighted. She picked up her luggage. But then a foot in royal-blue Adidas sneakers stretched out. "I don't want you to leave like this. Guo'er." Kamiya Kanade's eyes were earnest as stars, his voice like a kite string waiting for her to take hold. Aya looked at him for a long time in silence. Why had she not confessed to him? Because she did not want him to bear, on television, the infamy of rejecting a girl? Or because she herself did not want to hear him reject her? At last her hands loosened. She dropped her luggage and went to stand by Kamiya Kanade, her feelings heaving wildly. Under the revival rule of the program, if someone from the opposite sex spoke up to keep you and expressed an interest in continuing things, you could stay even after a failed confession.
Arita. A heart like shattered porcelain.
No one left at Enoshima. Neither did anyone leave at Kamakura or Hakone after that, though one stop even had people reenacting the meeting of Xu Xian and the White Snake on the broken bridge. No one wanted to confess. No one wanted to leave together or leave alone. In private, everyone said that though all those cameras were disgusting, there were still so many destinations left ahead. Even if you liked someone, why say it now? Wasn't it much better to keep traveling together and let the ambiguity grow slowly? After the third stop, Aya's mother called to say the television station had started airing one episode a week and was now up to the Enoshima segment. Her courageous confession in the piano museum had shocked them all. Her mother had only wanted her to see the world and make friends. She had never imagined her daughter would go at it like a woman pumped full of adrenaline. But she also said cheerfully that the boy was handsome and sang well, and besides, Aya had already finished her university entrance exams. Meanwhile her father, who handled ratings statistics, discovered awkwardly that the scene in which she was rejected and then brought back had become the highest-rated segment in the whole broadcast so far. Online, a forum devoted to "deeply devoted Kamiya Kanade" appeared. Fans said the way he kept her from leaving rivaled a scene from an idol drama, and excitedly speculated about what would happen between them afterward. What happened? Nothing happened. Kamiya Kanade had only kept her there. In Kamakura there was a segment where they learned to perform an excerpt from The Legend of the White Snake. He played Zhang Yutang, while she played Xiaoqing. In the scene they acted, Xiaoqing had not yet rid herself of snake poison and was causing Zhang Yutang to hover near death, forcing her to use the spell of forgetting and make him live on without her. Kamiya Kanade was like that awakening Zhang Yutang: even when he smiled at her, it was as if he had already forgotten how much hope his rescue at Enoshima had given her. He never mentioned it again, irresponsibly. The one who did remember her humiliation clearly was the boy she had confessed to. Once, when they ended up on the same team in a game, she tried to tell him their strategy. She said "Hey" for ages without getting his attention and at last, in a mood of wanting to throw herself into the sea, had to ask, "Excuse me, what's your name?" He turned slowly back, lifting an eyebrow in surprise, as if reproaching her for confessing without even knowing his name. Miserly with words, he still answered. "Kikawa Saku." Now Fujiwara Aya sat groggily on the bus heading toward Arita in Saga. The show had become so popular that the pink bus caused a stir everywhere it went. Passing one street, a girl jumped up to pound on the window and shout, "Kamiya Kanade, I support you so much!" At lunch he signed autographs for several people, already the most popular cast member on the program. When he turned back from that, he saw Aya bent over beside a tree, retching wildly. He came over, patted her back, and handed her a paper napkin, and the sour water rising in her throat almost turned into tears. Then other participants called him away to help with luggage. The host came over and said, "Look how nice Kamiya Kanade is to you. The Arita we're about to reach is so beautiful. I recommend confessing to Kamiya Kanade there. The atmosphere would be perfect." Aya knew perfectly well the host was only egging her on because no one had stirred up any excitement for two episodes in a row, and the little frog had to be pushed toward the swan somehow.
Driven to the edge, Fujiwara Aya straightened up, wiped her mouth, and said with grim heroic resolve that she would do it.
The host tossed out, "I'll arrange a romantic scene for you," and scampered off happily. Left alone to gather the force of her swelling little universe, Aya suddenly felt someone watching her. Looking over the crowd, she saw Kikawa Saku. The chill in his eyes seemed to accuse her: So you've changed targets again? You've already set your sights on your next confession?
The group arrived at a pottery kiln in Arita, full of fragile, beautiful porcelain, white as jade, bright as mirrors, thin as paper, clear as bells. Naturally they all had to try making some. They worked in pairs, and Fujiwara Aya still went with Kamiya Kanade. Their hands, smeared with clay, touched now and then in brief flashes of heat. When she placed her unbaked vessel into the kiln, all she could do was wait silently while her labor passed through thousands of degrees of fire and became a piece of pottery heavy with unspoken feeling. Once the host brought her finished piece back, she meant to hold it out to Kamiya Kanade and speak the tender confession in her heart. If he rejected her, she would smash the vessel and walk away into a world where the two of them were strangers forever. But another girl beat her to it. "Kamiya Kanade, I can't stand the way you and Fujiwara Aya hover in this in-between state. I like you." She was beautiful and fresh and easy to be moved by, but Kamiya Kanade only shook his head. Aya felt herself let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. No one spoke to keep the girl, and the host announced her elimination. Then, expectant eyes fell on Aya. She took a deep breath and stepped forward. One step. Then she saw Kamiya Kanade give the smallest shake of his head, as if saying, Guo'er, don't come over here. She looked at him and in the end did not go. Afterward, everyone escorted the eliminated girl away and could not help complaining that Fujiwara Aya had also been rejected by Kikawa Saku and yet still got to stay for a free trip. Their words carried a sour note, and they abandoned her there alone. Kikawa Saku lagged behind the main group, then came over and said, "You didn't really like me. What you feel for Kamiya Kanade is real. I'm an acting student. I can tell whether a feeling is performed or true. What are you trying to do?" There was the faintest trace of anger in his voice, as though he himself had been hurt. When no one else was around, Kamiya Kanade came over too and said, "Isn't this nice, Guo'er? The show still has Yokohama, Kobe, Kyoto, so many fun places left. Let's keep playing together until the very end, okay?" She had held those two return tickets in her palm until they were damp with sweat. Hugging her misshapen ceramic vessel, she walked on and still could not ask the question in her heart. Kamiya Kanade, if you shorten everything you've just said, does it mean I like you?
Osaka. Jelly noodles of heartbreak.
The host seemed to have found a secret. He watched for the first signs of feeling between the young people. If he thought A liked B, he would run to A and whisper that B and C seemed to like each other. A would immediately become alarmed, and more often than not a confession followed very quickly.
By the time the program had gone on for a month, they had visited seven places and only six people remained. One more girl bravely confessed to Kamiya Kanade. He refused her. "You're not the one I've been waiting for." Then his stubborn gaze crossed over her and fell on Fujiwara Aya. No wonder the pairing of Su and Tetsu was now the hottest subject on the forums. Online, people talked themselves dizzy with it: Kamiya Kanade's waiting, Fujiwara Aya's loneliness, a modern Condor Heroes story full of grandeur and heartbreak. Poor Kikawa Saku, carrying the shackles of "former confession target" while the cameras filmed the three of them together. He worked hard to keep his face calm, but ripples still crossed it. He could not deny his displeasure. He admitted, if only to himself, that his pride felt mocked. Fujiwara Aya had run like a sly fox through his flower field and escaped, leaving him with only a few white strands of fox fur in his hand and a dull, helpless ache.
The next stop was Osaka, where they competed over the city's famous heartbreak jelly noodles, so spicy they brought tears to the eyes. The one who could take the most heat won. Kikawa Saku mercilessly kept telling the owner to add more spice. Kamiya Kanade was ultimately defeated and retreated to the side. Victorious, Kikawa Saku said, "I choose Aya." Everyone on the program followed Kamiya Kanade in calling her Guo'er, but Saku refused, as though deliberately trying to create a form of address that belonged to him alone. Both his way of calling her and his choice of her left the whole group gaping. The host nearly jumped out of his skin with excitement, so overwhelmed by the thought of the ratings soaring that he could barely hold onto the microphone. Separated from the others, Aya resigned herself to boarding a bus with Kikawa Saku. Their destination was Kamikochi. Eight full hours in a vehicle, with only Kikawa Saku's almost painfully handsome profile for company. But what could she do? The reward for winning the heartbreak jelly-noodle challenge was a three-day, two-night trip to Kamikochi with any partner of your choice, while everyone else had to remain in Osaka and wander around the city waiting for the two in paradise to return. Fujiwara Aya had no heart left to admire Kamikochi's many-colored lakes shifting in the light. The guide excitedly reminded them that The Return of the Condor Heroes had once been filmed there too, that Xiaolongnu had floated there like a fairy. At that, Aya slipped. Kikawa Saku caught her, and she pushed him away. Every birdcall, every blossom, every stir of the lake seemed to be calling out, Guo'er. Her nose stung, and she cursed inwardly: such beautiful scenery, wasted on the wrong person. Turn around all you want, prodigal hero, it won't help. Right, right, you're that damned Yin Zhiping from the Quanzhen sect, interrupting Xiaolongnu and Yang Guo when they were trying to fall in love properly. That night, Aya was choked by a cup of butter tea and went back to her room to rest. Only once she lay on the bed did she feel her fatigue crash over her like a mountain. She grew sicker and sicker, dimly aware of someone carrying her, then the whole road rocking beneath her. When she woke, she was in a hospital. Kamiya Kanade was staring at her with a face gone white. It turned out she had suffered altitude sickness and had only just come around.
Kyoto. A place too full of feeling.
The scene of Kikawa Saku beside himself with worry for her spread everywhere almost as soon as it aired. People who had faithfully supported the Su-Tetsu pairing suddenly began to waver. They explained that Kikawa Saku, who had always seemed cold and aloof, was actually gentle, always giving off a lonely air that kept people at a distance, when in fact all it took was one stone tossed into the lake of his heart to raise ripples. Outwardly cold, inwardly warm, like a volcano covered in snow. Japan has one of those. It is called Mount Fuji. Online, fans screamed at one another; on the real bus, as Kikawa Saku drew closer and closer to Fujiwara Aya, Kamiya Kanade began stepping aside. A girl went over happily and asked, "Kamiya Kanade, can we be partners next time we play a game?" Looking at Fujiwara Aya, who was also looking at him, he answered lightly, "Sure." He looked both wronged and stubbornly sad. Several stops later they reached Kyoto. The director took them touring through the old imperial city, talking about its Tang-style prosperity, then brought up how the great beauty Yang Guifei had first been the consort of Prince Shou, son of Emperor Xuanzong, and later become a woman of Xuanzong's harem. Whom had she loved in the end, the young Prince Shou from the days when happiness was still simple, or Emperor Xuanzong, who gave her a love that toppled kingdoms and then betrayed her? It was a foolish question, and Aya did not ask it aloud. She was not Yang Guifei. Yang Guifei could get drunk; she could not. Her heart was like a lake, clear and calm. She knew very well whom she liked. Kikawa Saku was a friend from a broken mirror trying to be made whole. Kamiya Kanade was the one she longed for. The pity of it was that she could not say so. Once she spoke, either she would have to leave, or she and Kamiya Kanade would have to leave together. Kamiya Kanade had said he wanted to make it all the way to Kyoto. It was where he had been born and raised, and it held many beautiful memories for him. When he said that, a special, contented light filled his face. But once they arrived in Kyoto, he claimed he was unwell and asked the crew for leave to see a doctor. He was absent when they toured the palace. A fine rain began to fall, and the day's schedule ended early. Aya sat by the window of the bus and watched the old capital blur beneath the rain, and then she froze. Though people hurried all around them, she still saw the tall shape of Kamiya Kanade running through the rain with an unfamiliar girl in his arms, the smile on his face more devastating than any beauty in history. Aya opened her eyes wide and fought with all her strength not to cry. A warm hand came from behind and covered her eyes. Kikawa Saku's voice was as light as a dandelion drifting in the wind. "If it hurts, then don't look." In the end her tears still fell, staining his palm and winding over the lines of his fate, his love, his life. But when Kamiya Kanade returned, she had no courage to ask the question. Kamiya Kanade, you never went to the hospital. You went to see a girl. Who is she?
All she knew was that over the five days they stayed in Kyoto, Kamiya Kanade did not spend a single day moving with the group. He always had some excuse to slip away. On the last day in Kyoto, that same girl stood at the station waving at the departing bus for as long as she could. Kamiya Kanade kept turning to look back at her fading figure. When he turned around again, he wiped away tears in a flash, hid his sorrow, and forced a smile before speaking to Fujiwara Aya. "Guo'er, was Kyoto fun?"
The scenery was sweet, and yet...
In the rosy afterglow, the Youth Bus went on, heading for Hokkaido. That night the inn where they stopped was holding a bonfire party in the open yard. A group dressed in ethnic costume was singing at full volume and roasting a whole lamb. Everyone had been exhausted, but the scene revived them all at once, and they ran over in groups to join in. The firelight made Aya feel warm through and through. Then she realized that in all the laughter and noise, Kamiya Kanade was nowhere to be seen. He could not possibly miss lamb that tender. Carrying off a piece for him, she began looking. She searched and searched, and at last saw him sitting alone on a stairway, his back lonely. Aya crept over, wanting only to surprise him, but what she gave herself instead was a fright. Kamiya Kanade was hiding there making a phone call. All the cameras were back at the bonfire party. He was slipping out of the crew's sight, and he had done it often enough by now to be practiced. In the quiet, his voice was like wool, soft and dense, warming someone else on that cold night. "Don't worry. I'll work hard. Things are already starting to go my way. The producer says I'm very popular and asked if I want to sing the show's theme song..." He drew a long breath. "Chinatsu, one day you'll turn on the radio or the television and hear the song I wrote for you and sang for you everywhere. We promised each other that." He hung up, stood, and let his smile collapse into loneliness before walking back toward the crowd, never noticing Fujiwara Aya shrinking smaller and smaller against the wall. She humbly began to guess that everything kind he had ever shown her was only a thin mask, like the swift change from smiling to desolate she had just seen. She felt like the lamb in her hands, slowly going cold until even the fragrance was gone. She suddenly began stuffing the meat into her mouth. When she choked, Kikawa Saku was standing not far away with a glass of water in his hand. No telling how long he had been watching her. At last he said, pained, "He's fake." Kikawa Saku really was a smart acting student. No one else had seen through Kamiya Kanade's show of deep feeling; only he had understood it clearly. He had been bewildered by Kamiya Kanade's performance for a long time, so he had secretly followed him to find an answer. Once he discovered Kamiya Kanade slipping away from the cameras to make a call, he followed out of curiosity and heard him speaking to a girl named Chinatsu, reassuring her that everything he did to Fujiwara Aya on the show was fake. Pretending to be nice to her. Pretending he wanted to travel everywhere with her. Pretending to be jealous for her sake. He said the girl had no special qualities and yet had somehow gotten onto the show, which meant she probably had powerful family connections. He had approached her on purpose, hoping to make use of whatever influence her family might have. Besides, she was so ordinary that she would help him create a Cinderella storyline on screen, letting viewers fall for his image of loyal, unwavering devotion. His popularity would rise. Record labels would notice him. At last he would achieve the musical dream that had driven him south alone in the first place. In the entertainment world there are its own unwritten rules. Always single. Always healthy in image. Always belonging to all fans. Always fodder for endless publicity. If Kudo Shizuka could wait behind Kimura Takuya for all those years, why couldn't Chinatsu silently swallow the pain for Kamiya Kanade too? Kikawa Saku had waited a long time at that moment for Fujiwara Aya's tears. But they did not come. Not only did she not cry, she straightened her back stubbornly instead. In the cool night wind, she had finally awakened from a dream too magnificent to survive. "Kikawa Saku, thank you for telling me," she said. "Did you think that stabbing Kamiya Kanade in the back would make me take your side?" In Osaka, when Kikawa Saku had suddenly chosen her for Kamikochi, was it because he had seen Kamiya Kanade's methods working and wanted to rise to fame too? Kikawa Saku was an arts student. He knew how to act too, didn't he? Those tears in Kamikochi, all the kindness he had shown her on the road, and now all these accusations against Kamiya Kanade. Wasn't it all just to make her turn toward him from now on?
"It's just a pity that both of you guessed wrong. I don't have any powerful background at all. My father is only a clerk at an advertising company. The show needed one utterly ordinary creature to set the rest of you off, so he slipped me in. I had nothing going for me from the start. But you were clever enough to know that Cinderella is every girl's fatal dream."
Furano. Returning to the open fields.
Back when she was just a shut-in, Fujiwara Aya had loved wuxia novels as much as manga and dreamed of frontiers and wild places, of galloping across the Tokachi grasslands like some ancient swordswoman, swift and free in love and vengeance. But the next day, when the crew truly arrived at that immense sweep of prairie, she could only wish to leave, because by then staying had lost all meaning. The boys were sent to learn riding; the girls followed Mongolian girls to the horse pens to learn how to milk mares. After a day's lessons, at sunset, Kamiya Kanade came riding toward her yurt on a tall, docile white horse, bathed in heroic red light, calling, "Guo'er, Guo'er, Guo'er..." When she came out, he held out his hand and asked, "Guo'er, do you want to sit on the horse and look out over the grasslands?" His tone was just like a knight in a martial-arts tale promising his beloved that once grudges had returned to dust, they would retreat to the frontier and live in peace, grazing and farming in an ordinary life. Fujiwara Aya smiled with all the enchantment she had been saving for a lifetime. It was as if the most beautiful years of her life had all opened at once in that one instant. She took his hand, climbed up behind him, and wrapped her arms tightly around him, not because she was afraid, but because it would be the last warmth she was allowed. When the horse began to run, she pulled out her hair tie and let her hair fly wildly in the wind. Her mist-bright eyes took in the vast sky, the endless earth, the grass bending low to show cattle and sheep, that majestic northern scene. Much later, when they saw smoke curling upward in the distance, they rode back, following the rich scent of boiled mare's milk. A girl handed Aya a steaming bowl. Looking at Kamiya Kanade where he stood tethering the horse, she smiled and said in a voice both soft and certain, "Kamiya Kanade, I like you." After saying it, she did not look at his face. She lifted the bowl and drained the mare's milk in one breath, leaving not a drop. An empty bowl. An empty heart. She went back into the yurt, packed her luggage, and when she climbed into the car, she still could not help glancing once more at his face. It looked calm and fragile at once, yet without resentment, without sorrow, without pain.
Aya's mother was waiting for her at the airport. After coming home from that long, exhausting journey, she said nothing at all about any of it for a whole week. She only went online in silence and searched out the old recordings. Some viewers had cut together fan videos devoted to the Su-Tetsu pairing: Kamiya Kanade keeping her from leaving at Enoshima; Kamiya Kanade as Zhang Yutang, devoted unto death, in Kamakura; his fingers touching hers and then pulling away at Arita; the silent way he watched her leave with Kikawa Saku in Osaka; the hurt and spite in him when he agreed to go with someone else in Kyoto; the way he rode with her across the grasslands. And when she left, the way his shoulders trembled while he held back tears. The fragments looked too real. If she had not lived through the fire and the ice beneath them, she would have envied the girl being loved so fiercely by someone. She also saw the comments below. "Fujiwara Aya was the fickle one. She had Kamiya Kanade and still shamelessly flirted with Kikawa Saku. They both had their hearts broken because of her. Ugly girls never know when they're lucky. It's good riddance now that she's gone. May Kamiya Kanade and Kikawa Saku quickly find their own sunshine." She also read the latest news on the forums: Kamiya Kanade would record the theme song for Youth Bus and release his first EP. Kikawa Saku had been invited to a television production and given an important supporting role. The two of them had become the most popular participants on the show. Aya smiled faintly and closed the page. From then on she tucked her wounded heart away. She, Fujiwara Aya, had never in the end belonged to either man's version of enchantment. She would keep those beautiful dreams like treasures, the way, as a young girl, she had once kissed the poster of a male idol star without being able to help herself. His lips had not been real. She would wake, laugh it off, and leave it there. She would only be grateful to those people who had made her memories blaze with so many colors, grateful to those who had taught her that love could be so painful and so beautiful. What she would never know, though, was that on the Fujiwara Aya forum she was too frightened to face, a user named "Kikawa Saku" was being drowned beneath curses while he kept posting the same words: I'm sorry. I like you. Kamiya Kanade was fake. Kikawa Saku was real. He had always been lonely by nature, quiet in crowds, so his teacher said that such inwardness would make him good at scenes that depended on psychology, though the teacher had also worried that someone so taciturn might never attract a director's interest. For years people had stopped at a distance when they looked at him. Only Fujiwara Aya had barged straight in and then slipped away again with careless ease. Perhaps he had been childish. He really had minded. He minded that she said she liked him without any feeling behind it. He minded that her blazing gaze was always turned toward somebody else. Once he learned the truth about Kamiya Kanade, he had tried to force himself to be brave, to win Fujiwara Aya over so he could protect her from being hurt when she eventually found out the truth. But then his teacher had called, heard the story about Kamiya Kanade, and suddenly slapped a hand in excitement. "Kikawa Saku, you can do the same thing. Kamiya Kanade is that popular. If you get popular too, directors will definitely ask you to act." He had wavered. Then despised himself for it. But he truly could not keep from being tempted by the offer. Little by little, even he could no longer tell how much of what he felt for Fujiwara Aya was real and how much was performance. Perhaps liking someone is that kind of thing: a mixture of a hundred tastes. And still he had stubbornly demanded a flawless jade without a single blemish. So that night he stood where he was, struck dumb and unable to defend himself. Only after she left did he feel his heartbeat slowing and slowing, as though he were edging toward death.