Chapter 31

Monday, December 23

1:30 P.M.

Yumi

Yumi put her headphones on and shifted over to Coco’s chair, clicking on the window half hidden behind the auction site bid screen.

The flashing words Look!Look! zoomed into view. It was the streaming Internet talk show hosted by a woman who had rocketed to stardom by posting videos of herself ambushing celebrities. The graphics gave way to a studio “lounge” and zoomed in on a miniskirted woman, seated in an armchair.

“Welcome to Look!Look! You’ve all seen the tragic footage of the Jimmy’s Top Talent Studio being washed away by the tsunami with megastar band VuDu Dolls inside . . .” she narrated as the now-familiar video began to play on a screen behind her head, “. . . only to be whiplashed by the revelation that all the members had survived but Flame.” Nana and her lighted candle appeared with the dark trees of Yoyogi Park in the background.

The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the celebrity ambusher as she leaned toward the lens and announced, “But today I have a guest in studio who has even more shocking news. In order to protect him from powerful entertainment industry figures who have their own reasons for wanting you to believe Flame is dead, we’ll alter his voice and obscure his identity. But what he’s going to tell you will rock the entertainment world.”

The camera zoomed out to a wider view that included a man seated in an adjacent chair, his face electronically blurred.

“Welcome to Look!Look!” she said. “May I call you Mr. X?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied in an artificially deep robotic voice. “Thank you for not showing my face or using my real name. I promised not to tell anybody what I know, but I’m a huge VuDu Dolls fan, and I can’t stand the way Flame’s fans are suffering. A piece of paper isn’t enough to keep me from telling the world the truth.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Flame is alive.”

The studio audience gasped on cue.

“How do you know?”

“Because I was there, in the recording studio, when the earthquake hit.”

Excited audience buzz.

“Tell us what happened.”

“We’d just finished recording the VuDu Dolls’ new single ‘Kiss Me, Kill Me’ when everything started shaking. We all ran out of the building as soon as it stopped. By the time the tsunami hit, we were safely at the Disaster Prevention Park.”

“And Flame was with you then, alive?”

“No.”

“But I thought you said she got out safely?”

“She wasn’t at the studio at all that day.”

A gasp from the audience.

“But . . . didn’t you say the VuDu Dolls were recording their new single?”

“They were doing it without her. I’m a guitarist. I was playing her part.”

The show host paused to let the audience reaction reach the viewers.

“Why were you standing in for her?”

“Because she quit the band a month ago, and her promoter didn’t want anybody to know. Jimmy Harajuku hired me to fill in because he heard my tribute band play in Shibuya last year and he knew I could handle the guitar parts.”

Guitarist. Tribute band. Shibuya. Is the guy with the fuzzed-out face Haru’s boyfriend, Taku?

“So they contacted me on Monday, and on Thursday I went to Odaiba for an audition, along with four other guitarists. After the promoter told me I’d made the cut and the contract was signed, I practiced with the band. At first I could barely play, I was so excited, but . . .”

It was Taku. Was Haru watching this? She should call. Or better yet, tweet. Calling was still unreliable, as towers continued to be checked and repaired.

“So where do you think Flame is now?” the interviewer was asking.

“I don’t know. But there are plenty of rumors to choose from—one of them has to be true.”

“Thank you, Mr. X.”

“Thank you for helping me get the truth out.”

Yumi fumbled in her purse for her phone, her attention glued to the “Flame Sightings” map of Japan that had appeared on the screen. It was peppered with dots from the southernmost tip of Kyushu to the northern reaches of Hokkaido, attesting to fans’ desperate desire to believe their idol was still alive. Tokyo looked like a solid red blob until the camera zoomed in to show that the sightings were predictably clustered in the entertainment districts of Shinjuku and Shibuya.

The celebrity ambusher’s face filled the screen again. “We don’t know how or why Flame has disappeared, but we’re going to find out! Our team has analyzed the data and concluded that she must be staying in some of the bigger net cafés, where anonymous overnighters are a way of life. Follow me as we take a camera crew to hunt her down!”

Phone in hand, Yumi pulled off her headphones.

The map was replaced with a photo of a building with a subtitle that read, “Is Flame staying here?”

Yumi’s mouth dropped open, recognizing the cheaply made miniskirts in the window of the fashion outlet downstairs. Was Flame hiding here, at the Bagus Gran Cyber Café? Yumi stood and spun around, peering over the wall of her cubicle, scanning the dark room. No scuffle of activity suggested any of the inhabitants were fleeing.

Yumi grabbed her purse and the narrow clipboard with her time stamp. If Flame was here, she was in one of the other rooms. If she’d seen the Look!Look! webcast and wanted to get out before the camera team arrived, she’d have to leave the same way she came in, stopping to settle her bill at the cashier’s desk before going. Yumi trotted through the cubicles, through the hallway lined with manga, and got in line with the customers waiting to pay.

There were only four. Two boys whose rumpled clothes gave away that they’d probably been playing an online role-playing game for days, living on Cup Noodles. An older man who probably stayed here more or less permanently, but had to go out occasionally to buy whatever wasn’t sold in the vending machines. A boy with close-cropped hair dancing from one foot to the other, in a yellow-and-black Hanshin Tigers baseball cap. A guitar and duffel bag sat at his feet. Yumi frowned, staring at his shoes. Shiny gold high-tops. Was it the same Hanshin Tigers cap-wearing boy who had been picking out a haunting melody in Yoyogi Park, the day of the Flame tribute?

None of the waiting customers were girls. If Flame was here, she was still inside. Yumi heard footsteps behind her and glanced back, but they belonged to a boy just passing by the cashier station to feed coins into one of the vending machines.

The pair of gamers finished paying and slouched over to wait for the elevator. The boy in the Tigers cap shoved his bag forward with his foot as the man ahead of him stepped up to pay. The man pocketed his receipt, and the boy in the baseball cap picked up his guitar. Something fell out of his hoodie pocket as he pulled out his wallet, but he didn’t notice as he stepped up to the desk.

Yumi stared at it, then scooped it up. It was a long, white lace, fingerless glove.