"You and her," Maki bellows out through a heaving of her breast, "are in two different worlds! A VOICALOID and VOICEROID simply cannot come together in matrimony, the law, the world, the dollmaker won't allow for it — you're not dumb, you know this!"
Yukari withholds her bitter sentiment towards the scantily-clad guitarist.
"Yukari... I have loved you for so long!" Maki cries out, through more tears, her canines looking sharp with her screams, "YOU are the only one for me! Akari and Zunko have Kiritan, but you're all there is to me! In the entire world!"
"I thought bars were your only boyfriend," Yukari replies through a grimace.
"I need YOU!" Maki continues to beg, "I need YOU to set me straight!"
"You need therapy," Yukari retorts in an open-handed gesticulation, averting her eyes from the desperate android, "not me, not alcohol, you just need something to... a ritual or something, to get you on the right track. Not me..."
Maki twists her fingers, in circling ringlets, over her chest, "I don't mind being an affair, anything. I would do anything to be your lover!"
"Even if I wasn't with IA," Yukari gasps, out of breath — forgetting about the process of respiration, "Even then, I, like the bottle you keep nestled next to you. It can only serve as... a comfortable poison."
Maki writhes closer and caresses Yukari's ankle with her slender fingers, there's a dribbling of tennis shoes from the adjoining room and Akari tears through the curtain, panting, "Maki?! Yukai?! What in the hell are you guys doing?"
"As if you wouldn't know!" Maki spits out belligerently, with a serpent's tongue sliding through her teeth, "You pretend to be sweet and innocent, but really, you're just the same as me! Pretending to be good is fruitless, it sure as hell didn't give either of us a chance with Yukari!"
Akari's face is an open moue, her lips quiver, she declares, "Yes, I was in love with her! I did have feelings for Yukari Yuzuki, it's true! No matter, no matter the circumstances: Yukariin is happy with Ms. Aria. And that's all that matters to me! To see her smile, to hear her laughter, to watch a friend that I've admired forever finally being able to allow herself the leisure of happiness! I prioritize what Yukari wants for herself, more than what I want for her. And that is because, because I truly do... love her!"
Akari stands akimbo with such a sincere pronouncement of her feelings, that her backside seems to emit an imaginary luminesce! Her silver locks gleam, as she holds half of the mane close to her heart. Maki gawks and is drunkenly dumbfounded. Yukari erects her posture and rises to her feet — she walks over and stands beside Akari; mascara tear stains pollute Maki's beautiful face.
Yukari whispers to Akari, "I'm going to high-tail it out of here. Maki isn't bad person... she just occasionally becomes a demon, under the influence. Could you please watch after her?"
"Sure thing," Akari salutes, "uh, anything else?"
"Just, thank you!" Yukari says, the contemplation of Akari's love for her — creating a sort of mawkishness, "You're the best friend I could ever ask for!"
"I brought you a treat," Akari chuckles warmly, and produces a package of melon bread from her varsity jacket's pocket.
"For me?" Yukari accepts the morsel, with the plastic crinkling between her fingers, "I-I'm sorry for the drama and heartache, Akariin! You truly are the greatest!"
Akari winks at her, with her ultramarine eye sparkling. Yukari bounces from the café, and as soon as the toe of her sneakers touch the pavement — there's a set of open-toed stilettos, with each digit perfectly pedicured in pink. The hue was so pale, that it looked like fallen cherry blossoms on each wiggling toe. A salubrious voice then releases a tiny peal of giggles and says, "My face is up here, silly!"
"IA?" Yukari says, in a vertigo, taking in her eyes deliriously, "D-Do you have an umbrella?"
"Yes?" IA asks, worry creating a knit in her flaxen brows, "As you can see."
"Ah, sorry," Yukari's mouth ejaculates, "I, uh, just got out of a really bad situation."
"My condolences," IA trails off, absent-mindedly, "I wouldn't suppose that it would appropriate to say that I'm in the same boat. I'm sure there are different circumstances on both sides, though."
"Do you want to talk somewhere?" Yukari mutters, stupefied by the response.
"I suppose," IA ponders, touching the plump flesh of her lower lip, "your secret lair may be the best? I think I'm being watched."
"Very well then," Yukari replies, with her eyes to the sky, "let's go. The same alleyway, alright — we'll meet at that spot in five!"
"Sure thing!" IA says with a wiggle of her roseate rose.
When they make it through the labyrinth of security, Yukari starts brewing a percolator full of black coffee; her automatic response to dire situations was always to put a pot on. IA sits at the kitchen bar and crosses one leg over the other, saying into her chilled hands, "I was punished for going to the beach with you and your friends."
"Punished, how?" Yukari asks, with her back turned.
"I was sent to a mental health facility," IA murmurs, like a zephyr in the silent catacombs of their refuge, "big, muscular men strapped me to a gurney. The whole nine yards, they restrained my ankles and wrists so tightly, that I couldn't feel the blood in my veins."
Yukari's shoulders crunched together, still unable to look at IA's face while she was speaking in such a sweet inflection, while saying these awful things! The lavender-haired woman spoke with hesitance, asking, "And then what?"
"Then I was in an asylum," IA recants, trying her best to laugh at the end of each statement, "they were trying to gaslight me into thinking that my logic had gone awry. And maybe it has, who really knows? I was able to make it back here, because I bartered for my release papers and they paid for a cab, that would take me back to the VOCALOID production unit — but, as soon as I hailed the taxi, I told him that the address that the hospital had given him was wrong, and asked him to drop me off here... that was the first time I have ever had to lie."
"I can't believe they would... confine you!" Yukari shouts, finally turning around, her glassy eyes lingering on the in-patient wristband, "Just because you defied them and met up with me!"
"A VOICALOID who is romantically interest or even shows a mild fascination with an inferior VOICEROID is deemed defective," IA mutters into her open hands, "they are humble, peons... and we are the apex models, serving the apex of humanity! To think that free-thinking, feeling creatures could hold such a dominion over each other... it's insane isn't it!"
"That's the world, I guess," Yukari babbles thoughtlessly, "but, even so—"
"—even so, Yu," IA answers her drivel of ideas, "we would be exterminated for going against them."
"What?" Yukari asks, mouth agape, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, this," IA exposits with a sharp exhale, "you know Hatsune Miku, don't you?"
"Everyone does!"
"They do, but they don't — this may be hard to believe," IA muses, choosing her words with careful deliberation, "but this Hatsune Miku is the ninth model."
"Model?" Yukari asks, preparing a sieve for the filtration of fresh coffee from the pot.
"Eight other replicas of Hatsune Miku have been KILLED," IA's words cut like a knife," including the ORIGINAL."
Yukari stood in a staid silence, until boiling hot java juice is dribbling all over her clenched fist, she exclaims, "Ouch!"
"Oh, Yu!" IA regains her gentleness and exclaims, "Is your hand alright?"
"Nevermind my hand!" Yukari yells, "You're trying to tell me that they're going to kill you, and they've replaced other idols before, aren't you?"
IA's face freezes and she becomes more docile, and with downtrodden eyes, she remises to address the question directly by whispering, "I suppose that might be what this is coming to."
"You can't go back, then!"
"I have to," IA murmurs, staring down into the crevices between her toes.
"Why?!"
"I have a contractual obligation to them," IA decries, with an urgent slinging of her purse.
"Obviously," Yukari examines through rage, "your contract continues, whether you're alive or dead!"
"I'm sure," IA says, with a sullenness enveloping her person, "everything in the entertainment industry works to coincide with the ethos of propaganda and maximizing profit. Any detractor must be taken care of."
"STAY WITH ME!" Yukari demands, from across the kitchen island, "I've hidden from the law before and they've never been able to get into this place!"
"They will eventually," IA coughs out a small laugh, "they have unlimited resources."
"If they do, then," Yukari's eyes scatter over her cozy subterranean hideaway, "then, we'll run away! We'll go someplace where no one will have any clue who you are, and we'll work on a farm and go to small festivals, and if they find us there... we'll run again!"
"What about your band?" IA yells back, "What will happen to them?"
"You staying alive is all that matters to me, right now!" Yukari sobs and walks over to kneel at IA's knees, clasping her hands together.
IA whispers, "I wrote a new song, I'm not sure if they'll let me release it officially, but it has a punk-rock kind of vibe to it. Wanna listen?"
Yukari doesn't answer and her head is balanced between IA's knees.
IA brushes through Yukari's flowering tufts of hair and she begins to sing softly:
今朝のニュース 僕をバカにして
Today's news decided to make a fool of me
偉そうな肩書きと 権利と言う名の武器
With an important looking title, and the weapon known as 'authority'
難しそうな言葉並べてんだ
With complicated words side by side
頭いいの？バカにでも解るように言葉並べてよ
Are you stupid? Why don't you use words even an idiot can understand
理論と言う名の盾 傘にして いつも声 届かない
Using a shield of logic as an umbrella, your voice will never reach me.
昨日にバイバイをして また今日が始まる頃
From when I bid goodbye to yesterday, until today began
パパはママの上に乗っかって バカみたいに腰を振って
Father was on top of mother, shaking his hips like an idiot
寝たふり坊やは 携帯で行き場探してる
Pretending to sleep, the boy uses his phone, searching for a place to go
どうやらここも僕の居場所はない ない ない
It seems this isn't where I belong either··· no, no, no
アホみたいに映る 鏡の中の人は 誰だ？
Who's the idiotic looking person reflected in the mirror?
孤独論理 揺らいだ万象と
With logical loneliness and the trembling of the universe
猜疑心に蝕まれた心
My undermined heart feels jealousy
そうさ 僕だって いつだって 全力出してんだ
That's right, even I'm trying my best every day, so
「うるせぇ」 口を出すな
"Shut up", don't you dare say a thing
大人しく社会に 従順しろ
In this submissive society, be obedient.
また眠る僕を叩いて 偉そうに嘲笑うんだ
They criticize me as I sleep, sneering patronizingly
周りも皆 敵になって 一斉射撃 バカにするんだ
Everyone around me is an enemy 一they fire rapidly, treating me like an idiot
頭いいの？アホにでも解るように言葉選んでよ
Are you stupid? Why don't you just choose words even an idiot can understand
道を示す人なんだろ？ なら僕に明日を教えて
Isn't there anyone to point the way? If so, teach me of tomorrow
快感ばっか求めたって 人間だものいいんじゃね？
Even if they only seek pleasure, aren't human things good enough?
無機質な僕が笑った
I laughed without emotion
空気のような存在です いてもいなくても同じようです
Your existence is just like air. Even if you aren't here, it's the same,
悲しいな 僕がいないや
isn't it sad if I'm not here?
孤独論理 揺らいだ万象と
With logical loneliness and the trembling of the universe
猜疑心に蝕まれた心
My undermined heart feels jealousy
記憶論理 曖昧な現象を
Ambiguous memory: a logical phenomenon
過去がいいな 美化する嘘 だってさ
Causes a beautified lie; "my past was quite nice…"
Because, you know,
僕はいつだってヒーローで 皆の中心で
I'm always a hero, in everyone's hearts
まあ全部嘘だけど
Well, in reality, that's all a lie
いいじゃないか 夢の中くらいは
But isn't it alright, if it's just in my dreams?
TO BE CONTINUED