AN: Chapter title is random, I know...I'm trying to see how many nonsense titles I can come up with in the course of this story.
2 / Henry Butter and the Chamber of Raaw
Shinta Okoba needed a drink.
He needed more than one, of course. Perhaps he'll bring that bottle he had saved from New Year's and drink it all up. Yeah, that sounded like a good plan. Get that headache going before anything else could.
Although, he reasoned, if he started drinking now, he wouldn't be able to make sense of these girls.
Franchouchou.
These girls were still small time and yet they had managed to make such an impact; from Karatsu to Kashima to the corners of Saga City and beyond, the girls were truly an amazing bunch.
And yet, here he was, itching for a drink. All because of these girls.
He let out a sigh before looking over the pictures his assistant had taken in Arpino all those months back one more time. Okoba looked over the pictures of numbers Three, Four and Six, before staring at the pictures of the deceased that lay nearby.
Ai Mizuno, Junko Konno and Lily Hoshikawa. Two of them had been idols and the other had been a TV star. All of them had taken the world by storm with their performances. And all of them were dead. But the more Okoba stared, the less sure he was about everything he knew about these deceased celebrities.
Here where three girls that looked exactly like Mizuno, Konno and Hoshikawa and he couldn't make heads or tails out of the whole situation. Did they even know they looked like dead celebrities? Had they cared?
Okoba put his hands over his face and groaned.
What the heck was going on here? Was he mad? Was he just seeing things where they were none?
The man shook his head, eyeing the cabinet behind him. He was pretty sure that bottle was still there. Okoba shook his head. No. He couldn't drink now. Not yet, anyway. He still had work to do.
Okoba put the pictures of the three Franchouchou girls aside, and focused on the remaining girls. A part of him was almost glad these other girls had not sent off alarm bells the moment he saw them, but even then he couldn't be so sure. If he did an internet search now, would he find similar looking girls...all dead?
He shook his head again, and resisting the drink, began his search.
Okoba started with One, putting her picture in the search engine to see if he could find anything. An hour later, all he had found out were blog posts and forums about Franchouchou. A few similar questions were posted here and there, like if anyone knew their real names, favorite snacks and did they have an internet account, all typical things fans were interested in. There were a few other topics that Okoba skipped altogether for the sake of his sanity. But he didn't find anything beyond Franchouchou for Number One.
He was almost glad. Number One was just your typical run-of-the-mill girl. There was no dead girl sharing the same face. He could breathe easy. For now.
Deciding his search was over for Number One, Okoba moved straight to Number Two, the tough girl, as some fans in those forums put it. He immediately skipped over the forums and Franchouchou fan blogs, trying to focus on finding something else. Twenty pages of internet searching later, he found it.
It was an old article from newspaper that had been out of print for the past five years.
Local news, 1997. A terrible accident was reported at Kagamiyama, where a local girl went off a cliff and met her end in a fiery explosion. The deceased was said to be a member of the biker gang, Dorami. Name Nikaido Saki. A picture, or rather, a mugshot stood near the text. The girl in question, Nikaido, had shorter hair and a much youthful face, small scratches here and there. She had a toothy grin, as if she was glad she was caught and was daring an escape.
Okoba let out a breathe. Hot damn. Even without the longer hair, this dead girl and Number Two were almost identical. Perhaps distant relatives maybe? That would make sense, wouldn't it? Nikaido had been too young (probably) to have any children before her time of death, and even if she had had, the child would be too old to join some idol group. Right?
Still, he printed the article and the mugshot and placed it together with Number Two's picture from the Arpino show.
Hours later, he'll wonder why he even printed the article out, but cared little as he moved to Numbers Five and Zero.
He was almost glad he hadn't really found much on Five. No dead girls to compare her to, no accidents, no nothing. For all he knew, Five too, was like One, no history no nothing. He would have breathe easy if he hadn't spotted that painting however.
The woman depicted in the painted was beautiful, her kimono a bright red, with flowers and petals all over, a kiseru held tightly in one hand, with a fan in the other. Her long auburn hair was held up tight in a bun, the shape of a heart in its center. Yugiri, the artist had called it, leaving behind a small text that read, "To the most beautiful woman in Saga…" Year 1878.
Another half hour of searches found many other paintings and woodblock prints of the same woman. Many depictions of the woman showed her with clothes and other times in sexual poses and without a kimono to speak off. Most of these paintings appeared to be by the same man, a few give or take were unknowns. But they all had the same title, Yugiri.
A round of research later revealed very little of the woman in the painting, only that she had been some sort of courtesan that had died young back in the Meiji era.
Okoba printed the more modest-looking painting and put it close to Number Five's picture. If it weren't for the art style, he could have sworn they were twins.
At least, Five's appearance made sense. If this Yugiri did exist, she was probably an ancestor of sorts. Yeah. That made sense. Probably.
He shuddered and moved to Zero.
Three hours later, he found absolutely nothing. Nothing beyond forums and fan sites and videos. Nothing. Number Zero was a literal unknown. Pictures showed nothing.
Okoba let out a sigh of relief.
(no dead girl here, thank the gods)
The man looked at his desk again. Five out of the seven girls had doppelgangers, except for Numbers One and Zero.
He glanced at the photos of One and Zero and then he looked at his computer. He'll give One another shot and probably try Zero tomorrow; two hours later and Okoba was back where he started.
Beyond the forums and websites and blogs, there was nothing beyond Franchouchou for the one known as Number One.
So, it came as a surprise when he noticed an article just forty pages into the search, detailing local accidents. A part of Okoba was almost dreading what he'll find but he still clicked the link which sent him to a local newspaper's web page. The article that had been opened detailed a hit-and-run and by the side a photo of a girl: Local girl, Minamoto Sakura, killed at the tender age of 17. Year 2008.
Karatsu Local News, April 07, 2008
"In the early hours of Monday morning, a young woman, Minamoto Sakura, was run down by an unknown individual riding a truck."
"According to witnesses living in the area, the truck is said to have appeared from nowhere before speeding off in the direction of Miss Minamoto's residence. Neighbors did not think much of it as they had seen trucks speeding by on occasion."
"That all changed when the truck struck Miss Minamoto, sending her flying over the vehicle before she crumpled on the street behind it. By the time neighbors reacted, the suspect had sped off."
"Minamoto was pronounced dead at the scene...cause of death...head trauma...broken neck…brokenー"
"...police are currently investigating…"