AU Yeah! August 14: Reincarnation
Kira Tsubasa, as everyone knows, has already helped Kousaka Honoka
tell her story. But there is unfinished business with 'those two girls.' _
Dear readers, what more do I have to add?
I can imagine you, readers of this edition of the collected "Love Live! School Idol Diaries," asking that question. After all, all of Japan and much of the world knows Honoka's story now. Or rather, her stories. There is, of course, Love Live! School Idol Project. It's amazing to think a middle school girl created that, even though I was there all along. She populated it with her friends and loved ones, including me and Erena and Anju. How glittering her image of UTX was, even though she was never able to leave her hospital bed to see it in person! How touching her love for Otonokizaka Girls' Academy, which she only knew through her mother's yearbook — and her stories about being a student there, softened and warmed in her memories by time! Of course, that's not quite true, as Minami Kotori was already quite familiar with the place and told her stories about it, too.
Before Honoka died, we were all told that Otonokizaka would not, in fact, be closed. The news that she had, like the Honoka in her stories, saved her mother's precious school (and that Yukiho was going to attend it) made Honoka happier almost than I'd ever seen before. Both UTX and Otonokizaka have had student tourists in abundance. To a degree, the music room, the building roof, and so on are almost shrines.
The three of us were tempted to go to Otonokizaka to prepare the way for Yukiho and Alisa, and perhaps the Yazawas, but we also felt compelled by Honoka's imagination and vision to give UTX a try. And that's the other Honoka story, of course. The way she worked her friends into her fantasies. Honoka had a very keen eye for details and a deep understanding of character. So much so that even Nico only complained a bit about her imagined scenarios. She puffed up with pride when Honoka told her she would be the first to create a school idol troupe, then puffed up with indignation when she said it would fail. But for the most part, Umi and Kotori, Eli and Nico and Nozomi, and Rin, Maki and Hanayo were amused and amazed. So were her "rivals," as we were in fact all three doing performances together in middle school. I hasten to add they weren't the polished affairs you see in the famous anime series. On the contrary, the first time we were dancing to a recording of a current pop song in public, both Anju and I fell on our butts and cried and cried. Nonetheless, Honoka found it all very inspiring.
The shadow over Love Live!, of course, is that nearly all of Honoka's close friends died in Heisei 23, when Honoka was about to start her third year in middle school. The burden of knowing everyone you treasure outside your family was drowned or crushed must be a heavy one, but added to that burden was the results of the collapse that also killed Sonoda Umi and Minami Kotori and her mother, the headmistress of Otonokizaka. Crushed and broken, Honoka was not expected to live, though she did, and she was bed-ridden and in surgeries for what remained of her young life.
The two Honoka stories are yin and yang. They balance and complete each other. The "real" Honoka story is a heartbreaking tragedy. The fictional Honoka story is a shining story of inspiration and faith. But I have of course written all this before, not to mention Honoka's much better explication in her famous stories. There is, after all, the real Love Live!, too. The public scarcely knows the nine middle-school girls whose names — with the permission of their families — fill the pages of Love Live! School Idol Diary. For one thing, when she found out that Dengeki G wanted to adapt her light novels to a manga format, she called on the creator of Strawberry Panic! to help out (and to finish off the uncompleted diaries, and help write the Drama CDs). But the Mu's the public knows are really the seiyuu who played Honoka and her friends. Obviously, Anju, Erena and I were available to consult, so we had tremendous input into our characters, but even in the case of A-RISE, the Tsubasa et al. you know, dear readers, if you came to this world through the animated series, is them, not us.
Despite the help from Kimino Sakurako, I can tell you for certain that all 24 Love Live! books were mostly written by Honoka herself. Towards the end, as fatigue and pain took more and more time away from her writing, she would sketch out transitional chapters, but the main story and important chapters were all Honoka. Sometimes A-RISE helped, as well, but it was very painful for us. I can't remember a single time consulting with Honoka where we weren't bawling our eyes out practically the whole time. It really makes you question the goodness of Heaven when such awful things happen to sweet, loving girls like her.
But now, finally, I arrive at my topic, so thank you for your patience, dear readers. Many fans have suspected that she injected some of Baby Princess or Strawberry Panic! into Honoka's stories. Especially so, given the "real" characters were all in middle school at the time Honoka knew them. For the most part, that is not true. All nine of the girls that were later called Mu's by Honoka were physically affectionate, and whatever baby crushes were present are, for the most part, faithfully represented in the School Idol Diaries. Rin and Hanayo really were inseparable, and so were Umi, Honoka and Kotori. And that transfer student Nozomi went from having a crush on Nico to a full blown hearts-in-her-eyes love for transfer student Eli - who could barely speak Japanese and kept herself distant from everyone but Nozomi at first — was absolutely common knowledge among every girl at our middle school.
I see I have left out Nishikino Maki and, to a degree, Yazawa Nico. Honoka told me once that she saw Love Live! partly, secretly, as the story of Nico and Maki. I do not believe anyone else has ever told the public anything like this. Even if "Mu's" had lived, I think only Nozomi would not be surprised to read this. After all, in middle school Nico and Maki had nothing in common, were not often seen together, and fought like monkeys and dogs when they were. Half the time, they weren't even on speaking terms.
A fair bit of time has passed, and it is not my goal to gossip about dead young girls, you know. But I want to prevent misunderstanding of who they were, and how faithfully Honoka and her assistants have depicted them. I will have to — no, I choose to — go all over the place, though.
My dear girl readers, nowadays girls are what Umi (the real one as well as the fictional one) would call shameless, so this is probably a silly question, but did you practice kissing in middle school? We all certainly did. From the fact that Anju and I are still together and Erena married Yazawa Cotarou, you might think that she liked it less than we did, but she says it was "very fun." Honoka and I each had our circle of friends, but we were the most outgoing in our circles. Once a week we tended to meet up at lunch time and fill in the other girl on what had been going on in our circles.
One such occasion will answer any questions you may have had about how I, Kira Tsubasa, tended to be depicted in the Love Live! world.
Honoka informed me that she, Umi and Kotori had been discussing "kissing." How you did it, what it was like, how you worked your nerve up to "practice" doing it. And so on. Well, I didn't literally jump across the table or anything, but I did scurry around it and sit right up next to Honoka. I did grab her shoulders and our eyes did meet. And I forced Honoka's first kiss on her (and mine, but it was my choice) right there in the lunch room in front of everyone, with no privacy at all. I held it until I had to take a breath. It was wonderful. I had been thinking about kissing, myself for ages. That's the only way I can account for my actions.
"Mou! Tsubasa!" Honoka yelled. She moved away from me and just looked down at her food without touching it. She was bright red, and on the verge of tears. I wanted to say, "Sorry," but I also didn't want her to feel bad about herself. This is where the flirty Tsubasa character came from. "Sorry, Honoka, but you were just too cute! So, so cute!" I said, and went back across the table and picked at my food. Honoka did the same, and most of it was left on our trays by the time the bell rang for the first afternoon classes. That was a Monday, and Honoka didn't speak to me all week. By Saturday, she would at least meet my eyes, and by Monday I think she'd gotten over it.
I later found out that Sunday they'd met at Honoka's place and she, as the experienced girl, "taught" the other two about kissing. I had done the same with Anju and Erena on Saturday and Sunday both, and now Honoka's friends were inspired. Eli was reluctant to encourage Nozomi, who already gave her a huge amount of chocolates for Valentine's Day and left love notes every week in her shoe locker, but curious enough to want to try, and she wasn't cold enough to break Nozomi's heart by kissing anyone else. She wasn't brought up to think of girls as kissing partners, so, according to Honoka, she was quite surprised how pleasant it was kissing Nozomi. Obviously, that girl was in heaven, and it broke the ice. Sometimes Eli let her hold her hand, and since they had both joined the student council, it made their time there more informal and relaxed after that. Rin and Hanayo really liked kissing, too, no surprise, and so did the second-year trio. Nico and Maki claimed it wasn't interesting to them.
Honoka looked like she wanted to say something when they both announced that, but they followed that up by glaring at her until she kept her mouth shut.
The truth is, Nico had met Maki on the younger girl's very first day, in a cliched way. Nico tended to run everywhere, as she was hyperactive and disorganized. She had fallen on top of Maki, who let her have it for being clumsy and stupid. Because it was a fact that Nico admired me, she tried to be flirty like I supposedly was, and miraculously, it worked. Maki had very little experience dealing with people her own age, so it had an outsized impact. Nico was in the middle of saying she "fell for" Maki because she was so cute when Maki kissed her. Nico was too shocked to pull away, too shocked to say anything, and too shocked to disagree when Maki demanded they exchange phone numbers and LINE nicknames. She did gather herself together enough to ask Maki "why?" to which that girl replied "I just felt like it."
After that, whenever they could, and especially in the tiny music rooms at the middle school, Nico and Maki were physically affectionate with each other, though publicly aloof. They visited Nico's family's apartment frequently and slept in Nico's bed. Before the summer break, they had started having sex, even though Maki was not yet a teen-ager.
We know a lot about Nico and Maki, dear readers. Not only did Honoka accidentally overhear them discussing their relationship, leading them to swear her to secrecy, but we have their diaries, letters to each other, cards, and even texts on Nico's phone, which was recovered, unlike Maki's. They were engaged to be married, at least in their minds. Maki, extremely precocious, had already planned out how they would manage that. Nico, already an experienced homemaker, was a practical-minded critic whenever Maki would overreach. Honoka believed, as I do, that things would have worked out for them somehow.
Maki really did write Aishiteru Banzai for Nico, just as Umi really did write poems that had the rhythm and meter of song lyrics. I don't believe Umi and Maki ever collaborated - they were both friends of Honoka and admired each other, but were not extremely close. When Honoka told their story to Kimino Sakurako, she said that woman cried for quite a while. Honoka played her a recording she'd made of Maki singing Aishiteru Banzaithat night, so Sakurako-sensei didn't have to cry alone.
I could go on, I could tell you how the Yazawas regarded Maki as almost another older sister, or how Maki told her parents she was interested in sports medicine so she could specialize in fixing up Nico if she was injured dancing. I could point out that Maki made Nico study so hard she did way better than Nozomi and almost as well as Eli, who was the top student in their year in everything but Japanese. Or tell about the time Nico and Maki went shopping — using Maki's allowance — then went to the Nishikino manor and Nico cooked a dinner for the Nishikinos that was every bit as elegant and delicious as their cook would normally produce, even though Nico was still only fourteen.
The point remains that, in a little less than a year, the two girls had an affair that other couples would have drawn out over several years' time. It makes me shudder, but I almost wonder if they had a premonition that that would be the only time they'd ever have, so they made the most of it. They were both perfectionists, and both of them were wounded when their relationship was less than perfect, so their fights and sarcasm and snubs were all real. However, typically they made up passionately the same day as they fought, which is the part us fellow middle-schoolers never saw.
It was a college-type relationship in a junior high school, and it was, in the end, another great tragedy.
Honoka-chan, I will never, ever forget you, angel. You were my first kiss, and I believe, my first love. Anju is very understanding, and always reminds me that she misses you terribly, too. And not just the brave, famous girl in the hospital, desperately turning out book after book in the fantasy world she retreated into because the real world was so painful that only the books and the manju Yukiho and her parents brought her every week could even make her have a hint of a smile. No, we both miss the girl who hadn't been crushed yet.
Honoka, you were right about how you affected others. If things had turned out differently, I think you would have sweet-talked your eight friends into joining your idol group (even Nico). And I think you would have handed us our butts at the school idol contest you renamed Love Live! in your stories. When we won, we dedicated our victory to you, after all.
Even as it was, reading and re-reading, and watching and listening to Love Live! I finally see what Honoka meant. NicoMaki was the main love story in Love Live! to me, even before the information I will finish this note with.
Maki, please forgive your mother. I am writing this, of course, about the Maki that is alive and in my house, not her posthumously famous namesake. Your mother is going to draw unwanted attention to you and it is probably intolerable. But I have two reasons. The first is that it is the prerogative of parents to embarrass their children. The second is that if you follow in my and Anju's footsteps, there is not much in the way of publicity that is bad publicity.
When we adopted you, and Erena and Cotarou adopted Nico, Honoka was still very much alive. It made her really happy to hear what we had named you two in the adoption papers. "Who knows, Tsubasa!" was her first comment. When you are old enough to understand the rest of this afterword, please, Maki, understand that what dear Honoka was doing was wishing you happiness like she had seen, from the bottom of her brave, wounded heart.
I would beg Yazawa Nico's pardon as well. The Love Live! story involves reality and fantasy intertwining to such a degree that it's difficult to separate the two. You and Maki may not well remember the anecdote I am going to finish with. And the background will simply annoy and embarrass you both.
The Kiras and Yazawas both had a spooky time with their new family members. It is good to remember that Cotarou and Erena had only been married for a year, and he, seven years younger than Erena, was still, if barely, a teenager when they adopted Nico. Erena kept Todo in public but went by Yazawa otherwise, and Anju did the same with her family name of Yuuki. I think we were all fortunate that Nozomi had a cousin, Tsushima Yoshiko, in Shizuoka's Numazu, that shared her interest in divination. That cousin says that Honoka was a little unfair to Nozomi. Though they grew up in the Chuubu area, Nozomi's parents and relatives mostly had a Kansai accent, so that girl came by hers honestly. At any rate, Tsushima has an open-minded but very grounded perspective on things that aren't firmly scientific, and our families have often discussed our adopted children with her. She even has one of Nozomi's first Tarot decks, which she was given by Nozomi on her birthday a year before the tragedy. She says she will bequeath it to Nico and Maki if ...
Well, at any rate, here we are at the final anecdote. It involves, of all things, a couple of lemonade stands.
Oh wait, as warned, I need to jump around a bit more.
Kira Maki was born, like Yazawa Nico, a year after the tragedy. She was half American, we believe, and had eyes that slanted upwards, and, eventually, dark, reddish hair. By the time she was four, she had a habit of twirling a strand of her hair, which she insisted on keeping long, in her fingers. She even craved tomatoes. All of these traits were really those of her namesake, as I and Anju were in a position to observe. Some of this could be expectation by us, though I don't really see how it could be given what we did and didn't do. With one exception: Anju is easily amused, so I know for a fact she is the one who trained Maki to say, "Imi Wakaranai!" as a habit. She learned to read at four and to play the piano a bit at three years old.
Meanwhile, Yazawa Nico is petite, energetic, can be short-tempered, and was so eager to be an older sister her nagging finally wore them down to the point that Cotarou and Erena added Yazawa Honoka, by birth, not adoption not that that mattered to them, to their family a couple of months before I began writing this afterword. She also took to doing "Nico-Nico-Nii!" like a duck to water. Even though it made Cotarou cry like a baby the first few times.
We live right across the street from each other. Both Nico and Maki are independent girls, and they both had the idea to run a lemonade stand at roughly the same time. So, like warring fortresses, the two stands faced each other and divided the customers, to the great dissatisfaction of Nico and Maki both. Maki had the idea of including green tea in her lemonade, which gave her an edge, though at a small additional cost.
I have to wander again, this is the part Anju, Erena and Cotarou agree is true but not very believable. Nico's first word was not "papa" or "mama" but "Maki" and she even said it in her sleep. The same is true in reverse for Maki. That was what led our two families to reach out to Tsushima Yoshiko, in fact. She told us, matter-of-factly, that reincarnation should not be dismissed out of hand. We observed a lot of the details I have noted above after that.
At any rate, Nico came across the street to grumpily observe Maki's wares. Somehow, she knocked over a couple of pre-poured cups of lemonade, and Maki berated her for it, which she was quite justified in doing. When Nico very grudgingly apologized, Maki looked at her intently, then, according to Nico, quite weirdly suddenly grabbed her and kissed her on the mouth! When Nico could stutter out a "why?", she told her parents, all Maki said was that she "felt like it." And that's the same story she gave us. We were shocked, and worried this would cause a falling out between the girls, and it seemed like it had. But as I write this, they are best friends. Nico hugs Maki whenever she feels like it, and Maki kisses Nico, but on the cheek or top of the head, which is proper.
The story of Love Live! outlived Honoka, and outlived A-RISE. It will almost certainly outlive those of us who survived Honoka, and even our children. But this anecdote is rather precious to me. It hints that there are other things that may survive us, things that are more personal to us. I am not suggesting Yazawa Honoka has the same spirit as my friend Kousaka Honoka. But she may be - I only say may be — out there, somewhere. If we remembered too much, it would be boring — like reading a story you've already read the plot to.