Saturday, April 26, 2014

Waiting for physical therapy to start. I am looking back in Niko's nikki. Today I read about when Nozomi was shooting video to be used to tell new students about the club. She filmed "candid" stuff aided by Kotori and Rin. It mostly made us look bad, except for practice. When it was Niko's "turn," according to Niko, she first did her full Niko-Niko-Nii persona and greeting - which, to be fair, we were all sick of by that point - Rin was filming and Nozomi said no, they wanted more candid, everyday video. So Niko took her hair down and assumed a very calm and mature attitude. Only a snippet was filmed, but she was outright gorgeous. As much presence as Eli or Umi ever pulled off. And everyone, including Nozomi and Rin, simply walked out while she was talking. Maybe she wasn't saying anything interesting enough to them, she explained that she wasn't her idol persona, mainly. But she was doing a great job, and showing us how a real idol gets interviewed. We all acknowledged her acting skills. But there was no Niko at all in the video for the club (even very little of her in the practice session part).

I had been checking in with Nozomi lately and I brought it up. Was she being phony? Why did they simply rudely walk away instead of telling her what they wanted? Nozomi said actually Niko was acting much the way she had been every day before her idol club failed. They just didn't want glamour interviews or to give the impression that Niko was usually the calm, poised, glamorous one.

Nozomi said "I know the picture that paints, and in retrospect, you're right. I think we kind of punished her for being hostile to us at first. When Muse was seven people, you got paired with her as a sacrifice. There were the three second-years, best friends forever. There was Hanayo and Rin that you cannot separate, and then there was Niko. So really she was an outsider. At least Maki could easily be bunched with Rin and Hanayo. And after that, disrespecting her became a habit, and it was a form of bullying. Then again, that girl had a really hard time being honest."

"She wouldn't have been so greedy for attention and praise, and would have been more honest, if people just gave her even a little bit," I said. "You guys literally couldn't have let her be interviewed - for 5 minutes - and then used a snippet, even?"

"Well, most of the video was the opposite, I was filming people and having Kotori and Rin film them when they weren't looking. So whoever called it interviews was being misleading." Nozomi was sighing when she said that.

"Maki, this is simply not important now. You're talking about a different girl in a different universe now. If this is what you're going to spend our time on, we won't be able to fix anything. Tsubasa told me you're on a tear right now to confront people about all the injustice against Niko-chan. We already feel bad. I was her friend and I still went along with it, not for a good reason, but because it amused me. You weren't as bad for bullying, but when you said stuff, when you and her were bickering, it hurt more, because she was so in love with you. Can I say one thing?"

She was saying a lot more than one thing, but I said "okay."

"I think Tsubasa's right. Even if the world is wrong, and you are right, Maki, it doesn't matter a bit. The world is bigger than you and it will win every time. You and Niko need to focus on the thing that can change, and that's Niko. I can tell already that you and her family are ready to fill her with the love and praise she needed. She was always comforting her siblings and making things easy for her mother, and no one at all was comforting Niko. But you also need to watch that she doesn't acquire the same habits this time around. I'd be most careful after she finds out the truth and reads her diary. I don't say you shouldn't give her her history and her own thoughts. But that's when she may turn into Dr. Niko and Mister Nii."

I told Nozomi I had saved Rin's video to my laptop, so I still had the snippet just before they walked away after Niko had a chance to get out only a couple of sentences. I showed it to Arisa and she said "Ara, Niko-sempai is as cool as Umi-sempai!" and that she agreed with me that it showed Niko could be absolutely beautiful when she wanted to. Nozomi said if it weren't for her eye color Niko sometimes did look like Umi's little sister when her hair was down.

She mentioned a few things like the lawyer's advice for an ongoing process, and I told her I was cheering for her with Eli, after thinking about it a lot. She didn't even ask how I knew. She re-visited the Niko subject and said "what counts now is what all of us do for the Niko that's here and now, not the other one. That girl is kind of like a Niko in a story-book. I agree with Eli pointing that out to you. I wouldn't help if I didn't care - all this dredging up the past won't help except if you point out something specific that we can change."

I told Nozomi about Mama Yazawa's visit - in the hospital Niko asked about a cousin of her ghost member Rin that Niko was friendly with, that wanted to be in idol club when she started at Otonokizaka. That girl went missing in the tsunami and was never found. Niko didn't react that well to the news, and it was a kind of test to see how strong she is to hear bad news. But even if it makes her very sad and depressed, there is some news, like what year it is, that you can't hold back for very long.