The material was genuine. The intent was genuine. The costume had been designed to fit Sawako's body type, and no one else. This wasn't an outfit that Yatsubo had purchased from her after the band dissolved. It had been made from scratch, meticulously recreating its perfections, and its flaws. The leftover fabric from the project sat on the floor of the closet like confetti from a party held long ago, gathering dust alongside the object of desire they had been split apart to make.
"Wait, I'm not getting something," said Ayame, reaching out her hand to touch the costume.
Yatsubo stepped in front of the closet, his arms outstretched. "No touching. This is meant to be worn by Catherine, and nobody else."
Ayame sat down on the couch. "Okay, okay, I get it. This is your masterpiece. Why isn't it outside? If you feel something is your best, display it. You can't be the only Death Devil fan out there."
"This dress is my greatest achievement, and my greatest failure," said Yatsubo. "I had intended to give it to Catherine when she and the band came here for a concert. I was younger then, and full of dreams. My dream was to work for them. They were rebellious, groundbreaking, the finest example of a girls' band Japan has ever produced.
"After one of their concerts, I walked onto the stage, and presented my costume to Catherine. She turned around and gave me that smile. Such an innocent smile, in contrast with her piercing eyes. I thought that this was my moment. And she told me 'It's good, but we already have a costume designer. We'll look forward to seeing you again!'"
"Ouch," said Ayame.
"I kept trying, over and over again for ten years. Never once was I accepted into their band. I don't know what the reason was. My greatest rival and my greatest idol, Catherine. She was the reason I wanted to join, but she was the reason I couldn't join! It kept going that way for ten years, before I gave up and resigned myself to a life of freelance work. Bands have come and gone, but none have struck me with the same kind of inspiration as you have," he said. "But I haven't stopped costuming. I can't stop. It's my passion."
"Excuse me," said Sachi, "but I think I know why you weren't accepted."
"What?" said Yatsubo.
"It is a girls' band. They all went to high school, like us," she said, "Trying to make yourself a fifth wheel wouldn't have worked out. There are things girls just can't discuss while a guy's around. Maybe instead of working for one band, you should've tried to work for any and every band? I'm sure there's still a chance."
"You think I didn't try that?" said Yatsubo, "I submitted my work to every costuming outlet across Japan, but by that point, standards had changed. I was stuck in the 90s, they said. Everything looked so gritty and hard edged that it would never sell. The closest I've gotten is a few offers for some independent films, and those are fodder for the comedy shows! It seems I was born under an unlucky star."
"What does any of this have to do with us?" asked Akira, "It sounds like a lot of this is your fault."
"It's not like I didn't try to change," said Yatsubo, "Around the turn of the millennium, that style overtook Japan's music industry. Moe. So I changed along with it. Brighter colors, softer edges, styles that resembled a school uniform more than a battle outfit. Every artist has his own touch that can't be erased, and the style remained. It was cute, but when people tried it on, it looked disconcertingly wrong. This isn't the kind of thing I was meant to make. Even if I tried it now, they'd say I'm too old for this sort of thing. I'd rather keep this outfit locked away. It's caused me too much trouble."
Akira reached towards her back and removed her guitar case. She unzipped the black bag, and revealed me from within its chambers. My master clenched her guitar pick between her teeth, reaching up to grab it. She turned my knobs, tuning me for the kind of sound she was going for.
"Maybe what you need is to find a new sound," said Akira. "Here, give this a listen."
Akira played one of Onna Gumi's slower tunes. It was still heavy on the guitar, the melody of the strings overpowering the drums. Without the bass backing it up, it sounded incomplete. After playing a few bars, Akira sang the lyrics a capella. The lyrics were casual, and dotted with slang that Yatsubo didn't quite understand. Akira heard her voice bounce back at her off the cramped room's walls. She looked at her own reflection in the mirrored closet door. That expression on her face, had she seen it before?
"Akira, don't tell me. Are you thinking of Hirasawa?" said Ayame with a grin. "That song sounded more like HTT's discography than anything you've ever done." She elbowed her affectionately. "And all this time you said her influence wasn't rubbing off on you."
"Is this the same Hirasawa that knows Catherine?" asked Yatsubo.
"She was mentored by her," said Akira.
"Can you tell me where this Hirasawa is? Perhaps I'll have better lu-" said Yatsubo.
"Like hell I will! You're a creep. Yui's far too important a friend. I, I mean, fellow light music club member. It's in the club charter!" said Akira.
"Akira, you're so dishonest with yourself," said Sachi.
Yatsubo reached for the CD collection on his shelf, and took out one of the disks. The paper was creased, and the disk looked like it had been played many times. The CD didn't even have a label, just a design drawn with marker. It could hardly be called professional. Yatsubo placed it in the boombox beside his desk. His eyes darted back and forth between the speakers and Akira.
"That music. It sounds so familiar. The chords may be hidden beneath otaku pop, but that is the rock music Catherine produced. What kind of person is this Hirasawa? Where is she now?"
"She's a natural airhead," said Ayame, "Oversleeps, gorges herself on sweets, and as soon as her sister got to our university, did very little for herself."
"She treats her guitar like a little brother," said Akira, strumming her fingers across me furiously, going up and down the scale like mad.
"Akira," said Sachi, winking at her, "Who's the one who named her instrument Rosalie?"
My master pouted. She and Yui were a lot alike. In those months between, when she found out from Houkago Tea Time that they had gotten their first big break, she was happy, because Yui was reacting the same way she would. She wished it could've been her, but that someone like Yui was able to make it gave her hope that someday she would too. My master broke the news to Yatsubo.
"Hirasa- Yui's band, Houkago Tea Time, is playing a concert at the Budokan today. Somene named Yumeno picked them up. Not every day you get to see a group make their debut there. You'd think they'd play to the crowds in Akiba or something," said Akira.
Yatsubo looked at the Death Devil poster on his wall. There was a longing in his eyes. "Why, Catherine? Why must your protege take on the fame you never had? She does not understand the musical legacy she's throwing away."
"Look, it's almost lunchtime," said Akira, "We'll get going. If we can think of anything for you to do for us, we'll call."
We left Yatsubo's apartment. The door closed, drowning out the sounds of Death Devil's single in the background. The trio walked back into town, finding a different restaurant to eat at for lunch. Sachi suggested checking out the clubs in the area to see which one would be the best for tonight. After that, a long, awkward silence followed until we had taken our seats at the table.
"You know, I noticed something strange on the other side of his apartment. Threads in every color of the rainbow were coming out of the door. Looks like he's not just hiding his completed works, but his works in progress too," said Ayame, "I kinda wanna go back there and see what it was."
"We need a reason to go back there," said Sachi.
"Checking out more of his work counts as a reason," said Ayame.
"He was kinda pitiful," said Akira, after taking a sip of her drink, "Death Devil broke up years ago. I think one of them is married now, and it's not like there's a reunion tour on the way. Why should we let him work for us?"
"Giving him work at all might get him out of his rut," said Sachi.
"Are we rock enough?" asked Akira, "We don't even have stage names or a mythology. We're just a group of girls trying to make music. This guy seems like the kind of person who looks into every song for meaning. That's not what songs are. Not all the time, at least. Sometimes you just pick lyrics because they flow or because they sound cool. That's how I named Rosalie."
"Maybe we should give him another chance," said Sachi, taking a bite of her hamburger, "So he's a failed costumer, maybe he has talent elsewhere. It's never too late to learn to do something new."
Akira felt another buzz coming from her cell phone. She flipped it open, revealing another message from the shadowy figure called Yumeno. Akira read it aloud. In the back of her mind she was still curious how a person she had never met had her number.
"The paradox of art. The lows create the art most well received, but that reception brings happiness. To live in infamy is to live in fame. Follow the bird to where it flies, and realize that his feather will some day be used as a pen. Masaka Yumeno.
"Geez, she isn't making this clear at all," said Akira.
Nine minutes to one. Akira felt a change in the wind. The sky overhead had become cloudier and grayer, tinting much of Nagoya a darker shade of gray. Onna Gumi walked outside, their lunch completed. The air was humid and sticky and warm. The sky was lying to them.
"I don't remember seeing anything like this on the weather forecast," said Sachi, "We'd best be careful, Akira. You don't want Rosalie to stop producing her music, do you?"
"You know, one of these days I'll give your bass a nickname. Let's see how you like it," said Akira through the side of her mouth.
Ayame forced us on a detour through the clubs. Only one of them had an opening for tonight. We walked through the front door, noticing the large pink HMV logo plastered on the back in neon. Posters of the master with various artists were scattered around. He could tell from our looks why we were here.
"Sign up right here, ladies. What would you say your genre is? We've got a lot of acts on tonight, so-" Akira had already signed the form. You could still see the ink drying.
"Rock. We're rock," she said. "Ayame, Sachi, you too. This is our Budokan!" Akira pumped her fists.
"Budokan?" said the master jovially, "You're pretty confident, aren't ya? Get yourselves back here tonight, and show me what you're made of."
"You can count on it!" said Akira.
A light rain began to fall, creating a sunshower. People were walking faster on our return trip to Yatsubo's, but our pace remained the same. A breeze of damp cherry blossom petals scattered around the streets. Akira crushed one underfoot, and walked up the steps towards Yatsubo's apartment.
Perhaps in this weather, it wouldn't make any difference, but the blinds on his apartment had been shut since the last time we'd been here. Akira pressed the doorbell, letting the chime echo throughout the living room. It echoed again. Off in the distance, there came a roar of thunder, ringing in time with the doorbell.
"Kota Yatsubo!" shouted Akira.
The door slowly creaked open. The silhouette of the designer to the stars could be seen rushing towards the back of his tiny apartment, skittering out of sight like a mouse. Akira, me strapped tightly across her back, walked into the apartment. Spools of thread in many colors were wound out across the floor. Akira stepped lightly, calling out to the lonely apartment.
"Mr. Yatsubo?" she asked, "It's us."
"There's a storm blowing in, so we may have to stay here for a while," said Ayame.
"Ayame," said Sachi, elbowing her in the waist.
The lights weren't turned on, and the blinds were half open. The only source of light was the faint blue-white glow of the computer screen, now showing an open email from someone and a browser opened to Death Devil's webpage. The thunder continued in the background. The click of a remote was heard, and the speaker began to play "Maddy Candy" at a volume so low it was nearly inaudible.
In the center of the apartment, there was a sight that caused Akira to tense up. The replica of Catherine's stage outfit was sprawled out across the bed. A loose black thread, shortening the waist of the outfit, went out from the costume's pant leg and onto the floor. A red thread from the shirt joined it, and the two threads became interwoven, going under the door and into the closed off room.
"I knew there was something under that door," said Ayame.
"Yatsubo, are you here? We've got something for tonight, and you're the only person we know who can do this, so please, answer," said Sachi.
"You can't hide," said Akira, "You don't have many places to. We're coming in, whether you like it or not." Akira placed her hand on the doorknob leading into Yatsubo's bedroom. It was still warm. Carefully, Akira turned the knob, and pushed the door back.
Yatsubo was nowhere to be seen. The room was covered in complete darkness. Akira could feel more thread underfoot, and jumped back. Lightning flashed outside the tiny apartment, briefly illuminating the room. On the mannequin that had once held the imitation Catherine, the outline of a new dress could be seen against the darkness. Akira barely had time to comprehend it, but she had seen colors. Every color of the rainbow, woven into a patchwork fabric.
Sachi reached for the light switch, and clicked it on. Threads and spools of fabric were covering every corner of the room, wrapping around the dress. The bedroom was a technicolor spider web, ensnaring prey who came in search of a man with a talent. Akira fell to her knees, and saw up close the threads that had carried on from the previous room.
The black thread stopped before it reached the foot of the bed, letting the red thread weave its way through the dress. A turquoise thread and an orange thread, both of equal length, stitched themselves up the body of the dress, but only the orange wrapped around the red thread and became intertwined with it. The red thread abruptly unraveled near the chest; it had become loose before it reached that point.
The pink fabric did not intersect with the others. It had been wrapped around the dress as an ornamental belt. Its pink threads touched every other color, but it did not follow them upward. Blue and yellow thread had been used to create asymmetrical arms. The blue arm was frilly and puffed up, but became smooth once it reunited with the yellow, making up the stitching on the back.
The dress had cuts in various places, making the threads frayed and broken. Bits of the turquoise, red and blue threads hung off the silver blade of a nearby pair of scissors. Light blue and light green spools of thread were on the floor, nowhere near the dress, and not even unwound.
Akira approached it, knowing in the back of her mind that Yatsubo might come out from his hiding place and try to stop her from touching it. That's what she hoped for. It was the only way she could find him.
The short-haired girl stretched her hand through one of the holes. She felt nothing. There was another flash of lightning, and the rain intensified. Yatsubo, hiding himself underneath the bed, poked his head out, and spoke.
"What do you think?" he said in a hushed voice.
"It's very well put together," said Akira, "The threads are all intertwined, and together, they create something that I'd be proud to wear. I can tell you put a lot of yourself into it." She looked intensely at the dress, and stepped back, taking in its whole form. "However, there's something off putting about it."
"I knew you were going to say that," said Yatsubo.
"It's ugly," said Sachi, "I'm sorry to say that, but it is. You put your fears and anxieties into making it, but in a way that leaves them clear and exposed. In a way that exposes whoever wears it too."
Yatsubo pulled himself out further. "I'd hesitate to call it my masterpiece, but the last person who looked at this wanted to hire me." Onna Gumi turned around, their eyes perking up. "To design monsters. Is that all I'm good for? I got into this to show the beauty of the human form, but I only end up exposing its dirty parts."
"What about that Death Devil dress out there?" asked Akira, "You loved that."
"I had to break apart my past works to create this. It was the best material around I could find. Even then, look at this dress. You like it, but this style? I have others like it, and I'll make others like it. It doesn't stand out amongst my works at all," said Yatsubo.
"It does stand out! That's your personal touch," said Ayame.
"You don't understand," said Yatsubo, "I did more than break Death Devil's clothes. It's far too late now. Not just for me, but for Catherine. Tell me, have you heard of Bubble Angel?"
Lightning broke through the clear sky. The power blinked on and off, but in the dark confines of this room, it made no difference. Onna Gumi had no response. Yatsubo, shaking, slid up onto the bed. His dress hung behind him, blowing back and forth with the ceiling fan. Yatsubo looked around the posters hanging on his ceiling.
"Bubble Angel and Death Devil were rivals. Not so much Death Devil. They were too in love with music to consider anyone anything other than a friend in battle. Bubble Angel's music was not my kind of thing. It felt too unreal, too manufactured, designed to capture the hearts and minds and wallets of the very people who now keep my bank account full," he explained.
"Fans can be a tough business," said Akira, "but sometimes they have good points to make too. Yui and I may have different styles, but we have a lot of overlap. There's no reason you couldn't have been a fan of both."
Yatsubo walked over to the window, navigating the maze of threads like a sleepwalker. The dress had not been disturbed. He pulled open a drawer beside his bed, revealing a notepad and pen. As he continued talking, he sketched out more rough ideas for costumes, ripping off the paper and throwing it to the ground when an idea met his expectations or failed to meet them.
"It turns out Masako Koike, Bubble Angel's lead singer, had tried to keep her musical career going after her limelight had faded. I had found someone who could understand where I was coming from," said Yatsubo. "She admired Catherine's music, and told me she was planning to keep that style alive well into the new century, and vanished for Hokkaido. I didn't hear from her for years.
"That is, until the start of this year. She had assembled a band in her tenure as a high school teacher, and trained them to be Death Devil's successors, despite never being in the band herself. Someone called Masaka Yumeno had called her up and offered to bring them to the Budokan. I wasn't sure how to react, until Koike spoke the truth."
"Wait, so you knew?" asked Akira.
"Yes. I knew that Catherine had mentored a band closer to her old rivals, defying all my expectations. They were going to the Budokan too. Masako told me what her plan was. There, she had told her girls to crush Catherine's, to steal their stardom from them and make sure they never get signed. It was the only way she felt we could get back at the world for denying us the fame we so richly deserved. I was with her at first."
"Until you met us," said Sachi, picking up one of the drawings he had left on the floor.
The dress in the picture was cute. Genuinely cute. The color key to the right painted it in cooler shades than Sachi had expected. It was a dress out of a fantasy, that would look brillaint contrasted against a cool winter lake. That he had roughly sketched out something so elaborate in only a few minutes surprised her.
"Yes," said Yatsubo, "Masako had gotten the idea into my head that I was supposed to hate Catherine's students, but when you played that soulful melody, I couldn't find it in myself to. Those with talent are people I aspire to be like, and people I aspire to be with. I'm sorry you had to see this ugly sight, girls."
The phone started ringing. Against the silence of the room, it chilled my master and caused her hair to stand on end. She had these feelings at night, assuaged by the knowledge that Yui Hirasawa was sleeping soundly, comfortably next to her, ready to greet the next day with a smile. She could never admit to it, but I am her instrument. Her heart and soul has been poured into me.
"Excuse me," said Kota Yatsubo.
He put the phone on speaker. A smug voice came through. It was definitely feminine, and would have sounded cute and alluring had it not been for the words that issued forth. "Yatsubo, you there?"
"Hello, Masako," said Yatsubo. He mouthed to Onna Gumi, "Be quiet."
Akira fidgeted on the floor. The only sound she could hear was me rattling around in the case and the sound of her own breathing, and even that sounded like it might be too loud. Ayame and Sachi were at her back. The clap of skin against skin should've been barely audible.
"Kota, is someone there? I know you haven't been seeing anyone. Except at your silly little markets," she said.
"Our markets, partner," said Yatsubo, "There's nobody here. What are you calling for? Today was supposed to be my off day."
The girls leaned closer.
"The plan was a success. Yamanaka won't know what hit her. Kitaku Free Time will soar, while her cake and tea club will drop like an anvil!" Yatsubo flinched at those words. Failure was happening to someone that wasn't him. Yet he wasn't any closer to success. It was a Pyrrhic victory. "Isn't this what you desired, Kota? Your dreams are finally coming true," she said.
"Don't call me Kota," said Yatsubo, hanging up the phone.
Akira stopped holding her breath, and slumped back onto the bed. Sachi and Ayame rested at her legs. Yatsubo looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Akira nodded to the others, motioning for them to step back into the living room. Yatsubo looked out the window at the falling rain.
"Catherine... Sawako... What have I done?"