The Star

Umi

Umi, Mary, and Honoka had gotten on the plane with great difficulty. Honoka attempted to touch nothing, on the way in, but an uninformed flight attendant had brushed past Honoka and it was an hour before the woman came to and the air stopped crackling with green sparks.

Umi knew she should have been doing literally anything else, writing work emails, perhaps, or doing some physical therapy exercises, but instead she scribbled out free verse poetry as they waited in the plane cabin. It was pure nonsense, words coming out of herself without meaning or syntax. But she kept going. There was something there, in that poem.

Why had Umi been writing about fairy tales? It was senior year. The clamor of Love Live had died down. Kotori and Hanayo had been watching Perfect Blue, in parts fascination and terror, of what the idols of the past had been subjected to, of what they, had they gone professional in their idol careers, would be subjected to. This had turned into many other movies that semester (Umi didn't like Paprika, or Legend, or Mirror Mask either. Umi had wanted to watch a sentimental movie about horses.) but Kotori had insisted they watch Black Swan next. Umi watched with them, bored and embarrassed by the sex and the emotional flamboyance of the movies. Seeing Mina being chased by her other self. Watching Natalie Portman transform herself from the innocent ballerina into the devious Black Swan. And Kotori and Hanayo were enraptured when the sex scenes happened, and Umi had to leave the room, least anyone tease her further.

"You're the white swan." Kotori said, when Black Swan ended and Umi asked if they could watch literally anything else. "Aren't you?"

"I'm not a swan." Umi was not someone else. "I would be Ballerina Extra number one. People are not swans."

"I don't think so, Are you the prince? Deceived by the black swan, in love with the white swan?"

Umi blushed. "What about you, then? Are you the swan?"

"Oh my. I could only imagine being spun around by you." Kotori giggled in her ear. "But I'm the costume director, Umi, I demand ultimate tyranny over the clothing. I don't have the melancholy depths for the Swan. If only we'd gotten a ballet-themed song." Kotori had sighed. "Can you imagine? Eli in black wings and the feather headdress."

Umi had pictured it: Eli's powerful form, muscles rippling beneath the feathers. The wild red eyes of the swan. Hair pulled into a bun. Twirling and leaping with desperation. Breasts half-falling out of the dress. Claws and feathers enveloping her. Umi was disturbed.

They had then moved onto watching the actual Swan Lake on youtube. Hanayo and Kotori had gotten out their sketchbooks, doodling costumes. Umi had decided it was time to go home.

The next day at school Kotori had come to school with a book of fairy tales. She'd pulled Honoka and the rest of the first-years in as well, to Umi's chagrin.

"We aren't idols anymore."

"This is for us! I haven't made an outfit since last year." Kotori pleaded at her with her big wet eyes. Write me a song, Umi?"

It hurt, to remember this.

Umi wrote down all she could.

King sized bed, six feet,

wet legs pushed up together.

Morning migraines.

###

Umi had started the affair with Honoka, although she would never have admitted it.

Umi had seen Honoka pulling up a stocking before a show. The embroidered diamond pattern was just off-center. Umi had insisted that Honoka let her fix it. She'd gripped the smooth fabric up Honoka's thigh, which was plush and shapely. Umi compared them, silent, to her own narrow thighs, which didn't touch. Her legs would look so slender, next to Honoka's.

Umi had looked up at Honoka, who'd frozen rigid. Obedient, finally, Umi had thought. "Much better." She'd said aloud. She tied the ribbon and admired the lace tops. "You're so beautiful when you've been all ironed out, Honoka."

Kotori had teased Umi, somewhere on the road, that they were half swingers.

"Am I not submissive enough for you, Umi? I always thought you were the bottom."

Umi had scoffed at her. 'It's nothing like that. I'm just helping her idol image."

"You never put on my stockings."

"You do them up right!"

"You're so mean, Umi." Kotori gave her the pitiful liquid doe eyes. "I want you to fuss over me, too."

Umi didn't feel a charge with Kotori. They were equals, and Kotori could always bend her feminine wiles over Umi. Honoka, however, had no girlish charm or cunning, and was naive as a first year. She asked only for bread - not cheesecake from the nice bakeries in the expensive part of town, wouldn't notice if Umi had worn the nice jewelry when they went out, and had only asked for a girl's friendship and not a woman's romance. Kotori's inner thighs were perfect, carved marble. There was no softness to bruise.

/

"Let me see." Honoka's eyes were cool. "What you wrote."

Could she really trust this person? Umi thought, not for the first time. She was undoubtedly Honoka, and she undoubtedly had a power beyond Umi's understanding of reality. Did Umi ever trust her own Honoka? Umi gripped the arm rest. Her fingernails had been worn down to nubs, and she kept going further, into the cuticle.

"Why?"

"I'm curious. Mary said you were working on something for the case. I'm… curious."

"About what?"

"What's similar. What's different. You had a questionable poetry career in your other life. You'd put out a chapbook every over year. Your fans would read it, and it'd be a best-seller but it'd be castigated otherwise. I thought it was a little unfair." Honoka said. "You were just like every other poet putting out chapbooks, honestly. You just happened to be an idol, too."

Umi blinked. Poetry? She remembered the poems she had written in middle school, and shuddered. Feelings like the depths of the ocean/heart drowning in your waves/love is a maelstrom/and you're in the way. Where had Umi found the depths of those emotions when she was 13? Umi had won the class poetry contest, to her embarrassment, and Kotori would whisper the lines to her at inopportune moments. "I was a poet? What did I write about?"

Honoka didn't meet her eyes. "Love. Beauty. Art. Nature. The isolated childhood of a high-achieving young woman. It was like your songs, but haikus, or sonnets. Villanelles?"

Umi had no idea what a villanelle was.

###

In a bar, in Vermont,

Honoka had been talking all night with Kotori about costume ideas. They laughed with private jokes between them. Kotori had complemented Honoka's hip-bust-waist ratio. Honoka had the perfect figure for Kotori's newest dress, a leather dress, with rosette buds and chain straps.

Honoka went to the bathroom.

"Leather roses, huh?"

"The hem is very high. Too high for you, darling." Kotori winked

"Is Honoka your muse now?"

"You've both been my muses. I had 8 of them, you know, nine including myself."

"Don't I…" Umi was a hypocrite, but she couldn't stop herself. "Don't I do anything for you, at all?"

Kotori blinked. She was more beautiful, in her anger, but less attractive. "Umi, the last time I kissed you, you scolded me."

"It was the wrong time for that."

"A Saturday night."

"Honoka would have heard."

"We've made out a hundred times with Honoka not even sleeping." Umi didn't want to tell Kotori that she couldn't be perfect as long as Kotori was also perfect. That Umi resented the beauty of Kotori's body as much as she admired it.

"Does it matter?"

Kotori stood up from the bar table. "I'm getting another drink."

Honoka was reapplying her makeup when Umi entered the bathroom. Honoka's winged eyeliner was uneven, her hair strangled, still half wavy from her slapdash flat ironing. Umi tsked. We were idols?

"Let me." She took the eyeliner from Honoka's hand. Umi closed in, not caring if her breath smelled like a pumpkin craft beer. Honoka started, and then shut her eyes.

"Good girl." She dragged the felt tips over Honoka's eyelids. Her hands lingered over Honoka's face, running over the cheeks, the lips.

###

This Honoka on the plane was behind a veil. She would have neither been pleased with vending machine bread or cared if Umi had worn the Nice Jewelry to dinner. She did not allow herself to be seen putting on stockings. Her only awareness of Umi was total disdain. Umi had the most perverse stirring. She wanted this Honoka's love, too. She wanted to be loved across time. "Did you read it? The poetry?"

Honoka watched her with a wary eye. The radiation absorbers Honoka was fitted with was a cold white plating that covered her body, closer to armor than clothing. Umi no longer felt the same insistent pulse coming from Honoka, although if she let her eyes unfocus she would still see green light. (It disappeared as soon as she looked directly at it.) Honoka kept her gray cloak, however, and she made a startling figure sitting in the airplane seat.

"Of course. I watched all of you."

"What did you think?"

"I loved it, back then. I could see your voice coming out. You had a restrained elegance, and the little bites of regret of your double life. Maki thought you were–" Honoka's eyes watered. Her irises were almost aquamarine. "We had several music geniuses, in our midst." She laughed, like the bitterest matcha.

The plane begun to move

"Well." Mary said. "It will be a long flight. Do you want to tell us more of your story, Honoka?"

Honoka looked over at Mary with a face that clearly said absolutely not. "I'll have to keep it brief. Not too emotional. I think the time flares up when I get emotionally worked up, regardless of what I'm touching. And…" Other Honoka looked away.

"And?"

"We died - or, everyone else died, in that plane crash, on the beach. It seems… Like tempting fate, to tell that story now."

Umi felt her face to tingle as the blood drained out. "The beach."

"Yes." Other Honoka almost seemed nonchalant. "Where the hidden part of our souls reside."

"What?"

"It's where all of you died. Were frozen in place. You're haunting it, across time. I still see myself there sometimes, at the beach. It's where a part of me died, even if I technically lived. My story, my fate, had ended there, and now I play it on loop again here." Other Honoka took a breath. "Have you seen your other self, Umi? I'm sure many of the other girls have, in little moments. In dreams, in trances, sometimes whispers right in the back of our heads."

They were picking up speed.

"I… haven't seen anything like that." Umi said.

The plane surged upward. Umi was thrust back into her seat.

"If you were lucky, you would never see her. See the beach." Honoka glared at her. "But you will."