So. There I was. Right where, I was beginning to realize, my Onee-san had been. If not on the train, how did everything fit, other than a few oddities. Was I about to find out?
The same producer from Talent Starball was in the front seat. I was in the back, between two men who were each resting a hand on my thighs. The producer looked back at me and laughed. So did the driver. So did the two men, one of whom gave my thigh a squeeze.
They discussed what they would do with me at the party we were headed to as if I were a bottle of sake they were going to pass around. I kept all expression from my face, but I also did not pull out my phone. That part was important.
The car started up, but the plans for the night went wrong right away. They had just been startled by all four tyres exploding at the same time when I covered my face with a shawl I'd been wearing for just this contingency when truncheons attacked the two back windows. Then they were driven through the holes newly made and knocked out the two men in the back. the front doors were yanked open, and the producer and the driver were dragged out and handcuffed.
Talent Starball was so dirty, even for the industry, that two much smaller competitors had helped girls who jumped ship try to take legal action against them. It went nowhere, and the competing agencies stopped getting referrals not only from Talent Starball, but from other big agencies who were afraid of, or in cahoots with, the company.
But the prefectural police under the National Police Agency had compared notes. They needed only a small bit more of a push to arrest people from the agency, with the producer as a prime target. The final signal had been quite simple: if the car started up before I texted them, they'd pop up the spikes that were placed before the front and rear tyres and take action. Because I would text them if I wasn't being kidnapped.
Onee-san couldn't have understood or been okay watching the courtroom drama that eventually ensued, but I was there, of course. She was still, and will be for years, reconciling her reality and memories with what she was being shown about her real history. My hope is that justice for Nico-nii will help a lot with her healing. Our share of the money from the bankruptcy of Talent Starball wasn't much, but every bit helps.
I will never forget the driver (he'd been the driver then, too) talking about how Nico's little body looked, tumbling through the air, briefly lit up by the tail light. "It looked like a doll, like someone had thrown a doll out of the window behind the car," he said.
There is a superstitious story, I think originally from the West, that is popular in Japan. A doll named Mary is abandoned. Later, much later, the girl who abandoned it gets a call on her phone. She says her name is Mary, and she's at the docks or the airport or some such.
The next day, the call says she's in your chome. The next day, she's outside your house. And the final day, in more ways than one, she's behind you in your home.
"That doll is Mary, and this is your last phone call," I told the driver as he was led away after sentencing.
The producer got a long sentence. The joint lawsuit of all the idols abused by Talent Starball, as suggested by my earlier comment, bankrupted the company. It also made an example of them. When the news included the information that two agencies had been fighting for the idols, their applicants soared.
The producer had refused to testify, but one of his colleagues had turned on him. It had been the producer's idea to turn around after Nico fought her way out of the car (while it was speeding along) and take her body to where there had just been a train wreck. They'd avoided the flashlights and the onlookers and gotten away cleanly. They didn't care if JR found out Nico hadn't been on the train. By that point, any evidence against them would be long gone.
The producer got a long sentence. If Nico really had died (which they believed she had, in the panic of the moment, as her breathing was so shallow) in the process of kidnapping, that would be an aggravated death. The coverup instead of getting help amounted to attempted murder.
Mama and I have been doling out information to Onee-san in small doses. She has Maki to comfort her, and she has a bunch of ready-made friends. Her physical therapy should be done in two years. In the meantime, her therapy is geared towards dancing - she's scarcely the first dancer to be gravely injured in Japan! Her singing is a bit melancholy for an idol, but extremely touching. I don't remember it being quite so beautiful before.
This is just a sketchy conclusion, Nikki. Most of this is expanded in my notes for "Like a Doll: Yazawa Nico and the Fall of Talent"
What won't go in the book is how close Maki-nee and Nico-nii are, again. Set upon by devils in the idol industry, Nico needed an angel, and Kannon must have heard her and sent one. Maki-chan is like a sister already, and while her parents were confused at first, they are extremely proud of Maki - it's easy, in retrospect, to be business-oriented in the medical field, and they've needed to develop that acumen. But the heiress to a chain of hospitals needs to somehow also find her calling. Caring for Nico-nii showed her family that she was more of a natural in that respect than they were!
I may put in the book, after all, that I hope by the time my book gets a second, or perhaps a third, edition, I hope it will be common for idol girls to marry other girls. I will have to ask "NicoMaki" about that, though.