Robots vs. Fairies(89)
The music cut off and her ears rang with silence. Hands found her and unzipped her quickly, and Ruriko sagged with relief. “Are you okay?” asked Kaori. Looking at her, Ruriko saw, instead of her wide, earnest face, a mess of dark hair spilling out from beneath two tons of metal, and sharp, shocked shapes of blood splattered across the stage.
“I don’t think so,” Ruriko whispered. She couldn’t be okay, not if she was paying to destroy herself, over and over every month.
Kaori pulled her into her arms and held her tight. They stayed like that until Ruriko’s two hours were up.
Ruriko was still shaking as she boarded her train home. Her phone rattled in her grip. But by the time the subway reached its next stop, she had booked and paid for her next appointment at the Aidoru.
*
“This is going to sound rich, coming from me,” said Shunsuke, “but you need to learn to let things go.”
They stood on the balcony of Shunsuke’s apartment, smoking together and watching the rain pour down in great sheets. The brilliant multicolored lights from all the signs and ads and cars zinging by became patchy and blurred, doubled and strange, in this weather.
“Sure I do. Speaking of, how’s that new dry cleaner working out for you?” said Ruriko.
“He’s great. He never asks any questions.” He cut his eyes at her. “I’m serious. Those girls can’t remember anything. They don’t even know who you are.”
“They can’t remember,” Ruriko mumbled, stabbing out her cigarette. “But I can’t forget. I don’t want to forget.”
“You know what always helps me,” said Shun, and Ruriko hated him for what he was about to say. “Cutting right to the heart of the problem. And you’re the heart, Rina-ko. Not them.”
She flicked the cigarette off the edge of the balcony. Its dying ember flickered in the air, fluttering downward before disappearing into the night.
“You can finish this. You’ll never have to go back again.”
She whirled on him, anger flaring bright in her. Shunsuke always acted like he had everything figured out, with his sly voice and dry cleaning and neat little suitcase. “Does it feel good to lie to me?” she snapped. “Is that why you keep coming back to Aidoru, Shun? Because you’ve excised the heart of the problem?”
He stared hard at her and turned away. Ruriko bit her lip to keep any more of the venom bubbling up in her mouth from spilling out.
Looking at the tall, lanky shape he cut against the sky, she realized how different he was from when she’d seen him the first time, over ten years ago, surrounded by the other members of his group. He’d been small back then, with bleached blond hair, and in the decade following his own accident, he’d grown into himself and left his gangliness behind. He was sharper now, harder. And there was only ever one room that Shunsuke visited at the Aidoru, only ever one person.
“Do you ever talk to him?” she said at last. “When you go to see him?”
Shunsuke passed her another cigarette. There was still synthetic blood on his sleeve, a dark, thin stain running toward his wrist. “What would we have to talk about?” he said.
*
Cutting right to the heart of the problem, Shunsuke had said. As if it were that easy. But he’d opened his suitcase and pressed a bright switchblade into her hand before she left, folding her fingers over its polished wooden handle. Trust me. It’ll feel better afterward.
People came to the Aidoru Hotel for answers. Therapy, excess, an outlet for stress. To sate obsessions. If the Aidoru could help someone as fucked up as Shunsuke, Ruriko reasoned, then surely it could help someone like her.
The overwhelming roar of pop music threatened to crush her down into the plush, ugly black-and-white hallway carpet. Upstairs and downstairs, people were already fucking TV personalities and musicians long dead, and somewhere else in the hotel, Shunsuke was about to take his bright knife to his younger self’s skin. But Ruriko stood alone outside a room she’d paid for, Shunsuke’s borrowed switchblade in her pocket, too afraid to touch the door.
You already spent your money, said a voice in her head. It sounded like hers, but off, the way recordings of her own voice always sounded. A room here is expensive. Don’t waste it.
It’ll make you feel better, said Shunsuke’s voice. Trust me.
The only person you think about is yourself, whispered Yume. Fix that, and then we’ll talk.
No one in their right mind came to the Aidoru Hotel, thought Ruriko, and she gripped her key card tight and reached for the lock.
The door slid open on its own, and Ruriko’s hand leaped back. A dark-haired girl peered at her from inside the room, one hand up to shield her eyes from the bright cacophony of pop music. She was the same height, the same build as Ruriko, if ten years slimmer and younger.
“Are you going to come in?” said Rina Tanaka. “Or are you going to stand in the hall all night?”
After a moment, Ruriko tucked her key card back in her jacket pocket and followed her inside. Rina’s room was all dusty violet, the color of her childhood room. The lights were dim, and Rina slid the switches up, making the room brighter. The wallpaper glinted with silver interlocked triangles, and they winked viciously at her as she passed.
“I was wondering when you’d stop by. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Ruriko studied her, hiding her nervousness behind her mask. Rina looked about seventeen and had the same angled haircut that Ruriko remembered getting in September, right before the show in Shibuya with the powder-blue uniforms. “How did you know I was coming?”