Robots vs. Fairies(90)

“Your friend told me. He’s been visiting me for a while. Paid for memory retention services and everything.” This was Rina minus her stage persona, rougher than the other girls in IRIS, always a little too honest. In her voice, Ruriko heard the hints of Kabukicho that she’d spent her life trying to erase. “He said a woman with a red face mask would come by because she wanted to talk to me about something, but he didn’t tell me what it was. And you’re the only woman with a red face mask I’ve seen so far.”

Shunsuke had set this up for her. Ruriko’s hands shook; she kept them tucked in her pockets. The knife burned in her pocket. He’d probably meant it as a gift.

“Hey, you’re from Kabukicho too, aren’t you?” said Rina. She smiled. Ruriko had had that smile once too. “So who are you? What did you want to tell me?”

“You’re going to let her die,” said Ruriko, the words tumbling out past her clenched teeth. “At the Astro Hall.” She had Rina’s full attention now. And in that face, Ruriko read what she’d known was there—the anger, the fear, that she remembered having before they set out for Harajuku. “The lighting grid is faulty, it fell, and it crushed everyone. Yume—”

“Stop it,” Rina said tightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But her eyes were overbright, her voice too high.

Ruriko grabbed her by the shoulders. “She died. You killed her, because you were a selfish little shit, you showed up late because you were sulking and wanted to make them miss you, there wasn’t enough time to run a tech rehearsal, they would have caught it—”

“I know!” Rina pushed at Ruriko, but Ruriko held on. Tears brimmed in Rina’s eyes. “Fuck! I know! I remember. Did you think I’d forget?”

Ruriko’s grip was so tight that her fingers were starting to hurt. “What?”

“I was an idiot. I thought—I was so mad. I was so upset at her. I thought she’d dump me for sure after that.” Rina’s tears splattered onto Ruriko’s arms. She wasn’t pushing her away anymore; she gripped Ruriko’s shirt. “I wanted to make her hate me. I wanted to make her pay.”

She had wanted that. And Yume had paid. But Ruriko’s head was reeling, and she shook Rina. “What day is it?” she demanded. “What’s the last day you remember?”

“October twenty-fifth,” whispered Rina. “I woke up in the hospital. The people from the talent agency were there. They said they’d scanned me while I was out. They told me I’d never dance again. Everyone else in IRIS was dead, and if I knew what was good for me, I’d pretend I was too.”

She’d forgotten. Ruriko let go of Rina. She’d forgotten about that last scan; those days were a blur of grief, horror, regret, and it hadn’t seemed important in the wake of her loss. Yume was gone.

“I could have saved her,” said Ruriko. She felt numb. She’d been so stupid. “She was right. How could I have been so selfish?”

“You?” A look of terrible revelation crossed Rina’s face. “What’s under this mask? Who are you?” She reached out toward Ruriko’s mask.

Ruriko shoved her away as hard as she could. Rina stumbled back into the small wooden vanity parked against the wall. “Don’t touch me,” Ruriko said hoarsely. All their collective secrets were spilling into open air.

“Please,” said Rina, but Ruriko backed away. Her awful synthetic body with its awful synthetic skin and awful synthetic youth, its face twisted with regret but still whole, made Ruriko sick.

She turned and fled the room. She was in the elevator and through the lobby and out into the street, fifteen minutes into her two-hour time slot. She didn’t ask for a refund.

*

It took a long time for Ruriko to come back to the Aidoru. But when she did, there was only one door she gravitated to.

“Does my face scare you?” said Ruriko.

Yume glanced over at her. They lay together on the red circular bed in her room, side by side, their hands just brushing each other. One of them had accidentally hit a switch to make the bed rotate, and they hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn it off, so they turned slowly together, their feet dangling to brush the floor.

“No, of course not. You had reconstructive surgery, right? It looks really natural.”

The red cloth mask was wadded up in Ruriko’s other palm. How many times had this Yume seen her face? How many times had she asked her the same questions, aching to hear Yume’s affirmation, over and over again? How much did it hurt, knowing that Yume couldn’t blame her for what would happen, what did happen in Harajuku, because she would never know who Ruriko was?

Impulsively, Ruriko sat up halfway, propping herself up on her elbows. “You know, some people have said I look like Rina Tanaka. What do you think?”

Yume took a moment before she replied; perhaps her internal algorithm was searching for a tactful answer. “Maybe a little,” she said at last. “Your eyebrows. Very Rina Tanaka.”

Ruriko laughed. She’d thought she’d be injured by that response, and she was surprised and pleased to find that she wasn’t. “That’s more than I thought I’d get. I’m surprised you saw any resemblance; you spend so much time together, I bet you know her better than most people.”