Story 3: Even When I Embrace You

STORY 3
Even When I Embrace You

 

The rain fell without end—not just any rain, but a gloomy downpour, tinged with acidity. Moist air seeped in through the thin wooden walls of the man’s room. As it settled over his skin, he felt as if the wetness would rot him to his core.

I can’t take this any longer, the man thought sourly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a kitchen rag. He set the rag down on the table in front of him, and then leaned down and pulled out a cardboard box sitting on the floor underneath.

The box was stuffed with large wads of grimy cloth—former bedsheets, possibly. The man pushed aside the bunched-up fabric and dug out an object that just about filled his arms. He looked at the object for a moment, lifted it up to his face, then slipped it over his head.

The pungent odor of mildew struck his nostrils. The inside of the thing was so oppressively stifling that he nearly choked. The musty, stale air mingled with his exhaled carbon dioxide and, with nowhere else to go, lingered in a cloud around his face. The only ventilation came through a small rectangular opening, barely the size of his closed lips, located partway between his eyes and his nose. The opening also served as his only window to see out from within. In truth, the slit so severely restricted his field of view that he may as well have been blind. As long as the object was over his head, moving and acting freely would only be possible with great difficulty.

He kept the thing on for a while as he stood in place, muttering, “I need to get used to wearing this, as if it were a part of my own body. But there isn’t time. There just isn’t time. I have to do something. I have to…”

With hesitant steps, he staggered his way over to the wall and stood in front of his calendar.

“Damn it!” The man removed the object from his head. Without thinking, he threw it with both hands against the floor. It bounced a few times and rolled to a wobbling stop.

The man’s face was drenched with sweat, and he took in deep, shoulder-heaving breaths. His dead eyes stared at the calendar with such intensity that he could have bored a hole into it.

A large X had been marked over the square for the twenty-sixth of September.

“Only one week left,” he said. “I’m nearly out of time.” His voice rose as he repeated, “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time!”

Enough time for what?

His expression twisted into something sinister. His lips were taut and curled, trembling. His eyes, unfocused, stared off into nowhere.

The man balled his fists. He squeezed them tight and then tighter still, his joints creaking. Blood began to seep between his fingers as his nails dug into flesh. He didn’t know what it was that hastened him with such urgency. All he knew was that he felt a deep-set irritation, clawing at him from within.

He opened his bloody fists and rubbed them across his face, painting it in deep red. For a moment, he seemed to be smiling. Then a sorrowful wail escaped his throat. His voice was shrill, like some strange bird’s call. It sliced through the stagnant air, pierced the thin walls, and melded into the expanse of black, low-hanging storm clouds.

 

I’m happy, right? Yukiko thought. I’m supposed to be happy.

She picked up the weekly men’s magazine in front of her. The periodical led with pin-up pages featuring Yukiko herself, wearing a natural, no-makeup look with just a subtle hint of lipstick. Behind her was a quiet, wintry outdoor landscape, snow falling all around.

The scene was appropriate, and not just because of her given name, which had the word “snow” in it. The caption leading her featured section read, “In this winter for idols”—which referred to the slump in popularity pop idols were experiencing—“a single flower blooms from the snow.”

Indeed, Tsukioka Yukiko was a traditional kind of pop idol rarely seen in recent times.

How could I not be happy to receive so much attention so quickly after my debut?

Yukiko had never aspired to become an idol singer. She’d always had an interest in becoming an entertainer, but being an idol was never her one and only dream. When she graduated from high school, she had found herself without direction. She was friends with a model, and on a whim, she joined the same modeling agency that represented her friend. Yukiko viewed it as little more than just a part-time job to get her by until something else came along.

That wasn’t to say she did it with no reason whatsoever. Modeling offered substantially better pay than waitressing at some family restaurant or café, and she’d always liked the idea of being famous, even if the desire had never defined her. It was with that level of thought—and a few small pushes from her friend—that Yukiko entered the modeling world.

Yukiko was not particularly glamorous, but her face had a traditional beauty, and gigs came in at a fairly brisk pace. After a little while, the agency’s owner asked her if she wanted to give Tokyo a try. Apparently one of his business acquaintances at a talent agency there had expressed interest in her. He wanted to represent her, cultivate her career.

Yukiko took up the offer without hesitation.

For the first six months in Tokyo, she lived under her new boss’s roof and spent all day, every day, in intense lessons. She threw herself into her vocal training and jazz dance lessons, even if the exact nature and direction of her debut remained unclear.

She still hadn’t figured out what she wanted to be, but from the content of her studies, she began to suspect her new boss intended for her to become a singer. When he started bringing songwriter-types to observe her vocal lessons, Yukiko was sure of it.

Even now, she could still remember being mystified by her boss’s choice, as she knew she lacked vocal talent. Nevertheless, she ended up debuting as a pop idol of the traditional, innocent style that didn’t demand that much singing ability. That too felt like a mismatch to her, as she didn’t consider herself innocent, either.

Meanwhile, the media was saying that pop idols were in their winter. Privately, Yukiko questioned the sense in having her debut as an idol just as they were going out of fashion—but she kept such complaints to herself. She wanted to be in entertainment, and she was. If her manager decided she would be an innocent idol, then that was the path she would follow.

And yet her doubts continued. She was too old to be an idol. Her personality was demure and old-fashioned, whereas the younger girls were more lively and dynamic. She had been certain no one would buy her music.

But, contrary to her expectations, she found an audience.

Her debut single, “Flower in the Snow,” was a smash hit, selling tens of thousands of CDs. After an appearance in a soft drink commercial, her name was on everybody’s lips. (Her only line, spoken softly: “Refreshingly pure.”) Within six months of her debut, she had established herself as one of the top idol singers.

Her outmoded style meant she had no direct rivals worth mentioning, and perhaps being out of step with the trends served to make people take notice of her rather than ignore another face in the crowd. Whatever the causes may have been, in a remarkably short time, Tsukioka Yukiko succeeded in leaving her own mark on the music industry.

Debuting as an idol was itself an accomplishment, and in the entertainment world, where many careers were over before they even began—buds sprouting, never to blossom—Yukiko had secured real popularity and fame. It should have been enough to make her more than happy.

If I’d wanted to become an idol from the start, she thought, I’d be up in the clouds right now. In her mind, she stuck a scolding tongue out at herself. What will ever be enough for me?

 

Having finished an appearance on an FM radio program in Tokyo’s Akasaka district, Yukiko took a late lunch at a nearby restaurant. Sitting across from her, her manager Domoto Yoriko was intensely focused on a plate of spaghetti carbonara. Something about the seriousness of the woman’s expression as she conveyed the pasta to her mouth made Yukiko giggle quietly.

Yoriko was thirty-three and single. She wore her hair pulled back and had silver-rimmed glasses.

She looks just like Fräulein Rottenmeier, she thought, picturing the strict governess from Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Now Yukiko chortled outright.

Yoriko looked over the rims of her glasses with an expression that only made her look even more like Fräulein. “You should hurry up and eat,” she said, twirling her fork to pick up the next bite. “We only have time for a short lunch before you’re due at Marusho.”

Yukiko’s expression turned sullen, and she pouted. “Do I absolutely have to go to that department store? The exhibition starts tomorrow. Why can’t I just show up then?”

“What are you talking about? You know how extremely important this event is for you. The whole exhibit is about you—you’re the star.” Yoriko sighed, and began reminding Yukiko, in exhaustive detail, of all the hard work she had put into organizing the event.

The last idol the department store had held an exhibition for had been Matsuda Seiko, and that was fifteen years ago. Yukiko was grateful for everything her manager had done to make the exhibition happen, but she’d heard this speech a hundred times.

When Yoriko was finished, the manager added, “That’s why I want you to look over the displays for yourself. You need to see, with your own eyes, how it all came together.”

Yukiko replied, “All right, all right,” then puffed out her cheeks.

 

The Marusho department store had a long and successful history, in part due to its location adjacent to a major Tokyo transit hub. The passing years had inevitably begun to show their wear, but the building had a distinctive character that retained its appeal.

Yukiko and Yoriko went in through the employees’ back entrance. The receptionist called for the exhibit’s coordinator, who came to usher them up to the event space on the twenty-fifth floor where the singer’s exhibit was installed.

The coordinator was a man in his fifties, and as the group waited inside the elevator, he passed a hand through his thinning hair. Proudly, he said, “I shouldn’t be one to brag, but this turned out really well—especially the life-size figure of Tsukioka-san. It’s not just your ordinary wax statue.”

Yukiko smiled pleasantly at the man, but on the inside, the whole thing repulsed her. The exhibit was meant to put the singer on full and open display, and the items included her actual toothbrush and coffee cups. She found it absolutely creepy. Any fans that would delight in seeing her personal belongings like this were not fans she wanted to have.

Worst of all was that life-size figure of herself. Apparently, some superfan had spent three months sculpting the piece, but she had no desire to see a replica of herself—and she got chills when she thought of her copy being put on display in full view of who knew how many people.

The elevator doors opened, and the exhibit’s coordinator gave a deep bow before spreading his arms wide as if to say, Well? What do you think?

The entrance to the exhibit space was directly outside the elevator. It was a large space, big enough to fit a comfortable home inside. The walls and floors were clean and polished, and the exhibit was brightly lit, with spotlights on the various showcases and displays adding tasteful and eye-catching splashes of color.

One display featured photographs taken of her lessons before her debut, alongside the leotard she wore for her jazz dance practice and a smartly arranged assortment of other objects from that time.

Yukiko was impressed. This wasn’t the haphazard and chaotic mishmash she’d pictured. A four-sided standing display case occupied the center of the first viewing room. Inside the showcase were her various daily items and pajamas and the like. Even that collection was far from tasteless.

“It’s great,” Yukiko uttered without thinking.

“It is, isn’t it,” Yoriko said with a satisfied nod.

It would do. The exhibition was elegant but also splashy.

Looking across the room, the coordinator said, “Tsukioka-san’s fans are sure to be pleased.” He clapped his hands and turned to look at Yukiko. “We’ve partitioned off the space into three rooms in the shape of a ‘U’ to direct the viewers through the exhibit. Your life-size figure is at the very end of the third room.”

Yukiko nodded and briskly walked into the exhibition space. She followed the U-shaped path, turning right, and then right again, and there at the end stood another her. The second Yukiko, frozen in her signature dance pose and wearing her stage costume for “Flower in the Snow.” It was completely identical to the woman herself.

For a moment, Yukiko thought she was looking into a mirror. When she moved her arm, she almost thought she saw the figure raising its arm to match. A chill ran up her spine as her forgotten apprehension came back to life.

As the coordinator had said, the figure was incredibly realistic, with none of a waxwork figure’s typical artifice. The effect was uncanny. When she thought of the countless people who would come to gaze at her replica, she felt uncomfortable, like she was being spied upon in a private moment.

The figure seemed to radiate an aura of its creator’s repulsive devotion.

Yukiko asked herself, Can I do anything about this? As she looked at her own smiling face, vibrant and lifelike, she bit her lip in irritation. The rest of the exhibit is fine, but maybe I can ask them just to leave this figure out of it.

She decided that she would do exactly that. Even with that figure back in storage, the exhibit would still be able to stand on its own.

Having seen enough, she started heading back to the entrance, where her manager and the coordinator were waiting. Then, just as she was about to turn the first corner, she felt a presence behind her.

Something had stirred the air at her back.

What could that be? she wondered. She thought that she might have imagined it. Or at least, that’s what she tried to make herself believe.

She sensed one thing above all: Whatever she did, she mustn’t turn to look behind her. Her sixth sense warned her she would see something that could not be unseen.

Wherever that feeling came from, she didn’t want to look. She couldn’t look—but the more she told herself not to, the more her body rebelled against her instincts. Gradually, she began to turn to glance over her shoulder.

Before long, her upper body had turned so far around that her spine began to creak. Her eyes peered directly behind her.

Her life-size figure was still standing there—but now, something about it was even more unsettling.

Wait. What’s that?

Yukiko’s wide eyes opened wider. Something was entwined around her duplicate. She noticed it immediately, but in her already unsettled state, it took her mind a moment to accept what she was seeing.

The thing stroked her replica’s face with a furry hand. Its entire body was covered with thick, fuzzy hair.

Yukiko stared in transfixed terror.

It was oddly tall. The thing teased its fingers across the figure’s face, hugged its arms around the figure’s chest, and lovingly caressed the figure’s body.

Yukiko felt the sting of stomach juices rising up her gullet. A raw, unpleasant odor prickled at her nose; her throat made a reflexive, guttural coughing sound.

The thing’s hands froze. Slowly, it turned its giant head to face Yukiko. Their eyes met.

The thing had a big, round face and two long, standing ears.

Softly, Yukiko blurted out, “It’s…a rabbit?”

It was indeed a rabbit—or rather, someone in a rabbit mascot suit, a mainstay of the typical department store’s rooftop play area.

Her initial reaction was almost disappointment. She felt like a fool to have felt such terror because of a rabbit. This was an event space in a department store, after all. An animal mascot was nothing out of the ordinary.

Yukiko let out a deep sigh of relief and began to observe the rabbit in more detail. The first thing she noticed was how dirty the costume was. The face, which must have once been white, was now brown with dust and grime. Its arms and legs, where they stuck out from the denim jumpsuit, were similarly filthy and knotted in patches.

I can’t believe how dirty that costume is, Yukiko thought. Not long after, she wondered, And why was it rubbing my replica all over?

The terror began to build inside her once again and made its presence known. The right side of the rabbit’s face seemed melted, a burn-victim mess. The eye on that side was not its cheerfully oversized self. Instead it drooped, like a piece of round candy held over an open flame.

That eye stared back at Yukiko, boring into her. The rabbit’s mouth curved up in the shape of a crescent moon. Out of its center jutted two buck teeth.

“Yu…ki…ko,” the rabbit said. It was a man’s voice, hoarse yet strangely shrill. The combined effect was something Yukiko wished immediately to never hear again.

“Yu…ki…ko,” the rabbit repeated. It pushed itself away from the figure in a slow, exaggerated motion. He took one step toward her, then another.

As if violently repelled, Yukiko turned on her heels and ran.

When Yoriko saw her come running from the exhibit space, her face pale, the manager spread her arms wide. Yukiko collapsed into her waiting arms and clung to her.

“Yukiko-chan, what’s wrong?” Yoriko said. “What happened?” She took Yukiko by the shoulders and gave her a firm shake.

Yukiko’s lips trembled. Her voice wavered as she muttered, “A rabbit… a rabbit…”

“What?” Yoriko shouted impatiently. “What are you talking about? What rabbit?”

Yukiko’s shoulders shuddered as she pointed a weak finger toward the exhibit.

“Yukiko-chan, please get a hold of yourself! Is someone behind you? Did you see something?”

Yukiko pushed herself free from her manager and slumped down to the floor with her hands and head on her knees.

“There was,” she said, pausing to gather herself, “there was a rabbit. Someone in a mascot costume. It was putting its hands all over that figure of me—that life-size figure of me.”

The exhibit’s coordinator was beside them, listening in. “A rabbit costume?” he said with doubt in his voice. “As far as I know, we don’t have any animal costumes here.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t something else you saw?” Yoriko asked. “Like he said, they don’t have any animal costumes here.”

Yukiko shook her head from side to side. “I’m not making this up,” she said, her sentences running together. “It was really there. It was really a rabbit—and it wasn’t a normal animal costume. It was dirty, and its face was burned. It was like some kind of monster. And it was coming toward me.”

Yoriko looked at her face for a moment, then turned to the coordinator and said, “Well, let’s go take a look. Whatever it was, she must have seen something.” The manager put her hands on Yukiko’s arms. “You stay here, Yukiko-chan. We’ll go have a look. Just wait right here.”

Yukiko bobbed her head once. As Yoriko and the middle-aged man disappeared down the exhibit’s corridor, she thought, What if that sinister rabbit is trying to bring some terrible disaster upon us?

It was too late to stop her manager and the coordinator; they had already entered the exhibit. But now Yukiko worried that she had sent them into peril. With bated breath, she watched and waited for the outcome.

She didn’t know how long she’d been waiting when she looked up and saw Yoriko and the coordinator in front of her. Both appeared unharmed.

Yoriko gave Yukiko a smile and said, “You can relax. No one was there. No rabbit—not even a mouse.” She turned to the coordinator and said, “Whoever it was must have run away.”

“It’s odd, though,” the man said. “This is the only way in or out of the exhibit. The emergency exit at the rear is locked, and there’s nothing else but concrete walls.”

Yoriko and the man exchanged a look that seemed to say, Maybe Yukiko was just seeing things.

Her manager looked to her with worry. “Yukiko-chan, you’ve been working so hard lately.”

Yukiko couldn’t figure out where the rabbit had gone. Maybe Yoriko was right, and the rabbit was just some phantom conjured up in her head.

Then the idol rejected her doubt. No. That was no trick of my mind.

That monster had called her name. It had come after her.

That disturbing, half-melted face had been seared into her retinas—but the true source of her certainty was the distinctively repulsive and prickling smell that even now clung to the inside of her nose.

 

Sitting at a table in a small café near the Akasaka-mitsuke subway station, Domoto Yoriko slowly drank her cooled-off lemon tea. Across from her was a well-built gentleman in his fifties—Kanda of Kanda Projects, the talent agency to which Tsukioka Yukiko belonged.

Yoriko downed the rest of her tea and gathered her resolve before saying, “I was hoping you would consider letting Yukiko-chan take some time to rest and recuperate. I realize that this is a crucial time for her career, and she won’t be able to forgo all her responsibilities, but I’d like to at least ease her schedule, even if only by a little.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, Yoriko-kun. But if we ease up on Yukiko’s pace right now, it’ll be worse for her in the long run.” His voice was calm and low as he tapped his finger on the table. “I agree that Yukiko is fatigued. I also understand that you care about her like a mother cares for her child—if not more so. But right now, Yukiko needs to go full throttle, even if means having to push herself. I’ve been in this business for a long time now, so I know—with girls like Yukiko, everything hinges on this first sprint. So far, she’s been lucky—her debut single had strong sales, and a commercial has already come in. She draws a lot of attention due to her unique position as the lone innocent-style idol persevering against the current trend. If we don’t build her success into something lasting, the next thing we know, she’ll be part of the past.”

Yoriko nodded with each of his points, but that didn’t mean she agreed with everything he said.

Kanda discovered Yukiko when she worked for a modeling agency in another part of the country, and he had gone to great lengths to get the head of that agency to give her up. It was no wonder he invested such care and enthusiasm in her. Yoriko felt the very same way.

But what Yukiko needed most now was not some future stardom. She needed rest.

Not giving up, Yoriko told Kanda everything that had happened in the department store.

Then she said, “Yukiko-chan is so exhausted, she’s started to hallucinate. Please consider her situation. She’s still only nineteen—just a child. She doesn’t know any better. We’re the adults—if we tell her to keep trying because it’s for her own good, she’ll listen. We’ll end up forcing her to keep on pushing herself past the limits of what she can take—when what we should be forcing her to do is rest! Surely you must know I’m right.”

She slapped her palms down on the table. The sugar pot and the cups and saucers hopped, making a tremendous clatter. The other customers turned startled stares their way.

Tears began to well in Yoriko’s eyes. Kanda put his hand to his chin, then grunted and slumped in his chair.

“All right, Yoriko-kun,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with Yukiko. I want to hear what she has to say.”

Yoriko nodded as if to say, That’ll have to do.

 

Yukiko awoke with a start.

She looked to the clock beside her bed—three in the morning. Her alarm wouldn’t go off for another two hours. Night sweat clung to her forehead. She must have been dreaming, though she couldn’t remember it. A half-read paperback sat next to her pillow. Yukiko sat up in bed. She must have fallen asleep while reading—she thought that might have been around one in the morning, which meant she’d only slept for two hours.

I need to get back to sleep, she told herself. Tomorrow is another hard day.

She laid herself back down and closed her eyes. But now that she had woken up, sleep didn’t return easily. After a little while, Yukiko gave up on trying to fall asleep and instead simply let herself rest. Forcing herself back to sleep would have expended more energy. Far easier for her to just rest until it was time to get up.

Yukiko stared off through the darkness at the wall across from her bed, thinking about the recent events of her life.

After her commercial aired, her former classmates—who hadn’t reached out to her following her debut—got together to send her a bouquet of flowers with a card signed by all of them.

She’d received interview requests from nearly every men’s weekly magazine there was.

At the planning meeting for her follow-up commercial, she met an eighty-year-old sponsor who kindly gave her a great deal of advice.

And…

And there was that other thing.

That sinister rabbit suit popped into her mind unbidden. She had tried and tried to make herself forget. Again and again, she had told herself that the rabbit was, as Yoriko said, a figment of her imagination.

After a few days, Yukiko had finally started to believe the hideous rabbit couldn’t have been real. But now, in this moment, alone in her bed, the figure appeared in her mind’s eye, the melted side of the rabbit’s face made even more disturbing by the animal suit’s former cuteness. Its short and round body was likely adorable once, but its sinister, miasma-like aura made it feel like an evil spirit.

Then there was its smell, powerful and raw, which still lingered in Yukiko’s nostrils.

The singer shook her head forcefully, hoping to dispel the ever-growing vision of the rabbit from her thoughts. Whoever or whatever it was, the rabbit had vanished from the exhibit without a trace, like a puff of smoke dissipating into air.

Did that mean that, like smoke, the rabbit could go anywhere, through any crack?

The chilling thought prompted her to her feet.

With its two bedrooms, her apartment was luxuriously spacious for a woman living alone. With quick footsteps, she moved to her living room and turned on the lights, and then the TV. She pressed the play button on her VCR, which already had a tape inside it. Edward Scissorhands, a favorite of Yukiko’s, began to play.

Portrayed by Johnny Depp in a superb performance, Edward possessed scissor blades for hands, which kept him isolated from normal humans. Yukiko was a huge fan of Depp, in no small part thanks to this film.

Her anxiety was soon soothed by the bright lights of her living room and the comfort of watching a favorite movie. Quickly, she settled into her sofa and became absorbed.

Johnny Depp tried to embrace Winona Ryder, but he couldn’t complete the gesture, for fear of hurting her.

It was a rather sad scene. No matter how many times Yukiko watched it, she cried without fail. One of the nice things about living alone was being able to bawl as freely as she pleased without having to worry about anyone seeing her.

Sniffing through her runny nose, she lay down across the sofa and eventually drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

 

Yukiko didn’t know how long she had been asleep when a sound awoke her. Through sleepy, half-lidded eyes, she saw that her living room lights had been turned off. The curtains over the sliding glass door to her balcony glowed faintly from the streetlights outside.

Just as she decided to go back to sleep, a silhouette passed across the curtains. Or at least, that’s what she thought she saw. It looked like it had been a plump person with a big round stomach and a distinctively round face. From the top of its head stood two long, thin horn-like protrusions that flapped about.

It was the rabbit. It was the rabbit’s shadow.

As sleep relentlessly pulled her back into its embrace, she experienced terror, pure and primal, deep down inside.

 

Yukiko and Yoriko sat side by side on a couch in the talent agency’s reception area. Despite being managed by Kanda Projects, Yukiko had only visited this office a few times before, as her vocal and dance lessons were always held in a separate location.

She felt oddly uncomfortable here.

After a short time, Kanda Hiroshi—the agency’s president—appeared around the wall of filing cabinets and metal bookcases that partitioned the reception area from the main workspace. Kanda must have been older than fifty, but his face remained smooth and shiny to an off-putting extent. He sat on a second couch facing the two women.

Yoriko greeted him without small talk. “Have you thought about what we discussed earlier?”

Kanda blinked his eyes a few times in a put-upon manner. “You mean Yukiko taking a break?” He turned to the singer. “Well, Yukiko, what do you think? Yoriko-kun has asked me to give you time to rest, but I’d like to hear your opinion.”

Glancing at Yoriko, Yukiko answered, “I don’t want a break. I know she’ll be worried about me, and I’m sorry to do that to her, but I just want to keep doing my job.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Yoriko pleaded. She took the singer’s hand in hers. “This is a matter of your personal well-being. This goes beyond being an idol. You need to think of yourself. If you wait until you’ve already ruined your health, it will be too late.”

Yukiko squeezed her manager’s hand. “I understand,” she said. “Believe me, I do. But focusing on my work is the best way to help me get through this. Taking a break sounds like the reasonable thing to do, but it actually might make things worse.”

Kanda stood and said, “Then it’s settled. Yukiko’s schedule will go on without any changes. But for our part, we’ll keep an extra close eye on her. Right, Yoriko-kun?”

Defeated, the manager rose to her feet and gave a reluctant nod. “Okay. That’s what we’ll do.” Then to Yukiko, she said, “Your taping for Music Standby is today. I’ll go to the station ahead of you, but please, if at any point it gets to be too much, don’t hesitate to tell us.”

Yukiko grinned and said, “I’ll see you there.”

After Yoriko left, Kanda invited Yukiko to sit next to him, and she soon obliged. With an untroubled grin, he said, “Yoriko-kun always worries about everything. That can be a good thing, but sometimes she takes it a little too far.” He winked at her as if to say, What can you do?

Then he added, “By the way, I have a present for you. Something came here this morning with your name on it.”

Kanda reached under the table between the two facing sofas and retrieved a package. Wrapped in white paper, the box was about thirty centimeters long on either side.

“Open it and take a look,” Kanda said. “I’ve already had a peek inside, and I have to say, it’s pretty cute.”

She opened the box and a rabbit tumbled out.

Yukiko gasped.

The rabbit was a wind-up figure about twenty centimeters tall. As it marched along the table, its long ears rose and fell, and it beat little drumsticks against a drum carried at its stomach.

“Well?” Kanda said, beaming. “Was I right? Cute, isn’t it?”

 

I’ve had enough of that man, Yukiko thought, silently cursing her callous boss as she walked to the television station. Of all things, it had to be a toy rabbit. How little do I matter to him?

For days she had been tormented by visions of the rabbit. It was starting to affect her daily life. And yet Kanda had excitedly brought out that rabbit toy. He should have known that was nothing she wanted to see.

She shook her head left and right as her mind went back to that wind-up rabbit drumming away. Just remembering it gave her the chills all over again.

Subconsciously, Yukiko hurried her pace. All she could do was head to the studio where Yoriko was waiting. Her manager would understand how she was feeling.

The television station was near Akasaka’s bustling commercial district—close enough to her talent agency’s office to make walking her only option. She could have taken a taxi, but she didn’t want to inconvenience a driver by only riding for the minimum fare. Besides, she’d been feeling like she hadn’t been getting enough exercise and figured a little walk would do her good.

But even if she might have annoyed the driver, she should have taken a taxi. That, or she should have insisted that someone from the office walk with her to the TV station—for just minutes after so casually deciding to leave the office alone and on foot, she would again be confronted by blood-chilling terror.

 

Something’s wrong, Yukiko thought.

She had just turned onto a side street near the train station. Small shops lined the narrow and sleepy street. Some were little two-story mom-and-pop operations with their residences above the street level shop and only old, weather-beaten signs to announce their presence. Others were greengrocers with fruits and vegetables left out in bins with nary a customer or proprietor in sight.

The street was so quiet that it made the bustle and noise of the nearby commercial district seem like it hadn’t existed at all. Yukiko always took this street when walking to the TV station, and she recognized immediately that something was off—though she didn’t know what.

Something was out of place on this familiar street. But what?

Yukiko stopped to observe.

There was the candy store that always seemed to be under the watch of the same old woman every time Yukiko passed by. Next to the store, there was a run-down cigarette stand, a greengrocer, and a shoe store.

Yukiko liked that this street was never busy. Just a few dozen meters away were teeming crowds, yet this street alone seemed left behind from another time. It offered her nostalgia and a kind of comforting loneliness. Walking past those old shops often reminded her of her hometown.

But on this day, it felt cold and unwelcoming.

Unable to locate the cause of this change, Yukiko thought, Oh well, and started walking again. Just a few steps later, she stopped anew. A group of excited children had gathered at the other end of the street. There were maybe ten of them, happily bouncing and laughing.

That’s what’s different, Yukiko realized.

Children didn’t usually come to play here. When she’d turned onto this street, she must have caught a glimpse of them, and the impression they’d left on her subconscious mind had transformed the street into something unfamiliar.

That must be what’s different. I’m sure of it.

Having solved the mystery, Yukiko’s spirits lifted. With a sigh of relief, she walked toward the children.

They were each holding a red balloon. Someone in the middle of their circle was handing them out—probably to advertise for some nearby department store.

The sight reminded Yukiko of her own childhood. Handing out balloons on a street corner was a common way for stores to drum up business, and as a child she had received many balloons that way, much to her delight. One time, it had made her so happy that she started skipping along, and the balloon slipped from her hand and floated away into the sky.

Yukiko approached the circle of children in hopes of getting a balloon for herself, for old times’ sake.

That was when the hidden figure stood up in the center of the circle.

It was a person in an animal mascot suit, nearly twice as tall as the children, and until that moment, it must have been kneeling down to hand out the balloons.

Yukiko froze.

Immediately, she closed her eyes. Something inside her told her she mustn’t look.

But her eyes disobeyed. They slowly opened.

Why can’t I keep my eyes closed? she asked herself, with increasing panic. I can’t look. I know it!

Just as her eyelids were halfway open, her mind recognized what it was she was seeing.

The animal costume had a rotund body, oversized head, and two long, slender ears—it was a rabbit.

It was the rabbit. The source of her terror. The thing that had taught her fear like she had never known. It stood there, right before her eyes.

For a moment, she wondered if Kanda’s wind-up figure had grown to ten times its size to appear here before her. The thought made her more perplexed than afraid.

But soon, her eyes opened all the way, and they stared unblinking at the rabbit. His head creaked around, fixing big round eyes on Yukiko. His right eye was distorted and drooping.

There was no room for doubt or denial. This was the same rabbit that had glided his disgusting hands up and down her life-size twin.

He seemed to recognize her. When their eyes met, the suit’s ears perked up.

Keeping her eyes locked on the rabbit, Yukiko slowly backed away, careful not to make any sudden movements that might provoke him. After an excruciatingly long and frightful while, she managed to circle around the rabbit’s back. Quickly, she turned and slipped out the end of the street.

She exited onto a main thoroughfare complete with its typical traffic of cars and bustling crowds. The TV station was just across the road and down a little to the right.

Yukiko patted down her chest and exhaled in relief. Yoriko was inside the station, along with the staff and crew members, many of whom were familiar to her. Once she got inside, she would be safe.

Yukiko ran up the stairs of the elevated pedestrian crossing. If she had looked over her shoulder, she would have seen something that would have made her heart leap out of her chest.

Just a few steps behind her, something followed. Whenever she went faster, it too sped up. Whenever she slowed down, it slowed down, too. Her pursuer carefully kept the distance between them the same. It seemed to be enjoying the chase.

It was, of course, the rabbit. He chased behind her, with nearly silent footsteps.

 

Out of breath and shoulders heaving, Yukiko reached the TV station entrance. Her fear and distress melted away, and her legs went weak. Putting force into each step, she walked up to the front doors.

She saw her reflection in the glass. Her hair was a mess, her skin blemished, and her eyes sunken. She looked like an entirely different person.

I look so old like this, she thought, with a self-deprecating smirk.

Then the little smirk froze.

Beside the exhausted woman’s reflection was that of another—the rabbit.

Yukiko swallowed a startled cry.

The rabbit stood right next to her, haunting her like a ghost. His smile seemed to be directed at her frightened expression.

He followed me. He followed me this whole time, and I never even noticed.

The terror which she’d kept locked deep inside had now broken free, coursing through her body and filling her awareness. Face contorting, her swallowed-down cry came rushing back up into a wordless shriek.

She ran full speed into the TV station. So wild was her expression and so mad her charge that the front security guard couldn’t even stop her. Still screaming, she fled down the lobby stairs and into the basement floor green room, where she collapsed into the arms of a puzzled-looking Yoriko.

The manager staggered back a half step but managed to catch the distraught singer.

“What’s wrong?” Yoriko shouted. “Yukiko-chan! Get ahold of yourself. Get ahold of yourself!”

She slapped Yukiko on the check.

Yukiko looked at her in wide-eyed shock, and then her eyes began to fill with tears.

“Yukiko-chan,” Yoriko said, “look at me. Can you calm down and tell me what happened? Please, Yukiko-chan.”

Without looking away, the singer nodded her head twice. Her lips trembled, and her right cheek twitched. After an empty swallow, she forced out a tight-throated answer.

“The… the rabbit. It was the rabbit. He followed me here. He came into this building. He’s still in here, somewhere. I know it.”

Unable to manage any more, she covered her face with her hands.

The moment Yoriko heard the words “the rabbit,” she thought, Not this again. Another hallucination. This exhaustion is too much for her. She felt a heartless kind of pity for the singer under her care.

As Yoriko saw it, Yukiko was still just a kid—a kid who had been plunged into the tumultuous life that came with being in the entertainment industry. Physically and mentally, the young singer had been pushed to the breaking point.

In an attempt to put Yukiko at ease, the manager walked toward the door with exaggerated movements. She threw it open.

“Here, look,” Yoriko said. “There’s nothing out there. There’s no one in the hallway.”

Fearfully, Yukiko looked at the door. Like Yoriko said, nothing was out of the ordinary.

But—but.

The rabbit who relentlessly pursued her was no hallucination. Yukiko was sure of that. His grimy, furry hand had been about to grab her shoulder. She hadn’t dreamt or imagined that up. It had really happened.

Steeling her resolve, she walked toward Yoriko, then she pushed past the woman and into the hall.

No one was there.

“See?” Yoriko said with a bright smile. “Nothing.”

Not quite able to accept it, Yukiko shook her head and said, “But…”

Yoriko spoke soothingly. “In any case, that scary rabbit is gone. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

She’s right, Yukiko thought as her nerves slowly settled. The rabbit is gone. I don’t need to be afraid.

She felt her heart begin to slow, and her shoulders grew heavy. She sat down in a chair at a makeup table and let out a deep sigh, then absently gazed off at a ceiling-mounted TV playing a relay feed from a studio camera upstairs.

Yoriko put her arm around her and spoke softly into her ear. “Yukiko-chan,” she said, “once you get through this appearance today, take a little break, okay? You must be exhausted. And you know what—I am, too. A little rest would do us both some good.”

Yukiko took her manager’s hand and squeezed it tight. “Thank you. Your concern means a lot to me, and it’s great that you’re looking out for me. But I’m fine. I’m not exhausted. It’s that rabbit that’s upsetting me, nothing else.”

Yoriko wanted to say, Those hallucinations are proof of your exhaustion. But she sensed that saying that would only serve to put more strain on the girl’s already fragile mind, so she kept it to herself.

Yoriko squeezed Yukiko’s hand back and gave the singer a there, there pat on the shoulder.

Yukiko leaned back in the chair and looked at the vanity mirror. Her sunken-eyed face was reflected back at her.

I do look tired, she admitted to herself. Yoriko is right.

Her lips formed a wry smile as she thought of how her manager knew her own body better than herself.

She really is incredible, Yukiko thought. She turned her head to look to Yoriko.

The two women’s eyes met. They nodded to each other without breaking their gaze.

Yoriko-san worries about me like I were her own sister, and I trust in her, from the bottom of my heart.

Yukiko suddenly wanted to hug the woman. In this city of strangers, Yoriko was the only person who felt like family. Fat tears began to drip from the singer’s eyes and blurred her vision so that she could no longer see the image on the ceiling-mounted monitor.

“I can’t believe I’m crying like this,” Yukiko said, wiping away her tears. “What’s gotten into me?”

On the monitor, various crew members were constructing the set for the eight o’clock live broadcast music show. Yukiko had been on the show a few times now, and she always liked to get an advance look at the set through the makeup room’s monitor. That way, she could decide which outfit would best match the set’s design and color.

Yoriko looked up at the TV screen and said, “No matter how many times I see the sets they build for Music Standby, it’s always dazzling.”

Yukiko nodded. “If there were more shows like this one,” she said, “it would go a long way toward lifting up the idol business.”

The two women watched the bustling crew with some measure of hope in their eyes.

“Huh?” Yoriko said as the monitor went black.

Someone seemed to have moved directly in front of the camera—probably some oafish crewmember casually standing there, not realizing that anyone might be watching the feed. But soon it became evident that that someone wasn’t just standing there by chance. They were doing it on purpose.

And then the person moved, leaning face-first into the lens.

Yukiko felt the hairs over her body stand on end. Something inside her told her to look away from the screen before she saw anything else. It’s the rabbit, she told herself. It has to be the rabbit. I mustn’t look, no matter what.

But, defying her will, her eyes remained fixed on the screen.

The face came right up to the lens like someone playing peekaboo. And, as she had dreaded, the face was not that of a human.

It was round and furry.

It had two big, wide-open eyes.

It had an upturned mouth.

It had two buck teeth.

It had two long, skinny ears.

It was the rabbit. It was that damned rabbit mascot.

Yoriko let out a little gasp.

Yukiko’s eyes widened as big as they could.

The rabbit’s mouth grinned even wider. It let out an eerie laugh that could have easily come from a witch or some ghostly monster.

One of its eyes had sagged from its socket. Small patches of fur were burned away here and there along its arms.

Yoriko thought, This is it. This is the monster Yukiko was talking about—real, not imagined. This is Yukiko’s tormentor.

Yoriko shouted, “Someone, anyone, come here!”

As Yukiko heard her manager shout for help, she felt her consciousness slipping away.

 

With a bitter shake of his head, Kanda grumbled, “I spoke with an acquaintance of mine on the police force. Like I feared, the detective said it just wasn’t enough for them to do anything.”

Her temper flaring, Yoriko said, “But look at how she’s been hurt. Is causing mental anguish not a crime?”

The agency’s president shook his head again. “It’s not. I think you’re right—mental and emotional pain is every bit as serious as physical pain. But unless that rabbit bastard inflicts tangible, physical harm, the police won’t act. That’s just the way it is. Frightening someone isn’t even a misdemeanor.”

“Then what can we do? If we wait until something has already happened, it’ll be too late. Shouldn’t the police be interested in preventing crime from happening in the first place? If they won’t do anything, we have to think of what we can do—otherwise Yukiko won’t be able to feel safe anywhere.”

The image of that rabbit’s menacing face on the studio feed would likely remain with her forever. Only when she saw it did she understand Yukiko’s terror. It was no wonder the singer had been so out of sorts lately.

That rabbit had waltzed right into the TV station and disappeared without a trace. The same had happened at the department store. Only minutes after Yukiko saw the rabbit, he had vanished.

After arriving in response to Yoriko’s shouts for help, a group of the TV station’s employees searched all around the studio. But they found neither hide nor grimy hair of the rabbit. This wasn’t just someone in an animal suit. He was capable of misdirection and deception to an almost supernatural degree.

Yoriko said, “What we need to do—the only thing we can and must do—is form our own protective squad.”

“Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?” Kanda asked. He hadn’t seen the rabbit with his own eyes. He didn’t even begin to try to understand Yoriko and Yukiko’s fear. As far as he was concerned, they were being a bit hysterical.

“No, it’s not going too far,” Yoriko said, “and I’m doing it with or without your approval. In fact, I’ve already decided who will form the squad.”

“You have?” Kanda asked.

“That’s right. And I expected you might not be on board with my plan, so I took the liberty of getting started on my own.” She turned to the door and said, “Yuji-kun, you can come in now.”

The door slowly opened, and a boy hesitantly walked in. With his long hair and sharp-eyed expression, he tried to make himself look like an adult, but more likely than not he was just barely high school age.

He bowed his head to Kanda.

“You probably know him already,” Yoriko said to Kanda. “This is Oe Yuji, the president of Yukiko’s fan club—the Snow Children.”

Kanda hadn’t recognized the boy at first, but the introduction jolted his memory. They had met once before, right after Yukiko’s debut when the nascent fan club’s president came to this office.

Yoriko continued, saying, “I’m sure you’re aware of how much he’s done for us. He arranges for the club members to come to Yukiko’s events as a group, helps promote her campaigns, and much more.”

“Certainly, I am,” Kanda said. “And I’m very grateful for it.”

He glanced at Yuji, who bashfully lowered his head to look away.

Yoriko said, “I know it’s asking a lot of the club, but I know they want to help, and I think we should let them. Isn’t that right, Yuji-kun?”

The boy stood at attention, puffed out his chest, and said, “Leave it to us, Yoriko-san. We’re ready to give our lives to protect Yukiko-san.”

Kanda was taken a little aback by the kid’s militaristic eagerness to serve, but he also recognized that it was the perfect attitude for an ad hoc bodyguard.

“All right,” Kanda said, “we’ll do it Yoriko-kun’s way.” He looked to the kid and said, “We’ll be counting on you.”

Yuji bobbed his head deeply. “Thank you, sir. I will see to Yukiko-san’s absolute safety. I’ll convey the orders to my subordinates immediately.”

 

Shimizu Kunio walked down the poorly-lit street, savoring a certain sense of fulfillment.

A chic apartment building was visible in the gaps between the branches of the carefully maintained row of bushes alongside the street. When Kunio thought of how Tsukioka Yukiko was somewhere in that building, he felt pleasure spring up from deep in his chest. The sensation was powerful enough to make him tremble.

I’m so glad I joined the fan club, Kunio thought fervently. His passionate support for Yukiko had been rewarded.

If he hadn’t joined her fan club and been active in the inner circle, he would have never ended up here, standing outside her apartment, let alone with the honor of being her protector.

Kunio glanced at his wristwatch. It was two in the morning. Yukiko was probably asleep by now.

Kunio imagined the idol wearing pajamas with some cute pattern on them, breathing softly and adorably in her sleep. He remained vigilant to ensure that she could remain slumbering peacefully until daylight came.

Kunio had joined Yukiko’s fan club almost half a year ago, and he always cheered loudly for her at her events. His passionate support caught the attention of the fan club’s management (specifically, the head of the inner circle, Oe Yuji), who invited him into the elite group of Yukiko’s most ardent fans.

Being in the inner circle was not easy, and the privilege came with rigid rules and severe expectations. They had to clear their lives to match Tsukioka Yukiko’s schedule. The moment he was in, he was no longer his own person.

Yuji had told him, “Tsukioka Yukiko-san is a treasure—one that we must protect even if it means risking our own lives. We must do everything within our power to support Yukiko-san so that she can become an even bigger star. You must understand that when you join us, you lose your personal freedom.”

Kunio nodded deeply in response. He felt his back muscles tense up.

After graduating high school, he found a job at a nearby factory, but it didn’t fulfill him. He felt like he was just going through the motions of life.

The moment he saw Yukiko on TV, everything changed. For the first time, he felt complete. The transformation in his life was like a monochrome screen coming into full color.

His tedious job at the factory became easy when he thought of it as something he did for her. He was willing to give her everything—that was how valuable she was to him. Nearly every moment not spent at work was spent on supporting Yukiko and cheering her on. Without fail, he bought every new CD and photo book on the release date—not a day later. Whenever she had a local event or performance, nothing could prevent him from going to see her.

Why was he drawn to her with such intensity? Probably because she came off as sharing some of his negative qualities—in particular, timidity and introversion. Whatever the underlying reasons, his passion as a fan brought him into her fan club, got him invited into the inner circle, and now found him standing on guard outside her apartment.

Even within that inner circle, the hierarchy was firmly established, and good conduct was a must. As with such groups, simply being a member of the elite did not mean a fan would get any closer to the subject of their cause. In fact, they had to remain at a greater distance than the typical fan.

The very top management got to be on familiar conversational terms with her, but to new recruits like Kunio, even speaking to her would be like a dream within a dream.

But now here he was, keeping watch over her through the night. How could a fan be more blessed than that?

Kunio didn’t know why he was keeping watch. He hadn’t even the slightest idea. Yuji’s orders were to guard the area around Yukiko’s apartment building until morning. That was it. It wouldn’t have been in Kunio’s place to ask any questions, nor did he even entertain the thought.

He was happy to simply be near Yukiko, no matter what the circumstances might have been.

All that I must do, he thought, is stay on the alert so that Yukiko-san can sleep without worry. Even as his thoughts got carried away, romanticizing his role as her protector, his sense of duty burned inside him like an open flame. He kept a sharp eye on the darkened streets.

Maybe some deranged, malicious fan is stalking her around her neighborhood. My mission might be to protect her from him.

Kunio wondered what he would be like if he were that kind of fan instead. Wouldn’t he be around here somewhere, stalking her around her neighborhood, hoping to accomplish some sinister goal?

I won’t let him!

Even as he thought this, another part of him wrestled with the possibility that some twist of fate could have turned him into the very person he was out to stop.

And so, as he carried out his commander’s orders, and though he was fired up by his duty to protect Yukiko, his conflicting emotions swirled about inside him with no signs of stopping.

 

A rustle came from the bushes.

Someone was hiding in the shadows.

From what Kunio could see, the lurking figure was crouched over, completely still. The intruder appeared to be trying to get a look inside the apartments.

Kunio thought, Is this the bastard who’s stalking Yukiko-chan? Then, without any hesitation, he resolved himself. I’m going to chase him away!

On silent footsteps, Kunio approached the suspicious figure. He got a better angle through the bushes and saw that someone was indeed crouched there.

This wasn’t a normal person. He was gigantic. For a moment, Kunio’s resolve wavered, and he gulped down a breath of air.

The intruder must have sensed someone was near, because he swiftly arose. He had a furry body, denim overalls, and a round face twice as large as a man’s.

What? Kunio thought, feeling almost disappointed. It’s someone in a rabbit costume.

What potential threat did a person in a rabbit suit pose to Yukiko? Kunio had only known mascot characters to hand out balloons to kids, or flyers to passersby. They were friends to children.

Kunio was puzzled. He asked himself, What is someone in a rabbit costume doing here? Shouldn’t he be in some department store’s rooftop amusement park? And it’s the middle of the night, too.

Suddenly, the rabbit turned toward Kunio.

It was then that he saw the face. What he had assumed would be the lovable visage of a cartoon rabbit was instead a half-melted, monstrous thing.

Kunio held down a scream.

The rabbit’s ears stood up.

The would-be bodyguard understood instinctively what that meant—the rabbit was going to attack.

Kunio took one step back, and then another.

The rabbit swayed his way through a gap in the bushes, and then emerged.

Kunio’s legs froze as he looked up at the giant rabbit. I-I have to run. I have to run now.

That’s what he told himself, but his body refused to listen. His only movement was the fearful shaking in his face. For the first time in his life, Kunio knew true terror.

Slowly, the rabbit walked forward, stopping right in front of the young man. A piercing, repulsive smell came drifting from the suit.

In a hoarse, inhuman voice, the rabbit said, “You’re shaking.”

Kunio thought he glimpsed two evil eyes staring out at him from the rabbit’s mouth.

The rabbit raised a furry hand and grabbed Kunio by the shoulder. The hand felt soft and rubbery. In that instant, Kunio’s body came back into motion. He rocked his shoulder, pushing away the rabbit’s hand, and with a wordless battle cry, he threw himself at the creature.

Kunio’s terror powered him, and he found himself filled with a strength he had never known he possessed.

The rabbit fell over backward into the bushes, and Kunio went with him. The young man sat up, straddling the rabbit, and put his hands around the suit’s fat neck. On the other side of the scratchy fabric, he felt an unexpectedly slender human neck. All he had to do was squeeze. He put all his strength into the task, strangling the rabbit as hard as he could.

The rabbit flailed his arms and legs. Sweat rolled down Kunio’s forehead as he kept on squeezing.

Just then, the rabbit’s cutesy mouth curled into a twisted snarl, and a voice rasped out. “I’ll…kill…you.” The scratchy voice, muffled by the mask, sent an even deeper terror into Kunio. “I’m running out of time—not that you’d understand. September twenty-sixth. Her first live stage performance will be on the Marusho roof.”

Kunio fought the rising urge to run away screaming and instead put everything he had into squeezing the rabbit’s neck. The creature swung up his arm and drove an open palm strike into Kunio’s face from below.

Kunio’s head rocked back. His arms weakened. Then the rabbit was back on his feet, grabbing the stunned Kunio by both shoulders. He plunged his giant head toward the young man’s face.

Again and again, the rabbit head-butted him. The costume’s head was only a shell constructed out of light materials, but after enough strikes Kunio’s face began to welt and bleed.

Kunio no longer had any fight left in him, but the crazed rabbit kept slamming his head into the young man’s face. At some point, Kunio lost consciousness. His upper body had gone limp, and he rocked back and forth like a wooden marionette, each forward motion met with another strike. His face was a disfigured mess. Wide rivers of red blood flowed freely from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and from wherever the skin had rent with another opening. An occasional gasping cough indicated he was still alive.

The rabbit took Kunio’s bloody face in both hands and pulled it up against his own. Then he whispered, “I’ll do this to anyone who tries to get in between me and Yukiko. And don’t you forget it.”

 

Yukiko sat at a makeup table in the green room provided for her by the Marusho department store staff. As she applied her makeup, she thought about her decision to go forward with the concert.

She was scared, certainly. She was very scared.

She knew she should have begged and pleaded to call off the event, but she’d done nothing of the sort.

It was the last thing she wanted to do, really—even after her manager gave her an easy way out, saying, “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. I can come up with an excuse for you.”

It was a nice offer, but Yukiko viewed canceling her performance as letting that repugnant rabbit win. She didn’t want to lose—especially not to that rabbit. Her hatred toward her costumed stalker had grown into something too large for her to keep in check. What better revenge could she have than capping off her successful exhibit with a stellar live performance?

The police hadn’t been able to find Shimizu Kunio, a volunteer bodyguard who had gone missing from outside her apartment. Only the police and the young man’s direct relatives knew of his disappearance. The president of Yukiko’s fan club had gone to great lengths to ensure that the media remained ignorant of her volunteer security force.

Had the media found out about Kunio’s disappearance, reporters would have been on her like a pack of hyenas. Blaming her would have made for a great scandal.

Yukiko worried that the rabbit might have done something to the man, though she kept the thought to herself. She didn’t even tell Yoriko.

The rabbit’s true intentions remained a total unknown. All Yukiko knew was that he seemed to be fixated on her. Perhaps his ultimate goal was to make Yukiko his. If that were the case, then it stood to reason that he had attacked Kunio for interfering. Yukiko was convinced that logic was sound.

Up until now, the rabbit had terrorized Yukiko by appearing near her. But that was all he had done. He struck terror into her only to vanish like so much mist. That was his consistent pattern.

But now he had attacked someone. Even if that person had interfered, the change in the rabbit’s behavior was alarming. Had he finally revealed his true, violent nature?

She didn’t think that was what had happened—or at least, not exactly. Instead, she believed that the rabbit was now prepared to get her by any means necessary.

Yukiko shivered. Apparently, she hadn’t fully numbed herself to the terror.

Will he come here? she asked herself, then answered, He will. I’m sure of it.

But she wasn’t going to let him do as he pleased any longer. She was going to hold her concert just as planned, and if the rabbit came, she wouldn’t be alone. The talent agency’s staff was on hand, along with Oe Yuji—hungry to avenge his comrade—and a group of plainclothes cops there on Kanda’s insistence. Surely, they would be able to subdue him.

Yukiko glanced over to Yoriko, who was sitting on a sofa near the makeup table. Her manager looked on with a troubled brow.

The singer gave her as bright a smile as she could muster and said, “Yoriko-san, try not to think about it too much. If he comes, he comes.”

Yoriko nodded in acceptance. “Well, put on a good show today,” the manager said, sounding more reassuring than Yukiko could have managed in her position. “I took a peek at the audience, and the seats are absolutely packed. I heard there are hundreds who couldn’t even get in.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Yukiko said without pausing at her makeup. “Sometimes it’s easy to forget how grateful I am to have them.” She reached for the outfit she’d chosen for the event, then asked, “How much longer until I go on?”

Yoriko glanced at her watch. “About fifteen minutes.”

 

Nearly half of the Marusho department store’s rooftop space had been reserved for the live concert. The ice cream, yakisoba, and various other food stands had been cleared away, and a stage erected in front of the open space.

These department store temporary event spaces were often slapdash affairs, but Marusho went to the effort of doing it right. The stage platform scaffolding was solidly in place, and they had even set up a stage truss complete with lights.

Some four hundred chairs had been provided, and all of them were full. A standing-room crowd made up another three hundred or so attendees. People had even filled the rooftop’s amusement area, where there was a modest carousel, single-seat miniature trains, and other smaller-scale attractions. According to the event organizer, Marusho had never had a more highly-attended event.

As Yukiko walked from the green room to the backstage wing, she looked out at the packed crowd and couldn’t help but feel deeply moved.

There’s so many people, she thought. And they’re all here to support me.

Yukiko hadn’t become an idol because she wanted to be one. The talent agency had decided that was what she was going to do. It wasn’t an idea that had come from within her. “Pop idol” was simply a role for her to fill. But as her fans’ outpouring of excited kinetic energy washed over her, for the first time, she felt glad she had become an idol. Now it was her turn to repay them by putting on the very best show she could. She focused her mind on the show, and determination filled her completely.

As long as she was an idol, she would always have followers who weren’t normal. Unbalanced fans would be drawn to her—and perverts, too. Some might try to threaten her like the man in the rabbit suit.

Yukiko drew strength from the cheering crowd and redoubled her resolve. I refuse to let them beat me!

 

A single plainclothes policeman stood at his post next to the freight elevator at the rear of the event hall holding Yukiko’s exhibit. His job was to check every person who went in or out of that elevator.

But he hadn’t been given any concrete details from his superiors—he was only told to watch for “suspicious-looking individuals.”

He knew that a popular idol singer named Tsukioka Yukiko was making an appearance up on the roof, but as far as he knew, he wasn’t there for her protection. His best guess was that he had been posted in case there was a stampede and mass panic.

This is an awful lot of fuss for just one girl, he thought. He was supposed to have had the day off and wasn’t especially happy about being forced to work an overtime shift instead.

The policeman had seen Tsukioka Yukiko sing on television once. She looked mild-mannered and mostly unremarkable, and he remembered her voice as being nothing special, either. So why on earth were so many people coming to see such an ordinary girl?

The world is full of things that don’t make any sense, thought the officer, who was atypically closed-minded for a man only in his mid-twenties.

That was when it happened.

The freight elevator’s rusty metal doors groaned open with a terrible scraping sound. For a moment, the policeman’s body went rigid. From the first moment he saw the figure that stepped out from the elevator, he thought he sensed a malicious presence—something too horrifying to be witnessed by the human eye. But what emerged was nothing but an adorable animal mascot—a rabbit in overalls. Its ears stood straight up.

It’s just someone in a costume, he thought in a mixture of relief and anticlimactic disappointment. The rabbit was probably part of the rooftop amusement park.

The policeman let out a deep sigh. When he was in college, he took a job as a mascot for just a single day. He had been a rabbit, too. It had been a sweltering day in the middle of summer break, and the inside of the costume had been hotter than hell. Just one hour wearing it put him in a state of dehydration.

With the wistful remembrance of a hardship passed, the policeman watched the rabbit walk by. It gave him a slight bow and walked toward the emergency staircase that lead up to the back end of the roof.

Noticing that patches of the rabbit’s fur were knotted up, the policeman muttered, “Someone oughta clean that thing.”

He must be headed up to the roof to give out balloons to the kids, he thought.

But something still bothered him. Why had he felt that momentary terror at seeing the rabbit? As he tilted his head in bewilderment, he kept his eyes on the door to the staircase where the rabbit had gone.

 

With a deeply concerned expression, Yoriko said, “It’s not too late. Can’t we still call this off somehow?”

“Yoriko-kun,” Kanda said with a not-this-again scowl, “why do you always have to be like this? You know we can’t cancel the show now. You’ve been in this business long enough to understand full well what would happen if we did. Besides, Yukiko is standing by, ready to go, and in good spirits.”

Kanda and Yoriko were seated in the small rooftop level office Yukiko was using for a green room. From the window, they could see the singer standing in the stage wing, waiting for her cue.

“Of course, I know what would happen,” Yoriko said, “but I still say we need to cancel it. Call it a woman’s intuition. I can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen.”

Kanda let out a heavy sigh and pressed his palms against his knees. “Let me guess—that phantom rabbit will appear again. And he’ll attack Yukiko like he did Shimizu-kun.”

“I don’t appreciate you making light of this,” Yoriko said. “I’m serious. I’m deeply worried about what could happen to Yukiko-chan.”

Kanda put his hand on her shoulder. “Listen. I understand how you feel. I wasn’t joking. I really do think that rabbit got Shimizu-kun. That’s why I convinced my police chief friend to give us three plainclothes officers for the day. Yukiko’s volunteer guards are operating in groups of two, and I’ve assigned them posts throughout the event space. The department store’s security and staff are on alert, ready to act the moment anything happens. Even if that rabbit does show up, he won’t be able to lay a finger on Yukiko.”

Yoriko felt somewhat reassured by his words, but her expression remained unconvinced. “I am worried about that rabbit,” she said, “but that’s not all I’m afraid of. What really concerns me are all those people.”

She turned her eyes to the sea of Yukiko’s fans that filled the roof.

“What are you talking about?” Kanda said with surprise. “We should be glad they’re here. No idol inspires this much excitement these days. We need to nurture that kind of audience, not fear them.”

Yoriko’s face remained grim. “There could be a panic.”

“A panic?”

“That’s right,” Yoriko said. “Think about it. The roof is packed to the brim. If there are police officers here, they sure aren’t enforcing the fire code for capacity.” As she spoke, she became more and more agitated. “The crowd stretches all the way down the staircase. And they’re all here with one single-minded purpose—to see Yukiko-chan. Even the smallest accident could turn into a catastrophe.”

Her bleak tone unsettled Kanda, but he said, “You’re overthinking things, Yoriko-kun. Anyway, the show will start in a matter of minutes, and it’ll all be over within an hour. Can’t we just cheer up a little for her big moment?”

In the stage’s wing, Yukiko was checking over her outfit one last time. She had on a white turtleneck sweater over a black corduroy dress. The dress went down to just above her knees, revealing athletic legs clad in black stockings. For her shoes, she had gone with her favorite pair of black pumps.

She put her hands together and said a little prayer to herself. It was something she always did before every event, be it a TV appearance or a handshake meet-and-greet.

The busy backstage staff all looked nervous for the performance. The PA engineer finished readying the tape containing Yukiko’s backing tracks as he listened to orders coming over his headset.

It was about to start.

The fans’ cheers swelled like a tidal wave. Hollers and whistles and foot stomps resounded across the roof. This was to be Yukiko’s first real live performance, and as she felt the crowd’s anticipation, her legs began to shake.

“God, please look over me,” she said under her breath. “Please allow this event to be a success.” Then, fired up, she turned toward the stage.

The audience’s shouts began to sound almost furious. Their anticipation to see Tsukioka Yukiko live was driving them wilder and wilder.

 

At the entrance to the rooftop, a security guard was arguing with the line of fans. The crowd was attempting to press through the entrance and tempers had flared.

“It’s free admission,” a long-haired youth at the front of the pack said. “There’re no tickets! So let me in already.”

He pushed against the security guard’s chest and tried to get by. The guard quickly pushed the young man back. As they struggled, the angry fan grunted and growled, and a group of other fans pushed at his back.

The guard reached for the transceiver radio at his belt so that he could call for backup. But before he could, a high-pitched man’s voice came from somewhere down the stairs. The rooftop was a cacophony of crowd noises, but somehow the shrill voice pierced through the din and across the audience.

“It’s Tsukioka Yukiko!”

The first to react was the long-haired youth trying to force his way past the guard. He shouted, “She’s—she’s down there?” and turned and ran down the stairs.

That was the spark. All the fans who hadn’t made it onto the rooftop ran down the stairs after him. They knocked down a child playing on the landing where the stairs doubled back. The boy began to scream and cry, but the child’s voice only agitated the crowd and spurred them to run faster.

It wasn’t just the fans at the rooftop’s entrance now, either. The entire audience stood up from their seats.

“It looks like Yukiko-chan isn’t appearing on stage, but down in the exhibit,” said one.

“She’s not coming here?” cried another.

“Behind us,” a third shouted. “Behind us! Yukiko is back that way!”

Standing at the seat he’d secured in the front row, one impassioned fan looked to be in shock. His face went pale. Then he was scrambling to pack away his tripod-mounted camera, and made a dash for the staircase, attempting to beat the rest of the crowd to the punch.

Folding chairs began to tumble over. Attendees started getting swept away and knocked down by the surging crowd. Angry shouts arose all around. One simple phrase shouted by one heartless person had thrown the entire area into total panic.

Kanda and Yoriko burst out from the green room. For a brief second, they both froze in shock at the erupting chaos, then quickly regained composure and began shouting orders to the security team and staff.

For a moment, Yukiko didn’t realize what was going on. One minute, she was ready to step on stage and deliver her best performance, and the next, angry shouts filled the air, and her fans all stood up at once.

Hundreds of people took off running at the same time and in the same direction like a herd of stampeding buffalo. Yukiko watched the stampede aghast, but for some reason, her emotions remained utterly calm. At one point, she thought, This is like that scene from The Lion King.

Not knowing what she should do, the idol returned to the green room to look for Yoriko. The event would likely be canceled. The stampede might not go without injuries. If that happened, those hyena-like newspaper reporters would come around looking for someone to blame. For that reason—and every other—she hoped that no one would be hurt.

When she reached the green room, no one was inside. She considered returning to the stage, but thought better of it and instead decided to leave via the emergency staircase down the hall from the green room. If anyone saw her back on stage, the chaos would only increase. For now, she would go to the staff room next to her exhibit.

Hurrying now, she exited the green room and turned right. Stacks of cardboard boxes lined the hall, narrowing the passage there. Beyond the boxes, a metal fire door led to the stairs.

The hallway’s fluorescent lights didn’t quite reach to the end of the hall. The dimly lit space made Yukiko feel nervous.

Under her breath, she told herself, “I need to find Yoriko-san as fast as I can.” Walking quickly, she headed for the end of the hall.

Then, just as she slipped past the stacks of boxes, she heard a rustling noise behind her. Reflexively, she looked over her shoulder. Farther down the hall, a figure stood backlit by the soft glow coming from the green room. For a moment, Yukiko’s mind froze.

Then she wished it had stayed that way. She recognized who it was easily—it was the last person she wanted to meet.

It was the rabbit—that monster. Until now, he had been lurking around her like a shadow, but now he had come to confront her directly.

The event area had descended into chaos, stretching the heavy security thin. The rabbit hadn’t failed to capitalize on the opportunity. He’d waited for the security to go out onto the roof, and when they were all outside, he went inside.

He’s worked through every detail, Yukiko thought. Keeping her eyes on him, she slowly backed away.

Silhouetted by the lights, the rabbit’s ears stood up. He had seen her.

An indistinct growl came from his mouth. Was he enraged or elated? Yukiko couldn’t tell. Whatever the case, the rabbit was excited.

Overwhelming terror hit her in waves, so strong they might have made her faint. But deep down, she remained surprisingly calm.

Maybe I’m more resilient than I look, she thought.

In a dark hallway, she faced down this rabbit, whose true identity and capabilities remained a mystery. If this wasn’t danger, then nothing was. And yet she stood against him in full control of her emotions. Perhaps facing him out in the open and so close up had enabled her newfound resolve.

As she backed away, she reached her hand behind her in search of the fire door’s handle. The rabbit tilted his head quizzically. He seemed to be trying to figure out what she was doing.

Her fingers touched cold metal. The fire door, she thought. Her hand quickly found the handle and turned it without a moment’s pause.

The door clicked open.

Hearing the sound, the rabbit shook his head. Letting out an unnatural scream, he sprang into a charging run.

As soon as she had slipped through the open door, she flung it shut. As the door swung closed, the rabbit barreled straight into it. The metal shook, and the impact sent Yukiko flying backward.

The rabbit rebounded, landing in a heap just on the other side. It looked as if he’d been at least mildly concussed.

Yukiko landed hard on her backside. She had to struggle to breathe through the sharp pain, but she managed to scramble to her feet and flee down the stairway.

The rabbit held his hands to his head and arose unsteadily.

 

Yukiko came running into the staff room shouting unintelligibly. But the dreary, bare concrete room was empty. Everyone had gone up to the roof.

Yukiko’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. The rabbit was still pursuing her, but no one was here to come to her rescue. She turned around to face the door she’d left half-open behind her, and the rabbit suddenly appeared in the gap.

Yukiko jumped and let out a startled peep, then quickly looked around for anything she could use to defend herself.

On the table in the center of the room was a large and heavy glass ashtray. She grabbed it and faced the rabbit, weapon at the ready. The rabbit chuckled. His big, round left eye blinked at her, as did the half-melted right one, its eyelid twitching erratically up and down. It was an utterly repulsive sight.

Yukiko rushed at the rabbit, taking the ashtray in both hands and swinging it hard against the rabbit’s fat head. A startled, muffled grunt emanated from inside the costume, and the rabbit sank down to the floor. Again Yukiko beat the ashtray against the top of the rabbit’s head, and then again and again. She kept on striking him, not even stopping when her arms began to tire and her muscles began to ache.

The costume’s forehead split open, revealing a cotton-like backing. It looked like the rabbit’s gray matter was spilling out, and the sight was oddly chilling.

The rabbit glared up at her and curled up the corners of its buck-toothed mouth into a ghastly smile. Yukiko’s hands froze for a fraction of an instant.

That was all the time the rabbit needed to reach up with his furry hands and grab her around her slender waist. He yanked her down against him. Yukiko flailed with her entire body, but the rabbit’s strength overpowered her, and he drew her into a bear hug.

The idol’s arms were still free. She pushed against his sides and his stomach to try to escape, but he held her firm. The rabbit’s face, sinister and unnerving, was right up next to hers. At such a close range, it seemed absurdly huge. She could see each and every hair, and the melted plastic eye bulged out in gruesome close-up detail, while the foul smell of ammonia and sweat radiated from inside the suit and assaulted her nostrils.

Lifting her in his arms, the rabbit walked to the rear of the staff room and dumped her onto the linoleum floor. The cold tiles pressed into her back.

I have to escape, she thought, pushing herself up from the floor, but the rabbit pinned her in place. The suit’s stench was overwhelming and nearly gagged her.

The rabbit lay down beside Yukiko, as if they were cuddling. He pulled her against his chest. Her eyes were now level with the rabbit’s mouth. In the back of that gaping maw, two small points glistened. She looked at those points—not with any purpose, but because there was nowhere else for her to look. Her eyesight wasn’t perfect, and at first, she couldn’t tell what she was seeing. Then, after a moment, she thought she might know what they were.

They were the eyes of the man inside the costume. That had to be it. They were the eyes of the unknown man who had relentlessly stalked and tormented her. They were staring at her with ominous excitement.

Yukiko saw the obsession in those eyes, and it gave her goosebumps.

The rabbit tightened his arm around her, and with his free hand—an oversized, soft hand—he caressed her long hair.

“Yu…ki…ko…”

His hoarse voice stabbed into her ears. Sticky breath fell across her face. As if that weren’t unsettling enough, the rabbit pressed his giant face against hers, and a warm, sluglike thing popped out from its mouth.

Then, it licked across her face.

It was his tongue, wet and slimy, but also with an animal’s rough, sandpapery texture. The urge to vomit filled her chest, and she pushed at the rabbit’s face with both hands.

“Stop it!” she shouted. “Please, stop!”

The rabbit redoubled the strength of his grasp. With his scratchy voice, he coaxed her, “Yukiko… I love you. I don’t want anyone else to have you.”

Even without all that was happening to her, the freak’s confession of love would have been enough to repulse her to her core.

The rabbit’s hand began feeling at her chest, squeezing her smallish breasts like he knew what he was doing. He let out a deep breath in ecstasy, and his fingers moved down between her legs. Yukiko’s body began to tremble, but certainly not from pleasure. The sheer horror of it all sent shivers cascading through her nervous system.

Desperately seeking to escape from this hell, Yukiko flailed her arms and legs. But the rabbit’s oversized body was all around her, and it would have taken a lot more than that to break free.

The rabbit hugged his arms around her and slithered his tongue across her face. “I love you so much,” he whispered with his foul breath. “So, so much.”

Yukiko managed to wrestle her right arm free. “I don’t want to be loved by someone like you!” she shouted.

She jabbed her hand into the rabbit’s gaping, grinning mouth. Her fingers made contact with something squishy—the eyes of the man inside the suit, she thought. She was quickly proved right as the man’s unrelentingly powerful arms slackened, and a muffled grunt escaped the rabbit’s head.

Yukiko shoved away his weakened arms and kicked at him as hard as she could with both feet. Her skirt fluttered up distastefully, but she had no time to worry about appearances.

The rabbit rolled about on the floor holding his arms to his mouth. She watched him for a moment then snapped out of it and left the room. When she reached the landing to the stairs, she faced a choice. Go up to the roof or down to the lower floors. She hesitated for a moment. Then, thinking that the panic might have settled down by now, she chose the roof. As she started climbing the stairs, she heard a doleful voice coming from behind her.

“Yu…ki…ko.”

She looked, and the rabbit was there, blindly swinging his arms about as he came toward her. He seemed to be having a great deal of trouble seeing after her eye jab. Watching him stagger and wind toward her, she froze for a second but quickly recovered and fled up the stairs.

As she stood at the doorway leading to the rooftop, the rabbit crawled up the stairs after her, slowly and steadily, moving like a lizard on his hands and feet.

Yukiko flung open the door and found a small, separate rooftop occupied by a water tower and a fenced-in power transformer unit. Her heart sank. Where was she? She must have taken a wrong turn and now she was cornered.

The rabbit was still coming after her. If she didn’t quickly find a way to escape, he’d capture her again. But there was nowhere to run.

She turned and watched him coming up the stairs. She must have really hurt his eyes, because he appeared to be climbing each step with great effort.

She wondered if she could jump over him and run back downstairs. Yet injured eyes or not, he still possessed overwhelming strength. If he managed to catch her again, it would likely mean her life.

She slipped around the side of the water tower and stood beside the chain-link fence. A metal sign affixed to the fence read DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE CURRENT. The idol started to climb over the fence, but the sign gave her a moment’s pause.

That pause was her ruin.

The rabbit had managed to catch up to her. He put his hand on the back of her head and twisted it toward him until her eyes were on his ugly face. A lazy trail of blood dangled from the rabbit’s mouth. She must have scratched his eyes.

His shoulders rising and falling with each breath, the rabbit said, “That was cruel, Yukiko. Why would you hurt me like that? Can’t you see how much I love you? How could you be so mean to me?”

He rattled her head, and then again, and then once more.

His voice went eerily quiet. “I could just keep turning your head around.”

His fingers tightened around the back of her skull.

Maybe he’s serious, she thought. Maybe he’s really going to twist until my neck snaps.

The rabbit’s ears stood up. He put more force into his arm, and her neck twisted to an almost impossible degree. Her muscles cried out in unimaginable pain. Yukiko grunted as saliva started to run out from the edges of her lips.

I’m… I’m going to die.

As her head turned past ninety degrees, her mind struggled to find any avenue for survival.

Still twisting her head, the rabbit leaned its weight against her and threw her to the floor. First she felt the sting of the concrete, and then the rabbit’s fur enveloped her.

“I have to do this,” he said. “I just want you to know that. There’s no other way.”

The rabbit bent his arm, and her neck craned with it. She could no longer breathe. Convulsions shot through her body. She began to lose her vision, as if a strip of gauze had been placed over her eyes.

Is this what it’s like to die?

In her mind’s eye, she saw herself as a little girl. She was giggling, cradling a dirty doll in her arms.

So it’s true then, what they say—that the moment you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Is this the moment I die? I don’t want to die!

Her refusal to let go of life roused her from her descent into death.

I can’t die here. I can’t die at the hands of this rabbit.

Her eyes opened wide.

Yukiko could see the side of the water tower just beyond the rabbit’s furry arm. Valves of various sizes came out from the side of the tower. Below them was a row of metal outflow spigots.

Yukiko reached for a red valve and turned it. The valve hadn’t been worked loose in a long time, and Yukiko was not particularly strong to begin with. She shouldn’t have been able to turn it, but her determination to survive gave her the strength she needed.

With a deafening roar, reddish-brown water sprayed from the spigot. The torrent hit the rabbit perfectly in the face and knocked him backward. Yukiko rolled to the side, got to her feet, and scrambled to the opposite side of the water tower, while the gushing water pushed the rabbit almost all the way back to the top of the stairs.

Yukiko peeked around the far side of the tank and saw the rabbit reeling in pain and confusion. She nodded with satisfaction.

She had her opening, but now she needed to do something with it. She focused with every scrap of willpower she possessed.

Her eyes glistened.

She had an idea.

 

The rabbit was soaked through, every last hair matted to his body. Coughing and sputtering, he slowly stood. The pain from the torrential water’s impact was matched by the anguish at being taken so completely by surprise.

The rabbit despaired.

While he had been struggling against the seemingly endless deluge, Yukiko had almost certainly escaped. By now, she probably wasn’t even in the department store. How would he ever be able to catch her again?

His ears drooped, and he sank down onto the concrete floor.

He had been so close. Just a few moments longer, and he’d have taken his beloved Yukiko’s life with his own hands. A few moments longer, and he’d have twisted her head fully backward, and she would have been dead.

He looked up to the sky through eyelids half closed over by blood.

Scaffolding had been erected around and above the water tank that had brought about his failure. It looked like the building’s owners were intending on installing an even larger reservoir. The scaffolding held platforms that spiraled up to the top of the tank, with more framework going higher still, leaving a void in the middle.

Slowly, he put a hand on one of the scaffolding tubes and leaned back against the wall next to the stairway door. For now, he needed a break. He’d get some energy back, gather himself, and think of how he would handle Yukiko.

His ears folded back against his head, and his eyes closed—but then he let loose a small, startled exclamation and opened his eyes. He sensed someone nearby. Above. Someone was above him.

His ears stood straight up as he looked up at the scaffolding. “She’s… she’s here.” Yukiko was there.

He had been wrong. She hadn’t escaped far away, but was right there, partway up the scaffolding.

Yukiko was standing still, gripping the guardrail, but when the rabbit took his first awkward, water-soaked step onto the decking, she quickly turned and began ascending the ramp to the next platform.

“Yukiko,” the rabbit rumbled, “give it up. You’ve got nowhere to run.”

With her lithe body, Yukiko climbed her way from level to level with ease, while the rabbit’s encumbered, leaden steps prevented him from closing in. In the end, that wouldn’t matter, because what the rabbit said was right. Once she’d reached the top of the structure, there was nowhere farther for her to go. Even if he couldn’t catch up with her before then, he would still reach her.

Yukiko must have known that, but still she climbed.

There was no guarantee she’d even manage to ascend that far. The scaffolding was by no means sturdy. With each step she took, the platforms shook, and the connecting bolts gave a loud and dissonant creak. Even attempting the ascent was dangerous—and that was only under her comparatively light weight. The giant, waterlogged rabbit was climbing after her now, and he was much heavier.

When Yukiko neared the top of the water tower, she stumbled and leaned against the guardrail. The platform had suddenly bowed beneath her. It seemed that some careless worker had only half-fastened the bolts in that section.

Yukiko looked down, and her head spun. The water tower stood several stories tall above the rest of the roof. She had a fear of heights, though not on the same level as James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Still, she clung to the handrail and did her best not to look down again.

Yet she couldn’t just remain standing there, without doing anything. The rabbit, slow as he was, was coming for her, closing in. She risked another glance down and found that he was quite close now, moving faster even as his footsteps made the rickety scaffolding creak and groan.

Yukiko looked up. At the top of the tower was a small square landing just one meter long on each side. The terminus of the water tower. The only way back down was the same way the rabbit was coming up.

She could hear him now, muttering in that scratchy voice. “Yu…ki…ko.”

The rabbit’s fingertips appeared on the lip of the platform one level down. Yukiko drew in her legs and hugged her arms around her knees. The rabbit laughed and ran the remaining distance with surprising speed. And then his hand was on her ankle. His grip was incredibly strong. She kicked her leg as hard as she could, but his fingers held on tight.

Slowly, he pulled her toward him by the ankle. As her body was dragged down, the rabbit rose up and soon their faces met. The rabbit let out a delighted sigh.

As she suffered under the stench of his rotten-meat body odor, she moved a hand behind her back and begin loosening one of the bolts holding the scaffolding together. When it had been first constructed, the bolt would have been far too tight to loosen with her bare hands, but after extended exposure to wind and small vibrations, the bolt had gradually worked itself loose.

Careful not to let the rabbit catch on, she shifted her weight toward the wall of the tower so that the scaffolding pressed against the tower’s surface. With some of the strain taken off the bolt, it began to turn more easily. The bolt had rusted over, and Yukiko still had trouble turning it, but as she kept putting her muscle into it, the layer of rust flaked away, and the bolt itself popped free from the joint.

Yukiko shoved at the rabbit’s face with both hands and threw her weight backward. With a shrill creak, the scaffolding sagged and began tipping away from the tank.

Taken by surprise, the rabbit let go of Yukiko and grabbed for the scaffold’s vertical tube—which was quickly becoming rather less vertical. Yukiko hooked her arm around the railing at the top landing, lifted her feet, and used her stomach muscles to raise her lower body up and onto the platform.

The scaffolding began to buckle under the rabbit’s weight, and it twisted toward the next section where the bolt still held. The rabbit’s platform traced a wide and slow arc until it came back to slam into the side of the tower.

The rabbit’s hand jolted free from the handhold, and he smacked hard into the wall. Pancaked against the curved surface, he slid and skidded down, gravity winning the fight against friction. As he fell, his arms searched about for anything to grab that might arrest his descent, but they found nothing.

 

Yukiko sat motionless on the platform atop the water tower.

She was relieved to have defeated the rabbit, but now it seemed she was stuck, with nothing to do but wait until help came for her.

Since panicking would get her nowhere, she simply sat hugging her knees while gazing up at the empty sky.

After watching the rabbit fall with the scaffolding, she was confident he couldn’t have survived. Though she felt a little uneasy being entirely alone on her high-up perch, she was free from the terror the rabbit had struck into her.

What she didn’t know was that the rabbit, driven by his obsession, was slowly working his way back up the tower. He took whatever small handholds it had to offer, moving his oversized body with the deftness of a rock climber.

Holding fast to the curved wall, he climbed all the way to the top. When he crested the top edge, he saw Yukiko on the platform, her back turned to him. A low laugh of victory threatened to come up, but he stifled it so as not to spoil the surprise.

The metal railing of the upper platform was nearly within his grasp.

 

When they had at long last managed to quell the mass panic, Kanda and Yoriko went to the roof to look for Yukiko.

“Where in the world could she have gone?” Yoriko wondered.

Kanda said, “If she wasn’t in the green room or backstage, she must be out on the roof somewhere. She probably waited for everything to settle down and then went out there to find us.”

From the stage, they looked out across the vacant roof. The scattered heaps of folding chairs spoke to the severity of the chaos that had occurred.

“Surely she wouldn’t have left the department store,” Kanda said, sounding unsure. “Would she?”

“Not a chance,” Yoriko replied. She surveyed the rooftop with worry in her eyes. “She may be young, but she has a strong sense of duty. She wouldn’t have left her fans—or us—behind.”

“You’re right. Well, where else could she be?” Kanda thought for a while, then muttered, “Wait, what about…” Then to Yoriko, he said, “Follow me,” and started jogging to the emergency stairs. “The original part of the building has its own little roof—it’s still there today. Maybe that’s where she went!”

Yoriko hurried after him.

 

The rusty door opened onto a small, dilapidated roof dominated by a weatherworn water tower.

Yoriko shouted, “Up there!”

Kanda saw it at the same time.

Yukiko was sitting, arms around her knees, at the top of the half-collapsed scaffolding. She seemed to be staring off into the distance, lost in her thoughts—oblivious to the monster coming up on her from behind, his arms spread wide.

Opening his mouth so wide his jaw might have fallen off, Kanda shouted, “Yukiko! Behind you! Yukiko!”

But even yelling as loud as he could, his voice didn’t reach her.

The rabbit put his hands on her shoulders. Watching helplessly from below, Yoriko could feel his fingers digging painfully into her flesh, as if she were the one up there.

Yukiko remained still, stoically enduring the rabbit’s cruel touch.

“That’s good,” Yoriko said. “Don’t upset him. Fighting will only make things worse. Just do as he says.” If Yukiko tried to fight him off and failed, it might anger him into doing something terrible.

Yukiko couldn’t have heard her, but she seemed to have gotten the message, as she remained entirely pliant and passive. Whether she was choosing not to struggle or just didn’t have the strength left to try it, Yoriko didn’t know. Whatever the case, complying with the rabbit was the safest route.

“Yoriko-kun, bring the police,” Kanda said. “And get word to management and security.”

He put his hand on what remained of the scaffolding and began attempting the ascent. Before he could start, Yoriko let out an unearthly scream that was so loud her heart might have leapt out from her throat.

Kanda froze.

He looked up with eyes open wide. The rabbit had grabbed Yukiko’s head and was twisting it as if she were a doll. By the time he looked up, the rabbit had already wrenched her head around more than ninety degrees.

The rabbit’s shoulders rose as he put even more force into his hands, turning Yukiko’s head fully backward.

Kanda’s face went pale.

Unable to bear the sight of such madness and cruelty, Yoriko covered her face with both hands and slumped to the concrete.

The rabbit kept on turning her head right and left and right again until it popped clear off. He swung her head against the water tower over and over and over, cackling as he did so. Then he tossed Yukiko’s head up into the sky. It traced a tall arc until it gradually gave way to gravity, slowing down and beginning its descent.

The head crashed into the concrete roof exactly halfway between Kanda and Yoriko. It landed with a heavy thunk and crumbled into course powder.

Yoriko stared at the dust in blinking disbelief. She leaned over what had become of Yukiko’s head.

“This,” she said, “is this…plaster?”

Yukiko, dressed only in her underwear, came running out from the other side of the water tower.

Kanda and Yoriko cried her name in unison, but she held up a palm to quiet them. She beckoned the two over and handed them a rope that hung down from the platform atop the tower. Speaking only through looks and gestures, she signaled for them to pull the rope as hard as they could.

Kanda nodded in understanding, and Yoriko tightened her grip on the rope, whispering, “That was the replica, wasn’t it?”

Yukiko nodded.

Above them, the rabbit screeched, “Yu…ki…ko!”

As if that were their cue, the three put all their combined strength into pulling the rope. They pulled it with all their focus and all their weight.

The supports beneath the platform hadn’t been sturdy in the first place, and they collapsed as readily as if they were made of taffy. The platform began to tilt, and the rabbit rolled forward.

Yukiko’s replica was the first to slide off, and the rabbit came tumbling down immediately after, as if still in pursuit. As they both fell, the rabbit caught the life-size doll in his arms and drew it into a deep embrace.

Speed increasing, he slammed against a water valve jutting from the side of the tower. He rebounded out and over the rooftop’s guardrail and then down toward the street below in an unwitting dive toward his death.

Yukiko patted Yoriko on the back with a rope-burned hand. Yoriko embraced her, covering the singer’s unclothed body.

“It’s over,” Yoriko said. “It’s over, Yukiko-chan.”

In her arms, Yukiko nodded several times.

Yoriko took off her jacket and gave it to Yukiko, then walked to the rooftop’s guardrail and leaned out to look down below.

Yukiko’s life-size twin figure had fragmented against the pavement directly in front of the department store’s entrance. Several hundred curious onlookers were gathering around the doll’s remains.

But somehow, inexplicably, the rabbit suit was gone.

“I can’t believe it,” Yoriko said. “What could have happened? He was dead. He had to be.”

Yoriko and Yukiko’s eyes met.

As if to herself, Yukiko said, “What was he?”

Kanda looked off into the clouds floating far in the distance. Softly, he said, “Maybe he was a phantom. Maybe that’s what he was all along—a monster conjured by jealousy and obsession.”

Yukiko simply nodded.