Narrator: Ishihara Satomi

 

    He is that guy everyone knows. Always smiling shyly, quietly in the background whenever I am on the same variety show by chance. In our more than fifteen years long of career, we occasionally crossed paths.

    I would hear his deep voice in short reply like ‘fine’, ‘yes’, ‘is that so?’ along the corridor of TV station, and the next second I turned my head to see if it is really him, I would see a little of his back or a bit his brown hair in the busying crowd.

    Sometimes the drama I was starring on-air the same time as his, and I know he would be there along with his costars. I would fidget around trying to see the casts of other featuring dramas and made a fuss for the rest of the staff that were trying to help dress me up.

    I don’t know where to start tell you this, but it is exactly how my mind is around him. I don’t know where it started, I don’t know when and why and how.

 

    But to make it easy, may be all of this has something to do with myself and him starring as a wide-eyed kid in Ikebukuro West Gate Park.

 

    That was my first one-sided introduction of him to me. Through the screen, at home. Time passed by and at 17, I also passed the talent audition and questionably enter the industry without really having the senses of what people really do here.

    Like, you are 17, and suddenly you have to go and work seriously in front of so many professionals who would rely on you to make good products.

    I got the lead role as soon as I signed the contract and it was so stressful I began to break a little. Even though people thought I was a really strong type of girl. After leaving the studio each day I would lock myself alone in the bedroom trying to memorise all these pointless lines.

    Moreover, my first ever project was broadcasted by ing NHK. That’s like the most suffocating thing. That one fateful day, I remembered I did really badly while filming one of the more difficult scenes and the staffs were sort of feeling sympathetic to me, so they were consoling and giving compliments even though I didn’t earn it. The director gave us a break and I also broke in tears, alone, behind the closed door outside the studio.

    I kept crying and sobbing without any care in the world because I was sure no one’s around. And I cleaned my face and those unprofessional emotions to go back to work all smiley - easy going again. Suddenly, the feeling that someone had been watching me made me conscious of myself again.

    And when the person looked up, I knew he had been here listening to me since the beginning.

    A boy my age, a little tanned and lean with dyed hair stood there beside another studio gate. I did not remember what he was wearing really well, this moment will come to the too much later notice that he might be smoking cigarette before I barged into that empty yard so annoyingly.

    The boy’s face was really pretty, the kind of pretty you have to notice the first time you laid eyes on him because the features blend so well together. The kind of pretty that embed well in your memory. I might or might not recognise him as that cute boy in the drama I had watched years ago, you know that kind of awkward moment, my mood was so mixed with frustration and embarrassment.

    My and his eyes met for a brief second and I tried to said some excuse for all the crying, and he looked as if he wanted to say some for smoking too.

    Did he say anything? Did I say anything?

    It was really a long time ago, and that, was our first encounter.

 

    And I would cried again when it gets so hard, some other time I was just so tired of seeing and talking to the staffs and escaped that by just sitting around in the studio back lot. Rarely I felt like he was there though I never find anyone hanging around in my eyesight again. Like I felt his presence or may be it was just cigarette smell that lingered.

    I knew his name by then. He was already probably the hottest one among the generation and believe me, a lot of girls in the industry were after him. I never once shared that little secret moment with anyone though.

    People would talk about how he was at the all-stars school Horikoshi, which I was not a part of. People would talk about how he got into the prestigious Meiji University, which I was not a part of. And it just came to me naturally that we were so strangers to each other.

    The story would end there.

 

    Except it was not.

    “I really really really really like him!”

    One of the girls confessed after hours into the slumber party at the company outing. All of us got really excited, I must admitted some alcohol was involved at that point. But it was just for the merry!

    “Who? Who? Who?”

    “Well, we went to the same school…”

    “Oh! Oh! Horikoshi?” the other girl squealed.

    “He was kind of cold and quiet! So it’s a little hard to get to know him but he only cared about Y. I guess I have no chance.”

    “How is he like? Give us some hint.” I investigated, my cheeks red and hot from the dizziness.

    “Tall! And really good looking, really sweet face. And really nice voice. Oh and you guys have to see him in PE class. No one can look away from him doing sports.”

    “Ah!”

    “I heard he smokes but that’s not really a big deal, well, isn’t that kind of hot?”

    I stopped, then stared.

    “Oh, so it is him.”

    “Ishihara, who is that?” the other friend immediately turned to me.

    “I don’t… don’t know actually.” I managed to get away.

 

    Oh, so he has a girlfriend.

    That’s what I thought.    

 

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It's going to be Her/ Him/ Her/ Him all the way to the end. I know there's no Satopi fiction out there so I just need to write one. Please please comment if you like it!