Narrator: Ishihara Satomi

    Everything comes and goes so fast before my eyes. 2005 2006 then suddenly it’s 2008, I blinked and televisions had turned all digital. I blinked again and people I used to know changed. I learn to get used to this fast paced life soon enough before getting hurt.

    The Satomi-chan persona slowly emerged from nowhere. May be it is my true self too, well, partly. The sunny, bright, cute bubbly girl who would brighten up atmosphere among sets would somehow still hide herself in bedroom from time to time and I am still her.

    I learned to brace difficulties and annoying people in work and fight them with my all-in attitude. I could say I was pretty strong.

    And then there was someone whose politeness wins all. Someone who would rarely speak and keep working quietly. Someone who never complains at all. I watched that someone from afar with respect. I kept thinking - oh smile or cry if you feel like it, won’t you? That someone suppressed his personal emotions like it’s dangerous to show one.

    But I would never, ever wanted to see the kind of emotion he expressed like I did saw that night. Not ever again.

    

    The late September night was cold and windy. It’s starting to get cold but I enjoyed strolling alone around quiet neighbourhood of Tokyo.

    I fell for the quiet, breezy wind that flutters those yellow and red leaves while nibble at a hot sweet potatoes on my way home. Sometimes I would made it as far as Ginza if I walked past the train station and that sometime was tonight.

    There I heard the familiar disgusting shutter sound. I suddenly felt cold to the bone with fright. Why? Why are they following me? I was not with a man or smoking so I should be fine right?

    I wrapped my jacket tighter and pulled down the hat further to hide my face. The paparazzi won’t get anything from me! I tried to spot them while turn right into a smaller alley intending to get away from those bugs with cameras as their weapons.  What the hell they were hoping to get from me anyway?    I hoped they just come up and ambush me with questions like how they did to some other people, when that happened, I would slay them with my answers. I was surely not someone they could play with.

    Drowning in my own imaginations, I didn’t notice that there were people standing really close where I was heading. Their sudden appearance startled me, but what startled me more was when one of them spoke.

    “I hate to say this.”

    The voice, the voice was so known to me.

    “So don’t say it, let’s go home. Let’s…just go back to what we used to be, can’t we?” pleaded the girl in sunglasses and a furry hat. I looked at her and vaguely recognised her. This was so strange. Was I dreaming? Or was this just another my imagination running wild and they were just normal couple bantering in dark alleyways?

    The man covered his eyes with two hands making his face even harder to be recognised. Ironically it is because of that gesture that reminded me of someone I had been thinking about several times a year - many times a month.

    “I can’t, no, I won’t see you ever again.”

    He whispered.

 

    The girl had already left. He had not.

    I had not.

    I just couldn’t move. There he was, sitting defeatedly on the pavement with beautiful round pair of eyes that was looking at nothing. Here I was, hiding behind the bush with absolutely no idea what to do.

    What kind of fate did I had to be the one who witness the It Boy breaking up with his sweetheart-spell-trouble? I chuckled to myself, to my incredibly bad timing. Anyone with enough senses would have known enough to walk away and remain silent about what they see. May be I was drunk that night, or may be I was really that crazy in the head - I just had the guts to walk right into him.

 

    I walked right past that miserable clutter of a human being. And little did that human move. A step, two steps, three steps away from him, I kept walking but couldn’t help looking back. I examined him from his tired eyes - the sharp nose slightly red and the slightly shaken lips from the breeze, his attire too light for a breezy autumn night and lastly how defeated he looked. He might not even acknowledge my presence.

    “Are you going to sit here all night?”

    I heard myself asking.

    

    It took him several minutes to answer me. And the funniest thing was that I waited for it. He just really couldn’t register what was happening around him properly enough and somehow I could notice that.

    “Why?”

    “Why what?” I said.

    “It’s you.”

    “Yep, too bad.”

    From the corner of my eyes, he looked pretty out of energy - or more like out of any mood to do anything at all.

    “Of all people.”

    “Of all people.” I repeated.

    I turned towards him who was looking at me unamused right now. “Well, are you going to sit here all night or are you going somewhere? Just for your information, I was just running from crazy bloody paparazzi. Should you really be around here?”

    “Huh?”

    “If you’re staying like this, I’ll be going first.”

    “Yeah.”

    A tinge of anger bloomed up in me. I had to tell myself this is not my problem. He was an adult - a celebrity should be responsible of himself. It shouldn’t bother me whatever would happened to him or whatever would get publish in next week’s tabloid magazines. I pictured myself reading next issue of Bunshun with a photo of this wreckage human being gracing the spread - oh man,

    I couldn’t see Yamaa Tomohisa like that.

    “Just go somewhere! Would you?”

    I screeched. It made him looking up at me like an alarmed puppy and that’s all it takes for me to grab his arm. I was just dragging him with me at first but the sudden sound of someone else’s footsteps alerted us into running.

 

    Soon we both left the alleyway full of tears and broken heart. Our paces got slower as we reached a deserted building where cameras couldn’t follow us.

    “What was that for?”

    He looked at me in the eyes for the first time. I gave him an answer with a shrug. “Nothing really?”

    “Nothing really?”

    “I don’t like seeing people I know on tabloids.”

    He scoffed bitterly, like he was saying ‘Like you’d care, we barely know each other.’. But he was a really polite man, mind you, so he just said thanks.

    What was that for? I asked myself too.

    “Where will you go from here?”

    He just looked at me back.

    “Are you okay?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I know this sounds stupid but, you know you should call your manager to pick you up from here, don’t you?” I started to speak quite fast because I didn’t want to sound oversensitive. For some reasons, his eyes began to take surroundings to his mind once again.

    “What about you?”

    “Subway.”

    He pointed at his watch. “At this time?”

    “If I go now, I’ll make in just in time.”

    “Then hurry.”

    I nodded before turning around to take my leave first, rule 1 - don’t ever walk out of any kind of place together with an opposite celebrity. But that celebrity was still standing there in the dark alone. With dead eyes.

    “Hey”

    He looked up.

    “Nothing.”

 

    And the night that was like some weird day dream you have after eating too much was over that way.