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“Please, somebody, look at me! I’ve been keeping this inside me for years. Tell me you need me, if you do, I'd work my fingers to the bone. Say that I am useful, and I'll work myself to death for you. Somebody just praising my efforts would keep me going forever. Someone. Anyone! Say it's okay for me to be here…”
—
“And the Oscar for best actress in a leading role goes to…”
The golden statuette scintillated in the glare of the spotlights as Rinko Kikuchi slid her nail beneath the slit of the beige envelope.
That kind of silence produced by thousands, rather than emptiness.
“Kana Arima, for Rain Forecast !”
—
Many years ago
“I don’t want to go.”
Bill lit a cigarette outside the ground-floor lobby of the Aman Tokyo, the smoke curling around his golden tie with the Versace medusa on it. A fat, chunky Rolex glistened around his wrist.
“It’s a cultural experience, Bill,” Sean declared. He tapped a Gucci horsebit loafer against the solid stone as his eyes expected their black car to roll up, the rhythm blending with the rain outside.
“The tea ceremony with a geisha in Kyoto was a cultural experience. This? You’re a fucking weeaboo, Sean.” Bill exhaled, before handing off the stub of embers to a uniformed bellboy with golden buttons. “We’re going to Sushi Namba for dinner tonight with the Tokyo distributors, anyway.”
“May I remind you that you’re a Hollywood studio executive on a business trip, not a tourist on an eating tour.”
“Hey, there’s folks paying ten thousand dollars for the privilege of eating at Namba’s branch in Miami.”
“Then go to Miami.”
“You can go gawk at teenagers in Miami by the pool at the Surf Club, too, if that’s what you’re into.”
“Scarlett Johansson was a similar age when she filmed Lost in Translation here,” Sean noted, “and we have an open casting call for Sayonara, Nagasaki that we’ve had trouble filling. This could be a good opportunity, Bill. An early-stage investment, even. Plus the industry’s tripping over itself for some ‘diversity and inclusion’ these days.”
Bill rolled his eyes and stretched his fingers out towards Sean. “Can’t argue with business. Who’re we watching? Playbill, please.”
“It’s some amateur idol singer group named B-Komachi. Apparently they’re a reboot of some other famous group.” He handed the leaflet to Bill.
Bill glanced at the three girls making heart signs at him from the paper: two blondes flanking a redhead in the middle. “Sean, what’s the name of the singer in the center?”
“Oh, her? Her name is -”
—
Kana Arima felt time stop for a few moments in the cavernous auditorium, before everyone surrounding her stood and turned to applaud her.
“Was that really my name?” she thought, “maybe it’s a goof like the La La Land award many years ago?”
Her husband nudged her back into reality. “Come on, Kana, go get it!”
Her shiny velvet hair and her shiny velvet dress swayed as she rose and tottered towards the stage in heels with perhaps a little less grace than she would have desired or had imagined for this moment. She clambered up and soon the little golden man was smudged into her clammy hands and dumber-than-she-liked smile. She gulped and recomposed herself, to assume the look and profile that had won over the Academy, won over America and the entire world itself.
At this very moment, she felt the thousands of people in the auditorium and the millions watching on TV looking at only her. She gripped the Oscar statue tighter.
“Wow, what can I say? I never thought this day would come.”
She blinked for a moment, feeling like a small child actor in a pinafore and sunhat again. And thinking of those days made her think of someone…
“I remember when I first started acting, I thought it was all about me. But the truth is, no matter how big any star or director or writer is, it’s a team effort. No one person can make a great movie alone. So I thank the Academy for this recognition, but I have to thank the director for inviting me to participate in this project. Thank you to my fellow actors, especially my co-star Leo, you just brought this amazing energy to the set every day and worked so hard to mesh with me and the rest of the cast. Thank you to the entire crew, I love you guys and I will thank each of you when I find you!”
She turned towards her family. “Thank you to my husband for supporting me through thick and thin. Thank you to my daughter for her cheerleading and motivation. Thank you to…” She paused, just for an imperceptible second, “to my mother, for helping me get started and…always believing in me.”
“And for giving me my big break and supporting me in the industry all these years, you have my great thanks, producer Bill Whitehead. I wouldn’t be here without that serendipitous moment all those years ago with you.”
She added, almost without thinking, “and with Hoshino Ruby and Mem-cho”.
—
“You can’t leave!” Ruby protested.
Miyako groaned. “Technically, her B-Komachi contract’s almost up and it doesn’t say anything about activities in America anyway. Trust me, I had a lawyer comb through it.”
“Not can’t, I mean, shouldn’t !”
Kana couldn’t bear to look at Ruby and Mem-cho as she stood in the doorway of the familiar Strawberry Productions room.
“This is my dream, Ruby,” she whispered to the floor. She had never wanted to be an idol, in truth. Just another gig to tide her over as she bobbed between one occupation to another in an ocean of failure. Washed up child actor, a singer no one wants, a 2-bit actor for 2-bit TV dramas. Overambitious idol would have been yet another to add to the list, before the tall American Hollywood producer in a nice suit swooped in from the heavens to a handshake event after a concert and handed her his business card. Every actor just wants to be seen, to be enjoyed, and there was no stage with more eyes in the world than the American film industry.
“What about my dream?” Ruby whined. “What about what we talked about before our first concert? About being rookie idols together ?”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone better than me anyway,” Kana blandished.
She scooped up the office box in her arms and turned to exit the room when she almost ran into Aqua. He stared at her, wordless, expressionless. Typical.
“Please become an idol, for my sister,” he had asked her back then. “For me .”
“You’re far cuter than those run-of-the-mill idols.”
Kana dipped her head and pulled her beret forward as she walked past him. She didn’t want him to see her eyes, even if he could hear her sniffles.
There was a lump in her throat she wanted to cough out. It stayed there all the way until she was to fly out of Japan, as her former Strawberry Productions colleagues and her family waved her off at Haneda airport departures. As she hugged Aqua, unexpected even to herself. She whispered something in his ear, but even then all she could manage was, “Please wait for me, Aqua.”
—
There was a lump in Kana’s throat as she held tight to the Oscar statue, as she gazed at the audience and the television cameras.
“And finally, to the one who inspired me to become a better actor all those years ago…”
—
Skipping school to play baseball.
Pretending to be Pieyon and keeping up with their rigorous idol training under that stuffy mask.
A dinner date.
They were such stupid, childish moments so many years later, and yet they were demo reels for the one movie that Kana never got to make. The one she played on a projector in her head over and over again.
She had thought it kismet when they happened to pass by each other in that high school hallway all those years after their childhood acting days. Yet she had realized, waving to Aqua at the airport, that sometimes it wasn’t fate that brought people together, but merely dumb, meaningless coincidence.
—
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to remove your glasses and beret for a moment,” the Japanese border guard requested from his kiosk.
As Kana obliged, the border guard’s eyes widened. He glanced at the huge billboard ad at the airport duty-free store of Kana covering her mouth with a solid gold Audemars Piguet watch, then at the small smiling Kana on her passport, and then at the real Kana in an incognito baggy sweater in front of him.
“Would you mind if I had your autograph?” he asked.
“Sure,” she obliged as she scrawled a signature on an extra immigration form.
He handed back her passport. “Welcome back to Japan, Arima-san.”
—
“You have some nerve showing up out of the blue, finding me, and then immediately asking me about Aqua, Loli-senpai.”
“Loli-senp-” Kana gritted her teeth and shook a fist. “Why you! Will you ever drop it?”
Ruby gave a weak laugh. “There’s a lot of things that haven’t changed about you.”
She slid Kana a scotch on the rocks across the scratched lacquered counter. The whole Roppongi bar had a dark wood theme which probably looked luxurious in the bubble era when it was built. The thick dark carpet seemed made out of cigarette dust.
“Nicknames aside, you seem friendlier than I expected,” Kana admitted.
Ruby leaned behind the counter as she traced patterns in the wood grains with her finger, long golden strands falling in front of her face. “You know, at first I was really mad. At you especially, too.”
“What changed?”.
“A lot of things, but mainly time passing. I remember back then you used to always sell yourself short even when it wasn’t justified - we ended up not being able to find a new center, after all.”
Kana winced.
“I mean, Mem-cho and I were pretty terrible singers for a music group, even if it was just an idol group. But the truth is, Kana, I was glad to be able to taste the dream even for a little bit. That’s more opportunity than I ever had in my past lif- in my past childhood. And I came to realize that even that much was only possible because of you. So I really shouldn’t have blamed you so much when it came to an end after you moved on. Nothing lasts forever, after all. And on some level, I’m glad I got to be a small part of your dream at least.”
“Thanks, Ruby.” Kana stared at her reflection in the drink. “I wanted to visit all these years but…I was just kind of nervous about what I’d find, you know.”
“I think you’re lying, Loli-senpai.”
“Hey!”
“Well, only half-lying. I think you really were nervous, just not about me.”
Kana took a sip.
“Well, that too. I read about it online when…it happened,” Kana confessed.
Ruby scrawled an address on a blank receipt and slid it over to Kana.
“Thank you, Ruby.”
—
The door screeched open, followed by the incongruous clack-clack of stiletto high heels against the metal floor in the otherwise austere room.
Kana remembered how she had brushed her hair and redone her makeup in the school bathroom when Aqua had asked to see her after school, only for him to ask, really beg, her to join B-Komachi. It seemed so inappropriate that she had done it again, garbed to the nines in a floor-length dress and a small designer clutch and a beret of course, in this setting of all places and this circumstance of all times. But she wanted to look her best.
“Can I have your autograph, Arima-san?” the guard beside her ventured. Kana shot him a death glare and he quailed, head bowed.
There he was. It was really him.
Behind glass, in an orange jumpsuit.
Kana pulled out the chair and took a seat. She studied his blond curls, now slightly longer and more tousled. His sea-colored eyes seemed dull and dark and listless until he caught sight of her, and then they seemed to brighten, his posture seemed to straighten.
Her heart pounded in her chest. What could she say?
“Why didn’t you wait for me, you stupid idiot?” she cried out.
Aqua said nothing. His eyes just drifted to her hands resting on the table, studying the diamond ring on her finger. Kana noticed, screwed the ring off her finger, dropped it in her bag, and sighed.
Aqua moistened his lips.
“Blunt as always,” he muttered. Was that a slight curve of a smile? Another pause. “Why didn’t you stay?”.
“Why didn’t you ask me to stay?”.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t,” Aqua answered. “Because I knew a part of you would have wanted to stay, but you would have decided to pursue your dream anyway. Because I knew that’s what the girl I came to love would do and because that’s what I wanted her to do.”
As Kana’s vision blurred, she almost imagined Aqua in his old school uniform instead. Then it blackened as she buried her head against the table. So much for her effort putting on makeup.
Aqua said nothing as she sobbed.
She had worked herself to the bone, reached the pinnacle of her craft, because she had to be sure that it was worth what she had left behind, what she had given up, for it. That’s what all true artists did after all, right? The thought of that sacrifice reminded itself at least once every day ever since she left Japan.
She was a girl who got everything she wanted, who had more luck than one in a million. Everyone knew her name and face. She had more money than she could spend before she died. She had a family. And here she was, crying her heart out.
Why was she like this?
“Aqua…we’re both actors. And yet…you can’t now play the man I fell in love with, even though you have the same hair, the same eyes, the same voice, the same lines. I’m sooo, so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, Aqua.”
“You didn’t do it, Kana. I did.”
“But I could have stopped you!”.
“Aqua’s like his old self when he’s with you.”
What happens to the orderly orbits of the planets when the sun disappears?
Aqua said nothing in response.
“I have to ask, do you regret what you did?”
“Not until now,” Aqua admitted, “because I never expected to see you again.”
“…in person, of course. I did watch your movies,” he added. “You did an amazing job in Rain Forecast . I knew you were a genius actor since the very beginning. Congratulations on your Oscar, Kana.”
Kana mustered a smile. She closed her eyes, leaned in, and left behind an imprint of lipstick on the dirty prison glass.
—
“...thank you, Hoshino Aqua.”