“She doesn’t like the costume,” Rina muttered. “I didn’t like it either.”
Kaori raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “No one likes the costumes. They’re always terrible, this time especially. But we wear them anyway, and they’re never as bad as they look at first.” She headed for the dresser and began digging through drawers. Stockings, lingerie, and compression tights fluttered to the carpet. “What they need to do, in my opinion, is kiss and make up. Or make out. Whichever one helps the most.”
Ruriko’s head jerked up. “You think they’re together?”
Kaori laughed. “Everyone knows. They’re so obvious. Even Miyu knows, and she’s in denial because she’s half in love with Yume herself.”
Ruriko’s stomach turned and she sat down, hard, right there on the floor. They’d fought because Ruriko had wanted to tell the rest of IRIS about them and Yume hadn’t. The media would have eviscerated them. Ruriko hadn’t cared.
The last thing she’d heard, before she’d turned on her heel and stormed away, was Yume shouting, How could you be so selfish?
Yume had forbidden her to tell anyone anything. So Rina hadn’t. Rina stopped talking to her groupmates altogether, and the frosty silence had carried over on the train to Harajuku, days later.
Kaori gave up on the dresser and threw open the door to her walk-in closet. The racks were a riot of color, stretching back like a long, awful throat made of bold metallic dresses and gauzy floral prints. Every costume she’d worn onstage, arranged by year instead of color. A fan’s paradise. “It’s gotta be in here. Hang on.”
“Please don’t,” said Ruriko. Her voice came out strangled. The closet stank of bad memories; just looking at the costumes made sweat gather in her palms, at the small of her back, her heartbeat galloping into her throat. But Kaori was already rifling through them, humming one of their songs under her breath. Ruriko could only remember half of the notes; the melody in her head was distorted, like trying to listen to music underwater.
Kaori emerged, flourishing a silver dress with a stiff, flared skirt. “Look, I found it! Isn’t this terrible?”
“It’s really bad,” mumbled Ruriko. The second-to-last time she’d seen that costume, she’d thrown it in Yume’s face.
Kaori pressed it against Ruriko’s chest. “Here, try it on. It is so uncomfortable, you will not believe it.”
Ruriko should have said no. But all she could think of was how she had screamed at Yume, sending the dress flying in her face like a giant bat. If she could have taken it back—if she could take any of it back—
Something must have been wrong with her head, because then she was stepping out of her jeans, and Kaori was zipping the dress up behind her, all the way to the nape of her neck. It didn’t fit properly; their bodies weren’t the same shape, and where Ruriko was small and soft, Kaori was tall and toned. This version of her, seventeen years old and programmed with a new set of memories—October twelfth, two days from IRIS’s amputated future—was full of tomboyish energy and excitement.
“See, I told you. But you actually look pretty good in this,” said Kaori, turning her toward the mirror. They stood side by side, Ruriko pinched into a dress that was too tight in the waist and too loose in the bust, Kaori comfortable in shorts and a light blouse. The dress gaped open like a loose flap of skin over Ruriko’s breasts. None of it fit, and it was hard to even look at her own body.
And then Kaori tapped a panel on the wall, and music blared into the tiny room. Synth vocals over a pulsing beat, four voices in one.
The Aidoru Hotel vanished. Ruriko was back there, standing on that slowly rising stage, her eyes wide in the dark, the ceiling of the Astro Hall soaring high above her in perfect geometry, her high heels already pinching her feet with two and a half hours left to dance, empty palm aching to hold Yume’s hand, mouth still angry, both at Yume and at herself for not being able to get over it, waiting beneath that teetering lighting grid, waiting for the tech cue to start the third song, waiting—
“I can’t do this.” Ruriko’s hands scratched wildly at the dress, hunting for the zipper. She couldn’t reach it, and she thought, wildly, What if I am stuck in this forever? “I can’t, I can’t—”
The music cut off and her ears rang with silence. Hands found her and unzipped her quickly, and Ruriko sagged with relief. “Are you okay?” asked Kaori. Looking at her, Ruriko saw, instead of her wide, earnest face, a mess of dark hair spilling out from beneath two tons of metal, and sharp, shocked shapes of blood splattered across the stage.
“I don’t think so,” Ruriko whispered. She couldn’t be okay, not if she was paying to destroy herself, over and over every month.
Kaori pulled her into her arms and held her tight. They stayed like that until Ruriko’s two hours were up.
Ruriko was still shaking as she boarded her train home. Her phone rattled in her grip. But by the time the subway reached its next stop, she had booked and paid for her next appointment at the Aidoru.
*
“This is going to sound rich, coming from me,” said Shunsuke, “but you need to learn to let things go.”
They stood on the balcony of Shunsuke’s apartment, smoking together and watching the rain pour down in great sheets. The brilliant multicolored lights from all the signs and ads and cars zinging by became patchy and blurred, doubled and strange, in this weather.
“Sure I do. Speaking of, how’s that new dry cleaner working out for you?” said Ruriko.
“He’s great. He never asks any questions.” He cut his eyes at her. “I’m serious. Those girls can’t remember anything. They don’t even know who you are.”
“They can’t remember,” Ruriko mumbled, stabbing out her cigarette. “But I can’t forget. I don’t want to forget.”
“You know what always helps me,” said Shun, and Ruriko hated him for what he was about to say. “Cutting right to the heart of the problem. And you’re the heart, Rina-ko. Not them.”
She flicked the cigarette off the edge of the balcony. Its dying ember flickered in the air, fluttering downward before disappearing into the night.
“You can finish this. You’ll never have to go back again.”
She whirled on him, anger flaring bright in her. Shunsuke always acted like he had everything figured out, with his sly voice and dry cleaning and neat little suitcase. “Does it feel good to lie to me?” she snapped. “Is that why you keep coming back to Aidoru, Shun? Because you’ve excised the heart of the problem?”