Chapter 23
I don't know exactly what happened in the thirty seconds that followed Ochiai's statement. Aya and I looked at each other, looked at Ochiai, and then back at each other in an involuntary imitation of a silly cartoon scene.
Aya was the first to react verbally.
"Excuse me?" she asked politely.
The manager of the café - who, with her simple statement, had just freaked me out in a way worse than Aya and Shibata had combined - invited herself to the third chair at our table and sat very straight, her hands folded on the table in front of her in an attempt to demonstrate the calm she had regained. She looked directly at me, and I found myself squirming under her gaze. She began to narrate her story.
"About four months ago, I realised everything had changed. I don't know exactly when it happened, but when you two didn't come here as usual, I began to pry. I checked up some sources and discovered that your histories had changed. Well, yours had," she said, looking at Aya and then looking at me, "but yours didn't even exist."
"Wait," I interrupted. "You actually know me?"
The woman nodded.
"And it's not just that you kind of recognise me or think you know me?" I asked, perhaps feeling a bit desperate.
I wanted her to just recognise me, not know me. That way nothing would be different from the current norm. We were already aware of people recognising me, and we were trying to deal with it. If this woman actually knew who I was, then we'd have to figure yet another thing out.
Ochiai frowned, and I lost hope.
"Yes, I know you."
"Ochiai-san," Aya said quietly. "The same thing happened to me."
Ochiai looked at her.
"I woke up in a changed world where Miki-chan didn't appear to exist."
"Hey, I exist," I butted in, getting a little annoyed at my existence being brushed aside.
"Sorry," Aya apologised. "I mean the one that I knew didn't exist."
"So who is this?" Ochiai asked, looking at me again with a slight frown.
"Who do you think I am? Didn't you just say you knew me?" I retorted in an exasperated way.
Ochiai and Aya both paused and looked at me. They must have known how painful it was to sit there and be talked about like that. They must have realised they were being rude and confusing. Or something.
"I mean," Ochiai continued slowly, "you're obviously different from the Fujimoto-san that I knew four months ago, but you're also obviously the same person. I want to know how you got here. How you met her."
She gestured towards Aya.
"That's Aya's story to tell," I mumbled, hoping that some light would be shed after everything was explained.
Aya looked at me as if getting permission to speak, and I gave her the go ahead: a blank look and a small nod.
"I woke up one day and she had disappeared. Nobody here - none of our friends or co-workers - knew who she was. Only I seemed to have a memory of her. When I realised she had been erased from the world, I went up to Hokaido to see if I could find her," she explained. "When I found her, she didn't know who I was. Not a single memory."
"And yet you still managed to convince her to come here?" Ochiai asked.
Aya appeared flustered at the question, and I, too, wanted to tell this lady to stop being so nosey. Not that I cared. But wait. I did.
"Yeah, but that's not the point," I interrupted, and Ochiai let it be.
"All right. So what's happened since coming here?"
Aya took another deep breath.
"She got here at the beginning of January, and at first it was okay, but-"
"It was never okay," I continued for her, wanting to tell my side of the story. "From the moment I stepped off the train to go to Aya's place, people started to react strangely to me. I've had people coming up to me and then apologising because they thought I was someone else. I've had people staring at me with strange looks on their faces. I've also had inexplicable encounters with people who had already judged me and have certain expectations of me. I've made enemies with people I've never met before in my life. I've probably received special treatment, too, because of who this other Miki is."
Aya jumped in and quickly explained the situation with Shibata, and by the end of it, I thought Ochiai would think we were crazy and leave.
She didn't, however. She stayed and continued to talk.
"I'd like to confirm some things if that's okay with you. Just bear with me."
Aya nodded.
"You've been patronising this shop for many years now."
Aya nodded again.
"At least once a week, sometimes more. At the end of October, you stopped coming here, and I had a bad feeling about it. It took me a month to turn to the gossip magazines and see what was happening with you. What I saw were the usual ridiculous rumours, but what caught my eye was an odd reference. You and your friend Shibata-san having done a tour together. I don't consider myself an expert on your life, but I knew that had never happened. Am I right?"
"Right. It never happened!"
Aya sounded thankful.
"Well, at least what we know seems to match up."
"It does," Aya mumbled, the relief clearly showing on her face.
Silence for a beat.
"Why do you think this happened?" Aya asked.
Ochiai didn't appear to notice she was being addressed. She sat in silence for a long time staring at the table, her face expressionless. I was about to repeat Aya's question when she spoke up.
"I don't know," she started. "I have no experience with supernatural phenomena. Excuse me."
With surprising speed, Ochiai got up and walked over to the kitchen where a distressed man in an apron was waving her over. Maybe there was a cookie emergency. She went through the door, and Aya and I were left alone again in the empty café.
"I can't believe she knows who you are," Aya said to me in awe.
I shifted uncomfortably.
"I think it's creepy. Who is she?"
Aya eyed me with a smile.
"See? I told you she was an interesting character. Do you believe me now?"
I nodded grudgingly. Creepy or not, she had my attention.
"So what should we do now? What if there are more people who know the other Miki?"
"I somehow doubt there's anyone else."
She sounded positive. I chose to believe her. The alternative was frightening. Or at least a fraction more frightening than reality.
"I-" she started to continue, but Ochiai popped out of the kitchen and came back to our table.
"Apologies. Cake emergency."
Well, I'd been close enough in my guess.
"Frankly, at first when you didn't come here for a few weeks," Ochiai continued as though there had been no interruption, "I thought things had broken down between you two. Nothing was quite the same since that debacle a few years ago."
Of course I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was extremely curious as to what this "debacle" had been, and I was also a bit put off by the fact that Ochiai knew a little more about me and Aya than most people did.
I looked over at Aya questioningly, but she was looking at Ochiai with a pleasant but clueless face.
"What debacle?" she asked.
Ochiai looked at me and then back at Aya.
"The magazine article..." she said slowly, trying to jog Aya's memory.
Aya now looked confused.
"What magazine article?"
Ochiai looked at her, and then for the first time I saw a look of discomfort appear on her face.
"About Fujimoto-san's indiscretion."
My indiscretion? Or more like the other Miki's indiscretion? What had the other Miki done?
Aya's look turned slightly towards the negative side.
"What are you talking about?" she demanded.
What was going on? Had Aya forgotten about something the other Miki had done? Or did she not want to talk about it and was trying to convey that to Ochiai?
Ochiai looked at me again and then spoke.
"Tell me you don't remember about three or four years ago when Fujimoto-san appeared in Friday magazine and was revealed to be dating Shouji-san, the comedian, for quite a few months."
"Huh?!?"
Aya's outburst surprised me. She yelled so loudly that the chef who had called Ochiai over earlier poked his head out of the kitchen door to make sure a robbery wasn't in progress.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Indeed, I thought.
What had happened? A comedian? A betrayal? A scandal?
Ochiai frowned deeply and then related to us an interesting tale. Apparently the other Miki had been caught up in a dating scandal and had been fired because of it. It all sounded ridiculous to me. Why fire a girl for having a boyfriend? I began to wonder why I had ever wanted to be an idol so badly in my youth.
"After that happened, you two met here and fought like vultures. You both eventually stormed off. I thought that was it. I thought it was over for you two. But about a month after Fujimoto-san had been fired, she came to me for help and advice. Somehow you two started talking again and you repaired whatever had been broken."
Aya stared at Ochiai. I wanted to reach over and shut her mouth for her. It was hanging open like she was waiting to catch insects for lunch.
"You don't remember any of that?"
Aya managed a nod.
"Shouji-san?" Ochiai tried.
Aya shook her head.
"Doesn't ring a bell," she rasped out.
It didn't ring a bell in my mind either, but that was to be expected.
"Then I think our problem is a bit bigger than I originally thought," Ochiai muttered.
She sounded almost perversely happy about that. I wished she wouldn't derive excitement from this situation. This was my life being screwed up. It wasn't a game or a TV programme.
A hundred questions ran through my head, most of them starting with "what the" and then descending into foul language. Aya just sat there looking stunned.
"That never happened. Miki never did that to me. She never would. Never. Right?"
She looked at me as though I was supposed to know the answer. I shrugged, which I think did no good to ease her mind.
"Forgive me for sounding strange," Ochiai said quietly, "but I think the three of us are from very different places."
By that she meant different worlds? Dimensions? Because that was a whacked out theory, but nothing explained it better. Aya was from a world where we were happy together until she had to go on a three month business trip and Miki disappeared. Ochiai was from a world where Miki cheated, Aya forgave, and things were put back together until Miki disappeared. I was from a world where I'd met neither of these people - nor any comedian.
"How could this have happened?" I asked, taking charge.
Aya looked like she was going through some huge inner turmoil. She wasn't looking at either of us.
"I can't even begin to guess," was Ochiai's unhelpful answer.
"Ochiai-san, how did we meet?" Aya asked suddenly, interrupting us.
"Here in the café. You've been a regular for quite a few years now."
"And did we talk much?"
Ochiai tilted her head to the side in thought.
"Not until after the scandal. Up until then, we chatted about the weather."
Aya nodded, pensiveness etched into every crease in the skin of her face.
"I just thought of something, Ochiai-san."
We both looked at her, but she kept her eyes trained on Ochiai only, not sparing me a single glance. It made my stomach sink just a bit as an impending sense of doom came over me.
"How did I know your name?"
"Huh?" I couldn't help but say.
"You never learned it?" Ochiai asked curiously.
Aya nodded.
"I've chatted with you occasionally - enough to get a sense of your personality - but I never learned your name. So how did I know your name?"
Aya and Ochiai stared at each other and I watched.
If Aya had no memory of learning Ochiai's name, then how had she been able to use it the night before to describe to me who we were going to meet? It was knowledge that she didn't know she had. Knowledge placed in her mind.
I had a thought.
"Could it be that, like, um..." I trailed off stupidly, unable to express myself coherently.
Ochiai eyed me with the same curious look that had been on her face the past minute. Aya eyed me with a neutral expression. I wanted to sink into the ground.
"Could it be like how everyone's been recognising me? Somehow, somewhere, wires have been crossed and people like Shibata have had this information put into their brains without knowing it?"
What had seemed like a good theory in my mind sounded so stupid spoken aloud that I couldn't believe I've been the one to say it. However, Ochiai seemed to like the idea.
"That's one way to think of it," she said thoughtfully. "But the question of how it came to be still stands, as well as why the three of us seem to be a little different."
Nobody knew. Nobody knew because it was a messed up, impossible situation that only belonged on television and in dreams.
"Hey Aya-chan," I said softly.
She looked at me.
"What do you think?" I asked her, seeking her opinion.
I had come to rely on it. On what she thought. Now we needed her thoughts more than ever.
"I think..." she mumbled. "I think I want to go home."
I blinked.
"Okay," I said.
Ochiai took out a pen and wrote her name, phone number, and e-mail address on a pad of paper that she took out of nowhere. She slid it over to us.
"I think we'll need to talk some more later."
Aya nodded blankly, took the paper, and put it in her purse.
"Let's go," I said, standing up.
She stood up quietly and we said goodbye to Ochiai. I told her we'd come back soon. She saw us off to the door.
The train ride home was deathly silent. Aya looked concentrated, and I didn't want to say anything out of fear. We got back to Aya's apartment, and I sat on the couch while Aya went off to her room to do something. When she came back, she saw me just sitting here and then went to the kitchen.
"You hungry?" she asked.
Surprised that she was talking to me, I turned around.
"Yes."
She asked nothing else and went about preparing lunch. I didn't dare offer to help. I could tell she was in a foul mood. I didn't criticise her cooking technique when she handed me a plate of lopsided onigiri. I smiled, took a bite, and said it tasted good.
She remained seated on the floor and gave me no reply.
What the hell? What did I do? Why was she angry with me? I suspected she was angry at me about what she'd found out from Ochiai, but that wasn't fair. That wasn't me in the magazine. That wasn't me.
"Hey, Aya," I said with a bit of an edge in my voice. "Why the silent treatment?"
She put her food down and looked up at me.
"I'm just thinking, okay?"
She spoke so defensively that it was obvious something was wrong.
"You know, the stuff that Ochiai-san told us about was about someone else. Not me," I reminded her.
I detected a bit of a twitch in one of her eyebrows.
"That other Miki - or other other Miki from Ochiai-san's world - is not me. Okay? She's another person."
I spoke maybe a tad too angrily, but I'd had enough of being associated with other people whether consciously or unconsciously.
Aya sighed and picked up a half-eaten onigiri and studied it for thirty seconds.
"Do you think you could give me some time alone?"
She may as well have started chanting in Yiddish. I might have been less surprised.
Time alone? That meant "get out" in a polite way.
I had done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong. And I was being kicked out of the only place I had to stay. Out into the cold of the streets.
I considered my possibilities. I could start arguing with her, but then where would that leave us? I probably wouldn't want to stick around afterwards if we argued viciously. I could beg for forgiveness, but I couldn't bring myself to do that when I'd done absolutely nothing wrong. I could try and talk to her in a level-headed way... but if the person I was talking to was being unreasonable, I'd turn unreasonable, too. I could do as she asked and just walk out. Find somewhere to stay.
I chose the last option. Without finishing my lunch, I stood up, grabbed a few things of mine, and walked to the door.
"I can't believe you," I said quietly.
I slipped on my shoes and jacket and walked out. I hadn't seen or heard her move from her seat. Obviously I'd interpreted her words correctly.
Stupid idiot Aya! I screamed in my mind.
Why was she such a child? Why would she blame something like that on me? Why did she have to keep thinking I was that other girl? She'd promised me that that's not what she'd been doing, but she was. She was doing it now as I walked down the hallway, my anger showering me like buckets of water poured from a balcony.
Once I got out of the building, I pulled my phone out. It was past one o'clock. It was cold. I was miserable and pissed off.
I dialled up Kuniko.
She answered the phone screaming my name.
"Fujimocchan!!!"
I held the device a metre away from my head until the screaming died down.
"Are you busy now?" I asked before she could start with any pleasantries.
"You're so rude!" she scolded me. "You could at least ask how I've been the past week."
"Are you busy now?" I repeated.
"No," she huffed.
"Where are you?"
"I'm shopping in Shibuya," she replied.
She was out in public and answering her phone like that? How embarrassing.
"Are you alone?"
There was an excited pause for breath.
"Actually, I met this guy on Wednesday at a club and he promised he'd prove that he could go on a shopping date with a girl without falling asleep, so he-"
"Oh," I said, trying to keep the dismay out of my voice.
So much for hanging out with her.
She didn't carry on, however. She stopped her ramble.
"Are you okay?" she asked quietly, turning serious.
I laughed bitterly in my mind.
"I've been better," I replied truthfully.
"Wait," she said, and I heard her speak to someone before coming back on the line. "Come and meet me. I just sent him home."
Now there was friendship.
"Thanks, Kuni-chan," I said gratefully.
"How long will you be?"
I looked at my watch. I had to get to the station first.
"Twenty minutes."
"Good. Meet me at the south exit."
I made a sound of consent, hung up, and picked up my pace, walking further away from the source of all my troubles and towards a person that at least didn't purposely blame me for someone else's idiotic mistakes.
The whole short trip to Shibuya I went through bouts of anger, sadness, and even guilt. I couldn't believe I actually felt bad about something I'd never done. I would never do something like that on purpose. Maybe the other Miki had been sleepdating. Maybe she hadn't been aware that she was going out with that guy...
I shook my brain free of such thoughts. Why was I justifying some non-existent girl's unfaithful actions with such silly suggestions? And why was she so important anyway? It seemed the whole universe revolved around her. Or around me. Us. Each world was defined in terms of what its Fujimoto Miki had done. That sent shivers down my back.
Kuniko was standing right by the exit of the station when I got there. She was holding three or four shopping bags and her cell phone and looking cold. She was easy to spot because of it, and I smiled in relief as I walked over to her. She watched me the whole time, studying my face and not reacting in any way until I stopped in front of her. She gave me a knowing nod.
"Ice cream," she said as though a doctor prescribing medicine.
I nodded back with definite gusto. Four degrees centigrade weather be damned.
"Ice cream."
And so we went for the time-honoured medicine for matters of the heart: chocolate ice cream.
Topic: Restart (Love x ∞ Part II) (Read 83880 times)