Harumi stood in the center of the recording studio with a microphone six inches from her mouth. He eyes remained fixed on the image projected against the far wall as she tried to keep her body in position; it was a lot harder recording for a show than playing for thousands on a stage. She didn't have to worry about touching the stand or breathing too hard on the thin screen that protected the mic.
It wasn't what she expected when Satomi said she would be recording an anime. Harumi thought it would look more finished. She wasn't expecting the sketched women on the screen moving with disjointed swings and exaggerated looks. Her character was a cute little girl and the animators said they would use Harumi's trademarked colors for it, but the screen just had a few eyes and a mouth to mimic as she said her lines.
She blinked to clear her eyes.
The recording light flashed off. “You missed a line,” came the impersonal voice of the recording manager. She never saw the man, but in the last few hours, she came to hate the sound of his voice. It grated on her ears every time he stopped and made her do it again. Even when she said her clearest words, he found some imagined flaw on her timbre or pacing.
Harumi took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. She bowed to the mirrored window that shielded the producer from her vision. “I'm sorry, I will do it again.”
The speakers hissed, but no one said anything.
After a few seconds, Harumi shifted to her other foot. “Um, excuse me?”
No answer.
She waited a minute. She could imagine the ticks of a clock, but the studio had nothing that would make a noise inside the cramped room. She amused herself by imagining patterns on the baffles, a fancy word for carpet stapled to the wall, and then watching herself in the reflective glass window.
Harumi was a beautiful girl, well not exactly a girl. Her persona was still sixteen but she just celebrated her ninetieth birthday. Her lips pursed together, celebrated was also a stretch of the imagination. The grueling need to keep up appearances for the public meant that she had to whisper herself a birthday song while sitting in a closet between shoots.
A frown briefly crossed her face before she forced it away. It was only a few weeks ago and she still felt a bitterness in her stomach every time she wondered where the last two years went. Everything was controlled and placed and presented, all for the kayfabe.
She made a soft noise in the back of her throat to attract their attention. “Excuse me?”
The speakers hissed and Satomi's voice came through. “Go for a walk, we're talking. Five minutes.” The speaker clicked off.
Harumi stared at the window for a moment and waited for more instructions, but none came. She sighed and pulled off her headset. It tugged on her bleached blonde hair before she pulled it lose. Setting it down, she gave the glass window one last look before heading outside.
There was no one in the plain hallway. Harumi turned around twice before she picked a random direction and headed down it.
Ten minutes later, she was outside of the featureless building and in the alley between a shopping arcade and the recording building. At one end of the alley was a busy road and the other lead to a quieter residential area.
“You look lost.”
She jumped at a strange man's voice. Turning around, she saw a young man in his mid-twenties sitting on a dumpster. Curls of cigarette smoke rose around his head and the bright cherry end glowed in the dim light.
“Don't worry,” he pulled the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled. For a moment, he looked like one of the monsters the video game she was recording. The smoke faded away to reveal his dark hair and an easy smile. He had a small goatee, close-cropped hair, and wore a uniform of one of the restaurants in the arcade.
“Um, no,” she looked around nervously, “I was told to take a break and I thought I would… go outside.”
“Well, if you don't have anywhere to go, why don't you have a seat?” He padded the dumpster next to him and the plastic top thudded. “No one ever bothers me here.”
A prickle of nervousness filled her, but she inched forward to the dumpster. Finding a box, she stepped up on it and sat down next to him. Her dress, a brilliant yellow, settled down over the top of the dumpers.
He chuckled and gestured to the door to the recording studio. “What do they do in there?”
“I'm… they are recording a game.”
“Oh, like Street Fighter? One of those fighting games?”
“I think its a visual novel, actually.”
“My sisters like those games.” He waved his cigarette and it left a line of smoke behind his fingers. “I don't play them myself. All these emotions and feelings.” He grinned at her. “Makes me feel like a girl.”
“I,” Harumi clasped her fingers together, “I don't really have time to play myself. They… they keep me pretty busy.”
He looked through the smoke at her and smiled. “Doing what?”
For a long moment, she stared at him as she thought about the day before, when she did a bikini shot on the top of a waterfall. It was a long, exhausting day. But, instead of heading home to the beautiful home that her fans thought she lived in, her home was a one-bedroom apartment on the far edge of Tokyo. It was well hidden to prevent any of her fans from every finding out that she was a practical slave when she wasn't in the public view.
“Hello?” He waved his hand.
Harumi shook her head. “Sorry, just thinking.”
“So,” he said, “what do you do when you aren't sitting pretty?”
She blushed. “I… they take pictures of me. And I do photo shoots… and sing a little.”
He nodded and took another drag of his cigarette.
She hesitated, the need to keep a secret rising in her throat. All the hours of singing and pretending she was something she wasn't suddenly came to a head. She closed her mouth for a long moment and then the words came out. She stumbled at first as she told him about recording for the game and how they kept her in a small sealed room, but then it blossomed into more stories of her bikini shoots and singing on stage, pretending to live the glamours life all the while living in a hovel.
The young man said nothing.
The floodgates continued to pour out. Even though she knew she was talking too much, she couldn't stop. The last three years came pouring out to a complete stranger sitting on a dumpster.
When it ended, she was crying. She went to wipe the tears from her hands and realized she couldn't. Looking down, she realized she was holding his hands.
Everything came crashing around her. She gasped and yanked her hand back. “No, I-I'm sorry, I have to…” She slipped off the dumpster and landed heavily on the ground. The back of her heel cracked and she stumbled.
Her hand slapped hard against the metal edge and she felt a sharp pain where the metal cut into her.
The young man looked surprised, the cigarette slipping from his fingers.
Harumi looked up at him and then away. “I can't, I'm sorry!”
“Wait!” His cry echoed against the walls.
But she was already at the end of the alley and sprinting away.