Cutting through the crowds of Center Gai, I still feel like an insect. Part of a swarm, a plague on this shining city. Up on the LCD screen, a singing girl rounds her pink lips. It’s a perfect O for Otherworldly. I am a cicada preparing to molt, a pearly shell forming around my skin as I ascend toward the special girl.

I step into the Tower building elevator and find another teenager there, quite like me: dressed in a navy blue school uniform, baby-faced but skinny, an endearing bruise on one of her bony knees. I got mine from falling in the bathroom, desperately drunk. Hers are probably from PE class in the private school she attends, leagues above my level. Her skin looks like make-up would be an insult to it. She is too far away to even notice me staring at her. 

We get off on the same floor, wordlessly. My heart quickens as I trail her down a long corridor. It would not surprise me if she was signed to the same label; she seems to belong in this world much more than I do. I know she must be a newcomer like me, because I would know her if she had already debuted, but the thought is not reassuring. She has molted a long time ago, or perhaps entered this world already possessing her skin, ready to wield the body like a blade.

As I expected—feared—hoped? her stride comes to a halt at the door of Mr. Takahata, my manager. She hesitates for a second before knocking. “Come in,” Mr. Takahata shouts. She enters without holding the door open for me. I wonder if she genuinely has not noticed my presence. Perhaps I have turned into a ghost with a heartbeat. For a split second I close my eyes and let myself float in the glittering dream. 

“Ah, Suzuka, you’re on time for once,” Mr. Takahata says. “Come take a seat.”

I keep my head half-bowed as I sit beside the elevator girl. She looks at me as though only becoming aware of my existence for the first time, taking in every wrinkle on my clothes, every strand of hair out of place. Pinned under her full attention, I am so close to insecthood. “Don’t look so confused,” Mr. Takahata says, jovially, to both of us. “Yukiko, this is Suzuka. Suzuka, Yukiko.”

“Pleased to meet you, Suzuka,” Yukiko says, bowing. Her voice is clear but sweet, crystallized honey, exactly how a girl’s voice should be. Mine sounds all wrong—not genderless, but the singular cry of a failed girl. I press my lips together.

“You’re both slated to debut this November, so I thought it’d be good for you girls to meet.”

We nod in unison, and it elevates me.

“Yukiko is our most recent signee. In fact, she was only contracted last week. She is incredibly impressive—plays three instruments, dances well, face and voice of an angel.”

“Ah, please—” Yukiko giggles, hiding her mouth behind a thin hand.

“We have no doubt your debut will be a hit. Suzuka, on the other hand…She’s been signed to us for a full two years now, but we’re still getting her ready for the debut.”

“A diamond takes some time to refine,” Yukiko says sweetly.

“So you’re a diplomat.”

They giggle conspiratorially, and I have nothing to say to defend myself.

“You’ll be sharing your TV debut in December’s Shinrai Shoujo program. Rehearsals start next Tuesday.”

“How exciting,” Yukiko sighs.

“Yes, I’m looking forward to it,” I say. I just want to go home and bury my head in a pillow, put the TV on loud, but I am still here, nodding involuntarily as Mr. Takahata explains something I do not follow. It probably does not even really concern me. Not a single word of the subsequent conversation manages to stab through the static in my head, until we are finally being dismissed.

“I’ll see you in the fitting tomorrow, Yukiko—make sure not to eat too much breakfast.” Mr. Takahata glances at me and says, by way of goodbye, “Just don’t get yourself into any more trouble, Suzuka.”

My big sister is a yo-yo dieting nurse, and she sometimes sends me scrubs that don’t fit her right. I love wearing them at home and pretending I’m in a hospital. What I really want is to be cared for, tucked into bed and given pills that give me dreamless sleep, but the vague medical associations are enough to satisfy my naive heart. While wearing her clothes, I often dream of my big sister. I am lying in the darkness, an IV tube in my arm, and she emerges from a square of pure light, drawing the curtains of my bed apart. She brings me trays of citrus fruits, pets my hair and takes my temperature. She sings lullabies into my ear and whispers gossip about the old people in our hometown. Her body is warm and firm like the earth. Every time, I wake up smiling.

I’m not sleepy enough to coax my sister into taking care of me, yet, so I lie on top of my bed covers and listen to the sound of traffic below, the inane talk show blaring on TV, my phone vibrating with relentless notifications. My apartment is small and dirty, but I can always settle in the labyrinthine house of loneliness. On TV, the ad break segues into the theme song of Hundred Princess, and I lift my head up to stare at the screen. This week, the main performers are the B group of YZW68. I recognize most of these girls, and they’re all quite boring. The interview segment drags on for far too long.

“What’s your favorite animal, Sayuri-chan?”

“Um, I like cats.”

“What do you like about cats?”

“Well—they’re so cute! Aren’t they?”

“What about you, Mika-chan?”

“I like cats too.”

Their dance number is equally lifeless, anemic marionettes defeated by their calorie deficits. True professionals would know how to power through. I can’t see any of them being promoted to the A group anytime soon. Overcome with frustration, I switch the TV off before the credits roll. My fingers clench and unclench around the silver handles of the sewing scissors kept in a plastic box under my bed, together with other supplies. I know I’ve got to stop it with the cutting. If only I knew who ratted me out to Mr. Takahata, I would cut that bitch instead. But I’ve got to let it go. The scars on my thigh are almost faded, and there will be no new ones.

“What if your debut is a failure, and you end up going the gravure route?” Mr. Takahata had asked me after he found out, not unreasonably. “Who’s gonna want to see a maimed chick in a bikini?” He had fallen silent for a while before adding: “Actually, I’m sure there’s a market for that.” I know there is—I’ve watched the stuff. Still, I got the message. There is some hope for me yet. Mr. Takahata might not have much faith in me, but neither is he in a hurry to discard me, and I know I should be grateful for that.

Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I wonder if there truly is that much of a difference between the dream-worlds of the idol, the gravure model, even the AV starlet. In each case, a girl carries the expectations of an audience, sublimates herself through them, all the way to eternity—a glossy page, a shining screen, a sticky half-memory. I know I can only think this way because I am a pervert. For most people, there exists a difference of morals. Therefore, no cutting for me. I roll over in bed and stare at my wall, my screen, my wall, my screen, my wall, drag myself out of bed and stare at my physics homework. Ambulances scream by as I calculate movements of kinetic energy. My own body is so sluggish, barely generating any heat at all, numbed by boredom and hunger pangs. I know a mission exists for me in this world, but I have not been set upon it just yet.

Because of last summer’s incident and my old cutting habit, Mr. Takahata seems convinced I am suicidal, which is an insult. The one time I did try to kill myself, the goal was not to die, and I thought it would be fairly obvious to everyone who should’ve known me. I was simply tired of waiting, being muzzled with an impotent contract. I have no memories of the hours following my admittance to the hospital; I woke up from a total blackout with a drip in my arm.

“Mr. Takahata from Dove Heart is here to see you,” a nurse had said by way of greeting, already opening the door to let him in.

Mr. Takahata looked haggard, as though my incident had kept him up all through those hours I swam in the sea of chemical sleep. “Good morning, princess,” he’d said, a wry smile on his face. “I was wondering if you’d sleep for a hundred years.” At that point, my head still felt very heavy, and even a gentle shake of it had sent ripples of nausea through my body.

“Morning,” I’d said simply, trying to move my face as little as possible.

“Do you remember the voicemail you sent last night?”

“No.”

“Shall I recount what you said?”

“Please.”

“You said you’ll kill yourself unless I let you have your debut by the end of the year. The call from the hospital reached me earlier than your message.” He’d paused for a moment, laughing dryly to himself. “Fuck, I thought. Is this really it? Are you really so impatient? Naturally I rushed here, and they said you just OD’d on over-the-counter painkillers. They had to pump your stomach, but there’s no sign of liver damage.” He’d taken a very deep smoker-wheeze of a breath. “Look, Suzuka-san. I am simply confused. What do you want from me, from this life? Do you really want to die?”

“What I said in my voicemail was true,” I’d said, my voice thin but confident enough. “I don’t remember it, but I must have meant every single word. You have to give me this. Otherwise I swear I will jump from the roof of the hospital.”

“Please consider this from my perspective,” he’d said. “If you’re going to pull stunts like this, how are we supposed to trust you as an employee?”

“I don’t care if you trust me or not. If you don’t give me a real chance, I’m going to off myself. That’s a promise.”

That made him laugh again, more nervously. “Look, kid, I’ll see what I can do for you. Just stay away from the roof for now. Will you promise that too?”

I’d nodded and been left alone in the strange unsanitary loneliness of the hospital. I spent seven days there, being monitored for signs of further mental imbalance. I suppose I might have been let out sooner, had the record label wanted me. During those muggy afternoons, staring at the grey stage curtain of the July sky, my mind was cloudless. I was counting down the hours to hear the verdict from the label: would they give me something to live for? In the end, my debut single was penciled in, circled in red on my pocket calendar. Mr. Takahata came to bring me a new outfit, a maroon dress with a V-neck that accentuated my collarbones and the slope of my neck. At first, I thought it was simply a gift to lift my spirits, but it turned out to be a stage direction. Magazine photographers were waiting for me as I left the hospital. It was July 19th, the first day of my life.

Now, summer is long gone, and the exhilaration of rebirth is starting to give way to a new anxiety: what if my new life is stillborn after all? Perhaps I have been caught red-handed, trying to steal something that was never supposed to belong to me. If it was going to happen, wouldn’t it have happened without me forcing it, pulling the trigger? I am already being pushed aside by younger, prettier, more talented girls. I could see it in Yukiko’s eyes—she could tell I would never amount to anything. She was kind enough to treat me with civility, perhaps compelled with a certain kind of noblesse oblige.

My phone screen lights up with an incoming call from Mr. Takahata, prompting me to drop the pen I’ve been absent-mindedly holding onto. “Hello. What’s the matter?”

“Suzuka-chan. Something has come up—an interesting opportunity. Can you come into the office so we can discuss it in private?”

“Right now?”

“As soon as possible.”

I take off the scrubs and fold them carefully over my chair. They’ll wait for my return. I put on a black velvet turtleneck and a pleated gingham miniskirt, even though I’d prefer to wear the navy dress I barely wore the night before. In the months following my dramatic discharge, the paparazzi have mostly lost their interest, but on slow gossip days, they occasionally latch onto me for things like repeating outfits. It matches the persona they’ve given me—a tasteless country girl who’s lost her way in the city, out of her depth and her mind. Every time I hand them some easy material, it stings, but I reason they might just as well invent it from thin air. I could barricade myself into my apartment for months and see headlines decrying my secret affair with a married actor pop up from the ether. It’s all just a game, and I know I’ll never win, so the best I can do is lose with grace.

A cold rain is falling, ghostly in the flare of street lamps. I hold onto my umbrella with a white-knuckled grip. The station is quiet; rush hour is over. I wonder if every other person on the platform is thinking of throwing their body on the gleaming wet tracks, too. In most cases, thinking horrible thoughts is actually a protective mechanism. It is normal for new parents to think about throwing their baby down the stairs, or for car drivers to obsess over the idea of swerving into the wrong lane. The purpose of catastrophizing is to prepare you for the real thing, should the universe be cruel enough.

On the train, I hold the wet umbrella close to my chest. By Ikenoue station, my turtleneck is soaked through with rainwater, and my teeth are chattering. Old women give me strange looks. I feel completely absorbent.

The moment the elevator stops at the Dove Heart floor, I feel an overwhelming urge to go back, smash the ground floor button, run away, disappear. The storm is a cliché of a bad omen, but it’s a classic. Slowly, the door slides open to reveal the familiar sight of the bright-lit and perfumed offices. I hesitate for a split second before running down the corridor to Mr. Takahata’s office.

“Come in,” he says before I have even knocked.

Mr. Takahata always looks as though God was being frugal with skin while making him. There’s not quite enough of it to cover his skull comfortably, so it pulls tight over his sharp nose and his protruding cheekbones. Even his lips are too thin, barely framing his mouth. This evening, he somehow looks even more severe than usual, his spindling fingers wrapping tight around a glass of whiskey.

“Take a seat, Suzuka-san.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing is wrong—as I said over the phone, it is an opportunity.” 

“A good opportunity?”

He scoffs. “An opportunity is a good thing by definition. Don’t be silly.”

“I suppose,” I offer and wait for him to tell me more. He empties his glass and stares down at it before pouring himself another fat finger.

“Some opportunities involve more risks than others,” he finally continues. “But all are good.”

“I agree,” I say. “Can you tell me more about this opportunity?”

“That’s what I called you here for. It has to do with your debut.”

My heart crashes so fast it’s painful, and I exhale. It was never going to happen. They’re going to sideline me—maybe give me a gravure gig. My mouth is glued shut. At least there is a way out. There is always a way out.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Takahata says. “It’s still going to happen. Just in a slightly different format.”

“What do you mean?” I exhale.

“It’s actually quite exciting. The label wants to pioneer a new format called self-edge cloud-base. In this medium, your music will express the true nature of your soul, interpreted from your dreamwaves. You will perform in an eternal capacity.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your consciousness will be transferred into the cloud, and you will retain your full agency, existing in a digital format.”

“I will only exist in a digital format?”

He nods and smiles, impressed that I’m finally keeping up.

“What will happen to my body?”

“Well, it becomes irrelevant. Isn’t that a blessing?”

“Are you telling me I should finish what I started?”

“I would never put it like that. We are not talking about suicide.” 

“How do you want me to do it?”

“Slow down. First, we must make careful preparations, precisely because this has nothing to do with suicide. Your consciousness must be extracted before or at the moment your body ceases functioning.”

The words ring through my head like screams across the surface of a clear lake. The dream of becoming an idol is a dream of sacrifice: giving away your humanity to the eternal image. Some girls are too afraid to reach this conclusion, and I can always tell. I have never been afraid. I know I was born for this purpose, the veil already thrown over me, separating my hazy, barely-there self from the lucid, emotionless image of me. I know I have the right constitution; my problem is that my image is not yet beautiful enough. If it was a question of devotion, nobody could beat me.

“Suzuka-san?”

“Sorry.”

“How do you feel?”

I shake my head slightly. “It doesn’t matter. I want this. I won’t back out.”

“That’s excellent,” Mr. Takahata says, staring out into the wet black night. I count the burst veins in his eyes.

“That’s it, then,” I say. “For my life.”

He looks at me with a wistful kind of smile on his face. “For your old life. It hasn’t exactly been dancing on roses, anyway, has it?”

In that moment, I think he looks like my father, even though I know he does not. My father was a short, stocky, red–faced man; Mr. Takahata is pencil-thin and pale, waning in sight. Their appearances hardly matter. I always find fathers in the men hell-bent on destroying me.

On the train ride home, I stare at my reflection in the rain-washed windows, looking for God. Is he offering me salvation? Is this madness a sign of his absence? My face is a half-gone memory imprinted on the glass. 

The rain has stopped. As I navigate neon lit puddles, my phone chimes with the opening chords of Parallelisme. It’s my sister—the only person whose calls I answer, save for Mr. Takahata.

“Is everything OK?”

My sister rarely calls.

“I just wanted to check if you’re still coming home for New Year’s. Has the label confirmed your schedule yet?”

“I’m not going to be on Kouhaku, if that’s what you’re angling for. Of course I’m coming home.”

“OK. That’s all.”

“See you. Bye.”

The door of my apartment clicks shut behind me. I walk into the living room without turning on the lights. This place does not feel mine anymore; neither does my body. I am watching a train crash into someone else’s house, so close the flames lick my skin, but they are lukewarm. On TV, my label mate with a wildly successful sophomore single still fresh in his rearview mirror is taking a long swig of water. His forehead shimmers with sweat. “The next song is for Nana,” he says and flashes a smile that could power Yoyogi Stadium for a week. He and his new fiancée have been in the eye of a minor media storm for the past week or two. They’re both young, pretty, in the business—a foolproof recipe for deranged backlash. Somehow, I expected Aoki’s masculinity would save him, but I was naïve. He’s been called a cradle-robber, a gold-digging rentboy, a walking dildo with an inflamed ego, and worse. Still, he’s out on the stage, while Nanami is lying low, waiting out her days as an unmarried woman.

The audience’s applause makes Aoki wince, as though the sound is wounding him. I don’t feel too bad for him. However anxious he may be in that moment, showing a brave front to the world, he has someone waiting for him at home.

I put on the navy blue dress, fix my hair with a silver barrette, and step out again. I consider going to Omotesando and spending my savings on a couple of designer dresses, going out like a firework, but all I really want is a seat at a smoky izakaya, a stack of greasy plates beside me.

“Keep a low profile until the extraction,” Mr. Takahata said. “We still want you to go to the rehearsal on Tuesday. Don’t cause a scene. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. When it happens, it will shock the whole world into loving you.”

The izakaya is half-empty, and I get a seat at a secluded booth near the back. I was almost hoping to get seated at the counter, to be noticed, pierced with eyes. What is a girl like me doing, eating like a pig? Trying to fill in the cracks in my heart? In the end, it hardly matters whether the voices come from the outside.

After finishing up a milky bowl of ramen, I order fried aubergines, their bellies glazed with sweet miso. My stomach pushes against the tight cradle of the dress. After that, half a dozen chicken skewers. After that, a plate of deep-fried tofu in a dark golden broth. Light-headed with salt and grease, I cross the street and enter a bright-lit dessert café. I buy a massive slice of chocolate cake, finish half and take the rest of it home in a pretty little cardboard box. I wonder if the box is heavier than the one my ashes will be placed in. What will my sister think of its weight when she carries me home for the new year?

I don’t ask what exactly will happen to my body. I assume it will be neat, clinical, resembling a scene from documentaries about Swiss euthanasia clinics. No jumping from a tenth-story window, no blood-speckled windshields, no traumatized passersby. My corpse will be well-preserved for incineration. As for my mind, I do not know. When the door clicks shut behind me and I am in the darkness again, a wave of fear swirls inside me. They will decipher every part of me: stray thoughts disinterred from the mud of time; imperfect half-circles of unfinished realizations; memories of innocence; shameful secrets—my own and those I keep; desires I do not acknowledge or understand. Will they understand why I need to go through this, better than I do? Will they think I’m beautiful? I flip the light switch.

Kaisa Saarinen grew up in the Finnish countryside and ended up in London via Glasgow, Tokyo and Oxford. Her debut collection of poetry and fiction, Voideuse, was published by Feral Dove in 2022. Her first novel, Weather Underwater, is forthcoming from Bellows Press in 2023.