April 15, 1989.
The cherry blossom season in Tokyo was winding down.
Pink and white petals clogged the drainage ditches along the streets, gray and sodden from the rain, like a layer of rotting mud.
Thanks to his work on Kasuga no Tsubone, Kitahara Shin’s per-episode fee had finally climbed to one hundred thousand yen.
It still wasn’t top-star money, but it was more than enough to rent a decent apartment in Nakano and buy a few proper appliances.
Eleven o’clock at night.
Kitahara Shin was fine-tuning his new Pioneer stereo.
A two-hundred-thousand-yen rig played a Tamaki Koji vinyl, the low, smoky voice drifting through the quiet rainy night.
He poured himself a whiskey and sank into the sofa.
The taiga drama had just wrapped its final scenes.
New offers were still in negotiation.
For once, he had a rare stretch of empty time.
Beep-beep-beep— The pager on the table cut through the music like a blade.
In the dead of night the flat electronic tone sounded unnaturally loud.
Shin set his glass down and picked up the device.
Same familiar nameless public-phone number.
This wasn’t the first time.
Ever since she’d left that silver Zippo on the vending machine that night, they had kept this strange, wordless thread between them.
For a woman treated like a cash machine by her own family and a product by her agency, Shin — the one person who wanted nothing from her fame and wasn’t swimming in the same filthy pool — had become her only place to breathe.
But tonight the timing felt wrong.
Shin glanced at the calendar.
For weeks now Weekly Bunshun and Focus had been tearing into Kanai like rabid dogs.
Photos of him meeting some other diva in New York were everywhere.
As the “official girlfriend,” Akina should have been barricaded inside her apartment right now, cameras camped outside her door, curtains drawn tight.
He picked up the phone and dialed.
“…Hello.” Akina Nakamori’s voice came through the receiver — soft, almost weightless.
Wind whispered behind it, the kind of sound you only hear when you’re standing high up.
“It’s me,” Shin said, switching off the stereo.
“It’s late.
You haven’t gone to bed?” “Kitahara-kun.” She didn’t answer his question.
“Tokyo’s so loud.” “Yeah?” “Even at this hour it’s still so loud.
Reporters’ flashes keep going off.
The TV won’t stop saying that woman’s name… It’s giving me a headache.” She paused.
“I was standing on the balcony just now, looking down, and I thought… if everything here just went quiet… if I became something quiet too… maybe I wouldn’t have to hear any of it anymore.” Shin’s hand tightened around the receiver until the plastic creaked.
That wasn’t a cry for help.
That was the sound of someone already standing on the edge.
As an actor he knew the difference.
Tears meant there was still something left to vent.
This flat, empty calm was what came after everything had already been crushed.
Public mockery.
Her boyfriend’s betrayal.
The agency’s cold silence.
They had pushed a girl who wasn’t even twenty-five right to the drop.
He couldn’t waste words.
Anything soft or dismissive right now — “don’t think like that,” “get some sleep” — could be the final push.
“I know a place,” he said, voice steady and low, cutting straight through the dead air on the line.
“Out in Chiba, at Kujukuri Beach.
There’s a stretch of sand that was never developed.
No tourists.
No reporters.
Just seagulls and the waves.” Silence on the other end for a few seconds.
“Really?” A tiny thread of life flickered in her voice.
“Really.” Shin looked out at the dark city and didn’t hesitate.
“Where are you?
I’m coming to get you right now.” “I’m… on the roof of my building.
I can’t go downstairs.
There are reporters everywhere.” “Find a back exit or the fire stairs.
Forty minutes.
I’ll be waiting at the convenience store two blocks away.” He hung up.
No second thoughts.
He grabbed his dark-gray windbreaker, pulled a business card from the drawer — the number of a rental-car guy he’d met once — and was out the door in under a minute.
Ten minutes later he was knocking on the rental guy’s door, offering double the usual rate for an inconspicuous Toyota Crown.
Late-night Tokyo expressways were almost empty.
Shin kept both hands on the wheel, eyes sharp.
He wasn’t some bleeding-heart saint.
But in this industry that chewed people up and spat them out, watching someone with real talent get driven to the brink while the whole world watched and laughed — he couldn’t just sit there.
That Zippo had left him owing a debt.
Tonight he was paying it.
Forty minutes later, in a quiet corner of Meguro Ward, a lone figure in a thin windbreaker, hat pulled low and mask in place, stood half-hidden in the shadow of a convenience store.
She clutched a paper cup of coffee long gone cold.
Her body trembled in the damp night air.
She looked thinner than she had two months ago — fragile enough that a strong gust might knock her over.
The Crown pulled up in front of her.
Shin leaned across and pushed the passenger door open.
“Get in.” Akina lifted her head.
For a second her eyes were blank, unfocused.
Then she saw him.
It was the look of someone who had already gone under and was still reaching for anything that might keep her head above water.
She climbed in without a word.
“Seatbelt.” Shin didn’t ask about the scandal.
He didn’t offer empty comfort.
He just turned the heater on full, bumped the temperature up two degrees, and pulled back into the night, heading east.
Toward the sea.
Away from Tokyo and every single thing in it that refused to shut up.