The hook behind my left shoulder would not open.
I could reach it with two fingers. I could pull the fabric tight enough to make the seam creak. I could not obtain the particular angle required to separate one cheap piece of metal from another.
The costume committee had installed it because the original fastening looked too modern.
At the time, I had approved.
This was the difficulty with exercising judgment: one occasionally had to live with the consequences.
I tried standing beside the bed.
I tried sitting.
I tried pulling the robe over my head and discovered that its collar had been designed by someone with no interest in emergency exits.
My arm became trapped in the lining.
I sat on the floor.
Then I laughed.
It was an ugly little sound. Too high at the beginning. Gone almost before I recognized it.
I pulled at the gold braid.
The laugh came again and broke into something else.
I wanted the robe off.
That was all.
Not a strategy. Not a return working. Not a kingdom to make my lie defensible.
I wanted to stop wearing the thing.
The door opened.
I stood too quickly, caught the hem under my shoe, and struck my shoulder against the bedpost.
Pain flashed down my arm.
The girl in the blue jacket stopped just inside the room.
We looked at each other.
I drew a breath.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Whatever voice you were about to do. Don’t.”
She closed the door behind her.
Up close, I could see the worn places in her jacket. A broken zipper tooth. A patch inside the cuff. Beneath the unfamiliar leather belt and practical boots, it was still recognizably a piece of clothing bought in a world with department stores.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Her gaze dropped to the braid clenched in my fist.
“Stuck?”
“The fastening is defective.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
“Then enjoy being a curtain.”
I considered the remaining alternatives.
Turned around.
She freed the hook in three seconds.
The robe slid from my shoulders.
For a moment, I simply stood there in my school shirt and trousers while the weight of it disappeared.
Aoi held the fabric.
“Oh,” she said.
The sound was very small.
I looked down.
There was stage makeup on my collar. A little pale rectangle of adhesive marked where someone had taped a microphone wire during rehearsal.
I had forgotten about the wire.
I had forgotten about so many ordinary things that seeing one of them nearly undid me.
She laid the robe across the bed.
“Craft foam,” she said, pointing at my head.
“Yes.”
“Plastic gems.”
“Yes.”
“And that hem.”
“In the seamstress’s defense, she had two examinations that week.”
“You were actually in a play.”
I took off the crown.
The room felt colder without it.
“Yes.”
She pressed a hand over her mouth.
I waited for contempt.
What came out was laughter.
Sudden, disbelieving, almost painful.
“You got summoned in the middle of a school play.”
“That appears to be the sequence.”
“And you just kept going.”
“I failed to identify a preferable alternative.”
“You told a king to explain his foreign policy.”
“He had brought it up.”
That made her laugh harder.
She sat on the hearthstone, shoulders shaking.
I should have resented it.
Instead I sat on the edge of the bed and discovered that I no longer had the strength to be offended properly.
Her laughter faded.
She was looking at my hands.
I folded them.
Too late.
“Hey,” she said.
“I am all right.”
“Your shoulder’s bleeding.”
I looked.
A thin red line had appeared beneath the tear in my sleeve.
“Oh.”
She found a cloth by the washstand and held it out.
I took it.
For a while, the room was quiet except for the faint movement of the guards outside.
“The crown’s from our supply closet,” I said.
She glanced up.
“I thought you might like the provenance established.”
“Very royal.”
“The good foam, apparently.”
“You can tell. Cheap foam creases.”
I looked at her.
“You know costumes.”
“Festival committee. Two years. Mostly because nobody else wanted to deal with the sewing machines.”
“An institution sustained by the reluctance of the capable to watch others fail.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The voice. You’re doing it without doing the voice.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
She looked pleased with herself.
An irritating development.
Then she asked, “Were there people watching when it happened?”
“The gymnasium was full.”
Her expression changed.
“My mother was supposed to be there,” I said.
I had not intended to tell her that.
I pressed the cloth against my shoulder.
“She said she might be late.”
Aoi picked at the damaged zipper.
“I was alone,” she said. “Walking to the station.”
I waited.
“I keep thinking that’s worse. Nobody knowing. Then I think about somebody seeing it happen and not being able to--”
She stopped.
Neither of us completed the thought.
Outside, one guard asked the other whether supper had been sent up.
Supper.
Somewhere in the world I had left, it might still be afternoon.
“What time was it?” I asked.
“When?”
“When you arrived.”
“After school.”
“No. I meant--”
I did not know what I meant.
What time was it now? How far had the light carried me? Was my mother still in the gymnasium? Had Miyata finished reaching?
I lowered the cloth.
“Never mind.”
Aoi did not tell me it was a stupid question.
That was the first kindness she offered me that I knew how to recognize immediately.
After a while, she leaned her head against the stone beside the hearth.
“I’m Aoi.”
A name from home.
No title attached. No explanation required.
I repeated it, quietly enough that it sounded strange in my own voice.
“All right,” I said. “Aoi.”