CHAPTER 1
Her Step Step
Saturday, August 29th, 2026.
Not long after Karen Kohiruimaki got turned down by her would-be boyfriend, Fire Nishiyamada, and ended up singing her lungs out to Elza Kanzaki numbers at a karaoke place…
“Hifh hucks…”
“You went overboard, Kohi. But I gotta say… You were awesome. I’m in love all over again. You feel better? Got it all outta your system?”
“Nwah hewy…”
“Okay, cool. You did good. C’mon, drink!”
Karen sat slumped on the sofa at the very end of the long, narrow room, her head lolling backward. Next to her was Miyu, busying herself by placing a cold, wet towel on her friend’s forehead and sticking a straw for iced tea into her mouth.
And on the other side of Miyu, in the middle of the room, sat Elza Kanzaki in a large hat and Goushi Asougi, dressed in a suit.
“M-Miss Elza! C-can we ask you a qu-question?”
“Would that be all right?” “If you don’t mind!” “You must!” “We beg of you!” “Please!”
And beyond them, at the other end of the room, was a group of teenage girls energetically jabbing their hands into the air.
They, of course, were the six members of the gymnastics team at the high school affiliated with Karen’s women’s college. They played GGO with big, frightening avatars to increase their bonds of friendship and were known as the menacing Team SHINC, regular finalists in the Squad Jam event.
Miyu had summoned the team to the karaoke booth here, where they learned the shocking truth: that Pitohui, GGO’s incarnation of destruction and slaughter—the very person who put her own life on the line in SJ2 by claiming she’d kill herself if her character died, all for a perverse thrill—was none other than one of the top singer-songwriters in Japan, their absolute idol, Elza Kanzaki.
The girls had dutifully joined in during the choruses of Karen’s enthusiastic performances, but when that was done, they naturally had many questions for their favorite singer. And plenty of energy to spare, too. They were young.
Elza was in the process of putting her guitar away into her soft case, but she generously answered, “Okay, no problem! I’m sure it’s fate that brought us together in the real world, too! I’ll even tell you things that I’d only tell those who are very close to me! But no mentioning this on social media. This is just between us!”
She handed the case to Goushi and took a healthy swig of her favorite drink—black coffee, iced.
Goushi held the guitar case tight and said nothing. Instead, he reached out and lifted his coffee, also without cream and sugar, to his lips.
Mmph! He tensed his stomach to keep it from revolting against him.
“Of course! We’ll keep your secrets close to our hearts!” chirped the starry-eyed Saki Nitobe, the girl who played as Eva in GGO, more commonly known as Boss. She acted as though Goushi did not even exist between her and Elza. “We’ll take whatever we hear to the grave! You can have our oaths on this! If we break our word, you can kill us! It’s a promise between women! Did you hear that, girls?”
“Yes!” “You bet!” “Uh-huh!” “Got it!” “No prob!”
“Very good. I appreciate that answer. Then you have my trust. Ask away.”
Elza acted like a prim and proper young woman on TV, but here she talked just like Pitohui. The difference didn’t bother the girls at all. It was a trifling matter to them. Inconsequential.
“Th-then…Miss Elza Kanzaki! As the humble leader of this team, I, Saki Nitobe, will ask on behalf of the group! I have a question that we—nay, the entire world wants to know!”
Her back went straight as she made a salute directly toward Elza—with Goushi in between them.
She was the shortest member of the gymnastics team in real life, but Elza was even smaller. However, their attitudes were completely opposite each other: A confident smile adorned Elza’s beautiful face, while Saki’s features were nervous between her braided hair.
The other five members gazed at Elza as solemnly as royal knights before their monarch.
“Hmm! That’s a pretty intimidating lead-up! But very well, my little interviewer. Ask away, and I will tell you anything I can. Meaning that if I can’t answer it, you’ll get nothing.”
“It’s an absolute honor! Thank you! First, I’d like to ask about your wonderful name, Elza Kanzaki. Is that your real name?”
“Nope. Stage name.”
It was a pseudonym.
“My real name’s a secret.”
“Then I won’t ask your real name, of course. But might I ask the source of that beautiful stage name?”
The six awaited her answer, eyes sparkling with anticipation.
At the same time, separated by the trio of Goushi, Elza, and Karen on the opposite end of the couch, Miyu listened intently. What was this? She had no idea. But she wanted to know. She was very curious.
Elza beamed and answered, “Well, to tell you the truth, it’s not a very meaningful reason. I liked the last name of the villain from an old movie, and for the first name, I went with something that wasn’t exactly Japanese, and that was what popped into my head.”
“Ooooh,” Saki marveled, joined by the rest of the girls.
So that’s what it was! They’d finally learned the secret to Elza Kanzaki’s name!
“…”
Miyu said nothing. She glanced at Karen.
“…”
Karen had no reaction. She was still splayed out on the couch, presumably from exhaustion.
“Okay, next question! Tell us about your childhood, please! What were your early years like, Miss Elza?” Saki asked.
“Oh, you know. Normal. I grew up in a rural area of Japan, though I can’t tell you where.”
“Ohhh!”
As the conversation bounced back and forth over him, Goushi mused, I’m amazed she can come up with stories about her stage name off the cuff.
He knew full well that she was lying. She wasn’t going to reveal even the tiniest of truths.
“Okay, I won’t ask where. But when you say rural, that can mean different things to different people. What kind of place was it?”
“I went to a school where every grade was just a single class. And there were only a few kids in each one.”
“Ohhh. So you didn’t have any cafés or creperies or karaoke?”
“Nope. It was really on the outskirts. The only way to hang out was to run through the untamed mountains.”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
She’d spent her childhood in Los Angeles, California.
It was in the suburbs but certainly not in the country—and it wasn’t in Japan.
“Uh-huh. So you were raised amid the majesty of nature. Now, let me ask about your parents! Do you mind if I inquire about what they do?”
“Sure. We’re totally in the forestry business. My dad and grandpa go into the hills and cut down trees, then use them for all kinds of things. From what I hear, our ancestors used to make charcoal back in the Edo period. My father’s a master with the chain saw. He’s got such fine control, he can carve a log into any shape. Basically, he loves trees.”
“Cool!”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
He didn’t know what her ancestors had done in the Edo period, but her parents, at least, were classical musicians. Both were Japanese, but they were virtually unknown in their country of origin. Among classical music fans abroad, however, they were a fairly famous couple.
Her mother was a pianist. Her father was a violinist.
He obviously didn’t wield a chain saw. Did he love trees? Maybe. Violins were made from wood.
They traveled around the world to perform on tours, so they were quite wealthy. And they’d never publicly announced they’d had a daughter. Apparently, that was because they worried their daughter might get kidnapped and held hostage for ransom.
So all the gossip rags found almost nothing when they tried to pry into Elza’s past.
“And I’m the fourth daughter. I have three elder sisters.”
“Uh-huh!”
“Basically, my home life was pretty lively. I had a raucous and exciting childhood.”
“Ooooh!”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
She was an only child.
Her mother gave birth to her, but her parents did not raise her. Their top priority at the time was to fulfill the demands of their adoring audiences around the world.
From infancy through childhood, she bounced from babysitter to babysitter. Little Elza saw her parents only once every few months—maybe even half a year.
The memories she had of her parents’ faces during her younger years were from the tablet screens when they’d video chat from the other side of the globe or from the covers of classical music magazines in foreign languages.
“So were you an active child, then?”
“Of course. I had to cross two mountains to reach my elementary school. The snow would pile up in the winter, so I got rides then, but any other time I had to rush over those mountains to get to school and back, rain or shine. And I’d catch any frogs and snakes I saw along the way! Wow, that takes me back.”
“What an amazing story!”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
By her nature, she’d always been a very sickly, delicate girl.
She had chronic respiratory disease. Anything that took her beyond her physical comfort zone made breathing painful, as though she were drowning in air.
A huge manor encompassed the entirety of her childhood world. She almost never ventured outside because of the possibility it might worsen her condition.
Even then, Elza had experienced several attacks that nearly killed her. Though she lived on land, she was all too familiar with the agony of drowning in search of a breath. On several occasions, despite struggling from pain and lack of oxygen, she would make out a doctor saying “She will be called up to God soon enough.”
After each time, the doctor would always ask her babysitter, “And you haven’t been able to get ahold of her parents?”
More often than she could recall, Elza had thought, Will I finally be at peace this time?
Will I finally be able to die?
“So your childhood must have been really wild, then!”
“I suppose so. Looking back on it, I was a pretty rambunctious squirt; I’ll admit that. But the truth is: I always just thought that was normal!”
That, at least, was not a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
Her rich parents were never around, she never left her luxurious home, she had constant difficulties breathing, and she nearly died many times. Regardless of her personal peril, her parents were constantly globe-trotting for their career and could never be there for her.
But she did think that was normal. She just assumed that life was more or less the same for every other child growing up.
She had no friends her age and wasn’t allowed to watch TV. The doctor and babysitter that her parents had hired rarely told her the truth about the world. In fact, they almost never did.
Perhaps that was to avoid putting too much hope for the future into the sickly girl’s head, given that she was always on the brink of death. Or perhaps they just didn’t care.
“How was the end of elementary school? Did your life change? What were your interests at the time? Did you listen to much music?”
“You make for a very good interviewer, Saki! Well, let’s see. I don’t think my life changed much. As for music, I listened to all kinds of things around then. I started with the pop artists my friends liked, and when I got hooked, I went through as many different singers as I could. I’d download everything on my phone, then go through every genre I could get my hands on.”
“Oh, I see! So those were your musical roots!”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
After she’d turned ten, Elza’s condition had slowly begun to improve.
She remained careful, of course—and she came close to dying a few times—but the frequency slowly but surely lessened over time.
Even then, she spent all her time indoors. Naturally, she didn’t attend elementary school or middle school.
She was homeschooled in all subjects. If there was one thing her parents had, it was money. They hired several excellent tutors to give Elza an education.
Elza had studied many subjects intensively. Music had been the sole exception.
Her parents loved classical music with their entire souls, so they flatly refused to let her listen to anything else. No matter the medium—TV, radio, streaming—they always strictly limited her listening.
She spent every day without fear of starvation or cold, in a mansion she could not leave.
Like a bird in a cage.
And Elza had no idea that this wasn’t normal.
“Then let’s move forward and talk about memories from middle school!”
“Hmm? Like what?”
“Sorry, that was vague. When I was in middle school, I had some awkward pubescent moments like everyone does. Lots of things happened to me, which left a major impact on my psyche. Was there anything in middle school that hugely impacted your life, Elza?”
“Ah yes. Ah yes. Impact, huh?”
“And?”
“Nope. Not really. It was basically like an extension of elementary school for me.”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
In her middle school years—or the equivalent in her early teens, since Elza had never actually gone to school—there had been one thing that had majorly influenced the direction of her life.
The respiratory illness she’d struggled with since birth, a presence in her life much more constant than even her own parents, finally went away. She was cured.
It could have subsided because of the strength of her vitality, the progress of medical science, or both. Perhaps she was just lucky.
But this much was true: Elza no longer needed to assume she might die tomorrow.
And at the same time, she thought, I guess I didn’t get to die after all.
After all that terrible pain—and all that longing to simply rest and find peace. She had prayed it would just end. She had hoped for it.
So there had been one thing that had significantly affected her life—she hadn’t gotten to die.
“Ah, I see… And how about when you got to our age? We have all kinds of worries, things that don’t go so well, and anxieties about college and our future! But we also have good friends and teammates—and lots of VR fun together! Tell us more about your high school years!”
“Mmm! You’re so young and fresh! Yes, I had those years, too!”
“Ooh! What kind of fresh? Like Poppin’ Fresh?”
“That’s a really weird thing to say. Anyway, my high school years? It still hasn’t been a decade, but it feels so old and nostalgic now. I dunno; I guess I’d say I enjoyed them normally.”
“Uh-huh. Meaning?”
“Meaning that I studied like a high schooler does but had a lot of fun. Going to karaoke with friends, chowing down on sweets. It was an all-girls school, so I didn’t know much about romance!”
That was a lie but also the truth. Elza had told Goushi her story.
After she’d recovered from her respiratory illness, Elza had been able to go to a normal high school like most others.
Her parents found a private boarding school in the suburbs of Los Angeles where they intended to send her. That was, of course, because they were constantly traveling around the world. If she stayed at a boarding school, they would have less to worry about around the house.
But this was where a transoceanic protest came into play.
It was Elza’s grandparents who put a stop to the arrangement from across the Pacific and the international date line. On her mother’s side.
Elza’s mother had stifled their complaints by moving to America and having that nasty disease as an excuse, but once Elza’s condition improved, the circumstances changed.
Her grandparents felt terrible that her parents weren’t giving her a proper family life, so they proposed that Elza come live with them in Japan. Despite not giving Elza the time of day, her parents balked at the idea, but Elza made up her mind at once. She decided to go live in a country she didn’t remember from her early days, with people she’d seen so infrequently that she could count on her fingers the number of times they’d met.
The kerfuffle that arose from that decision was probably intense, but Goushi hadn’t been privy to the details. All he knew was that Elza had overridden the arguments and had made her choice.
Thus, Elza set foot on Japanese soil for the first time in fifteen years and began a new chapter of her life in the Tokyo suburbs with her grandparents. The elderly couple embodied gentleness in human form. Elza was their only grandchild, so they smothered her with attention.
She started attending an all-girls school near their home, where she experienced “normal” life for the first time.
Before that point, Elza had spent all her time trapped in an American home. A “normal life back in the country where she was born” might as well have been another world entirely.
“I was a fish out of water,” she’d claimed.
She felt overwhelmed by culture shock—and much consternation and anxiety, but Elza enjoyed it all the same.
Soon she blended in with Japanese life and quickly learned how to get along with friends, another brand-new experience. It wasn’t all that hard for her.
In Goushi’s opinion, she probably hadn’t adjusted to the alien world of Japanese society at all. Rather, she’d simply been talented enough at adapting to the new setting that she could enjoy it for what it was.
Around this point in her life, she heard music that wasn’t classical for the very first time. She learned what popular music in Japan—and the rest of the world—sounded like. From there, she devoured all kinds of music with great enthusiasm.
Elza had felled the birdcage and was living freely and peacefully and normally—but deep in her subconscious, dark thoughts still bubbled and frothed like magma under the mantle.
Everyone dies someday.
So when will I die?
How will I die?
And what about other people?
“Is that when you decided to try being a singer?”
“Nope. It was after that. Once I graduated high school.”
“Oh my! Then I have a similar question. What was the most memorable thing about your high school years?”
“…Hmm…what was it? That’s a hard question to answer. It was chill. I had lots of fun. But out of those three years…nothing really springs to mind.”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
Elza’s grandparents had passed away one after the other when she had been in her final year of high school. She’d mourned them consecutively.
In a sense, it should have been no surprise that elderly people would wither away very quickly once they got sick. But it must have been unbearable for her to have finally found family members to live with, only for them to pass away so rapidly.
Elza hadn’t told Goushi anything about how she’d felt at the time—but he often wondered if her fascination with death had partially developed from a hope, perhaps a desire, to see her grandparents once again.
But he couldn’t be sure.
“Tell us about when you decided to be a singer after you graduated school. What was the biggest reason why?”
“Let’s see…what can I say?”
“Is the answer a secret? If so, I’ll take back that question!”
“No, no, it’s not a secret or anything. I dunno, though.”
“You don’t know what?”
“It’s not very cool.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, basically, I wanted to make a ton of money. So the question was, what’s the most likely way I could do that? And the answer was being a singer.”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
Money wasn’t the biggest reason she’d became a singer.
When it came down to it, it was for her grandparents.
When she was in high school, they praised her singing voice. Singing was something she’d done on her own since she was small to pass the time.
She would listen to classical music, the only thing that had been allowed, and would use the melodies to construct new songs. Sometimes, she would make up her own lyrics as she hummed along to the pieces.
Her grandparents told her, “Elza, you have the talent to be a singer.”
As a teenager, she understood their compliments as simply grandparents doting on their grandchild. Life was enjoyable enough for her at that point in time, and she had not an ounce of desire to actually be a singer.
But after they both passed away, she had to wonder: What if they were right?
So she came to a decision.
I’ll make them right!
“But being in it for the money is a perfectly good reason! I want to be rich in the future, too! But how did it go once you started to pursue your dream for good? How did all this happen?”
“It was painful, it was fun, it was tough, it was sad, it was crazy… But since I’m here now, I guess it all turned out okay in the end. A lot happened before I became a pro singer, but most of it has to be kept under wraps. I can’t tell you anything that would violate anyone’s privacy.”
That could have been either the truth or another lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
Elza’s path to stardom had not been an easy one.
Initially, she was working part-time jobs as she studied various subjects. Part of that involved studying music and songwriting, of course—but she worked on business even more than that. She needed to have absolute control over her own finances in the future.
Money wasn’t the main reason she became a singer, but she knew full well that you needed capital to survive in this world. All that healthcare in her childhood had been unbelievably expensive. Had it not been for her parents’ financial protection, she literally wouldn’t have survived.
That’s why she approached her finances far more seriously and carefully than her peers.
Elza inherited her grandparents’ savings, but they’d lived a humble life, so it wasn’t much. She didn’t ask her parents for anything, either. They’d sent her some spending money while she had been in high school, but after graduation, she changed the bank account and refused anything more.
Goushi had no idea what her parents had done in response. Elza hadn’t told him anything about it.
But she did say this: “I am a déraciné—a flower without roots.”
And that was why she’d cut loose all her previous attachments from the roots, Goushi imagined.
He had actually seen Elza in her pursuit of stardom as a singer. That was when he’d started stalking her and had wound up as her willing gofer.
So the next part was something he’d witnessed for himself, not just heard secondhand.
Elza put in a tremendous amount of work to become a singer. She balanced different jobs during the day and studied business and finance at night school.
Then one day, fortune smiled upon her.
She got hooked on the beta test of Sword Art Online, the world’s first full-dive massively multiplayer online RPG, where you could truly inhabit an alternate fantasy world.
As luck would have it, the day the game officially launched was also the day she was scheduled to visit the first music label to take an interest in her.
Elza had a natural longing for death and destruction. When she learned that she had missed the opportunity to get trapped in a true game of death, she went mad with rage. Goushi still looked back fondly upon the pain of the rib she broke in the aftermath.
Although she’d lamented her terrible “bad luck,” Goushi considered it to be one of the Three Great Strokes of Luck to happen in her life.
The music label gave her a lot of strict training, transforming her amateur talents into skills befitting a professional. Even now that she was independent, she still spoke of the label with gratitude—without them, she wouldn’t have been the person she was today.
One of the other two strokes of fortune was being blessed with her grandparents. And the last was being blessed with Karen Kohiruimaki. If she hadn’t met those three people, Elza’s life would have turned out completely different.
So would Goushi’s.
He liked to think that somewhere, several levels below that, his presence was also good luck for her.
And for his part, Elza’s existence was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
“I see… And then you made your debut, and here you are now…”
“Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to mention.”
“What is it?”
“Thank you for accepting my songs into your hearts, everyone.”
“We, we, we…”
“We, we, we? No, the scale goes do, re, mi.”
“We’re not worthy! I—I mean we—want to thank you, Elza Kanzaki! Thank you for singing those songs for us!”
“You’re welcome. But I need to express my gratitude again. It’s because you support me as a singer that I get to keep doing what I do. Plus…”
“Plus?”
“Thanks to you all, I was able to buy a new sniper rifle in GGO!”
“Gwah! That’s true, that’s true. You’re also Pitohui… I won’t bring up anything you do as her here, but let me say this: We owe you so much for your help in that other world, too. I hope you’ll continue to teach and guide us in GGO!” Saki announced.
“Please, ma’am!” the other team members echoed in unison, bowing as one. Their coordination was excellent.
“Such politeness for women so young. Very well! Let’s do it! I’ll teach you! I’ll crack that whip! Hey, wanna run a quest together next time?”
“R-really? Are you sure?”
“Why not? We all love GGO, so let’s enjoy it together! Did you hear about that brand-new quest starting up on the fifth of next month? It begins exactly at noon for everyone, and the squadron who completes it the fastest will get a ton of experiences and loot!”
“That’s great! We’re free then, too! I was going to suggest we all take a dive that day anyway!”
“Nice! We’ll take our four, plus the Shirl-Clare combo, if we can recruit them. Plus, you six! We can tackle this with the dozen strongest players in the game!”
“Let’s do it! We’d be happy to join you!”
“Great! Then go to Karen over there and let her hear how excited you are.”
“Yes! Hey, Karen! Let’s play together again! We’d love to!”
Saki and the five others stared at her with eyes full of sincere enthusiasm.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah…okay…”
Karen, who was slumped in the corner of the room, didn’t have anything special going on that day, like a date, or a date, or maybe even a date. So Llenn had no excuse lined up to squirm her way out of this one. She was locked in, cleverly cornered by Elza.
“Hey! Me too!” blurted out Miyu, who grinned and gave them a thumbs-up.
“Umm…Boss…”
One of the six teenagers, golden-haired Milana, quietly spoke up.
“Yes?”
“May I ask Elza one thing, too?”
“Yeah.” “Sure thing!” cried Saki and Elza simultaneously.
Milana locked her blue eyes on Elza’s face.
“About the Elza Kanzaki model guitar,” she started, “I mean, your actual guitar, not the mass-produced one. You have those white cat footprints on the fret board. Do you like cats? Do you have any?”
“Yeah, I like cats. But I don’t have one. I’m actually allergic.”
That was a lie. Elza had told Goushi her story.
At her grandparents’ house, they’d had three different-colored cats. The family had treasured them dearly.
The black one with the feisty personality was Spica. The big reddish-brown one was Antares. And the blindingly white one was Canopus. Her grandfather was an astronomy buff, so he’d named them all after stars.
Elza loved the three felines with all her heart. She wasn’t allergic to them, either.
But after the death of her grandparents, they’d all left the house. Not of their own accord, mind you; her grandparents had delegated who would take care of the animals after their passing in their will.
Taking care of three cats took a considerable amount of work. And since the home had to be sold after their death, Elza could no longer live there. Given that she was going to be on her own, with true freedom for the first time in her life, her grandparents had kindly let her begin her new life free of burdens.
And while she’d loved the three cats with all her heart, she had no intention of adopting a new one.
When she’d told him the story, Goushi had replied, “I love cats, too. I think you should get one.”
Elza replied, “But I already have you as a pet.”
Goushi had been choked with emotion. She did him the favor of knocking more sense into him that night.
But let’s not get sidetracked.
Elza did not have a cat at the moment.
Instead, she placed a cat sticker on the fret board of her guitar, the single most valuable item of her career. Then she stuck cute little paw prints in a trail behind it. The design was based on Canopus, the white cat closest to Elza of the three.
It represented moving forward, bit by bit, one step at a time. All in order.
Goushi was always watching her closely. Sometimes he saw her tracing the steps with her fingers, even though she wasn’t playing the frets.
“Thank you!” Milana said, bowing.
“Thank you so much!” Saki echoed. “We’ll be taking our leave now! We won’t ask for your contact information! Instead, we’ll just ask Pitohui to get in touch for game business! This is Boss’s account!”
Saki held out her smartphone toward Elza, who returned the gesture, trading their information. The younger girl clutched her phone to her chest, cradling the precious information within.
“Everything we’ve seen and heard today is our little secret! We’ll never tell anyone, even under torture!” she swore gravely. The other team members nodded.
Elza smiled and said, “Thanks for that. I appreciate it. Yes… Karen’s broken heart will be our little secret…”
“Uugh!”
Karen had been recovering from her heartache until that reminder hit her in the gut. All six feet of her body bent and coiled like a snake.
“That was merciless,” Miyu commented, rubbing her friend’s back.
“Don’t worry. In two and a half months, your hurt feelings will have healed up, and it’ll all be a fond memory,” added Elza, winking. “Rumors don’t last forever, y’know. That’s how it’s been for you, too, right Miyu?”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha.” Karen chuckled, putting on a weary smile.
But without a trace of irony, Miyu replied, “Huh? No, I get over a breakup in three days. Why?”
Saki and the girls left, and the Karen Kohiruimaki Rejection Memorial Karaoke Event drew to a close.
Goushi used the company card to pay for the feast, which meant that, ultimately, it was all on Elza.
“Hey, do you really want to spend the night alone? Sure you don’t want to take a bath together?” Elza insisted—which was sexual harassment, by the way—but Karen extracted herself and prepared to walk home.
“All right, just don’t forget the quest next week! Let’s kick some ass!” Elza called out, her features hidden behind a face mask, while Goushi carried her guitar case. They disappeared into their car, which was parked at a meter.
It wasn’t the usual black luxury vehicle, but a fashionable compact in a cute color. Was that to avoid people recognizing them?
As for Miyu, who had taken a morning flight from Hokkaido just so she could spy on Karen’s date, she sidled up to Karen and said, “Hey, can you let me stay the night? You can vent my ear off until morning if you want! You did that for me, after all!”
The streets were packed from Saturday nightlife, so they navigated the crowds in silence until they reached a side street with more breathing room.
“Miyu…”
“Yeah? Oops, wait until we’re at your place if you want to yell at me.”
“Not that. I’m not mad. Thank you.”
“Right? Hey, you’re welcome.”
“Anyway, about what Elza said back there…”
“Huh? Oh, you wanted to spend the night with her after all?”
“No! The answers she gave to Saki’s questions.”
“Oh, those.”
“I think she was mostly lying about those things. In fact, I don’t think any of that was true.”
“Yeah, probably not. I could tell, too. But those girls were so earnest and innocent that they bought every last word of it. She’s got layers upon layers…”
“Also…”
“Hmm?”
“Goushi never said a word the entire time he was there at her side. I think he knows the actual truth”
“Probably.”
The fashionable, adorably colored compact car sped down the expressway.
Elza held the guitar in her hands in the right-rear seat, not playing but humming, “Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm-hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm-hmm, hmm, hmm…”
It was the Promenade section of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which she had arranged into one of her own songs.
Goushi recalled that Llenn had also sung it on the banks of the lake back in SJ1.
When the humming in the back seat ceased, Goushi said “Boss” without turning his head. He glanced at her face in the rearview mirror instead. “That was quite a story you put together. I’m blown away that you were able to concoct it so smoothly.”
“No big deal when you’re Elza Kanzaki.”
“But even I haven’t heard about your stage name. Do you mind if I ask what the real reason for it is?”
“Huh? I never told you?” she asked, blinking. She was really, truly surprised. “Well then, I’ll let you in on the secret of my pseudonym. Just for you.”
“I’m honored to have your trust. I’m listening.”
“The kanji for Kan in Kanzaki is God, of course. And Saki or Zaki is a promontory, a piece of land that juts into the sea, right? The people God didn’t call to be with Him must be standing on that point somewhere.”
“…And Elza?”
“That one’s simpler. El comes from eru, the verb meaning to attain. And can you tell what za is?”
“The kanji for sit… A seat, then?”
“You got it. How clever of you.”
“A place to sit on the headland before God…”
“Basically, it’s just a silly pun. I’m sure that when I thought of it, I felt like I was sooo deep. But the truth is that it’s so embarrassing I can never publicly admit the story behind it.”
“No, I think it’s a wonderfully meaningful name. I’m moved.”
“Really? Well, it’s a secret. I’m never going to tell anyone else.”
“I’ll take everything you’ve told me in confidence tonight to my grave.”
“My. Thank you. But there’s one more thing. Something very, very important that I don’t want you to forget.”
Goushi said nothing. For a time, the only thing moving in the car were his hands on the steering wheel.
A few moments later, he spoke up. “What is that very, very important thing?”
“Everything that I’ve said to you in confidence could be…”
“Could be?”
“Could all be lies.”
Elza slid her fingers down the fret board of the guitar.
Over the cat’s paw prints, step-step-step.
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