It seems I need to contact Kiyono Arisa first to find out what happened between her and that girl yesterday.
But…
Koharu Miura pinched her chin.
When Kiyono Arisa messaged her yesterday, she refused to let Koharu come to the livehouse, and she still hasn’t told her the reason.
In the end, she’s gone back to that state of shutting people out.
It won’t be easy to get her to talk under these circumstances.
‘Do I have to rely on guessing?’
Did “the other side” realize that her actions these past few days were detrimental to them, so they specifically contacted Kiyono Arisa, made threats, and forced Arisa to cut off contact with her… Is that why Kiyono Arisa acted that way?
If that’s the case, there might still be a chance. She could always find an opportunity to get a response from Arisa, but…
If Kiyono Arisa chose to cut off contact on her own initiative, then it’s a bit more troublesome.
Koharu Miura frowned, completely unaware that Mayumi’s expression beside her was growing increasingly grim.
“Can I go now…?”
So immersed in her thoughts, when she heard the other girl’s words, Koharu Miura just instinctively looked up and made a sound of acknowledgment.
Then her still-dazed consciousness froze.
—Because Mayumi’s expression was already twisted, on the verge of tears.
“—Wait? What’s wrong…”
“Sorry, I have to go—”
Koharu Miura frowned, her outstretched hand stopping mid-air, failing to grab Mayumi’s arm.
That bad feeling from before surged up again, and Koharu quickly picked up her pace to follow.
Mayumi stumbled ahead, and Koharu called out to her several times in a row, but couldn’t get her to stop.
Fortunately, although she was as bad at running as before, the low heels Mayumi was wearing weren’t suited for fast movement in these messy alleyways either, so Koharu could barely keep up.
…Is that it?
Chasing from behind, Koharu’s mind refined the idea that had just surfaced.
The group originally targeting only Kiyono Arisa, after she started contacting Arisa, had also diverted some of their attention to deal with her.
Regardless of the fact that the cause of this change was most likely her own actions, it was even possible that the harassment Kiyono Arisa suffered itself only happened because she, this variable, had intervened in the story.
Then—
Koharu Miura looked at Mayumi fleeing ahead of her.
As Kiyono Arisa’s teammate.
…Had Mayumi suffered the same harassment?
Was she being targeted too?
After that, Koharu finally managed to catch up to Mayumi before the end of the alley.
Then, under Koharu’s gentle persuasion, Mayumi quickly broke down in tears and told her about what she had been experiencing recently.
To Koharu’s surprise, the good news was that the girl’s emotional walls were considerably thinner than Kiyono Arisa’s.
The bad news was…
The situation was indeed as she had speculated.
…According to Mayumi, a few days after she last saw Koharu Miura, her private LIME account received a direct message from a stranger.
The account had no avatar, its ID was garbled characters, and the friend request only contained one sentence: “Mayumi, are you enjoying your idol activities?”
That LIME account was Mayumi’s hidden account… meaning it was an account she used to go online under a different identity, one that had never exposed her real life.
She had never talked about her life with anyone on that account, but the day before yesterday, she received a message from an unknown account, clearly stating her name and identity.
Mayumi just felt a bit uncomfortable at the time and immediately blocked the account.
But in the following days, some strange things started happening to her.
…Her phone number started receiving spam messages, someone ordered unplanned dishes for her when she went to a restaurant, and an unsigned bouquet of flowers was delivered to the livehouse, specifically for her to receive.
—Regarding that bouquet, when she took it home, overjoyed to see tangible support from a fan and ready to appreciate it properly, she discovered several flower stems hidden within the bouquet that had clearly been added later, with their thorns deliberately left on.
While recounting these events, Mayumi cried intermittently, making it hard for Koharu to hear everything clearly; but because Mayumi herself was sobbing, she spoke slowly, allowing Koharu to make out the content of her words.
Even so, Koharu felt a chill run down her spine the more she listened.
“…Finally… on my phone, I…”
“Received… the same sentence…”
“As that first private message…”
By the end, Mayumi could no longer hold back her emotions.
‘Mayumi, are you enjoying your idol activities?’
Koharu Miura frowned.
A statement that named names, displaying blatant malice.
No mistake about it. Judging by the content of the actions, it was the same group harassing Kiyono Arisa.
—Just like when dealing with her, were they now starting to harass the people around Kiyono Arisa?
After seeing Mayumi off at the station, her friends had long since gone home.
The sunset was almost sinking below the horizon.
The slanted orange light cast from the side made Koharu Miura’s figure, sitting dejectedly on the platform bench looking at her phone, appear especially lonely.
LIME showed the messages she had sent her friends earlier.
After catching up with Mayumi in the alley, Koharu had foreseen that she wouldn’t be able to return to her friends at the normal time, so she simply sent Yui Hori a private message.
She said that after coming out of the restroom onto the street, before she could meet up with them, she ran into a relative.
The relative was surprised to find her alone in a place like Sakuragicho. Although she explained she was with friends, they insisted on taking her away and sending her home.
[What? There’s such a thing? That’s so unlucky!]
[And don’t you think it’s a bit unreasonable? To just forcibly take you away like that.]
Her friends’ messages had stopped popping up. Koharu’s gaze was fixed on another quiet avatar next to the chat window.
It was Kiyono Arisa.
Koharu still didn’t immediately send her a message.
Although she was very concerned about Kiyono Arisa’s situation now… in Koharu’s view, no matter how bad things got, Kiyono Arisa probably wouldn’t be in any life-threatening danger.
If the other party wasn’t willing to communicate now, her taking the initiative to contact her would be much less effective, and might even have a negative impact.
Adding various other reasons, after thinking it over, Koharu decided to temporarily—at least for today—not message Kiyono Arisa.
“…Sigh.”
This gave rise to a new problem.
Koharu Miura looked at her phone screen with distress.
She was now in a situation with nothing to do.
Given the circumstances just now, she couldn’t very well ask Mayumi to exchange contact information with her either.
She was already overwhelmed by the sudden harassment, just hoping for a place to vent…
If she asked for her contact info on top of that, she’d probably really get PTSD.
“Ahh…”
Ignoring the curious glances from passersby, Koharu rubbed her head full of long hair.
She was really at too much of a disadvantage. Was there really no other breakthrough besides Kiyono Arisa?
She bit her lip tightly, scrolling up and down on her phone, her eyes darting back and forth between those few names and avatars.
In the end, the only distinctive one she could see was Kanzaki Sou’s unique avatar.
“…”
The overwhelmed Koharu Miura felt that between the “SS” in Kanzaki Sou’s ID, it was missing a letter “O” to turn into the SOS she could call out for help.