XLVI

“So who are you again?” Mirai asked Rei, rubbing her eyes tiredly.

“My name is Rei Hamamori, I was Akari’s friend before she became famous and I’ve been Amanda Wells’ assistant for the past three years,” Rei replied, physically and emotionally exhausted. Ever since the five girls had barged in she had been sitting in the same chair at the dining room table answering questions thrown at her from all five of them. The tall blonde from before had finally left but she felt no safer. She recognized three of them as members of Kunoichi, Sachi, Mari and Yukiko, though Sachi looked far worse from wear than she had the last time she’d seen the group on television.

“What are you doing here?” the short blonde Japanese girl demanded.

“Looking for Akari, like I’ve said a thousand times, now,” Rei snapped irritably.

“And you say Amanda tried to kill you,” Sachi demanded, her voice rising. “The pictures you showed from your phone plainly show the only person she tried to kill was me. Tell me where the fuck she is!”

“It wasn’t my fucking phone! That belonged to the killer, like I said!” Rei yelled back. Rei was angry and frustrated and could take it no longer. “I helped Amanda! Ok? I helped her! I am just a stupid runaway cow with no talent that was foolish enough to think I could step into a world, even for a second, that I had no business even dreaming of!

“I wanted to share a stage with Akari one time as someone who wouldn’t embarrass her so I whored myself out to Amanda to feel that light just once. To know what it felt like to dance beside my idol I helped her. She hurt me and I stayed. She abused me and I stayed. She treated me like dirt and, god fucking help me, I stayed. In the end she used me to get Akari and when she got what she wanted, when my usefulness was over, she decided to do away with me. I let her do it. For one glimpse of the spotlight up close with Akari I let her do it.” Rei was crying uncontrollably now. “If I could take it back I would. I would have stayed at the convenience store to keep this from happening but I can’t do anything, now. So, yes, you want to know whether I helped Amanda. I fucking did!” Rei dropped her head to her hands and sobbed, the others stared at her in silent shame.

“Ness, get me the computer and an internet connection that isn’t run by carrier pigeons. I have an idea,” Mirai said in English, glancing down at the phone on the table.

“Fucking hell,” Mirai growled, staring at the computer screen. She turned to the tall blonde again. “Get Takihiro on the phone and see if she can get me that back door access site for NTT. I’m too tired to remember it.”

“What are you doing?” Sachi asked from where she sat beside Rei on the couch, the exhausted girl’s head in Sachi’s lap as she rested.

“It’s a long shot, but I’m going to see if I can get Amanda’s cell’s location through breaking a really long series of laws,” Mirai replied.

“Good thing I’m a lawyer,” Sachi replied, running her fingers through Rei’s hair to soothe her.

“125.200.0.56,” Vanessa said to Mirai.

“There we go,” Mirai said, typing furiously on the computer. Several breathless moments later Mirai sat back and rubbed her eyes again. “She’s out of range at the moment but as soon as that phone connects to the internet we’ll have her.” Mirai picked the would-be assassin’s phone up from the table and tapped a short message before laying it back down.

“What do we do, now?” Yukiko asked, petting Rei’s leg like she was a cat.

“We wait,” Mirai replied.

“Again with the waiting,” the tall blonde woman, Vanessa, sighed in broken Japanese.