Chapter 10: Reporters on the Stairs

By evening there were forty people outside Emi's building.

She counted them from behind the curtain.

Fans stood in a loose ring around the front door with phones raised, and three men with long lenses leaned against a van.

One girl held a sign that said KOKONE WE BELIEVE YOU.

One man held a sign that said LIAR.

A drone buzzed past the third-floor window and hovered there.

"Don't," Kokone said from the futon. "Don't open it."

"I wasn't going to."

"They found the building in six hours."

"Someone sold the address."

"Someone always does." Kokone pulled the blanket around her shoulders.

Misaki had gone back to the agency to fight for a lawyer.

She had said she would come back by midnight.

At midnight the buzzer rang, and Emi looked through the peephole to find only the empty hall.

Someone had pushed a note under the door.

It said: STAY INSIDE. DO NOT LEAVE. CAR UNSAFE. M.

So they stayed.

The flat grew small and warm.

Emi cooked eggs on the single burner, and Kokone ate them on the futon with the plate on her knees.

Emi lent her a spare shirt, the gray one with a hole in the collar.

It hung to her thighs.

When Kokone leaned forward to put the plate down, the neckline fell open.

It showed one collarbone and the curve of a shoulder, and Emi had to look at the ceiling.

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