Chapter 21: Rehearsal

The seven of them rehearsed in Emi's flat, because nowhere else was safe.

Rina played the reporters.

She stood at the kitchenette with a wooden spoon held up and bellowed questions in six voices.

"Kokone-san! Are you in love with your stepsister?"

"Kokone-san! Is it true the photo was real?"

"Kokone-san! Did your mother approve of the girl?"

"My mother wants to hit the president with a ladle," Kokone said, "and she approves of Emi more than she approves of me."

"Too much information," Rina said, and shook the spoon. "Next."

"Is the group breaking up?"

"No," said Kokone, and then, more firmly, "Not unless he's the one who breaks it."

"Good. Shorter. Who's the man in the photo?"

"I don't know. He's been paid to be nobody. That's the point."

"Better."

The youngest sat cross-legged on the futon with a notebook, writing down every answer and underlining half of them.

Misaki had set up a laptop on the counter and was making the slides the lawyer had asked for.

Three images: the email, the sign-in sheet, the timestamp of the photo against the live broadcast.

"No fancy transitions," she said, to nobody. "A single slide, a single fact, forty seconds each."

Emi stood by the window and watched.

She had a plain black dress hanging on the closet door, one she had bought for a cousin's wedding.

She wasn't sure yet that she'd put it on.

When the others went to buy dinner, Kokone stayed behind, and sat on the arm of the futon with her hands between her knees.

"You're quiet," she said.

"I'm thinking."

"About the dress?"

"About whether I should be there."

Kokone went very still.

"Emi."

"It's your press conference. The reporters want a story about you, and the agency wants a story about me. If I stand next to you, I'm the story."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Stepsister Is the Idol Everyone Wants to See from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.