Chapter 22: Press Conference

The hall the lawyer had booked was on the second floor of a ward office, with a blue carpet and forty folding chairs.

By eleven fifty, there were two hundred people in it.

The aisles were full, and a row of camera operators stood on the radiator covers at the back.

Across the street, in the grand ballroom of a hotel, Daigo Kitamura's conference had started at eleven thirty with an open buffet.

Half the journalists in Tokyo had gone there first.

Misaki watched the hotel stream on her laptop, grim-faced.

"He's saying Kokone is on indefinite rest for her health," she said. "And that her stepsister is under police investigation."

"Are there police?" Emi asked.

"Not for you. For him, not yet."

The fan lawyer stood in the doorway, a woman of fifty with square glasses and a briefcase.

She had shaken Emi's hand with both of hers that morning.

"Don't be afraid of the numbers," she said. "There are two hundred here and half a million online. Look at the camera and say the plain thing."

"Will that work?"

"It always has for me."

Kokone stood at the side of the stage in a white dress with a blue ribbon, the exact blue of the Tokyo night on the floor.

Six girls in matching jackets stood behind her in a line.

Rina had her arm around the youngest.

Emi stood last, in the black dress, with her hands clasped to keep them still.

"Ready?" Misaki said.

"No," said Kokone. "Go."

Misaki opened the door.

The sound of the room changed when they walked in.

Two hundred conversations dropped away at once, and the shutters began, a sleet of tiny clicks.

Kokone crossed the carpet to the single table with its row of microphones, and sat, and put her hands flat.

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