My Stepsister Is the Idol Everyone Wants to See novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sequins on the Canvas
Kokone comes home from a concert in full costume and falls asleep on Emi's wet floor painting, and Emi refuses to hand over her phone.
Emi Yoshida was kneeling on a drop cloth the size of a bus stop when someone knocked on her door at eleven at night.
She had a brush in her left hand and a can of deep blue in her right.
The cloth covered her whole floor, three meters by two.
It was her class project, a painting of Tokyo at night seen from far above, and it was due in nine days.
She was also due at the convenience store in forty minutes.
The knock came again, three quick raps and one slow one.
Emi stepped over the Shinjuku district, still wet, and opened the door.
A woman in a navy suit stood in the hall with a tablet under her arm.
Behind her stood a girl in a pink stage dress covered in sequins, with a hooded coat thrown over it.
Her honey-blonde hair hung down to her waist.
She was asleep on her feet, her cheek against the wall.
"Emi Yoshida?" the woman in the suit asked.
"Yes."
"I'm Misaki Ono, Kokone's manager. Your stepmother gave us your address. She said it would be fine."
Emi looked at the girl against the wall.
She had met her once, for ten minutes, at a wedding in Kyoto five weeks ago.
Her father had married a ramen shop owner from Osaka.
The ramen shop owner had a daughter who was twenty and apparently famous.
Emi had shaken her hand and said congratulations, and that was all.
"Kokone?" Emi said.
The girl opened one eye.
"Oh," she said. "It's you. You're the tall one."
"I'm Emi."
"I know. I remembered the tall part." She shut the eye again.
Misaki stepped inside without being asked and looked around the six-mat room.
She took in the futon rolled in the corner, the single window over the train tracks, the cloth, the cans and the brushes.
"There's a magazine story tomorrow," she said. "It's bad. Kokone can't be at the dorm or at her mother's. Nobody can know she's here."
"Here," Emi said.
"A week or two. Maybe three."
"It's one room."
"It's one room nobody would look at," Misaki said, and she sounded sorry about it.
She turned to Kokone.
"Shoes off, please. Then sit."
Kokone slid off her shoes in the hall.
She walked in three steps, looked at the huge cloth with its glittering lights and dark blue rivers, and said, "It's so pretty."
Then her knees folded, and she lay down on it.
Emi said, "No, wait, that's wet."
Kokone curled on her side across the Shibuya crossing, one hand tucked under her cheek.
Sequins left her dress and stuck to the paint.
She was breathing slowly and evenly.
Misaki pressed two fingers against her eyes.
"She did a three-hour concert and a two-hour handshake before that."
"She hasn't slept in a bed in four days."
"She's lying in my painting."
"I'll pay for it."
Emi looked at the girl.
Her pink dress was smearing blue along one hip.
A single false eyelash had come loose and rested on her cheek.
Emi put down the brush.
She took the blanket off the futon and shook it out.
"What are you doing?" Misaki asked.
"Covering her. It's cold by the window."
"You can move her to the futon. I'll help."
"Then the paint on her dress goes on my futon, and the part she's lying on dries with her shape in it."
Emi laid the blanket over Kokone's shoulders.
"I'll paint around her."
Misaki stared at her.
"Around her."
"Tokyo is big. There's a lot of other places."
Misaki let out a short, tired laugh, then went back to business.
She held out her hand, palm up.
"Phone, please."
"Why?"
"The agency's rule."
"Anyone hosting a talent hands over their phone while she's with them, so nothing leaks."
"I'll give it back every morning for an hour."
Emi looked at the hand.
She thought about her father, who texted her every night at nine.
She thought about her shift at midnight, and about Haruka, who would ask where she was.
"No," she said.
"Ms. Yoshida."
"I'll keep it to myself. I won't tell anyone. But I'm not handing over my phone in my own flat."
Misaki's face did something complicated.
Then she lowered her hand.
"Then you're responsible for her," she said. "If it gets out, it's on you."
"Fine."
"Her schedule is on the table. I'll be back at eight."
She left.
The train went by outside, and the window rattled.
Emi stood in the middle of her flat with a sleeping idol on her art project.
She picked up her phone to tell Haruka she'd be late.
The screen lit with a news alert, already live, a day early.
Tsubomi Seven's Center Has a Secret Boyfriend.
Under it was a photo of Kokone in a car park, kissing a man in a mustard-yellow jacket with a white stripe down the sleeve.
On the floor, without opening her eyes, Kokone mumbled, "That man isn't anyone I know."
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