Chapter 15: Six Girls

Emi opened the door with the chain still on.

A tall girl in a sports jacket stood in the hall, her blue-tipped black bob flattened on one side.

Behind her, crowded up the stairwell, stood five more girls in hoodies and masks.

"Rina?" Kokone said, from behind Emi's shoulder.

Rina's face crumpled and cleared in the same second.

"Oh, thank god. You're alive. Can we come in? Is there tea? Is there a floor?"

"It's one room," said Emi.

"We're thin."

They came in single file, the whole rest of Tsubomi Seven, and took off six pairs of shoes in a hall that held two.

Then they stood around the edge of the finished painting and looked down at it without stepping on it.

"Is this Tokyo?" asked the youngest, who was seventeen and still had her school bag.

"It's the whole thing," said another. "Look, the tower. The red dot. That's the one from the train."

"Kokone put it there," Emi said.

"Of course she did," Rina said. "She never could wait for a train."

Emi made tea in three mugs and two bowls.

The girls sat on the futon, the windowsill and the counter, packed together.

Kokone sat on the floor with her back against Emi's knees, and nobody commented on that.

Rina told it standing up.

"They called us in at midnight. All seven. Or six, because you weren't there."

"The president read us a paper. He said Kokone has broken the no-dating rule and may be removed as center."

"And that if she doesn't sign by the thirtieth, the group goes on with someone else in the middle."

"Who?" Kokone asked.

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