Chapter 5 Part VII

After everyone left, I sat in front of my computer and looked at Sakura Airi's – I mean, the gravure idol Shizuku's – blog. As I read through the past entries, I saw that she had started blogging about two years ago. Precisely around the time that Sakura started working as a gravure idol. Her hopes and aspirations for the future were spelled out in writing. I didn't see anything that especially stuck out, no red flags. I checked out other idol blogs just for reference, but they seemed similar.

I had to wonder, how would it have felt for a second-year junior high student to debut in the entertainment world? During one year, she'd updated the blog almost every single day. She wrote about what happened that day and her thoughts. She also responded to almost every single comment from her fans. But, just as I'd expected, she stopped replying after being accepted to this school.

She had strictly adhered to the rule about contacting anyone outside the school. Although she wasn't really the direct center of attention, Sakura seemed more popular than I had imagined. She had over 5000 followers on Twitter. Many of them were fans that wanted her to return to doing gravure magazines really soon, or asked if she had any plans to appear on television. Among those many comments, a post from three months ago snagged my attention.

"Do you believe in fate? I do. I believe we will be together forever."

It that had been the only message, it would've been the delusional fantasy of a fan. But there was more every day, and it escalated quickly.

"I can always feel you close to me."

"You were even cuter today, huh?"

"Did you notice when our eyes met? I noticed."

If Sakura saw this, those words would probably frighten her. It was almost as if the poster wanted to be physically close to Shizuku so he could whisper these words into her ear. Were they just delusions? Within this heavily restricted school, only a very limited number of people could encounter Sakura.

Students, teachers…or anyone who did business with the school. I flashed on a memory of the man who worked at the campus electronic store. Then, a post from last Sunday caused my hair to stand on end. I had a crushing realization.

"Look, God is real after all."

Sakura had bought a digital camera after she enrolled in school. Of course, she'd probably disguised herself that day, just like any celebrity would. But while a disguise like that would make sense for her to use with fans, that clerk had recognized who Sakura was. Of course, there were only a few ways that they could have contact at that point.

However, after Sakura's camera broke, he saw her. Since she loved it so, she had to fix it. Given our circumstances it was nearly impossible for someone in Class D to buy a new one. However, because she took it in for repair, there was the possibility that she'd encounter the store clerk.

She'd been hesitant to go get her camera repaired because of the clerk. The clerk, on the other hand, had been in incredibly high spirits. After all, here was his chance to get his favorite idol's real name and phone number on the form she had to fill out. It also might explain why she'd called me that evening and asked some rather significant questions.

When I thought about it, the answer seemed obvious. I combed through the comments, searching for more he might have written.

"It's so mean for you to ignore me! Or perhaps you just didn't notice me?"

"What are you doing now? I want to meet you, I want to meet you, I want to meet you!"

Frightening comments were posted one after another. Of course, other fans had simply been disgusted by these comments, but it was different for Sakura. I wondered if knowing that he was so close pushed her to the point of almost unimaginable terror? But Sakura had concealed that from us, and now she was desperately trying to fight Class C for us as a witness. She was probably hesitant to leave her dorm, considering how much this man's existence terrified her.

If they were on the same campus, her fear wasn't surprising. However, there was hardly anything we could do, no plan we could implement to solve the issue of this stalker by tomorrow. In the end, the only option was to wait on an SOS from the girl in question.

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