True Self

A street at night with intense city lights.

The street is crowded, and I walk with small steps through the crowd coming from the stores and the voices of people talking as they pass by my ears.

And next to me was a girl with hair shining like the moon in the night sky.

“This is the first time me and Misaki san are walking together like this.”

Sakura looks at me and smiles.

The gap between her black-rimmed glasses, which she wore to avoid causing a scene, made my heart beat faster.

Even just walking with Sakura makes my heart pound.

“Well, there was always someone beside me.”

It’s times like this that I’m glad I’m learning the art of being an actor.

Going home together, if it had been me before, it would have immediately showed on my face.

“Now that you say it, it’s true.”

“There were always people around you, right? After all, popular people are different.”

“Popular, you mean…….”

With a snap, Sakura’s footsteps stopped.

“Who is this person that all people like so much?”

“Sakura……?”

“I wonder if they really like me?”

We had not yet had a significant conversation.

Still, the fact that she stopped in her tracks is surely because….I had stepped into something.

I’ve failed, I thought. On the other hand, I would like to hear what happens next.

I somehow understood that this was probably the answer to the discomfort I was feeling.

“In fact, Misaki san……I have always regretted it.”

Slowly, Sakura opens her mouth in the middle of the street.

“I wish I had never become an actress.”

Her words are like a denial to the current Sakura.

The heavy tone of her voice made it hard to believe that she was joking.

“Of course, acting is fun. It’s busy, but it’s rewarding, and I get a lot of money. I’m sure I’ll have so many things going on in my life that I won’t have to worry about it.”

Sakura, who has been in the entertainment business since she was a child and has been active in the front lines, has certainly acquired many things at this stage of her career.

Money is one thing. Connections, experience, recognition, skills, and so on.

It is a world full of constraints, but Sakura has more benefits than that.

But–

“But one day a few years ago, at the funeral of my uncle who passed away……I had a sudden thought.”

Sakura let a single tear fall from her eye.

“Ah, I should just cry in this situation.”

……I see.

I finally understood what Sakura was trying to say.

“Look, Misaki san. I tried to shed the tears I have now. I can cry easily.”

She claims that she has the skill to shed tears at any time.

……No, I don’t think that is what Sakura is trying to say.

The problem is that before that–she was not saddened by the loss of her uncle, but rather she created an attitude in accordance with the circumstances around her.

“……Sakura.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you recognize yourself?”

When I said that, Sakura smiled with tears in her eyes.

“Fufu, as expected of Misaki san. You seem to be very perceptive and don’t have to say much.”

—I may have misunderstood who Sakura Hiiyo is.

She is polite, soft-spoken, generous, elegant, and kind to everyone, a hard worker who looks after her surroundings, and is strict with herself.

That was my perception of Sakura before and until now.

But actually? What if she is just making that up?

“…..At the beginning, I was working so hard on the role.”

Sakura walked past me and started walking ahead.

“It’s done. Apparently I had talent. Then what about the next one? I’ve been getting more opportunities to appear on TV, so I decided to make myself look like what the public would like to see on camera.”

Her walking stride is girlishly small.

It shouldn’t be much of a challenge to stand side by side, but I have a hard time lining up. Each step is very heavy.

“Here it is again, done. What’s next? This time I decided to change my normal self so as not to cause trouble for my sponsor or others around me.”

Her calm demeanor would be considered polite by adults, and mature by her peers.

Taking both sides of the equation, there are only advantages. You may be stoned for being mature, but that is a trivial matter in front of the advantages.

Furthermore, it is possible to create the character of Sakura Hiiyo at the same time. Fixing the impression of the world should also lead to cognition.

“And so here I am today. How many years have I spent as this ‘me’ since then? ……I didn’t feel any discomfort in the beginning, you know? It’s just–“

“Sakura’s uncle….”

“Yes, when he passed away, I realized. I don’t know where I went.”

Sakura, walking ahead, looks back.

In the background, I saw crowds of people and a huge billboard on the top of a towering building.

“What is the real me? Am I really me now? Was I the right first person to begin with?　What foods do I like? What do I dislike?　Which would make me happy? What hurts the most? No matter how much I think about it, no matter how much I try, I can’t figure it out at all. No matter where I dig, I can’t find the answer. I want a script, a textbook, a novel, anything to set me up. I feel like I’m walking down a road with no destination. In the end, all I can remember is making myself up and acting.”

A detriment from her constant acting.

In addition, it was probably because she was more talented than others that she became so.

Quickly integrated herself into society, put a face to the people around her, and forgot who she was because she kept pretending to be something she wasn’t.

Perhaps if she had not thought that she could “cry” when her uncle died, she would not have even realized that she had continued to act out.

If it doesn’t come to mind that the feeling of sadness is completely missing.

“But after meeting Misaki san……I began to have a few feelings that I might have missed.”

“…………”

“I was excited, uplifted, and intrigued by Misaki san. I also embraced feelings that I did not know existed. In fact, it is only to Misaki san that I talk about these things, you know?”

So I must have watered it down at that time, he said.

Sakura looked apologetic.

But I couldn’t tell whether that expression was genuine or acting after hearing what she just said.

“For me, Misaki san is—. More than my parents, more than Kisara san, more than my classmates. Other people can teach me about me that I couldn’t have. But……I still can’t remember myself. I want to remember, even though I know with all my heart that I should.”

Sakura opens her hands and smiles.

“Hey, Aoi kun.”

Her appearance was no different from her reflection on the billboard–

“Can you find me properly?”

I couldn’t reply anything to those words.

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