“Thank you everyone. Thank you, thank you.”
Daehyun bowed several times and smiled grandly at the audience. Meanwhile, Momo’s jaw hadn’t recovered from its seat on the floor. Her dimwit teenage brother, the wannabe Soundcloud rapper, was standing in front of an audience of hundreds with a five o’clock shadow and a designer suit, and he somehow… didn’t look out of place.
Am I having a stroke?
“You know,” he started, and the audience quieted as he wrapped his fist around the microphone stand. His fingernails were painted black as soot. They were perfect, not even a little chipped. Definitely better than anything Momo had ever accomplished on her own cuticles. “This is just— surreal, really. All of your beautiful faces. These amazing costumes. I’m… I’m honored to even be among such a good-looking group of people.”
The audience cheered. Momo could barely believe her own ears. He sounded… charismatic? Charming? She wondered if in twelve years the human race had discovered a way to remotely pilot other people’s brains. Because she would be less surprised if some underpaid speechwriter from Los Angeles was plugged into Daehyun’s skull than to know it was actually him speaking.
“It’s funny. When I accepted the role to play Takeshi in the movie, I thought, holy crap, I can’t believe they didn’t realize I’m a total fraud,” he laughed, bowing his head bashfully. I’m surprised too, she thought, but ultimately, the gesture came off as completely authentic. Momo had been listening to this boy’s white lies her whole life, and yet her bullshit detectors were unusually quiet as she listened to him yammer on about his journey into acting.
He continued, pearly white teeth shining like a commercial for a dentist’s office, “I’ve told this story many times, so I’m sure most of you know it, but for those who don’t—I was never supposed to be an actor. My true destiny was to be a complete loser. Really! Before I got scouted, I was the guy you would religiously avoid on the corner right outside the subway station. The one who was aggressively trying to hand you his mixtape.”
That drew a small but genuine chuckle out of Momo, and for the first time, she was laughing alongside the crowd. Daehyun hadn’t quite gotten to the point of passing out his tapes on the street back when Momo lived with him, but it wasn’t hard to imagine him getting there.
“But for heaven knows what reason, Scott Levi, the scout for the Momo production, ran into me when he was on vacation. I did my whole usual shtick with him, tried to get him to take a copy of The Trials and Tribulations of a Bay Area Bozo—all original CD copies now out of stock, sorry to say—and instead of just slapping my hand away like people usually did, he actually took the CD, listened to it in his hotel room, and came back to see me the next day.”
Now that was truly unbelievable. Momo had heard that album more than once. Just thinking of it again made her involuntarily cover her ears in distress. “He must have been a charity worker,” she muttered under her breath. “Or an insane person. Or an insane charity worker person.”
Luckily Daehyun—nor anyone else—heard her. Even luckier that he had no idea about Valerica. If anyone was going to get accused of being a social worker responsible for inept Lim children… They all certainly had their own types of angels.
“And let me tell you guys,” he laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I never had anyone come back the next day. So I was super excited when he showed up. Only to be a lot less excited when he shook my hand real rough—this guy has a handshake like a gorilla—and he said kid, your music is trash. Just, really bad. Quit that straight away, give up on it, never look back. But your look, he said, your attitude, your style—by the way, he was gesturing to my stained Linkin Park t-shirt and twelve dollar Goodwill jeans—he said this is something I can sell. You’re just what we’re looking for. Of course, I assume he’s talking about working at a strip club or something, but it turns out he wants me for a television show.”
The audience roared. Daehyun gave them a devilish little smile.
That smile—that smile Momo recognized.
This was really her brother. Her brother who, by his own admittance, would have ended up forever on the sidewalk handing out tapes for an uninspired Slim Shady-parody-sequel if it wasn’t for Momo’s ascendance. His life had been completely upturned by her actions. It was a funny thing, knowing that. Funny in the way that it made Momo feel like crying.
She had been a big sister, in a way, even from afar.
She blinked quickly, feeling her eyes sting. Goddamnit.
“But, the thing is… I didn’t want the role.”
Daehyun took a breath in, and it felt as if the entire room began to deflate. Momo could see it in the people’s faces, in the German couple next to her, in the teenage girls frowning from a row over—all these people, these strangers, knew something about her brother that she didn’t. Something important, obviously.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“As you all probably know, I lost my big sister Momo twelve years ago.” He exhaled shakily. “She went missing in upstate New York, and still hasn’t been found. So as soon as Scott told me the name of the production, of the central character, I just couldn’t do it.”
Momo’s stomach dropped. She had the sudden urge to stand, to start jumping up and down like a crazy person, to wave her hands around and yell, “you didn’t lose me, you idiot! I just got lost for a bit, but I’m right here!” But she knew that the moment she did that in front of all these teenagers and their cellphones, she would turn the whole thing into a big, messy, viral moment, which in turn would probably trigger some annoying Lore Department emergency button and whisk her back to the Nether. So she refrained.
“But Scott Levi helped me realize that by doing the show, I could honor my sister’s memory. She was a huge television fan. She’d binge series she liked for days and days, to the point where it kind of worried our mom and dad,” Daehyun laughed, and Momo’s cheeks burned a bit. “But once they discovered all her art notebooks full of drawings of the actors and actresses, they saw it differently. We all did. She was an incredibly talented artist, just like the Momo we see in the show. They’re really more similar than I ever could have imagined.”
He cleared his throat. Momo’s cheeks burned even hotter.
“So, yeah. Thank you for all the support you’ve shown the show. I know my sister and Momo Tokugawa are technically two different people from two different worlds, but your love for Momo the character sometimes feels like it’s meant for my sister. So,” he rubbed at his watery eyes, laughed, and then saluted the audience awkwardly. “Thank you again. From me and from her. Now, without further ado, let’s see some amazing costumes.”
The crowds began shouting “Joon Lee, Joon Lee, Joon Lee…” at the top of their lungs as the artificial lights brightened to welcome the eager cosplayers to the stage. Momo could only shake her head at the ridiculous stage name. She watched him clumsily peel himself from the microphone and head toward the back of the stage, failing to notice as tears streamed down her face. At least that was until she received a rude notification.
[Pitied] has been activated!
“Oh, for god’s sake,” she mumbled.
She could already see the wife of the German couple climbing over her husband with a tissue in her hand. She was plotting it on Momo’s cheeks before Momo could complain.
“Please—it’s fine,” Momo said, backing away. She wasn’t about to lose track of Daehyun now. The woman tutted at her, but Momo was already standing up and stalking toward the barricade surrounding the stage.
Security was very thin, and the stage crew were preoccupied with setting up the floor for the cosplayers, so almost no one noticed her until she was rolling onto the cold wood of the stage and belly-flopping at the feet of seven scantily-clad women in so-called Momo costumes. The women were wearing almost no clothes except for angel wings, the infamous cat-cowl, and instead of clogs, two very uncomfortable looking high heels.
She blinked at them. “What the hell did Roger do to my signature outfit?”
The women looked down at her as if she was a cockroach.
“This is Momo’s final form,” one of the cosplayers said icily. “When she has that big battle in the last episode? And she has to take off her clothes so her skin can absorb the sunlight?”
Momo blinked deliriously up at her.
I’m going to have to have a word with the writer’s room.
She turned to pursue Daehyun again, but a large hand wrapped around her arm, fixing her in place. The hand was attached to a burly man in a navy blue security uniform.
“Ma’am, you can’t be up here,” he said.
Crap. She looked toward the audience. Everyone was looking at her.
This is what she got for judging the outfit choices of her fellow woman.
Quick karmic retribution.
The members of the audience were already whipping their phones out. Even Emily’s pack of vape-addicted wolves, Tall One Lacy and the other girls with names she couldn’t remember, had their cameras hovering steadily upward. The stage’s lighting operator wasn’t making it any easier, either; he jostled the spotlight away from the seven cosplayers and toward her, illuminating her like she’d just jumped on the stage at Broadway.
Oh well. Dignity be forgotten. Time to turn on the waterworks.
“Everyone, please, don’t record me!” she said, fresh tears already ready to go. “I’m just having, like—like, a really vulnerable moment.”
[Pitied] has been activated!
The crowd’s rising tide of phone cameras stilled. Anonymous faces looked at each other as if considering en masse how to proceed. This was clearly a clickbait-worthy video. Would they choose to sacrifice their chance at five seconds of internet fame in exchange for being a decent person?
Momo didn’t know if her skill was powerful enough to do that kind of black magic.
And yet, somewhere in the audience, a phone suddenly shattered onto the ground. Momo’s eyebrows rose as she identified none other than Lacy standing over the shattered device, her hands placed defiantly on her hips. The girl had taken a man’s phone and thrown it onto the ground without a second thought. The sorry gentleman was looking up at her in complete shock and horror, unsure how to respond.
“Wow. What kind of person are you?” Lacy asked, “Taking advantage of a woman during a vulnerable moment? What a society.”
The audience was silent for a moment, their eyes drifting between the stage, the weeping mess of a girl standing on it, the teenager who just committed property crime, and then their own devices. The gears in their heads abruptly finished churning, and they began to roar in solidarity with Lacy’s statement, cheering her on and pretending like they weren’t about to do the exact same thing a moment before.
“Yeah, asshole! What were you thinking?”
“Total sicko,” someone agreed vehemently. “Who would record a woman who is clearly going through a mental health crisis?”
Momo frowned at that one. Still, she wasn’t going to waste the very obvious gift she was being given. So she nodded gratefully to her audience and shrugged out of the security man’s grip. He didn’t seem to want to stop her anymore. With an angry mob at her back, she walked quickly toward the back stage, determined to track down her baby brother.