Every day at 4:15 PM, the screen would cut to a live feed from the station's lobby. And there, surrounded by a shrieking, weeping mob of little girls in sailor uniforms, stood the Do Re Mi Fa Girl. She wasn't singing then. She was just Yumi. She'd sign autographs on bento wrappers, retie a lost girl's ribbon, and laugh—a real, un-synthesized laugh that crackled through the TV speaker like static electricity.
That evening, Leo didn't practice his math homework. He took the five-string koto, tuned it to a broken, lopsided scale—Do, Mi, Fa, La, Ti—and wrote his first song. It had no major chords. No happy rainbows. It was about a girl inside a fake ladybug, crying real tears. The Excitement of the Do Re Mi Fa Girl -1985 - ...
"I'm sorry," she said, her real voice thin and reedy. "They told me not to tell you. But my name isn't Yumi. It's Hanako. And I'm very tired. They want me to record twelve new songs by Friday, but I haven't slept in two days." Every day at 4:15 PM, the screen would
"It's not a racket, Oba-chan. It's… physics," Leo lied, not taking his eyes off the screen. On it, Yumi-chan was riding a giant mechanical ladybug through a soundwave-shaped forest, teaching the difference between a major and minor chord by turning sad clouds into happy rainbows. She was just Yumi
Leo felt a cold, hard stone drop into his stomach. He knew Kenji was right. But knowing felt like a betrayal.
But Leo turned to his grandmother, who had been watching from the doorway. "Oba-chan," he said, his voice buzzing. "Do you still have your old koto?"
The screen went to static. Then, a test pattern. The Do Re Mi Fa Girl was gone. Cancelled by the next commercial break.