Budding Star

by Annie Dalton

  “Shut your eyes and just listen,” he hissed back.

  This was sound advice. Without the disturbing visuals, Tsubomi’s astonishing voice just shone through.

  After her first album came out, Tsubomi totally dropped the bubble-gum sound, along with the jailbait clothes, and started writing her own material. Tsubomi’s new songs were not only street, they had a genuine spiritual vibe, which fans instantly recognised. Since they were also wildly popular, neither her mum nor Miss Kinsho could exactly object.

  While we were watching Tsubomi’s life story, Michael made insightful comments. “You see what she’s doing? She’s too young to be in the spotlight, yet she’s trying to reach out to other young people. Tsubomi’s only twelve here, yet she’s already an artist through and through.”

  His assistant, Sam, was more into family dynamics. Like, “Watch Mum’s expression here. Did you see she’s started wearing designer furs!” Or, “Have you noticed Dad is getting increasingly pushed out? You never see Dad on the concert tours, just Mum and Miss Kinsho.”

  Tsubomi’s schedule as a teenage celeb was unbelievably demanding. We saw her recording tracks for a new album, wisecracking on chat shows, doing interviews for lifestyle magazines, shooting videos, getting up at four a.m. to film a commercial for a mobile phone company.

  Any time Miss Kinsho got caught on camera, she looked like the smug cat that got the low-fat cream. Just like a cat, she was completely two-faced. If it suited her, she’d schmooze around people and be really sweet and charming, but even a child could see she was out for herself. As for Tsubomi’s mum, she didn’t even bother with the charm.

  One day Tsubomi took time out, to have some fun with her old school friends. They went shopping, took silly photos of themselves in these really cool Japanese photo booths, ate sushi. Then Tsubomi persuaded them to go with her to get a bad-girl tattoo!

  When I saw the design on her naked shoulder, I almost stopped breathing. It was a tiny blue butterfly. The Universe had been sending me all these signs and I had never noticed.

  Sam rapidly fast-forwarded through the next few scenes. “Miss Kinsho isn’t too pleased as you can imagine,” he commented. “Tsubomi never sees her friends after that. Mum takes care of that.”

  “Are you with us, Melanie?” Michael inquired.

  Still reeling from the butterfly coincidence, I forced myself to focus. My headmaster wanted to show us the second and final time Tsubomi dared to rebel.

  It was the night they were due to play in Kyoto. Tsubomi had never been to this ancient city, and wanted to do some sightseeing. Mariko Hoshi had a headache, and Miss Kinsho was prowling up and down, talking on her phone, so Tsubomi sneaked out of the hotel with one of her bodyguards.

  Tsubomi and Stretch were good mates. We’d already seen them playing card games in the tour bus to pass the time. One time, when Mrs Hoshi was asleep, they had this mad competition to see how many takeaway noodles they could cram into their mouths!

  Stretch never treated Tsubomi like a big star. He called her “Suzie”, and said she reminded him of his little sister. I think he actually felt sorry for her. OK, she was rich and famous, but she had absolutely no life.

  This sympathetic bodyguard agreed to help her play hooky, unwisely as it turned out. Wearing dark glasses and with baseball caps pulled down over their faces, they wandered through old Kyoto. They ambled along canals fringed with weeping willows, visited a Zen garden made out of swirls of white gravel, and took photos at all the major tourist attractions.

  Then Tsubomi decided to hit the shops. She wanted to find a place she’d read about that sold a Japanese pickle her father adored. This was a v. interesting cosmic coincidence, since one of our agents was conveniently playing his sax outside this exact same shop.

  The Agency had become increasingly alarmed by Mariko Hoshi’s unhealthy influence on Tsubomi. They had big plans for this young girl, but if things didn’t change, their budding star would be burned out before she was twenty.

  So they called Blue in to help nudge Tsubomi’s life back on track.

  Blue is an Earth angel who is also a totally luminous sax player, and an old hand at giving cosmic reminders. When Tsubomi heard the divine sounds he coaxed from that sax, she responded exactly as our agents hoped. You could see her thinking, OMG! Yess! This is what it’s all about. Not chat shows, not money, not fashion shoots. It’s the music!

  Tsubomi stood on that busy street corner for over an hour, totally rapt.

  Then, looking her in the eye, Blue deliberately started to play one of Tsubomi’s own tunes, and, being a true musician, she couldn’t resist the invitation.

  Outside the pickle shop, with traffic rushing past, the pop star and the undercover angel improvised a magical jam session.

  Astonished passers-by couldn’t believe that these talented performers were playing for free. They literally started throwing paper money. Bank notes just snowed down. It was like one of those feel-good music videos. Little kids were dancing. Stretch was dancing. Old people with Zimmer frames were dancing. Even Reubs and I were dancing in the viewing suite!

  But, inevitably, someone recognised her. A crowd quickly formed, fans began pushing and shoving, demanding autographs. Stretch was excellent at his job. He managed to get Tsubomi away from the overexcited crowd and safely back to the hotel. Giving each other high fives, they congratulated each other on getting away with it.

  They didn’t realise that Tsubomi had been spotted by a photographer.

  Next morning her picture was splashed all over the tabloids: Tsubomi Hoshi singing outside a pickle shop, with a homeless lowlife. Stretch was fired the same day.

  Sam fast-forwarded to a few weeks later. Tsubomi was hunched in the back of a limo on the way to some TV studios. Since the pickle-shop incident she wasn’t sleeping well. Looking unbelievably lost and lonely, she glanced out of the limo window, and totally froze.

  Every billboard carried a giant poster of Tsubomi Hoshi!

  My mates and I used to dream of being celebs. But when you lived the dream for real, like Tsubomi, it looked a lot more like a nightmare.

  That moment marked the beginning of a worrying change in Tsubomi. On stage, she still sparkled to the max. But when the lights went down she looked absolutely drained.

  “That’s not tiredness,” I said suddenly. “That’s—”

  Reuben shushed me. “We know what it is.”

  The documentary showed a few highlights from one of her last concerts, then replayed them from Tsubomi’s point of view. Now we were looking out over a crowded concert hall. The huge space was packed out with ecstatic teenagers, swaying and singing along. All of them were waving cigarette lighters, making it look like the hall was full of twinkling fireflies. As the camera panned along the front row, there was a sudden technical glitch. Bizarre blips and blots of shadow made it impossible to see faces clearly. But I’d seen enough to know that the “fans” whose vibes were playing havoc with the Agency’s equipment were not blissfully swaying, and they definitely weren’t waving lighters. That’s because PODS are allergic to light.

  Sam touched a computer key, bringing up Tsubomi’s energy field on the screen, a shimmery cloud of rose, gold and violet. “See those dark areas that look like bruises? Every concert, she gets a few more. The poor kid’s on stage almost every night, there’s no time for her to heal.”

  No wonder Tsubomi wasn’t sleeping; it was a miracle that she still had a vague memory of what she’d come to Earth to do. When PODS mess with your system, remembering who you are, and why you came to Earth, is generally the first thing to go.

  I knew all this. What I didn’t know was WHY? Why would the PODS go out of their way to target a teenage pop star? What threat could a sweet fourteen year old possibly pose? Unless…

  “You’d lined up some major cosmic role for Tsubomi, hadn’t you?” I said abruptly. “And it leaked out to the Dark Agencies?”

  “That’s very astute of you, Melanie.” Michael said, letting ou
t a sigh. “And as you know, Dark agents prefer to let humans do their dirty work for them.”

  I remembered the chilling expression in Mariko Hoshi’s eyes, and shivered. “They’d got to work on her mum hadn’t they?”

  Sam put the film on pause. “And they brought Miss Kinsho in, and made sure Mr Hoshi was nudged out of the picture,” he explained, “making it almost inevitable that Tsubomi would be pushed out into the spotlight years earlier than the Agency had intended.”

  “Then the Dark Powers sat back,” said Michael, “and waited for her to sabotage herself.”

  I swallowed. It would never have occurred to those cosmic lowlifes that this vulnerable teenager would STILL try to carry out a soul plan designed for an older, wiser Tsubomi, like, years in the future.

  Sam restarted the film. “There’s not much more.”

  I wondered if the Dark Agencies had been filming Tsubomi too, playing the tapes in some viewing suite in the Hell dimensions, watching and waiting, hoping to find a way in. I think they were, because in the very next scene they got frighteningly close.

  Tsubomi had flown to yet another city, to perform at a huge concert the next day. When they arrived there was some hassle with their luggage. The airline had lost the trunk with Tsubomi’s stage costumes.

  Mariko Hoshi stayed to sort it out. Tsubomi and her entourage went on to the hotel, only there’d been some major mix-up, her bodyguards and roadies hadn’t been booked in and at two a.m. there were absolutely no vacancies. That’s how Tsubomi came to be sitting alone in an empty hotel lobby in the small hours, while a yawning Miss Kinsho signed the register.

  Tsubomi was so exhausted she kept nodding off. The Agency cameras were playing up again. The ugly blips and blots made it impossible to identify the shadowy figures stealthily moving towards her across the foyer. Tsubomi’s mineral water bottle slipped out of her hand and rolled across the floor. She jolted awake, and whoever or whatever she saw scared her so badly that her screams echoed round the foyer.

  Miss Kinsho hurried towards her. “Tsubomi? What’s wrong?”

  The documentary cut to Mariko Hoshi and Miss Kinsho drinking saki at the Hoshi’s apartment. They were celebrating their latest deal. A multinational wanted Tsubomi to promote a new teen clothing range. Tsubomi was all set to go global.

  Mr Hoshi was sitting with them looking withdrawn and unhappy. It was obvious he wasn’t part of the celebration.

  The camera showed Tsubomi nervously hovering outside the door, wearing her fave Hello Kitty pyjamas. In that moment you saw how young she was, and how fragile.

  She took a breath, went in and made her brave announcement.

  “Mum, Dad, Miss Kinsho. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t think I can. I want to make music because I love it, not because I have to, not because I’m scared of letting everyone down.”

  I have never heard a mother talk to her daughter the way Mariko Hoshi talked to Tsubomi then. It was a barrage of pure hate.

  By the end Tsubomi was trembling, but you could see she still had one faint hope. She looked pleadingly at her father. “Dad?”

  “I prefer to leave this type of decision to your mum,” he mumbled.

  Tsubomi closed her eyes. “Yes, Daddy, you do,” she said in a choked voice. “And I wish you wouldn’t.” Without another word she went to her room.

  Weeks passed. Snowflakes melted in crowds on the window of the coach. Tsubomi and her entourage were on the road again.

  Her insomnia was getting worse. Miss Kinsho had persuaded a doctor to prescribe super-strong sleeping tablets, as none of the normal ones seemed to work. On nights she couldn’t sleep, Tsubomi sat up watching Manga cartoons, or flicking through teen magazines, but mostly she played computer games. “I’ll just get to the next level,” she’d tell herself. “Then I’ll stop.” But I knew she was really too scared to fall asleep.

  One of our agents, posing as a roadie, tried to tell her that the pills were a bad idea.

  “I have to sleep, don’t I, Tomo?” she said softly. “I can’t perform if I can’t sleep.”

  She suddenly looked confused. “How many pills did I just take then? Did you see? How many are left in the bottle?”

  “You just took two,” he said gently. “I was watching.”

  The following night, Tsubomi collapsed in a hotel bathroom. By the time they found her, she’d slipped into a deep coma. We saw weeping fans leaving bouquets of flowers and flickering tea lights outside the Hoshi’s apartment as if Tsubomi had already died.

  The screen froze on the blank beautiful face in the hospital bed.No one spoke.

  It took me a few moments to pull myself together. “I don’t mean to be dense, but do human souls often take off when their body falls into a coma?”

  Michael seemed horrified. “Of course not. What kind of Universe do you think this is? Tsubomi has been under intolerable pressure. We believe she was protecting herself the only way she knows how.”

  “But she’s in danger, isn’t she?” I said anxiously. “Not just from the Dark Agencies. The longer her soul is separated from her body, the more difficult it will be to retrieve.”

  Reuben cleared his throat. “Can I just ask a really obvious question? Tsubomi’s been in a coma for three weeks. Why didn’t some Agency guys go in straight away and get her back?”

  Sam looked sheepish. “The thing is, she’s sort of given us the slip.”

  I was gobsmacked. “You’ve lost a soul? I thought that was virtually impossible!”

  “It is. But Tsubomi is an unusual girl. And remember we’re talking about a million plus Limbo dimensions. We don’t have enough personnel to search them all.”

  It was down to me to ask the second most obvious question.

  “So this wasn’t like, Tsubomi’s time to die?”

  “No,” Michael said. “It isn’t Tsubomi’s time to die.”

  “But she still could?”

  “Yes, she still could,” he said very quietly.

  “But if you don’t know where she is, how exactly are we supposed to bring her back?” said Reuben asking the exact same question that had been hovering on the tip of my tongue.

  Michael took a breath. “There is one technique which might enable us to find her, but there would have to be a soul connection between the human and at least one of the agents.”

  I shot up in my seat. “But there is a link! I’ve been feeling it for days. I just didn’t realise until tonight.”

  “We suspected there might be.” Michael sounded relieved.

  “It’s theoretically possible to locate a lost soul by using the principle of resonance,” Sam explained.

  “Like sound, you mean?” I said.

  “More like vibration,” he said. “It’s an ancient and extremely powerful angelic technique. I’d say it works nine times out of ten. The only drawback is, we wouldn’t be able to track you. There’d be no Agency backup.”

  Reuben grinned. “No change there then!”

  “How will we cope!” I faked a dramatic sigh

  “Sam, have you noticed how trainees today have absolutely no respect?” Michael complained.

  “Actually, I seem to remember you making the same comments about me,” Sam said tactfully. “So are you guys willing to give it a shot?”

  “Yeah, we’re in, aren’t we, Mel?” said Reuben immediately.

  “I’d like to hear it from Melanie, if you don’t mind,” Michael gave me one of his searching looks. “I heard you were thinking of changing options?”

  Once again my inner angel got in first. “That’s OK,” she said, quickly. “I might as well go out with a bang.” It seemed like Helix REALLY wanted to go on this mission.

  “Nobody wants to pressure you,” Sam said cautiously. “But pretty much everyone here feels you and Reuben are exactly the right people to help Tsubomi. You’re young, you both have a great love of music, and I think you’re on very similar wavelengths.”

  Reuben sounded distressed. “It’s not just a
bout Tsubomi, is it? In Heaven, everything reminds kids how magic they are. On Earth there’s just this constant pressure to forget. Tsubomi used her songs to help teenagers remember who they really are. Those kids need her, and they need her songs.”

  That’s when it hit me just why Tsubomi Hoshi was so dangerous to the PODS.

  The Dark Powers want humans to live in a kind of grey-green-khaki waking dream. Tired, depressed, confused. Just awake enough to work, shovel in food and watch TV, and just asleep enough to make them easy to control.

  This extraordinary fourteen year old had the power to wake kids up all over the world.

  We said goodbye to Michael out in the corridor. He’d been called away from some huge Earth project to deal with Tsubomi; now he had to go back.

  “Sam will talk you through the procedure. It’s really very simple.” Our headmaster sounded like he was worrying that he was abandoning us.

  To make him feel better I teased, “If we complete this mission, Michael, you have to take us to Guru for hot chocolate!”

  He gave me a tired smile. “If you complete this mission, I’ll take you to Sugar Shock. Their hot chocolate is supposed to be out of this world.”

  Then we tried not to notice we’d both said “if”.

  Sam led us along a maze of corridors to a row of lifts I’d never used before.

  I couldn’t tell you if we travelled up or down to reach the Zone, as Sam kept calling it. When the lift doors slid open we were in a totally unfamiliar part of the Agency Tower.

  A sign said: TRANSDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL ZONE PERMIT HOLDERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT

  All our previous missions had started in a bustling departure lounge. It’s mad up there, no matter what time you go: trainees dressed in costumes from every historical period you can think of, all queuing for angel tags, making last minute calls, joking with team mates, attempting to meditate while the maintenance guys hunt around for some crucial replacement part for your time portal.

  In comparison, the Zone was as silent as the bottom of the ocean.

  Sam unlocked a series of sealed doors made from some special celestial metal, ushered us through the final door and relocked it.