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It’s the frayed, ripped, half-faded advertising poster that’s showing through a myriad ofotherfaded, ripped adverting posters pasted over it. Time, weather, and whatever else have faded and peeled back the top layer, revealing the older one beneath it.
My pulse skips as confusion tangles around me.
Because there, smiling at me in a white wedding dress, surrounded by a dozen Japanese men in tuxedos holding white lotus flowers…
IsCain.
Not someone who looks like Cain. I mean it’sliterally her, smiling from the center of the advertising poster, surrounded by all those guys and text I can’t read because it’s in Japanese.
We’ve only met in person that once. But there’s no mistaking it. The woman on the poster isCain—same face, same hair, even the same quirky little smile.
What the actual fuck.
Hana laughs as she walks back to where I’ve paused and glances at the old poster. “Oh myGod, that show was so fucking cringe.”
I blink, frowning as I turn to her.
“Show?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. It was calledLotus Bride. It was like Japan’s super-weird version ofThe Bachelorette. All those guys are all totally rich and set for life. Exceptoneof them is just a regular, broke guy. Andthatchick,” she says, pointing to Cain, “has to pick one of them to marry. But obviously the whole twist is that she doesn’t want to pick the poor guy.” Hana rolls her eyes again. “Told you it was trashy.”
I stare at the poster, trying to figure out what the hell this is.
“Oh, and thebestpart,” Hana snorts, “is that in the end it turned out thatnoneof the guys was rich. They wereallregular-ass men with regular-ass jobs...” She clears her throat. “Frey?”
I blink, pulling my gaze back to her.
“You okay?” she asks, noticing the look on my face. “You look freaked out.”
“Yeah, I just—” I trail off, unable to form a coherent sentence. My mind is racing, trying to piece this together. “Iknow her.”
Hana frowns. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Yeah. But not as…this,” I frown, pointing at the poster. “She’s an encryption analyst and network tester now. We met in New York.”
Hana arches a brow. “Really?”
“Yeah, I just know her as Cain.”
“Cain?” Hana types madly on her phone for a sec. “Okay, yeah, her name is Kitamura Kyo.” She glances back up at me. “The show ended weird because some fan figured out Kitamura was actually an actress. She’d done a fewsuperlow-budget horror movies before the show. And once that came out, everyone just started shitting on the show and calling it fake.” She snorts. “As if it wasn’t a totally scripted piece of crap to begin with.”
I chew on my lip, shaking my head. “This is really weird.”
“Totally. I can’t believe you know her.”
“I’m literally meeting with her later tonight.”
She whips around to stare at me. “Hold up,what??”
“Yeah! We chat all the time about coding and encryption hacking and shit. She’s based out of Tokyo, but she’s in Kyoto for work.”
“She’s a literalhackernow?” Hana’s brows knit. “That’s…sort of a strange pivot.”
“Oh, I agree. But she’s legit,” I shrug. “She really,reallyknows her shit, too.”
It suddenly hits me thatthismight one-hundred percent be why Cain has been so cagey about sharing her real name with me.
My phone dings.
