Book Title: The Stars May Rise and Fall
An M/M retelling of Phantom of the Opera set in turn-of-the-millennium Japan
Author: Estella Mirai
Publisher: Self-published
Cover Artist: MiblArt
Genre/s: M/M romance, contemporary
Heat Rating: 2 flames
Length: 90 000 words/320 pages
It is a standalone story.
Blurb
Teru came to Tokyo with dreams of making it big in the glam-metal visual kei scene, but three years later, all he has to show for it is a head of hot pink hair and some skill with an eyeliner pencil. He may look the part, but he doesn’t sound it, and constant bickering among his bandmates has him worried about his future. When he finds a mysterious business card in his bag, he’s willing to take any help he can get.
Help comes in the form of Rei, a crippled, disfigured composer whose own career was ended by an accident before it had really begun. With Teru’s voice and looks, and Rei’s money and songwriting skills, both of their dreams seem about to come true – but a forbidden kiss and a late-night confession threaten to tear it all apart. Now Teru, who has spent most of his life denying his attraction to men, and Rei, who vowed long ago never to love again, must reconcile their feelings with their careers – and with their carefully constructed ideas of themselves.
THE STARS MAY RISE AND FALL is an M/M retelling of Phantom of the Opera, set in Tokyo at the turn of the millennium. It comes with a healthy dose of angst and a dollop of nostalgia, as well as an age-difference romance, a physically disabled love interest, and memorable characters who will stay with you long after the pages are closed.
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One of the things that has always attracted me to reading is the ability of books to take you to another world. Whether it’s fantasy, historical fiction, or just something set in another country or city, or with characters from a different walk of life, each book is like a little mini-vacation.
When it came time for me to tell my own stories, then, it was only natural that I wanted to give my readers the same experience. I wanted to share with them a place that is near and dear to me, a place that many of my readers might not have an opportunity to experience on their own—not only Tokyo, but the particular slice of Tokyo subculture I was a part of almost 20 years ago.
Not all of my early readers loved what I did with the setting. The book was set in a weird in-between time period that wasn’t really modern or historical. One literary agent said that the characters’ “cultural quirks” would be hard for American readers to understand. But as Neil Gaiman famously said, “when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” I could have changed the story to set it in the present. I could have made one of the characters American, to filter the world through an outsider’s eye and easily work in the explanations that agent seemed to want. But that would have changed the heart of the story that I was trying to tell. I knew I had to keep my setting, and to keep certain core aspects of the characters–among other things, they had to be native Japanese–but I also had to do it in a way that would be understandable and accessible, not necessarily to American readers alone, but to English-speaking readers all over the world.
There are two big reasons (and a couple of small ones) that the story needed to be set when it was. The first was pure nostalgia. I had lived through this time, and experienced things that don’t necessarily exist anymore, or that don’t exist in the same form, and I wanted to preserve that and share that experience with others. That’s partly a selfish reason, yes, but I also think it’s important for every author to write the stories that only they can tell. As a kid, too, some of my favorite books were things like the Little House books or Noel Streitfeild’s Ballet Shoes. Even books that weren’t historical at all when they were released, like Judy Blume’s, were charming and authentic to me rather than incomprehensible, and that mindset has followed me into adulthood. I needed to write about the time that I was familiar with, and the time when this particular subculture was first and foremost in my life.
The second big reason is addressed directly in the story: The visual kei genre was extremely popular in the late 80s and through the 90s, but by the turn of the millennium was starting to go out of style. It wasn’t completely dead yet, so it’s not unfeasible that my characters will realize their dream of making it big… but it’s also becoming more and more unlikely. If I’d set it much later, the wide-reaching subculture wouldn’t have been there to serve as a backdrop. (There are still visual bands today… but they are much fewer and farther between. Most of the visual kei record shops and clothing shops have closed, and the venues that used to host mostly if not all visual bands have adapted to include a wider range of genres.) It was crucial for the story that the scene itself be at that particular stage in its lifecycle, so rather than change the setting, I decided to make sure that significance was clear.
It’s also very encouraging, in a sense, to look back at the way life was then, and to see how things have changed. While a lot of LGBTQIA+ people in Japan still remain in the closet, there have been major steps taken recently, with some areas of Tokyo acknowledging civil unions similar to marriage, and mainstream Japanese media drawing sympathetic attention to queer relationships. Similarly, while Tokyo is still not one of the most accessible places in the world for people with disabilities, the number of elevators, accessible toilets, and other important facilities has increased greatly since the time the book was set. Things still aren’t perfect, but they’re getting better. For that reason, I do think it’s important to remember how things were, how far we’ve come, and how much more work there still is to do in the future.
It was also very important for me to show this particular slice of Japanese life, because my characters come from a demographic that’s underrepresented in English-language media. Readers who are familiar with anime and manga have probably seen a wider range of Japanese lifestyles, but a lot of English-language books set in modern Japan either focus on expat characters, or on this very mainstream idea of needing to get into a good school, to get a job at a good company, to bring honor to your family or country, etc. And most of those stories aren’t WRONG. Obviously, some authors get it more “right” than others do, but I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of expat stories (and really, the cultures of the children of business expats, exchange students, or military families stationed overseas are their own things, and are absolutely valid and important, if not really “Japanese”), and plenty of great stories about more mainstream, conservative, upper-middle-class characters. A lot of people here DO have those values and live those lifestyles… but Japan is a lot more diverse that a lot of Western media lets on.
It was important for me to tell the stories of characters who didn’t fit the traditional mold, because a lot of my friends and family here don’t either. I do not think any of my characters went to a four-year college… three of them went to technical school and one to a two-year junior college. The rest are high school or junior high school graduates, who decided to pursue other careers. My main character, Teru, is barely on speaking terms with his family, although his best friends’ parents were a little more supportive of his decision to move to Tokyo to be a rock star. Some of them are more traditional and religious than others… maybe they choose to go home for the holidays, maybe they don’t. Maybe they’d like to, but can’t because of financial issues or an inability to take time off work. All of those situations really happen. It was important to me to show characters who are less traditional and less focused on conventional ideas of success, because I wanted to reflect the experiences of the people that I love. I know a lot of people who did leave their rural hometowns after high school to work two or three part-time jobs while trying to make it as musicians, and I wanted to show the many ways that that kind of goal can intersect with the more traditional values of society.
It was absolutely my pleasure and my privilege to work on this book, and to attempt to bring this little slice of Tokyo life to my readers! A good book should feel like a mini-vacation. I hope you enjoy taking this whirlwind tour as much as I enjoyed being your “guide”!
I can help you. Call me.
Teru ran his finger around the edge of the card. Maybe it had been a mistake. Should he call, and let whoever had left it know?
He opened the window and lit a cigarette. The smoke floated out into the muggy Tokyo night.
“This is stupid,” he said aloud. “It’s one in the morning. Whoever it is, they’re asleep.”
But Teru wasn’t asleep. His bandmates probably weren’t asleep either. If it was a musician who had left the card, one in the morning was better than one in the afternoon.
I can help you. Call me.
He picked up his phone and dialed.
It rang once, twice—and Teru cut the connection. This is stupid. But he didn’t feel stupid. He felt guilty, like he’d been doing something he shouldn’t.
He stubbed out the cigarette and walked across the room to the refrigerator. Nothing but a pack of noodles and a flat Diet Coke. Even though he’d already had a couple with the guys after the show, what Teru really needed was a beer.
On the other side of the room, the phone rang.
The floor was littered with clothes and magazines and Playstation controllers. Teru almost tripped as he lunged for the phone, and then only crouched there, watching it, with his nerves wrapped around his voice box like a snake. There was no name with the number, but Teru knew it by heart. He’d only been staring at it for the past hour.
The ringing stopped. An engine rumbled outside Teru’s window, and a train clattered over distant tracks. Upstairs, slippered feet padded across a tatami floor. The air was thick with an anticipation far from silence—but just as easily shattered by the trill of a different ring.
Teru’s fingers fumbled to open the text.
I heard you sing.
He stared, waiting for the words to sink in. They didn’t, though. They made no sense.
It had only been a mistake after all.
You’ve got the wrong number, he replied. This is Teru, the drummer for La Rose Verboten. I don’t sing.
And then: You should.
The phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“You have a beautiful voice.”
It wasn’t Yasu. It wasn’t anyone he knew.
“Hello?” Teru repeated. “Who is this?”
“A friend.” The voice was male, deep and effortlessly sensual in a way that Seika would have envied. It made Teru distinctly uncomfortable.
“Look,” Teru said. “I think you want Bara. I’m not the singer. I’m the drummer. The one with pink hair?”
“I heard you,” the man pressed. “In the dressing room. I can help you.”
In the dressing room? There’d been no one else in there.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Not at all.”
“What do you want?” Teru whispered.
“To teach you. To help you. Will you meet with me?”
Teru’s palms were sweaty, his face flushed. It was partly exhaustion, partly a lingering buzz… but it was more than that. He felt dirty. This was worse than what he felt with Seika—and it was just a voice on the goddamn phone.
“There’s a studio in Koenji,” he heard himself say.
“No!” the man snapped, and he took a sharp, hissing breath. “No studios. You may come to my apartment.”
“Your apartment?”
“Please. It is… difficult, for me to go out.”
“Um… okay.” What the hell did that mean?
“I live in Meguro,” the man said. “Near the live house. I can send you the address. If you’ll come.” There was a plea in his voice, a quiet desperation. Teru swallowed, hard.
“You want to give me singing lessons?”
“Yes.”
This was insane. “When?”
“Whenever you are free.”
Teru glanced at his calendar. June, 2000. Three years, almost to the day, since he had stepped off the night bus from Niigata. After all that time, he didn’t even have anything to lose.
Estella Mirai lives just outside of Tokyo with her human family and a very spoiled lap cat. When she isn’t reading or writing, she works in editing and translation—which means that 99% percent of her day is usually words. In her minimal free time, she enjoys watching musicals, cooking (badly), and slaughtering power ballads at karaoke.
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