Chapter 3

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At home on the outskirts of Tokyo, Mrs Ootani Aimi prepares lunch for her family and updates her famous blog of advices for housewives. She reflects on the fact that many of her friends' children of the age of Karouji have lost their way, become good-for-nothings or have mental issues.

Through considerable efforts in asking people and in interpreting Japanese signs, Mulan is finally able to find the small café for crossdressers where he meets Yurina, and manages to communicate with her in his basic Japanese. They have fun listening to music and doing karaoke, then Yurina takes Mulan to the music school where she studies bass guitar and drums. Here they salute a dapper man, the school's receptionist and handyman, and meet Yurina teacher, the legendary Cowboy, a drag queen in her forties with an artistic past. After a brief conversation between Yurina and Cowboy - of which Mulan only understands a few words - Yurina jubilantly announces to Mulan that - having found a singer - the three of them can put together a punk band, The Fake Kiss. And the singer will be Mulan.

During the therapy, Dr Bertini praises Karouji for staying at home performing the 'secret' task of supervising his parents. He prescribed the symptom, Karouji stayed at home not because he is hikikomori, but because the therapist asked him to. Emerges the concern of the mother, whose future but definite plans for everyone are endangered by Karouji's 'illness'. For a moment during the session, Mr Ootani seems to abstract himself, fixing his gaze on something only he can see. The session ends early because the family is worried that Mr Ootani will not make it in time to catch a plane. He is due in London, where will meet the board of the magazine "Sunglasses", of which he is one of the editors, to be proclaimed director of the new Singapore office: a coveted post, but also a job that will take him further away from his family, and his son. At the airport, Taro drinks a couple of gins, and on the plane drinks more heavily; he briefly flirts with a flight attendant, who recognises in him a desperate man.

At the clinic, Dr Kawakami tells Dr Bertini about a ghost that appeared during the session; she is surprised that he did not notice it...

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