The door started to close.
The sound of the latch clicking shut was a final, metallic sound, a full stop on a foolish, impulsive idea. This was it. The universe was giving me an out. All I had to do was turn around, walk back to the art room, and tell Emi and Yui they were right. I wasn't the type.
But as the sliver of light narrowed, a voice that wasn't mine, a voice I thought I had buried, screamed from the deepest part of my soul.
No. He doesn't get to decide. SHE doesn't get to win.
My hand shot out, slapping against the wood with a loud crack that echoed in the empty hall. Ren stopped, the door paused an inch from the frame.
"What the hell?" he grumbled from the other side.
Something inside me broke. Or maybe, it was pieced back together into a shape I knew all too well. The fear, the anxiety, the suffocating doubt—it all vanished, replaced by a cold, diamond-hard calm. The training kicked in. The switch flipped. Hotaru Abe, the shy transfer student, receded. Hoshiko, the product, the performer, stepped forward.
I pushed the door open.
Ren stumbled back, surprised by the force. I walked past him without a glance, my eyes scanning the room. It was a mess. Amps were stacked in corners, cables snaked across the floor like tripwires, and a drum kit was crammed against the back wall. Two other students were there—a lanky boy with glasses holding a bass guitar and a girl with her hair in a messy bun sitting behind the drums. They both stared at me, their mouths slightly agape.
Ignoring them, I walked over to a guitar stand where a dusty, sunburst Fender Stratocaster was resting. My fingers brushed over the strings. It was slightly out of tune. My hands moved with an economy of motion drilled into them by a decade of relentless practice. I picked it up, slung the strap over my shoulder, and plugged it into a nearby amp with a sharp thunk. A low hum filled the room.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Ren finally snapped, finding his voice.
I didn't answer. I turned the knobs on the amp, tweaking the gain, adjusting the treble. Then, I turned to the microphone stand in the center of the room. I snatched the mic from its clip. It felt familiar in my hand, a cold, metal extension of myself.
The three of them just stared, frozen in a state of confused shock. I stood there for a beat, letting the hum of the amp hang in the air. The silence was my stage.
And then I sang.
It wasn't a request. It was an invasion. The voice that came out of me was not the whisper of Hotaru Abe. It was Hoshiko's voice—clear, powerful, and perfectly pitched, honed by a thousand hours of vocal coaching to slice through the noise of a stadium.
The song was one of hers, a B-side from the last album, one Ryouko had deemed "too aggressive" for the brand. It was a raw, snarling thing about being a puppet, about the smile that never reaches the eyes. My fingers found the chords on the guitar without thought, my body moving with the muscle memory of a thousand rehearsals.
For the first few bars, the only sound was me. My voice, my guitar, filling the room. The other three were statues, their faces a mixture of shock and disbelief. Then, the drummer girl was the first to break. Her eyes were wide, but her hands, as if by instinct, found her sticks. She caught the beat, a crisp, hesitant tap-tap-tap on the rim of the snare, then a solid kick that locked into the rhythm of my guitar.
The bassist with the glasses blinked, as if waking from a trance. He looked at the drummer, then at my fingers flying across the fretboard. He found the root note, and a deep, resonant bassline began to bloom, weaving itself underneath the melody.
Ren was the last one. He stood there, his face a mask of pure disbelief. He watched this stranger hijack his club, his instruments, his bandmates. He looked angry, confused—and then I saw a flicker of something else in his eyes. The musician in him couldn't fight it. He grabbed a different guitar from a stand, plugged in, and with a few crunchy, powerful chords, he joined in, fleshing out the sound, turning my solo assault into a full-throated roar.
For one glorious, terrifying minute, we were a band. They didn't know the song, but they didn't need to. I was leading, and they were following, caught in the gravitational pull of a performance I had been built to give.
I hit the chorus, my voice soaring over the sudden, explosive sound of a full band, filling every corner of the dusty room with a professional polish it had never known. At the song's climax, during a blistering guitar solo, I let the muscle memory take over completely. The microphone left my hand, spun once, twice, a perfect, fluid rotation between my fingers like it was a simple pen, and I caught it without missing a single beat, right as the vocals were supposed to come back in.
The bassist's jaw was on the floor. The drummer was playing with a focused intensity, lost in the sound.
I was Hoshiko. I was the product. I was perfect.
"...this painted smile is all you'll ever see / I'm just the perfect girl on your TV—"
The words.
My own words, scribbled in a notebook and stolen by Ryouko. The lyric I had fought to keep, only to be told it was "off-brand."
On your TV.
The room suddenly tilted. The full-band sound became a deafening roar. I wasn't in a dusty clubroom with three strangers. I was back on stage at the dome, the lights blinding me, the roar of the crowd a physical pressure, Ryouko's face on a monitor in the wings, her expression cold, calculating. A puppet. A doll. A thing on a screen.
My voice cracked. My fingers fumbled on the fretboard, producing a horrible, screeching note of feedback. The drummer missed a beat, the spell broken.
The performance shattered. Hoshiko was gone.
It was just me. Hotaru. A terrified sixteen-year-old girl standing in a room full of strangers, holding a guitar I suddenly didn't know how to play.
The microphone slipped from my sweaty fingers. It hit the floor with a deafening CRACK that echoed through the amp like a gunshot.
I dropped the guitar. It clattered to the ground. And I ran.
I shoved past the still-frozen Ren and burst out the door, my footsteps pounding down the empty hallway.
Behind me, in the ringing silence of the club room, the drummer girl was the first to speak. "What... what was that? We sound amazing for a second, and then she just... breaks? She can't handle the pressure."
"Are you kidding?" the bassist breathed, staring at the door. "Her voice... her movements... she looked and sounded exactly like Hoshiko."
"Shut up," Ren said, his voice low and strange. He was staring at the fallen microphone, his face pale. "Both of you. Just... shut up."
I didn't stop running until I was outside the school gates, my lungs burning, the ghost of the crowd's roar in my ears. Emi found me there, leaning against the wall, shaking.
"Hotaru-chan! What happened? I heard a loud noise!" she said, her cheerful face clouded with worry.
For a few minutes, Emi and Yui sat in the art room, the comfortable silence punctuated by the scratch of Yui's charcoal on paper. From down the hall, they could hear the clumsy, stop-and-start sounds of a single electric guitar.
"Guess she's getting the tour," Emi whispered, dabbing a bright yellow onto her canvas.
Then, a new sound cut through the wall. A voice. Clear, powerful, and utterly professional, joined by a clean, sharp guitar. Emi's paintbrush froze mid-air. Yui's head snapped up. They looked at each other, eyes wide.
A moment later, a drum beat kicked in, followed by a deep bassline and a second, crunchier guitar. The sound was huge, a full-throated rock song that seemed to make the very air in the art room vibrate. It was tight, polished, and unbelievably good.
"Whoa," Emi breathed, a massive grin spreading across her face. "I guess she is the type! She sounds amazing!"
Yui nodded, a rare, small smile on her face. "She found a place."
They listened, captivated, as the song swelled, the mysterious new girl's voice soaring over the instruments. Everything was more than alright; it was perfect.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it shattered. A horrible screech of feedback, a missed beat, and then a deafening CRACK that sounded like a gunshot, followed by a clatter.
Then, silence.
Emi and Yui stared at each other, their smiles gone. "What was that?" Yui asked, her voice tight with worry.
Before Emi could answer, they heard footsteps pounding down the hallway, fast and frantic. Emi was on her feet in an instant, dropping her brush and running for the door. She burst into the hallway just in time to see Hotaru's back as she shoved the school's main entrance door open and disappeared.
"Hotaru-chan!" Emi yelled, but she was already gone.
She found me leaning against the wall just outside the school gates, my whole body shaking, my face pale and bloodless.
"Hotaru-chan! What happened? We heard you singing, and then that loud noise!" she said, her cheerful face clouded with a deep, genuine worry.
The walk home was a long, ringing silence.
Not the peaceful quiet of the cove, but the void left behind by an explosion. Emi walked beside me, her usual chatter gone, replaced by a tense quiet. She kept casting glances at me, her brow furrowed, her mouth opening as if to say something before she'd think better of it and snap it shut.
I offered her nothing. I was a hollowed-out gourd, scraped clean of everything inside. The girl who had stormed into the music club, the idol who had seized the stage, the terrified child who had fled—they were all gone. All that was left was a body, moving on autopilot. One foot in front of the other.
"Was it... was it the boy?" Emi finally asked, her voice barely a whisper. "The one who opened the door? Was he mean to you?"
I should have said something, but the path from my brain to my mouth felt like a collapsed tunnel. I just kept walking.
"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," she said quickly. "I get it."
We walked along the sea wall, the rhythmic shush of the waves a gentle, mocking counterpoint to the static in my head. The setting sun bled across the water. It was beautiful, I suppose. I felt nothing.
The ghost of Hoshiko was quiet. And Hotaru? Hotaru was just a name. A mask. Without the performance, without the fear, what was I? Just empty.
When we reached the path to the Tanaka house, Emi stopped me, placing a gentle hand on my arm. "Listen, Hotaru-chan," she said, her eyes full of a concern I didn't deserve. "I don't know what happened in there. But... if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here. Okay? Yui is too. We've got your back."
I looked at her, at this kind, bright girl offering a friendship I hadn't earned. I opened my mouth, and a dry, rasping croak came out.
"Thank you," I managed to whisper.
It was a pathetic sound, but it made Emi's face break into a small, relieved smile. "Anytime," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
I gave a single, jerky nod.
I watched her walk away before turning to face the house. It was lit from within, a warm, golden glow spilling from the windows. A home. Another thing I didn't deserve.
I had to face them now. Chiyo and Akira. What could I possibly explain?
Taking a deep breath felt like inhaling shards of glass. I slid the door open and stepped inside.
I slid the door open and stepped inside.
The warmth of the house wrapped around me instantly, a stark contrast to the cold dread chilling me to the bone. The air smelled of soy sauce and ginger, a comforting, domestic scent that felt like it belonged to a different world, a different life. From the kitchen, I could hear the gentle sizzle of something in a pan.
"Okaeri," a voice called out. Welcome home.
Chiyo came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Her kind, wrinkled face broke into a smile when she saw me, but the smile faltered slightly as she took in my appearance—my pale face, the tremor in my hands, the emptiness in my eyes.
Akira was there too, sitting at the low table in the main room, a textbook open in front of him. He looked up when I came in, and his gaze was sharp, analytical. He saw it too. He saw the wreckage.
"How was your first day, Hotaru-chan?" Chiyo asked, her voice soft, trying to be casual, but I could hear the undercurrent of concern. "Did you find your way alright?"
The question hung in the air, simple and impossible to answer. How was my day? It was a hundred different days crammed into one. It was terrifying and hopeful. It was the quiet life I dreamed of and the loud nightmare I had run from. I lived and died a dozen times between the first and last bell.
The Hoshiko training screamed at me to smile. It was wonderful, thank you for asking. Everyone was so kind. The lie was right there, perched on my tongue, ready to be deployed. But I was too tired to perform. The mask was too heavy to lift.
I looked down at my scuffed new shoes. "It was..." I started, my voice hoarse. "It was good."
Chiyo's gentle expression told me she didn't believe me for a second.
"It was great," I tried again, forcing the words out. "Until... until it wasn't. Someone I thought was gone... she woke up for a little while. And she... broke everything."
The words were clumsy, cryptic, a nonsensical metaphor that should have earned me a strange look. But Chiyo just listened, her head tilted, her eyes full of a deep, ancient understanding that went beyond words. She didn't ask who "she" was. She didn't ask what broke.
Akira looked up from his book, his pen frozen over the page. His brow was furrowed, not with confusion, but with a quiet, intense concentration, as if he were trying to solve a difficult equation.
"Well," Chiyo said finally, her voice still gentle. "Sometimes, the ghosts inside us need to scream. It is the only way they will ever learn to be quiet." She untied her apron. "Dinner is almost ready. Go and wash up. You look like you've been to war."
She turned and went back into the kitchen, leaving me standing in the genkan, stunned into silence.
No questions. No probing. No demands for an explanation. Just... acceptance.
The relief was so profound it felt like a physical blow, buckling my knees. I quickly slipped off my shoes and scurried past Akira, not daring to meet his eyes. I fled to the sanctuary of my room and slid the door shut, leaning my back against it, my heart hammering.
I hadn't been to war. It was worse. I had been the battlefield. And tonight, I had no idea who had won.
I slid the shoji door shut, the soft thump of the wood seeming to sever my connection to the warm, safe world of the Tanaka house. My room was dark, the only light a pale silver rectangle cast by the moon on the tatami mat floor. I didn't turn on the lamp. I wanted the darkness. I deserved it.
My school uniform felt like a costume I had sweated through. I peeled it off with numb fingers, letting the pieces fall to the floor in a heap. Dressed only in my simple t-shirt and shorts, I collapsed onto the futon, the soft cotton a small, insufficient comfort. I curled onto my side, facing the wall, pulling my knees to my chest.
Chiyo's words echoed in my mind. Sometimes, the ghosts inside us need to scream.
But my ghost didn't just scream. She whispered. And her whispers were far more dangerous.
As I lay there, adrift in the silent darkness, a memory rose from the depths, unbidden and sharp as a shard of glass.
I was fourteen. I was in a sterile, white dressing room backstage at some music festival.
I had missed a single dance step during the performance. It was a tiny mistake, one that no one in the roaring crowd would have noticed. But
she noticed.
Ryouko hadn't yelled. Yelling was for amateurs. It was messy. Her anger was a cold, precise thing, like a surgeon's scalpel. She stood before me, her arms crossed, her face a mask of disappointment that was a thousand times worse than rage. I was sitting on a stool, still in my glittering stage costume, my head bowed.
"Look at me, Hoshiko," she said. Her voice was quiet, almost gentle. I forced myself to lift my head, to meet her cold, brown eyes.
"Do you know what your problem is?" she continued, circling me slowly like a shark. "You think you're a person. You think you have the right to make mistakes. You think that this," she gestured vaguely at my face, my body, "belongs to you."
She stopped in front of me, leaning in so close I could smell her expensive, sharp perfume.
"Let me be very clear," she whispered, her voice a venomous silk. "You are a product. My product. And products don't have feelings. They don't get tired. They don't make mistakes. They perform."
Tears were welling in my eyes, hot and shameful. I tried to blink them back. Crying was another unauthorized emotion.
"Don't you dare," she hissed. "Don't you dare cry. You have nothing to cry about. I gave you everything. I lifted you from the gutter and put you on a throne. And you have the audacity to be imperfect."
She straightened up, looking down at me with an expression of pure contempt.
"Do you think you could ever leave this? Do you have fantasies of running away, of living some pathetic, normal life?" She laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Don't be a fool. Even if you ran to the end of the earth, you would forever be in a place that is tied to me. You can't live without me. I am the architect of your entire existence."
She picked a piece of lint from her immaculate black dress, her movements calm and deliberate.
"So be grateful, Hoshiko," she said, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper that was meant only for me, a final, perfect twist of the knife. "Be grateful, because I am the only person in this entire world who ever thought of loving a broken, forgotten thing like you."
The memory faded, but the words remained, branded onto the back of my eyelids. I lay on the futon, the moonlight creeping across the floor, and a single, hot tear finally escaped, tracing a path down my temple and into my hair.
She was wrong. She had to be wrong.
But as I lay there in the quiet house, in a life I hadn't earned, wearing a name that wasn't mine, a terrifying thought took