I ran.
There was no thought, only the animal instinct to put as much distance as possible between myself and the smiling predator in the student council room. My footsteps slapped against the pavement, a frantic, uneven rhythm that matched the hammering of my heart. The evening air was cool, but I was burning from the inside out, my lungs screaming for air I couldn't seem to get enough of.
A diamond. A successor. My legacy.
Ayame's words tangled with Ryouko's in my mind, creating a monstrous, two-headed ghost that chased me through the darkening streets. It was the same. The same script, the same predatory gleam in the eyes, the same offer of a gilded cage disguised as a throne.
How? How could I have run halfway across the country, erased my identity, and stumbled directly into the path of another Ryouko? Was I a magnet for them? Was there some invisible mark on me, a brand that only monsters could see, that screamed product, tool, thing to be controlled?
The thought was so horrifying it made me stumble. I caught myself against a telephone pole, gasping for breath, my school bag digging into my shoulder. The weight of the math textbook inside felt immense, a physical manifestation of my failure. I was drowning in a world of normal things, and the sharks were already circling.
By the time I saw the warm, welcoming lights of the Tanaka house, my panic had subsided into a cold, trembling exhaustion. I stopped at the head of the path, forcing myself to take deep, shuddering breaths. I couldn't bring this terror into their home. I couldn't contaminate their peace with my poison. I wiped my damp cheeks with the back of my hand, straightened my uniform, and tried to arrange my face into a mask of placid tiredness.
I slid the door open as quietly as I could. The smell of grilling fish and soy sauce filled the air. Chiyo was in the kitchen, her back to me, humming a quiet tune.
Sitting at the low table in the main room was Akira. He was mending a fishing net, his large, capable hands moving with a slow, practiced rhythm. He looked up when I came in, and his hands stilled.
His eyes, the same calm, steady brown as his grandmother's, took in my disheveled hair, my pale face, the tremor I couldn't quite hide in my hands. He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't press. He just watched me for a moment, his expression unreadable.
"Welcome back," he said, his voice a low rumble.
I managed a weak nod, kicking off my shoes and stepping inside. "I'm home."
I dropped my bag by the table with a heavy thud and sank down onto one of the floor cushions, the energy draining out of me completely. Akira went back to his net, the rhythmic knotting a steady, grounding sound in the quiet room. He didn't pry, but his presence was a silent anchor. He knew something was wrong, and he was letting me have the space to deal with it. It was a kindness so profound it made my throat ache.
Defeated, I pulled the math textbook from my bag and dropped it onto the table. I opened it to the page of horrors, the trigonometry equations mocking me with their cool, indecipherable logic. I stared at them, the feeling of hopeless inadequacy washing over me again.
After a minute, a shadow fell over the page. Akira was leaning over, looking at the book. I flinched, expecting a comment, maybe a laugh.
Instead, he just grunted. "Ah, this stuff," he said, a note of old, familiar suffering in his voice. "Gave me nightmares."
He sat down opposite me, leaving his net for a moment. He pointed a calloused finger at one of the equations.
"It's all about triangles," he said simply. "Forget all the letters for a second. Just picture a triangle."
I stared at him, confused.
"It's a pain," he said, shrugging. "And the teachers always make it sound more complicated than it is." He looked at my face, at the genuine, pathetic confusion in my eyes. "Look, I'm no genius, but I passed. If you want... I can show you the basics. After dinner."
The offer hung in the air between us. It wasn't Ayame's offer of power, or Ryouko's offer of a polished cage. It wasn't a transaction. It was just... help. Simple, unconditional help, offered from one person to another. With no strings attached.
I looked from his steady, patient face to the terrifying symbols in the book. A single, hot tear I hadn't realized I was holding back splashed onto the page, smudging the ink
Dinner was a quiet affair. Chiyo seemed to sense the fragile peace that had settled in the room and didn't press me about my day. We ate the perfectly grilled fish, the salty miso soup, and the fluffy rice, the only sounds the clinking of chopsticks and the distant cry of a gull. It was a normal, domestic scene, and the sheer normalcy of it was both a comfort and a terror.
After Chiyo had cleared the last of the dishes, she patted my shoulder gently. "Don't stay up too late, you two," she said with a warm smile, before disappearing toward her own room.
The house fell silent. It was just me and Akira, sitting opposite each other at the low table, the cursed math book lying between us like a dead thing. The single tear I'd cried had dried, leaving a small, warped stain on the page.
Akira let out a soft sigh, the sound of a man facing an unpleasant but necessary task. He pulled a couple of worn pencils and a notepad of scrap paper from a nearby drawer.
"Right," he began, scratching the back of his neck. "Let's see what I remember."
His explanation was nothing like a teacher's. It was clumsy, full of stops and starts. He didn't use proper terms. Instead, he drew a boat on the scrap paper. "Okay, so this is us," he said, tapping the boat. "And we need to get to that island." He drew a lopsided circle. "But the tide is pulling us this way." He drew a wavy arrow. "This math junk... it's just a way to figure out the angles, to know exactly how to steer so you end up where you want to go, not where the water wants to take you."
He spoke of triangles in terms of fishing nets, of angles in terms of the sun's position in the sky. It was a language I'd never heard, but it was practical, grounded in a reality I could almost touch. Still, my brain, so accustomed to memorizing lyrics and choreography, refused to bend around the cold, hard logic. I kept getting lost, the numbers blurring into a meaningless soup. The old voice, Ryouko's voice, was a poison in my ear. Stupid. Useless. You can't even do this simple thing.
My frustration must have shown on my face. My hand tightened around my pencil until my knuckles were white.
"Hey," Akira said, his voice soft, pulling me from the downward spiral. "It's okay. It's confusing stuff. Just take a breath. We can work it out."
His patience was a foreign concept. In my world, mistakes were punished, and frustration was a weakness to be stamped out. His calm acceptance felt... strange. Unsettling, even. I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to look back at the page.
He tried a different approach, breaking a single problem down into tiny, manageable pieces. It took a long time. The moon rose high outside, painting the room in silver light. But then, something clicked. A single, tiny gear in the rusted machinery of my mind turned. I saw how one number connected to the next, how the triangle he drew related to the equation.
My pencil started to move, this time with a hesitant confidence. I scribbled down a few lines, my heart thumping with a strange, nervous energy. I finished the last calculation and looked at the answer. I pushed the notepad across the table to him, bracing for the inevitable red mark of failure.
Akira looked at it, his brow furrowed in concentration. He was silent for a long moment. Then, he looked up at me, a slow, small smile spreading across his face.
"You got it," he said. "See? Not so bad."
A sound bubbled up from my chest. It was a laugh. Not a practiced, pretty laugh for the cameras, but a short, sharp, incredulous burst of air. It startled both of us. The relief was so sudden, so overwhelming, it was almost painful. It was one problem. One tiny, insignificant math problem. But I had done it. I had faced the monster, and with a little help, I hadn't been eaten alive.
The lesson ended soon after that. I was exhausted, but it was a new kind of exhaustion. It was the satisfying ache of a muscle that has been used for the first time, not the soul-deep weariness of a spirit that has been broken.
"Thank you," I said as I packed the book away, the words feeling small and inadequate.
"Anytime," Akira replied, already gathering his fishing net again.
I walked to my room, the echo of my own laugh a strange and wonderful sound in my ears. I lay down on my futon, but I didn't fall asleep for a long time. I just stared at the ceiling, thinking about the simple kindness of a boy and a boat, and a problem that wasn't impossible after all. It felt like I was learning to fly, but my wings were still so very weak.
The next morning, for the first time since I arrived here, I didn't wake up with a feeling of pure, unadulterated dread. It was still there, a low hum beneath the surface, but it wasn't the screaming static it had been. When I looked out my window, the sky seemed a little brighter. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, I thought, and the rest of the line, the part about feeling good, didn't feel like a complete and utter lie.
The walk to school was different. I noticed things I hadn't before: the way the morning glories curled around a weathered fence, the intricate patterns of the cracks in the asphalt. The weight in my school bag felt less like a burden and more like a simple fact. It was just a bag with books in it.
When I slid open the classroom door, the usual chatter died down for a moment, the whispers still following me like a shadow. But my eyes were drawn to the seat by the window.
He was back.
Ren Takanashi was slumped in his chair, staring out the window with that same profound boredom, as if the entire world were a television show he'd seen a thousand times. He didn't look over when I came in. He didn't acknowledge my existence in any way. But his presence was a magnetic force, pulling all the air in the room toward his corner. I slid into my seat, my heart beginning a low, nervous thrum.
The day crawled by. During math class, I stared at the blackboard, and through the jungle of symbols, I saw it: a triangle. A boat. An island. I didn't understand the whole problem, not even close, but I understood that one small piece of it. I picked up my pencil and, for the first time, I wrote something in my notebook that wasn't a desperate, meaningless scribble. It was a single, correct step in a long, complicated journey. It was a start.
At lunch, on the rooftop, the peace of the previous day felt harder to grasp. I could feel the tension coiled in my shoulders. Emi and Yui were talking about an upcoming festival, their voices a cheerful melody, but all I could think about was the boy in the classroom downstairs and the disastrous performance in the music room.
"You're quiet today, Hotaru-chan," Emi noted, nudging me with her elbow.
"Just tired," I lied. It wasn't a lie, really. I was tired. Tired of the ghosts.
As we were packing up to leave, a faint sound drifted up from the old building. It was a bass guitar, playing a slow, melancholic riff, followed by the clumsy, unsteady beat of a drum. They were practicing. Without me. The sound was a dull ache in my chest, a phantom limb I didn't know I had.
The rest of the afternoon was a blur of anxiety. I decided to walk home alone, telling Emi and Yui I needed to stop by the store. It was another lie. I just needed to be by myself, to let the fragile composure I'd worn all day finally crumble.
My path took me past the old building. I told myself to keep walking, to not look back. But my feet slowed against my will. I found myself standing in the hallway, the same worn linoleum, the same smell of dust. The music room door was slightly ajar. I could hear them inside, talking. The lanky bassist and the drummer girl.
"...never seen anything like it. It was like she was possessed." "Ren-kun still won't talk about it." "Do you think she'll come back?" "No way. She's probably just another weirdo."
I recoiled from the door as if burned, my cheeks hot with shame. A weirdo. A ghost. That's all I was. I turned to leave, to run like I always did, but a figure stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hall, blocking my path.
It was Ren.
He must have just left the room from a different exit. He held a can of coffee in his hand, his expression as unreadable as ever. We stood there for a moment, the silence stretching between us, thick and heavy. I expected him to be angry, to tell me to get lost, to call me a freak.
He just took a slow sip of his coffee. His eyes, dark and intense, finally looked at me—really looked at me, not through me.
"That performance," he said, his voice low and flat, devoid of any emotion. "Who was that for?"
The question was so unexpected it stole the air from my lungs. It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't an insult. It was a genuine question, and it was the most terrifying thing anyone had ever asked me. It cut through the performer, through the runaway, through the shy transfer student, and struck at the very core of the empty space inside me.
He didn't wait for an answer he knew I didn't have. He just looked at me for one moment longer, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes—pity? frustration?—and then he walked past me, his shoulder brushing mine, and disappeared down the hall.
I stood alone in the empty corridor, the echo of his question ringing in the silence.
Who was that for?
I had no idea.
I don't know how long I stood there in that empty hallway. It could have been a minute or an hour. The world had gone silent, the muffled sounds from the music room forgotten, the distant shouts of other clubs faded to nothing. All that was left was the ringing echo of that one, simple question.
Who was that for?
It followed me out of the school, a ghost at my heels. It whispered in the rustle of the leaves as a cool evening breeze swept through the trees. It was in the rhythmic crash of the waves against the seawall. The walk home was a dream, a sequence of images I saw but didn't register. I was a camera, recording the world without any understanding.
My entire life had been a performance for someone else. When I sang, it was for Ryouko's approval, for the sales figures, for the carefully constructed image of Hoshiko. When I smiled for a camera, it was for the fans, for the brand sponsors. When I cried, it was in secret, a performance of one for an audience of none, because even my sadness wasn't my own. It was a liability, a flaw in the product.
Running away—that was for me. Hiding here, changing my name, going to school—that was all for me. It was a desperate, clumsy attempt to build a life raft out of the wreckage.
But that explosion in the music room? That raw, desperate burst of sound and fury?
Ren's question had sliced through everything and laid the truth bare. That performance hadn't been for me. It was a reflex. A dying star collapsing in on itself. It was the ghost of Hoshiko, thrashing in her cage, screaming for an audience that wasn't there. It was a desperate cry into the void, for absolutely no one. It was the most honest performance of my life, and it had no purpose at all.
When I finally reached the Tanaka house, the sky was a deep, bruised purple. The lights were on, spilling a warm, yellow comfort onto the path. I slid the door open, the scent of home—wood, sea salt, and Chiyo's cooking—wrapping around me.
Akira was at the table, a textbook open in front of him. It was a history book, not a math one. He was frowning at the page, his pencil tapping a slow, frustrated rhythm. He looked up as I entered, his expression clearing slightly.
"Welcome back," he said. "You're late."
There was no accusation in his voice, just a simple statement of fact. He looked at my face, and his frown returned, this time laced with something else. Concern. "Everything okay?"
I opened my mouth to say "I'm fine," the automatic lie that had been my shield for a decade. But the words wouldn't come. The question was still there, lodged in my throat. Who is this 'I' that is supposed to be fine?
I just shook my head, a small, helpless gesture.
Akira held my gaze for a moment longer, then seemed to understand that I had no words to give him. He simply nodded and looked back down at his book. "Dinner's almost ready," he said quietly.
I went to my room and collapsed onto the futon, my school bag dropping to the floor with a heavy thud. I stared at the familiar patterns on the ceiling.
Who was that for?
The question wasn't an accusation anymore. It was a compass, spinning wildly in the center of my chest, searching for a north that didn't exist. To answer it, I would have to create one. I would have to find something, a single note, a single word, a single act, that was purely and undeniably for me, and for me alone.
I had no idea what that would be. I had no idea who I was without a script, without an audience. But for the first time, I felt a flicker of something that wasn't fear or anger or despair. A terrifying, fragile curiosity.
I had to find out.