The lesson on Kokoro lingered with me for the rest of the day, a quiet, contemplative hum beneath the noise of school life. It was as if I'd been given a secret key, not just to the puzzle of Ren Takanashi, but to the tangled, messy workings of my own heart. We were all carrying our own burdens, our own secret histories. Maybe being a ghost wasn't so unusual after all.
The thought didn't fix anything, but it made the world feel a little less hostile. I felt a strange, new kinship with the boy by the window, a silent understanding that transcended words.
For a few days, a fragile peace settled over me. Practice in the music room was still a challenge, a constant battle against the ghost of Hoshiko's perfection, but it felt different. When Ren told me to "stop performing," I understood what he meant. He was telling me to stop being Sensei, to stop hiding in a fortress of my own making. When Mio and Kaito argued, I saw it not as a distraction, but as the messy, chaotic language of their friendship.
I had become so focused on this small, intense world of the band, on the approaching festival, and on the mystery of Ren, that I had almost managed to forget about the other predator in the school.
I was walking home late one afternoon, later than usual. Practice had run over, and the school was nearly deserted. The hallways were cast in the long, orange shadows of the setting sun. I was humming the melody of the song we were working on, a quiet, tentative thing. The memory of the ramen shop, of that first, shared laugh, was a warm spot in my chest. For the first time, walking these halls alone didn't feel threatening.
That was my mistake.
"Abe-san."
The voice was a silken thread, cutting through my thoughts. I stopped, the melody dying on my lips.
Ayame Kurokawa was leaning against the lockers down the hall, as if she had been waiting for me. She was alone, the fading light catching the gloss of her dark hair. She pushed herself off the wall and walked toward me, her movements a slow, deliberate display of power.
"I was beginning to think you were avoiding me," she said, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips.
"I've been busy with club activities," I said, my voice coming out stiffer than I intended.
"Ah, yes. The Light Music Club," she said, the words dripping with a condescending sweetness. "I've heard the noise you've been making. A noble effort, I suppose. It's a shame to see a diamond trying so hard to convince everyone it's just a piece of glass."
Her eyes, dark and analytical, scanned my face. "You look different, you know. Less... polished. More common. Is that what you want? To be dragged down to their level? To be the backup singer for a boy's sad little songs?"
The words were a direct echo of Ryouko's philosophy, of the world I had run from. The cage was being offered again, its bars disguised with pretty, poisonous words. A year ago, a month ago, a week ago, I would have flinched. I would have felt the shame of being seen as imperfect.
But I didn't. Instead, I thought of Ren's raw, solitary music. I thought of Akira's patient, clumsy math lesson. I thought of the glorious, chaotic noise of the ramen shop. These things weren't polished. They were real. And they were mine.
"I like the noise," I said. The words were quiet, but they felt like they were made of steel.
Ayame's smile didn't falter, but something in her eyes shifted. The hunter had just seen the prey refuse to run. It was a new, interesting development in the game.
"Of course you do," she purred, taking a step closer. "For now. But there will come a time when you get tired of playing in the mud, Abe-san. You will remember that you were made for the sky. And when that day comes, my offer to teach you how to fly will still be open."
She reached out and, with a single, long finger, gently tucked a stray strand of my dark hair behind my ear. Her touch was cold, a brief, reptilian contact that made my skin crawl.
"Don't disappoint me," she whispered.
And then she was gone, her footsteps silent as she disappeared down the empty hall, leaving me alone with the sudden, chilling realization that I hadn't just escaped one monster. I had simply wandered into a different jungle.
A feeling of deep, profound satisfaction settled over Ayame Kurokawa as she walked through the quiet, late-afternoon halls of the school. Her plan, the one she had been building since the day she first walked into this school, was so close to fruition. She remembered middle school: the whispers, the exclusion, the feeling of being powerless as other, prettier girls dictated the social order. She had sworn she would never be that person again. She had studied power, dissected it, and made it her own.
Hotaru Abe was the final piece. A perfect, beautiful vessel to pour her own identity into. When Hotaru ruled the school next year, using Ayame's methods, wearing Ayame's mask, it would be Ayame's ultimate revenge. She would prove that her system, her brand of cold, hard control, was the only thing that mattered. She would become a legend. Her carbon copy would ensure everyone remembered her.
It was almost perfect. But Ren Takanashi, with his silent defiance and his strange, gravitational pull on her prized project, was a variable she hadn't accounted for. He was a glitch in the system.
And Ayame Kurokawa always eliminated the glitches.
She stopped in front of the music room door, a place she considered a hovel of noise and bad taste. She slid it open without knocking.
The scene inside was as she expected. The two lesser members, the bassist and the drummer, flinched under her gaze. Her target, however, just stared back, his expression of bored indifference a mask she knew well.
"Takanashi-kun," she said, her voice a smooth, pleasant melody. "Could I have a word? Alone."
The other two scurried out of the room like frightened mice. Ayame stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind her. She ran a single, elegant finger over a dusty amplifier, a small frown of distaste on her lips.
"I'll be direct," she said, turning her cool, analytical gaze on him. "Abe-san is a project of mine. A special case under the student council's guidance." It was a lie, but it was a lie backed by the full weight of her authority. "Her time here is a delicate transitional period. She requires a stable, positive environment."
Ren just watched her, his silence a challenge.
"Your club," she continued, gesturing vaguely at the chaotic room, "is not that. And you... you are a known delinquent. A disruptive element." She smiled, a beautiful, sharp thing. "Your association with her is problematic. It reflects poorly on her, and by extension, on me. I need you to end it. Forbid her from coming here. For her own good, of course."
Ren was quiet for a long moment. Then, a sound that was almost a laugh, but held no humor, escaped his lips. "And if I don't?"
"Then I will be forced to take this matter to the faculty," Ayame said, her voice losing none of its sweetness. "I will recommend a full review of all club funding and activities. I will bring up your history of disciplinary issues. I will suggest that perhaps a student with your record is not a suitable leader for a club that seems to foster such... instability. I can have this little club of yours erased by the end of the week."
She was laying her cards on the table. A declaration of war. She watched the defiance in his eyes curdle into a look of quiet, trapped fury. He was defeated. She turned and left without another word.
A few minutes later, I walked down that same hallway, my heart light with a feeling that was almost hope. I was counting the seconds until I could retreat to the one place that felt like a sanctuary.
But when I slid the music room door open, the sanctuary had been desecrated.
The air was thick with a toxic, heavy silence. Kaito was pretending to tune his bass, his knuckles white around the headstock. Mio was adjusting a cymbal stand that didn't need adjusting, her movements jerky and anxious. They both refused to look at me.
And Ren... Ren was standing by the window, staring out, his back to the room. The tension radiating from his shoulders was a palpable force, a low hum of barely suppressed violence that made the air vibrate. He didn't turn when I came in.
"Are we practicing?" I asked, my voice small, already knowing the answer.
"No," Ren said, his voice flat and dead. "Go home."
"What? Why?" I looked at Mio and Kaito for help, but they flinched away, refusing to meet my gaze. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened," Ren bit out, still not turning around. "Practice is cancelled. Get out."
The words were like a slap. It wasn't his usual bluntness; it was a cold, hard wall of dismissal. He was shutting me out completely. The fragile trust we had built, the unspoken understanding, was gone.
I stood there for a moment, humiliated and confused, before turning and fleeing, the door slamming shut behind me on the suffocating silence of the room.
I don't remember running home. It was a sequence of disconnected images: the cracked pavement, the darkening sky, the salt-smell of the evening tide. The door slamming shut on the music room was a sound that followed me, a final, brutal punctuation mark on the shortest, most hopeful chapter of my life.
I was a ghost again.
The next day at school was a special kind of torture. The hallways were a minefield of memories and averted gazes. I saw Kaito by the shoe lockers; he saw me, and his face, already melancholic, seemed to crumple. He immediately bent down to retie a shoelace that was already tied, his lanky frame a portrait of awkward misery. Later, I passed Mio in the crowded corridor between classes. She was laughing with a friend, but the laugh died on her lips when she saw me. She turned away so abruptly that her shoulder bumped into another student.
They weren't angry. They were sad. And their sadness was a thousand times worse than any anger could have been. It meant this wasn't their choice. It meant they missed the noise we made, too.
The final bell chimed, a sound of release for everyone but me. As I was packing my bag, a familiar, cheerful voice cut through my haze.
"Hotaru-chan! We're going to get ice cream, you wanna come?"
It was Emi, with Yui standing shyly beside her. They were beaming. "It's so great that you're not busy with the club anymore," Emi continued, completely oblivious to the devastation she was witnessing. "We've missed walking home with you!"
The innocent kindness of it was a knife in my heart. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell them that the one place I felt real had been boarded up and condemned. But I couldn't. So I manufactured a smile, a weak, brittle thing that felt like it would crack my face in two. "Sure," I said.
We walked, and they chattered, their happy voices a world away. They talked about teachers and tests and the upcoming festival. I was a phantom walking beside them, nodding and making noncommittal sounds, my mind a million miles away, trapped in a silent, dusty room full of amplifiers and ghosts.
This feeling was different. All my life, connections had been severed around me. Backup dancers were fired, producers were replaced, staff members vanished. They were professional adjustments, moves on Ryouko's chessboard. I had felt nothing. But this... this was an amputation. A part of me, a small, new, fragile part that had just started to grow, had been unceremoniously hacked off. A part of me had just been stepped on and crushed to death.
My puzzle, the one I was just starting to piece together, hadn't just been torn apart; the table had been flipped over, the pieces scattered to the wind. I didn't understand. I knew Ayame was behind it, her threat hanging in the air like poison gas, but the cold, dead finality in Ren's voice... it was a wall I couldn't see a way through.
As we reached the main school gate, I stopped, letting Emi and Yui get a few paces ahead. I couldn't help it. I had to look back one last time.
I turned, my eyes scanning the path that led toward the old building. And I saw them. The three of them, walking slowly, a miserable little pack. Kaito was staring at the ground, Mio was kicking at a loose stone, and Ren... Ren was just walking, his hands shoved in his pockets, a black hole of silent fury.
And then, as if he could feel my gaze, he stopped. He turned his head and looked back, right at me.
Across the crowded, noisy schoolyard, our eyes met for a single, shattering second. There was no anger in his gaze. No pity. Just the same hollow, aching loss I felt in my own chest. A shared, silent acknowledgement of a world that had just been stolen from both of us.
Then he turned away, and they were gone.
The ice cream shop was a small, bright beacon of pastel colors and sugary smells near the town's main pier. Emi, true to her word, insisted on treating us, her voice a cheerful counterpoint to the hollow ache in my chest. I chose a simple vanilla cone, the cold sweetness a dull, meaningless sensation on my tongue.
We found an old wooden bench overlooking the water.
The pier was mostly deserted at this time of day, the fishing boats bobbing gently on the tide, the setting sun painting the sky in strokes of orange and violet. It was beautiful, a perfect picture of the peace I had craved, and it felt like a mockery.
"Isn't this great?" Emi sighed, taking a large bite of her strawberry-swirl cone. "I feel like we haven't done this in forever. The three of us."
"It's nice," Yui agreed, her voice soft as she delicately licked her green tea ice cream. She looked at me, her perceptive eyes clouded with a concern she didn't know how to voice. "Are you okay, Hotaru-chan? You've been quiet."
"Just tired," I lied again, the excuse tasting like ash in my mouth. I stared out at the ocean, at the endless, indifferent expanse of blue. The vanilla ice cream began to melt, a sticky, cold tear running down my hand.
"Well, now that you're not in that noisy club, you'll have more time to relax!" Emi said, trying to be helpful. "And we can all hang out and get ready for the festival together! It's going to be so fun!"
The word "festival" was the final blow. It was the finish line I would never cross, the promise of a future that had been erased. A sound, a choked, wet little sob, escaped my throat before I could stop it. It was a pathetic, ugly sound.
I turned away from them, pretending to be fascinated by a distant boat, but it was too late. A single, hot tear broke free and traced a path down my cheek, splashing onto the weathered wood of the bench.
"Hotaru-chan?" Emi's cheerful voice was gone, replaced by a sharp, sudden worry.
The dam broke. The carefully constructed wall of numbness I had hidden behind all day crumbled into dust.
"They kicked me out," I whispered to the ocean, the words a confession torn from the deepest part of me. I wiped my face with the back of my free hand, my movements clumsy, childish. "I got kicked out of the band."
The silence that followed was thick and heavy, broken only by the cry of a distant gull.
"What? Why?" Emi finally managed, her voice a mixture of shock and outrage. "But... you were so good! We heard you practicing that one time! You were amazing!"
I shook my head, the tears coming faster now. I couldn't explain Ayame. I couldn't explain the threat, the power plays, the silent war being fought over my soul. So I just let the raw, broken truth of my own feelings spill out.
Why does reality hate me so much? The thought was a raw, silent scream inside my head. For ten years, I had been adorned, known, and "loved" by millions. But it was all a lie, a performance for a ghost. It was a cold, hollow thing that had left me starving. And here, in this small, quiet town, I was on the verge of finding the real thing. A real connection, a real purpose, a real, messy, imperfect kind of love.
All I've ever wanted was to feel it for real. To be seen, to be known for who I am and not what I can produce. To be wanted, not for my voice or my face, but for the broken, empty person underneath. I was about to experience it. I was about to feel that warmth. And just as I reached for it, the world snatched it away. It all came crashing down.
"I don't know why," I finally choked out, turning back to face their worried, beautiful faces. "I just... I messed it all up."
"No, you didn't!" Emi burst out, her own ice cream completely forgotten, her face a mask of fierce loyalty. "They're the jerks! You were the best thing that ever happened to that club, I bet!"
Yui didn't say anything. She just put her own cone down on the bench, shuffled closer, and wrapped a small, warm arm around my shoulders. She pulled a neatly folded handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it into my free hand.
The simple, unconditional support was so unexpected it shattered the last of my composure. I leaned into Yui's embrace and finally let myself cry. Not the silent, lonely tears of a ghost in her room, but the messy, loud sobs of a girl being held by her friends. It was the most painful, and the most hopeful, I had felt in my entire life.