I cried until there was nothing left. The storm of grief and frustration passed, leaving behind a hollow, aching calm. I was still leaning against Yui, her small frame a surprisingly solid anchor in my turbulent world. The handkerchief she'd given me was a damp, crumpled ball in my fist. Emi sat on my other side, a fierce, protective sentinel, glaring at anyone who dared to walk too close to our bench.
My melted ice cream had formed a sad, sticky puddle on the wood. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the sky was a deep, star-dusted indigo.
"They're idiots," Emi said finally, breaking the quiet. Her voice was flat, all the usual cheerfulness replaced by a hard, stubborn anger. "They had a diamond, and they threw it away to keep their stupid, depressing rock."
"Emi," Yui whispered, a soft note of caution.
"No, I'm serious!" Emi insisted, turning to me, her eyes flashing. "You can't let them win, Hotaru-chan. You can't let them be the reason you don't get to be on that stage."
I shook my head, the movement tired and heavy. "It's over, Emi. They were my only chance."
"No, it's not!" Emi sat up straighter, a sudden spark of an idea lighting up her face. It was the look of someone who had just found the solution to a complex puzzle. "Wait. Oh my god. I'm so stupid, why didn't I think of this before?"
She grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. "The festival! It's not just for bands!"
I stared at her, confused. "What are you talking about?"
"The headlining slot always goes to the high school band, yeah," she explained, the words tumbling out in a rush of excitement. "But there are opening acts! They always have two or three slots for solo performers from the school. You know, for people who play acoustic guitar, or sing to a backing track. They hold auditions for it next week!"
The world tilted. A solo performance. Me, a microphone, and a pre-recorded track. The image that flashed in my mind was not of the small town festival stage, but of the Tokyo Dome. It was the Hoshiko formula. The ghost's M.O. A single, perfect product, presented alone. It was the very thing I had run from, the solitude and the artifice of a performance that wasn't a collaboration, but a presentation.
Yui must have seen the panic on my face. "Emi, maybe that's not..."
But Emi was on a roll, her loyalty and righteous anger blinding her to my terror. "It's perfect! You don't need them! You can get up there all by yourself and be so amazing that Ren Takanashi and his sad little band will be kicking themselves for the rest of their lives! It would be the ultimate revenge!"
Revenge. The word echoed in the empty space inside me. Revenge on Ren, who had looked at me with that same hollow loss in his eyes? Revenge on Mio and Kaito, who had looked so miserable? No. That wasn't right.
But revenge on Ayame? Revenge on Ryouko? The thought was a sudden, dangerous spark. To stand on a stage, not as their product, but as myself, and to sing a song that was mine...
The idea was terrifying. It was a path that led right back to the edge of the abyss I had just crawled out of. To perform alone would be to risk becoming Hoshiko again, to let the ghost win. But to do nothing felt like letting Ayame win, letting Ryouko be right.
I looked out at the dark water, the lights of the town twinkling on its surface. Emi's words had given me a choice. A terrible, impossible choice. Let the dream die, or risk becoming the nightmare.
"You have to do it, Hotaru-chan," Emi whispered, her voice full of a fierce, unwavering belief in me that I couldn't find in myself. "You have to."
The walk home from the pier was a silent, dreamlike procession. Emi and Yui flanked me, their presence a warm, protective shield, but my mind was a million miles away, lost in the terrible, impossible choice their kindness had created. When we reached the path to the Tanaka house, they both gave me a hug—a real, heartfelt hug that spoke volumes more than words ever could—and let me go into the night.
I slid the door to my room shut, the quiet darkness a stark contrast to the storm of emotions that had just been unleashed. I didn't turn on the light. I just stood there in the center of the room, the moonlight tracing a pale rectangle on the floor.
A solo performance.
The words echoed in the silence. It was a path back to the ghost, back to the polished, empty doll on the stage. My first instinct was a visceral, full-body rejection. It was Ryouko's method. It was Ayame's ideal. It was everything I had run from. To do it would be to admit defeat, to crawl back into the cage.
But Emi's other word kept circling back, a dangerous, seductive whisper.
Revenge.
Revenge on Ren and the band felt wrong, a misplaced arrow of anger. They were victims in this, just as I was. But revenge on Ayame, who saw me as a pawn in her game of thrones? Revenge on Ryouko, who believed I was nothing more than a product she had built? The thought was a flicker of heat in the cold, hollow space in my chest.
To do nothing was to let them win. To stay quiet and broken was to prove them right—that I was a doll who couldn't function without a puppeteer. It was to accept my quarantine, to let Ayame control my world, to let Ryouko's narrative be the final word on my life.
I sank to my knees on the tatami mat, my head bowed. The conflict was a physical war inside me. Hotaru, the quiet runaway, wanted to hide. She wanted to stay safe in this small, gentle world, even if it meant being alone. She was terrified of the stage, of the lights, of the ghost.
But a new voice was rising up to meet that fear. It was still my voice, the voice of Hotaru, but it was different now. It was harder, colder. It was the voice of the girl who had survived the alley, who had endured the humiliation, who had just been held by her friends as she cried her heart out. That girl was not a victim. She was a survivor. And survivors learned to fight back.
And what weapon did a survivor like me have?
My hands were empty. My past was a lie. I had no power, no influence. I had nothing.
Except her.
The ghost. The product. The perfect, polished, professional idol.
A strange, new urge began to uncoil in my gut. It was a terrifying, thrilling idea. For weeks, I had been trying to kill Hoshiko. I had cut my hair, dyed it, hidden my face, tried to exorcise her from my soul. But what if I had been wrong? What if the ghost wasn't a monster to be slain, but a weapon to be wielded?
Ryouko had spent a decade forging a perfect tool of performance. Ayame saw that tool and wanted to claim it for herself. What if I was the one who picked it up?
This was the new urge. It wasn't the ghost possessing me, a reflex born of panic like in the music room. This was a conscious choice. This was me, Hotaru, the girl who sat on a pier and cried, reaching back into the darkness, not to be consumed by it, but to take control of it. My new self was trying to awaken Hoshiko.
I crawled over to the small, cheap mirror that leaned against the wall. In the dim moonlight, my reflection was a pale, haunted thing. The short, dark hair, the sad eyes—it was the face of a victim.
"I can't do it," I whispered to the girl in the mirror. "I'm not strong enough."
But I had to be. To fight them, I couldn't be this girl. I needed the posture, the confidence, the diamond-hard stage presence that had been beaten into me. I needed the voice that could silence a stadium.
I looked deeper into my own eyes in the mirror, searching for a flicker of the old fire.
Wake up, I thought, the words a silent plea to the ghost I had tried so hard to bury. I need you. Not for them. For me. Wake up and teach me how to fight.
The plea hung in the silent, moonlit room, unanswered. The girl in the mirror was still just me: a pale, frightened runaway with sad eyes and hair the color of midnight. The ghost remained dormant, a weapon I didn't know how to lift.
Defeated, I ran a hand through my short, choppy hair, the strands rough against my fingertips. But my fingers snagged at the roots. The texture was different. Softer. Silkier.
My heart gave a sudden, sharp jolt. I scrambled closer to the mirror, tilting my head so the pale moonlight could catch the top of my scalp. And there it was. A thin but undeniable line of silver, a shimmering border between the harsh, cheap black dye and the new life growing from within. My natural hair had started to show again.
I remembered the box Chiyo had bought me from the town's general store. A cheap, temporary dye, meant for covering a few grey hairs, not for erasing an entire identity. In my old life, I'd had to sit through hours of lectures from stylists and brand representatives about the chemical compounds in hair products. I knew the precise, professional-grade dyes used to maintain Hoshiko's ethereal silver, and I knew the cheap, ammonia-based chemicals used in a box like that one. And I knew exactly how to get it off.
A new kind of energy, cold and electric, surged through me. This was the sign. The ghost was answering my call.
I moved with a silent, methodical purpose. In the bathroom, under the sink, I found what I was looking for: a bottle of oil-based soap Chiyo used for cleaning stubborn grime. The chemical base was perfect. It would break down the cheap pigment without destroying the keratin of my hair.
Under the dim light of the bathroom, I began the ritual. I worked the oil into my scalp, my fingers massaging away the last few weeks of my life as a ghost. I turned on the tap, the water running cold over my head. I watched as the water swirling down the drain turned from clear to grey, then to a murky, inky black.
It was the color of my fear, of my hiding, of the girl who thought she could disappear. I was washing her away.
When the water finally ran clear, I stopped. I stood up slowly, my wet hair dripping onto my shoulders, and dared to look in the mirror.
The reflection that stared back was a stranger and, horrifyingly, myself.
The hair was short, yes, and still messy from the clumsy haircut Akira had given me. But it was no longer black. It was a brilliant, luminous, unmistakable silver. It caught the dim light and seemed to glow from within. It was Hoshiko's hair. Her most famous, iconic feature. But the eyes beneath it were different now. They weren't the wide, haunted eyes of a victim, nor the polished, empty eyes of a product. They were my eyes. Hotaru's eyes. And they were filled with a cold, hard, terrifying resolve.
The two halves of me, the runaway and the idol, had fused. I was no longer a ghost haunting a new life. I was an alloy, forged in the fire of my own desperation. I had just put on my armor. I was believing in songs again, but this time, I would be the one to write them.
The next morning, the schoolyard fell silent.
It happened in waves. A first-year student stopped mid-sentence. His friend followed his gaze, and then he fell quiet, too. The silence rippled outward, a shockwave of stunned whispers. Heads turned, one by one, until every single eye was on me.
I walked through the sea of parted students, my head held high, the Hoshiko training taking over my posture, my stride. My short silver hair was a beacon in the morning sun, a declaration of war. They weren't just looking at the "pretty transfer student" anymore. They were staring at something radiant, powerful, and utterly out of place in their small, quiet world. I was no longer a person. I was a spectacle.
Emi and Yui found me by the shoe lockers, their faces a perfect portrait of stunned disbelief.
"Hotaru-chan," Emi breathed, her voice a squeak. "Your... your hair..."
I just smiled, a small, calm, dangerous smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. It was Hoshiko's smile, but it was my choice to wear it.
"It's my natural color," I said. "I just decided to stop hiding."
The whispers didn't stop. They grew louder, more brazen. All day, I felt the weight of their collective gaze, a constant, buzzing pressure. But something had shifted inside me. It was no longer a source of panic. It was a source of power. Their attention was a current, and I was learning to draw electricity from it. If this is what the universe wanted me to be, then fine. I will be.
At lunch, on the rooftop, Emi couldn't contain herself. "I can't get over it! It's so beautiful!" she gushed. "You know, with your hair like that... you look just like Hoshiko. The idol? I'm her biggest fan! The resemblance is insane!"
Yui shifted uncomfortably beside her, her gaze fixed on her bento box. The name hung in the air between us, a ghost at our picnic.
I didn't flinch. I just looked at Emi, my new, cool smile firmly in place. "Really? I've never heard of her."
The lie—"I've never heard of her"—was a shield, and it worked. Emi, bless her innocent heart, just accepted it, launching into an enthusiastic explanation of Hoshiko's career, her hiatus, and how tragic it all was. I listened, nodding along, offering nothing. It was like listening to someone read my own obituary. Yui, however, was quiet. She watched me over the top of her bento box, her eyes thoughtful and full of a quiet, analytical light. The gears were turning in her sharp mind.
For the rest of the week, I was a walking paradox. I embraced the spectacle. I wore the stares of my classmates like a designer coat. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but the ghost of Hoshiko knew how to walk on a stage, and for now, the entire school was my stage. If they wanted a goddess, I would give them one. But at night, when the performance was over, I was just Hotaru, a girl with a mission.
The solo auditions for the festival were in five days. I needed a song.
My old life was a library of songs written by other people, melodies crafted by committees to maximize sales. I had never written a single word, a single note, that was my own. Now, I had to build a world out of nothing.
I started that night, sitting on my futon with a cheap notebook and a pencil Akira had left on the table. The words wouldn't come. My mind was a desert. What did I have to say? Who was I, if not a collection of other people's lyrics?
Frustration gnawed at me. The ghost of Hoshiko whispered that I was a fraud, a pretty voice with nothing behind it. But Hotaru, the girl who had washed the black dye from her hair, was stubborn. She refused to be silent.
I closed my eyes and went back to the beginning. To the rain. To the cardboard box. I wrote down the words "cold" and "forgotten." I wrote about the grey walls of the orphanage. I wrote about Ryouko's smile, a beautiful, perfect lie. I wrote about the blinding lights, the roar of the crowd that sounded like a monster, the cage of perfection. I wrote about running, about the taste of freedom and the terror of being nothing. I wrote about a quiet house by the sea, a clumsy haircut, a bowl of ramen, and a boy with sad eyes who played his guitar for no one.
The words started to flow, a torrent of raw, ugly, beautiful truth. It wasn't a song. It was a confession. A testimony. I poured my entire, broken life onto the page. By the time the sun began to filter through my window, my fingers were sore and the pages were filled with my messy, desperate scrawl. At the top of the first page, I wrote the title: A Song for the End of Summer.
It was my story. It was my weapon. It was the first thing I had ever truly owned.
I spent the next few days humming melodies to myself, shaping the chords in my head, the music taking form in the quiet spaces of my mind. It was a slow, melancholic tune that built into something fierce and defiant. It was the sound of me.
On the day before the auditions, I sat on the rooftop with Emi and Yui. The mood was different. My new, silver-haired persona had created a subtle distance. Emi was more excitable around me, Yui more reserved.
"So, have you picked a song for the audition tomorrow?" Emi asked, her eyes bright with anticipation. "Are you going to do a Hoshiko cover? You'd be amazing!"
"No," I said, my voice quiet but firm. "I wrote my own."
Emi's jaw dropped. "You wrote a song?! No way! You have to let us hear it!"
Before I could protest, she was pleading. I hesitated, my heart hammering. This song was the most vulnerable part of me. But I looked at their faces—Emi's, full of pure, supportive excitement, and Yui's, full of a quiet, intense curiosity. I took a deep breath.
"Just a little bit," I said.
I closed my eyes and sang, my voice soft, without any of Hoshiko's polished power. It was just me.
"Born in the rain, a forgotten name / In a cardboard box of city shame / Then a stranger's smile, a perfect lie / Said she'd give me wings, but she taught me how to die... in a cage of blinding light."
When I finished the verse, I opened my eyes. Emi was staring at me, her own eyes shining with unshed tears.
"Hotaru-chan..." she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. "That was... the saddest, most beautiful thing I've ever heard."
But Yui wasn't looking at me with sadness. She was looking at me with a dawning, terrifying clarity. Her quiet, analytical mind had been connecting the dots for weeks—my sudden appearance, my hair, my professional-grade voice, my evasiveness. And now this. A song with lyrics far too sophisticated, too full of a deep, specific pain for any normal sixteen-year-old.
She knew. She didn't know how, but she knew.
"That song," Yui said, her voice barely a whisper, but it cut through the air with the sharpness of glass. "It's not just a song, is it?"