The evening before the festival was a world of ghosts and promises. The school grounds had transformed into a small, magical city of light and sound. Paper lanterns cast a warm, flickering glow on the faces of students and townspeople who had come for a sneak peek. The air was thick with the smells of cotton candy and grilled squid, a sweet and savory haze that clung to the cool night air.
I was walking through the heart of it all, a ghost in the machine, with Emi on one side and Yui on the other. They had practically dragged me out of the Tanaka house, insisting that I needed a break from my "hermit-like preparations."
"See?" Emi said, gesturing with a half-eaten candy apple at a group of boys struggling to set up a ring-toss game. "This is what you're missing! The beautiful, chaotic buildup to the main event!"
I managed a small smile. The cheerful, bustling atmosphere felt a million miles away from the cold, clinical precision of the backstage world I knew. There were no roadies in black t-shirts speaking into headsets, no frantic stylists with pins in their mouths. There were just kids, laughing and tripping over extension cords. It was messy. It was real.
"So," Emi said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as she looped her arm through mine. "The most important question. What are you going to wear tomorrow?"
The question was a bucket of ice water. In my single-minded focus on the song, on the war with Ayame and the turmoil with Ren, I hadn't even considered it. A costume. Another mask.
"I... I hadn't thought about it," I admitted. "Just my uniform, I guess."
Emi stopped dead in her tracks, a look of theatrical horror on her face. "Your uniform? Hotaru-chan, this is your grand debut! You can't perform in a potato sack! You need an outfit!" She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Something that fits the theme."
"What's the theme?" I asked.
"Taisho Roman!" Emi announced with a flourish. "You know, from like, a hundred years ago. All that cool stuff where they mixed kimonos with Western things. It's supposed to be super romantic."
Taisho Roman. A time of change, of blending the old and the new. It felt... appropriate.
"I don't have anything like that," I said, the problem feeling insurmountable.
"No," Yui said, her quiet voice cutting through Emi's frantic brainstorming. "But Chiyo-san might."
We ended up in the quiet, camphor-scented air of Chiyo's room, with her permission, of course. She watched with a quiet, knowing smile as Yui, with an artist's reverence, opened the doors to a large, dark-wood tansu chest. Inside, folded in layers of rice paper, was a history of a life lived.
Yui gently lifted out a kimono. It wasn't a formal, flashy garment. It was made of a soft, deep indigo silk, patterned with delicate, hand-painted silver grass that seemed to shimmer in the dim light.
"It was my mother's," Chiyo said, her voice soft with memory. "She wore it to her own high school graduation."
Yui, with her quiet, artistic vision, became the director. She had me put on the kimono, the cool silk a strange, comforting weight. But instead of the traditional obi, she found a simple, dark leather belt in one of Akira's drawers. She had me put on the sturdy leather boots I'd worn to the house that first night. She tied my short, silver hair back on one side with a simple red ribbon.
I stood before the full-length mirror, a stranger I had never seen before. I wasn't Hoshiko, in a glittering, custom-made costume designed by a team of stylists. I wasn't Hotaru, in a drab, anonymous school uniform. I was someone else. A girl from a different time, a blend of tradition and rebellion, of softness and strength.
It was a costume, yes. But for the first time, it felt like it was mine.
"Wow," Emi breathed, her voice full of awe.
I looked at my reflection, at the girl with silver hair and sad, determined eyes, dressed in the clothes of a ghost from a hundred years ago. And I felt ready.
The festival was a living, breathing creature of light and sound. The sun had set, and the school grounds were transformed, unrecognizable from the mundane world of classrooms and textbooks. Hundreds of paper lanterns cast a warm, magical glow, painting the scene in soft reds and yellows.
The air was a chaotic, intoxicating symphony of smells—the savory smoke from the yakisoba stand, the sweet, cloying scent of cotton candy, the faint, salty tang of the nearby ocean.
I walked through the heart of it all, a ghost no longer, but a girl in a borrowed kimono from a hundred years ago. Emi and Yui were on either side of me, both dressed in their own beautiful yukatas, their faces bright with the pure, unadulterated joy of the moment. We were just three girls at a festival, and the feeling was so normal, so wonderfully, beautifully simple, it made my heart ache.
But the stares followed me. My short, silver hair seemed to capture the lantern light, glowing with an ethereal luminescence that made me stand out from the crowd. I was, without a doubt, the center of attention, the most beautiful for the night. But for the first time, it didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a choice. I was wearing my own armor, and the looks of awe and whispers from my classmates felt less like a judgment and more like an affirmation.
"First stop, takoyaki!" Emi declared, dragging us toward a stall run by the sumo club, where large, burly boys were expertly flipping octopus balls with a surprising delicacy.
As we were waiting in line, a figure in the crowd a few feet away caught my eye. It was Ren.
He was alone, standing awkwardly in front of the stall next to ours, a place selling grilled squid. He wasn't the cool, detached boy from the classroom, or the silent, furious leader of the band. He was just a guy, out of his element, fumbling with the bills in his wallet and trying to get the attention of the busy student running the stall. He looked so normal, so endearingly clumsy, it made the breath catch in my throat.
Emi followed my gaze, and a slow, wicked grin spread across her face. "Oh," she said, her voice a low, conspiratorial purr. "Would you look at that."
"Emi, don't," Yui whispered, sensing the impending chaos.
But it was too late. Ren finally managed to complete his transaction, turning away from the stall with a single skewer of grilled squid in his hand. He looked lost, a solitary island in the swirling sea of festival-goers. He hadn't seen us.
"Now's your chance!" Emi hissed in my ear.
Before I could react, she and Yui were behind me. "Sorry, Hotaru-chan!" Emi whisper-shouted. "This is for your own good!"
And then, they pushed.
It wasn't a hard shove, but it was enough to send me stumbling forward, right into Ren's path. I collided with his back with a soft "oof," my hands flying out to steady myself against him.
He froze, his entire body going rigid. He turned around slowly, his face a mask of pure, startled confusion. "Oh. Uh, food?" he grunted, holding up his squid as if it were a shield.
I looked back to where my friends were supposed to be. But the spot was empty. They had vanished into the crowd, the traitors.
My hands were still pressed against his chest. I could feel the frantic, hammering beat of his heart under my palms, or maybe it was my own. I snatched them back as if I'd been burned, my cheeks flaming with a heat that had nothing to do with the takoyaki stand.
"Sorry," I stammered, looking at the ground, at his shoes, at anything but his face.
He just stood there, holding his single, pathetic skewer of squid, the picture of a boy whose carefully constructed walls had just been bulldozed by a girl in a borrowed kimono. And we were alone, together, in the middle of a thousand people.
The moment stretched, a pocket of excruciating, silent awkwardness in the middle of the loud, joyful festival. My hands were burning where they had touched his chest. Ren was still holding his skewer of grilled squid like a scepter, his face a perfect blank slate that I was beginning to recognize as his "panicked and has no idea what to do" expression.
"Sorry," I mumbled, pulling my hands back as if I'd touched a hot stove. "My fault," he grunted back, taking a half-step away.
The crowd swirled around us, an oblivious river parting around two stones. To escape the silence, I started walking, just moving aimlessly away from the food stalls. To my surprise, he fell into step beside me.
"It's too loud here," he said, his voice a low rumble, barely audible over the chatter and the sizzle of the food stalls. He gestured with his head toward the edge of the school grounds, where the game booths were set up. "It's quieter over there."
It was the first real suggestion he'd ever made, the first sign of him trying to navigate a social situation instead of just enduring it. I just nodded, and we walked without a destination, two ghosts haunting a party, the space between us charged with all the things we couldn't say.
We ended up at the edge of the main festival area, by the goldfish scooping stall. It was a pocket of relative calm, the main sounds being the gentle splash of water and the delighted shrieks of children. The stall was a magical sight, a large, shallow pool of inky water illuminated from below, with dozens of brilliant orange and white goldfish moving like living jewels under the surface.
"Ever tried this?" I asked, pointing with my chin, desperate to fill the silence again. He just shook his head, his eyes watching a small boy jab his flimsy paper net into the water with a look of detached, analytical curiosity.
On a whim, I paid the old woman for two nets and handed one to him. He looked at the fragile paper circle as if it were a complex, alien piece of technology. I went first, full of a bravado I didn't feel, and jabbed my net into the water, chasing a large, beautiful goldfish. The paper disintegrated instantly.
"Well, that was a failure," I said with a laugh, trying to cover my embarrassment. I turned to watch Ren, expecting him to be just as clumsy. But I had forgotten who he was. He wasn't a performer; he was a worker. A boy with steady, capable hands that mended fishing nets.
He knelt by the side of the pool, his movements slow, deliberate. He waited. He submerged the net at an angle, letting the water support the paper, and with a single, fluid, patient scoop, he cornered a small, shimmering goldfish and lifted it from the water. He had won.
He held up the small plastic bag with his prize inside, and for the first time, his mask of bored indifference cracked. A small, genuine, unguarded smile touched his lips as he looked at the tiny, thrashing creature. It was the first time I had ever seen him show a real emotion, a flicker of simple, unadulterated pride. The sight of it, so unexpected and so real, made my own heart skip a beat.
He knelt to release the fish back into the pool. Just as the tiny creature swam free, a shriek of childish laughter cut through the air. A small boy, no older than seven, was barreling through the crowd, his face a mess of chocolate from the half-eaten banana in his hand, his eyes fixed on a friend ahead of him. He was on a direct collision course with me.
I saw him a second too late. There was no time to move. But Ren saw him. He moved instantly, stepping in front of me and taking the full impact as the child crashed into him.
Ren stumbled back, a large, messy brown smear instantly decorating the front of his clean, white t-shirt. The boy froze, his eyes wide with terror, the half-eaten chocolate banana falling from his hand to the ground. He looked up at Ren, his lower lip beginning to tremble, clearly expecting to be yelled at.
I braced myself for Ren's usual grunt of annoyance, for him to dismiss the kid and the mess. But he didn't. He looked down at the chocolate stain, then at the terrified child, and his entire posture softened. He knelt down, bringing himself to the boy's eye level.
"Hey," he said, his voice surprisingly soft. "You okay? That was a big crash."
The boy just stared, too scared to speak. Ren pointed a thumb at the brown smear on his own chest. "Looks like my shirt lost the fight," he said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Guess it's a chocolate monster now."
The boy let out a watery little giggle, the fear instantly forgotten. He nodded, then turned and ran off to find his friends. Ren stood up, looking at the mess on his shirt not with annoyance, but with a look of tired, gentle resignation.
He turned to look back at me, and he caught me smiling. It wasn't a performance smile; it was a real, unguarded, deeply felt smile of pure admiration. The moment his eyes met mine, a dark blush crept up my neck, and I saw a similar flush of color on his own cheeks. We were both caught, our guards down for a single, shocking second.
He broke the silence, his voice a low, rough thing, his eyes flicking down to my kimono and then back to my face. "That... looks good on you," he mumbled, a clumsy, genuine compliment before letting me go. The intimacy of the moment, the shared blush, his quiet words—it was too much. It was perfect. And in that moment, seeing his genuine smile, his selfless, gentle act, and his awkward, blushing compliment, now that was something that would make me fall harder.
A crackle from the speakers on the main stage cut through the moment. A teacher's voice, full of cheerful, booming energy, announced that the evening's musical performances would be starting in fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes.
The blood ran cold in my veins. "Oh my god," I whispered, the magic of the moment evaporating into a pure, cold panic. "I have to go. I have to be on stage soon."
I turned to Ren, my heart hammering for a completely different reason now. "I... I have to go get ready."
Before he could say anything, I turned and ran, my kimono and boots a clumsy, beautiful prison as I pushed through the crowd, leaving him standing alone by the goldfish pool, a chocolate stain over his heart.
He watched me disappear, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. A moment later, two figures materialized beside him out of the crowd.
"So," Mio said, her voice a low, knowing drawl as she watched my retreating form. "That's the reason, huh?"
Kaito nudged him with his elbow, a slow, disbelieving grin spreading across his face. "Cheeky, cheeky."
The run from the goldfish stall to the designated "backstage" area—a hastily cleared-out chemistry classroom—was a frantic, breathless sprint. The sweet, clumsy moment with Ren evaporated like morning mist, replaced by the cold, sharp adrenaline of an impending performance. The two worlds, the girl who had just fallen a little harder for a boy and the idol who was about to face a crowd, collided within me.
I burst through the classroom door. A few other student performers were milling about, their faces pale with nerves. A teacher handed me a bottle of water and pointed me to a corner. "Five minutes, Abe-san."
Five minutes.
I found an empty stool behind a lab table, the air smelling faintly of sulfur and chalk dust. This was my dressing room. I closed my eyes, shutting out the nervous chatter around me, and I reached for the switch.
It was a technique Ryouko had drilled into me for years, a form of mental armor. You find the switch in your mind, the one that turns off the frightened, uncertain girl, and you flip it. She put on her idol mode. Hotaru, with her trembling hands and her hopelessly confused heart, receded. The ghost, Hoshiko, stepped forward. But this time, it was different. I wasn't being possessed. I was picking up a weapon I knew how to use. My breathing slowed. My frantic heartbeat settled into a low, powerful thrum. My hands, which had been shaking, became perfectly still.
I opened my eyes. The world looked different now, sharper, clearer. The nervous students were no longer my peers; they were amateurs. The makeshift backstage area was no longer a classroom; it was the wings of a stage. I was no longer a runaway. I was a professional, and it was time to go to work.
I sat there, a statue of calm in the midst of the low-grade panic, and I waited for my name to be called. I could hear the crowd outside, a low, happy murmur, the sound of a beast before it has been woken. I thought of Ren's small, unguarded smile. I thought of Ayame's cold, reptilian threat. I thought of Ryouko, somewhere out there in the world, pulling strings I couldn't even see. They were all out there, in one form or another. And I was about to sing to all of them.
"And now," the teacher's voice boomed from the stage, amplified and cheerful, "please give a huge End-of-Summer welcome to our solo performer, the winner of this year's audition, Hotaru Abe!"
The crowd offered a polite, scattered applause. It was the sound of a thousand people who were expecting nothing.
I stood up, my movements fluid, economical. I walked out of the classroom and toward the short set of stairs that led up to the stage. The world narrowed to a single, brilliant cone of light.
I walked on stage.
The moment my boot hit the wooden platform, a change swept through the audience. A ripple of whispers, a thousand heads turning, a collective intake of breath. The scattered applause faltered, then died completely. Everyone suddenly became quiet when I was on stage.
They had been expecting a nervous high school student. They were not prepared for me. In the borrowed kimono, with my silver hair catching the white-hot spotlight like a crown, I was not one of them. I was something other. I walked to the center of the stage, took the microphone from its stand, and the silence that followed was absolute, a perfect, reverent void.
I looked out, my eyes sweeping across the sea of stunned, upturned faces. I saw Emi and Yui in the second row, their faces shining with a fierce, proud loyalty. I saw Mio and Kaito, standing near the back, their expressions a complicated, unreadable mixture of bitterness and curiosity. I saw Ayame in the front row, her arms crossed, a perfect, condescending smirk already in place. And somewhere out there, in the darkness, I knew he was watching.
I brought the microphone to my lips. The silence was so complete I could hear the soft click as my fingers adjusted their grip.
"Thank you all for being here tonight," I said, my voice clear, calm, and carrying to the furthest corners of the schoolyard. It was Hoshiko's perfect, professional tone, but the words were mine.
The stage was set. The audience was mine. The silence was my canvas. And I was ready to paint.