Aquamarine Hoshino's POV
Two weeks had slipped by. Fate had placed me with Arima Kana for the entirety of those two busy weeks. The world truly was too small, for here we were, meeting again after all the years since we were child actors.
Our history went back to a childhood film set, where she'd been hailed as a genius child actress.
Back then, her attitude had been… a massive problem, especially compared to the more cynical yet approachable person she seemed to be now.
I mean, the kid version of her was pure, undiluted arrogance.
She carried herself with a suffocating sense of superiority that made everyone around her—adults included—feel small and scrutinized.
Being near her felt like standing too close to a blinding, judgmental spotlight.
She was definitively not someone I'd ever wanted to talk to.
"I felt the same way." The loli goddess's voice chimed in my mind, playful and sharp. "She was a nasty little brat back then. Truly awful."
"I think you're describing yourself," I chuckled internally.
No matter how deep her silent strike had been before, she still couldn't resist the urge to talk at me.
It was a need she clearly had, unlike me, who felt no basic urge to converse with a parasitic deity living in my head.
Probably offended by either my thought or my words, Tsukuyomi let out a psychic "Humph!"
I could almost see her pouting, a storm cloud on a tiny, divine face. "You know, you need to be fixed, Aqua. You're a bad boy!"
"Alright, alright. I get it," I replied, an actual chuckle escaping my lips as I walked down the hall. "Then fix this wretched soul of mine, O Goddess. Please, by all means."
In the theater of my mind, she glared at me with those deceptively large, adorable eyes, brimming with faux indignation and a very real, simmering intent.
"I will fix you," she declared, her mental voice dropping to a whisper that was both a promise and a threat. "Definitely."
I approached the corner of the drafty warehouse, the concrete floor cold even through my shoes.
Huddled there, looking smaller than her usual fiery self, was Arima Kana—the prime suspect for my supposed "soulmate," a concept the goddess in my head seemed hell-bent on using to troll me.
I held out a bottle of water. "Here. Looks like you've run yourself ragged trying to herd those problem children."
She was leaning against the wall, her energy completely spent.
When she looked up, her face was downcast, stripped of its usual defiant spark. "You probably think I'm pathetic too, right, Aqua?"
Of course I knew what she meant.
This whole mess started when she dragged me onto this set, desperate for someone—anyone—to replace an actor who'd quit mid-production because the role "wasn't to his liking" or some other diva nonsense.
Now, I'd been cast as the stalker in this floundering romance drama.
A perfect, inconspicuous position.
My real motive wasn't acting; it was investigation. I needed to scrutinize the director, Masaya Kaburagi, and find out what his relationship with Ai really was.
Ai's phone records showed an unusual frequency of contact with him.
I needed to get close, to test his blood, to see if the math of my existence somehow added up to him.
Kaburagi was a cynic. The type who put sponsor money and safe, marketable choices above everything else—art, integrity, people.
By any realistic measure, a man like that wouldn't have the guts to impregnate a teenage idol.
The risk would be astronomical, the fallout career-ending.
But… what if?
I had to be sure.
He clearly disliked Kana, judging her through the lens of her past arrogance despite his surface-level camaraderie.
I'd overheard him talking to a crew member, coldly stating he was using her faded fame to prop up the show while ridiculing her for wasting time trying to coach a cast of pretty-faced amateurs who couldn't act.
I pushed the water bottle into her hand.
"So, why would you say that?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral, genuinely curious about the shift in her.
She took the water but didn't open it, her fingers tracing the condensation on the plastic. "You saw my acting out there, didn't you?"
A dry, humorless laugh escaped her. "Hah… When you knew me back then, you must be wondering. Why has the 'high and mighty Kana' lowered her standard so much? Why is she dragging her own performance down to match these useless newbies?"
She finally looked at me, her eyes haunted by the ghost of her own past brilliance. "Even the netizens are roasting us. The show's sitting at one star. Everyone says we're… cringe. That I'm cringe."
"Well, they're telling the truth. You were cringe, Kana." I stated it straight to her face, no sugarcoating, no empty comfort.
She reacted instantly, her frustration manifesting as a sharp, angry stomp on my foot. "What the hell is that?! Did you come here just to ridicule me too, Aqua?!"
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the dull throb in my toes. "That's the reality of this industry. Sometimes you have to be willing to be cringe. To look foolish. The audience needs someone to laugh at, or to laugh with, even when it's painful. We'll all have to play that role eventually."
I glanced down pointedly at her shoe, which was still planted firmly on top of mine. "So? Feeling better now?"
She flushed, snatching her foot back as if burned. "S-sorry! I just… I…"
Her voice wavered, and her eyes grew shiny, threatening to spill over.
I reached out, not with a hug, but with a rough, brotherly hand that sank into her red hair, ruffling it into a messy crown. "Hush. Save those tears. Use every one of them for the performance that actually matters, Kana."
I held her gaze, letting my words sink in. "This time, I'm going all out. Consider this dumpster fire officially getting a rescue attempt."
Yeah, it's a complete dumpster fire.
Every actor on set is delivering their lines with the emotional depth of a soggy napkin, all saccharine smiles and awkward, stilted deliveries that make my skin crawl.
The cringe is so palpable it's like a physical presence in the room, grating on my nerves with every forced confession and wooden reaction shot.
I saw the manga creator, the woman who actually birthed these characters and this story, sitting off to the side.
The look on her face was pure, unadulterated horror.
It was the expression of someone watching their own child being slowly mangled in public.
She spent the whole shoot staring at her shoes, her shoulders slumped under the weight of seeing her creation—her heart's work—get gutted and stitched back together into this lifeless, corporate-approved puppet show.
But what did she expect? What could any of us really expect?
She doesn't have the armored backing of a powerhouse like JUMP. She got plucked from a webcomic platform, handed a contract, and thrown into the deep end.
A webcomic publisher isn't some guardian of artistic vision; it's a content mill. They don't defend an author's creativity or fight for the integrity of the work.
They see a trending title, they smell a quick buck, and they strip-mine it for whatever profit they can wring out before moving on to the next trend.
They care about clicks, about low production costs, about slapping a recognizable name onto whatever cheap, fast product they can churn out.
It's a different world from the industrial giants.
A place like JUMP, for all its own flaws and ruthless commercialism, at least understands the golden goose principle.
They'll spoil their successful authors like gods—give them assistants, creative leeway, merchandising empires—because as long as that author keeps printing money, everyone wins.
Here?
The creator is just another disposable part in a cheap machine, forced to sit silently and watch as the soul is systematically drained from her own story.
I turned and walked away, leaving her standing there in the warehouse gloom, stunned into silence, one hand slowly rising to touch the hair I'd just messed up.
Inside my head, I addressed my ever-present critic. "Goddess, it seems these girls aren't quite the monsters you made them out to be."
"I never said they were monsters," Tsukuyomi's voice chimed back, a note of sly correction in her tone. "I said they were mentally unstable. Fragile. They are teetering on a ledge. Without the right person to pull them back, they will fall beyond salvation. That's why you, as their destined soulmate, are so critically important, Aqua."
"So, does that make you one of them, too?" I asked, the question more playful than probing.
The goddess emitted a soft, dismissive snort in the confines of my mind. "I don't need anyone to save me..."
But was that really the case?
Her presence, her obsession, her endless games—they all spoke of a profound, unspoken need.
A loneliness that echoed deeper than any mortal's.
Who knew the truth of a god's heart?
But one thing was for sure: time would tell.
It always did.
Every secret, every buried wound, and every tangled thread of fate would eventually unravel itself, and we would all have to face what was revealed.