...
...
Mai Sakurajima had no idea how she escaped the Asami Entertainment building.
Her memory came in shards, jagged and out of order.
She remembered half-falling down the stairwell, the frozen metal railing scraping across her palms hard enough to sting, though she felt nothing. She remembered sprinting through empty streets in the dead of night, the wind cutting into her face like a blade, forcing itself down her throat until every breath tasted of copper.
Her stomach churned. She kept seeing it. Over and over.
Seiji Fujiwara's cruel, amused smile.
Mutsumi Wakaba's profile, so numb it made Mai's heart seize.
And that pure white undergarment, used to casually wipe his fingers clean, then calmly gathered up to be worn again.
She crashed through the door of her studio apartment, slamming it shut behind her with enough force to rattle the frame.
Every lock, every deadbolt, thrown into place, as though a few inches of wood and steel could keep the devil and his nightmare on the other side.
Her back pressed against the cold door, and Mai slid to the floor.
No lights. Just the dark.
There was no glittering Roppongi skyline here. Only a sliver of pale moonlight creeping through gaps in the old window frame, and the faint smell of mildew that clung to aging walls.
The sprint had drained every ounce of her strength. Her mind, though, refused to quiet. It thrashed against the inside of her skull like something caged.
Fear.
Chaos.
Absurdity.
And the shattered remains of a perfect idol she'd built inside her head.
She'd believed Mutsumi Wakaba was chosen by god. A princess above the clouds, born to stand where no one else could reach.
What she'd seen with her own eyes was something else entirely: a doll with clipped wings and plucked feathers, toyed with at a devil's leisure, then left to quietly clean up the wreckage herself.
The genius who could channel sorrow from the deepest reaches of the human soul on stage... was this the wellspring of that sadness? Something so wretched, so degrading?
Damn you, Seiji Fujiwara.
Every last one of them. Upper-class men, not a decent one in the bunch.
Mai buried her face in her knees. Her body began to shake, the delayed wave of horror and nausea hitting all at once.
She didn't know how long she stayed curled up in the dark.
An hour. Two.
The trembling faded as her body simply ran out of the energy to sustain it.
Her brain, which had crashed from the overload of shock, began to reboot. Like a veteran actress stepping offstage after a harrowing performance, she started picking through the night's events with clinical precision.
She forced herself to replay everything.
Being locked inside the building. Following the light to the top floor.
Watching Seiji Fujiwara slide his hand beneath Mutsumi Wakaba's skirt. Shoving the door open in a blaze of fury.
And then her thoughts snagged on the one detail that mattered most.
Seiji Fujiwara's reaction.
When she'd burst through that door, surprise had flickered across his face. But it wasn't surprise at the intrusion itself. It was closer to how did she get past security?
Then, the instant he recognized her, that surprise dissolved. Completely. Replaced by something knowing, something entertained.
He saw me.
The thought struck like a match in the dark, and her tangled mind went still.
"He saw me."
"He looked right at me."
"He didn't ignore me the way everyone else does."
Her breathing quickened again. Not from fear this time.
From the glimpse of a lifeline.
Her head snapped up. Even in the pitch black, her eyes burned bright, wide with shock and a disbelief she couldn't contain.
She'd assumed Seiji Fujiwara was like her. Another victim of Adolescence Syndrome. Another invisible person the world's cognition simply slid past.
That was how she'd explained it. That was why he could violate Mutsumi without her noticing. And that was why watching one of her own kind sink so low had enraged her.
She'd been wrong.
Spectacularly wrong.
Seiji Fujiwara wasn't invisible. Mutsumi hadn't been oblivious. She'd known what he was doing from the start, and she'd gone along with it willingly.
The only person in that room who couldn't be seen...
...was Mai Sakurajima.
So then...
Why can he see me?
Why is it that in this entire world, as every person alive slowly forgets I exist, only he... that vile man... can perceive me clearly?
There was only one answer.
Mai bit down on her lip, her expression caught between resentment and reluctant understanding.
She didn't want to admit it. But there was really only one possibility.
He's different.
Seiji Fujiwara is something different.
The realization split through the fog in her mind like a bolt of lightning.
Her body shook again.
This time, what drove it wasn't fear alone.
It was a war being fought inside her.
On one side: revulsion and terror. What Seiji had done to Mutsumi, that inhuman, objectifying cruelty, repelled her on every level, physical and psychological alike. The man was a monster wearing skin.
Mutsumi's submission and compliance only deepened the wound. It hurt to witness. It defied belief.
The mere thought of approaching him, of asking that devil for help, sent bile rising in her throat.
But on the other side...
He was her only Hope. The only one she couldn't refuse.
The world was forgetting her. People's eyes passed through her like glass. Her presence grew thinner by the day, and she had no idea where it ended. Maybe one morning she'd vanish entirely. Maybe even her mother would forget her name.
That slow erasure, that death by a thousand cuts as the world itself carved her out of existence, was its own kind of hell.
And Seiji Fujiwara was the only person in that boundless hell who could see her.
He might be the only cure.
What do I do?
Stay here in this lonely purgatory, invisible and fading, drifting toward oblivion?
Or find the courage to walk into a different kind of hell, and trade it for the chance to be seen again?
In the darkness, Mai bit down until she tasted the salt and iron of blood.
Her expression shifted like weather, one thing after another passing behind her eyes, none of them settling.
...
...
The next morning.
A world away from Mai Sakurajima's cramped, lightless apartment, the chairman's office at Fujiwara Group headquarters occupied the top floor, bathed in the full glory of the dawn.
Seiji sat behind his desk, legs crossed, leaning back with the boneless ease of a man who owned everything in his line of sight.
Morning light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows and wrapped around him like a gilded shroud, lending him the look of some mythic figure stepped out of antiquity, beautiful and imperious.
He was savoring last night's unexpected bonus.
Mai Sakurajima, that startled little rabbit, careening from righteous fury to abject horror to a frantic, stumbling retreat. She'd added just the right seasoning to a game that had started to grow stale.
That final look on her face especially, the moment her entire worldview collapsed behind her eyes, had been genuinely entertaining.
Smiling to himself, Seiji pressed a button on his desk.
His aide appeared within moments, as always impeccably dressed, knocking once before entering.
"You called, sir."
"Pull the full file on a trainee at Asami Entertainment. Mai Sakurajima." The words left his mouth like an afterthought.
"Right away."
No questions asked. The aide turned and left.
Minutes later, he returned with a slim folder, setting it respectfully on the desk.
"Here's what you requested, sir..." The aide trailed off. Confusion crossed his face.
He blinked, as though grasping for something that kept slipping away.
"...What was I reporting on?" he murmured to himself, then looked at Seiji with a trace of embarrassment. "Apologies, sir. I seem to have... forgotten what you asked me to do."
"Don't worry about it. You're dismissed." Seiji waved him off, his smile deepening.
"Yes, sir." The aide retreated with visible relief, pulling the door shut behind him.
Seiji picked up the folder and opened it.
The first page held Mai Sakurajima's ID photo.
The girl in the picture still carried traces of the pride and radiance that belonged to a child prodigy at the height of her fame. That exquisite face, the one that had once captivated the entire entertainment industry, remained strikingly beautiful even in the most austere format a photograph could take.
His long fingers traced the line of that defiant jaw.
Confirmed.
He was the only person who could remember her. The only one whose perception of Mai Sakurajima remained intact and clear.
Whatever he was, his nature, his very existence, stood above this bizarre phenomenon of cognitive erosion.
Though Mai's circumstances here differed slightly from what he remembered of the original.
According to the file: family bankruptcy, a life of hardship, and an infamous swimsuit incident during middle school where she'd publicly turned on everyone involved, burning every bridge in the industry and getting herself blacklisted.
He studied the documents.
A script began to take shape in his mind.
A star who once stood at the summit, cast into the mud, forgotten by the world.
And he would descend before her as the sole person who could see her.
A confident, predatory smile settled onto Seiji Fujiwara's face.
"A genius child star the world forgot..."
"Let me make you seen again."
"On my terms, of course."
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