The elevator going down to the 4th floor felt less like a commute more like being swallowed by a giant machine. Reina obediently stood still in the center of the cold metal box, watching the floor numbers flash in a bleeding neon red.
7.
6.
5.
4.
With a sharp hiss, the doors opened, breathing out a gust of cold eerie air.
Welcome to the Maintenance Wards.
The idols called it "The Aquarium."
It was a long, windowless hallway corridor made of cold concrete, covered in a "cute" shade of pastel pink paint that made her feel sick. On the floor, there was a heavy gray carpet which was designed to absorb all kinds of sound, from clicking high heels to the thudding of collapsing bodies. Each time Reina took a step, the overhead motion sensor activated lights flickered on in cold, sudden flashes.
The high from Sayuri's "Vitamin Cocktail" was starting to disappear. The drugs had pushed her through a brutal 4 hour long swimsuit concept photoshoot where she had been forced to twist her tired body under burning lights, smiling until her gums began to bleed. And now her body was paying the price. Her heart began to beat irregularly. And she felt a subtle but unignorable pain in her chest. A cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck. She desperately needed sleep but in the Aquarium, sleep was a privilege that could be taken away at any second.
After a long brutal walk, she reached Room 402.
There was no lock on her door. No chains, no way to keep people out. Her contract was a labyrinth of rules and Section 12, Paragraph 8 was the cruelest-
For the safety and rapid medical response of the Talent, private quarters shall remain accessible to Management at all hours. And they had the right to enter her room 24/7 in case of a "medical emergency".
It was a beautiful cage and the door was always open for them.
Reina pushed the heavy door open and stepped into her room. It was exactly as she had left it 14 hours ago. It was clean and bright, sickening pink. There was just a small bed against the wall, a small desk and a wardrobe. The windows of the room were made out of shatter-proof plastic glass and were permanently sealed shut to prevent "accidents."
She dropped her gym bag onto the floor. Hearing the faint satisfying clink of the stolen glass vial inside made her aware of her new reality.
'Exhibit A'.
Reina moved toward the bed, ready to collapse onto the covers. But then she froze.
There was a plush teddy bear sitting perfectly in the middle of her pillow.
It was a large bear, about two feet tall, made out of soft and expensive brown fur. Around its neck was a thick red ribbon tied in a beautiful bow. A small card with the LUMINA agency logo was pinned on it.
Reina didn't dare to touch it. She stayed back completely frozen at the edge of the bed. And suddenly, the room became too quiet.
She leaned down, her eyes narrowing as she read the fancy print on the card-
To our shining Center,
A gift from a Platinum Tier fan to congratulate you on your upcoming graduation.
Keep smiling,
Reina.
Normally, an idol would scream with joy, hug the bear and take a selfie for her fans. But Reina wasn't that girl anymore. The "perfect princess" act was over, destroyed by exhaustion and fear. The weak, obedient girl everyone used to know was dying and constantly being killed off by the drug intake and the horror of seeing her digital replacement. Her brain instantly became hyper active. In her place, a cold, sharp mind of a survivor was waking up. And her mind was becoming colder and logical. She wasn't an idol; she was a survivor.
She stared at the bear. It looked soft and innocent.
"In a warzone, Reina, the enemy doesn't always carry a gun. Sometimes they carry a bouquet of flowers."
The memory of her father's voice echoed in her mind. He had been an intelligence officer for a corporate firm in Beijing before his liver gave out. He was a paranoid man who taught her how to scan a room for hidden bugs like microphones and cameras before he taught her how to ride a bike. He had viewed the world as a chessboard of hidden intents. She had spent her entire life trying to forget his lessons, trying to live in the light. But now she needed them. The so-called light had burned her. And now she needed the shadows.
Reina took a slow step back from the bed. She studied the bear like a predator. Its fur was perfect. Its posture was stiff. But then she saw its eyes.
They were like large black plastic buttons. The left one was dull and slightly reflecting light but the right one had a tiny, perfect reflection right in the center.
It wasn't a button. It was a lens. A camera lens.
A wave of sick fear washed over her. It was a suffocating sensation, a feeling of being watched by something evil.
An invisible enemy.
The air in the room suddenly felt too thin to breathe. Someone was in there with her, looking at her, watching her every move, staring through the fake eye of the teddy bear.
She wanted to grab the heavy ceramic lamp from her bedside table and crush the bear until it was nothing but shattered cottons and broken wires.
No, the voice in her head warned. If you break the camera, they know you found it. Your only protection is making them think you are still clueless and staying hidden is your only shield.
Reina forced herself to calm down. She took a deep breath and let her shoulders drop, acting like she was completely worn out as she walked past the bear, stayed out of the camera's view and stepped into her small bathroom.
Once inside the bathroom, she turned on the sink faucet at full speed, letting the water run loud to hide any noise. Then she opened the cabinet and grabbed a pair of sharp, stainless steel scissors.
Reina came out of the bathroom but her face was completely blank. She walked to the bed, grabbed the bear by its soft ears and turned its back to the room's blank wall. She quickly searched the fur of its head. Without making any sound, she pulled back the fur at the back of its neck. Her fingers quickly found the stitching. The stitchings were slightly tighter and the color of the thread was different, a darker shade than the rest of the bear's stitching.
Someone recently opened this bear and stitched it back together by hand.
Reina used her scissors to carefully cut the thread and severed three stitches. She pulled back the fur and reached into the white cotton stuffing.
She dug her fingers into the cotton and suddenly felt it. A hard, square shaped object buried deep inside the head.
She slowly pulled the object out while keeping the wires connected so the camera wouldn't go dark.
The device was tiny but perfect. Seems like a masterpiece in the field of micro-engineering. It was a matchbox sized black box which was connected to the eye by a wire as thin as a hair. Also a black microphone was attached to it. Seeing how sophisticated the device looked, she thought the quality of the microphone wouldn't be bad. It might even be a powerful hyper-sensitive microphone which was glued and designed to hear every whisper in the room.
Her hands were shaking with fear and anger. At first, she thought it was from the stalker, Kenji, a scary wide eyed man from the handshake event.
He was obsessed enough to bribe a staff member to slip this into her room. The thought made her skin crawl.
Her first instinct was to completely destroy the bear.
But then her father's training kicked in, Reina looked closer at the hardware.
She turned the black box over. The work was perfect. Not a single messy wire or messy solder joint. It was a professional, enterprise-grade equipment. She looked closely at the microscopic small text printed on the side of the battery. It lacked a SIM card slot. It wasn't sending a signal to the internet.
Then a sickening thought crossed her mind that she didn't want to acknowledge at all. It might be a localized RF transmitter. It wasn't meant to send her video to a stalker across the city. At maximum its signal could only reach a receiver within fifty meters.
Reina's blood turned to ice.
Fifty meters.
Reina lived on the fourth floor. The floors above her were empty. But the floor directly below her, the 3rd floor, held the executive offices. More specifically it was where Sayuri worked and where the agency kept its internal servers.
The enemy wasn't a crazy fan on the street.
The enemy was paying her salary.
It was Sayuri.
It was Chairman Kaneshiro.
It was the Agency.
It was the agency's "Quality Control." They weren't just watching her weight or tracking her calories. They were tracking her life. They were watching her sleep. They were listening to her breathings. They were watching her every time she took off her clothes. Every time she cried, every tear she had ever shed into her pillow, every moment of weakness, every little secret she whispered, they had recorded it all. They had it all on tape.
Reina was living inside a panopticon. A prison designed to monitor her every second of every day while the guards remained hidden. She was like a beautiful princess trapped in a birdcage but the bars weren't made of metal. They were made of high tech glass and hidden cameras that watched her every move.
A deep and terrifying silence washed over her. She didn't cry. The 'Vitamin Cocktail' and the horror of being spied on had dried up her tears. Instead a cold, terrifying rage began to form in her stomach. It made her feel steady and gave her a new kind of strength. She wasn't a victim anymore.
And this was the moment the "wicked woman" was born.
She knew the police wouldn't help. She couldn't fight them with the law. She had seen Sayuri bribe the police chief with a briefcase of cash. The agency owned them. She couldn't fight them in public either. Her fans wouldn't hear her true voice. The Yotsuba Algorithm had already shadow-banned her existence and replaced her with a smiling, obedient digital ghost.
If she wanted to survive, she had to play their game. She had to follow Sonshi's (Sun Tzu) 'Laying Plans'. Her father always recommended her to read his 'The Art Of War' book and always follow his ideology.
And now she had to appear weak even when she was strong. She had to be the perfect and weak little princess like she used to be. All she has to do now is pretend.
Reina carefully pushed the box back into the bear. She put all of the cotton perfectly into the bear around the box so that both any kinds of hollow sound can be muffled and no one find the tempering of the bear. Then she took a small sewing kit from her desk and threaded a needle with dark brown thread.
With a hand steady as a surgeon's, she sewed the stitchings of the bear's neck shut. She made sure her stitches perfectly matched the original ones. When she was done, it was impossible to tell if the bear had ever been opened.
She turned the bear around and placed it at the center of her pillows. The glass eye was looking forward.
Reina stood up and walked to the middle of the room, standing directly in front of the hidden camera. She let her shoulders drop, letting a look of total exhaustion wash over her face. She raised her hands to her cheeks, rubbing her eyes as if she were a fragile, broken girl who was giving up under the pressure.
She looked at the bear.
Then she gave it the million dollar idol smile. It was a perfect and radiant smile. But it didn't carry any real emotions behind it. Everything was fake.
"Thank you for the gift," Reina whispered into the quiet room. Her voice was soft and filled with fake gratitude. She knew Sayuri was most likely sitting in the office downstairs, watching the live feed and smiling at her broken state.
"I'll try my best to be good," Reina said. "I'll always be your pure Reina."
She bowed to the camera, turned off the lights and climbed into bed. She lay perfectly still in the dark, her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling.
Her heart wasn't racing from the drugs anymore. It was beating with a slow but deadly purpose.
She was going to burn this aquarium to the ground.
> [SYSTEM LOG: LUMINA_SECURE_SURVEILLANCE_NODE_04]
> Location: Ward 402 (Asset: Reina Shiratori)
> Audio/Video Feed: ONLINE.
> Signal Strength: 100%
> Asset Status: Compliant. Emotional baseline stable. No rebellious ideation detected.
> Manager Note (Sayuri): Increase dosage of Vitamin Cocktail tomorrow. She looked tired when she smiled.