“Helllllllo~ ladies and gentlemen. I’m Yoshi Ono, and this is I.O. PANIC! We’re starting off tonight stronger than a sumo wrestler, with our special guests who shine like stars in the sky, and I mean that literally, haha, give it up for StarMania!”

Hatsuko sat wrapped up in a black blanket on her couch downstairs, her laptop resting on her knees streaming this afternoon's game show of choice. She usually watched these types of things upstairs in her lounge, but that wasn’t possible tonight.

She’d ordered a takeaway an hour ago, triple the amount she usually buys. Her portion had been cleared away already, but the rest was waiting in the fridge to be reheated.

It wasn’t the plan, but sometimes that’s just how it goes. And Hatsuko was never a good cook, ready meals, simple dishes, and takeaways were the norm for her. Besides, it wouldn’t do to feed a starving person a half-edible dish she had made, so takeaway it was.

Or will be, once it's reheated and dished up.

The audience had calmed down now, their applause quieting enough for the host to speak, “So, StarMania, how are you ladies feeling tonight? Ready for your showdown against our mystery guest?”

Hatsuko was going to have to sleep here again. She found it a little comedic, she’d changed her bedsheets yesterday morning, as she does every Wednesday, and yet this would be the second night in a row that she hasn’t slept in them.

Though in hindsight, it was for the better. At least Seina had clean sheets to sleep in.

If you could call what she was doing ‘sleeping’.

As still as a corpse, her pale skin almost ghostly in the darkness of the room. She didn’t toss or turn, nor mutter in her sleep. Even her breathing was inaudible, and beneath the thick covers the subtle movement of her chest rising was imperceptible.

A real-life sleeping beauty.

Except Hatsuko wasn’t sure if this one wanted to wake up.

She had chalked it up to exhaustion. Seina already worked the night shift, so combine that with the natural tiredness of not sleeping and the physical exhaustion of walking across the city all night, it's not hard to figure out why she crashed so abruptly.

But what did catch her off-guard was that Seina had let it get this far.

Hatsuko had always thought of Seina as indestructible. It was the aura she emitted, emotionless, detached, and disregarding of all the world’s problems and woes.

She was a wall, a fortress atop an untouchable mountain peak.

Yet she still crumbled on Hatsuko’s floor, scattered as she hit the ground and faded as she burnt out.

“Yeah bring it on!” Said the first of four cutesy girls, “It’ll be easy, we’ve got this!” Continued another, before the other two tacked on their own lines of mock confidence.

It was all a show, Hatsuko had set up similar things before with her past talents. The idol group knew exactly who they were facing, the agencies of the two talents would have set this up in advance with the game show’s company weeks ago.

Orchestrated with the same groundwork as a fantasy TV series. She wouldn’t be surprised if the winner had already been chosen too, depending on who StarMania is facing, it’ll be obvious.

Whoever has the stronger backing will be the winner.

“Well, well, looks like we have some zealous idols here tonight, ladies and gentlemen. So… is everyone ready to meet the opponent that these girls will be facing?”

It was 08:27 p.m..

The greenscreen to her right behind the desk was staring at her. She never invited talents to her office, to her home. Not even guests would see it all set up like this, it was an embarrassment, a clear indicator of her lie of success.

Yet Seina saw it all.

And Hatsuko didn’t care.

If she did, she never would have let Seina here in the first place.

It was a first for Hatsuko. But so was Seina, so different, strange, foreign. She knew that Seina wouldn’t even flinch at the lie, this acted illusion so well practised it almost became reality.

After all, if you fake it for long enough it becomes real.

Except it didn’t.

But Seina didn’t care. Hatsuko still didn’t understand why she agreed to act in the first place, why she signed that contract, or why she seemed to just accept everything Hatsuko asked her to do.

Was it an escape? A desperate last chance to change her life? It wouldn’t be the first time that someone saw acting, saw frame, and success as a way out of their dead-end career.

Did Seina? No, no she didn’t. Hatsuko knew that from her interaction with Adachi.

She had acted then.

But what was more important was who she acted as.

Seina said it herself, though Hatsuko supposes that calling her ‘Seina’ isn’t quite correct.

‘I cease to be me, and I become an idealised version of Seina Kanemoto.’

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

An idealised version, not of herself, but of Seina Kanemoto.

Hatsuko never would have guessed that when she told Director Ttio she had a veteran actress ready to replace Isamu, she was telling the truth.

After all, how much experience must Seina have racked up acting as… ‘Seina’?

“Alright then! Everyone give it up for the one and only, 19 year-old up-and-coming superstar actress, Akari Umi!” The game show host, Yoshi Ono, announced with a bellowing voice and enchanted flair to a massive applause.

Akari Umi.

She was the winner.

It's simply how the business goes, StarMania is here to piggyback off Akari’s frame, and in return Akari gets to show herself off by beating four idols in a game show, all the while distracting her fans from the fact the movie she’s staring in has been hit with another delay thanks to casting.

‘Is It Wrong To Live’, Akari is locked into a contract as one of the leads, and two months ago the writer of the source material decided she hated the finished movie and fired half of the actors and demanded it be recast.

In any other case, the whole movie would have been scraped. But ‘Is It Wrong To Live’ is worth too much money, it’s a top-selling manga that has a control freak of a writer who can’t help getting involved with every facet of the filming. And no one can stop her all thanks to a single line in a contract.

“Total creative control.”

That’s all it took, and the movie that still has billboards stuck up on Tokyo skyscrapers advertising the release date for the end of this month has been pushed back half a year.

And all the while, Akari is unable to star in another film thanks to the exclusivity casting written into her contract that’ll only expire when the movie either releases or finally dies in production hell.

Hatsuko closed the laptop, cutting off the opening introduction given by Akari Umi.

Seina’s phone was on the kitchen counter plugged into an outlet charging.

Ha:Yami must be wondering about the whereabouts of Seina right about now. Assuming she has a shift tonight. Either way, Hatsuko couldn’t exactly get Seina up to go to work, and nor could she ignore the situation potentially resulting in Seina getting in trouble.

She picked up the phone, the screen lit up with a keypad to greet her.

Locked.

As if she didn’t know that already.

Hatsuko snuck up the stairs phone in hand, as silent as a god answering prayers.

The door to her bedroom slid open and she slipped into the room and arrived next to Seina still fast asleep.

Corpse-like and pale, all she needed now was a gathering of flowers like bridesmaids at a wedding, and she’d be fit for a funeral; Death ready and waiting with beckoning arms.

The phone had a fingerprint scanner. Hatsuko snaked an arm under the covers and gently pulled one of Seina’s arms out from it. Pressing her finger against the scanner, the phone clicked as it lit up and unlocked.

She returned the arm and left the room to begin shifting through Seina’s contacts.

Contacts…

All four of them.

Hatsuko, last called 5 days ago.

Nao, last called 26 days ago.

Ha:Yami Club, last called 189 days ago.

Mother and father.

There was no last-called date for that final one, she had never called it.

Those were all of her contacts, it was almost tragic how much she isolated herself.

Hatsuko pressed on the contact for the club, and it began to ring.

“Seina, why are you calling on your day off?” The answer came before the third ring, it was Kiyoshi Shikichi, not that Hatsuko knew that.

Still, a part of her was relieved that Seina wasn’t missing work today, she had put this phone call off on the chance that Seina woke up and was able to make it herself, but clearly, that wasn’t happening any time soon.

“Hello, I’m ringing on behalf of Seina Kanemoto, she is currently ill in bed and will be unable to come into work until Monday at the earliest.” Hatsuko stated, refusing to budge a single inch on the matter.

Kiyoshi Shikichi took a moment to reply, processing everything that had been rapidly fired at him. “Right, 3 days of sick leave? Yeah, that’s fine-” He was cut off by the loud voice of a woman who sounded completely blown away in shock.

“Huhhhh? Did she say Seina’s ill? That’s impossible, I refuse to believe it.” She turned away from the phone speaker and questioned someone behind her, “Mikakooo~ when was the last time Seina took sick leave?”

The mature and tempered voice of a woman just managed to carry itself to the phone speaker and into Hatsuko’s ear, “Hmm, I think it was two years ago? My memory may be a little off on that. However, it was a long time ago.”

“Girls, please. I’m trying to have a conversation here.” The frustrated voice of Kiyoshi cut back in as he brushed Nao and Mikako out of the reach of the speaker. “I apologise about that, thank you for giving us a heads up. I’ll make sure to log it.”

Nao shouted something in the background of the phone call that didn’t quite come through, but Kiyoshi relayed it to Hatsuko on her behalf, “Nao wants you to pass a message to Seina, is that okay?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

The ruffling sound of the phone passing between hands could be heard before Nao’s bubbly voice came through, “Hiya, please tell Seina that me and Mikako wish her well. Oh, and that we’ll miss her- Ah, ah, and make sure she knows we’re inviting her somewhere, I dunno, anywhere, next weekend, okie? Wait- I wasn’t finishi-”

Nao could be heard begging as Kiyoshi retook the phone, and gave a final farewell, “Ok, thank you. That’s all from us, is there anything else?”

“No, I think that’s everything. Goodbye.” Hatsuko replied, instantly disconnecting the call afterward and returning the phone to the kitchen counter.

The exchange was over, and Hatsuko had found the whole ordeal more exhausting than she’d expected. But more importantly, she’d found it rather interesting…

Nao and Mikako, maybe not so much Mikako, but Nao definitely seemed to be a close friend of Seina’s, something which rather surprised Hatsuko.

It put her at ease, knowing that Seina had someone who cared for her that much. It humanised the otherwise emotionless girl, made her seem a little more normal.

Of course, regardless of what Hatsuko believed, it wasn’t reality.

Seina had no friends.

Perhaps if Hatsuko had put two and two together and noticed the Nao in the contacts was the same one that she’d spoken to, she would have realised Seina felt almost nothing towards her.

After all, what kind of friend doesn’t call or text once in 26 days?

A bad one.

So what does that make Seina?

A non-existent one.

But don’t worry too much, she prefers it like this. And she’d most certainly think it's better this way, even though it isn’t.

Liar. Liar. Liar.