Late at night, the sterile white glow of the hospital's diagnosis room pressed down on everyone inside.
A doctor in his forties, his expression carefully neutral, studied the diagnostic sheet in his hands with the furrowed concentration of a man deciphering a complex puzzle. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic beeping of some unseen machine.
After a long moment, he adjusted his glasses—the gesture precise, almost ritualistic—and lifted his gaze to the small crowd gathered before him. His eyes swept across their faces: the young girl with the crumpled expression, the professional woman in the business suit whose composure was visibly fraying at the edges, the young man whose dark eyes betrayed nothing, and the woman behind him whose expression was an unreadable mask.
"Excuse me," the doctor began, his tone carefully measured, "aside from this agent here... are the rest of you immediate family members?"
Hojo Suzune had been staring blankly at the floor, her small face scrunched into a knot of tangled emotions, so lost in the labyrinth of her own thoughts that the question didn't even register. It wasn't until Fukada Fuyuna's gentle hand touched her shoulder that she jolted, blinking up at the doctor with the bewildered, unfocused gaze of someone abruptly pulled from a trance.
"Are you her family?" the doctor repeated patiently.
"Ah—yes. I'm her younger sister. Her only sister."
The doctor nodded, making a small notation on his clipboard. Then his gaze shifted, settling on the young man and woman standing slightly apart from the others, their body language suggesting a connection to the patient that wasn't quite familial.
"And you two as well? Are you also relatives?"
Hearing this, Shiratori Seiya's lips parted. The automatic response—some form of clarification, some careful delineation of his current, complicated relationship to Hojo Shione—formed on his tongue. But then, just as quickly, he swallowed it back.
What exactly would he say?
I'm her ex-boyfriend who she hasn't moved on from?
I'm the composer who abandoned her career?
I'm the one she was looking at when her voice shattered?
Every possible answer felt inadequate. Misleading. Cruel.
He closed his mouth and made the subtle motion of turning to leave, his hand brushing against Takahashi Mio's sleeve to guide her toward the door.
In Japan, patient privacy laws were ironclad.
Unless the patient was physically incapable of expressing their wishes—comatose, incapacitated, otherwise silenced by their own body—the doctors prioritized informing the patient directly.
If it weren't for Hojo Shione's special status as a public figure and the fact that this incident had occurred during a professional engagement, even Fukada Fuyuna would have been asked to step outside.
He could find out the details later.
Through Suzune.
Through Fukada.
There was no urgency. And judging by Shione's current condition—conscious, upright, alert despite the exhaustion haunting her features—whatever was wrong wasn't serious enough to require emergency surgery. He wasn't needed here. His presence might even make things worse.
But he had only taken half a step toward the door when he felt a tug at the fabric of his shirt.
Light. Desperate. Trembling.
He turned.
Hojo Shione sat in the examination chair, her posture carefully upright despite the visible exhaustion dragging at her limbs. Her dark eyes, swimming with unshed tears that caught the harsh fluorescent light and transformed it into something almost beautiful, were fixed on his face with an intensity that bordered on pleading.
Don't go.
She didn't speak. Couldn't speak—her voice was still gone, still shattered somewhere in the wreckage of her throat. But the words were written so clearly in her eyes, in the desperate angle of her eyebrows, in the way her trembling fingers clutched the hem of his shirt, that they might as well have been screamed.
Shiratori Seiya stopped. His jaw tightened. He looked down at her hand, so small and white against the dark fabric, and then—slowly, deliberately—he lifted his gaze to meet Takahashi Mio's.
Takahashi Mio had observed the entire interaction. The tug. The pleading eyes. The way Shiratori Seiya's expression had flickered—just for an instant, just barely—with something that looked painfully like guilt. Her own face remained perfectly, carefully neutral. A mask carved from porcelain.
"I'm going to find the restroom," she said, her voice soft and utterly unreadable. "Take your time."
And then, without waiting for a response, without a single backward glance, she turned and walked out of the diagnosis room. The door swung shut behind her with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
In the corridor outside, the fluorescent lights buzzed a low, monotonous hum. Takahashi Mio lowered herself onto the cold plastic bench and sat motionless for a long, suspended moment. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples, massaging slow circles against the ache that was beginning to throb behind her skull.
She had known.
From the moment Hojo Shione's voice had cracked on that first, fateful note. From the way she'd knelt on the stage, head bowed, the microphone dangling uselessly from her hand. From the way her tear-filled eyes had scanned the audience, searching for one face and one face only. The pieces had all been there, scattered like broken glass, and it had only been a matter of time before they cut her.
The conversation in the rain. A week ago. Hojo Shione had practically laid out her strategy in advance, and Takahashi Mio had been too caught up in her own defiance to recognize it for what it was.
"I'll prove it to you."
"Everything you're experiencing, I've experienced too."
"Don't get too deeply involved, or else breaking up will be unbearable."
Hojo Shione had never given up on Shiratori Seiya. That much was now blindingly, devastatingly obvious. She hadn't surrendered. She hadn't retreated. She had simply changed tactics.
The realization settled into Takahashi Mio's chest like a cold stone.
Compared to Hasegawa Saori—who was practically living in a coffin, metaphorically speaking, with her crumbling shack and her leaky ceiling and her complete, helpless dependence on Shiratori Seiya's care—Hojo Shione's situation was the polar opposite.
Independent. Wealthy. Famous. Adored by thousands. A woman who, on paper, needed no one. A woman who could—should—be perfectly fine on her own.
And yet. And yet.
When she'd accompanied Shiratori Seiya to help Hasegawa Saori move out of that waterlogged hovel, something had nagged at the back of her mind.
A sense of wrongness. A puzzle piece that didn't quite fit.
How had Hojo Shione, with her sharp, calculating intelligence, failed to understand the basic, obvious truth: that the weaker Saori seemed, the more Shiratori Seiya would feel compelled to protect her? That every display of helplessness was another chain binding him tighter to her side?
Hojo Shione wasn't stupid. Far from it. So what was her angle? What was her counter-strategy?
Now, sitting alone in a hospital corridor in the dead of night, Takahashi Mio finally understood.
She took the opposite approach. If weakness chains him, then... what does extremity do? What does self-destruction do? What happens when the strong one suddenly becomes the one who's breaking?
An extreme approach. An extreme, terrifying, almost unthinkable approach.
Even Takahashi Mio, who had thought herself prepared for anything, felt something inside her tremble at the sheer, audacious desperation of it. Hojo Shione had deliberately—deliberately—pushed herself past every safe limit. Overdosed on antidepressants specifically to trigger a physical collapse. Sabotaged her own voice. Sabotaged her own concert. Sabotaged her own career, all for one single, devastating message: Look at me. I need you. I can't survive without you either.
Takahashi Mio tried to imagine herself in Hojo Shione's position. Standing on that stage. Feeling her voice crack. Feeling her throat close. Kneeling before thousands of staring, horrified fans, knowing that the entire trajectory of her career was shattering in real-time. Could she, Takahashi Mio, do something like that? Could she sacrifice that much, risk that much, for a single person's attention?
Just the brief, fleeting mental image—the imagined sensation of standing on that stage as her own body betrayed her—sent an involuntary shudder rippling through her frame. Her hands clenched into fists on her lap. Her stomach churned.
A theory floated up from her memory. Something she'd read in one of her acting textbooks, back when she was still devouring every scrap of knowledge about human psychology and character motivation.
A person's capacity for determination isn't solely determined by their inherent personality. It's intimately connected to their lived experiences. Experiences function like a magnifying glass—the greater the emotional stimulus provided by those experiences, the higher the magnification factor. The more an individual has been shaped by extreme circumstances, the more driven they become to do things others would consider unthinkable.
So what did that say about Hojo Shione? What kind of pain—what kind of all-consuming, soul-deep, unbearable agony—had she experienced to develop the desperate, terrifying courage required to do this?
Takahashi Mio found she couldn't imagine it. The scale of suffering required was simply beyond her capacity to model.
Hojo Shione... is this what you meant when you said you would show me? Is this what you wanted me to see?
Do your eyes see nothing but Shiratori Seiya? Does the entire world vanish when he's in the frame?
A sudden wave of profound, bone-deep weariness washed over her. She stared up at the fluorescent light panel buzzing on the ceiling, its harsh white glow bleaching the color from everything it touched. Then, softly, helplessly, she laughed. A small, dry, humorless sound that echoed oddly in the empty corridor.
What am I even fighting against? A woman who's willing to destroy herself just to prove a point... how do you compete with that?
"Excuse me, Miss Hojo. I need to confirm something for your records." The doctor's voice cut through the heavy silence of the diagnosis room. "You had been taking antidepressant medication on a regular, long-term basis prior to this incident. Is that correct?"
The words landed like stones dropped into still water.
Shiratori Seiya's expression froze. Beside him, Hojo Suzune's small face went slack with shock. Both of them turned simultaneously, their gazes converging on the young woman seated in the examination chair.
Hearing the question, Hojo Shione didn't flinch. She didn't look up. She simply pressed the small hemostatic cotton patch against the inside of her wrist—the spot where blood had been drawn earlier—and lowered her eyes. After a long, suspended pause, she gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
"I see." The doctor made a notation. "And prior to tonight's performance, you self-administered a dose approximately three times your usual prescribed amount. Is that also correct?"
Another nod. Smaller. More fragile.
Fukada Fuyuna, standing rigidly to the side, swallowed hard. Her voice, when she managed to speak, trembled at the edges despite her best efforts to keep it steady.
"Doctor—please, I need to know. Is Shione's voice... are her vocal cords permanently damaged? Will she be able to sing again?"
"Ah, no, that's not—"
Noticing the barely suppressed agitation radiating from the manager, the doctor turned toward her directly, shaking his head with a calm, reassuring expression.
"Her loss of voice isn't attributable to any physical trauma or organic condition affecting her vocal cords or throat. The cause appears to be primarily psychological. The clinical term we use for this is 'hysterical aphonia'—a psychogenic voice disorder triggered by extreme stress and emotional overload."
The unfamiliar term hung in the air. Hojo Suzune's brow furrowed deeply, her small face scrunching with confusion and alarm.
"Hysterical... aphonia?" She stumbled over the foreign syllables. "What does that actually mean? In normal words?"
"Mm. To explain it in more concrete terms..." The doctor folded his hands on his desk, adopting the patient, pedagogical tone of someone accustomed to translating medical jargon for frightened families.
"Miss Hojo has been on a long-term regimen of antidepressant medication. Tonight, the combination of immense psychological pressure—the weight of the performance, the expectations, the emotional significance of the event—coupled with the sudden, extreme chemical imbalance caused by tripling her dosage, triggered an acute stress response.
This response manifested as abnormal muscular control over her vocal cords.
Essentially, the part of her brain responsible for coordinating speech and song... temporarily shut down as a protective mechanism."
Hearing this explanation, the tightly-wound tension in Fukada Fuyuna's shoulders visibly eased. The furrow between her brows relaxed. A spark of cautious hope flickered in her eyes, and she drew a breath that sounded almost like the first real breath she'd taken in hours.
"So—so Miss Hojo will still be able to sing in the future? Her voice will come back? This isn't permanent?"
Shiratori Seiya, who had been listening in silence, turned his head and gave Fukada Fuyuna a long, penetrating look. The question she'd asked—the way she'd phrased it—told him everything about where her priorities lay. The voice. The career. The asset.
But the doctor hesitated. It was a small hesitation, barely perceptible, but it was there. When he spoke again, his tone was significantly more cautious.
"If we consider only her physiological function—her vocal cords, her respiratory system, the physical mechanisms of sound production—then theoretically, yes. She retains the physical capacity to sing."
A pause. The doctor removed his glasses and polished them absently on the edge of his coat.
"However. Whether she can actually continue her singing career—whether she can return to the stage and perform at the level she previously achieved—that will depend entirely on her recovery trajectory. Specifically, her psychological recovery.
If the underlying mental health issues remain unresolved... if she cannot find a way to alleviate the intense psychological stress that triggered this episode... then whether she can ever sing as she did before..." He spread his hands slightly, a gesture of professional humility. "I'm afraid that's not something I can give you a definitive answer on at this stage."
The hopeful light in Fukada Fuyuna's eyes guttered and died. The smile that had been tentatively forming on her lips froze, then crumbled.
Shiratori Seiya stepped forward, positioning himself between the stunned manager and the doctor. His voice was calm. Even. Deliberately practical.
"What specific precautions should she observe in the immediate future? And what's the optimal course of treatment to support her recovery—both physical and mental?"
The doctor nodded, clearly more comfortable with concrete, actionable questions.
"Based on her current condition, I recommend a period of complete vocal rest and psychological quiet—three to five days at minimum. No singing. No straining her voice. Minimal stress of any kind."
He began writing on a prescription pad as he spoke. "I can prescribe a short-term course of anti-anxiety medication to help stabilize her mood and reduce the immediate psychological pressure. As long as she takes it consistently and on schedule, and isn't subjected to additional stressors during this vulnerable period, it should provide some relief from the acute symptoms."
He tore off the prescription and handed it across the desk.
"However. I strongly recommend regular psychological counseling moving forward. Medication can manage symptoms, but the underlying issues—the long-term depression, the anxiety, whatever drove her to triple her dosage in the first place—those require professional therapeutic intervention. This is not something she should attempt to navigate alone."
After leaving the diagnosis room and settling Hojo Shione into a quiet, dimly lit recovery room at the end of the corridor, the small group reconvened in the hallway. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that particular shade of sterile white that seemed to exist only in hospitals after midnight.
Fukada Fuyuna was already pulling out her phone before the door had fully clicked shut. Her fingers, still trembling slightly from the accumulated stress of the evening, navigated to her contacts with practiced speed.
"Yasukawa-senpai... yes, we've finished with the doctor."
Her voice was pitched low, mindful of the sleeping patients in nearby rooms, but the tension in every syllable was unmistakable.
"It's not as serious as we initially feared. The doctor said it was primarily due to Shione's excessive psychological stress over the past few months... the pressure had been building, and tonight it simply reached a breaking point."
A pause.
Fukada's free hand rose to massage her temple.
"Mm. Mm-hmm. I'm truly sorry for all the chaos. You've worked so hard tonight—everyone has. I've already been in contact with the public relations team, they're drafting a statement for release tomorrow morning."
Another pause. The voice on the other end spoke at length. Fukada nodded along, her expression weary but focused.
"Okay. Yes, I understand. I'll take Shione back to the hotel shortly and make sure she gets proper rest. The doctor recommended complete vocal rest and minimal stress for at least three to five—"
She stopped cold. Her entire body went rigid, as if she'd been struck by an invisible force. Her brows, which had only just begun to relax, furrowed so deeply they seemed in danger of carving permanent lines into her forehead.
"Ah? What?!"
Whatever words were coming through the speaker, they drained the remaining color from Fukada's face. Her expression crumpled—not dramatically, but in the quiet, bone-deep way of someone receiving news they had desperately hoped never to hear. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
"How can this be... No, I understand the liability concerns, but surely there's room for..." She stopped. Listened. The fight visibly drained from her shoulders. "...Then that's the only way, isn't it? Yes. Yes, I'll inform the relevant parties."
A final pause. Her voice dropped to something barely above a whisper.
"Yes, A-Sensei is right here beside me. I'll tell him now."
She ended the call and stood motionless for a moment, staring at the dark screen of her phone as if it might somehow offer a different outcome. Then, with the mechanical efficiency of someone running on pure professional autopilot, her thumbs began dancing across the screen—messages firing off to publicists, to venue coordinators, to the record label representatives who were surely panicking in their own corners of the city.
Two minutes later, she finally looked up. Her eyes, when they met Shiratori Seiya's, were rimmed with exhaustion and something that looked painfully like defeat.
"A-Sensei... Shione won't be able to return to the hotel tonight. The reporters have already staked out the entrance—it's completely blockaded. And there are almost certainly more journalists gathering downstairs at the hospital entrance as we speak." She gestured vaguely toward the window, toward the invisible swarm of cameras and microphones waiting below. "We'll need to find alternative arrangements for her."
A heavy sigh escaped her lips. She glanced between Shiratori Seiya and the silent, pale-faced Hojo Suzune, her expression apologetic to the point of guilt.
"I still need to return to the company headquarters later tonight to handle the remaining fallout—the insurance claims, the contractual obligations, the tour cancellation logistics. So... I'm afraid I'll have to trouble you both to look after Shione for the time being. I'm truly, deeply sorry for imposing."
She paused, then seemed to remember something. Her eyes flickered with a different kind of urgency.
"Oh—A-Sensei, I know this is asking a great deal, but if you could possibly post a brief message of support for Shione on your social media... something acknowledging her condition and wishing her well... it would mean a tremendous amount for the public narrative. The fans are terrified. The media smells blood. A word from you could help stabilize things."
Shiratori Seiya gave a short, silent nod.
Fukada Fuyuna's eyes glistened with genuine gratitude. She pressed her palms together and bowed—a deep, respectful inclination that communicated more than words could—and then straightened, already turning toward the elevator.
"Wait."
Shiratori Seiya's hand rose, stopping her mid-step. His expression had shifted from its previous, carefully-maintained neutrality into something far more serious. His dark eyes were sharp. Focused. The look of someone who had spotted a trap before the trap had even finished closing.
"Fukada-san. One question before you go." His voice was low. Deliberate. "Shione's concert tour contract—does it contain a clause regarding penalty compensation for performance failures that fall outside the scope of force majeure?"
Fukada Fuyuna blinked, visibly caught off guard by the question. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. Her expression flickered through confusion, uncertainty, and a dawning, creeping dread.
"I... I don't believe so. I would need to review the specific language, but I don't recall—"
"'I don't believe so' isn't good enough."
Shiratori Seiya's voice cut through her hedging with a sharpness that made everyone in the corridor straighten slightly. But he wasn't yelling. He wasn't even raising his voice. The intensity came from somewhere deeper—a controlled, banked fire rather than an uncontrolled explosion. He took a breath. Made himself speak calmly.
"After you finish your immediate crisis management duties tonight, go back and read through that contract. Every page. Every clause. Every footnote. And if it contains the kind of penalty provision I just mentioned—if there's any language that could be used to pin financial liability on Shione for what happened tonight—contact a lawyer immediately. Tonight. Not tomorrow morning. Tonight. Then negotiate with the company to see if the damages can be mitigated or reduced. Your goal is to get the compensation figure down to the absolute minimum possible. Understood?"
The words landed with the weight of a battle strategy being delivered to a soldier on the front lines. Fukada Fuyuna, who had been drowning in the chaos of the past few hours, felt something click into place in her mind.
Clarity. Direction. A path forward through the fog. She drew a deep, steadying breath and nodded with renewed resolve.
"Yes. I understand. I'll handle it immediately."
She turned to leave again, but Shiratori Seiya's voice stopped her once more. This time, his tone was different. Quieter. More careful.
"Oh. One more thing."
Fukada turned back. Shiratori Seiya's expression had shifted again—the sharp, tactical focus softening into something more complicated. Something that looked almost like dread.
"When did Shione start taking those medications? The antidepressants. How long has this been going on?"
The question hung in the air. Fukada Fuyuna's entire demeanor changed. Her professional mask—the one she'd been clinging to with white-knuckled determination—cracked, just slightly, at the edges. Her eyes grew distant. Pained. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"She... it seems she began taking them shortly after you left, A-Sensei. After the separation. The company noticed her condition deteriorating, her energy levels dropping, her weight fluctuating. Our physician recommended the prescription. She's been on them ever since."
"..."
Shiratori Seiya closed his eyes. His hand rose to massage his temples in slow, methodical circles. Even though he'd suspected—even though some quiet, guilty part of him had already assembled the timeline and reached the obvious conclusion—hearing it spoken aloud, confirmed, made undeniable... it landed differently.
A bitter, familiar ache bloomed in his chest and radiated outward.
Hojo Suzune watched him from the side, her small face pinched with worry. She bit her lip, the urge to reach out, to say something comforting, to bridge the invisible distance between them, rising and falling in her throat. But before she could find the words, another voice cut through the heavy silence.
Takahashi Mio had been standing apart from the group this entire time—present but removed, leaning against the corridor wall with her arms crossed and her expression unreadable. She had observed everything. The phone calls. The strategizing. The revelation about the medication. The complicated emotions playing across Shiratori Seiya's face. She had absorbed it all in silence.
Now, she straightened from the wall. Her voice was calm. Practical. Almost unnervingly composed.
"Fukada-san. Don't you still have urgent matters to attend to? The company is waiting."
Fukada Fuyuna jolted slightly, as if suddenly remembering the avalanche of responsibilities that were still crashing down around her shoulders.
"Yes—yes, of course. I'll leave Shione in your care, then. I'm truly, deeply sorry for the imposition. Thank you. Thank you all."
She bowed once more—deeper this time, the kind of bow reserved for genuine penitence and desperate gratitude—and then hurried down the corridor, her heels clicking a rapid, fading rhythm against the linoleum until they disappeared entirely.