Chapter 14: Encounter
The fluorescent buzz of Yuna’s apartment was a profound relief after the surgical brightness of the studio. Ren stood in the doorway, still in the mint-green practice dress, feeling like a deflated balloon. The sequined stars on the wallpaper seemed to mock him.
“I’ve got a meeting with the designers for the Raito costumes,” Yuna announced, not even looking back as she swapped her leather ankle boots for a pair of vicious-looking crystal heels. “Don’t just stand there melting. The laundry’s piled up. Your turn.”
He managed a grunt. The moment the door clicked shut behind her, the last vestige of ‘Rena’ sloughed off him. He shuffled to his room, the dress suddenly an intolerable prison. He peeled it off, letting it pool on the floor like a shed skin, and collapsed face-first onto his bed in just his boxers. The sheets smelled faintly of his own, familiar scent—gaming chair vinyl and cheap body spray—a tiny bastion of normalcy. He was out before his head fully settled into the pillow.
A buzzing shock jarred him awake hours later. His phone was skittering across the nightstand. He fumbled for it, the screen burning his retinas in the dark room.
“Yo, Ren! Where you at, man? Server’s popping off. We’re running ranked. Get on!” It was Kaito, his usual gaming cohort. The sound of frantic button-mashing and victorious shouts filled the tinny speaker.
For a second, the old urge flared. The simple, pixelated logic of a battlefield. The clean satisfaction of a win. He opened his mouth, the trash-talk already forming on his tongue.
But his body betrayed him. Every muscle sang a dull, aching chorus from the day’s dance drills. His throat, though not actually sore, felt alien, reshaped by hours of someone else’s melodies.
“Nah,” he muttered, his voice rough with sleep. “Can’t. Wiped.”
“Seriously? Dude, you’ve been ghosting us for weeks. You sick or something?”
“Or something,” Ren said, and ended the call before the questions could dig deeper. He dropped the phone onto his chest, staring at the glowing nebula of a LED panel on the ceiling. The silence after the call felt heavier.
His stomach growled, a loud, guttural protest. The emptiness was a physical void. He hauled himself upright, the room tilting slightly.
The fridge, when he yanked it open, offered a stark, fluorescent panorama of despair. A single, withered green onion. A half-empty bottle of glittery nail polish remover Yuna had stored there for some deranged reason. Three cans of sugar-free energy drink. Condiments. No actual food.
He stared. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone grocery shopping. Yuna usually handled it, or they ordered in. A creeping, pathetic realization settled over him: he had no idea how to cook anything more complex than instant ramen, and the cupboards were barren of even that.
The city outside Yuna’s window was a tapestry of neon and shadow, deep into the evening. He pulled on a pair of gray sweats and a loose black hoodie, stuffing his long hair up under a beanie. In the dim elevator light, his reflection was just a tired, angular face. No Rena. Just Ren. It was a small relief.
The night market three blocks over was a different world. Strings of bare bulbs illuminated stalls overflowing with vibrant produce, the air thick with the sizzle of takoyaki and the sweet, yeasty scent of freshly steamed buns. It was loud, real, and gloriously un-curated. For the first time all day, his shoulders unhitched a little from his ears.
He moved on autopilot, grabbing a plastic basket. Eggs. Milk. A pack of pre-sliced pork. A decidedly un-idol-like bounty of instant noodles and potato chips. He was pondering the existential dilemma of curry roux blocks when a familiar, chirping voice sliced through the market din.
“—and then Suki-chan said the cucumber looked like a space submarine! So I bought it, obviously!”
Ren froze, a box of strawberry pocky halfway to his basket. He knew that cadence. That unhinged, cheerful flow.
He turned, slow as a glacier.
There, at the next stall over, was Mina Tamura. But not the Mina of the stage. This Mina wore an oversized pastel pink sweatshirt with a cartoon cat on it, her blonde twin tails poking out from under a striped beanie. She was holding up a decidedly phallic cucumber to a baffled old vendor, her face alight with pure, unadulterated joy.
She hadn’t seen him. She was paying, juggling a tote bag that already seemed full of random vegetables and what looked like a giant plush octopus. She hummed a snippet of their new song, completely off-key.
Ren’s mind blanked. Every instinct screamed to back away, to melt into the crowd. This was his space. His minute of freedom. A collision here, in his greasy hoodie with his basket of sad groceries, was unthinkable.
He took a sharp step back, right into a stacked pyramid of citrus fruit.
It happened in horrific slow motion. A wobble. A teeter. A decisive lurch.
Oranges and lemons erupted like fruity shrapnel, rolling and bouncing across the wet pavement with a sound like frantic drumming.
Every head in the vicinity swiveled. The vendor let out a cry. And Mina, startled by the commotion, turned directly toward the source of the catastrophe.
Her eyes, wide and curious, scanned the scene: the disgruntled stall owner, the scattering fruit, and then finally, the culprit frozen in the act of attempted flight.
They locked onto Ren’s face.
Her head tilted. The cheerful confusion in her eyes shifted, solidified into a spark of recognition. It wasn’t the bright, professional recognition of a colleague. It was something more puzzled, more personal. She was looking at him—the person under the hat, the guy in the hoodie—and her brain was trying desperately to place him.
Her gaze traveled from his hidden hair, down to his sharp, makeup-free features, and finally to his emerald eyes, now wide with deer-in-headlights panic.
Mina’s smile didn’t fade. It just… changed. It softened from market-day joy to a curious, knowing little quirk.
“Rena-chan…?” she said, the honorific falling awkwardly into the space between them. It wasn’t a full accusation. It was a question, laden with a dawning, earth-shattering understanding.