She pressed play on her own recording—the one she’d hidden from the forest, from the game, from the producers. It was Mr. Takeda’s voice, discussing “discardable assets” and “idol shelf lives” with a room full of silent investors.
And the cherry blossoms outside the Dome finally fell—not in tragedy, but in release.
For three years, she had been “Mochi-chan,” the eternally cheerful third-row member of the semi-forgotten idol group Starlight Reverie . Her life was a scripted loop: 5:00 AM vocal training, 7:00 AM contract-mandated protein shake, 10:00 AM handshake event where she memorized the names of 300 middle-aged men, and 11:00 PM a return to a six-tatami-mat apartment she wasn’t allowed to decorate because “fans preferred a sense of accessibility.”
The crowd—half fans, half former industry executives—sat in stunned silence.
“The agency says I have to bow in a public apology. For ‘betraying the trust of our oshi .’” Rin’s voice cracked. “But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“My real name is Hana Sato. I hate mochi. I hate the color pink. I have a brother who doesn’t recognize me because I’ve been on a diet for three years and my face changed.” She paused. “And Mr. Takeda… I know you recorded our sessions. I know where the hidden camera was in the ‘rest’ room. I have the SD card. I’ve had it for a year.”
“They leaked my ‘past’,” Rin whispered, showing a grainy photo from two years prior. In it, Rin was at a koshien baseball game, laughing, a half-eaten stick of takoyaki in one hand and a boy’s pinky finger linked with hers. No kiss. No hotel. Just joy.
She was led out of Aokigahara to a waiting black van. Inside was a lawyer, a journalist from Shūkan Bunshun , and a live feed to Mr. Takeda’s office. He was smiling his whiskey smile.
The first night, the yūrei came. Not ghosts of the dead, but ghosts of their former selves. For Hana, it was Mochi-chan, a holographic projection that skipped and smiled, performing a dance routine from a concert she’d collapsed from exhaustion at. The projection’s eyes bled pixelated tears. “Why don’t you love me anymore?” it chirped in her own voice.
When Hana arrived, she was handed a single ofuda —a Shinto purification tag—and a flip phone with one bar of signal. The rules were spoken once by a kagura dancer wearing a fox mask: “Survive three nights. The forest will test your spirit. Your only weapons are your training in wa —harmony—and the truth you’ve buried.”
The journalist’s pen never stopped moving.
Tonight, however, Hana was about to break every rule.
