The face reflected in the vanity mirror was one that millions of people across Japan would recognize.
Her light chestnut hair spilled over her shoulders, the ends a bit frayed from a month of neglect in the hospital.
A white bandage was wrapped around her forehead, stretching from her left temple to above her right ear, like a crooked headband tied around her skull.
The vanity was cluttered with all sorts of bottles and jars she couldn’t name—foundation, primer, eyebrow pencil, blush palette…
The person sitting in front of the mirror slowly raised both hands, using her index and middle fingers to prop up the corners of her mouth, pushing them upward experimentally.
The girl in the mirror had her mouth corners forced into a distinct curve as she tried to replicate that “just smile and everything will be fine” expression from a famous anime.
But soon she let go, and the corners of her mouth immediately drooped, because she felt something was missing from that smile.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and started searching her memory for something.
Finally, she recalled a scene she’d watched dozens of times: a girl stood on the stage of a LiveHouse, a spotlight shining down on her, making her glow like a little sun.
Mic in hand, she shouted in a voice so sweet it could stretch like taffy—
“Everyone—! Today, come with Haruka and see the best scenery!”
The memory ended.
She opened her eyes.
This time, without using her hands, she tried to naturally lift the corners of her mouth.
At the same time, she made her eyes crinkle too, eyebrows slightly raised, all the muscles of her face contracting in one direction—the curve of her lips, the angle of her crescent-shaped eyes, even the slight tilt of her head—all were exact replicas.
The muscles of this body seemed to have hit a switch, automatically reproducing a set of motions she had never learned but that were engraved in its bones.
She stared at the smile in the mirror for a long time, as if confirming something.
Then, slowly, she lowered her hands.
“…Something’s missing.”
She murmured to herself.
The voice that came from her throat was clear, with a slightly husky quality at the end, sounding a bit sweet.
The curve was right, the angle was right, the way the muscles moved was right.
If she took a photo of that smile and posted it online, even the most hardcore fans probably wouldn’t spot a flaw.
But there was an indescribable sense of dissonance.
If forced to describe it—this smile was empty, soulless.
It was like a high-end figure: exquisitely crafted, perfectly sculpted, precisely painted, even the highlights in the pupils faithfully reproduced.
But in the end, it was made of plastic—it wouldn’t warm up, wouldn’t breathe, its pose frozen in that one moment forever, never brightening under the cheers of thousands.
The reason her smile could make people feel “the whole world brightened a little” was never about how many teeth she showed or how many degrees her lips curved upward.
It was because the person smiling was named Hoshino Haruka—not a twenty-nine-year-old shut-in puppeteering a sixteen-year-old girl’s face.
Hoshino Haruka sighed, leaned back in the chair, and stared at the ceiling in a weary pose that didn’t match that face at all.
“Playing an idol and being an idol are really two completely different things, huh.”
Her name was Hoshino Haruka.
Or rather, from a month ago, she had no choice but to be called Hoshino Haruka.
Originally, her name was Matsumoto Hidetoshi, a twenty-nine-year-old unemployed otaku who lived off rental income as a landlord.
His hobbies were following anime series, playing games, buying figures, and attending live shows.
His specialty was binge-watching anime or playing games for over a dozen hours straight without eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or sleeping.
She reached for her phone on the vanity and casually pressed the power button.
The moment the screen lit up, Face ID captured her face and unlocked with a click.
At first, when she got the phone, she had worried about how to unlock it—after all, fruit-brand phones were famous for strict password protection.
But she never expected that the original owner had enabled facial recognition.
What surprised her even more was that the original Hoshino Haruka had written down all the important things—phone password, bank card PINs, payment passwords, everything—in the phone’s memo app.
Yep, right there in the memo app.
“If you can’t unlock the phone, how are you going to open the memo to check the passwords?”
If Hoshino Haruka were still alive, she wanted to call her out to her face.
But somehow, she felt that Hoshino Haruka would probably answer, “Hehe, it’s fine, there’s facial recognition anyway. If I forget, I forget.”
She aimlessly scrolled through her phone screen.
The timeline on X (formerly Twitter), unread messages on LINE (mostly work-related, already handled by the agent), and a news app.
She tapped on the news app and searched her name in the search bar: Hoshino Haruka.
The results brought up a whole screen of various news articles.
Among them, the latest headline from three days ago read:
「Hoshino Haruka discharged from hospital. Agency announces adjustments for activity resumption.」
(Hoshino Haruka discharged. The agency announced adjustments for resuming activities.)
She continued scrolling and found a news article from a week ago:
「Hoshino Haruka’s condition ‘stable’ says Stella Pro insider.」
(Hoshino Haruka’s condition is “stable,” a Stella Pro insider revealed.)
Further down were scattered articles from half a month ago, twenty days ago, and a month ago:
「Popular idol Hoshino Haruka seriously injured in traffic accident, suspends entertainment activities temporarily.」
(Popular idol Hoshino Haruka seriously injured in traffic accident, suspends performance activities.)
「Runaway large truck at Shibuya Ward intersection kills three, one identified at scene.」
(Large truck runs out of control at Shibuya Ward intersection, 3 dead, one identified at the scene.)
She stared at the words “three dead” for a long time.
That was what the news report that night had written.
Maybe the news report wasn’t wrong—that night, the truck really had completed a “triple kill.”
That report was based on physical condition.
But if you counted by “souls,” only two people actually died that night: the truck driver and Hoshino Haruka.
Fate is such a strange thing—or rather, the hand of “providence.”
One soul died but its body remained; one body died but its soul remained.
They just complemented each other like that, were stuffed into the same shell, stitched together, and inexplicably came back to life.
“…”
If this were a novel, she thought, the author must be crazy.
But then she recalled her life resume as Matsumoto Hidetoshi, and it really did seem like something out of a story: his parents had passed away, he had a car and a house, and he had achieved financial freedom at a young age by being a landlord.
He had no job and no lover, living a secluded life free from worldly concerns.
With his template, you could open ten books on any light novel website and find six or seven with the exact same setup—just missing a “trigger” to start an adventure.
And that “trigger” came too—luck was on his side, a good start.
He was hit by a transmigration company’s fortune envoy and sent to another world.
Then a goddess stood in a pure white space and said to him, “Welcome to the other world, Hero.”
In the fraction of a second when Matsumoto Hidetoshi was sent flying, the last thought that flashed through his mind wasn’t “I’m going to die,” “I still have anime to finish,” “Games to clear,” “My browser privacy history isn’t deleted,” “There are videos on my hard drive to watch”—no, it was—
“Holy crap! I’m getting hit by fate too! Am I going to reincarnate? Has this kind of thing finally happened to me?! I knew I had the protagonist template.”
But in a way, he really did reincarnate—not as some trashy isekai hero, but as an idol.
Moreover, an idol he had been a solo fan of for four years—Hoshino Haruka.
“Do I have to change too?”
“Yes.”
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