The search results popped up dozens of entries.
There were magazine interviews in text format, TV station interviews in video format, short variety show interviews, and even a few short video exclusives from online media outlets.
She clicked on one of the variety show interview clips.
In the video, Hoshino Haruka and several other entertainers were seated side by side on a white sofa.
She wore a light blue dress, and her hair was styled into a loose side braid.
The lighting was soft, and the set was a pre-built stage designed to look like an indoor living room.
She was answering the interviewer’s question.
“What’s been making you happy lately?”
“Happy things, huh?”
The Haruka in the video tilted her head slightly, thought for a moment, then clapped her hands together with a sharp smack.
“Ooh, ooh! I’ve got one! A couple days ago during recording, I finally hit that high note I’d been stuck on! My teacher said it’s still not stable enough, but I felt… hehe, I’m getting pretty close!”
“Are you working toward any goals right now?”
“Goals? Of course I am!”
Haruka puffed out her chest and raised her index finger.
“Budokan! Someday, I’m going to stand on the Budokan stage!”
“Just Budokan? Have you ever thought about aiming higher, like the Dome?”
“Of course I have! But I need to achieve one small goal first.”
Haruka pressed pause.
There was an indescribable ache in her chest.
She stared at the frozen frame on the screen.
Haruka’s smiling face shone bright, like a little sun.
“Budokan, huh…”
Then she rewound and watched it again from the beginning.
This time, she wasn’t watching the content.
She was studying the method.
The rhythm of Hoshino Haruka’s answers went like this: first, a brief pause, creating the impression of ‘I’m seriously thinking about this.’
Then, she’d start with an exclamation or an action, before diving into her answer. Not too long, not too short.
Each answer was kept between three and five sentences.
At the same time, while Haruka answered, her gaze would shift naturally between the interviewer and the camera.
When she looked at the interviewer, it felt like she was chatting with a friend.
When she looked at the camera, it felt like she was speaking directly to every single person watching on the other side.
The timing of her switches was perfect—not forced, not stiff.
As for body language, tilting her head was her signature move.
Her sitting posture was relaxed but not sloppy.
Her hand gestures mostly involved her index finger a bit more than other things.
Her wording was colloquial, friendly, with a slightly childish tone at the end of her sentences, but not too immature.
Occasionally, she’d slip out an emotionally mature expression that belied her age.
This contrast between “childishness” and “maturity” was the very core of her charm.
Yoshino found three or four more interview videos from different periods and different media outlets and watched them over and over again.
She also noticed an interesting pattern: Hoshino Haruka’s interview style had changed over time.
When she was thirteen or fourteen, she was noticeably more nervous, her answers were shorter, and her body language was stiffer.
After she turned fifteen, she gradually relaxed and started to show her “variety show sense,” specifically by picking up on cues, making fun of herself, and actively creating laugh points.
In her most recent interviews, she could already switch seamlessly between three modes: “cute,” “serious,” and “funny.”
‘Huh. It feels like this research method of mine is exactly the same as what a certain someone named Kurokawa does. Both of us are studying how to play a woman whose surname is Hoshino.’
After finishing the interview footage, she opened her browser and searched for her own name—”Hoshino Haruka.”
The first page that showed up was news articles, mostly recent ones related to her own car accident from last month.
The headlines were all the same: “Hoshino Haruka Discharged,” “Hoshino Haruka’s Comeback Imminent.”
She scrolled down and found the Wikipedia page.
She clicked on it and skimmed through it.
Things like her date of birth, place of origin, talent agency, debut history, single discography, and filmography—she already knew most of it.
But there were some details she hadn’t known even as a fan.
For example, the specific broadcast date and ratings of that family drama Haruka starred in when she was little.
Or the exact release date of her first single.
These “knowledge blind spots” probably wouldn’t come up in everyday conversation, but if they were mentioned during an interview…
She silently memorized a few key dates.
She didn’t look at Haruka’s Black X.
She’d basically already scrolled through the entire thing.
Instead, she chose to open YouTube.
The search results flooded in with tons of Haruka-related videos.
MVs, live clips, variety show cuts, TV appearance recordings.
There were also some fan-made compilations and MADs.
As she scrolled, she found a few things that would be most useful for her: full-length recordings of TV interviews Haruka had done over the past few years.
In her opinion, these recordings were far more valuable than magazine or variety show interviews.
Magazine interviews were text-based, and variety show interviews were mostly about performance.
But TV interviews were shot “in one take.”
Every micro-expression, every pause, every unconscious little gesture—there was nowhere to hide from the camera.
She watched four or five TV interviews from different periods in a row.
After each one, she mentally ran a “debrief”: What did Haruka do right in that answer?
What could she have done better?
If she were answering the same question, what would she say? And after she said it, would Ritsu frown?
She felt like she was reading a walkthrough.
Back when she played games, she’d first watch how other people cleared a level, find the optimal solution, and then replicate it herself.
The only difference was that back then she was replicating game mechanics.
Now, she was replicating a person.
After finishing all the material, she did something that might have been a little crazy, but she felt it was absolutely necessary.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, picked up her phone, opened the front-facing camera, propped it up on the nightstand, and pressed record.
Then, she pretended she was being interviewed.
“Hoshino-san, regarding your return after this accident, could you tell us how you’re feeling right now?”
She came up with the question herself and answered it herself.
“Hmm—”
She tilted her head slightly, her eyes looking about thirty degrees to the right of the camera lens, pretending a reporter was sitting there.
“Honestly, when I was in the hospital, there were times I felt anxious. But—”
“Stop, stop, stop. That’s wrong.”
Yoshino interrupted herself.
“My voice was too flat just now. It was missing that Haruka-like up-and-down rhythm. When she speaks, the ends of her sentences go up a little, especially after transition words. The tone was just too flat…”
She cleared her throat and decided to try again with a different tone.
“Honestly, when I was in the hospital, there were times I felt anxious. But!”
Yoshino paused here, slightly raising the pitch on the word “but” to create suspense.
“I received so many messages and cheers from my fans! I saw every single one of them! So… hehe, I actually wasn’t lonely at all!”
She did it all in one go.
This time, she felt like it was fine.
Then she watched the video she’d just recorded.
“Hmm, that was better. But my expression was still a little stiff. The smile didn’t quite keep up.”
To use a poor analogy, the genuine Hoshino Haruka’s smile was like a spotlight that turned on instantly, with zero lag, and lit up the entire room.
But the fake smile she’d just made was like a light bulb controlled by a sliding dimmer switch.
There was a very obvious transition period from dim to “gradually bright.”
“Again.”
This time, instead of deliberately controlling her expression, she first recalled an image in her mind—Haruka on stage at a live show, standing under the follow spot, shouting that one MC line at the audience.
Then, she let that image drive her expression.
Immediately, the corners of Yoshino’s mouth naturally curved upward.
Her eyes crinkled.
The light on her face changed.
She stared at her reflection in the playback and froze for a second.
For that one moment, if you only looked at the picture and couldn’t hear the sound, there was almost no difference between her and the real Hoshino Haruka.
The arc of her smile, the degree of her eye crinkle, the slight angle of her head tilt—it was all correct.
‘Huh. This must be… this body’s talent?’
In that moment, Yoshino realized this was likely the muscle memory this body had honed in front of the camera for a decade.
Starting from when she was six years old, facing the camera.
Accumulated through countless photo shoots and recordings.
Something that had been carved into her bones.
Even if a different soul was driving it, it still remembered what to do.
In other words, she didn’t actually need to learn what “camera presence” was.
She just needed to find a way to let the body remember it on its own.
This realization brought her a great deal of comfort.
Riding the wave of momentum, she practiced a few more groups of different types of answers: happy, serious, sentimental, playful.
She recorded each group, watched it back, adjusted, and recorded again.
After about forty minutes of practice, she felt she had basically grasped the essentials of “speaking in front of a camera.”
At the very least, she was confident she could pass.
A perfect score? That was still a long way off.
If she put her recorded video side-by-side with Haruka’s old footage, the gap would be obvious.
But her goal for today wasn’t a perfect score.
It was to not get found out.
Just as she was about to continue practicing, her stomach let out an untimely growl.
She suddenly realized that Haruka’s completely empty refrigerator was probably because she almost never had time to cook or eat at home.
Even when she was resting at home, she’d barely scrape by on snacks from the fridge.
But when Yoshino had checked the fridge in the morning, there was nothing but nearly expired ice cream and already expired pudding.
What was she supposed to eat?
“Yeah, what am I going to eat?”