Chapter 23: The Fuse

The minibus crawled forward in the evening rush hour traffic.

Ritsu leaned back in the passenger seat, his phone screen lit, but his gaze wasn’t actually focused on any of the text on it.

He was thinking.

This was probably the umpteenth time today he’d spaced out and gotten lost in thought.

It wasn’t work-related—because for him, work didn’t require “thinking.”

It was an automated process, like breathing, something that ran without conscious involvement.

The schedule had been sent out, the subsequent notices arranged, the magazine’s proofing flow confirmed, the dance instructor’s time slot set—all of it churned through his head the same way a program runs in the background on a computer.

What he was thinking about was something else.

Outside the window, Tokyo’s lights flickered on in the twilight.

Behind each light was someone’s life—people cooking, working overtime, arguing, gaming, scrolling on their phones, eating dinner with family… and others, like him, just living.

His hand unconsciously moved to the inner pocket of his jacket.

Inside was a phone—Matsumoto Hidetoshi’s phone.

He carried it with him every day.

He pulled it out, pressed and held the power button, and his thoughts drifted far, far away.

—

On that absurd night of the car accident, Ritsu sat on the cold hospital bench in the hallway, scrolling through the accident report shared by the police.

His eyes swept across the screen, then locked onto the name of the second victim:

[Matsumoto Hidetoshi: Male, 29, resident of Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. Unemployed. Emergency contact: Mizutagawa Ritsu.]

At that moment, Ritsu’s brain experienced a true, physical “crash.”

The edges of his vision instantly drained of color, turning into a dead, pure black.

His body wobbled uncontrollably; if President Kirishima hadn’t quickly grabbed his shoulder, he probably would have toppled headfirst onto the cold hospital tiles.

But he didn’t actually fall.

Because in that dark, near-breaking moment, the harsh red light above the operating room door at the end of the hallway—the “Surgery in Progress” sign—pierced his retina like a needle.

Haruka was still in there.

Death hadn’t given its final verdict yet.

‘I can’t fall. At least, not now. Absolutely not.’

So Mizutagawa Ritsu did something incredibly cruel.

He took about a minute or so to shove the bloody truth of “Matsumoto Hidetoshi is dead,” along with all the weight of despair it carried, deep into the bottommost layer of his consciousness.

To put it in rough terms, it was like violently stuffing a bomb whose countdown had already started into a thick steel safe, locking it with three deadbolts.

Then he dragged a table over the safe, piled it high with dense work documents, and pretended the safe didn’t exist.

He knew full well this approach was extremely unhealthy.

He also knew better than anyone that, sooner or later, that bomb would blow him to pieces.

But “sooner or later” absolutely could not be “now.”

Because right now, Haruka was still on the operating table, and he still had things he had to do.

Later, the surgery succeeded.

Haruka was out of danger.

The moment he heard the attending physician announce that news, the last shred of strength drained from Ritsu’s knees.

He sank down against the wall, and the mountain on his shoulders finally collapsed.

If Haruka had died that night too—

To lose both his best friend and his most important partner in a single day.

Ritsu didn’t know what he would have become.

He probably would have still stood up, brushed the dust off his suit, and continued handling the mountain of aftermath.

Because he wasn’t that fragile.

He’d had a strong backbone since childhood.

His knees could go weak, but his steps could never stop.

But if it had come to that, the only reason he would have had to keep living was a mindless, zombie-like “inertia.”

Not living “for something,” but simply living because he “couldn’t die immediately.”

Thankfully, Haruka survived.

So she remained the last anchor he had in this world.

Over the next twenty-plus days, he clung to that anchor, supporting himself like a tireless machine—handling Haruka’s medical affairs during the day, and dealing with Hidetoshi’s funeral arrangements late at night.

The broken rib in his chest sent a piercing, stabbing pain with every breath, every movement.

But that pain served as a perfect stimulant—it constantly reminded him: ‘You’re still alive.’

—

When the minibus reached the underground parking lot of Stras Agency, the night had fully settled in.

Most of the agency’s lights were off.

The daytime administrative staff had already left, leaving only two or three grunts from the production department still burning the midnight oil.

When they saw Ritsu walk in, they habitually gave a slight nod.

Ritsu replied with a brief “Thanks for your hard work” and headed straight for his desk.

His desk was in the most inconspicuous corner of the office.

It wasn’t huge, piled high with documents, the sorting rack next to the monitor stuffed full.

The surface looked a bit messy, but there was order in the chaos—the kind of desk where ‘others would find it a headache, but I could find anything with my eyes closed.’

He pulled out his chair and sat down, but didn’t immediately turn on the computer.

Instead, he reached into his inner jacket pocket, took out that phone, and gently placed it on the desk.

It was a mid-range smartphone that had been used for two or three years.

The screen had originally had a vicious crack from the car crash, but Ritsu had paid out of pocket a couple days ago to get it replaced with an original screen, and had even carefully applied a new tempered glass film.

Now it looked as good as new.

Ritsu pressed the power button.

The screen lit up.

The lock screen wallpaper was a beautiful anime image—a silver-haired girl with a black hairpin in her hair, wearing a gray-green dress.

The background was an empty rooftop, a deep night sky, and a brilliant sea of stars.

She was smiling at the camera.

Ritsu wasn’t well-versed in mobile games; he vaguely remembered this character seemed to be from some extremely popular turn-based game, a female character who piloted a mecha.

Something like Hotaru.

This phone didn’t have any lock screen password; a simple swipe unlocked it.

Ritsu had once complained to Hidetoshi about that.

At the time, the guy, chugging beer at an izakaya, had replied:

It’s not like I have top-secret work emails worth billions, or some player chat history I need to hide.

It’s just my anime watchlist, game saves, and some borderline NSFW art I retweet on my Black X alt.

Why bother with a password?

“But seriously—if you ever attend my funeral, make sure you delete my entire browser history first, and delete my Black X account. Otherwise, I’ll be so embarrassed I’ll wake up from the dead, and you’ll be responsible.”

“…”

These digital fragments, unique to him, were so open when Hidetoshi was alive that he didn’t need to hide them from anyone.

But after death—

A person’s phone is a microcosm of their entire life.

Ritsu stared at the lit screen.

The silver-haired girl on the lock screen had a calm expression, a gentle smile.

His finger paused at the edge of the screen.

A single swipe was all it took.

A single swipe, and he could see Hidetoshi’s social media, chat logs, browsing history, photo album, memos—the entire digital life of Hidetoshi’s last few years.

Then he pressed the power button.

The screen went dark.

He put the phone back on the desk, level with his own gaze.

“…”

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, the one he almost never used, shut off Hidetoshi’s phone, and placed it inside.

‘This is his privacy. People don’t lose their right to privacy just because they die.’

When Matsumoto Hidetoshi was alive, they had an unspoken rule between them—no going through each other’s phones.

That rule didn’t cease to exist just because Hidetoshi had died.

No matter what was in that phone—things Hidetoshi might not have gotten a chance to tell him while alive—if he hadn’t said it, then it wasn’t something Ritsu was meant to know.

Then he shook off those tangled emotions and opened his laptop to start wrapping up today’s work.

The email interface popped up, showing six unread messages.

All of them were work-related—schedule confirmations, contract drafts, and the like.

He clicked on the latest one, from Editor Sato.

The attachment contained the written draft of the magazine interview from this afternoon, needing the agency’s preliminary confirmation on the wording.

Ritsu moved his mouse and quickly scanned the draft text.

But when his eyes slid to the third paragraph, his scrolling finger suddenly froze.

It was the part from the interview this afternoon—the segment where Haruka had answered the question about “watching anime”—

“That really popular one lately, um… what was it called, The Reversed Him and Her or Something?”

Reading this, Ritsu paused.

He guessed Haruka probably meant The Oppo site You and Me (You and I who are completely opposite), because he’d also watched that anime after someone had persistently recommended it, and the quality was decent.

Whether Haruka had deliberately messed up the name to build her persona, or actually misremembered, she’d said The Reversed Him and Her.

But the slip-up wasn’t the point.

Haruka sometimes deliberately played up a “dumb girl” persona, even though she could be genuinely airheaded at times.

The point was—wasn’t the name of that anime a little too coincidental…?

A wild suspicion gradually took shape in the depths of his mind.

Ritsu pulled out his own phone, opened LINE, and scrolled to the grayed-out chat titled “Hidetoshi”—the chat that would never light up again.

He flipped to the last unread message, sent three days before the accident.

This idea was absurd.

Absurd enough that he thought he might be going crazy.

But he wanted to confirm it.