And now, the positions were completely reversed.
She was no longer that waste who locked herself in a dark room and needed to be forcibly pulled out.
Now she was Hoshino Haruka, standing in front of the mirror in a brightly lit practice room, wearing her practice clothes, trying to shoulder another person’s life.
Haruka took a light breath, pushed down those heavy and distant memories, and looked back at Ritsu.
Ritsu’s face still showed no extra expression.
He frowned slightly, staring intently at his phone screen, his fingers tapping rapidly on it, his usual workaholic demeanor.
As if sensing Haruka’s prolonged gaze, Ritsu stopped typing.
He looked up and met Haruka’s eyes.
“What, done zoning out? Your thoughts flew off to queue at which crepe shop?”
He raised an eyebrow, his tone carrying its usual teasing.
“No way! What nonsense are you talking about?”
Haruka instinctively retorted, but she keenly noticed a difference.
When he said that line just now, the eyes behind his glasses, always carrying a scrutinizing and evaluating look, were not activating the strict filter of “manager looking at artist.”
Normally, if he caught her zoning out during a serious discussion, he would probably shoot a death glare with an icy look that said “Do you want to get scolded?”
But his current gaze was simply that of “one person looking at another.”
It was a look that had shed all work labels and carried only pure concern, a look that said “I’m here watching you.”
Somehow, looking at the man in the suit in front of her, Haruka’s heartbeat suddenly skipped a beat without warning.
It was like a song’s melody suddenly shifting from a calm major key to a gentle minor key.
The score hadn’t changed, but the entire emotional color instantly became viscous.
She felt a familiar heat spreading up from the base of her ears.
Just like that day at the entrance—like someone had suddenly covered her face with a hot towel, an uncontrollable burning sensation quickly took over her facial nerves.
The heartbeat in her chest became unusually heavy, as if someone had quietly turned up the volume on her heart.
Thump—thump—thump— so loud it almost drowned out the sound of the practice room’s air conditioner.
She slightly opened her mouth, wanting to casually joke something to brush it off, but the words reached her lips and were all blocked by that heat in her throat.
So, like a child who had done something wrong, she abruptly averted her gaze, lowered her head, and stared fixedly at the white toes of her sneakers.
A tangled mess of yarn was churning wildly inside her heart.
“I’m here. Don’t worry.”
It was just an ordinary expression of concern.
The same words, when she heard them before as Matsumoto Hidetoshi, only made her eyes heat up and feel immensely grateful.
‘I never thought there would be a brother who treats me this well in this world. I really haven’t lived in vain. For my brother, I can’t just stay degenerate like this.’
But now, having changed bodies, hearing the same words, she was blushing?!
Was this a residual instinct from the body? Was it sixteen-year-old girl hormones acting up?
Or was it… another “hardware” problem?
‘Once or twice could be explained by hardware, but this many times…’
Haruka clearly preferred to accept it as a hardware problem—she definitely wasn’t making excuses this time.
Ritsu sat on the folding chair, quietly watching Haruka with her head down.
To be honest, he had seen Hoshino Haruka blush countless times over the past five years.
The frequency of her swooning in front of him was about two to four times a week.
For example, if he rarely said something that wasn’t so cold, Haruka would pounce with shining eyes.
“Manager, you were so gentle just now—!”
For example, if he was working overtime during lunch break, Haruka would lie on the break room table, staring at him, and then blurt out, “Ritsu, you look so handsome when you’re working.”
In short, regarding the matter of “Hoshino Haruka swooning,” Ritsu had long developed absolute immunity.
Because the previous Haruka was a typical “straightforward” fool.
She would shout when blushing, come close when she wanted, rushing about without any restraint.
This straightforward, almost reckless way actually made it stress-free for Ritsu to deal with.
He only needed to use standard phrases like “What nonsense are you saying again,” “Keep your distance,” “Remember you’re an idol” to easily defuse.
It was like facing a known opponent—you know what card they’ll play, so you can defend effortlessly.
But today, she was different.
She didn’t shout or pounce.
She just quietly lowered her head and averted her gaze.
As if… holding back.
Like a truly lovestruck girl, who, upon noticing her own inappropriate flutter, frantically tries to hide it.
Not “acting coy because embarrassed,” but “choosing silence because aware of the weight of this feeling”—this was an extremely restrained, complex, and even somewhat mature reaction.
Ritsu looked at the silent Haruka with her head down.
The tips of her ears were bright red, and the side of her slender neck was tinged with a faint pink.
She was biting her lower lip tightly, as if swallowing all the words she wanted to say.
This posture… had considerable destructive power.
If the previous Haruka’s swooning was like an ordinary fangirl, the current Haruka was maxed out on girlish shyness.
Ritsu blinked hard, his Adam’s apple involuntarily bobbing.
He stood up abruptly from the folding chair and turned to walk toward the door.
“…There’s still some work I need to handle.”
Ritsu’s voice was noticeably more strained than usual.
Although he desperately tried to maintain the standard “manager mode,” his speech rate still betrayed a hint of panic.
“Continue practicing. If you don’t want to, you can rest. I’ll message you at noon.”
After saying that, he walked out of the practice room in a few quick strides and closed the door.
He quickly walked to the blind spot at the corner of the corridor, then suddenly stopped, leaning his back against the cold wall.
Just now—
The moment Haruka lowered her head and bit her lip, his heart skipped a beat.
Again.
This was no longer the first time; it was the third.
The first time was the day after she was discharged from the hospital, when Haruka looked at him with that firm, clear gaze and said, “Manager, you’ll help me earn back the money, right?”
The second time was when they parted yesterday evening, her soft, slightly sulky words: “Manager, you’ve worked hard.”
In less than three days, his emotional defenses had been precisely hit three times.
This had never happened once in the past few years of his career as a manager.
Ritsu clearly knew this was absolutely abnormal.
He was the manager, and Haruka was the entertainer under his charge.
She was sixteen, he was twenty-nine.
She was an idol living in the spotlight, and he was a behind-the-scenes manipulator hiding in the shadows.
Between them lay professional ethics, age gap, industry taboos—each one was an absolutely insurmountable high-voltage line.
But he didn’t know when he had started sliding from “within the safety line” to “the edge of danger.”
Maybe today, maybe yesterday, or even that moment on the hospital bench when he heard she was out of danger.
Ritsu shook his head hard, trying to throw away those wandering thoughts.
Haruka was his entertainer.
Whether she had become well-behaved, reserved, or mature, she was still just his entertainer.
He didn’t know what word to use to define that boundary-crossing emotion.
Since he didn’t know, he would choose to ignore it.
As long as he didn’t acknowledge it, it didn’t exist.
Ritsu took a deep breath, forcefully calming the ripples in his heart, and strode toward the elevator with long legs.
The sound of footsteps gradually faded down the corridor.
—
Hearing the fading footsteps, Haruka finally raised her head like a fish starved of oxygen and let out a long breath.
Ritsu was gone.
She poked her head out the door, stared at the empty doorway for a few seconds, then lowered her head to look at her hand.
In those seconds of accelerated heartbeat, she had unconsciously clenched her hand into a fist.
Now opening it, there were four shallow crescent-shaped marks left by her fingernails on her palm.
She stared at those red marks for a while.
The heat on her face had slowly faded, and the out-of-control heartbeat had returned to a steady rhythm.
Even she found it somewhat unbelievable that the transition from an extreme “heart-racing” state back to “normal” was surprisingly smooth.
There was no anticipated collapse of ‘Oh my god, I actually got turned on by a full-grown man,’ nor any soul-searching of ‘Who am I, where am I, why am I like this.’
Everything was like a tide, naturally rising up, submerging her, and then naturally receding.
She didn’t even feel any urge to resist.
It was as if body and soul had reached a wonderful consensus: when facing someone who makes you feel safe, reliable, and who has always protected you, it’s the most natural reaction in the world to have a heart-racing flutter.
No need to make a fuss, nor to agonize over whether this is “Hidetoshi’s dependence” or “Haruka’s instinct.”
‘So then, just now I really… purely, had a flutter?’
‘But I have to admit, he really is reliable. Those words… they spanned nearly a decade…’
In that slightly artistic and melancholic quiet moment, a loud and extremely inappropriate sound came from Haruka’s stomach.
Grrrrr—
Haruka looked down at her own towering… no, flat stomach, then looked up at the clock on the wall.
11:47.
Almost instantly, the complex emotional file titled “What was that flutter just now” was moved to the recycle bin and replaced by a high-priority command: ‘What to eat.’
‘Yeah—put aside those messy things… Food is the most important thing in the world.’
She stared at the fluorescent light on the practice room ceiling, her gaze becoming incredibly clear and determined.
‘Time to go find food.’