The recording played steadily into the final stretch of the latter half.
“So, has that cold-hearted Manager become even a little gentler?”
From the speakers came Takahashi’s highly recognizable teasing voice, and the expressions of the nine staff members in the auxiliary control room instantly turned subtle.
“You still harbor some unrealistic fantasies about the word ‘gentle.’”
“Every time he appears, he’s always carrying that black briefcase. And the first thing he says when he walks in is always, ‘How are your vocals today?’”
“I’m just that production tool, and the pudding and peach tea are the lubricant to keep the machine from rusting.”
“Pfft——”
The young female staff member finally couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing, then covered her mouth with both hands in horror.
Director Yamamoto turned and glared at her, but if you looked closely, the corners of this serious middle-aged man’s own mouth were also twitching uncontrollably.
After this segment aired, the ratings suddenly jumped up.
On the Twitter monitoring panel, the curve representing real-time buzz almost went straight vertical within just a few dozen seconds.
[After half a year, the Manager is still holding strong on the front lines of being the victim. Tearful.]
[The production tool and lubricant metaphor is just too perfect hahaha! Even capitalists would cry!]
[Wait, she was just complaining, but then what did she mean by ‘it’s not that bad’???]
[Haruka-chan, listen to yourself… the tone you used there… that’s not dislike at all, hey!]
A few minutes later, the five-minute-long recorded material finished playing completely.
Takahashi put his monitoring headphones back on and, as naturally as breathing, retook control of the entire program.
“Alright, that was today’s special talk segment with Haruka-chan. Even though what we just played was pre-recorded, I hope everyone can have a good mood today. See you tomorrow at 7:30 AM, don’t miss it.”
The familiar ending song gradually swelled through the airwaves, and the indicator light switched back to dark.
Half an hour earlier.
The minibus was driving on the Shuto Expressway heading back from Odaiba to Tokyo City Center.
The worst of the morning rush hour had just passed, and traffic was much smoother than on the way there.
Outside the window, the massive, cold cable stays of the Rainbow Bridge reflected a glaring cold white light under the winter morning sun.
Haruka collapsed onto the spacious rear leather seat, her head lolling against the window while her limbs spread out in a perfect starfish pose.
After the recording ended, she took off her makeup in the dressing room at Fuji TV and changed back into her comfortable casual clothes.
The whole process took at most five or six minutes.
By the time she jogged down to the underground parking lot, Ritsu was already holding the door open for her, his face still bearing that familiar unspoken message:
—Get in the car, don’t dawdle.
“Good work, Miss Hoshino, Mr. Mizugawa. Did the recording go smoothly today?”
Driver Uncle Uehara glanced at the back seat with a smile from the rearview mirror.
“So smoothly that I probably shortened my life by three years.”
Haruka buried her chin in her scarf and muttered in a muffled voice.
Uncle Uehara chuckled at that, then naturally reached out and turned the knob of the car radio.
After the familiar low-frequency noise, a clear voice jumped out.
“Welcome back. Now, after the news and traffic report, next up is the long-awaited special interview segment—”
Haruka, who had been slumped like a puddle of mud in her seat, instantly tensed up all over the moment she heard that voice.
It was Takahashi’s voice.
“Eh? Uncle Uehara, do you usually listen to this show too?”
Haruka gave a dry laugh.
“I listen every day!”
Uncle Uehara chuckled while turning the steering wheel.
“When I’m driving, if I don’t listen to something, I get too sleepy. And Mr. Mizugawa specifically reminded me last night, saying today was Miss Hoshino’s first early morning schedule since her comeback, so of course I had to tune in on time to support her!”
Haruka let out a despairing silent scream in her mind.
‘No no no!! Uncle, please don’t listen!! Even if you have to listen, don’t play it out loud in front of me!!’
But she really couldn’t bring herself to say “please turn it off”—that would ruin the mood.
Besides, Ritsu was sitting in the front seat; if she overreacted, it would only make her look guilty.
If she asked to turn it off, Ritsu would probably reply like this:
‘What? You recorded the show yourself, and now you’re afraid to hear your own voice?’
‘Forget it… endure for a moment of calm, take a step back for a wider sky.’
Haruka stiffly leaned back into her seat, trying to put on a calm expression of “just casually listening to my work results.”
Then—“Hello everyone! I’m Hoshino Haruka!”
Haruka really didn’t know what expression to make now.
Back in the recording studio, through the expensive monitoring headphones and the bone conduction feedback from her own skull, she thought she had handled it perfectly.
Sweet but not excessive, energetic but knowing her limits.
A standard idol image management voice, by the book, flawless.
But when this voice, stripped of the studio’s meticulous polish, brutally compressed by the radio audio, was pumped directly into her eardrums from the minibus’s car speakers from a completely objective third-person perspective—
‘No way… whose voice is this?!’
She began to doubt for the second time what kind of weird noise she normally sounded like to others.
Moreover, today her voice wasn’t just “unpleasant” anymore.
Every trailing note she heard seemed to have been rolled in a jar of honey before rising up, with a sticky energetic tone built into the intonation.
Especially the drawn-out “—masu” at the end of her greeting just now, it was sickeningly sweet.
‘Is this my voice? Is this the weird noise I make when I speak normally to others?!’
She clearly remembered that when she said those words, she not only dropped all her idol smiles but also deliberately lowered her voice, wanting to make that part sound more mature.
However, when that recorded voice came out of the car speakers—
The pitch was indeed lowered.
But the hardware baseline of this body was what it was—a sixteen-year-old girl’s clear vocal cords, no matter how low she pushed them, absolutely could not produce the weathered feel of a middle-aged man.
The actual effect that came out was completely off.
It was like a girl with a very light, soft voice, in a quiet background sound like a late-night radio station, using a whisper that seemed to be right against your ear, with a slight nasal tone, seriously and deliberately talking about those heavy topics of courage and perseverance.
Combined with the content of those lines themselves.
“A car accident isn’t fun at all.”
“Being forgotten is the scariest.”
“Because there’s someone waiting for me.”
Haruka was instantly completely overwhelmed by a huge sense of shame called “despair.”
This was nowhere near the “hardcore counterattack of a mature adult” she had envisioned!
This was clearly a beautiful girl who was strong and putting on a brave face, but everyone could hear how fragile she really was, holding back tears and trying to prove her stubbornness to the world.
Haruka silently turned her head toward the window, covering her burning cheeks with both hands.
The face reflected on the window glass was almost completely written with “I don’t want to live” and “I’m already dead.”
But this was still not the limit.
Soon, the real killer climax came.
“So, has that cold-hearted Manager become even a little gentler?”
The instant she heard that question, Haruka’s shoulders visibly trembled.
‘Please, skip! Uncle Uehara, change the song, please! There’s a dump truck ahead, you can slam on the brakes too!’
But the car stereo didn’t understand human joys and sorrows; it faithfully played every word that followed.
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