Chapter 10: Anchor Point

That was probably sometime during the first week in the hospital, late at night.

Having just started to recover from the initial shock, the fact of “becoming Hoshino Haruka” had transformed from an incomprehensible absurdity into an unavoidable reality.

Over the past week, through the doctors, nurses, and Ritsu, she had pieced together the basic chain of events—the car accident, Matsumoto Hidetoshi’s death, Hoshino Haruka’s fatal injuries, and how her soul had somehow slipped into Haruka’s body and brought her back to life.

Once she understood it all, she felt even worse.

That night, she stared at the hospital room ceiling and ran through the whole thing from start to finish in her mind.

Soul possession, body snatching, reincarnation, spiritual attachment…

These themes were everywhere in the world of ACG.

Open any light novel site and you’d find a mountain of them—tropes that had been written to death and back.

She’d seen stories about soul swapping, ones about traveling to another world, ones about dying and being reborn as a baby starting from scratch, and even ones where the protagonist turned into the child of their own favorite character.

But all those stories had one thing in common: ‘The original owner of the body the protagonist enters usually doesn’t exist anymore.’

Either it was a baby, born from the start already possessed, with the original soul not even having a chance to form before being replaced.

Or it was done through some goddess or system, granting an entirely new body out of nowhere.

Those were essentially stories of a baby with memories growing up, or a completely fresh protagonist—they didn’t raise any moral issues.

Alternatively, the original owner was “confirmed dead”—killed in battle, framed by enemies or villains, or simply died of old age or illness.

In those types, the original body’s vessel was empty, allowing the protagonist to “move in.”

Most works handled this process neatly, or avoided mentioning the original owner’s past life altogether so readers didn’t have to wonder about the question of ‘What happened to that person?’

But her situation was different.

She didn’t know if she was a novel character or not, and even if she was, her conscience wouldn’t let her off the hook.

Because the body she had possessed belonged to a real, living person in her own reality—and he was her favorite idol.

She had once looked at that initial medical report from the night of the accident—multiple rib fractures, ruptured spleen, massive intracranial hemorrhage—under normal circumstances, it was fatal.

At the same time, the news that night had reported “three deaths.”

The attending physician had also told her that ‘It’s a miracle you’re alive.’

All the medical evidence pointed to the same conclusion—

The real Hoshino Haruka had actually already died in that car accident.

In a sense, it was only after Matsumoto Hidetoshi’s soul entered this body that those injuries began to heal at an unbelievable speed.

It was Hidetoshi’s “arrival” that gave this dying body a reason to keep functioning.

If Hidetoshi hadn’t been there, Haruka’s body would most likely have stopped breathing completely before reaching the operating table.

So, rather than saying Hidetoshi “stole” Haruka’s body, it was more accurate that Haruka’s body was already on the verge of death, and Hidetoshi’s soul gave it a second lease on life.

To put it bluntly, if Hoshino Haruka’s soul were still around, she’d have to thank him.

Haruka’s family, friends, and fans could still see “Hoshino Haruka” alive in front of them, instead of receiving a death notice—that in itself…

“But what does that change?”

She muttered to herself from the bed, turning over and covering her head with the blanket.

The facts didn’t matter, logic didn’t matter either.

What mattered was—

‘I, Matsumoto Hidetoshi, am just an ordinary person—even a failure in society. A twenty-nine-year-old ordinary otaku, a loser who lived off rental income for years after his parents died, a waste who couldn’t even manage his own life properly. Someone like him, what right does he have… what right does he have to replace another person?’

‘What right does he have to wear another face, to accept someone else’s hugs with a clear conscience, to respond to smiles that aren’t his own? What right does he have to sit here comfortably, using another person’s throat to speak, using another person’s eyes to see the world, and even… even this heart beating in my chest right now—it’s borrowed.’

Hoshino Haruka had reached her current position through her own effort.

She started as a child actor at six, debuted at twelve, and now at sixteen she was already on huge stages…

She was only sixteen years old—sixteen, she should have kept standing on that stage.

She should have had a future, and now her future had been stuffed into the soul of an otaku.

A person who got nervous just going to crowded offline events—what right did he have to step onto that stage for her? What right did he have to replace that sun on stage?

‘…’

No words were exchanged that night.

She lay awake until four in the morning.

At four in the morning, the hospital had a special kind of quiet.

Other than the occasional footsteps of a nurse and the beeping of machines, she could hear her own heartbeat.

In that silence, she thought of something she later considered the stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life.

—And also the most terrifying thing she had almost done.

She was thinking: what if—what if she disappeared now? If ‘Matsumoto Hidetoshi,’ this soul lodging in Haruka’s body, also disappeared, what would happen? Would it return things to their rightful owner and let Hoshino Haruka’s soul come back?

Would this body die? Possibly.

But without the soul driving it, maybe those “miraculous healings” would stop, the injuries would worsen again, and then…

Then Hoshino Haruka would really, completely, and utterly die.

But—

‘At least that way, there wouldn’t be a problem of “who replaced who.” Hoshino Haruka’s death would just be an unfortunate consequence of a car accident, not the parasitism of an otaku. And I wouldn’t have to keep living while wearing someone else’s face.’

‘At least that way, at least that way—’

Her gaze swept over the window of the hospital room.

Sixth floor.

The window could be opened.

It was a sliding type that pushed outward, with the top half able to open about forty degrees.

Perhaps for patient safety, this design was meant only for ventilation—the opening angle was too narrow for an adult to squeeze through.

But with her still fairly petite body, if she really wanted to…

She stared at that window for about ten seconds.

Then she looked away.

Not because she suddenly had a change of heart, or because of some divine epiphany.

It was because, in those ten seconds, two questions had sequentially crossed her mind.

The first, a practical question—with her current body, barely able to get out of bed on her own, trying to force herself through that narrow gap would require a high level of mobility and skill.

In her present state, this was an insurmountable hardware limitation.

The second question—Mizutagawa Ritsu, her best friend, her brother.

If she went out that window, Ritsu would lose his best friend and his most important work partner within a week.

Two people, in the same week, leaving him with none.

She didn’t know if Mizutagawa Ritsu could handle that.

Maybe he could.

To borrow a famous dismissive line from a protagonist who shared her surname: ‘He’s not that fragile.’

Because Ritsu was the toughest person she knew.

No matter what awful situation life threw at him, he’d grit his teeth and keep going with an expressionless face.

He could bear his mother’s serious illness, he could bear dropping out of school to work, he could bear a decade of high-pressure odd jobs.

(Although until a week ago she didn’t know Ritsu was a manager, before that he really was just doing odd jobs.)

He would just lose a friend and a work partner.

He’d go on living, but then—

‘What does he live for?’

That night, for the first time, she seriously considered that question.

The window was still that window.

She was still the person lying in the hospital bed.

The sky outside shifted from pure black to deep blue, then to gray.

She kept her eyes open until dawn.