Hoshino Haruka finished packing up and pushed open the door to the practice room.
To the left of the hallway were the elevator and restrooms; to the right was the fire exit leading to the first floor.
The adjacent rooms were practice rooms used by other trainees, and the muffled thud of footsteps on wooden floors could be faintly heard.
She had seen Ritsu head left earlier, and figured he must have already taken the elevator upstairs.
Today, besides the physical assessment, there were no other scheduled appearances.
Teacher Meihe had left after assigning next week’s training content.
In theory, she should be staying obediently in the practice room, waiting for Ritsu to come down and arrange the next steps.
“…Well, I’m free anyway, and I’ve never actually seen what my agency looks like.”
She muttered the guilt-ridden words under her breath, then decisively turned left and pressed the elevator button for going up.
“It’s not like a little walk is going to cost me money.”
Target: the sixth floor.
—
If the Hoshino Haruka of the past had been asked to describe her understanding of the concept of an “agency,” it would probably have been something like “the place where idols clock in for work.”
In idol-related news and variety shows, “agency” was a high-frequency term.
But as for its specific content, it was roughly equivalent to how a light novel might say “so-and-so protagonist belongs to such-and-such hidden faction.”
Ordinary fans only knew that this faction existed, that it was where idols were cultivated.
But how many people were actually inside, how it operated, what its internal structure was?
The vast majority had no clue, and the former Ei was certainly one of them.
When she was discharged from the hospital two days ago and went back to the agency to pick up her things, Ritsu had forced her to wait in the minibus, handling everything himself.
Yesterday’s interview had also been a straight shot to the magazine publisher’s office.
So strictly speaking, today was her first real look inside this “home base.”
During her hospital stay, she had done some catching up, learning roughly what kind of company her agency was.
The full name of the agency was Stella Production (Stras Agency), which corresponded to the English pronunciation of “Stella.”
The first time she saw the name, her mind immediately jumped to a certain great hero who shouted “Stella!” and then exited the stage.
In the industry, Stras was a mid-sized agency, not one of those industry giants that owned an entire independent building.
So in this office building, only the basement floor (practice rooms) and the sixth floor (office area) belonged to Stras.
The other five floors seemed to be occupied by some advertising company and an internet company—she didn’t know the specifics.
The elevator rose slowly.
When the number on the display jumped to “6,” she took a deep breath.
She had seen a variety show before, with the theme being idols returning to their agency for a “behind-the-scenes visit.”
The invited guest at the time was a very famous girl group under a large agency.
In the show’s footage, the agency looked like this: the lobby and office area were bright, the corridors were carpeted in high-end light gray, and the walls were covered with huge posters of their artists.
The overall atmosphere fell somewhere between a “high-end office building” and a “star dream factory.”
It was less an office and more an “artists’ glamorous home.”
She thought, an agency capable of fostering an idol of Hoshino Haruka’s caliber—its presentation surely couldn’t be anything too shabby, right?
“Ding—”
The elevator doors opened.
Just as she was preparing to welcome the kind of high-end, atmospheric vibe she had imagined, what met her eyes was nothing but an ordinary, run-of-the-mill open-plan office area—about twenty desks, with low partitions and potted plants casually dividing the space into sections.
A few unsightly empty cardboard boxes were piled in a corner, a stack of dusty A4 paper sat next to the coffee machine by the window, and the air was thick with a rich, slightly bitter black coffee scent.
“Uh… I didn’t get off on the wrong floor, did I?”
She took half a step back and checked the floor indicator on the elevator.
It was definitely “6.”
“Alright… reality really doesn’t have a filter. Either that, or my agency is just too poor.”
Haruka slowly walked out of the elevator, like a diner who had accidentally wandered into a restaurant kitchen, with a dazed expression that said, “So this is where the famous dishes are cooked.”
Her eyes swept over each area.
The first area near the entrance had a whiteboard with the words “General Affairs and Administration” written on it, no fancy decorations whatsoever.
A middle-aged man was bent over organizing documents, while a young guy next to him was typing intently at his computer, not even lifting his head.
Haruka observed their work for a few seconds, silently filling in the functional description for this department in her mind: buying printer paper, managing attendance, processing invoices, handling all the trivial odds and ends that nobody noticed.
These types of characters in idol-themed anime basically don’t even have a face; at most, they appear in a meeting, say “The contract is ready,” and then quickly exit the scene.
But reality isn’t an anime.
They are the gears that keep the agency running, the living, breathing people sitting here every day.
Out of politeness, Haruka smiled and greeted them as she was about to leave.
The middle-aged man looked up, was clearly stunned for a second, then stood up a bit flustered to return the greeting.
His eyes plainly read: “Wait, isn’t that Hoshino Haruka? Why is she wandering around here by herself?”
But after returning the greeting, he quickly sat back down and immersed himself again in the tedious paperwork.
Haruka completely understood his confusion.
Putting herself in his shoes, as the top idol here, she should currently be sweating buckets practicing singing and dancing, not strolling through the employee office area like a leader on a secret inspection.
After a simple greeting and a wave goodbye, as she continued inward, she came to the “Publicity Department.”
Three desks were arranged in an L-shape, with two monitors lit up.
One screen showed a Twitter management backend; the other was running image-editing software, with a promotional poster that was halfway through being edited.
A girl in her twenties was chewing on a pen, staring at the screen with an expression that betrayed the pain of “This color tone is almost there, but I just can’t get it right.”
“Hmm… the Publicity Department, probably that easy job of posting tweets and managing social media every day, right?”
Haruka muttered very quietly to herself.
To her surprise, the girl suddenly turned around, whether because she heard her muttering or simply sensed the gaze from behind.
“Eh? Haruka-chan? What are you doing up here? Weren’t you only doing the assessment today?”
“Ah—yeah, that… Teacher Meihe said I could go. I was waiting for my manager, got a bit bored, so I thought I’d look around.”
Haruka’s heart skipped a beat.
“Ritsu-san seemed to have gone to a meeting earlier; he’s probably still busy, right?”
The girl glanced toward the Artist Management Department.
“Come on, come on, have a seat and rest for a bit. You only got out of the hospital three days ago, don’t overexert yourself!”
This girl was excessively enthusiastic, immediately pulling over an ergonomic chair with a backrest and offering her own seat.
“Well then… I suppose I’ll humbly accept.”
“Oh, don’t be so polite! What’s with the formality after just over a month? By the way, it’s perfect timing. We’ve been racking our brains over the promotional photos for your comeback. We were going to send them to you on LINE for confirmation, but having you here in person saves so much trouble!”
“Haha, what a coincidence…”
Haruka put on a smile, but internally she was frantically screaming in despair.
(—Someone save me! Who exactly is this big sister?! How close was Hoshino Haruka to her before?! What persona am I supposed to use to respond to her now?!)
“But Haruka-chan, you got one thing wrong just now.”
The girl laughed and teased as she adjusted the images.
“Posting tweets and promotional images is indeed our daily routine, but the real headache-causer is the PR strategy. Things like schmoozing with journalists, crisis management, and reviewing all external statements… Ah, sorry, sorry, I started complaining again. I remember you used to hate hearing about all this behind-the-scenes hassle, Haruka-chan.”
“No, not at all. I’d be happy to listen now.”
Haruka quickly waved her hands, indicating she could keep talking.
This wasn’t a lie.
During that month in the hospital, in order to understand the fan ecosystem, she had browsed through many forums and seen posts where fans analyzed screenshots and said things like “This agency’s PR this time was beautiful” or “The wording of this statement is a disaster.”
“I’m still okay; Section Chief Okamoto is the real victim.”
The girl lowered her voice.
“He’s been up almost all night since you got discharged. Writing press releases, preventing flame wars… especially since you just made your comeback these two days. Some ill-intentioned rivals in the industry and paid trolls have been spreading rumors that you were ‘forced to discharge early by a heartless agency to be exploited.’ To control the narrative, our section chief’s hair is about to fall out.”
“…That’s tough.”
Haruka had a lot she wanted to say, but when it came to her lips, all she could dryly force out was that one line.
Before hearing this, she had no real sense of what “public opinion control” meant.
Now, she suddenly understood that those calm and peaceful comment sections didn’t come out of nowhere.
Behind them, there had to be people staring at the trends late into the night, extinguishing the potentially explosive fuses in advance.
In other words, these firefighters called the “Publicity Department” determined what kind of “Hoshino Haruka” the outside world got to see.
Just as the girl was about to continue her complaints, the desk phone rang, urging her to submit the first draft plan as soon as possible.
Haruka, seeing this, tactfully said she would look around elsewhere and not disturb her work.
Leaving the Publicity Department, the next area was the “Sales Department.”
There were four workstations here, and the atmosphere was much noisier than the previous area.
Three people were on the phone at the same time, and the remaining one was frantically flipping through documents.
Haruka lingered here a little longer.
Although the phone conversations weren’t loud, she still keenly picked up on several key terms: endorsement, advertising partnership, revenue share ratio, penalty clause.
She couldn’t help but recall the “bill” Ritsu had read to her a few days ago—direct losses of several million.
How were those enormous penalties compensated?
Where was the money to fill the deficit going to come from? It was obvious—it came from these ordinary desks, negotiated through countless rounds of haggling.
Watching those figures hunched over their work, Haruka suddenly gained a very concrete understanding of what Ritsu had said:
She truly was not just an idol; she was the livelihood of everyone here.
To avoid drawing attention and disturbing their work, Haruka didn’t stay long and continued deeper in.
At the end of the open office area were several private offices, with a sign hanging by the door that read “Artist Management Department.”
Since it managed artists, Ritsu’s desk must be in there.
She poked her head in.
Inside, five desks were chaotically cluttered with a lived-in feel, piles of documents stacked like mountains.
Ritsu was “facing the wall in self-reflection,” on the phone with her back to the entrance, a can of black coffee of unknown purchase time sitting by her hand.
“He’s really not afraid of dropping dead, huh… Well, better not disturb him for now.”
Haruka didn’t make a sound and quietly pulled her head back.
The glass door at the end of the hallway had a nameplate: [Representative Director: Shinji Kirishima] (President: Shinji Kirishima).
The lights were off inside; he was probably not in.
Haruka turned and walked toward the other side of the open office area.
There was a separate office here.
The room was small, with two printers inside and a whiteboard nailed to the wall, covered with various schedules and names written in marker pen.
Only a man in his thirties was inside, printing something.
A sign hung by the door: “Production Planning Department.”
Haruka guessed that this was most likely the department responsible for arranging her performance activities.
She wasn’t wrong; this was indeed the department in charge of planning in-house events, production management, and coordinating the production of works for the agency’s artists.
—
That essentially concluded the tour.
Haruka couldn’t help but inwardly complain, ‘Your company and my company don’t seem the same at all. Is this really an agency or just an ordinary office building?’
Just as she was about to turn back and take the elevator down to the basement, she suddenly noticed, on the wall to the right of the Production Planning Department, a large cork bulletin board.
On it were pinned photos, brief introductions, and recent news of the agency’s artists.
Haruka stood in front of the bulletin board and looked up.
The top spot, occupying the absolute center position and even specially framed in gold, was undeniably her own photo.
Below it was written: [Stella Production Affiliated · Solo Idol · Hoshino Haruka].
In the photo, she was smiling like a little sun.
Directly beneath the photo was a handwritten sticky note with a smiley face drawn on it, the handwriting a bit crooked:
“Welcome back, Haruka-san! Show us your energetic self soon! — The Entire Agency”
Looking at that sticky note, Haruka froze for a moment, and a wave of indescribable warmth surged through her chest.
Following her own photo downward was a tree diagram labeled “Stella Production Artist Composition,” densely packed with the photos of over twenty trainees and several other idols.
“Oh, so the agency doesn’t just have me as an idol…”
Haruka rubbed her chin, but she quickly realized it was a stupid question.
“No wait, that’s obvious. If the agency only had me as an idol, that would be insane.”
“Alright, let’s see who my seniors and juniors are, then.”
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