Chapter 5: Announcement

On the phone, Ritsu said he would go over after dawn, and also mentioned that he had other matters to handle.

The police officer briefly comforted him, then said he would send him a shared link later and told him to keep an eye out for it.

After expressing his thanks, Ritsu hung up, stood up from the bench, and began pacing back and forth in the hallway.

After a while, he opened the accident information page the police had shared with him.

In the “Death Information Confirmation” column, the second line read: “Matsumoto Hidetoshi (29). Resident of Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. Unemployed. Emergency contact: Mizutagawa Ritsu.”

He stared at it for a long time, then turned off his phone, walked to the bench in the corner, placed the phone face down on his lap, took off his glasses, and covered his face with his palms.

At 4:30 AM, the hospital corridor was very quiet.

The fluorescent lights hummed faintly.

In the distance, the wheels of a nurse’s cart squeaked, and even further away, some machine beeped rhythmically.

President Kirishima stood nearby the entire time, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, resting.

He didn’t say a word.

He saw Ritsu’s shoulders trembling violently, and his breathing was heavy.

This man cried the way he did everything: quietly and quickly.

His grief didn’t make any extra sound, didn’t let anyone see the whole picture.

He compressed everything into the smallest volume and shortest time.

President Kirishima didn’t say anything.

He went to the vending machine, bought two cups of coffee, placed them beside Ritsu, and left.

—

That night, Ritsu did the following:

05:55 — He contacted the household registration section of Eitai’s ward office and confirmed the list of documents required for funeral procedures.

06:20 — He returned to the hospital.

He stood outside Haruka’s ICU room for a while.

The nurse said she was still in a deep coma, but her vital signs were stabilizing.

She was not allowed visitors for the time being.

06:30 — He went back to his desk at the agency.

He began drafting an official announcement suspending Haruka Hoshino’s activities.

He wrote, deleted, revised, and revised again:

“The entertainer affiliated with our agency, Haruka Hoshino, was injured in a traffic accident late on the night of November 1. She is currently receiving treatment at a hospital in Tokyo. All entertainment activities will be suspended for the time being. We sincerely apologize for the concern and inconvenience caused to our fans.”

After the statement was released, the tweet was retweeted over three thousand times within ten minutes.

Half an hour later, “Haruka Hoshino” appeared on the trending list.

An hour later, the number one trend: “#HarukaHoshino.”

Ritsu sat at his desk, watching the numbers scroll rapidly on the screen.

In the comments section, some were puzzled, some were shocked, some were praying, some were cursing the truck driver, some were @ing the agency demanding more details, and some were analyzing Haruka’s schedule to guess which TV station she was leaving when the accident happened…

Some people had even already started writing analysis posts titled “If Haruka Hoshino Doesn’t Come Back, How Will the Idol Industry Change?”

Less than eight hours after the accident, while she was still lying unconscious in the ICU, people were already calculating how much of a market gap her “departure” would leave.

Ritsu closed the browser.

Then he picked up the first call—it was a TV variety producer from a partner station.

“Mr. Mizutagawa, I heard. How is she?”

“Thank you for your concern. She’s receiving full treatment.”

“Uh, about next week’s recording…”

“Cancel it.”

“Well, if we can adjust the schedule—”

“Cancel it.”

“…Understood.”

The second call came from the record company.

“The release date for the new album—”

“Postpone it.”

“How long can it be postponed?”

“Wait for notice.”

The third call.

An advertising agency for a brand she endorsed.

“Regarding the schedule in the contract—”

“Proceed with the breach of contract negotiation. I’ll send the official letter this afternoon.”

The fourth, fifth, sixth calls.

Every call followed the same pattern: the other party expressed concern (some genuine, some just polite), then the topic shifted to their own interests.

Ritsu answered each call one by one, handling them calmly.

His voice was steady, his wording precise, his attitude neither servile nor arrogant.

If an ordinary passerby had witnessed his work efficiency, they would have thought, “This guy is a true professional.”

But if you looked closer, you could see that his other hand was clenched so tightly that his fingernails had dug deep marks into his palm.

In his desk drawer lay a transparent evidence bag.

It contained Matsumoto Eitai’s phone, wallet, keys, and a plastic bag from a convenience store.

The food inside had been crushed in the crash; the pudding cup had shattered, caramel-colored liquid soaking half the bag, and the onigiri had crumbled everywhere.

Just a few hours ago, Eitai had been thinking about rolling down the window to “scam” a free dinner.

A few hours later, all that food lay before him.

Outside the window, Tokyo’s morning had begun.

Sunlight streamed through the office blinds, painting parallel bands of light on the wall.

On the road below the office building, office workers began to appear, rushing along with convenience store coffee and sandwiches in their hands—no different from any ordinary morning.

This city wouldn’t stop for anyone’s disappearance.

Ritsu picked up his coat and walked out of the office.

He had to go to the hospital.

Haruka was still lying there.

No matter what kind of person she became when she woke up, she still needed him.

And Eitai… he no longer needed anyone.

—

The first few days after Haruka Hoshino woke up were the hardest.

On the first day, she regained consciousness in the ICU, dazed.

Her whole body ached as if she had been taken apart and reassembled.

She couldn’t move at all.

She could only open her eyes a sliver, seeing nothing clearly—just a blurry white ceiling, beeping machines, nurses’ figures appearing intermittently at the edge of her vision, and the faint, ever-present smell of disinfectant.

At that moment, only one thought crossed her mind.

‘I didn’t transmigrate?’

Even though before he was hit, he had muttered something about transmigrating, those words had been more of a resigned self-mockery.

He still wanted to go on living.

Now, he was actually more confused about why he hadn’t died.

She clearly remembered the moment the big truck hit—the huge front grill filling her entire field of vision, the screech of brakes and roar of the engine merging into a jarring noise.

First there was the impact, then nothing.

Between “nothing” and the “white ceiling,” there should have been a blank.

But she couldn’t sense the length of that blank.

It could have been a second, or ten thousand years.

On the second day, she was a little more lucid.

She could roughly understand what the nurses were saying.

“Miss Hoshino—” “Haruka-chan—” “Hoshino-san, can you hear me—”

‘Hoshino? Why are they calling me Hoshino? My surname is Matsumoto. I must be hearing things.’

Even though she couldn’t speak, her inner complaints didn’t stop.

She thought she was hallucinating.

Until the third day, when she saw a mirror for the first time.

During a routine check, a nurse held up a small mirror to help her check the recovery of her facial injuries.

The moment the mirror was raised in front of her—

It was a face she had seen countless times in MVs, magazines, live concert screens, Twitter selfies, her phone wallpaper candidates, and in some weird dreams she would never admit to anyone—the face of Haruka Hoshino.

She had become Haruka Hoshino.

After confirming this fact, she didn’t scream, didn’t break down, didn’t throw off the covers and run away.

She just stared calmly at the face in the mirror for a long, long, long time.

So long that the nurse thought she was spacing out and took the mirror away.

Then she stared at the ceiling for a long time.

In those few minutes, she had a mental storm.

Not “What should I do?” but “Which problem should I deal with first?” because there were just too many problems.

She had become Haruka Hoshino.

Why?

How?

Could she change back?

Where was the real Haruka Hoshino?

Who was she now?

No idea.

Probably she really was the protagonist of some novel, just not an isekai trash novel, but rather a story about transmigration into an idol.

Every single one of these questions was enough to drive someone insane, but when they all rushed in at once, they created a strange “overload protection” effect.

Just like a circuit breaker tripping when it can’t handle the load, her brain, after a brief surge, entered an abnormally calm state.

Then, he appeared.