“Without even looking back, he dropped those two words, his pace not slowing in the slightest.”
Haruka quickly jogged a couple steps to catch up, carefully stepping through the maze of cables on the floor like crossing a plum blossom stake array, while also unable to resist looking around.
Both sides of the corridor were piled high with cardboard boxes of unknown original contents.
They were stacked haphazardly, some reaching four or five layers high, looking like they could avalanche at any moment.
On the side of one box, someone had used a marker to draw a crooked skull, with a menacing line of big text next to it:
“Do Not Touch!”
The directional signs on the walls were even more of a mess.
There were no high-tech electronic screens or proper acrylic signs—everything was printed on random A4 paper, taped crookedly to the walls with clear tape, handwritten notices.
[← MorningCheck Live Studio (This way! Stop getting lost!)]
[Construction ahead, watch your head]
[Second floor women’s restroom, second stall broken. Please use third floor—Management Department]
[Move move move—! Hot! Watch out, hot—!]
A sudden scream came from around the corner.
Haruka instinctively pressed herself against the wall.
A young guy with a work badge around his neck, his T-shirt completely soaked through with sweat, ran past her like a wild boar out of control.
He was carrying an entire cardboard box, stuffed with steaming cup coffee and instant miso soup, which wobbled dangerously on the brink of disaster.
The steam from the hot soup, mixed with the complex scent of sweat, cigarette smoke, and cheap coffee that clung to the guy, hit Haruka full in the face.
“The backdrop for Studio B hasn’t been dismantled yet?! The next group is coming in at seven thirty—”
“Wh-wh-who put this script on my desk? This is last week’s scrapped draft!”
“You admit this is your desk?”
“FF Sound—! Where the hell is the sound team? Microphone #3 has no sound again!”
The piercing static of walkie-talkies, urgent footsteps, angry shouts, and the countdown timer coming from some room…
All these sounds collided back and forth in the narrow concrete corridor, turning into a chaotic mess.
Haruka followed Ritsu through this maze, navigating twists and turns while rebuilding her worldview.
As she passed a corner, her peripheral vision caught a small empty spot in the corner of the hallway.
Between two stacked prop boxes, a young man in a plaid shirt was squatting.
The shirt was so wrinkled it looked like it had been pulled straight from the washing machine.
One hand held his phone as he stared intently at the schedule; the other hand was shoving a convenience store rice ball into his mouth that had been squeezed completely out of shape.
He chewed mechanically a couple times, then seemed to notice Haruka’s gaze.
He looked up.
He probably recognized her, and the surprise of seeing her suddenly made him choke.
He slammed his chest with his fist a couple times, grabbed a can of Red Bull from the floor, and chugged it.
His face, flushed red from lack of oxygen, held an expression that was perfectly balanced between “life is exhausting” and “ah well, keep going.”
Haruka looked at him and silently apologized in her heart for making him choke.
With that apology, the filter she’d had labeled “high-end TV station” shattered into pieces.
There was no Starbucks here, no grandiose chatter from industry elites.
Just a group of drained workers, struggling to survive.
Those beautifully staged studios on TV, those glamorous hosts and celebrities—they were all painstakingly built from this battlefield-ruin of a backstage, by these people who pulled all-nighters and squatted on the floor eating rice balls.
Haruka averted her gaze and suddenly felt a certain string that had been tight in her heart miraculously relax.
We’re all just workers here.
Thinking that, the nervousness she’d felt before going on stage strangely eased a lot.
After all, everyone’s just working.
Who’s really better than who?
She was just a slightly higher-level one, the kind who had to work in front of the camera.
“We’re here.”
Ritsu stopped abruptly ahead.
Haruka couldn’t brake in time and nearly crashed into his back.
She stuck her head out and saw, at the end of the corridor, a thick soundproof door.
Above the door was a red signal light.
Although the light wasn’t on yet, just looking at that blood-red bulb already gave off an invisible, heavy sense of pressure.
On the door was taped a half-hearted A4 sheet, with a line written in a thick marker:
[MorningCheck Recording Room #4012]
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