The gallery was packed. It was warm with bodies, noisy with voices, vibrant with colour. But to me, it felt like drowning.
The room spun, thick with the scent of varnish, sweat, and nerves. My throat tightened, not from heat or anxiety, but from memories—vivid, clawing memories of reporters chasing me after Mio's death. Their voices had blurred into static, their microphones poking like weapons. And here it was again. Not the cameras, this time. Smartphones. Screens lit with judgment. Eyes narrowed. Mouths whispering things they didn't dare say aloud.
Then, chaos.
A gasp. A body falling. A girl lay beneath me.
Sprawled on the floor, skirt ruffled, hair fanned like black ink bleeding into water. Her face burned red not from embarrassment, but rage. She bared her teeth like an animal and slapped me hard across the face. The sound rang louder than the crowd.
"Pervert!"
The word cut through everything.
I stood frozen, stunned. My mind whirled, trying to rewind, to explain how I had tripped. How it wasn't what it looked like. But all I could hear was her voice. Her breathing. The murmur of the crowd rising like smoke around us.
"He touched Miura-san!"
"Maki, are you all right?"
That name—Miura—stabbed through me like a needle tearing an old wound wide open.
Mio.
The girl staring up at me now, furious and humiliated, was Mio's sister.
Horie Maki— no, Miura Maki. Papa's stepdaughter.
Her eyes, though shaped slightly differently, bore the same fire I once saw in Mio. The same stubborn light. And in that split second, I was back there again, back in the world I had tried to bury beneath paint, silence, and years. Mio's screams. Her blood. Papa's voice. Everything surged up and seized me.
I ran.
I didn't remember making the choice to flee. My body simply shoving through the crowd, down the corridor, past posters and laughter and music. The air outside burned cold in my lungs, but it wasn't enough to wake me from the hell swelling in my chest.
The damage was instant.
Photos and videos hit the internet within the hour. Thumbnails of my startled face. Headlines exaggerated to hell: Blonde pervert molested Miura Maki during school festival. Comments raged. Shares soared. I became a digital disease.
They didn't need the truth. They only needed a story.
Our fragile, beautiful club crumbled overnight. People called it cursed. The exhibition, the one we'd poured ourselves into, was remembered only for that fall. Nanase stood by me, arms crossed and jaw set, but the others left. Only she and I remained.
And maybe that's when I knew. Maybe I don't belong here.
I drifted again—back into the night, where faces blurred and touches didn't require names. My body was a currency I knew how to spend. So I did. If I couldn't stay clean, I thought, I might as well return to the mud. It was easier to become something unwanted than to keep pretending I had any place among ordinary people.
It was in that darkness that Hasegawa appeared like some stray dog I never asked for.
He joined the club. Just… showed up. Friendly, nosy, cheerful in a way I didn't trust. When I learned he was dating Maki, I prepared myself. He was here for revenge, I was sure of it. Some boyfriend justice thing. Wait it out, I told myself. Let him yell. Let him swing. I could take it.
But he didn't do any of that.
He… stayed, kept talking to me. Laughing. Teasing. Like he didn't know what I was.
Or maybe he did, and didn't care.
And then came the day I still don't know how to explain.
We were cleaning up the clubroom. The others had gone ahead. I was tired. Paint under my nails. The smell of glue and dust thick in the air.
He turned to me suddenly.
"I love you, senpai." He said it like it was a joke. But his eyes said otherwise.
Love?
I don't have that anymore since I realized what Papa did to me. That word doesn't belong to me.
But even now, when I think I've escaped him, Papa's shadow still stretches over everything. Even Hasegawa. Even this.
Maybe that's why I said something cruel: I guess we love the wrong persons.