... Throughout the time I spent with him—
Throughout the days, weeks, months, and years—
I only found solace in him despite the way I change.
But... ending with him is much easier than holding myself back to experience that again.
Click
— // — // * * *
As I slowly enter through the doors that held beautiful carves etched in the fine wood. I still reflected back to my conversation with Vincent—it is an anomaly as to how I found this person in my life when I haven't even remember him once back in my collegiate life.
Was this life's doing to meet me another person besides him?
The hall greeted me with silence. It was wide, polished, suffocatingly immaculate. Marble floors reflected the chandelier light as though the house itself was trying to remind me of its wealth. The scent of wax and roses clung to the air, sterile and practiced.
This was home. But not really.
My umbrella leaned by the door, dripping faintly. My shoes clicked on the flooring with no other footsteps to follow, no voices to fill the void. Mother and Father were away, as always—meetings, travels, networks. Their presence was currency, spent elsewhere.
And so, it was just me.
I carried the book and the box of pastries to my room, each step up the staircase echoing too loudly for one person. The walls lined with portraits of ancestors stared down with practiced indifference. Their gazes always unsettled me, as if they were mocking the hollowness of my existence.
In my room, I finally let the mask slip. The ribbon loosened, the blouse undone at the collar. My reflection in the mirror was still perfect, but the girl staring back was empty.
It wasn't the first time.
* * *
Flashback
Bright lights, a stage. Applause that thundered like the ocean, crashing and receding.
I remembered the heat of it, the way the spotlight pinned me in place like a butterfly caught in glass. My voice had soared, flawless. My smile had dazzled. My steps had been practiced until they seemed effortless.
I was the best. Everyone said so.
The curtains had been velvet red. The kind that swallows light and sways like blood when the air stirs. I still remember that night vividly—the final concert, the one where the world was supposed to applaud my legacy.
The hall was alive. Thousands of eyes, thousands of hands raised, millions of fans, and the glitter of cameras flashing like stars. My name echoed, chanted, worshiped.
Arishu.
The girl who never faltered. The butterfly who rose higher, brighter, untouchable.
I stepped into the spotlight. My dress shimmered like liquid crystal, my voice pure, flawless. Every note I sang felt like it carved itself into the air, into them. I soared above them, a goddess made flesh.
"Arishu! Arishu!" The crowd's chant thundered, a thousand voices lifting me higher.
I smiled, poised. A butterfly in her final flight.
The music swelled, and I continued to sing. Each note flowed, perfect, beautiful. For a moment, I almost believed it—believed I could stay suspended in this eternity.
And then—
The screen behind me blinked.
Once, twice. Static.
"Keep singing!" the conductor hissed from the pit, motioning frantically.
At first, I thought it was a technical error—static, then a shaky video. But then the words came, plastered in bold across the massive projection.
My voice cracked. Just once. A hairline fracture in the glass.
"What is—?" I whispered into the mic before catching myself.
The conductor gestured sharply from the pit: Sing.
I forced the song back out of me.
Behind me, the staff swarmed the control panel, their whispers hissing loud in my ear monitors:
"What the hell is that—shut it down!"
"It's not responding—goddammit, it's overridden—"
"Keep her singing! Don't let the audience—"
Static cleared. The video rolled.
My own face appeared. Not on stage, not smiling, but backstage. Darker lighting, my lips curled in disdain.
"Cry prettier if you want the cameras on you."
The sound hit the hall like a slap. Gasps scattered through the seats.
"No, that's—" My words died in my throat.
How—
The orchestra faltered. Strings screeched off-key before falling silent altogether.
"Cut the feed!" a tech shouted from the side.
"I told you—it's not cutting—"
The audience's silence lasted three agonizing heartbeats. Then whispers flared like wildfire:
"What's going on!"
"What the hell is that?"
"It sounds like something sinister!"
"Arishu, Arishu!"
The screen cut again. Another clip rolled.
This time it was me backstage, makeup half-done, a staff girl holding tissues near me. My face twisted in irritation.
"Don't stand there gawking, do it faster. If you're not useful, I'll have you replaced tomorrow. I don't need someone useless in my life."
The staff girl flinched in the video. Laughter bubbled cruelly from me—no, from her, from that version of me.
Gasps cracked through the crowd.
I staggered back half a step. "That's not—I didn't—"
The next video cut in before I could breathe.
I was sitting in a lounge, phone in hand, smirking faintly. My voice dripped with venom.
"Idols? They're just useless to me. They won't even be able to overshadow me, as for their fans—they're just idiots. Following illusions and fame, no one's better than me."
A man's voice in the background asked: "And what if they ever see the truth?"
I shrugged, unconcerned. "Then I'll just find new ones."
The audience erupted.
"What the hell did she say!?"
"She called us idiots!"
"Is this… real footage?"
"Fake," I choked into the mic, voice trembling. "This isn't real—"
Another clip cut me off.
The screen glitched again.
A dressing room. My reflection stared back at me in the mirror, hair pinned perfectly, though my eyes were shadowed. A staff member's voice trembled from behind the camera.
"Miss Arishu, the others… they're tired. Can't we end rehearsal early?"
My recorded voice was calm, almost gentle—but too blunt, too stripped bare.
"If they're tired, they can quit. The stage doesn't wait for weak people."
Gasps rippled through the audience.
I had only meant it as truth. As protection. Because the stage really didn't wait—one mistake, and the crowd would eat you alive. But out of context, it was a guillotine.
The feed jumped again.
This time, I was on the phone. My voice was low, tired, speaking quickly between rehearsals. "Yes, he'll marry me. Because I need someone who won't leave when everything collapses. Because I can't keep standing alone."
But the edit cut the last sentence.
On the stage screen, it ended after "he'll marry me… because he has no choice."
The silence turned to shouts.
"She's using him!"
"Arishu's fake—everything's fake!"
"She's been playing us!"
My knees trembled. I wanted to scream, to tell them they didn't understand—that I wasn't cruel, I was desperate. That I loved too hard, demanded too much, because I didn't know how to be gentle.
But the mic only caught the thin tremor of my breath.
Another clip.
A rehearsal, dancers moving in blurred streaks. My voice sharp, commanding: "Smile wider. You don't smile, they'll hate you. Cry prettier, or I'll make sure the cameras never find you."
The crowd recoiled.
To them it was cruelty. To me it had been advice, hard truth—because I wanted them to survive where the stage had already begun to consume me.
But none of that mattered.
Because the screen didn't show intent. The screen only showed words.
And words without warmth were daggers.
"Stop it! Stop the feed!" the stage director screamed from the wings.
The staff swarmed the panel, yanking cables, pulling at wires, and... it finally worked. The video ended but...
The crowd surged.
"She lied to us!"
"She's disgusting!"
"Was she manipulating Stephen too?!"
"Arishu is a fake!"
My microphone picked up the first trembling breath that escaped my throat. I wanted to explain, to beg them to wait, to tell them:
Please—please, you don't understand.
"Monster!" someone screamed.
"Manipulator!"
"Fake butterfly!"
The chant began to warp. It wasn't my name anymore. It was venom, rising, breaking, shattering the air.
"Down with her! Down with her!"
My vision blurred. The spotlight burned hotter, harsher. For the first time, I wanted it gone. I wanted the dark.
Security rushed onstage, their arms out, blocking the front row as hands reached for me. Some threw bottles. Others, scraps of paper torn from banners once painted with my name.
The house lights seared my vision. Security grabbed me, tugging me offstage. My heels scraped against the boards, balance gone.
Backstage wasn't relief—it was worse.
The staff were chaos incarnate, shoving equipment, shouting at each other.
"Shut the show down!"
"Handle the riot!"
"We can't—too many people!"
And in the middle of it all—Stephen.
He stood frozen, eyes wide, bouquet of white roses still clutched in his hands. He had been waiting to step out, to surprise me with his support, with love.
Now he only stared.
I wanted to speak, to beg him to believe me. To say it wasn't what it looked like. That they twisted it, carved out the softness from my words until all that remained was cruelty.
But my mouth was dry. My voice cracked into nothing.
He didn't move. Didn't drop the flowers. Didn't step closer.
He just… looked.
And that look told me everything.
The butterfly had fallen.
And no one—not even the one I loved—would catch her.
"Stephe—"
Before I could even complete his name in my mouth, he already disappeared.
* * *
The aftermath wasn't instant.
It stretched. Weeks bled together, each day a thread unraveling from the fabric of my life.
At first, the staff insisted it would blow over. "A scandal, nothing more. We'll spin it. Say it's fake. The audience will forget."
But they didn't forget.
Everywhere I went, whispers followed. On the street, in cafes, even from shadows behind closed curtains. Phones rose when I passed, recording. I couldn't tell if people were waiting for me to smile or to break.
And Stephen—
Stephen stopped calling. At first, I thought it was nerves, or anger. Something I could fix. I sent him messages, long, desperate, short, angry, then sweet, pleading. None of them got replies. The read receipts never appeared.
The bouquet of white roses withered in a vase by my door. I couldn't throw them away.
Work turned to torment. Each rehearsal was a battlefield. My manager avoided my eyes, the producers whispered behind glass walls. When I sang, the musicians played too stiffly, as if they were accompanying a ghost.
"Again," they'd say.
So I sang again.
"Again."
I sang until my throat bled.
I told myself: if I just keep going, they'll see. They'll remember. That the girl on the stage is me, not the one on the screen.
But the applause thinned. The cameras turned away. Even the staff who once scurried to please me now walked on eggshells, waiting for the butterfly to die so they could find another one to cage.
And then the messages began.
Letters slipped under my door. Comment feeds filled with venom.
Manipulator. Snake. Two-faced doll. Die already.
Even headlines goes as far as ruining me.
"Showbiz Headline: Arishu Kurohona—The Greatest Artist had fallen out of Grace"
"Arishu Kurohona: A Butterfly or a Snake?"
I laughed at them, at first. Out loud, sharp and hollow. I told myself: they don't know me. They don't understand. I love too deeply, too foolishly—what do they know of that?
But inside… each word dug deeper.
Contracts were cancelled.
My family won't even come see me or lend their hand. I don't even know who would do something like this...
As for my friends and confidants, they never answer my calls or texts—and whenever they did, they pretend they don't know my number and slowly hang up.
And when Stephen finally agreed to meet me—I rushed in, going through the fourteen-storey building's rooftop with a beautiful tapestry and garden.
My hands gripped the railing. Cold iron bit into my skin. The air rushed hard against me, sharp with the scent of steel and rain.
Behind me, footsteps.
"Arishu."
That voice. Familiar. Too familiar.
I turned. Stephen stood there, framed by the rooftop door, suit jacket clinging to him in the wind. His face—handsome, steady, the one I had once leaned on was now unreadable.
"You came," I whispered with hope.
He didn't answer right away. His eyes swept the distance between us, the edge, the height. His jaw tightened. "What are you doing here?"
I laughed. A brittle, ugly sound. "Don't you know? I waited for you! I wanted to meet you..!"
"Stop." His voice cut sharp. "This isn't you."
"Isn't me?" I tilted my head, the wind tugging my hair across my face. "Who is me, Stephen? The perfect girl on stage? The snake on the screen? Or the fiancée who loved you so much she chained you to herself?"
His expression cracked. Just slightly. "That wasn't love, Arishu."
The words stabbed deeper than any blade.
I froze. For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
Not love? Was that what all of it meant? My careful words, my games, my manipulations—they weren't cruelty. They were survival. My way of holding onto him, onto the only person who ever looked at me like I wasn't a doll.
But he couldn't see that.
The city roared below, horns blaring, lights flashing. The sound swelled in my skull, too loud, too suffocating. My knees weakened. I hated it. Hated the noise, the way it pinned me as much as the stage lights once had.
"I—" My throat burned. "I didn't mean to—"
"You hurt people, Arishu," he said quietly. "You hurt me."
The words cut me down.
I swallowed, hard. "I never lied."
He looked at me like I had said the cruelest thing.
"I never lied," I repeated, louder this time. My chest trembled, but my voice stayed steady. "I only said the truth the way it lived in me. If I wanted something, I said it. If I loved you, I said it. If I feared losing you, I wrapped chains around you. Isn't that love? Isn't it?"
His expression faltered. The wind caught his jacket, tugged it like the night was trying to take him from me, too.
"You don't understand," I whispered. "That stage, those people—they don't want me. They want a doll. A perfect doll that never falters. But you—" My throat burned. "You were the only one who saw me ugly, and still stayed. So I held on. Too tightly, maybe. But I held on."
His voice was low. "And in holding on, you broke everything."
I flinched. My grip slipped from the railing before catching again. Heights. Always heights.
"I didn't want to break it." My lips trembled into something like a smile, something fragile. "I just… didn't know how else to live."
The silence between us was deafening. The city blared below—horns, shouts, the endless drone of a life I no longer belonged to.
Finally, Stephen exhaled, a shuddering sound. His hand lifted, just barely. For one wild heartbeat, I thought he would cross the distance. Thought he would take my wrist and anchor me again.
But he stopped. His fingers hovered in the air, then lowered slowly.
That single motion broke me more than any scandal ever could.
If even Stephen couldn't save me—then I wasn't worth saving.
Tears blurred the lights below into streaks, ugly and bright. My chest felt hollow, emptied of everything but one final, aching truth.
"Then… I'll stop hurting you," I whispered.
And I stepped back.
The wind swallowed me whole. The ground rushed upward. The lights fractured into blinding shards.
The air swallowed me whole. My stomach lurched as the city lights flipped upside down, then sideways, then into a blur of streaking color. Wind screamed in my ears, stripping the mask from my face, leaving only fear.
I wanted to close my eyes. I couldn't. I wanted to scream. My throat was empty.
And then—
CRAAAASH
A deafening CRASH. Metal caved beneath me as my body slammed onto the hood of a car waiting below. Glass spiderwebbed, shards scattering like starlight. Pain tore through me, sharp, burning, unbearable.
Through the fractured windshield, I saw him.
A man. Hands frozen on the steering wheel, his eyes wide, empty, yet screaming with something that mirrored my own despair.
Our gazes locked.
Recognition struck harder than the fall. I didn't know his name then—Vincent—but the face imprinted itself in me like a brand.
For a heartbeat, the world held still. My body broken, his future shattered. His eyes clung to me, blank yet full of a weight that made me think: he's falling too.
I tried to reach. He looked the same as me—as if betrayal soaked him too.
I stretched my hand—even when blood poured out of my neck and chest, glass pieced my skin, or when I couldn't move any part of my body besides my arm to him.
And as he was about to do the same.
My memory blanked.
* * *
Knock knock knock
"Ms. Arishu?"
Her eyes flew open.
The ceiling above was carved, pristine, gilded at the corners. Not a stage. Not headlights. Not the rushing blur of the city.
Her breath caught, ragged, as the phantom weight of falling clung to her ribs. She sat up too quickly. The book she had borrowed from the library slid off the bed, thudding against the floor.
Another knock.
The sound was ordinary. But her pulse still raced like glass had shattered around her. She pressed a hand to her chest, forcing air into her lungs.
Another knock. Softer this time. "Arishu?"