Nagasaki Soyo woke up on a cold floor.
With great effort, she pushed her upper body up, her head feeling stuffed with waterlogged cotton. The scene before her eyes blurred and swayed for a long while before gradually coming into focus—the familiar outline of the drum kit, the audio cables piled in the corner, and that massive floor-to-ceiling mirror that occupied the entire wall.
This was the band's practice room.
"Ugh..." She rubbed her throbbing temples. Her memories were like beads from a broken string.
'What happened? How did I end up asleep here?'
============
Her memory was abruptly yanked back to yesterday afternoon.
The practice room was filled with an agonizing silence regarding whether Tomori could be the lead singer, but Soyo's mind wasn't entirely immersed in it.
When she, Sakiko, Taki, and Mutsumi stepped into this practice room arranged by "that man," an indescribable sense of strangeness had clung to her like a shadow.
It wasn't a sound, nor a smell, but a feeling... of being watched.
Ethereal, yet prickling her back like needles.
As if, from some corner of the room, a pair of cold eyes were silently piercing through the walls, landing on them, especially on her.
This feeling gave her the creeps. Coupled with the suspicious behavior of that blond man (Sakiko's "brother")—the secret meeting with Mutsumi in the corner of Tsukinomori, the covert contact with Taki who shouldn't have had any connection to him, and the shadow-like stalking after leaving the café—the alarm bells in Soyo's heart had long been ringing.
A girl's "sixth sense" wasn't unfounded. She chose to trust this intuition.
'Could it be... there are hidden cameras in this room?' A bold guess took shape in her mind.
'He's the one who booked this practice room. As the young master of the Togawa Family, if he wanted to do something to this band... he certainly has the capability.'
Once this thought took root, it rapidly took hold. She remained calm, didn't look around, didn't show the slightest hint of anything unusual. She simply sat steadily in her seat, wearing a flawless, gentle smile on her face, watching her teammates' discussion about the lead singer reach an impasse.
However, her heart was like a tightly strung bowstring.
'I must... do something.'
Just as the atmosphere grew slightly tense due to Tomori's silence, a timely knock on the door broke the stuffiness of the practice room.
"Ah, that must be the drinks I ordered." Soyo lightly clapped her hands together, her voice carrying just the right amount of cheerfulness, as if the previous worries had never existed.
'Because Tomori-chan can't sing, the atmosphere's a bit stiff. I hope these drinks can help ease it a little.' She thought to herself as she stood up and walked towards the door, a slight complaint about the weather flitting through her mind.
'And it's been raining so heavily since just now, it's really annoying, rainy days...'
"In such heavy rain, being able to deliver on time is truly..." Soyo said polite words of gratitude while pulling open the heavy soundproof door.
However, the second half of her sentence got stuck in her throat, instantly frozen as if drenched in ice water.
The person standing outside wasn't the expected, rain-soaked delivery person. Despite wearing the eye-catching, bright yellow Teiai delivery jacket and a mask covering almost half their face, rainwater dripping from their hood... those eyes—cold, profound, along with those few strands of blond hair peeking out from under the damp hood and the glimpse of tanned skin at the edge of the mask...
'It's him!'
'That blond man Saki-chan calls 'brother'—Togawa Fuuki!'
"...Thank you." Soyo almost instinctively squeezed out these two words through gritted teeth.
The door slammed shut behind her with a forceful 'bang,' cutting off the gaze from outside.
"What's wrong, Soyo-san?" Sakiko's concerned voice came from behind. She had clearly noticed Soyo's stiffness after opening the door.
"No, it's nothing~ Come, everyone, let's have some drinks."
Soyo instantly turned around, her face already adorned once more with that sweet, appropriate smile, as if the earlier shock had been just an illusion. She quickly walked to the table, smoothly taking out the drinks from the bag one by one and distributing them to her teammates. The slight tremble in her fingertips was perfectly hidden beneath her smile.
'Why is he here?! The delivery person shown on the app was clearly a woman named Yuutenji...'
Soyo's mind raced, trying to parse this sudden encounter.
'Could it be he sensed my wariness of him? No, I hid it well; it shouldn't have been that obvious...'
Thoughts collided like sparks. The most "reasonable" explanation surfaced.
'Right. The seat closest to the door is Tomori-chan's. Logically, she would be the most likely one to open the door.'
'He wanted to use this chance to make contact with Tomori-chan! Right now, Tomori-chan is vulnerable because she can't sing. Even just a stranger's cold glance, an unintentional comment, could deal her a huge blow, making her even more unable to sing!'
'Yes, that must be it! He wants to dismantle us from within, first crushing the most sensitive lead singer.'
'And I, by accidentally opening the door instead of Tomori-chan, ruined his plan. That's why the look he gave me was so... cold!'
'Then, next, will I, this 'insignificant person,' become his primary target?'
"Soyo-san, are you really okay?" Sakiko had somehow walked over to her side. Those clear eyes were full of worry as she gently touched Soyo's arm.
"You've been a bit out of it since opening the door just now, and your expression was gloomy. Are you feeling unwell somewhere?" Sakiko leaned in very close, so close that Soyo could see her long eyelashes and the concern in her eyes.
Soyo's cheeks involuntarily warmed slightly. Sakiko's concern was like a warm current dispersing the tangled, cold ball of yarn in her heart.
Her originally chaotic thoughts instantly settled. One incredibly clear, incredibly firm notion took dominance.
'I must... protect Saki-chan's band! Protect this 'shared destiny' she holds dear!'
...
After practice ended, the members left separately. Soyo called out to Sakiko at the door.
"Saki-chan," she showed a slightly apologetic smile, "I was thinking of bringing some small items the band might need for practice tomorrow, like a metronome, spare picks, things like that. Could you give me the spare key first? That way I can come directly to set things up."
Sakiko, unsuspecting, readily handed a small silver key to Soyo: "Mm, sorry for the trouble, Soyo-san."
After getting the key, Soyo didn't leave immediately. She returned to the practice room, carefully pulling the heavy blackout curtains tightly shut, ensuring not a single gap allowed outside light to seep in. Confirming that darkness instantly enveloped the entire room, she gently closed the door and left.
...
Saturday morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten.
Nagasaki Soyo, who adhered to a "no staying up late" policy, now had faint dark circles under her eyes. She stood before the dressing mirror, scrutinizing her attire, which was completely different from usual: an inconspicuous dark gray tracksuit, her smooth brown hair tightly tied back and tucked into a dark blue baseball cap. Huge sunglasses and a mask covering almost the lower half of her face completely concealed her delicate features.
Looking like this, no one on the street would connect her to the elegant, gentle young lady from Tsukinomori.
She didn't choose the convenient train. Instead, she directly hailed a taxi by the roadside and gave the address of the building housing the practice room.
The car sped through the empty morning streets, but Soyo's heartbeat accelerated constantly as the destination neared.
She paid and got out of the car, quickly and discreetly bypassed the dozing front desk clerk in the lobby, and slipped into the elevator. The slight weightlessness from the elevator's ascent, which usually felt normal, now felt like a bugle charge rushing toward an unknown battlefield.
Click.
The spare key smoothly opened the practice room door. Soyo slipped inside, immediately turned and gently closed the door behind her, leaned back against the door panel, and took a deep breath. The room was pitch dark. The heavy curtains blocked out all external light; only a thin sliver of light seeped in under the door crack.
She quickly crouched down, her gaze sharp as she scanned the doormat.
After leaving the practice room last night, she had hidden in the stairwell to think of a plan. The air there was stuffy, filled with the heavy smell of tar and dust.
It was in this unpleasant environment that an idea suddenly struck. She picked up a relatively clean advertising flyer from the ground printed with [Happiness! Peace of Mind!] and carefully collected the accumulated cigarette ash from the windowsill in the hallway. After confirming everyone else had left, she quietly returned and evenly sprinkled these fine gray ashes on the doormat.
Now, the cigarette ash on the doormat maintained the even state she had left it in last night. There were no footprints with ash on the surrounding floor either.
'After everyone left, no one has come in.'
Soyo's taut nerves finally relaxed a fraction. She leaned against the door, feeling the rhythm of her heart gradually calming after its violent pounding in her chest.
After calming her initial nervousness, Soyo took out her phone from her backpack. On the screen was an app she had specifically downloaded last night—a tool that could help detect hidden pinhole cameras by checking for reflections and abnormal signal sources.
She took a deep breath and opened the app's scanning function.
The time that followed became exceptionally long—Soyo, like the most patient hunter, held up her phone, letting the screen's light slowly sweep over every corner of the room: ceiling seams, air conditioning vents, power outlets, baseboards, gaps in the instruments, the backs of speakers...
She moved extremely slowly, extremely meticulously, while also keeping her ears perked up, catching even the slightest noise from the hallway outside the door. If she heard footsteps or voices approaching from afar, she could quickly slide under the cluttered table in the corner, hold her breath, and only come out once the danger had passed.
'Strange...'
She subconsciously moved her head, feeling an unusual tightness in her hair under the baseball cap. Her ears were also unusually sharp, able to hear even the distant hum of the elevator.
But all her attention was focused on the constantly changing indicator bar on the phone screen and the corners before her that might hide evil, leaving no room for anything else.
An hour passed.
Just as she was almost beginning to doubt her intuition and the reliability of the app, the signal indicator bar on her phone screen suddenly jumped. Accompanied by a sharp alert sound, the flashing red dot on the screen clearly pointed to a location—the metal-framed border of that massive floor-to-ceiling mirror, near an inconspicuous joint at the upper right corner.
The girl held her breath, leaned close to that corner, almost pressing her face against the cold mirror surface. Under the faint glow of the phone screen, in an extremely tiny, circular hole almost blending into the dark metal frame, an incredibly faint, dark red light dot was glowing like a snake's eye.
'Found it!' The finally achieved result almost made Soyo cheer out loud.
'It really is him! Saki-chan's brother, he's been monitoring this band all along. The feeling of being watched yesterday wasn't an illusion!'
A surge of mixed emotions—anger, lingering fear, and the excitement of finally catching the other's tail—rushed to her head. She didn't even notice that the fluffy, brown tail that had been quietly hanging behind her was now uncontrollably swaying slightly from side to side due to her agitated emotions, like a little fox that had discovered its prey's nest.
'But... what should I do next?'
After the excitement, practical problems followed one after another.
'Tell Saki-chan directly?'
Soyo immediately rejected this idea.
'With that man's status and methods, he could easily brush it off with excuses like 'to ensure the safety of the expensive instruments' or 'concern for my sister.' Stirring the grass would only make him more vigilant, and he might even resort to more intense, more unreasonable means to deal with the band.'
'Right now, he's just secretly pulling small tricks, trying to destroy us from within in various ways... As long as he hasn't openly torn up the facade, we still have room to maneuver...'
Soyo frowned tightly, concentrating fully on thinking of a countermeasure, trying to find a way out for the band Sakiko cherished within the invisible net the other had laid.
Just as she sank into deep thought, unconsciously shaking her head slightly, the baseball cap she had been wearing on her head silently slipped off and fell with a soft 'pat' onto the floor by her feet.
"Ah..."
'This hat really doesn't fit well...'
Soyo was pulled back to reality by this slight sound, muttering a small, annoyed complaint in her heart.
She instinctively bent down, reaching to pick up the cap from the floor.
The moment she leaned over and lowered her head, the corner of her eye inadvertently swept over the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror in front of her.
The mirror clearly reflected her bending figure—the dark gray tracksuit, tied-back brown hair, the mask covering her face, and...
And above her head, standing erect, a pair of fluffy, brown-and-white... fox ears?!
============
What happened afterward had already deviated from the reality the girl understood.
"How could something like this happen... I turned into a fox, crying and screaming for help in the pitch-black practice room, or something like that..."
Soyo suddenly felt a bit cold. Just as she was about to reach out and wrap her clothes tighter, she found her hand directly touching her own well-developed chest.
"Huh... Huh?!!!"
The girl somewhat incredulously touched her whole body with her hands, only to find herself now sitting naked on the practice room floor, like a newborn baby.
'No way!!'
'Why am I naked here!'
She quickly groped around, trying to find something to cover her body, only to discover a pile of familiar clothes scattered not far from her.
Soyo directly pounced over, frantically pulling the shirt and pants onto her body. Coming back to her senses, she realized she hadn't put on her underwear, so she simply stuffed them into her pockets.
And while getting dressed, Soyo noticed something fluffy swaying back and forth near her tailbone... her butt. She reached back and grabbed it, feeling a furry sensation.
'Could it be true that I turned into a fox?!'
'No, that's too ridiculous... A person turning into an animal for no reason, that's a setting even sci-fi novelists wouldn't dare use lightly.'
'But... was it really for no reason?'
'I secretly infiltrated this practice room, lost consciousness, woke up lying naked on the floor, and grew a tail...'
The girl's brain started working again. Anxiously, she checked her surroundings, racking her brains to try and connect all the clues.
Finally, when her gaze fell on the glowing red dot at the upper right corner of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, the heart she had been holding up finally "snapped" and shattered.
'The camera... I haven't removed it yet...'
'Which means...'
Yes, under Togawa Fuuki's instructions, the ultra-clear camera with night vision capability, personally installed by [Spider], had completely recorded everything that happened inside this practice room.
Moreover, the video recording was transmitted in real-time to the encrypted cloud drive shared by [Spider] and Fuuki, while also being live-streamed on [Spider]'s computer screen!
Shame, sorrow, fear, and anger...
These emotions surged in the girl's heart, constantly battering against her seemingly strong, yet actually fragile heart.
"Togawa Fuuki... is this your method!?"
Feelings of grievance turned into tears, breaching the dam of the girl's heart.
"Sob..."
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