The fluorescent lights in the LUMINA! Entertainment's clinic didn't just buzz. They hummed.
The light was a clear, pure 5000-Kelvin bulb that removed the traces of all kinds of shadows, leaving nowhere for a flaw to hide.
In this room, time was frozen and the air smelled faintly of bleach, stagestep and a faint scent of Lavender, Neroli and Chamomile-meant to cover up the lingering smells of hunger and sweat. Also to manage anxiety and focus.
Reina Shiratori stood naked on the cold glass of the digital scale.
She kept her eyes fixed on a microscopic, hair-like thin crack in the white plaster of the ceiling. It was a survival tactic she had learned early on-
If she kept her eyes up, the numbers wouldn't change. Maybe the numbers wouldn't be real either. But in the idol industry, the only thing that really mattered was gravity and right now, it was deciding her fate.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
0kg
1kg
2kg
.
.
.
43.4kg
43.4kg
The digital scale's display finally stopped at 43.4kg. And locked in with glowing red font, red malice: 43.4kg.
Reina stopped breathing. Her chest tightened as if an invisible corset had just been yanked shut on her chest.
In her contract, a ninety page labyrinth of clauses, non-disclosures and ownership rights which she signed and pressed her seal at the beginning of her idol journey, stipulated a maximum operational weight of 43.0kg.
And now she was carrying 400 grams of unsanctioned sin.
Sayuri, her manager who was behind her, looked at the scale.
She didn't yell. Because yelling required passion and passion was something only the fans who dropped 5000 yen for a ticket could afford.
Sayuri simply looked at the clipboard and wrote something, her carefully manicured acrylic nail tapping slowly and steadily against the plastic backing.
Sayuri's face was a masterclass face. A face devoid of any emotions. She looked like a caring older sister but her eyes held the cold, detached look.
"Did you drink water after 8:00 PM yesterday, Reina?" Sayuri asked. Her voice was as smooth and frictionless as a porcelain doll.
"I had a sore throat from vocal training," Reina whispered and instinctively adopted a high, breathy pitch of her idol persona.
"Just half a cup. The instructor said my vocal cords were micro-tearing."
"Half a cup of water is half a kilo of liability." Sayuri replied, not looking up from her spreadsheet.
"The fans don't pay to see a bloated center, Reina. They pay for perfection. They pay for the dream."
Sayuri turned to the stainless-steel medical cart beside the scale and picked up a small, ribbed paper cup containing a single, chalky white pill. A top-grade diuretic.
"Swallow it. Then put on the suit," Sayuri ordered. "You have a swimsuit and lingerie concept fitting at noon and your jawline is also round and soft."
Reina took the pill directly. She wanted to swallow the pill with water. But then she thought about her contract and her fans. The pill scraped violently against the back of her throat, leaving an aftertaste of chalk dust and chemical rust. She didn't complain. Then she stepped off the scale and Sayuri handed her the "Sauna Suit."
It was a heavy, wrinkled silver polymer tracksuit that looked like an industrial garbage bag. It was designed to trap every ounce of body heat, forcing the wearer to sweat out their own weight in water. Reina pulled the suffocating, cold and unforgiving silver fabric over her pale skin, zipping it up to her chin. The disgusting suit clung to her instantly.
Ten minutes later, Reina was in the windowless proper air conditioning room. She was running on the clinic's hidden treadmill and the incline set to a brutal fifteen degrees.
The heat was increasing rapidly inside the silver plastic suit. She started to feel claustrophobic.
Within twenty minutes, her vision began to blur at the edges and the bright white walls of the room were gradually turning into a hazy grayish white. She could feel the bitter aftertaste of copper in her mouth, an unmistakable sign that her body was cannibalizing and stripping away its muscle tissue for a final spark of energy.
This was a birdcage. A high-tech, perfectly optimized prison where the bars weren't made of metal but were made of public expectations and brutal clauses.
To keep herself from passing out, Reina deployed her ultimate defense mechanism- dissociation. She split her mind from her body. As her legs ran frantically against the rolling black belt, she began to whisper the lines from her PR scripts in rhythm with her footsteps. It was a desperate, lyrical chant that was not her own.
"I love you all... you are my wings..." Step. Breathe.
"I'll always be your pure Reina..." Step. Breathe.
"Your smiles are my energy..."
Tower of Babel, she thought wildly in the back of her fading consciousness.
I feel like I'm stuck living in a tower of Babel.
She had repeated those same words so many times that they lost all their meaning for her. The agency had stolen her true voice and replaced it with an artificial mechanical voice designed solely for lonely men to waste their worthless time and money. She was like a princess locked in a tower but the real boss wasn't the tower itself. It was the dragon keeping her there and that was the actual final boss.
To her left, on a different treadmill, a younger trainee named Ami was running without any trouble. She was only 16, weighing in at a perfect 41.5kg. But unlike her, she wasn't wearing a sauna suit. Ami looked at Reina with a side glance, her lips curving into a subtle but razorsharp smirk.
"Pacing yourself, Reina-senpai?" Ami asked sweetly, her voice dripping with venomous innocence.
"I heard the director is thinking about making me the 'center' for the next summer single. You know how it is. Youth is our most important asset and biggest selling point. Once that's gone, what's left?"
Reina didn't look at her. She didn't even have the energy to turn her head. Every tiny movement was too much for her to handle.
Ami was just another victim, another pretty face, another beautiful corpse, waiting to be used up by the industry. The jealousy, the scheming and the backstabbing were all part of the agency's plan. They kept the girls fighting each other instead of the system.
"Keep your form tight, Ami. Don't get sloppy," Reina managed to say through her heavy breathing. She put on her best 'kind senior' act. "Your left foot is dragging."
Ami's smug look disappeaed instantly, replaced by a look of fear and panic as she quickly looked down at her feet.
Reina closed her eyes. It was a tiny victory, a petty win in a war she was already losing. When the treadmill finally stopped after two long brutal hours, Reina almost fell against the handrails. She grabbed the rails just to stay upright. Her silver suit was soaked and dripping with sweat. She stumbled into the locker room and stripped the plastic off her shaking body. She felt empty and dizzy, as if she was standing right on the edge of the deep dark abyss.
Before heading to the showers, she opened her locker with shaking fingers and pulled out her smartphone. She just wanted to see the time, to anchor herself back to reality.
Instead, her lock screen lit up with a notification from her official LUMINA! social media account.
Reina_Kirigoe_Official just posted a new photo!
Reina blinked, the metallic taste of copper still lingering in her mouth.
She unlocked the phone and opened the app.
There, on her feed, was a picture of herself.
She was sitting in a sunlit café, wearing a pristine white sundress she hadn't worn in months, holding a brightly colored can of Yotsuba Splash diet soda.
The caption read-
"Starting my morning right! ☀️💖
Nothing gives me energy like the new Yotsuba Splash!
Make sure to grab one today, everyone!
#YotsubaBrand
#Purity
#MorningVibes"
The post already had gotten 14k likes.
Reina felt a sudden chill as if a wave of icy fear washed over her skin, turning her sweat cold. She stared at the image, unable to breath.
She was allergic to the artificial sweetener in that soda. It gave her a rash. Besides there was no way she had been to a café in three weeks. Also her schedule was monitored down to the minute by the agency.
She zoomed in. The photo looked great. The lighting was just right. The smile was perfect. But when she looked closely at her own eyes, she felt something was wrong. She stared into the digital eyes of her own face. The reflection of the window in her eyes... were too perfect. As if it was done by a computer with mathematically perfected precision. The shadows didn't bend around her eyes the way they do in real life.
It was a computer generated deepfake image made by AI. A deepfake so advanced that it had bypassed reality entirely. It had polished the image into something more perfect than human beings could ever be.
The agency's AI algorithm had completely taken over her life. It had access to her accounts. It was posting her photos, hitting her sales targets and fulfilling sponsorship quotas. Also chatting with her fans in her voice, all while the real Reina was locked in a basement, running and sweating on a treadmill in a garbage bag.
Who is the victim here? The question filled her with a sudden, cold dread. A chill crawled down her back. It was her. She was being erased, piece by piece and replaced by a ghost, a perfect version of her that didn't need to eat, sleep or breathe.
"Reina."
Reina jumped, nearly dropping her phone. Sayuri was standing near the doorway of the locker room. She moved with the quiet and terrifying speed. She didn't offer her a towel or a glass of water. Instead, she held a silver tray. On it rested an alcohol swab, a small glass vial and a medical syringe which would soon be filled with unknown liquid.
"Come here," Sayuri said simply, her tone implying it wasn't a request.
Reina swallowed her panic, hiding the phone behind her back before sliding it into her locker. She walked back into the clinic area, her bare feet sticking slightly to the floor tile. She extended her bruised, shaking hand.
"You look pale," Sayuri rubbed a cold, stinging alcohol wipe on Reina's elbow while watching her the whole time.
"This will put the colors back in your cheeks."
Reina watched as Sayuri drew a pale yellow liquid from a small glass vial.
Reina stared at the vial, her eyes heavy with exhaustion and wide with terror, locked onto the vial.
It had no medical label. No brand name. No list of what was inside or any kinds of Yellow/Blue Letter warnings. Just a white sticker. Only a plain sharp pitch black and bright white barcode was printed on the sticker. It looked like an inventory tag or a tracking tag for a spare part in a warehouse.
The needle pierced her vein.
The "Vitamin Cocktail" hit her system like a bolt of lightning. The change was instant and violent. One moment she was dying, the next she was wide awake. Within three seconds, the exhaustion was erased, replaced by a terrifying focus and a scary, fake clarity. Her heart raced, beating like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. The world became sharper, warmer and brighter. She wasn't hungry anymore; she was just high. It was a mix of powerful stimulants, hormones and vitamins, a drug made for only one purpose: to keep her smiling, dancing and doing what she was told for the next 18 hours.
"Better?" Sayuri asked. She pulled the needle from Reina's vein and pressed a small piece of gauze over the spot. Without waiting for an answer, she turned around and put the empty vial on a steel table and threw the used syringe into the biohazard bin.
"Perfect," Reina lied. Her voice buzzed with a fake, terrifying energy. She flashed her million dollar idol smile. A beautiful and radiant smile but it didn't carry any real emotions behind it.
They are stealing my face.
My words.
My blood.
The thought became clear in her drug-fueled brain. The weak, fragile girl, the quiet princess, was going to die in this room. If she wanted to make it though, just being an idol won't help her. She had no choice but to become a predator. She had to become the "wicked woman" they were forcing her to be.
As Sayuri reached for the biohazard lid, Reina's hand shot out with lightning speed. Her fingers gripped the empty glass vial on the counter. It was still warm. With a smooth, silent move, a skilled move she didn't even know she possessed, she slipped the vial into the bottom of her gym bag.
A cold, sharp thought flashed in her mind-
If they are going to treat me like a product, I need to know exactly what's inside the packaging.
She wasn't just an idol anymore. She was like a crime scene and she had just picked up her first piece of evidence.
> [SYSTEM LOG: YOTSUBA_ALGORITHM_MONITOR]
> Entity: ASSET_Reina (Kirigoe)
> Physical Health: 61% (Critical Decline)
> Resting Heart Rate: 135 BPM (Chemically Elevated)
> Digital Twin Engagement: +400% (Sponsorship Quota Met)
> Public Purity Score: 99.8%
> Agency Ownership Level: Absolute.
> [WARNING: ANOMALOUS BEHAVIOR DETECTED. PLEASE MONITOR ASSET CLOSELY.]