October 1988, Tokyo.
The rain outside showed no sign of stopping.
Raindrops drummed against the glass walls, smearing the city’s brilliant yet hollow neon glow into hazy patches of color.
It was 2:15 in the morning.
Kawadacho, Shinjuku—Fuji Television’s old headquarters.
Even at this hour, the enormous white building remained awake like some tireless beast, endlessly swallowing and spitting out the greatest ambitions, desires, fame, and fortune Japan had to offer.
Every so often, an AD (assistant director) would sprint down the corridor with an armful of videotapes.
Elsewhere, a producer with an oily, exhausted face might stumble out of an all-night meeting.
The air carried the unmistakable scent of the entertainment industry: expensive perfume, cheap cigarettes, and the restless bitterness of far too much caffeine.
Shin Kitahara sat in the lounge at the far end of the corridor, a can of black coffee in his hand, freshly bought from the vending machine.
The metal can was almost too hot to hold, but he kept his fingers wrapped around it.
On a cold, damp night like this, it was the only warmth he had.
“Still a little too stiff.”
Shin stared at his reflection in the vending machine’s glass and quietly reviewed his performance.
The face staring back belonged to a twenty-two-year-old man.
His features were clean and well-proportioned—handsome, certainly, but in a painfully conventional way.
Put him in any television drama and he looked like the righteous side character who would be dead by episode three, or the heroine’s painfully ordinary ex-boyfriend whose idea of romance was telling her to drink more hot water.
No one knew that inside this young body lived the soul of a man from decades in the future.
In his previous life, Shin had spent nearly his entire career scraping by in Hengdian.
He had played everything from corpses and eunuchs to stunt doubles and featured extras.
By the end, people could at least call him a seasoned veteran.
Acting had been carved into his bones.
Unfortunately, his old face had been far too unfortunate for a leading role, and he had gone his entire life without ever becoming the star.
This time around, fate had finally given him a handsome face and then dropped him straight into Japan’s glittering bubble era, when money seemed to grow on trees.
Reality, however, had been much less generous.
“Too theatrical.”
“Nothing memorable about him.”
“Technically, I can’t find anything wrong with his acting…
but I still don’t want to look at him twice.”
That was the verdict a well-known casting director had given him just last week.
Tonight, Shin had landed a tiny role in a police drama: a waiter who appeared on-screen only to be killed moments later by a stray bullet.
To make the sudden death look convincing, he had thrown himself onto the floor five times while practicing the body’s involuntary spasms.
His knees were still throbbing.
“Guess I just have to keep grinding.”
Shin tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful of bitter coffee.
He had already decided to spend the next few hours on the bench and wait for the first morning train before heading back to his rented apartment in Nerima.
Then the silence at the end of the corridor was shattered by the hurried, uneven click of high heels.
Shin instinctively straightened his posture.
It was an old habit from his previous life: on a film set, never let someone important catch you sprawled out like you owned the place.
A woman came hurrying toward him.
She was walking so quickly it almost seemed as if something were chasing her.
Under the vending machine’s pale fluorescent light, Shin finally saw her clearly.
She wore an extravagant black stage dress, almost dazzling in its excess.
The wide skirt was covered in sequins that glittered whenever she moved.
Thrown over the elaborate costume, however, was an oversized men’s suit jacket that looked completely out of place, probably borrowed from some staff member to keep out the cold.
Her face was small enough to fit in a palm, her makeup immaculate.
But even cosmetics couldn’t hide the dark exhaustion beneath her eyes.
Akina Nakamori.
There was hardly anyone in Japan who wouldn’t recognize that face.
She was one of the defining icons of the era, the legendary songstress countless men dreamed about—and, to the gossip magazines, the tragic young woman forever being reduced to tears by her disastrous boyfriend.
But right now, she was neither an idol nor a tragic heroine.
She was simply an exhausted woman desperate to get away from everyone.
Akina didn’t notice Shin sitting in the shadows.
She went straight to the vending machine and reached into the pocket of the borrowed jacket, pulling out a crushed pack of Seven Stars cigarettes.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she slipped one between her lips.
Then she took out an elegant silver Zippo.
Click.
The crisp snap of metal echoed through the quiet corridor.
No flame.
Only a few pathetic sparks.
Click.
Click.
Twice more.
Still nothing.
Akina froze.
She remained there with her head lowered, cigarette between her lips, her shoulders rising ever so slightly.
It was the kind of tiny reaction that came when someone had finally been pushed to the edge.
Three straight days of work with barely four hours of sleep.
A host making cruel jokes during the recording about a romance that didn’t even exist.
Her manager endlessly rattling off one schedule after another.
She had endured all of it.
And now even this damn lighter had decided to turn against her.
Clang!
She suddenly slammed the expensive silver Zippo against the metal casing of the vending machine.
“Tch.”
The sound was quiet, but unmistakably irritated—a rare crack in the composure of the national idol so famous for her delicate, almost fragile aura.
It wasn’t really anger.
It was frustration.
The miserable, childish frustration of having one tiny thing go wrong after everything else already had.
Just as she was about to toss the useless piece of metal into the trash—
Click.
A softer, cheaper sound came from beside her.
A small orange flame appeared in front of her, weak but perfectly steady.
Akina blinked.
She instinctively stepped half a pace back and turned, her guard rising at once.
The first thing she saw was a long, clean hand holding an ordinary hundred-yen plastic lighter, the sort of cheap promotional lighter you could pick up almost anywhere, with the name of some karaoke bar printed across the side.
Following the hand, she found a young man sitting on the bench.
He wasn’t looking at her.
Shin’s eyes remained lowered, focused only on the unlit cigarette at the corner of her mouth.
His expression was as still as a pond.
There was no starstruck panic at suddenly meeting one of Japan’s biggest celebrities, nor the invasive curiosity she had learned to despise.
He was simply offering her a light.
Nothing more.
That perfectly measured lack of attention softened a small part of the defenses Akina had raised like a hedgehog’s spines.
She hesitated for a second, then leaned toward the flame and took a slow drag.
The tip of the cigarette glowed red.
Harsh smoke filled her lungs, and at last the tension drained from her back.
She leaned against the vending machine and exhaled a long stream toward the ceiling, as though she could breathe out all the exhaustion buried inside her along with it.
“Tens of thousands of yen…”
Akina looked down at the cold silver Zippo in her hand.
Her voice was slightly hoarse, carrying a trace of bitter amusement.
“And when I actually need it, it’s not even as useful as a hundred-yen piece of plastic.”
Shin withdrew his lighter and wrapped his hand around the coffee can again.
It had already gone lukewarm.
“It’s just out of fuel.
Refill it and it’ll work again.”
Practical.
Straightforward.
Almost painfully matter-of-fact.
He clearly had no intention of using the opportunity to flirt with her.
Akina turned her head and, for the first time, gave him a proper look.
In the restless entertainment industry where seemingly everyone wanted to scrape a little gold dust from her name, his indifference felt strangely out of place.
Sitting quietly in the shadows, he reminded her of a solitary tree.
“Akina-chan!
Akina-chan, where did you go?”
Her manager’s anxious voice came from the other end of the corridor, followed by a rush of footsteps.
That name worked like a switch.
The tired, irritated woman from moments ago vanished.
Akina immediately crushed out the cigarette after only two drags and tossed it into the nearby trash bin.
She adjusted the oversized jacket and straightened her back.
Even if it was only a mask, she still had to preserve the dignity expected of Akina Nakamori—the songstress everyone knew.
Before leaving, she casually placed the Zippo on top of the vending machine.
“Without fuel, it’s just a useless lump of metal.
I don’t feel like fixing it.”
She didn’t look back.
Her heels clicked rapidly down the corridor as she headed toward her manager, leaving one final remark drifting behind her.
“If you don’t mind it, you can have it.”
Silence returned to the corridor.
Only the faint trace of expensive perfume remained, proof that one of the most famous women in Japan had really been there.
Shin finished the last of his coffee and stood.
His gaze moved to the top of the vending machine.
The elegant silver Zippo lay there alone, intricate patterns engraved across its polished surface.
A useless thing abandoned by its owner?
Shin reached out and picked it up.
The silver casing still held a faint warmth, the lingering heat of her palm.
The instant his fingertips touched it…
Bzzz—
A violent tremor ran through Shin’s mind.
Without warning, a familiar translucent blue screen unfolded across his vision.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED.]
[Equippable Item Detected — Rare]
[Item: The Songstress’s Abandoned Silver Zippo (Purple)]
[Original Owner: Akina Nakamori]
[Slot: Hand / Accessory]
[Condition: Out of Fuel]
[Base Attribute: Charisma +15% (Trait: Fragile Aura)]
[Special Trait: Confession Behind the Mask (Passive)]
[Description: Before the public, she is a queen adored by millions.
Away from the spotlight, she is merely a girl longing to be loved.
This lighter has witnessed countless moments when she swallowed her pain alone.]
[Effect: While equipped, your eyes naturally carry the feeling of an untold story.
When you remain silent, the curiosity of those around you increases by 50%, and they will instinctively perceive you as someone mysterious, deeply emotional, and burdened by secrets.]
Shin’s fingers tightened around the lighter.
He stared at his reflection in the vending machine glass, his thumb slowly brushing across the cold silver casing.
“An untold story…”
For an actor, something like that was worth more than gold.
Shin slipped the empty lighter into the pocket closest to his heart, pushed open the glass door, and stepped out into the long, rain-soaked night.