By the time Shin Kitahara left Studio 6, it was nearly ten at night.
He carried the heavy lacquered bento box in his arms, somehow in an even better mood than when the photographer had praised him earlier.
Instead of leaving the television station immediately, Shin made a detour to the production center on the third floor.
There was free hot water there, and he planned to take some home.
The water heater in his shabby apartment had been broken for half a month, and his landlord kept putting off the repairs.
As he passed a meeting room labeled “Winter Sunflower — Script Conference Room,” he noticed that the door had been left slightly ajar.
No one was inside.
Only the aftermath remained.
Ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts.
Discarded printouts lay scattered across the table beside half-finished cans of coffee.
Judging by the mess, the writers had clearly just survived one hell of a brainstorming session.
Shin glanced inside without thinking.
The younger Shin Kitahara probably would have kept walking without giving the room a second look.
But after spending an entire lifetime on film sets, the old veteran inside him had developed one useful habit: always pay attention to your surroundings.
His eyes settled on a chair at the far end of the long table.
A pair of glasses rested there.
They had thin black frames and looked almost new.
Under the corridor lights, the lenses reflected a faint blue-violet sheen.
They sat alone on top of a stack of discarded documents, apparently forgotten by someone who had left in a hurry.
“Someone left these behind?”
Shin pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The whiteboard still read “Episode 3 Outline Revisions,” which meant the writing team had probably been gone for quite a while.
From what Shin knew of television-station routines, a room left like this overnight would be cleared by the cleaning staff first thing in the morning.
Anything abandoned on the table had a good chance of ending up in the trash.
He walked over and picked up the glasses.
They were surprisingly light.
The frames felt smooth and comfortable in his hand, and the lenses had no prescription at all—just plain blue-light filtering lenses.
The instant his fingertips touched them, the familiar translucent blue screen appeared before his eyes.
[Equippable Item Detected — Common]
[Item: Scriptwriter’s Forgotten Blue-Light Glasses (White)]
[Original Owner: An Unknown Assistant Writer Suffering from Severe Eye Strain]
[Slot: Head / Accessory]
[Condition: Clean and Undamaged]
[Base Attribute: Focus +20%]
[Special Trait: Reading Between the Lines (Passive)]
[Description: These glasses accompanied their former owner through countless sleepless nights of script revisions.
While wearing them, your sensitivity to written material greatly increases, allowing you to grasp the logic and emotions hidden beneath dialogue much more quickly.]
“Twenty percent more focus?”
Shin’s eyes lit up.
Compared with the almost supernatural effect of the silver Zippo, this was a straightforward productivity monster.
For an actor, studying a script wasn’t simply a matter of memorizing lines.
It was an exercise in breaking down logic, emotion, rhythm, motivation, and everything left unsaid.
Shin pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped the lenses.
Once he was satisfied they were clean, he slipped the glasses into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Thanks, whoever-you-were, Writer-san.”
* * *
Nerima, Shin’s apartment.
It was almost eleven by the time he got home.
The cramped six-and-a-half-tatami room was filled with the chill of late autumn.
Shin rubbed his hands together.
Instead of turning on the heater immediately, he first opened the elegant lacquered food box he had brought back from TBS.
Even though the food had cooled, the rich aroma of high-quality grilled meat still rushed out the moment he lifted the lid.
It was a premium yakiniku bento from the famous Jojoen.
Thick slices of beef short rib covered the rice, accompanied by crisp kimchi and seasoned vegetables.
Shin picked up a piece of beef and put it into his mouth.
Rich juices burst across his tongue.
The sweetness of the rendered fat seemed to melt away an entire day’s exhaustion in an instant.
“Now that’s good…”
Shin let out a deeply satisfied sigh.
In his previous life at Hengdian, his looks had condemned him to background roles.
His meals were usually the cheapest production bentos available, where the so-called meat was more often a lump of fat or some dubious scrap than anything worth eating.
Getting an actual chicken leg had practically counted as a special occasion.
Yet in this life, all he had done was prove during the promotional shoot that he was professional, competent, and easy to work with—and someone had rewarded him with a meal like this.
The bubble era really did live up to its reputation.
People certainly knew how to spend money.
By the time he finished the bento, warmth had finally returned to his body.
Shin cleaned the table, then pulled the script for Winter Sunflower from his bag.
Tomorrow would be the first official day of filming.
His character might not have a single line, but Shin had no intention of taking the role lightly.
He took out the black-framed glasses he had found and settled them onto the bridge of his nose.
[Equipment Activated: Focus +20%]
The world seemed to fall silent.
The occasional car passing outside, the muffled television blaring from his neighbor’s apartment—every distracting sound seemed to pass through some invisible filter and fade into the background.
All that remained in his vision were the densely printed pages of the script.
The dry blocking symbols and stage directions in parentheses no longer felt like lifeless marks on paper.
In Shin’s mind, they began assembling themselves into moving scenes.
“Here…
after the male lead finishes this line, he’ll definitely pause to breathe.”
“And here, the heroine’s emotion isn’t genuine.
She’s covering something up…”
Shin’s pen raced across the pages, filling the margins with notes.
Normally, breaking down the three scenes scheduled for tomorrow would have taken him at least two hours.
But with Reading Between the Lines enhancing his concentration, his mind was working at an astonishing speed.
He didn’t merely memorize his own marks and movements.
He even mapped out the rhythm of Kazuya Matsumoto’s dialogue.
Shin predicted where Matsumoto was likely to stumble over a line, where he might rush a cue, and where nervousness could make his movements stiff or unnatural.
“If you don’t understand your scene partner’s breathing, you’ll never steal a scene without saying a word.”
That was the experience of a veteran actor talking.
Only forty minutes later, Shin closed the script.
He removed the glasses and rubbed between his brows.
Instead of feeling mentally drained, he felt remarkably refreshed.
The clock on the wall pointed to midnight.
“That early?”
Usually, he would still be wrestling with the script at this hour.
Since the work was already finished, there was no reason not to sleep early.
In an industry where your face was part of your livelihood, a good night’s sleep was the cheapest beauty treatment available.
* * *
The next morning, 6:30 a.m.
Location shoot outside Shinjuku Gyoen.
The late-autumn morning mist had yet to clear, but the production crew was already busy laying camera tracks and preparing the set.
Shin arrived right on time.
He wore the linen shirt Miwako had given him the day before, with an old trench coat thrown over it.
After a full night of quality sleep, he looked completely refreshed.
His skin was clear and firm, and his eyes were bright enough that the makeup department barely needed concealer.
“Good morning, Miwako-san.”
He smiled at the stylist as she sorted through the costumes.
“Kitahara-kun!” Miwako’s eyes brightened when she saw him.
“Your skin looks great today!
Look at that complexion.
I can go much lighter on the foundation.”
By comparison, the male lead who finally arrived twenty minutes later looked considerably worse for wear.
Kazuya Matsumoto stepped out of his chauffeured van wearing sunglasses, surrounded by his usual cluster of assistants.
The moment he took off the glasses, the damage was obvious.
Even beneath his makeup, dark circles showed under his eyes, and his cheeks were slightly puffy.
Clearly, the popular idol had not spent the previous night carefully studying his script.
Judging by his condition, he had probably been partying in a Roppongi nightclub until the early hours of the morning.
“Where’s the makeup artist…?
Hurry up and do something about my face.
It’s still swollen.”
Matsumoto started complaining the moment he sat down.
His voice was hoarse, and every word carried the irritation of someone who had barely dragged himself out of bed.
Not far away, the director was adjusting one of the monitors.
He frowned and glanced toward Matsumoto.
Then his eyes shifted to Shin, already in makeup, quietly sitting in the corner with the script open in his hands.