Prologue

The spotlights are blinding.

Looking down from the stage, thousands of faces gaze up at me.

Cheers. The glow of penlights. Voices calling my name.

Everyone is smiling. And so, I smile too.

Taking a close look at each and every face, I scatter fake smiles across the crowd.

No.

...No.

A line someone once posted on social media crosses my mind.

‘Yurarin really looks at each and every one of her fans.’

That’s not it.

I’m simply searching.

For one person alone.

The front row.

The second row.

The third row.

Along the aisles.

The second-floor balcony.

Maybe today, he’ll finally be here.

Maybe, just maybe, he came to see me.

Clinging to that hope.

I scan the audience over and over again.

And yet, he isn’t here.

He isn’t here today, either.

“—!”

A sharp ache pierces deep inside my chest.

It hurts as though a hand is squeezing my heart.

Turning my reflexively squeezed-shut eye into a wink, I smile all over again.

Both my father and my mother were against it.

They lectured me to give up on becoming an idol.

Even so, I couldn’t give up.

On searching for him.

If I became famous.

If I appeared in magazines.

If I was on TV.

Because I thought that someday, he might find me.

Because I thought that someday, I might be able to find him.

And so today, once again, I smile beneath the spotlights.

I scatter my fake smiles.

Until the day I find him, forever—

Kaori TL