She turned to the elderly nurse. “You lost someone last week. You don’t have to smile tonight.” The nurse’s lip quivered. “How did you—?” X just squeezed her hand. “The way you held your sign. The paper was crumpled on the left side. That’s your grief side.”
The pink-haired girl was last. She was trembling. “X, I... I’m moving to Osaka tomorrow. I won’t be able to see your shows anymore.”
After the last fan left, Miso counted the meager box office take. “We can afford rent if we skip dinner for three days.”
X didn’t need a stadium.
The setlist was old R-peture numbers—songs about eternal loyalty, about never leaving your side. Ironic, given that everyone in X’s life had left. The scientists. The other test subjects. Even Miso had tried to quit twice, but X kept showing up to his office with homemade onigiri and a printed schedule for next month’s gigs.
But no one was left to press the button.
She had been raised for this. Raised in R-peture. Raised to be the idol who stays, even when everyone leaves. Underground Idol X Raised In R-peture -Dear Fan...
“This next song,” X said into the mic, her voice soft but impossibly clear, “is called ‘Dear Fan...’”
And then there was X.
Because somewhere, in a city of 14 million people, a salaryman was texting his daughter I love you for the first time in months. A nurse was allowing herself to cry. And a girl on a night train to Osaka was already planning her first trip back. She turned to the elderly nurse
Outside, the Tokyo night was cold and neon-bright. X walked alone toward the train station, her shadow stretching long behind her. She passed a puddle reflecting a billboard for a major idol group—stadium tours, TV appearances, millions of followers. Her own reflection sat beside it, small and water-rippled.
But the facility folded. Creditors fled. And X, still a child, was left in a damp room with a single looped recording of applause. For three years, that was her audience.
X had no last name, no birth certificate, and no memory before the age of six, when she was discovered in a sealed sub-basement of an abandoned “R-peture” facility. The documents they found with her were fragmentary: Project R-peture. Subject X. Purpose: to raise an idol who cannot feel abandonment. The facility had been a biotech incubator masquerading as a talent agency. They didn’t just train idols—they grew them. Modified them. X’s tear ducts were chemically narrowed. Her amygdala had been trimmed to dull the sting of rejection. She could sing for twelve hours without vocal fatigue. And she smiled. God, how she smiled. “How did you—
Dear fan... you’re still here.