The bass of Neon Butterfly thundered through the Tokyo Dome
The final chorus.
The climax.
And suddenly an invisible physical weight pressed upon Reina.
And the headset mic on her cheek caught the sound of her struggle, turning her every ragged breath into a beautiful melody.
She couldn't speak.
She couldn't even whisper.
Every sound that came from her mouth was a property of the KIZUNA Network.
Anything she said would be broadcast to fifty thousand people and streamed globally via KIZUNA.
And her only ally was silence .
Her heavy costume wasn't just fabric. It was a technological breakthrough. But to her it was like a parasite. Because the crystals on the dress weren't just normal they were embedded with haptic motion sensors vibrating against her skin, syncing her movements to the agency's servers. Her every move was being sent straight to the agency. Her every smile and movements was being tracked and verified in real time and harvesting that data to make her AI twin more perfect. Under the heavy silk and crystals cage, the athletic tape bit into her skin and bound her ribs like a cage. It restricted her breathing, forcing her to maintain a controlled, shallow rhythm to cope.
Inside her veins, the Vitamin Cocktail surged. She was feeling a fake sense of clarity.
If it were any other time, she would just enjoy the feeling. But in her life and death situation, she was actively trying to suppress that feeling with the cold tactical analysis of her father's training. Her heart started to beat at 160 BPM. But for some reason her mind was like a frozen lake. She moved down the runway, extending her hands towards the crowd.
The choreography demanded her to lean over the barricade, singing in front of the VIP section. Into the faces of the front row.
It was the moment of maximum exposure.
The moment of maximum vulnerability.
Don't look at the camera. Look at the shadow.
Her eyes looked past and beyond the sea of light sticks. To her they weren't just lights. They were a data-harvesting grid. Each stick pulsed with the beat, transmitting crowd engagement metrics back to the agency. But Reina noticed something else. They weren't looking at Reina and weren't even screaming in joy. They were looking at their phones and looking at her through their screens even though she was ten feet away. Thousands of lenses pointed at her, recording, buffering, uploading. As if they weren't looking at a person, they were capturing content.
They are ready to watch me bleed, she thought.
And then, she saw him. Seat 4, Row A. Dead center. Directly in her path.
Kenji.
And he was getting ready to jump the barricade.
And then he exploded from his seat. He didn't climb. He rushed towards the steel barricade with a clumsy, desperate strength. The sharp blade flashed in the scattered lights in his hand. He wasn't a man anymore. He was like a bull, rushing towards his target.
BANG
Despite the heavy hit, he didn't stop. He didn't feel any pain nor did he feel any hesitation.
He would only feel the target.
Cold, sharp panic clawed at her throat. She wanted to scream but she knew the guards were compromised.
She saw the security guards near the stage twitch.
A guard's hand flew to his earpiece. He looked at Kenji then at Reina. His eyes widened. He started to move and another hand reached for his baton.
Finally, help is coming, she thought.
But then the guard stopped. His hand froze mid-air. Overriding his instincts, his face went blank as he turned away. As if the earpiece was whispering in his ears-
Do nothing.
Stand down.
Let it happen.
The stage needs blood.
He turned his back. But despite that his hands were on his baton and his neck muscles were straining repeatedly to look back and rush towards the stage.
Another guard, a younger man with a scar on his chin, broke the line, shoving past his partner and charging toward the runway with his baton drawn.
"Hey!" he yelled, voice cracking.
But it was too late.
Behind Reina, the five backup dancers froze. Ami's face went pale and almost froze. They were trained to smile and keep dancing even if their heels were broken, not in stabbing attempts. Ami didn't cross behind her. She stepped right in front of her. And mirroring her every gesture and emotion fluently with a terrifying, youthful precision. She was showing everyone exactly how much better the younger girl was if they were given a chance to lead. She didn't just take the center. She stole the center spotlight and forcefully pushed Reina to the edge.
Toward Kenji.
Reina didn't scream. She didn't flee. She remembered her fathers saying-
Break the rhythm and you lose the room.
Break the run and you feed the wolf.
Maintain the profile, she thought. If I break into a sprint, I would trigger the subject's predatory pursuit reflex. And the moment I dropped the 'Idol' act, I would be compromised.
During dancing and her every "reach to the fans" she did many calculations and speculation in her mind. She knew the length of her steps, the reach of her own arm. She knew the blind spots of the overhead cameras and drones because she had danced in them for the last five years. To her this was no longer a show. It was a high-stakes chess match she had been playing since the first note of the song.
Kenji closed the distance. Nearby twitching security guards were fumbling for batons. And the ones that were looking towards the crowd were now turning their heads to the stage.
Reina didn't retreat. She stepped directly into the choreography.
Spin of the Comet.
A move from the second verse.
She rooted her left foot and did a practiced graceful spin. To the crowd, it looked like a diva turning to acknowledge a devoted follower.
But to Kenji, it was a nightmare. His momentum carried him forward into the place where Reina was a few moments ago.
And because of the stage floor, coated in a fine mist from the pyrotechnics made the stage slippery. His foot slipped and he stumbled. The blade almost missed its target.
And it tore through the silk of her left sleeve.
To her as if the time was moving very slowly, as if the time almost paused and her idol persona was almost collapsing. She almost cursed and let out her true self. A rough but inaudible sound almost came out from her throat. But she choked it down and turned the sound into a soft, musical breath. The edge of the blade tore through muscle and she suddenly started to feel a strange sensation of the open wound.
A sudden chill hit the open wound for a split second before the searing heat of blood rushed out. She felt as if her arm was no longer hers and her very heart had moved into the wound and its heavy, wet weight clinged to her skin with a suffocating, electric fizz.
For a single, terrifying second, a flash of ugly shame hit her.
I let them touch me.
I let them break the skin.
My father had taught me to be untouchable.
But here she felt extremely small and fragile.
Enough.
Stop you idiot, Reina. You can't be vulnerable right now. Harden yourself into ice. You can't afford to be human. At least not yet.
Behind her, Kenji screamed like a wild animal and raised the knife for a second strike. He didn't care about the blood. He didn't care about the screaming crowd. He only cared about the kill.
Reina's eyes locked onto the floor.
The 'Zero' mark.
The hydraulic lift.
During rehearsal and her ascent, she had seen the green safety latches were pulled back. The trap door wasn't locked. It was floating on nothing but fluid pressure. During practice, she had stepped on it and felt the slight give.
A trap door turned into a trap for her.
If I step there, it will immediately drop.
She couldn't let Kenji take that fall.
If that bastard fell, he might survive.
But she had spent the last forty-eight hours in athletic tape beneath her boots. She had wrapped her ankles tight, locking the joints so they wouldn't snap when she hit the floor. She wrapped her knees to keep them from buckling under her weight and to absorb the heavy shock of the fall
She had prepared her body for a fifteen-foot drop to concrete.
She faked a stumble. It was easy. The searing pain in her arm made her muscles spasm naturally. She fell backward, not away from him, but toward the trap door.
Kenji followed like a predator smelling blood. He lunged towards her, putting his weight onto the circular plate beside her.
Click.
The latch gave way.
The hydraulic pressure released.
The floor vanished.
And the trapdoor swallowed them into the darkness.
Reina initiated the Parachute Landing Fall.
She went into a tight ball, executing the five-point roll she had rehearsed in her mind for forty-eight hours. She hit the floor fifteen feet down and almost landed on the balls of her feet and hit the edge of the dropping platform. She let her legs absorb the initial shock, knees bending like springs. She rolled, tumbling to spread the impact across her back and shoulders, exactly as she had visualized a thousand times. The initial impact jarred her teeth like a hammer but tape held together and absorbed the impact, keeping her joints from shattering. She was down and full of pain but she was alive.
But Kenji, being caught off guard by the sudden shift in gravity almost immediately slammed against the edge of the opening and held the corner and hung there by dangling one of his arms. His drug-fueled mind wanted to follow her to the abyss but his body didn't obey his order. He didn't know how to fall. He was just screaming into the darkness, still clutching the knife.
Above her, the crowd's scream shifted from joy to pure horror. A few drones followed her, their lenses tracking her like predatory eyes. She didn't hide the wound. She pressed her hand against it, letting the blood seep through her fingers.
Show them.
Let them see everything in high definition.
The scarred security guard rushed towards the trapdoor. He looked down into the darkness, face pale.
"Medic! We need a medic down here!" he yelled into his radio, eyes never leaving the other guards who still stood frozen, hands on their earpieces, listening to whispers he couldn't hear.
But the other guards stayed frozen, hands on their earpieces, listening to the whispers in their ears-
Don't rush.
This is a stage effect, part of the show.
Don't interfere. Stay silent.
Interference will force us to breach your contract.
Reina leaned against a nearby cold steel pillar, breathing in the dust and ozone.
Her vision blurred. The Vitamin crash was hitting her hard, her whole body trembled with violent, uncontrollable shivering.
She stayed still, lay there playing dead but her ears were open. Through the concrete ceiling, she heard the continuation of the muffled, distorted bass of her song.
Then, she heard it-
Her own voice.
But something was wrong.
It continued without her breath.
Without the pain.
A recording?
No. Too perfect.
They are selling my blood.
My pain is their stock price.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to smash the camera down. But she didn't.
She had to be the victim.
If she fought back too hard, they would claim she was mentally unstable.
And if she bled quietly, she would be a martyr.
On the way to the ambulance, she saw the big screen.
Her own face stared back. But the performance continued without interruption. Something was wrong. The show went on but she was no longer in it.
I will destroy everything. Even if I have to become a ghost to do it ,she told herself as the drugs hit her system.
The stretcher slammed into the ambulance. The doors closed, sealing her again into the darkness. The last thing she heard before fainting was the sound of her own blood dripping onto the floor.
> [SYSTEM LOG: KIZUNA_NETWORK // AMATERASU_PROTOCOL]
> Node: LUMINA!_Tokyo_Dome_Sector_4
> Asset: Reina Shiratori
> Event: Farewell Concert (Final Performance)
> Status:Laceration detected.
> Warning: CRITICAL INJURY DETECTED
> Biometrics: Heart Rate 180 BPM (Trauma Response). Blood Loss: Approx. 400ml. Endorphin Spike: Detected.
> Security Breach: Intruder Neutralized (Pending).
> Media Feed: AMATERASU PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. Global Live Broadcast Hijacked. And ready to Broadcast altered footage.
> Action: Deploy 'Aesthetic Fog' to obscure camera angles of the blood.
> Reasoning: High-definition gore reduces long-term merchandise resale value.
> Market Impact: MONITORING. Sentiment Analysis: PROFITABLE TRAGEDY (PROJECTED).
> Recommendation: Transport to Minato-ku Medical. Isolate Asset. Begin Digital Erasure Sequence (Pending Approval).
> Note: Asset survival confirmed. Graduation Protocol adjusted to "Medical Retirement."