After hurrying out of the station and wandering for about forty minutes following the navigation, Rin finally found the apartment building before the twilight sank completely below the horizon with the sun.
The last sliver of twilight lay across the stairwell entrance, thin, like a fleece blanket light enough to be swept away by the wind.
She climbed to the third floor and fished the key out of her schoolbag's side pocket.
The faint sound of friction as the metal slid into the keyhole felt amplified in the silent hallway.
The door pushed open, and the stagnant air of the day rushed out from the darkness of the entryway, mixed with a faint scent of wood shavings and the smell of someone's dinner fumes drifting in from the window.
She didn't turn on the light.
She simply used the residual light filtering in from outside to take off her leather shoes, straightening them so the toes pointed toward the door, side by side, perfectly neat.
Then she walked inside; the living room was empty.
Mm, a familiar loneliness.
This emptiness hadn't just started today; long before she, the actress, moved in, this silence had been waiting for her.
Rin placed her schoolbag on the edge of the low table and sat down on the tatami mat.
Her silhouette was reflected in the windowpane; the room was too dark, making the outline blurry, a nearly transparent shadow.
She stared at the silhouette for a while. No particular emotion surged up, but she couldn't help thinking:
I have to say, the character of Rin is, to some extent, quite compatible with me.
For instance, neither of us has parents.
To be honest, when she first learned this, a faint sense of disappointment had indeed surfaced in her heart.
It wasn't heavy, more like confirming something she already knew but still couldn't help verifying.
After all, in her previous life, she had never experienced so-called family affection.
But that was the extent of it.
Ultimately, even in her past life, it only went as far as stealing a few extra glances when she occasionally saw a family of three walking arm-in-arm at the supermarket, before looking away.
Most of her feelings were, in the end, a sense of relief.
Because this made things much easier for her; at least regarding family background and past experiences, she could casually make things up in front of the audience with relative ease. No one could call her out on the spot anyway.
Even if someone really wanted to get to the bottom of it later, it would take considerable time and effort. By the time they finished investigating, this anime would probably have already ended.
"Speaking of which, how should I make it up..."
Thinking of this, Rin couldn't help but feel a bit of a headache.
Saying she'd just make things up was, of course, a casual joke. Background settings are a crucial part of creating a character arc; she knew this better than anyone.
To use a simple analogy: which is more touching—a girl born cheerful, or a girl who has endured hardships yet still chooses to be cheerful?
Without a doubt, it's the latter.
Suffering in a story is never just suffering; it's like a stone thrown into a lake—the size of the ripples depends on how calm the surface originally was.
What the audience wants to see is never the trauma itself, but how the character rebuilds their life upon the scars of that trauma.
That unyielding softness, that courage to still reach out—those are the parts of a character arc that are truly captivating.
But the problem was: did the character of Rin originally have a family background setting in the script?
She recalled the profile card the system had given her when she first entered the script.
Classmate of the protagonist Reina, sitting in adjacent seats, above-average grades, cold appearance, low presence in class, seemingly always a loner...
Apparently, that was all.
No parents' occupations, no siblings, no childhood anecdotes. This character was like a cropped photograph—neat edges, blank background, surrounded by an empty void that could be filled freely.
This was a good thing, of course.
No setting meant she could adjust the character's past at any time based on the plot's direction, audience feedback, and the progress of her relationship with Reina.
A taciturn girl could be withdrawn due to family changes, or she could be used to being alone since childhood; she could be longing for company but afraid to get close, or she could be enjoying her solitude with no intention of fitting in.
Each setting would lead to a different audience impression.
But, what if she chose wrong...
Rin rested her cheek in her hand, her fingertips unconsciously tracing unknown lines on the tatami surface.
Actually, she already had a rough draft in mind.
Not the kind of setting that deliberately piles on suffering—that's too cheap.
Nor was it a perfunctory brush-off, as if those blanks never existed.
What she wanted was a more perfect presentation—no excessive embellishment, no forced sentimentality, no over-the-top overlap, yet something that would make the audience suddenly realize at a certain moment, "Ah, so she's always been like this."
Then, that silence, that perfectly measured distance, that occasional display of thoughtfulness and detachment would all have a traceable source.
Like a seed buried under the snow, the audience wouldn't see it at first glance, but when the snow melts and spring arrives, when that seedling breaks through the soil, everyone will remember that it had been there all along.