“This next song,” X said into the mic, her voice soft but impossibly clear, “is called ‘Dear Fan...’”

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.

X was packing her bag. She paused, then pulled out a small notebook—dog-eared, covered in stickers fans had given her. “I’m fine,” she said. “I ate yesterday.”

“You didn’t eat yesterday.”

After the show, the fans lined up for the “handshake event.” This was X’s domain. While other idols rushed through pleasantries, X held each hand like it was a wounded bird. She asked the salaryman, “Your daughter—she’s better now, isn’t she?” He gaped. He’d never told her about his daughter’s illness. But X remembered. From two months ago, when he’d mentioned it in passing during a five-second exchange.

The synthesizer hummed. The lyrics were simple, almost childish: If you forget me, I’ll remember twice. If you turn away, I’ll learn your shadow’s shape.

Miso said nothing. He dropped his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and for the first time in years, did not light another.

But no one was left to press the button.

When the rescue team found her, she was dancing.

And then there was X.

X didn’t need a stadium.

After the last fan left, Miso counted the meager box office take. “We can afford rent if we skip dinner for three days.”

X saw this. Her smile, that engineered constant, flickered. For a fraction of a second, something raw surfaced in her eyes. Not sadness—the R-peture procedure had cauterized that. No, this was stranger. It was recognition .

X zipped her bag and stood. For a moment, she looked at the empty folding chairs, the scuffed floor where the salaryman’s tear had fallen. “In the facility,” she said quietly, “before they left, the last scientist played me a recording. It was the sound of a concert. Thousands of people cheering. He said, ‘This is what love sounds like. You’ll never have it, but you can fake it well enough to make others feel it.’”

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.