The room was dim, the glow from my monitor cutting through the shadows.
The echo of her voice in that empty classroom replayed in my head as I lay slumped over my desk, eyes open, staring at nothing.
"Your autotune is cheating… the lyrics are sloppy… you copy-paste American songs."
The song's too gloomy.
No studio quality.
Fuck that.
It's not like I don't know my music has flaws. I'm painfully aware of them. And I know—I know—that the moment I get my hands on a real setup, everything will change. A proper mic. A treated room. Clean sound.
I'll make waves.
…Won't I?
The thought didn't convince me. Not anymore.
What really gnawed at me wasn't the criticism itself—it was the way she delivered it.
The certainty. The arrogance. The ease with which she tore my song apart, like I was nothing more than some disposable nobody pretending to be an artist.
The more I replayed it in my head, the hotter my blood burned.
I couldn't lie still anymore.
I shot upright, fingers already moving, the laptop screen flaring to life as I typed like my life depended on it.
I opened YouTube and found it.
A trap beat.
Fast. Relentless. D minor—cold, sharp, unforgiving. 150 BPM, every hit a jab, every hi-hat a heartbeat too fast to control.
The delivery needed speed. I tapped my knuckles against the desk, the memory of our encounter replaying in sharp fragments.
I hit record on my phone.
Time to let everything out.
"In the club, wanna drink till I throw up
On the stage, buzzed as fuck
Got the music turnin' up
Real hip hop, hands up
We ain't never gonna stop
Give no fuck about a hoe
Cry alone, redo your makeup"
The first drums kicked in, and I freestyled the hook on the spot, letting the rhythm carry me, every word burning with raw energy.
"Your lyrics are hollow, your rhythm's a ghost,
Two years of "fame" and you're still just a host
Plastered in makeup, you're built like a stage
A script-reading puppet still locked in a cage
Just like a parrot, you don't need a brain
Play bunny for clicks, fans chasing the bait,
But your mask's peeling off under the weight
I bow to the crowd while you're buried in debt—
Does Ai-chan know her sun hasn't set?"
Then I dropped into the faster part of the beat, letting my voice grow deeper, heavier.
"You entitled bitch, you never bled for it
You just dress-up doll for your producer and he's feeling it
How about you stop flashing your panties on the stage like this?"
I stopped the recording and listened back to the final product.
Satisfied.
Without overthinking it, I clipped the hook and uploaded it as a short on my TikTok.
I didn't expect anyone to hear it, but if she did… maybe she'd finally understand.
Hours later, I noticed it. Comments. Views. Mentions in fan circles. And then… a notification from an unknown account.
"I heard the track. You're Shiba Takumi, right? Suzuki Aika wants to meet you."
I smiled. Not because I cared about her approval — not yet — but because I'd made her feel it. The sting of my words lingered somewhere in her world.
The next afternoon, she found me by the bleachers, looking like she'd rehearsed this apology in her head a hundred times.
"Shiba-kun…" she started, voice tentative. "About what I said… I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"
I raised a hand, cutting her off before she could finish.
"No. You didn't mean it, sure. Doesn't change that it hurt. And it won't change overnight. I'm not… I'm not just going to forgive and forget."
Her blue eyes widened — a mixture of surprise and, maybe, respect. I turned, leaving her standing there, and walked down the steps.
As I walked through the school corridors, the whispers followed me.
"Did you hear the rapper guy? The one who dissed Ai-chan?"
"Yeah, it's all over TikTok. Man, what could've gotten bro so angry?"
"He says the full version will be uploaded soon."
The TikTok even got a laugh emoji from one Ku-chan—a red-haired girl from her group.
Wow. Suzuki was popular even with her own co-workers.
I shrugged at the thought.
Suddenly, I was making moves, and for once, I enjoyed every second of it.
Not long after, the full track went up on YouTube.
Cry havoc and let the dogs of war slip.
The next morning felt off.
Not "I overslept and forgot my homework" off, but the air around me feels different off. I didn't even check the notifications at first. I just lay there, staring at the cracks in my ceiling, wondering if I'd gone too far.
When I finally unlocked my phone, I froze.
Thousands of plays overnight. Comments flooding in — some calling me a "menace," others calling me "the realest voice in underground J-rap.". A few even tagged her.
Of course, the haters were there too. "Cloutchaser", "this song sounds good on mute 👍" or "who let this wannabe breathe near a mic?". Her fans went crazy.
And then there it was. A DM.
Not from a fan. Not from a troll.
From a label.
"Hello, Forsaken, we've been tracking your stuff for a while, but this new release caught our attention. You got a unique sound.
Let's talk — maybe see where this goes."
For a second, I just stared at it. Me? The guy who was ready to drop out and rot in front of a cracked DAW and a second-hand mic?
No way.
I rubbed my eyes, checking the handle again. It was real — not some scammy "record deal" DM from a kid in his basement. A mid-sized indie label, the kind that had actually broken a few underground artists into the mainstream.
My heart was racing.
Not because I wanted fame — but because this was proof. Proof that I wasn't crazy to believe in myself.
And yet, I was conflicted on whether to accept it or not. Part of me craved the validation, the proof that someone, somewhere, actually heard me.
But another part recoiled at the thought of trading my creative freedom before I'd even stepped into the game.