The week leading up to the Polaris showcase was hell.
Rehearsals bled into midnight. Voices cracked. One of the backup dancers fainted from heat exhaustion during a full-run. A junior manager wanted to scrap Ami's emotional ballad and replace it with a safer, upbeat track that "tested better with urban female teens."
She almost walked out.
Elliot pulled her back. They argued. He yelled for the first time.
Then they fixed it. Barely.
By the time the night of the performance arrived, none of them had slept more than four hours in the last three days. Ami's eyes were ringed in purple under the stage makeup. Elliot had a bandage on his knuckle from slamming his fist into a sound rig when a mic battery died ten minutes before tech check.
But when the final lights hit and the beat kicked in—
Ami stepped into the spotlight like she'd been born inside it.
She sang like she'd crawled out of her own throat just to scream into the world's face and dared it to look away. And it didn't. Not once.
By the time her second song — the slower, stripped-back one — hit its final chorus, you could've heard a pin drop in a stadium.
The scout clapped.
The manager nodded.
Papers were offered.
Not a debut. Not a deal. But something just as heavy:
"Development contracts."
A future invitation.
A seat at the table.
A promise with no date.
⸻
Now?
It was summer break.
And the heat was unbearable.
Cicadas screeched into the silence of dead afternoons. The air hung like wet laundry. Vending machines sweated in alleyways, and kids drifted past on bikes too slow to be racing and too fast to be loitering.
Time moved differently in this kind of summer — like it had lost its shape.
Elliot hadn't heard much from Ami in the last week.
She was off doing vocal training at some industry facility in Kyoto.
She'd sent a voice note once — breathless and upbeat, thanking him again for "everything."
And that was it.
The silence left behind was thicker than expected.
⸻
Mizuki was around. Technically.
Still in class before break started. Still replying to group chats. Still laughing at Daichi's bad jokes.
But something in her felt… further away.
She didn't invite him to the rooftop anymore. Didn't sit next to him in homeroom if she didn't have to.
Whenever Ami's name came up, her whole face changed — not angry. Just… guarded. Like she didn't want to be the one to say it out loud, but already knew where this road was heading.
And maybe she did.
⸻
It was the second Friday of break when Elliot's mum found him slumped over the kitchen table, toast untouched, eyes half-open and stuck on some news article he hadn't really read.
She set her book down. Watched him in silence for a moment.
"You look like you've been hit by a slow-moving train."
He grunted. "Just tired."
"Summer break and you're still tired. That's a talent."
He cracked a smile, barely. Took a sip of his iced tea.
"You've been quiet since the showcase," she said softly.
"Ami's been gone. Everything's kind of… paused."
She nodded. "And Mizuki?"
He didn't answer right away.
"Still here. But different. I don't know. We text. It's just… every time I bring up anything about Polaris, she gets this look."
"What kind of look?"
"Like I'm talking about a world she can't enter."
His mum leaned forward, folded her hands under her chin.
"You've always been a quiet kid. Careful with your words. Not one to dive into chaos."
"Yeah, well. I dived."
"You did. And I'm proud of you for it."
"Doesn't feel like something to be proud of."
"Why not?"
He hesitated.
"Because I'm trying to balance both worlds. Mizuki and Ami. The normal and the insane. But every time I take a step toward one, I feel like I'm leaving the other behind."
She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes weren't judging. Just steady.
"Maybe it's not about which world you choose. Maybe it's about who stays when the noise dies down."
He didn't say anything.
Just nodded, slowly.
"And El?"
"Yeah?"
"You're allowed to change. But don't forget who held the door open for you to walk through."
⸻
That night, his phone buzzed.
Ami:
"I'm back in town. Want to meet tomorrow?"
He didn't open it right away.
He looked at the message.
Then scrolled up to another name.
Mizuki.
Her last message was from three days ago. A dumb sticker of a cat in a trash can.
No context. Just her usual nonsense.
He stared at it for a while.
Then typed:
"Want to go get ice cream or something stupid tomorrow? Just us."
He hesitated.
Then hit send.
Set the phone down.
And waited.