Electric Prayers

Rain never really fell on Shibuya.

It hovered — suspended in the neon-saturated air, fragmented into thousands of bright particles shimmering like lost fireflies. Standing under the awning of a konbini, Aoi Mizushima watched the crowd cross the iconic scramble — that human choreography repeated every two minutes, unfailingly, like some urban ritual.

Three hundred thousand people a day, the statistics claimed.
Three hundred thousand lives brushing past one another without ever touching.

She lifted her canned coffee to her lips. Lukewarm. Bitter. Exactly the way she liked it ever since she had stopped pretending to enjoy sweet things. That was four years ago, when she hung up her last stage costume and traded the spotlights for a crumpled press badge.

Former idol turned journalist.

Her phone buzzed. A message from her editor-in-chief:

“Where you at? Concert starts in 30 min. Bring me something fresh or bring your resignation.”

Aoi sighed. Fresh content.
As if anyone could still write something fresh about Rei Kagami.

The most popular singer in Japan.
His face plastered on every screen in Tokyo.
The man whose voice made millions cry without them even knowing why.

She slipped her phone back into her pocket and let herself flow into the human tide heading toward the Tokyo Dome. The crowd swelled at every corner — teenage girls in tight flocks, office workers awkwardly hiding their lightsticks under their jackets, couples holding hands like pilgrims.

Maybe that’s exactly what it was.

***

Inside the Dome, the air already vibrated with electric tension. Fifty-five thousand people packed into a modern cathedral, all facing the empty stage like believers awaiting the manifestation of a god.

Aoi pushed her way to the press area, badge visible. The other journalists were already seated, cameras pointing, notebooks open, bored expressions fixed in place. She recognized a few faces — the idol-industry regulars, the ones who had been writing the same articles for ten years, only swapping out the names.

She sat at the end of the row and opened her notebook.

Backstage interview scheduled after the concert.

If she could get anything usable — one sentence that wasn’t agency-approved, one moment of humanity behind the perfect mask — maybe she could write something other than the usual disposable fluff.

The lights cut out all at once.

Absolute silence fell over the fifty-five thousand.

Then, in total darkness, a single note resonated — the sound of a traditional koto electronically amplified, rippling through the Dome like an invisible wave.

Aoi felt something shift in her chest.

Not her heart.

Something else. Deeper. Older.

The stage lights rose slowly, revealing a silhouette standing at the center, motionless. Rei Kagami wore a modern black kimono embroidered with silver patterns that seemed to move in the light. His ash-blonde hair fell perfectly over his shoulders, and his eyes — golden, impossibly golden behind contact lenses that must have cost a fortune — swept across the crowd with unsettling intensity.

He smiled.

And fifty-five thousand people held their breath.

“Good evening, Tokyo.”

His voice — even without a mic — seemed to fill every corner of the Dome. Low. Warm. Enveloping. The kind of voice that made you forget where you were. Who you were.

The music exploded.

***

Aoi had attended hundreds of concerts in her life. She had performed about fifty herself, before… before everything collapsed. She knew the mechanics: the lighting calculated down to the millimeter, the choreography drilled to exhaustion, the perfect illusion of spontaneity that never really existed.

But what she was seeing now was nothing mechanical.

Rei moved as if gravity didn’t fully apply to him. Every gesture seemed both precise and completely free, like an improvised dance that had been woven into the fabric of the universe from the beginning. And his voice — it rose, it fell, it cracked just enough to sound vulnerable before soaring again.

But that wasn’t what unsettled Aoi.

It was the light.

Around Rei, the air looked… different. As if something invisible was gathering toward him, drawn to his presence. In the crowd, the lightsticks glowed brighter when he looked in their direction, and the fans in the front row all had the same look — glassy-eyed, hypnotized, emptied.

Aoi blinked.

For a split second, she thought she saw something move behind Rei. A shadow that wasn’t his. Something fluid, long, rippling like the tail of a—

She shook her head. Fatigue, probably. Or the stroboscopic lights.

Next to her, an older journalist discreetly wiped tears from her cheeks. Aoi stared, surprised.

“Sorry,” the woman whispered with a smile. “It’s just… he’s so—”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

***

The concert lasted two hours, but Aoi couldn’t have said if it was ten minutes or ten years. Time seemed to dilate, warped around Rei’s voice.

When the lights came back on for the final encore, she noticed something strange.

In the front row, a high-school girl stared at the stage with a completely vacant expression. Her friends called her name, nudged her gently, but she didn’t respond. Her lightstick hung limply from her hand — unlit.

This wasn’t the first time Aoi had seen that.

Over the last six months, she had covered three other Rei concerts. And every time, she had noticed the same thing: a few fans, always in the front row, always the most devoted ones, who went home… different.

Calmer. Emptier.

Her editor had brushed it off. “It’s emotional fatigue. Happens.”

But Aoi wasn’t convinced anymore.

***

Backstage smelled like disinfectant and cooled adrenaline. Aoi followed the assistant guiding her through a maze of identical hallways, her press badge bouncing against her chest.

“Mizushima-san?”

She turned.

Rei Kagami stood in the doorway of a room, still wearing his stage kimono. Up close, he was even more disturbing — too perfect, too bright, like someone had slightly increased the saturation of reality around him.

“I’m early,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his golden eyes. “The interview is now, right?”

Aoi nodded, unable to tear her gaze away. There was something in those eyes. Something moving under the golden surface, like a flame seen through smoked glass.

He stepped aside to let her enter what was probably his private dressing room. The space was surprisingly simple: a white sofa, a coffee table, a mirror surrounded by bulbs.

Rei closed the door behind them.

Silence settled — thick.

“So,” he said softly, sitting on the sofa with feline grace. “What question are you going to ask me that a hundred other journalists have already asked?”

Aoi sat opposite him and took out her recorder.

“None,” she said.

For the first time, something shifted in Rei’s expression. Surprise, perhaps. Or interest.

“Really?”

Aoi pressed Record.

“I want to know why your fans are losing their memory.”

The silence that followed was so dense Aoi could hear her own heartbeat.

Rei didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But something changed in the air around him — a sudden tension, as if the atmosphere itself was holding its breath.

Then he smiled. A real smile this time. Razor-sharp.

“You see things, Mizushima Aoi.”

He knew her first name. She hadn’t told him.

“It’s dangerous, you know,” he added, his voice dropping an octave. “To see what others don’t.”

In the mirror behind him, Aoi saw something that froze her blood.

Rei’s reflection was different.

In the mirror — behind his shoulders — two triangular ears stood upright. And a long, silver, mist-like tail slowly swayed in the air.

Aoi shot to her feet, her recorder falling to the floor.

Rei remained seated, perfectly still, his smile widening.

“Welcome to the real Tokyo, Mizushima-san.”

The dressing room lights flickered.

And in the rising darkness, his eyes glowed — golden, luminous, absolutely not human.