Gremlin Distribution System

November, 2025

Hakaze likes her new building. Quiet, quiet, quiet—and she appreciates it more now, after everything. Old money in every apartment: dyed hair, designer bags, diamond necklaces. She stands out like a sore thumb in her hoodies and oversized T-shirts, but the neighbors like her anyway, probably because she keeps to herself. Mainly, she's quiet enough that no one complains.

They like her routine, too. She wakes at 5 a.m., runs through empty streets, occasionally passing another jogger or a college kid stumbling home. Then back to her apartment, showers, and down to the basement studio she’d spent the last fifteen years moving through in various roles: ten as a trainee and idol, a one-year break, and the past four as a sound engineer.

The fluorescent lights buzz softly, candy bowls wait at reception, and the consoles hum beneath her fingertips. It's a slow day; she moves between consoles, headphones draped around her neck, tidying files, cleaning up old recordings, or prepping solo tracks for the next day. The work is routine and undemanding, and she even finds the energy to make appropriate small talk with the other technicians.

A camera blinks red above the hallway door. It's just standard security, but she still keeps her head down out of habit.

By late afternoon, she settles into the rhythm of monitoring mixes and checking levels. The nice thing about a company as big as Astreon is that even their tiny basement studios ran themselves most of the time. Unless—she frowns—a recording session appears on the schedule.

In that case, she has to deal with idols. And just like that, her quiet, slow day comes to a screeching end.

*

The trouble with some idols was how much like cats they were. Scoop them up with an airtight contract and they’d still wriggle. Praise them exactly how they like; not too sycophantic, aloof enough that they may take their first hesitant steps towards you, and then you might just be lucky enough to get them to do what you want without them noticing.

“Let’s go again from the second verse, please?” she says into the talkback. The idol in the recording booth looks at her with a blank stare, and she hastily amends her tone: more laidback, oh, I don’t care at all that we have to wrap up in a couple hours and there’s still five members to go. “Your voice is suited for a passionate delivery. If you’re satisfied with this, though, we can wrap up.”

Pushing, with a bit of a pull. Dust motes drift in the beam of studio lighting as she watches him weigh it in his head, a frown playing across his face. Hakaze is reminded of a cat again; pondering a glass on the edge of the table before it knocks it over.

She takes a deep gulp of her third energy drink of the day as the producer, Fuma, pinches the bridge of his nose. Neither of them dare to even breathe.

“Like what?” the idol –the top boy group Neonite’s leader, Harua-- asks.

“So right now, the way you sing the ‘I didn’t mean to lose you’ part is melancholy,” Fuma says, “which is fine, but the demo had more of an angry, desperate energy, and we all agreed that would be for the best.”

Harua’s bland expression grows blander. Fucker was messing with them, but Hakaze had no way to prove it, except for gut feeling after working with him for almost two years.

Trying to keep her annoyance out of her voice, she says, “Do you want to hear it again?”

Fuma presses play on the demo still labeled DRAFT_v6, which, now that Hakaze thinks about it, feels late for pretending this is on schedule. Whatever. Probably some corporate mess-up.

Harua makes another considering noise that definitely means he’s messing with them, the little shit. “…I think I get it? But it sounds too much like it was written for Ren, not me.”

Ren.  Goddammit. Of course it would come back to him. It always did, eventually.

Through the glass of the recording booth, Harua is all grown up now—two years since his solo debut, four years of being Neonite’s leader—but it’s hard to forget that he was a gangly trainee once. The terrible song they're recording is a B-side on his newest album, and despite Harua’s hard-earned popularity, there’s something in those eyes, like he’s looking for something more.

Game recognize game. Hakaze hated recording songs that had Nao’s sound, too.

“I promise it wasn’t,” she says, before Fuma can. “Your deeper range suits this one. But if you don’t want this one, we can trash it.”

A blink. Hakaze sweats. It’s a pretty bold gamble, and Harua’s 100% the type to call her bluff. She doesn't know why she keeps taking risks so above her paygrade like this, except that she’s always been better at deciding than waiting. From the corner of her eye, she can see Fuma staring at her. 

But then, Harua's lips curl. “I guess that’s why you never ended up singing Fuma’s songs.”

“Harua Nagasaki,” she says immediately, “if we wanted a comedian we’d have hired one. Start singing, you little asshole.”

His grin grows outright devious. “There’s the General Hakaze I know. Tell you what, I’ll sing the whole thing without complaining about how Fuma only writes songs for Ren, if you talk to me afterward.”

“Fuma only wrote songs for Nao, too.”

In response to this double betrayal, Fuma mutes his mic and screams something that sounds like slander.

“All the more reason for you to hear me out, then.”

There’s not enough songs in the world for Hakaze to get roped into one of Harua’s dilemmas again, who hid all the world’s mischief under his dimples. “Uhhh.”

“Please, Hakaze. You’ve always helped me. Leader to leader, I just need some advice.”

The worst part is that he says it with that earnest-angel expression he uses only when he wants something. Hakaze opens her mouth to shut it down—then Harua, sensing weakness, dips into a perfect trainee-bow and slips his headphones back on before she can get a word out.

And then he nails his next take.

Fuma turns to her pleasantly. “So he was playing us.”

“Should have seen it coming. You know how he is when he's after something."

Twenty minutes later, Harua steps out of the booth, bowing. “Good job today,” he says. “Fuma, especially. What a great song.”

“Get out of my face, kid,” Fuma says tiredly. “Hakaze, guess I’ll see you in ten.”

He shuffles off to the mixing room like an old man. Harua bows politely after him, then shoots Hakaze a cheerful, expectant look.

When Hakaze was the leader of ECLIPSE, she was every teenage girl’s older sister: now she spends her time in lightless studios, haunting her agency’s vending machines while earnest, big-eyed idols wail to her about their problems.

Harua lopes behind her as she speed-walks out of the studio, hissing at the bright lights. It’s technically not that late yet, but the studios are at the very lowest level, where there aren’t any windows to avoid reporters with their cameras.

The overhead lights make his eyes look gigantic, and if it wasn’t for the perfectly maintained skin and hair and faint arrogance, he’d just look like a normal teenager.

“Hakaze,” he says, very serious. “I’m your fan. I’ve watched your fancam for Do it like me a thousand times.”

“You’re a bug to me. Also if you’re picking a song to suck up to me, pick one that did well.”

“There’s a part that you look like you’re about to juggle with your mic and you end up just kind of batting it away. It’s really funny. Then Nao has to pick it up for you.”

Hakaze fishes out her next energy drink from the machine, and begins to walk away.

The puppy eyes come back on again instantly. “I’m seriously in trouble this time! You have to hear me out. It’s about Ren.”

“I don’t know him, so can’t help there.”

He scampers behind her as she tries again to walk off. “That’s crazy. How?”

“I didn’t take up the sound engineer gig till a few years after your group debuted, and he went solo before you did. All his work’s handled by the bigshots.”

“You mean they’re giving me the second string? Ow, ow,” he’s fully pouting when Hakaze bonks his head with her ice-cold can. “Okay, fine. I think Ren’s mad at me, and I’m worried he’ll mention it to someone important. All the execs worship the ground he walks on after his solo album did so well, so he could get me in real trouble.”

Hakaze slows down. “And why would he be mad at you?”

“He saw me with my girlfriend at the club the other day.”

“What.”

Harua takes a step back.

“Hakaze,” he wheedles. “It’s not a big deal! I’ve been single for a million years, don’t I deserve this? Besides, fans are more accepting these days than they were in yours. I promise.”

She still has his collar in her fist, the rush in her ears drowning out his rambling; this idiot, this asshole, this maddening kid, her reckless protégé, the one who said, two years ago, his smile wide: Hakaze-senpai! You’re working with me? I’m so honored, I was always your fan. He was going to crash and burn, just like she did. Another failure in the long line of heartbreaks, another person she cared about letting her down--

His hand comes over hers. They’re so big now, dwarfing hers.

“It’s not going to be like it was for Reina,” he says, quiet. “I won’t let it. All those years ago, it was you fighting alone, wasn’t it? This time it’s both of us. But you have to promise to help me.”

Hearing Reina’s name is still like distant thunder; she shields her ears against the boom. Her grip slackens on his shirt slowly, and she sags against the wall.

Harua leans on the wall beside her. He’s taller than her now.

“Besides, aren’t you always complaining that I whine too much? Now there’s someone else to listen to me.”

Conniving little gremlin that he is, Hakaze has always grudgingly indulged him. She lets out a breath.

“You are annoying,” she agrees.

“So you’ll help?”

“Why now?” she says. The ceilings of the agency are terribly boring; just bleak overhead lights. This late at night the only sounds are the trainees in the practice rooms, burning their youth for an opportunity. When she’s very tired—tired to her bones, in a way she can’t outrun—she fantasizes about telling them, none of it’s worth it. It’s never going to be worth it, knowing they won’t listen.

Growing up must mean that hypocrisy came easier, because she follows that thought with:

“Why not wait a few years? By then you won’t be this busy, or have this many people watching you.”

As if anyone she'd loved had any kind of patience. She'd spent most of her idol career trying to talk Reina out of bad dating decisions, and look where that left her. 

“I think,” he says, “I guess I don’t have a good reason. I wanted to see if I could have that much. I, um.” And it’s bullshit, the fact that his bashfulness makes Hakaze feel so fond. “I’ve never had a partner before.”

This kid is unbelievable.

“You’re so stupid it’s a miracle you’re alive.”

"Is that a yes?"

She tries not to look at the brightness of his expression head-on as she grumbles, "It's a maybe."

“Oh my gosh, thanks! You're the best senior I've ever had!” he bounds off before she can strangle him. “And watch out for cameras when you're talking to Ren, even if you can't see them they're always there!"