The Confession Room

a simple offering that had turned the atmosphere to ice.

Nataria stared at it,

her eyes wide and unblinking, all the color leaching from her face until she was as pale as the liquid inside.

Her breath hitched, a tiny, trapped sound.

She looked, for a second, like she was seeing a ghost. Or a monster.

Senri’s smile faded, replaced by bewildered concern.

“Hidomu-san? What’s wrong?”

Before she could answer, a hand shot out from the side.

Hibiki took the glass from Senri’s grip with a smooth motion.

He drank half of it in one go.

“Ah, sorry, Amano-kun,”

Hibiki said, his voice an easy cadence.

He gave a sheepish smile as he lowered the glass on the farther side of the table.

“The heat got to me, too.

My pride was just holding out longer than my taste buds. Thanks for this.”

The apology was normal.

The embarrassment seemed genuine.

But Senri saw the tension locked in Hibiki’s shoulders, the glint in his silver eyes.

This wasn’t about spice. This was an interception.

Senri’s gaze snapped back to Nataria.

She had pushed her chair back and stood, one hand braced lightly on the table.

She was still too pale, but a brittle composure was sliding back into place like a shield.

“Thank you, Amano-san,”

she said, not meeting his eyes.

“The curry was delicious. I’ll… I’ll start on the dishes now.”

She picked up her plate, the curry barely touched, and turned toward the sink.

Senri could see the faint tremor in her hands.

Every line of her back was rigid, screaming a silent alarm he didn’t understand.

He took a step to follow her, to ask again, to understand…

“Everyone settling in?”

A new voice came from the archway to the entrance.

A woman stood there, possibly fifty, impeccably dressed in a crisp blazer and slacks, a clipboard held to her chest.

She hadn’t been there a moment ago.

She smiled kindly, her eyes sweeping over the frozen tableau at the table.

A producer.

Senri felt a collective jolt go through the room.

“My name is Aoyama Mori,”

the woman said, stepping fully into the room.

Her heels clicked softly on the hardwood.

“I’ll be your primary point of contact with production. I’m here for your first confessionals. We need to capture your initial impressions while they’re fresh.”

She reminded Senri, oddly, of a very well-dressed police officer about to conduct an interrogation.

“We’ll start with you, Amano-san,” she said, her gaze landing on him. It wasn’t a request.

Senri hesitated, his eyes darting back to Nataria’s rigid form at the sink. Water was running, but she wasn’t moving.

“Amano-san?” Aoyama prompted, her tone pleasant but edged with steel.

“Right,” Senri said, forcing his attention back. He offered the table a small, distracted smile. “Excuse me.”

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Senri only knew two things for certain:

the girl he was partnered with was exceedingly beautiful,

the breathtaking sort that made him hyper-aware he was standing among celebrities,

people who existed in a different stratosphere from regular folks,

and second, something was going on that everyone else understood except him.

During the partner selection, he'd felt the host steering him away from Nataria,

pushing him toward the other girls with that repeated reminder that he could choose someone already picked.

But Senri had no idea why.

Nataria seemed quiet compared to the others, sure, and she hadn't said much during her introduction, but she'd seemed nice enough.

Which was exactly what he said now, sitting in what they called the "confession room."

°❀°❀°❀°❀

The couch beneath him was the single most comfortable piece of furniture he'd ever sat on, plush and oversized, the kind that probably cost more than a month of his combined paychecks. It felt alien.

The last time he’d been in a room this controlled was in a recording studio.

Headphones pressed against his ears.

The faint smell of antiseptic and expensive wood.

A microphone hanging in front of him like it was waiting to judge whether he belonged there.

“Levels are good.”

The voice crackled through the talkback.

Senri swallowed.

Through the glass, people in suits sat in a neat row.

No one smiled.

One woman didn’t even look up once, just lifted a finger, and Ogawa behind her, made a note.

His palms were damp.

He wiped them against his jeans and curled his fingers around the headphone so they’d stop shaking.

Breathe.

The backing track started.

Soft piano. A tempo he knew by heart.

The first note came out thinner than he wanted.

He winced, but didn’t stop. He let the next breath sink deeper, felt it settle in his ribs, and tried again.

This time the sound carried.

The glass disappeared.

There were no suits.

No money.

No future hanging on a single take.

Just the song, threading itself through the space between him and the room.

Something meant to be shared.

When the last note faded, Senri opened his eyes.

Silence.

Then… movement.

A man leaned toward another. They nodded.

The woman who hadn’t looked up before finally did.

Chairs scraped. Hands reached across the table.

They shook.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

“Amano-san?”

A flurry of activity surrounded him.

Someone rushed forward with a makeup brush, patting powder across his face with efficiency. He still wasn't used to that, the casual intimacy of strangers touching his face,

adjusting his hair.

It was a milder version of the stylists who’d descended on him alarmingly at the agency panel, prepping him to be visually presentable.

This was only his third time on television, and the whole process felt surreal.

"Just relax and tell us what's on your mind,"

said Aoyama standing behind the main camera.

"Talk about the show so far. The other participants. Whatever you're thinking."

Senri nodded and smiled.

"Everyone seems really kind. And this place is incredible. I keep thinking about how my sisters would react if they saw it. Yuki would lose her mind over the bathrooms, they're fancier than anything we've ever…"

The woman's expression shifted slightly.

She touched her earpiece, nodded at something, then interrupted him with smooth professionalism.

"That's wonderful, Amano-san. But let's focus on the other participants. What did you think of Miyata-san and Tamaki-san?"

He must not have been saying the right things.

That made sense; there was probably some etiquette to these confession room segments that he didn't know about yet.

It was another performance, just without a backing track.

"They both seem really great," he said.

"Miyata-san seems like she'd be fun to hang around with, you know, easy to talk to. And Tamaki-san is seriously impressive. An Olympic silver medalist? That's incredible. The discipline that must take..."

He shook his head, genuinely awed.

The woman's eyes lit up with satisfaction. Her smile widened, warm and approving, and Senri felt pleased with himself.

He was doing it right now, it must be required etiquette to compliment the girls after not choosing them. Similar to being gentle and respectful when you reject someone.

"That's lovely. And one more question, if you'd had first pick, who would you have chosen?"

Senri's satisfaction evaporated.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

The question sat in the air between them, heavy and uncomfortable.

The woman kept smiling at him, nodding encouragingly,

like this was perfectly reasonable.

But it seemed to defeat the entire purpose of being respectful and kind, didn't it?

Senri didn't date much, a few relationships in middle and high school,

nothing serious after that. He'd always been straightforward about it: when he liked someone, he asked them out.

The girls usually blushed and said yes, and everyone would whisper about it for days like it was some huge secret.

But eventually, those relationships always ended the same way.

The girls would stop smiling. They'd get annoyed with him but never explain why.

He'd try to fix whatever was wrong, but he never understood what he'd broken in the first place.

His friends called him a clueless idiot. They were probably right.

But even he knew that answering this question honestly wouldn't help anyone.

If he said Momo or Sachiko, it would hurt Nataria, his actual partner, the person he'd committed to working with. If he said Nataria, it would be another rejection for the other girls, plus he wasn't a good liar. People would see right through it.

Because the truth was, he wouldn't have chosen Nataria first.

Not because there was anything wrong with her,

she was stunning, probably the most beautiful person in that room if he was being completely objective about it.

But he would have gone for someone warmer, someone easier to read.

Someone like Momo, maybe, with her sweet smiles and obvious kindness.

But Nataria was his partner now, and he was going to make the most of it.

He remembered the look in her dark eyes during the selection, that tense, fearful expression she'd tried so hard to hide.

The way Takeshi had kept insisting Senri could choose someone else, like there was something fundamentally wrong with her.

Like she was a reject, something to be avoided.

It had made Senri's chest tighten with instinctive protectiveness.

Because she wasn't doing anything wrong, as far as he could tell.

She was just quiet.

Not the cute, blushing, sweet type of quiet that people seemed to expect from girls, just the reserved quiet of someone who didn't want to engage.

But so what? People didn't need to smile and blush constantly.

Then his mind conjured an unbidden image: Nataria blushing.

Those pale, perfect cheeks flushing pink.

Her careful composure cracking just slightly.

His heart did a small, unexpected stutter.

Would she blush if I made her laugh? What would that look like?

The thought felt oddly intimate, and Senri realized with a start that he wanted to see it. Wanted to make her comfortable enough to let that mask slip.

They are going to be living together for the next month, after all. Maybe they could be friends.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

"Amano-san?"

Aoyama's voice cut through his thoughts, patient but insistent.

"Who would you have chosen first?"

Senri blinked, refocusing.

"If I got to pick first?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, buying time.

"Hmm... I dunno. All the girls were cute, right? I panicked the whole time, honestly."

Aoyama waited, her smile unwavering.

Okay, just be honest. Partial honesty. That's not the same as lying.

"I picked Hidomu-san because, well, she was the only one left."

He said it simply, the way he always spoke.

"It felt sad to skip her. And she looked like she was trying really hard not to look lonely, so... yeah. I couldn't just walk past her."

Aoyama's face transformed. Her smile widened into something radiant, almost triumphant. "That's perfect, Amano-san. Thank you so much."

That seemed to be the right answer, judging by her expression. Good.

"You can head out now. Great work," she said, already gesturing to someone off-camera.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Senri stood, still slightly confused about the logic of the questions, but satisfied he'd navigated it well enough.

As he stepped out of the confession room into the hallway, he nearly collided with someone coming from the opposite direction.

Shou Komatsu.

Up close, the guy looked like he'd stepped out of a cologne advertisement, perfectly styled blond hair, flawless skin, clothes that probably cost more than Senri's rent.

It was still surreal, being surrounded by people who looked like this.

Shou's blue eyes tracked up and down Senri's frame in a quick, assessing sweep.

For a moment, something sharp flickered across his face, something that looked almost like a sneer.

Then it vanished, replaced by a pleasant smile.

"Good luck with your challenge,"

Shou said smoothly.

"Thanks," Senri replied, matching the smile automatically.

"You too."

But as Shou brushed past him into the confession room,

Senri couldn't shake the feeling that the guy had been sizing him up like competition.

Or like a problem to be dealt with.

He shook off the thought.

He was probably just reading into things.

This was reality TV, everyone was probably on edge, trying to make good impressions.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Still, as he walked back toward the main area where the others were gathering for the photoshoot challenge, Senri found himself thinking about that moment during partner selection.

The way Nataria's hands had clenched her dress.

The careful blankness of her expression that didn't quite hide the tension underneath.

The way she'd looked at him when he chose her,

like he'd done something impossible.

Her silent panic at the sight of that glass of milk.

What exactly am I missing here?

Whatever it was, he'd figure it out. He always did, eventually.

Even if he was a clueless idiot, he was at least a determined one.