Judgment in the Sunlight

Senri found Nataria on the balcony.

The space was ridiculous, all white marble and ornate iron railings,

with flowering vines climbing up trellises that framed the view like something out of a painting.

A fancy picnic table sat in the center, surrounded by pots of flowers.

Sunlight poured through the greenery, turning everything golden and soft.

And there, in the middle of it all, was Nataria.

She sat with perfect posture, violet hair falling in waves over one shoulder, catching the light like silk.

A laptop was open in front of her, and she was writing something in a notebook with careful strokes.

The concentration on her face was absolute, brow slightly furrowed, lips pressed together in a way that made her look both serious and impossibly elegant.

He stopped walking without meaning to.

She looked like she was modeling for some high-end advertisement.

The type where they sold luxury watches or expensive perfume, where the product barely mattered because the image itself was the statement.

Beautiful in a way that made his chest feel tight.

She looked up, finally noticing that she was being watched.

He shook himself and walked over.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

"Hey," he said, pulling out the chair across from her.

Her dark eyes widened slightly. "Is something wrong?"

"Nah."

Senri sat down and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

"I just couldn't help but notice how beautiful you are."

He said it matter-of-factly.

Then he glanced down at her notebook, curious about what she'd been working on so intently. The page was covered in neat handwriting, bullet points and sketched diagrams that he couldn't quite make sense of from upside down.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

Silence.

Senri looked up and found her staring at him with an expression he couldn't quite parse. Surprise, maybe. Or confusion.

Her lips were slightly parted, her eyebrows raised.

Then she ducked her head, a strand of violet hair falling forward to partially hide her face.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Her fingers fidgeted with her pen for a moment before she added, almost like she couldn't help herself, "I think... your smile is pretty, too."

The words came out soft, almost hesitant.

Then her cheeks flushed, actual color blooming across that pale skin, soft and pink and somehow making her even more striking.

She looked startled by her own confession,

her eyes widening as if she hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Senri felt his face split into a grin.

He couldn't help it.

Something warm and pleased spread through his chest at her words, at the blush reddening her cheeks.

There it is.

It was exactly as he'd imagined it would be, that careful composure cracking just enough to show something genuine underneath.

The soft pink on her cheeks made her look less like an untouchable celebrity and more like a real person.

Someone he could actually get to know.

He had the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to reach across the table and touch those flushed cheeks, to feel if they were as soft and warm as they looked.

She's my partner for the week,

he thought, the realization settling pleasantly in his chest.

I can't wait to get to know her better.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Nataria was fidgeting with her pen now, rolling it between her fingers with deliberate focus.

"I was just..." She cleared her throat, clearly trying to regain her composure.

"I was working on ideas for the photoshoot challenge."

She was changing the subject, and the shift was almost comically obvious, but Senri let her.

He leaned closer, genuinely interested now.

"Oh yeah? What kind of ideas?"

"I've never had to think of a narrative for one before," she said, her voice taking on that careful, controlled quality again, though the pink still lingered on her cheeks.

"Usually for drama promotions or advertisements, someone else decides everything, the outfits, the poses, the background. We just show up and do what we're told."

"Huh." He hadn't thought about it that way.

"I guess that makes sense. So now we have to come up with all that stuff ourselves?"

"Apparently." She tapped her pen against the notebook.

"The challenge is to show chemistry. To make it look like we're..."

She hesitated, choosing her words carefully.

"Getting along."

"Well, we are getting along, aren't we?"

Senri grinned.

"This doesn't seem so hard."

Something flickered across her face, amusement, maybe?

"We've known each other for approximately three hours."

"Right, but that just means we need to find some common ground. Things we both like."

He said it with easy confidence.

Finding common ground with people had never been hard for him.

"That'll make the chemistry thing natural. What kind of stuff are you into?"

She looked at him for a long moment, and Senri watched her thinking, calculating, maybe, or just trying to figure out how to answer.

Then, very quietly, she said,

"I don't think we'll find much in common."

She said it like a fact.

Like she'd already run the numbers and determined the equation wouldn't balance.

Senri frowned. "Come on, there's gotta be something. Let's just try. What do you do for fun?"

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Thirty minutes later, Senri was starting to think she'd been right.

"Okay, so... sports?" he tried again, leaning back in his chair.

"I go to the gym because I have to maintain a certain appearance for work," she said flatly. "It's not fun."

"Right. Okay. Food, then. What's your favorite?"

"Sweets. Pastries, mostly. But I don't get to eat them often."

"I love spicy stuff. Mapo tofu, curry, anything with a good kick to it."

She wrinkled her nose slightly, the first unguarded expression he'd seen from her since the blush.

"I can't handle spice at all."

“Sorry about that.”

He said, remembering her earlier reaction. Then he asked:

"Favorite season?"

"Spring."

“Summer."

They stared at each other across the table.

"Movies?" Senri tried, getting desperate now.

"I don't watch many. When I do, it's usually to study other actors' performances."

"Music?"

"Classical, sometimes. It helps me focus when I'm memorizing scripts."

"I like anything I can run to. High energy stuff. I sing all kinds, though."

Another silence.

Senri rubbed the back of his neck, laughing despite himself. "Okay, yeah. You were right. This is harder than I thought."

"I told you."

But there was something in her voice, like resignation.

Like she'd expected this outcome and was somehow disappointed to be proven correct.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Before he could ask another question, movement in the garden below caught his attention. Hibiki and Sachiko were walking along a stone path, deep in conversation.

Sachiko's ponytail swayed with each graceful step, and Hibiki had his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed.

Senri raised his hand and waved.

Sachiko noticed first, her navy blue eyes flicking up to the balcony.

She lifted her hand in a brief wave.

Hibiki's gaze followed. His eyes landed on Senri first, and he nodded at him.

Then his gaze shifted slightly to Nataria.

And stopped.

For just a moment, something flickered across Hibiki's face.

Something painful.

Then he looked away deliberately, turning his attention back to Sachiko and continuing their walk like the balcony didn't exist.

Senri felt something uncomfortable settle in his chest.

He glanced at Nataria and saw she'd gone very still,

her hands flat on the table, her expression blank.

The question formed in his mind before he could stop it.

He'd been wondering since the partner selection,

since that weird tension in the room, since the way everyone had reacted to her like she was radioactive.

"Why is everyone acting weird around you?"

The words came out before he could think them through.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

She went white.

Actually white, all the color draining from her face until she looked like a porcelain doll.

Her eyes darted immediately to the cameras mounted along the balcony's edge, half-hidden among the flowering vines.

Senri's stomach dropped.

Idiot. You complete idiot.

He'd forgotten.

Somehow, in the comfortable quiet of their conversation, he'd forgotten that they weren't alone.

That every word they said was being recorded, catalogued, prepared for broadcast.

Whatever she answered, or didn't answer, would be heard by the entire nation.

"You don't have to…" he started.

"I made a mistake."

Her voice was flat, emotionless.

She wasn't looking at him, wasn't looking at anything.

Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle distance,

and her face had gone stony in a way that made Senri's chest ache.

"I wronged someone," she continued, each word carefully measured.

"I was a bully. And people are upset with me because of it."

The confession hung in the air between them.

Senri went completely still.

A bully.

The word hit him like a physical blow, and suddenly he wasn't sitting on a balcony in an expensive villa anymore.

He was back in his tiny apartment, sitting on the edge of a bed while someone he cared about cried into her pillow.

Again. For the third time that week.

He remembered the way Hana had come home that day, shoulders hunched, eyes red, refusing to talk about what had happened.

He'd pressed, gently, until she'd finally broken down and told him about the girls at school.

The comments.

The deliberately excluded invitations.

The way they'd spread rumors about her online, laughing when she walked past in the hallways.

He remembered holding her while she sobbed, feeling helpless and furious in equal measure. Remembered watching a bright, energetic person become a shell of herself over the course of months.

Remembered the way she'd started flinching at her phone notifications, the way she'd stopped wanting to go to school.

The popular girls.

The pretty ones who had everything and still felt the need to tear someone else down for entertainment.

Senri's jaw tightened.

He looked at Nataria, beautiful, famous Nataria, and something cold settled in his chest.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

"What did you do?" His voice came out different. Harder.

She flinched.

It was a small movement, barely noticeable, but Senri saw it.

The way her shoulders tensed, the way her eyes widened slightly before she caught herself.

"I yelled at a staff member," she said quietly.

"Over a coffee order, something that didn't matter at all. It was cruel and unnecessary, and it was caught on video."

A coffee order.

She'd humiliated someone over a coffee order.

"Did you apologize?" he asked, and even he could hear the edge in his voice.

"Yes." Her hands were trembling slightly on the table.

"The same day. Before the video even came out. She accepted it."

Nataria's voice was barely above a whisper.

"It didn't matter. The internet had already decided who I was."

Senri sat back, trying to process.

Part of him, a small part, recognized that having your worst moment broadcast to millions of people must be terrible.

That being judged by strangers must be its own kind of hell.

But then he thought about Hana again.

Her small, broken voice asking, "When does it get better?"

°❀°❀°❀°❀

“I hate bullies," Senri said, jaw set, words rough.

He met Nataria's gaze directly.

"I hate cruel people who use their power to make others feel small. I really, really hope you've changed. That you're not that person anymore."

A tear slipped down Nataria's cheek. She didn't wipe it away.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

Nataria drew in a shaky breath, then another, composing herself with visible effort.

"I understand," she said finally.

Her voice was thick. "You're right to feel that way."

She didn't defend herself.

Didn't make excuses.

Just accepted his words like they were a sentence she'd been waiting to hear.

Senri felt something twist uncomfortably in his chest, guilt, maybe, or just confusion.

Because she didn't look like a bully right now.

She looked like someone who'd been carrying shame for so long it had become part of her skeleton.

But Hana had looked broken too, and she'd never hurt anyone.

Nataria sniffled once, a small, quickly stifled sound, then straightened her spine and pulled the notebook back toward her.

"We should finalize the photoshoot concept,"

she said, her voice carefully professional despite the tears still clinging to her lashes.

"We only have four days."

Just like that, she was back to work.

Face composed except for the dampness on her cheeks.

Hands steady as she pointed to sketches and explained angles.

Senri nodded and listened, offering input when she asked for it.

They worked through the details methodically, professionally.

But the warmth from earlier, the easy banter, the soft blush,

the moment when she'd called his smile pretty, was gone.

The space between them had grown cold.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

And Senri wasn't sure if that was fair or not.

Wasn't sure if he was protecting someone he cared about or punishing someone who'd already been punished enough.

He just knew that when he looked at Nataria now, he saw two different people: the girl who'd blushed at his compliment, and the person who'd called someone useless over coffee.

And he didn't know which one was real.