Guilt Doesn’t Let You Sleep

Senri could not sleep. Guilt was sitting on his chest like a physical weight.

The room was still dark.

His roommates were sleeping.

He lay there staring at nothing, his mind replaying the balcony scene on an endless, merciless loop.

I hate bullies.

I hate cruel people who use their power to make others feel small.

He'd meant every word.

Had felt righteous saying it, like he was standing up for something important.

For Hana.

For every kid who'd ever been torn apart by someone with more power.

But now all he could see was Nataria's face.

The way she'd gone completely still.

The tear she hadn't bothered wiping away.

Her voice, flat and resigned:

I understand. You're right to feel that way.

Like she'd been expecting it.

Like she'd heard it before and would hear it again and had just been waiting for him to say it too.

Senri pressed his palms against his eyes.

He'd made her cry. Actually cry.

And then she'd pulled herself together and gone back to work, planning their photoshoot like nothing had happened.

Because what else was she supposed to do?

°❀°❀°❀°❀

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He grabbed it without thinking.

Yuki: SENRI-NII

Yuki: THE TEASER

Yuki: I'M SCREAMING

Yuki: you look SO COOL in the teaser

Yuki: also people are making edits already???

Hana: Can we call tonight? Want to talk about the show.

Senri checked the time.

Nearly midnight in Tokyo. School night.

His sisters should be asleep, but of course they weren't.

He typed back: Yeah, give me ten minutes. Going outside so I don't wake the guys.

He slipped out of the bedroom, down the grand staircase, and out into the villa's gardens.

The night air was cool, filled with the scent of night-blooming flowers.

He found a stone bench under a trellis heavy with jasmine.

The video call connected to Yuki's face way too close to the camera.

"SENRI-NII!"

Her eyes were bright, practically vibrating with energy.

"Did you see the teaser? It's everywhere! People are obsessed…"

"Yuki, move back, you're literally blocking the entire screen."

Hana's voice came from off-camera before she appeared, shoving their younger sister to the side.

"Hi, nii-san. Whoa, is that a garden? It's huge."

"Hey."

Senri panned the camera slowly.

"Yeah, the whole place is like this. Ridiculous."

"It's so pretty!"

Yuki gasped.

"Looks like you're in a castle!"

Senri smiled.

"You two should be asleep."

"It's a reality show with our brother,"

Yuki said, like this explained everything.

"We're allowed to stay up."

"No, you're not…"

"Well, we already stayed up."

Yuki grinned, then her expression shifted to something more curious.

"So. The purple-haired girl. Nataria Hidomu."

Senri's stomach dropped.

"What about her?"

"She's your partner for a project or something, right?"

Yuki leaned forward.

"Everyone online is freaking out about it. Like, everyone."

"People are being really mean,"

Hana added quietly.

"There's this whole hashtag, #SenriDeservesBetter. It's pretty bad."

Senri felt something cold settle in his gut.

"How bad?"

"They're acting like she's going to corrupt you or something."

Yuki scrolled through her phone.

"It's so dramatic. But... wasn't there a thing with her? Like a scandal?"

"Yeah."

Hana's expression had gone careful.

"She yelled at someone on a set, right? It went viral."

Senri remembered Nataria's voice on the balcony:

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

"Yeah," he said. "That's what happened."

"Did you know about it before becoming a couple?" Yuki asked.

"Not really."

He thought about that moment during partner selection, the way Takeshi had kept pushing him toward the other girls.

"The host made it pretty clear I should choose someone else."

"But you didn't," Hana said.

Not a question. Just observation.

"She looked..." Senri struggled for words.

"Everyone was treating her like she was toxic. And she just sat there trying not to show it. I couldn't just leave her like that."

Yuki snorted. "That's so you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You literally ran into a burning building," Hana said dryly.

"Twice. You see something wrong, and you just... act without thinking."

"I think…"

"Not about consequences, you don't."

But Hana was smiling slightly. "It's not always a bad thing. Though you should be careful."

Yuki was still scrolling through her phone.

"People are really mad about you picking her. Look at these comments…"

She started reading:

"'Why would Senri waste his kindness on someone like her?' 'She doesn't deserve him' 'I hope he realizes his mistake before she drags him down'..."

"Yuki," Hana said sharply.

"What? I'm just telling him what people are saying!"

Senri felt his jaw tighten.

"She made a mistake. People make mistakes."

"Yeah, but..." Yuki hesitated. "I mean, that's what everyone's saying. That's what the video shows, too."

"What video?"

Both sisters looked at him oddly.

"The viral one," Hana said slowly. "The reason everyone's mad at her. You haven't watched it?"

"I…no." He'd just taken Nataria's confession at face value. Accepted her version of events without question.

"She told me what happened. I believed her."

Yuki and Hana exchanged glances.

Hana tilted her head curiously. "What exactly did she say she did?"

"She yelled at a staff member over a coffee order."

"And? What else?" Hana asked.

Senri blinked. "What?"

"What else did she say?" Hana's voice was careful. "Did she tell you all of it? Did she target that poor assistant repeatedly? What is the full story?"

The questions shifted something in his chest.

"I don't know," Senri said slowly.

"She told me that she apologized the same day. Before the video even came out."

"Oh." Hana looked thoughtful. "I never thought bullies apologized."

Senri could feel that familiar twist in his gut as he listened to Hana's voice go quiet.

"Those girls never apologized to me once. They knew exactly what they were doing and they enjoyed it."

She looked back at the camera, eyes wide and worried.

"Do you think Nataria Hidomu is the same, nii-san? I don't want you to get hurt if she is."

Senri didn't have an answer.

Was Nataria the same?

He still couldn't believe that she was.

"But she apologized, right?" Yuki said.

"Isn't that what you always tell us to do? When we mess up? Own it and apologize, and try to do better? She looked so sad in the teaser."

"That's…" He stopped.

Because they were right. Both of them. That's exactly what he always told them.

"Yeah. That's what I tell you."

"So she did what she was supposed to do," Yuki said, matter-of-fact.

“People should stop being mad."

Hana said dryly, "I don't think it is the same thing as you not doing your chores, Yuki."

For Senri, the thought hung in the air, though.

His mind was running.

He didn't know anything, and he was suddenly overcome with the urge to find out.

"I need to go," he said quietly.

"Go to bed, you two."

After they hung up, Senri sat in the garden for a long time, the silence feeling heavier than before.

Then he opened his phone.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

The search brought up the video immediately.

Millions of views.

Thousands of comments.

Senri clicked play.

The video was phone footage. Shaky and clearly taken from across a room.

Nataria's face filled the frame, eyes sharp with frustration.

"I specifically said no milk. Do you not understand basic instructions?"

A young woman in staff uniform, barely visible, voice trembling: "I…I'm sorry, I’ll fix the order right away…"

Nataria snatched the cup, set it down with a sharp click.

"Forget it. From now on, just stay out of my sight."

The video cut off.

Senri watched it again. Then a third time.

Nataria looked exhausted. Not just tired, but the bone-deep exhaustion that came from pushing too hard for too long.

That manic look that he saw in his own eyes when he pulled double shifts.

Her voice was harsh, yes, but underneath it, he could hear something else.

Something brittle.

It was cruel what she said. It was wrong.

But it didn't look like the calculated meanness of Hana's bullies.

It looked like someone breaking.

He started reading articles, diving deeper, searching for context beyond the outrage.

Most were sensationalized hit pieces:

DIVA ACTRESS EXPOSED

NATARIA HIDOMU'S TRUE COLORS

THE DARK SIDE OF FAME.

But buried in the manufactured fury were facts:

The incident happened fifteen hours into a shoot day.

The staff member had accepted Nataria’s apology the next morning and later posted asking people to stop harassing her online.

No one had listened.

Senri found an interview with a former co-star:

"I was shocked when I saw that video. Nataria is incredibly professional. Reserved, yes, but I never saw her mistreat anyone. We all have bad days."

Another from a director:

"She's one of the most prepared actresses I've worked with. That video doesn't represent who she is. But I understand why no one wants to work with her now. The risk isn't worth it."

As he scrolled further, her name became linked to another phrase:

"The Milk Incident."

Curious, he clicked on a news link.

It was an article detailing her public apology press conference.

Then he found the video.

He watched, his stomach knotting, as Nataria stood on a dais in a severe black dress, her face pale under harsh lights, giving a flat, mechanical apology.

Someone yelled.

The camera angle shifted.
A sudden movement.
A pale splash across her face.

His breath caught.

She just… stopped.

Like someone had pulled a switch inside her.

The camera zoomed in, greedy, as milk slid down her cheek and into the collar of her dress.

She looked smaller somehow, emptied out, her eyes unfocused as the room erupted around her.

His jaw tightened as the clip ended, the screen filling with commentary and speculation and casual cruelty.

Panels discussing it with delighted viciousness.

Then there were the comments.

LOL Guess milk isn’t beneath her anymore!

I’ve watched this clip like ten times, and it’s still funny every time

This is hilarious. Karma’s a bitch.

Ice Queen glitching when she gets splashed

Senri read every word.

Fury bloomed in his chest, dense and choking, at how easily her pain had been turned into a joke.

A memory detonated in his mind with brutal clarity.

The dining room. Him offering a glass of milk to a choking, tearful Nataria. Her black eyes, wide and fixated on the liquid with fear.

He hadn’t known he was holding up a reminder of a moment of public violence and utter humiliation that thousands of people had turned into a joke.

A meme they shared with laughing emojis.

They think it’s funny.

The thought hit him like a physical blow to the throat.

He’d seen cruelty before, in his father’s cold dismissals, in the sly, systematic torment aimed at Hana.

He thought he knew its shape.

But this… this was a scale he couldn’t comprehend.

This was a single mistake being used to justify an endless, gleeful punishment from a faceless crowd.

And he, Senri, had added his own voice to the chorus of judgment.

I hate bullies!

He’d said it to her face, on camera, for all those laughing people to hear and maybe laugh some more.

He’d become part of the machinery that was hurting her.

He had hurt a girl who was being bullied by thousands.

A scorching, suffocating shame burned through him, overwhelming the anger.

He stood up abruptly, needing to move, to escape the feeling, but it was inside him.

As he turned, he caught his reflection in the dark glass of the villa’s patio door.

For a split second, he didn’t see himself.

He saw his father’s height, his father’s jawline, his father’s cold eyes staring back.

The man who always knew how to deliver the cutting remark that would leave you speechless and small.

Senri had spent his life running from that reflection.

Molding himself to be the exact opposite.

But on that balcony…

He’d stood and delivered a judgment that cut just as deep, caused the same kind of hurt.

“No,” he whispered to the reflection.

His heart hammering against his ribs.

The words he always drilled into Yuki and Hana echoed in his skull, a lifeline through the shame:

“If you mess up, you own it. You apologize. And you fix what you broke.”

I need to fix this.

The thought settled with absolute, burning certainty.

He couldn't undo the viral video.

He couldn't erase the milk incident or the millions of cruel comments.

But he could apologize. Properly.

Tomorrow. First thing.

If she'd even talk to him.