The One Who Wanted Eternity

Ten years earlier.

Tokyo shone differently in 2015.
The neon lights were the same, the crowds just as dense, but something in the air felt lighter. Less saturated with digital despair. Social networks already existed, of course, but they hadn’t yet devoured the soul of the entertainment industry.

Rei was working for a small agency back then. Just a handful of idols, tight budgets, and dreams held together with duct tape and sheer will.

That’s where he met her.

Tsukino Hikari. Sixteen. Talented. Charismatic. And dangerously perceptive.

She arrived one spring Tuesday morning, her black hair tied in a ponytail, her eyes blazing with an ambition that could have set the world on fire. After thirty seconds of audition, everyone in the room knew she would be a star.

She looked at Rei differently. Not with the blind adoration of fans, nor the professional indifference of coworkers. She looked at him as if she were trying to see through him.

For the first few months, he kept his distance.

That was his rule. Never get attached. Humans were fleeting. To grow close to them was to condemn yourself to an eternity of mourning.

But Hikari followed him after rehearsals, asking strange questions between two choreography runs.

“Why do you never look tired, Rei-san?”
“Why do some fans look… empty after your concerts?”

He dodged. Lied. Changed the subject.

She insisted.

One evening, after a particularly exhausting show, she cornered him in his dressing room. Her dark eyes pinned him with an intensity that made him uneasy.

“I know you’re not human.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“You’re different,” she went on. “I want to know.”

Rei should have lied. Should have erased that moment from her memory with a well-placed illusion.

Instead, he told the truth.

She didn’t run. Didn’t scream. Didn’t even look surprised.

She just smiled.

“I knew you were special!”

That confession marked the beginning of their friendship.

It was rare for Rei. Dangerous, even. But Hikari had something that broke through his defenses—a brutal honesty, a curiosity without judgment, and a loneliness that echoed his own.

She told him about her dreams. About her childhood in a small provincial town where no one believed in her.

“I’ll prove them wrong,” she said, eyes shining. “I’ll become so famous they won’t be able to ignore me anymore. No one will ever be able to ignore me again.”

Rei listened. Understood. But something in her words unsettled him.

It wasn’t ambition.

It was terror.

***

The problem became clear over the months.

Hikari wasn’t obsessed with fame for glory. Nor for money. Nor even for validation.

She was terrified of being forgotten.

“Humans disappear, Rei,” she told him one night, sitting on the agency rooftop, staring at stars made almost invisible by light pollution. “We die and no one remembers. In a hundred years, who will know I existed? In a thousand?”

She turned to him, and in her eyes he saw something that looked like envy.

“But you… you’ve existed for centuries. Legends never die.” Her voice broke. “I want that, Rei. I want people to remember me forever. I want to be eternal.”

Rei shook his head.

“Eternity isn’t a gift, Hikari. It’s a curse.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve watched thousands of people die. Friends. Lovers. Places I loved vanish as if they’d never existed.” He closed his eyes. “Eternity is watching everything you love fade away while you remain. Alone. Always alone.”

Hikari stayed silent for a long moment.

Then she replied, softly but firmly:

“At least you remain. Me, I’ll just… disappear. As if I never existed.”

***

Things started to unravel six months later.

Hikari changed. Her smile grew forced, her eyes haunted. She spent hours on her phone, browsing obscure chans.

And she began to talk about Kageyama.

“He runs Nova Entertainment,” she explained one day. “He’s a yōkai, like you. And he says… he says he can help me.”

Rei’s blood ran cold.

“Stay away from him! He’s a monster. He doesn’t want to help you—he wants to use you.”

She looked at him with something like disappointment.

“You say that because you’re afraid.”

The words hit him like a slap.

“That’s not—”

“Kageyama says he can change me. Make me immortal.” Her eyes shone with desperate hope. “If you won’t help me, he will.”

***

The final confrontation happened on a rainy night.

On a rooftop in Shinjuku. Water streamed down Hikari’s face, washing away her makeup, revealing the dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin. She hadn’t slept in days.

“Kageyama will help me, Rei.” Her voice trembled. “Make me like you. Immortal.”

Rei shook his head, heart tight.

“No. Not like me. You’d become something else. Something you don’t want to be. You wouldn’t be you anymore, Hikari. You’d be trapped.”

“I’m already trapped!” she almost screamed, tears mixing with rain on her cheeks. “Trapped in a body that ages! Trapped by the oblivion waiting for me!”

She stepped toward him, pleading.

“Then help me, you. Change me. Share your essence with me. Make me like you.”

Rei closed his eyes.

He could have done it. Technically, it was possible. Dangerous, unpredictable—but possible. For a fraction of a second, he considered it.

Then he thought about what she would become. About what she would lose.

“I can’t.”

The words fell like stones.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Both.” He opened his eyes, meeting her wounded gaze. “That’s not how it works. And even if I could… I shouldn’t. You wouldn’t be you anymore. You’d become something else.”

Hikari stepped back as if slapped.

“So you’re abandoning me.”

“No! I’m trying to protect you—”

“Protect me?” She laughed—a bitter, broken sound that didn’t resemble the girl he’d known. “When your friend needs you, when she begs you to help her… you abandon her.”

She wiped her tears angrily.

“In the end, you’re just a coward, Rei.”

She turned to leave.

“Hikari, wait—”

She didn’t turn back. “If you won’t help me, he will. I refuse to be forgotten.” Her voice was icy now, drained of emotion.

It was the last time Rei saw her.

He searched for her.

For months, he tore Tokyo apart. Kageyama’s underlings laughed when he asked questions.

“She transcended,” they said. “You’ll never find her.”

The press spoke of suicide. A promising young idol, gone without a trace. No body. No letter.

Rei eventually stopped searching.

Not because he had moved on. But because with each passing day, the guilt grew heavier. More suffocating.

He could have changed her. He chose not to.
He could have protected her from Kageyama. He hadn’t been vigilant enough.
He let her walk away that night, knowing she would accept the monster’s offer.

And now, ten years later, she had returned.

Not as the girl he once knew.

But as something else.

***

Present.

Silence filled the hospital room.

Rei had finished his story, eyes fixed on an invisible point on the wall. His voice faded like a flame running out of oxygen.

Aoi felt everything through their bond. The guilt eating at him for ten years. The regret. The pain of losing someone he might have saved.

And something else. Deeper. More terrible.

The fear that the same thing would happen to her.

Kuzunoha smiled—but it was a joyless smile.

“Jin transcended the human she was into a digital nekomata,” she said flatly. “She lives in the network now. The internet is her kingdom. She can possess electronic devices, screens, connected humans.”

She paused.

“In a way, she got what she wanted. Immortality. Eternal recognition. Millions of followers who worship her.” Her pink eyes gleamed. “But she’s also trapped. Alone. Bound to Kageyama by a debt she believes she owes him.”

Rei closed his eyes.

Aoi took his hand. Through the Resonance, she sent him everything she could—not comfort, not empty words, just her presence. Her understanding.

You’re not responsible for her choices. You tried to protect her.
But she knew those words would change nothing. Rei’s guilt was carved into his essence.

Kuzunoha headed for the exit.

“Tsukino is the heart of Kageyama’s plan. If you want to stop him, you’ll have to destroy her first.” She stopped at the doorway. “The abandoned theater in Ikebukuro. That’s where you’ll find the original.”

“The original?” Yuki asked.

“When she performs during her streams, those are clones of herself. They can’t be destroyed—and even if they could, it would mean nothing as long as the original exists. If she’s destroyed there, there will be no ‘backup.’”

She vanished in a shimmer of light.

Silence fell again.

Then Rei stood, his hand still in Aoi’s.

“We have to go,” he said. “Before the Festival. Before Kageyama begins his ritual.”

Aoi nodded.

She didn’t know what they would find in that theater. Didn’t know if they could save Hikari…