Eurydice Looks Back

Around them, lit by streetlights, the district has for the most part retained its centuries-old narrow houses and roads. There aren’t any cars around, only bikes and pedestrians weaving through non-existent crosswalks, and when Ren steps out of the building, he slows instinctively so she can keep up.

“I feel irresponsible, taking you out alone like this,” Hakaze says. “Shouldn’t you have some kind of staff with you?”

“I have you. Or are you saying you wouldn’t protect me from threats?”

“He’s got jokes,” Hakaze mutters under her breath.

Slightly ahead of her, Ren snorts, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders loose, squinting up at the sky as if he could see stars beyond all the buildings.

Their destination, as it turns out, is the same hotpot place as earlier, open still but only sparsely populated, diners tucked away in far corners. Though they get a few looks when they enter, no one immediately reaches for their phones, and Hakaze figures it’s as private as it’s going to get.

Ren still looks loose-limbed and rumpled, humming under his breath and blinking frequently as if he’s fighting sleep while they wait to be seated.

Hakaze can’t stop staring at him. She just—likes looking at him, like he’s a piece of art in a museum she’s been arrested by. Familiar and unfamiliar both, like she’s known him her whole life, but also like her whole life’s been leading to meeting him.

Crazy thing to think. Crazy man to be at a restaurant with.

When she forces herself to look away, she catches their reflections in the metallic silver of the reception counter. They stand close, framed side by side, like pictures taken in different eras: the muted Polaroid fuzziness of her sweater and messy hair, the bruised undereyes with a vague, distant fury; Ren sharp and silver and brilliant in high-definition Technicolor, several inches taller and blinding to look at head-on.

She cuts her eyes away quickly. It feels like being handed something priceless and radioactive all at once, a piece of this stupidly handsome force of nature that she now irrefutably owned just by standing beside him.

They’re seated in another far corner, heads dipped low for privacy though there’s no one close enough to overhear. Still, Hakaze catches movement in her peripheral vision—someone laughing too loudly, a phone lifted and set back down again. She ignores it.

“Can I know now why you’re still dressed up after your shoot, Prince?” she murmurs.

His eyes trace over her face with unnerving focus. Sometimes she doesn’t understand what he’s looking for with that kind of precision.

“I had a meeting,” he says. “I’m being scouted.”

“I hate to break this to you, Prince, but I think you already were. Or am I misremembering all of Astreon being in a tizzy because they scouted a legendary trainee ten years ago?”

He neatly steals a boiled egg from her plate in retaliation.

Her skin feels strange and tight as she watches him chew, his Adam’s apple bobbing. She really needed to stop being this easily distracted. It was a bad look.

“Ha ha. It’s a different agency,” he says. “The one my dad used to work for.”

“I forgot you were some kind of nepo baby,” she mumbles. “Your contract says you can’t entertain other offers.”

“It expires next year. And if Astreon wants to keep us around as a cash cow they can use to prop up other groups, I’d rather it be somewhere that actually lets us promote ourselves.”

She looks at him sharply. He rolls his eyes.

“You’re not the only idol who can read the writing on the wall, Hakaze Shinomiya.”

“They don’t call you a once-in-a-generation idol for nothing.”

“So you do read my press.”

“Cocky,” she says. “You’re supposed to be humble around seniors.”

“Seniors are generally looking out for my wellbeing.”

Hakaze narrows her eyes. “Tell me about this company.”

“They’re smaller. Idol division of the agency that manages Eclipse’s Nao now.”

“How do you do it,” she says, and there’s a crack in her voice she didn’t intend. “How do you walk away from your legacy so easily.”

“It’s counterproductive to think about my place in history while I’m still living in it,” Ren replies. “It’s not a legacy yet. It’s my job.”

Nao’s voice overlays his, unbidden: you never did meet a fight you could walk away from, General Hakaze.

“Hakaze?” Ren asks, quieter.

The room feels smaller all of a sudden. She notices the group of girls at the neighboring table—too many bags, too deliberate in the way they’re angled. Camera equipment. Her stomach drops.

“Don’t you see,” she says, breath thinning, “if you don’t fight, they’ll disband you. They’ll do to you what they did to me.”

Ren is calm, which is somehow worse. “If that happens, I’ll take all of Neonite with me. We’ll re-debut under a new name.”

Idols had short shelf lives. Maybe men less so than women, but the truth was the same: whatever company you gave your youth to, owned you. No matter how brilliant Ren was, he couldn’t escape that.

“Harua would never agree.”

Ren exhales. “He would. Eventually.”

“So you’re not even going to try to fight.”

He looks uneasy, but if she’s a fast-burning fire, he’s a storm building offshore. “I told you. I’m more than enough to rebuild what we already have. Astreon needs Neonite. Not the other way around.”

He feels so far away, suddenly. Which is fine: idols weren't supposed to be approachable. She needs to remember that. Careless of her to forget. 

"Hakaze," he says, quiet. "I don't--"

His gaze flicks past her shoulder. He stiffens.

“It’s those girls,” he says, exhaustion cutting through his voice. “One of them isn’t allowed near me. She broke into our hotel last year.”

Hakaze turns just as a camera lifts—a massive lens, blunt and predatory. Her body moves before her thoughts catch up. She steps into Ren’s space, blocking the shot.

There’s a sharp intake of breath behind them. A chair scrapes.

“No photos,” someone snaps, close and authoritative. Staff appear almost instantly—two of them, bodies angled wide, practiced, efficient. One positions himself between Ren and the table. Another gestures firmly toward the girls, already calling for security.

The camera lowers. Voices rise in protest, then fade as they’re shepherded toward the exit.

The danger passes as quickly as it arrived, leaving the room buzzing, unsettled.

Hakaze’s hands are shaking. She curls them into fists at her sides.

If they hadn’t seen her, she could’ve been anyone. A stylist. A friend. A rumor without a name. Now they know exactly who she is.

“They saw it was me," she tells Ren, leftover panic still curdling her gut. "If they didn’t see me, I could have been anyone—any woman. Now anyone can tell I’m just a washed-up senior that you’re wining and dining out of courtesy.”

Ren stares at her. A muscle in his jaw jumps. Around them is the long, slow pull of the night, hot and sticky like a summer that wouldn’t end.

The look in his eyes is devastating. Lightning before thunder.

“Do you honestly think that’s how anyone in the world sees you?”

“That is how everyone sees me, Prince.”

“Or is that how you need them to see you.”

“I had to,” and she doesn’t remember the last time she felt this defensive, on the back foot, badly shaken. “Ren, they could have thought I was your girlfriend.”

“In my fucking dreams,” he says, low and rough. “Is this how you let every guy down? This stupid—you’re out of my league stuff?”

But you are out of my league, she wants to say. She feels stupid with shock. “You can’t honestly—Ren, you’re Ren Mikazuki.”

He flinches like she’d hit him. She trips over her words to explain, but she can’t help but feel like the damage is done, the wound already bleeding for the world to see. “You’re at the peak of your career, you can’t just go around confessing to random women.”

He’s angry now, raw with it, and she instinctively looks around for those girls again. The staff had shooed them away, but maybe they’re hiding, they were stalkers after all—

“Is this about Reina?”

Her eyes jolt to him.

“Harua told me he thinks you were…close,” Ren continues. His jaw tightens, the words sharpening as he commits to them. “He said he wishes you’d move on.”

He exhales, slow and controlled.

“But you don’t,” he says. “You stay where things ended. You let people think they never really had a chance.”

She sees an exit open in this long, lightless tunnel they’re trapped in.

“Yes,” she says.

She doesn’t listen to the broken sound he makes. Something in her has gone taut and survival-sharp; she can feel the walls pressing in, the mechanism of the trap winding tight. If she stays with Ren one second longer, she will be ruined.

Better to make a clean escape.

She gathers her things. “So,” she says, and nothing else. Her mind is calculating escape routes, marking every exit. “Please take care of the bill for me. I’ll pay you back. Good night, Prince.”

And then she adds another unforgivable crime to her long, weary list: she leaves him there, his head bent, looking as if she’d razed his cities to the ground.