The Bathroom Council

Nataria was smiling, as she struggled to turn Sachiko's impossibly straight navy hair into something resembling her own waves.

"Hold still," she murmured, attempting to secure another ribbon.

The hair refused to cooperate, lying flat and glossy where it should have had volume.

“It’s the texture,” Momo chirped, hovering beside them like a dazzling, anxious butterfly.

Already transformed into a Sachiko doppelganger, she looked taller in white slacks and a simple top, her shorter red hair slicked back in a valiant attempt at Sachiko’s ponytail.

“Sachiko-chan’s hair is like silk. Nataria-chan's is too thick and wavy.”

Unlike Nataria, Momo actually knew what she was talking about. Her expertise in styling and presentation showed.

This was another one of their "keeping the viewership high" activities. the strategic, audience-pleasing content they'd all agreed to create. They were playing the “embody a housemate" game.

The final week before the talent showcase demanded maximum engagement and buzz. They needed the hype now more than ever.

Nataria stepped back, surveying her work with a critical eye. The ribbon sat prettily in Sachiko's hair, but it hadn't transformed anything.

Sachiko looked no more like Nataria than she had with her usual ponytail.

"You need makeup too," Momo declared, her fingers already twitching toward her cosmetics bag.

She looked like she was physically restraining herself from taking over.

Sachiko turned her head up to look at them both, and her grin was pure mischief. "I don't know what you're talking about. I feel like Nataria already."

Then she struck a pose while still seated, face neutral, chin tilted at that precise angle, hands folded demurely in her lap. The imitation was so accurate, capturing Nataria's defensive formality.

Nataria's eyes narrowed even as Momo dissolved into giggles.

"Oh my god, that's perfect," Momo managed between laughs. "Very Nataria!"

Despite herself, Nataria felt her lips twitch into a genuine smile. The teasing should have stung, that posture was her armour, her shield against a world that had torn her apart. But coming from Sachiko, delivered with affection rather than malice, it felt almost... fond.

She'd been in a sour mood since the morning meeting. Worried about the mounting pressure, about Senri, about herself. Already feeling the hollow ache of the distance they'd have to maintain.

But these two girls, Momo with her bright energy, Sachiko with her generous heart, were good company. Real friends, maybe the first she'd had since her group disbanded.

And this ridiculous activity was turning out to be genuinely fun.

Her transformation followed. Momo took delight in turning her into a Momo-replica, dusting Nataria’s cheeks with pink glitter and painting her lips glossy with the enthusiasm of an artist at work.

“So cute!” Sachiko declared, her solemn Nataria-impression gone, replaced by amazement.

“I feel like an angry glittery marshmallow,” Nataria deadpanned, which sent them both into another fit of laughter.

Then her phone rang, cutting the moment’s peace.

Her phone sat on the cluttered vanity, screen glowing, caller ID was a simple sun icon.

Senri.

The laughter died in her throat. Her heart gave a hopeful lurch followed immediately by a plunge of cold dread. They’d agreed. Text only. For him to call, now, in the middle of an activity…

Momo and Sachiko fell silent, their smiles fading as they watched her face.

Unable to ignore it, Nataria picked up. “Hello?”

“Nata-chan.” His familiar warm rumble even though the speaker strained, pulled tight by stress.

“There’s news. You need to go to the bathroom in your room. Now, please. It’s the only safe place to talk.”

Senri with no preamble or sweet greetings?

“I’ll be back,” she said to the girls, her voice barely her own.

She didn’t meet their concerned eyes, just turned and walked out, the fluffy socks of her Momo costume whispering against the floorboards.

°❀°❀°❀°❀

She shut the bathroom door behind her, locking herself in the sterile, white-tiled space. Her ridiculous reflection in the mirror, glittery, wide-eyed, stared back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, the words tight.

He told her.

As Senri laid out Shou’s confession, the planned leak, the article about his father's drunk driver accident, Nataria listened, her body going numb. The professional dread she’d felt at the agency meeting morphed into a deep, protective fear for him.

Because this wasn’t about shipping rumours or calculated images anymore. This was about the man who still haunted Senri’s nightmares.

"Everyone says I look just like him."

Senri's words from that night echoed in her head.

The fear in his voice when he'd confessed his terror of becoming his father.

And now the entire world would know, would draw their own comparisons without understanding the context, the pain, the years it had taken for him to become who he was.

They would crucify him. Call it manipulation and deception. They'd say he should have disclosed it from the beginning, as if trauma were something you owed strangers.

This was worse than her scandal. So much worse. Her mistake had been hers alone. This was about death, about family legacy, about a crime that would taint him forever in the public's eyes no matter how blameless he actually was.

"Shou and Hibiki are with me now," Senri continued. In the background, she heard Shou's voice sounding strained: "... I don't see what telling her accomplishes..."

"Shut up, idiot." Hibiki's characteristic bluntness, but it sounded wrong too.

They all sounded wrong. Trapped in an impossible situation with no clean exits.

"Nata-chan?" Senri's voice pulled her back. "Are you there?"

"I'm listening." She forced the words out past the tightness in her throat. Her mind was already moving, analyzing, cataloguing options and discarding them just as quickly.

"Have you called your manager? Your agency needs to know. They need to prepare a statement before the leak hits." It was the logical move. Get ahead of the narrative, control and minimize the damage.

“I am not going to.”

The simple declaration stopped her cold.

"I don't want to lie," Senri continued. "I don't want to hide it or spin it or pretend it's something other than what it is. My father made terrible choices. People died because of him. That's the truth. I just…"

His voice cracked slightly, and Nataria's heart cracked with it.

"I know I can't just say it exactly like it is. I know that. But there has to be a way to tell the truth without it ending in disaster. And all I could think about was that one time you did exactly that. When I couldn't express things the right way, you shaped my truth into something people could hear."

The memory surfaced: that night on Takeshi’s talk show, when he'd tried to articulate his feelings about fairness and bullying in his usual blunt truthful way and got them twisted and thrown back at him.

And she'd rephrased his words so they could not be twisted again. She had not stopped to think about it, but Senri had looked so grateful then.

"Nata-chan, you're the smartest person I know when it comes to this industry. If anyone can find a way through this, it's you."

The words hit her like a physical force.

No one had ever said that to her before.

No one had ever looked at her calculated survival strategies, her careful navigation of industry politics, her strategic use of image and perception and called it smart. Called it valuable.

She'd always thought of it as a necessary evil, a skill born of desperation and self-preservation. Something shameful, evidence of her willingness to compromise her authenticity for success.

But Senri saw it differently. Saw her differently.

He thought she was smart. Trusted her judgment and her ability to find solutions in impossible situations. The simple recognition of this part of herself she'd never valued unlocked something in her chest.

Alone in that bathroom, staring at her reflection painted in Momo's bright, cheerful colours, Nataria saw herself through Senri's eyes.

Her mind kicked into gear, racing through possibilities and strategies with the same analytics she'd honed over years of navigating industry landmines.

A way to tell the truth that wouldn't destroy Senri's honest, open image. A way that wouldn't sacrifice Shou or provoke his agency's retaliation. A way that could end with all of them intact… reputation, career, future.

It would require vulnerability. A gamble on the audience's capacity for nuance and empathy.

But it might work.

"There might be a way," she said slowly, feeling the weight of responsibility settle onto her shoulders like a mantle. "You're right. But we'll need everyone's help to make it work.

"Everyone?" Senri's voice carried a note of hope.

"All six of us. This only works if we do it together." Nataria's mind was already mapping out the logistics and careful choreography required. "Wait, I'm getting the others."

She opened the bathroom door.

Momo and Sachiko looked up from where they'd been hovering anxiously in their shared bedroom, their ridiculous costumes at odds with the concern written across their faces.

"I need your help," Nataria said without preamble. "Both of you. It's urgent."

Neither hesitated. They followed her into the bathroom without question, crowding into the small space with immediate trust that made Nataria's throat tight.

She switched to the speaker.

"We're all here," she announced. "Everyone on both sides. Senri, start from the beginning. Tell them everything."

°❀°❀°❀°❀

The six of them were spread across two bathrooms, connected only by a phone call, but it felt like they were huddled together in a war room.

Senri, with interjections from a subdued Shou and the terse Hibiki, explained the situation again. The planned sabotage, the article, the pressure.

Nataria watched Momo and Sachiko's expressions shift from confusion to horror to a kind of devastated understanding that came from recognizing similar pressures in their own lives.

When Senri finished, silence stretched, suffocating.

Then Sachiko spoke, her voice small but fierce: "Why didn't you tell us you were under so much pressure, Komatsu-san? We could have… we would have helped."

Shou's laugh came through the speaker, bitter and self-deprecating. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Boo hoo, my song is only sixth on the charts, my agency is mean’? I have a dream job. It's pathetic to whine.”

Momo, sitting at the bathtub edge, nodded slowly. “I get it,” she whispered. painted nails picking at imaginary lint on Sachiko's borrowed pants. "It's hard to talk about these things without it looking like complaining when you already have so much."

She took a breath, and when she continued, her usual sparkles were dimmed, her voice heavy.

"My agency instructed me to make all the guys fall for me. It's an extension of my image… the cute, charming girl every guy wants. But I'm supposed to never fall in love myself, of course. I can't share that with anyone because... what kind of problem is that, right? So what if I face a few hardships? Everyone has to work hard. Every job has its problems, you know?"

The words were like stones in still water, ripples of recognition spreading outward.

Sachiko's face crumpled, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. Nataria felt the same heaviness settling in her chest, the weight of all their collective silences, all the burdens they'd carried alone because admitting struggle felt like admitting weakness.

Through the phone, she heard similar weighted silence. Hibiki's quiet exhale. Shou's quick breath. Senri's soft, devastated sound that might have been a curse.

They'd all been drowning in separate pools, too proud or too scared to reach out.

Finally, Nataria spoke. Her voice came out hard with the anger she felt on all their behalfs.

"If this had harmed Senri-kun the way it was meant to, Komatsu-san, I wouldn't have forgiven you."

The statement hung in the air.

Then she softened, just slightly. "But I'm thankful you said something. I know it's not easy to do."

"It was either confess or watch him burn for my cowardice," Shou said, his voice raw. "That's not exactly heroic."

"It gave us a chance to fix this.” Nataria countered. She looked at Momo and Sachiko, then down at the phone connecting them all. "There might be a way. But it requires all of us. It means trusting each other completely, and more importantly, it means trusting our fans with the truth."

"The truth?" Hibiki's voice, skeptical but intrigued.

"Context and truth," Nataria clarified. "We give people the full picture instead of letting them draw their own conclusions from fragments."

She took a breath, feeling the weight of what she was about to propose. This was risky. Potentially career-ending if it went wrong. But doing nothing meant guaranteed destruction for Senri, and possibly for Shou as well.

"It would mean getting backlash," she said honestly. "There's no way around that. But if we're strategic about it, if we control the narrative from the beginning, we can make sure that backlash is manageable. And maybe even something that makes us stronger in the end."

"How?" Senri's voice carried desperate hope.

Nataria looked at Momo and Sachiko, saw their determined expressions mirrored back at her. Saw the trust in their eyes.

"All six of us. We tell our stories, " she said simply. “the real ones, not the prepared versions the agencies want. We show people that we're human, that we struggle, that we make mistakes. And we do it on our terms, in our time, before anyone can weaponize it against us."

"You're talking about going public," Hibiki said slowly. "Deliberately. Before the leak."

"Yes, Senri-kun has no other choice, the leak is happening and it is better if it comes directly from him," Nataria said. "But we also tell a truth, not just Senri-kun, we all share enough to change the frame. To make it clear that we're..." She searched for the right words. "That we're people like everyone else. That we're choosing to be honest about it."

Senri’s voice cut in. “I can’t ask you all to do this. To risk your reputations for my problem.”

“You’re not asking,” Nataria said, her voice leaving no room for argument. “I am.”

There was a beat of silence on the line.

Then Momo let out an exaggerated sigh, rolling her eyes. “Ugh, please. We want to do it. No need to be so dramatic, you two.”

From the speaker, Hibiki’s dry tone followed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Sachiko giggled, a soft, nervous sound that broke the tension, sparking a moment of unexpected lightness in the cramped space.

Nataria looked at the faces around her, then spoke toward the phone. “So? Everyone agrees?”

One by one, the voices came, a quiet chorus of resolve from both sides of the door.

“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
“Agreed.”
“Yes.”
“I’m in.”

In the quiet of the bathroom, surrounded by friends in ridiculous costumes, the pact was sealed. The cameras were always rolling. Now, they would finally give them something real to film.