Chapter 27: The Drop-Off

The practice room on Floor 8 of Residence D measures approximately twelve meters by nine meters. The mirrors lining three walls show everything twice—every movement, every position, every person who enters or leaves. The fourth wall holds speakers, a sound system control panel, and a window that faces east toward Tokyo Tower and the bay beyond.

Morning light angles through that window at 10:47 AM, casting long rectangles across the polished wood floor. The air carries the familiar smell of the space: old sweat absorbed into floor mats, the faint chemical residue of cleaning products, the particular staleness of a room that exists for work rather than comfort.

Hana sits against the window wall, her back pressing into the glass. She's been here since the early session ended—stretching, cooldown, the routine that has become as automatic as breathing. Her workout clothes are damp with effort. The muscles in her legs carry the pleasant ache of productive strain.

The others have gone to shower and change. Celebration plans are forming—a dinner somewhere, the kind of gathering that follows achievement. The award ceremony was three days ago. The trophy sits in the common room now, positioned on a shelf where morning light catches its polished surface.

Best New Group.

Best New Young Idol.

The words still feel strange. Recognition for work she never expected to do, in a life she never expected to live.

Hana reaches into her bag and withdraws a stack of papers. The script for "Okinawa Mermaids"—the role she finally secured after months of auditions and callbacks. The pages are marked with notes, highlighted dialogue, blocking annotations in her precise handwriting. Production begins next month. Another commitment. Another choice to stay.

She sets the script aside and pulls out her laptop.

The machine is familiar now—two years of daily use, the keyboard worn where her fingers rest most often, a small scratch on the case from an incident she no longer remembers clearly. The screen illuminates when she opens it, displaying the last windows she had open.

Numbers scroll past. Charts update. The systems she's built continue their work regardless of her attention.

The door opens.

Voices filter in—Sora coordinating logistics, Rei making observations about restaurant options, Miya suggesting somewhere with vegetarian choices, Yuki laughing at something someone said in the hallway.

They enter in a loose cluster, changed into street clothes, energy elevated by the prospect of celebration and the lingering high of recognition.

"Hana!" Yuki spots her by the window. "Are you ready? We're going to that place in Harajuku—the one with the private rooms."

"The one where Rei got food poisoning last time?" Sora asks.

"That was a different restaurant. Same block. Different restaurant."

"You're sure?"

"Mostly sure."

"That's not reassuring."

Hana closes the laptop. The motion is automatic, habitual—the same gesture she's made hundreds of times when interrupted during work. The screen darkens. The numbers vanish.

"I'll meet you there," she says. "Just need to finish something."

"Finish what?" Miya tilts her head, curious. "We're celebrating. You should be there from the start."

"I will be. Twenty minutes."

"You said that last time and it was an hour."

"This time it's twenty minutes."

The others exchange glances—the wordless communication of people who have learned each other's patterns. Hana's work habits are known if not fully understood. Her need for solitary moments before social engagement has become accepted rather than questioned.

"Twenty minutes," Sora says. Her voice carries mild warning. "Then we're sending someone back."

"Fair."

They file out, their conversation continuing in the hallway—debates about menu options, discussions about the next week's schedule, the ordinary negotiations of shared life. The door closes behind them.

Silence returns.

Hana reopens the laptop.

The screen illuminates again, displaying the same windows. Two tabs in the browser, both open, both running processes that have continued uninterrupted for months.

She doesn't look at them now. Not consciously. The information they contain is familiar—checked and rechecked, tracked and analyzed, the numerical representation of choices she's made and continues to make.

Instead, she stands. Moves to the center of the practice room. Looks at herself in the mirrors that multiply her reflection into infinity.

The body looking back is hers now. Not the one she was born with. Not the one she expected to inhabit. But hers nevertheless—built through hundreds of training sessions, shaped by choices that accumulate into something definite.

Ten months ago, this room terrified her. The mirrors showed a stranger. The choreography felt like imprisonment. Every movement was a reminder of what had been taken.

Now the mirrors show someone she recognizes.

Not complete. Not resolved. The voices still exist—quieter but present, aspects of a complexity that will never fully simplify. The memories still surface—the playground, the classroom, the dining table. The patterns still operate—suspicion, analysis, the defensive frameworks that kept her alive and keep her cautious.

But something else exists too. Something that wasn't there before.

The door opens again. Footsteps in the hallway.

"Hana? You coming?"

Yuki's voice. Impatient. Affectionate.

"Coming."

Hana moves toward the door. Grabs her bag. Leaves the laptop on the floor near the window, still open, still displaying its screens.

The door closes behind her.

The practice room is empty now.

Afternoon light shifts through the window as hours pass—the slow rotation that marks time in spaces designed for human occupation. The mirrors reflect nothing but themselves, infinite recursions of an unpopulated room.

The laptop sits where Hana left it.

The screen remains active, power save disabled, brightness adjusted for visibility. Two browser tabs open. Two sets of information displaying.

The first tab shows a fitness application.

238 days logged

The interface is clean, data-driven—the kind of design that appeals to people who prefer information over encouragement. Charts track progress across categories: cardiovascular endurance, strength metrics, consistency indicators.

847 miles run

The number represents early mornings and late evenings. Treadmills at 5:00 AM. Outdoor routes through Roppongi when schedules permitted. The accumulation of individual efforts into aggregate achievement.

423 swim sessions

Laps counted. Strokes analyzed. The particular meditation of water resistance and rhythmic breathing, repeated until the body moved without conscious direction.

BMI: 21.1 (healthy athletic range)

The number is clinical. Objective. A measurement that means something to medical professionals and fitness applications, less to the person it describes.

Mental health streak: 118 days "improved mood"

The application includes this category as optional tracking. Self-reported. Subjective. The streak began four months ago and hasn't broken since. Whatever the metric measures—whatever combination of exercise and circumstance and choice it represents—it has held.

The second tab shows a trading platform.

The interface is more complex than the fitness application. Charts display market movements. Position summaries list holdings and exposures. Numbers update in real-time as global markets continue their eternal fluctuation.

At the top of the screen, in digits large enough to read from across the room:

Account Balance: ¥127,450,000

One hundred twenty-seven million, four hundred fifty thousand yen.

Roughly eight hundred fifty thousand US dollars.

More than enough to pay the contract buyout clause. More than enough to leave. More than enough to start over anywhere, in any form, with any future she chooses.

The number has been above the threshold for months.

The exit has been available.

The door has been open.

The sun continues its arc across the Tokyo sky. Shadows lengthen in the practice room. The mirrors darken as natural light fades, replaced gradually by the ambient glow of the laptop screen.

The numbers continue their work. The fitness application logs another day. The trading platform processes another transaction, the balance ticking upward by some small increment.

Outside, somewhere in Harajuku, five women sit in a private room, celebrating achievements and planning futures. Their voices carry the particular energy of people who have found each other against unlikely odds—laughter and argument and the comfortable silence that exists between those who have stopped needing to perform.

In the empty practice room, the laptop screen glows.

The numbers tell a story.

¥127,450,000

Then the computer goes to sleep.

But the numbers still climb.

THE END