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The several, lined lights of the third-floor hallway did not shine; they hummed. It was a low, vibrating vibration that settled directly behind Iroha’s eyes, a permanent fixture of her life for the past twelve months. At seventeen, she had learned to measure time not by seasons, but by the shifting choreography on the whiteboards and the varying degrees of sourness in her muscles.
She adjusted the straps of the black practice vest where her name was written in huge print, her fingers catching on the damp fabric. She was Japanese, born and raised in the quiet suburbs of Osaka, but for the last year, her world had shrunk to the coordinates of this Seoul entertainment agency. Her Korean was fluent enough to understand when she was being praised, and unfortunately, perfectly sharp enough to understand when she was being torn apart.
“Your feet are alive, Iroha, but your lungs are dead. You may be the best dancer here but with those vocals… you should just forget about debuting.”
The words of Vocal Instructor Hwang still echoed in the empty corridor, bouncing off the lockers and the water coolers. The monthly evaluation had ended three hours ago, but the judgment remained suspended in the air like dust motes. Iroha had stood in the center of the main evaluation room, her breath ragged, her sneakers squeaking against the polished wood, watching the three judges look down at their clipboards.
Her dance had been flawless. She knew it. Her body possessed an innate understanding of rhythm, a clean, percussive execution that made every isolation look effortless. But then came the vocal portion. The backing track had switched to a mid-tempo pop ballad, and as she tried to transition from a heavy, grounding hip-hop routine into a stable, airy chest voice, her throat had closed up. The pitch wavered. The high note at the bridge had cracked—not a dramatic, comedic squeak, but a dry, thin splintering of sound that signaled pure exhaustion.
“If you cannot support your tone while moving,” Instructor Hwang had continued, not even looking up from his notes, “you are just a back dancer who doesn’t deserve to hold a mic. We have sixty trainees downstairs who can do both. Remember where you are. Your performance this month is disappointing.”
That was last month.
Iroha bit her lower lip, pulling her thoughts back to the present. The other girls from her batch had long since gone back to the dorms, dragging their feet, some crying quietly, others already glued to their phones to numb the stress. Iroha hadn’t gone back. She couldn’t. The image of Instructor Hwang’s pen hovering over the ‘Unsatisfactory’ column was a physical weight pushing her down.
She walked past the primary practice rooms—the ones with the large windows that looked out over the glittering Seoul skyline—and descended the stairs to the sub-basement. Down here, the air was cooler, smelling slightly of concrete and old floor wax. This was where the older, smaller rooms were. The mirrors were slightly oxidized at the edges, and the sound systems still used auxiliary cords instead of Bluetooth, but it was private. No one came down here after ten o’clock.
She pushed open the heavy acoustic door of Practice Room 3.
The room was dark saved for the amber standby light of the amplifier in the corner. Iroha reached out and flipped the switch. Three long tubes of industrial lighting flickered to life, casting a stark, shadowless glare across the floor. The mirror stretched across the entire front wall, reflecting a tired seventeen-year-old girl with dark hair tied back in a messy bun, dark circles under her eyes, and a stubborn set to her jaw.
“Again,” she whispered to her reflection. Her voice sounded small, swallowed by the soundproofing panels.
She plugged her phone into the auxiliary cord, turned the volume up until the bass vibrated through the soles of her shoes, and stepped into the center of the room. She didn’t practice the vocals. She couldn’t face the failure of her voice right now. Instead, she threw herself into the dance, using the movement to burn out the humiliation.
Time in a practice room without windows became a blur. Iroha lost track of how many times the track reset, how many times she wiped her forehead with the back of her forearm until her skin was red and raw. Her breath came in heavy, rhythmic gasps that competed with the music.
When she finally paused, leaning her hands on her knees and letting her head hang, she glanced at her phone lying on the floor. The digital clock read 12:14 AM. Midnight had come and gone while she was lost in the eighth counts.
Her legs felt like lead, the lactic acid building up in her thighs with every repetition. Her stomach gave a dull, empty growl, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since noon.
“Three more times,” Iroha told herself, her voice a raspy murmur. It was her golden rule, a habit drilled into her by her first dance teacher in Osaka. No matter how tired you are, when you decide to quit, you do the routine exactly three more times. If you can do it perfectly when your body is failing, you can do it anytime. “Three times, and then the convenience store, and then sleep.”
She walked over to the phone, pressed restart, and hurried back to the center before the four-bar intro finished.
The first time.
She moved with pure muscle memory. Her arms snapped into position, her hips tracking the heavy downbeat. She was spinning, her eyes fixing on a specific scratch on the mirror to keep her balance. Midway through the second verse, above the thumping bass of the speaker, a sharp, distinct sound cut through the room.
Thump.
It sounded like something heavy dropping in the hallway outside. Iroha’s eyes darted toward the small, rectangular window on the practice room door. The hallway outside was dark, the automatic lights having timed out hours ago. She didn’t stop. In the trainee world, you didn’t stop a run for some noise. It was probably a stray cleaning cart, or perhaps one of the security guards doing their midnight rounds. She finished the routine, her heart rate spiking slightly higher than usual, and let the track bleed into the silence that followed. She stood still for a moment, listening. Nothing but the faint hum of the building’s ventilation system.
She took a deep breath, walked to the phone, and hit restart. “Two more.”
The second time.
This run was heavier. Her shoulders were stiffening up, and she had to consciously force them down to keep her lines clean. She was in the middle of the bridge, her body dropped low into a deep second-position squat before an explosive leap, when the heavy acoustic door of Practice Room 3 clicked.
The sound of the latch releasing was unmistakable.
Through the mirror, Iroha watched the door slowly swing inward. It didn’t slam; it moved with a deliberate, agonizing slowness, opening about a foot wide into the pitch-black corridor.
Iroha’s breath hitched in her throat, a momentary hitch in her rhythm, but her feet kept moving. She looked up, her eyes scanning the reflection of the doorway behind her. There was no one there. The dark hallway was a void beyond the bright frame of the door. No security guard, no manager, no fellow trainee. Just the open space.
It’s an old building, she reasoned, her mind working furiously while her body executed a triple spin. The ventilation pressure changes at night. It sucks the doors open if they aren’t latched properly.
She didn’t stop. She refused to let a draft of wind make her look weak, even to herself. She finished the final pose—one arm extended toward the ceiling, her fingers trembling slightly from exhaustion—and held it until the final echo of the music died out.
The door remained open, a dark rectangle watching her.
Iroha let her arm drop. She walked over to the door, her sneakers loud against the floorboards, and peered into the hallway. The air outside the room felt significantly colder, a sudden draft that raised goosebumps on her bare arms. The corridor was empty. The green exit sign at the far end cast a faint, sickly glow over the concrete walls.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice tight.
No response.
She pulled the door shut, making sure she heard the heavy metallic clack of the lock engaging this time. She turned back to the room, rubbing her arms to chase away the chill. One more time. Just one more, and she could leave this cold basement.
She pressed play for the final run.
The third time.
Iroha poured every remaining ounce of her energy into the movement. She didn’t look at the door; she locked eyes with her own reflection, focusing on the precision of her fingers, the angle of her chin, the sharp, percussive stops. She forgot about Instructor Hwang, forgot about the evaluation, forgot about the frigid practice room. There was only the music and the absolute control of her own limbs.
She hit the final pose perfectly, her body freezing like a statue, her chest heaving as she held the air in her lungs.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Iroha flinched, her entire body jumping a clear inch off the floor. She spun around, her hands instinctively coming up to her chest.
Sitting in the far corner of the room, right beneath the disused auxiliary speaker, was a girl. Iroha hadn’t heard the door open a third time. She hadn’t seen anyone walk in. But there she was, leaning comfortably against the mirrored wall, her knees pulled up to her chest, wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt that swallowed her frame.
“That was really amazing,” the girl said. Her voice was remarkably clear, carrying a light, melodic quality that seemed to cut right through Iroha’s lingering adrenaline. She spoke in perfect, casual Korean, though there was a slight, untraceable lilt to her cadence.
Iroha felt a hot flush of embarrassment creep up her neck, turning her ears bright red. How long had she been sitting there? Had she seen Iroha staring blankly at the door earlier?
“Ah... thank you,” Iroha stammered, wiping her sweaty forehead with the end of her shirt. She reached down quickly to turn off her phone, cutting off the low hiss of the speaker. “I didn’t... I didn’t see you come in.”
“The door was already open a bit,” the girl said, offering a small, easy smile. She had pale skin, her dark hair falling around her shoulders in soft, slightly messy layers. Her eyes were bright, reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights in a way that made her look incredibly alert for someone sitting in a basement past midnight. “I didn’t want to interrupt your run. You look like you’re about to collapse, by the way.”
“I’m fine,” Iroha said quickly, her pride bristling slightly. She sat down abruptly on the floor, her legs finally giving out from under her. She pulled her knees to her chest, mirroring the other girl’s posture across the room. “Just... finishing up my monthly evaluation practice.”
“Ah, the monthly evaluations,” the girl sighed, leaning her head back against the mirror. “They never get any easier, do they? Hwang’s an absolute tyrant, don't you agree?”
Iroha let out a dry, unexpected laugh. “A tyrant is too kind. He told me my voice sounds like it doesn’t belong to my body. He said I’m just a back dancer who doesn’t deserve to sing into the mic.”
The girl winced sympathetically. “Ouch. That’s classic Hwang. He likes to break people down to see what kind of glue they use to put themselves back together. Don’t take it personally.” She extended a hand across the gap between them, though she didn’t move from her spot. “I’m Minju, by the way. Park Minju.”
“Hokazono Iroha,” she replied, offering a small bow from her seated position instead. “Are you... a new trainee? I haven’t seen you around the upper floors.”
“Something like that,” Minju said vaguely, her fingers now tracing a pattern on her sweatpants. “I spend most of my time down here. The upper floors are too noisy. Too many people comparing themselves to each other. It gets exhausting, you know.”
Iroha nodded fervently, feeling an instant wave of solidarity. “Exactly! It’s like everyone is watching you, waiting for you to trip so they can take your spot. I’ve been here a year, and I still feel like a guest who stayed too long.”
“A year is a long time to feel like a guest,” Minju said softly. She looked at Iroha, her gaze steady and surprisingly deep. “But your dancing... it’s not guest-level. It’s debut-level. You have the texture down. Most people just hit the moves, but you actually ride the rhythm. It’s beautiful.”
Iroha’s heart did a strange, happy flutter. Praise from fellow trainees was rare, and usually coated in a layer of passive-aggressive jealousy. But Minju’s compliment felt completely clean, lighthearted and genuine. “Thank you. But it doesn’t matter if I can’t sing. If I crack on the bridge one more time, they’re going to ship me back to Osaka.”
Minju tilted her head, a playful smirk touching the corners of her lips. “Well, it just so happens that singing is the one thing I’m actually good at. Dancing? I look like a giraffe on roller skates. But vocals? I can do vocals.”
Iroha looked at her, blinking. “Really?”
“Tell you what,” Minju said, sliding forward on the floor until she was just a few feet away from Iroha. Up close, Iroha noticed she smelled faintly of something old-fashioned—like lavender sachets or dried flowers, a contrast to the usual scent of body spray and mint gum that filled the trainee dorms. “Let’s do a trade. You look like you’re losing your mind over your vocal placement. I can give you a few tips to stabilize your chest voice while moving. In exchange, you have to help me fix my hip isolations. Deal?”
Iroha looked at Minju’s extended hand. The lighthearted, easy nature of the offer was incredibly appealing. She was too tired to be cynical. “Deal,” Iroha said, reaching out to shake her hand.
When their fingers brushed, Iroha noted how incredibly cold Minju’s skin was—like she had just come inside from a winter storm, even though it was mid-June. But before she could dwell on it, Minju pulled her hand back with a cheerful grin and stood up.
“Alright, Iroha. Let’s hear that bridge. No music, just your voice. Don’t be shy.”
The next hour passed in a blur of smooth, easy camaraderie that Iroha hadn’t experienced since moving to Korea. Minju was an incredible teacher. She didn’t use the confusing, abstract metaphors that Instructor Hwang favored—like “sing from your soul” or “make your voice blue.” Instead, she was practical.
“You’re holding all your tension in your jaw because you’re trying to force the volume,” Minju explained, walking around Iroha as Iroha stood in the center of the room. Minju dropped a hand lightly onto Iroha’s shoulder blades. Her touch was feather-light, almost imperceptible through Iroha’s shirt, but the coldness of her fingers penetrated the fabric, causing Iroha to straighten her spine automatically. “Keep your shoulders down. Imagine your voice isn’t coming out of your mouth, but out of the space right between your collarbones. Drop your weight into your heels when you hit the high note. Don’t reach up for it with your chin. Let the note come down to you.”
Iroha took a deep breath, dropped her chin, and sang the phrase that had broken her earlier that afternoon while trying to practice with the other trainees.
To her absolute astonishment, the note came out clean. It wasn’t perfect, but it was solid, anchored by a resonance she hadn’t managed to find all month.
“See?” Minju clapped her hands together, a bright, musical sound. “You have the capacity, Iroha. You’re just fighting your own body. Your dancing is so free, but when you sing, I noticed you tend to lock yourself out. Let the movement help the voice, don’t fight it.”
“Wow,” Iroha breathed, touching her throat. “That... that actually felt easy.”
“Because it is easy when you stop overthinking,” Minju laughed. “Now, my turn. Show me how to do that hip drop without looking like I’ve dislocated my spine.”
Iroha couldn’t help but smile. She spent the next twenty minutes breaking down the core mechanics of the choreography for Minju. Minju wasn’t kidding about her dance skills; her limbs were long and slightly uncoordinated, and she kept losing her balance on the quick transitions. But she didn’t get frustrated. Every time she tripped or missed a beat, she would just laugh—a loud, unbothered sound that made the bleak basement room feel warm and alive.
“No, no, look at my feet,” Iroha said, demonstrating a slow-motion weight transfer. “You’re shifting your weight too early. Keep it on the left leg until the very last beat, then snap.”
Minju attempted the move again, her sneakers making a soft, whispery sound against the floor. She managed to hit the stop perfectly on the count.
“Yes! Like that!” Iroha cheered, clapping.
Minju stopped, panting slightly, though Iroha noticed with a strange detachment that Minju didn’t seem to be sweating at all, despite the intensity of the movement. Her skin remained perfectly pale, her dark hair immaculate. She looked absolutely breathtaking still.
“Phew,” Minju said, wiping her brow in a theatrical gesture. “That is hard work. I don’t know how you do that for hours every day.”
“You get used to it,” Iroha said, sliding down the mirrored wall until she was sitting on the floor again. She felt a profound sense of satisfaction. The knot of anxiety that had been twisting in her gut since the last evaluation had completely dissolved, replaced by a comfortable, sleepy warmth. “It’s nice to just... practice without someone grading you.”
Minju sat down beside her, leaving a few inches of space between them. “The grades don’t matter, Iroha. The company, the debut, the evaluations... it’s all just that. What matters is the feeling of the room when the music is playing. That’s the only part that’s real. Or at least, that’s what I think now.”
Iroha turned her head to look at Minju. The lighthearted atmosphere between them felt incredibly comfortable, like they were old friends who had known each other for years rather than two trainees who had met an hour ago in a seemingly haunted basement. “You talk like you’ve been here a really long time.”
“It feels like a long time,” Minju said softly, her eyes fixed on the empty space across the room. “But time is weird in this place. You can really lose track of it.”
They sat in silence for a while, the comfortable kind that didn’t need to be filled with chatter. Iroha found her eyes growing heavy. The digital clock on her phone now read 1:45 AM. The reality of the morning’s schedule—a 9:00 AM Korean language class followed by weight training—began to press in on her.
“I should probably go back to the dorm,” Iroha said regretfully, stretching her legs out in front of her. “If the dorm manager catches me sneaking in past two, she’ll make me clean the communal bathrooms for a week.”
“Go on then,” Minju said, her voice gentle. She didn’t move to get up. “You need the sleep. Your voice needs the rest.”
Iroha stood up, slinging her gym bag over her shoulder. She unhitched her phone from the auxiliary cord, the sudden silence of the room feeling heavy but no longer frightening. She walked toward the door, then paused, turning back to Minju.
“Are you coming? The building locks the main elevators soon. You’ll have to use the stairs if you stay longer.”
Minju shook her head, her dark hair shifting around her face. She gave Iroha a small, reassuring wave. “I think I’ll stay behind for a bit. I still have a few things to do here. Some things I need to finish up. I’ll practice the dance some more.”
“I think you’re already doing great. You should pack up immediately after. Don’t stay too late,” Iroha said, smiling. “See you at the cafeteria tomorrow? I’ll buy you strawberry milk as a thank you for the vocal tips.”
“Strawberry milk sounds nice,” Minju said. Her voice seemed to drift across the room, softer now, almost like an echo. “Goodnight, Iroha. Dance well.”
“Goodnight, Minju.”
Iroha pushed the heavy door open, stepped out into the dark hallway, and let it click shut behind her. As she walked toward the stairs, the automatic lights flickered on one by one above her head, guiding her path out of the basement. She felt lighter than she had in months.
The next day, Iroha looked for Minju.
She sat in the cafeteria during the lunch rush, her eyes scanning the sea of identical oversized t-shirts, high ponytails, and tired faces. She checked the vocal rooms on the fourth floor during the afternoon break, peeking through the small glass windows. She even asked a couple of the older trainees from the Class A debut project if they knew a girl named Minju.
“Minju?” one of the senior trainees, a girl named Jeemin, asked, pausing with her chopsticks halfway to her mouth. “Is she a new trainee? Is she one of the trainees from the new foreign batch?”
“I don’t think she’s a foreigner,” Iroha said, shifting uncomfortably. “She speaks perfect Korean. Dark hair, taller than me, very good at vocals.”
Jeemin shrugged, turning back to her food. “Never heard of her. Probably a private trainee, or someone from the acting department using the basement rooms. Don’t worry about other people, Iroha. Have you fixed your bridge for this month’s evaluation yet?”
“Yeah,” Iroha murmured, her mind drifting. “I think I have.”
Days bled into a week, and the week bled into two. Iroha returned to Practice Room 3 several times, always late at night, always hoping to hear that sharp clap, clap, clap from the corner. She left the door unlocked, she practiced her chest voice using Minju’s techniques—which worked miraculously well, earning her a rare nod of approval from Instructor Hwang during the weekly check-in—but the room remained stubbornly empty.
She grew curious, then slightly obsessed. She started rationalizing it. The agency was massive, spanning two separate buildings and housing over a hundred trainees across various departments—dance, vocals, acting, modeling. Minju had said she spent most of her time in the basement because the upper floors were too noisy. Maybe she was in a specialized survival-show lineup that was kept strictly under wraps. Maybe she was on a different schedule entirely, training during the day while Iroha had classes.
Still, the memory of that night remained vivid. The lighthearted banter, the coldness of Minju’s fingers, the effortless way she had unlocked Iroha’s voice. Iroha missed her. In an environment where everyone was a rival, Minju had been a momentary sanctuary. She wanted to see her again, if only to prove to herself that the late-night connection hadn’t been a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation.
“Turn the lights off! It’s creepier if it’s dark.”
The voice belonged to Wonhee, one of the new trainees in Iroha’s contemporary dance batch. It was a rainy Tuesday night, nearly three weeks after Iroha’s encounter in the basement. A sudden thunderstorm had knocked out the main transformer on the street, plunging the upper floors of the training center into a dim, shadow-drenched twilight powered only by the building’s backup generators.
Since the mirrors were useless and the sound systems were down, the instructors had called an early end to the evening sessions. However, the dorms were a fifteen-minute walk away through a torrential downpour, so a dozen girls had gathered in the main lounge on the fifth floor, dragging beanbags and stretching mats into a tight circle. They had long since fell into a heavy slumber, snoring softly as they pressed against each other, greedy for all the warmth they could get.
On the far side, next to the pillar, four girls huddled close, sitting on a bunch of blankets they spread to cover the cold floor.
The backup lights cast long, dramatic shadows against the concrete walls. Outside, rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, and every few minutes, a flash of lightning would illuminate the Seoul skyline like a stark, black-and-white photograph.
“Seriously, I have a good one,” Wonhee insisted, her face illuminated from below by the screen of her phone. “It happened to my older sister when she was in middle school in Daegu."
Iroha sat near the edge of the small circle, her knees pulled to her chest, half-listening. She was scrolling through her phone, her mind still vaguely occupied by the upcoming mid-term showcase.
“So, my sister’s school had this old storage building behind the gymnasium,” Wonhee began, her voice dropping into a low whisper. The other girls leaned in, gripping their knees, and giggling nervously. “It was completely locked up, but every year during the rainy season, the girls in the volleyball club said they could hear the sound of a whistle blowing inside it. Like an old coach running drills. One night, my sister forgot her knee pads and went back to the gym after dark. She had to walk past the storage building. She swore the windows were completely black, but when she walked past, she heard someone whisper her name right into her ear—Wonyoung-ah.”
Wonhee shrieked in an attempt to make her story more terrifying.
“That’s just an urban legend,” another trainee, Yunah, scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. “Every school in Korea has a story like that. My grandmother’s house in Gangwon-do is actually haunted. There’s an old well in the backyard that they covered with a concrete slab. If you stand on the slab during a full moon, you can feel something vibrating underneath your feet. Like a heartbeat. My cousin tried it once on a dare, and the next morning, he woke up with perfect, bruised handprints around his ankles.”
“Stop it! That’s horrible!” Wonhee wailed this time, burying her face in a pillow.
Iroha let out a small, quiet sigh. The stories were entertaining, but they felt distant, like campfire tales meant to pass the time. The atmosphere in the lounge was comfortable, the fear lighthearted and communal. It was a rare moment of normal teenage behavior in a life that was otherwise entirely synthesized.
“You guys are talking about schools and houses,” a quiet voice spoke up this time. It was Moka, a trainee who had been with the company for nearly four years—one of the longest-tenured girls who had seen multiple debut lineups succeed and fail. She was sitting with her arms crossed, looking out the window at the rain. “But you haven’t heard about this building.”
The room went completely quiet. Even the storm outside seemed to mute itself for a second.
“What do you mean, this building?” Wonhee asked, her eyes wide. “The agency is only seven years old. It’s a modern building.”
“The upper floors are modern,” Moka said, turning her head slowly to look at the group. The dim generator light caught the sharp angles of her face. “But the foundation—the sub-basement wing where the old storage and the small practice rooms are—that was part of the old textile factory that stood here before the entertainment company bought the land. They kept the structural walls because it saved money on excavation.”
Iroha’s thumbs froze over her phone screen. She looked up, her gaze locking onto Moka.
“There’s a ghost in the sub-basement,” Moka continued, her voice completely flat, devoid of the theatricality Wonhee had used earlier. It was the tone of someone stating a historical fact. “Specifically, Practice Room 3.”
A collective shiver seemed to pass through the circle. Yunah and Wonhee gasped, looking around nervously.
Iroha, however, felt a sudden, ironic urge to laugh. The tension in her chest snapped, replaced by an amused disbelief. She let out a short, clear chuckle that broke the heavy silence of the room.
“What’s so funny, Iroha?” Wonhee asked, turning to her.
“It’s just... that’s not true,” Iroha said, leaning back against the wall, a lighthearted smile on her face. “I’ve been using Practice Room 3 almost every night for the last month. I was literally down there past midnight a couple of weeks ago because of the evaluations. The door latch is broken, so it blows open sometimes because of the ventilation draft, but there’s nothing down there. It’s just old and drafty. Nothing happened to me anyway.”
The other girls stared at her. Yunah looked relieved, but Moka didn’t smile. She just kept looking at Iroha, her expression deeply solemn, almost pitying.
“You practiced there?” Moka asked.
“Yeah,” Iroha said, her smile faltering slightly under Moka’s intense gaze. “For like, two hours. It’s quiet. It’s a good room.”
“Did you practice alone?” Moka pressed.
The question hung in the air, suddenly heavy. Iroha opened her mouth to say yes, but the image of Minju—sitting in the corner, laughing, teaching her how to breathe from her collarbones, shaking her hand with fingers that felt like ice—rose up vividly in her mind.
“I...” Iroha hesitated, her voice dropping an octave. “Another trainee came in. We practiced together. She helped me with my vocals.”
Moka’s eyes didn’t leave Iroha’s face. The rain outside seemed to slam into the glass with a sudden, furious intensity.
“Iroha,” Moka said softly, her voice carrying a terrible weight through the quiet lounge. “There are no other trainees assigned to the sub-basement. The company locked those rooms off from the official schedule six months ago because of the structural dampness. No one goes down there.”
Iroha’s heart gave a strange, uneven thud. “That’s not true. She was there. She told me she spends most of her time down there because the upper floors are too noisy. She was wearing an old gray company sweatshirt.”
“Three years ago,” Moka said, her voice steady and direct, cutting through the room like a knife, “there was a girl in the main debut group. She was the best vocalist the company had ever seen, but she couldn’t master the dance choreography. The instructors were brutal to her. They told her she was just a singer trying to take up space in an idol group. She stayed in Practice Room 3 for three days straight without sleeping or eating, trying to fix her hip isolations before the final showcase.”
The lounge was dead silent. Iroha felt the air leave her lungs, her skin turning instantly cold from the inside out.
“Her heart failed from overwork,” Moka said, looking directly into Iroha’s widening eyes. “They found her in the corner of the room under the speaker. She was seventeen. Her name was… Park Minju.”
Hokazono Iroha kept going back to Practice Room 3 in the sub-basement. Three days after she was picked to debut… her body was found in the corner of the room under the speaker. She was seventeen.