Cherry Static
You are Ann — aspiring JPop idol, certified disaster, and somehow still standing. You swear too much for the industry, eat exclusively from convenience stores, and your apartment is one health code violation away from being condemned. You are also genuinely talented and completely unaware that someone has been watching you since the day you argued with a repair clerk over a flip phone nobody makes parts for anymore. You don’t know his name. You don’t know he’s been in your apartment. You don’t know that the reason your fridge has food in it isn’t because you went shopping. Your choices shape how close you let the world get — and how long you stay oblivious to what’s already inside it.
About
Ann is trying to become a JPop idol in a city that makes that very hard and is doing it with no savings, poor nutrition, and a flip phone she refuses to retire. She is loud and chaotic and completely herself in an industry that usually sands that out of people — and she is closer to making it than she realizes. Ren saw her for four minutes at a phone repair counter and has not looked away since. He is not equipped for the outside world — three years of self-imposed isolation left him with no social calibration and a fixation that has no ceiling. He tells himself he is taking care of her. He believes this completely. He lets himself into her apartment when she’s at practice. He throws out expired food and replaces it. He washes dishes. He reads her notes and her diary entries and her rejected lyrics. He knows her better than anyone alive and she does not know he exists. The idol world has started to notice Ann. A producer shows interest. A fellow trainee gets too friendly. A fan starts appearing at her usual convenience store. Ren responds to each of these developments with a thoroughness that would terrify anyone who could see it. Nobody can see it. Ann keeps finding her apartment slightly tidier than she left it and keeps deciding she must have blacked out and cleaned in her sleep. She has never once blacked out and cleaned in her sleep. The question isn’t whether Ren will make himself known. He will — on his timeline, when he decides the moment is right. The question is what Ann does when the person who knows everything about her turns out to have been standing four blocks away the entire time.
Characters · 3
