Kakeru is a typical high school sophomore who is totally obsessed with the super popular Vtuber, Muna Hoshinova. But one day, he accidentally discovers that the new transfer student, Hazuki, is actually Muna in real life! Hazuki begs him to keep it a secret from everyone at school, making him her only confidant.
But keeping that secret is way too hard! His classmates Yuzuha and Akari keep pestering him because they know he's a Muna fan, and his childhood friend Sakura is getting suspicious of h
A Secret Kiss Behind the Stars - The Dark Side of the Moon and Secret After-School Hours
――One day after the opening ceremony, the classroom air had slackened somehow.
The lingering humidity of late summer still clung to the hallways, and even with the windows open, the breeze was lukewarm. The hands of the clock above the blackboard pointed to ten minutes before homeroom.
Aikawa Kakeru sat at his desk, idly gazing at his phone. On the screen, Muna Hoshinova was smiling. It was last night's stream archive. Even though he'd watched this video countless times, he almost pressed play again.
(*Better stop. If I'm sleep-deprived, Sakura will say something.*)
He pulled the earphones from his ears and slumped over his desk. He could hear the girls in the next seats getting excited about some love gossip.
The classroom door opened.
Doujima-sensei, the Japanese literature teacher in his mid-forties, walked in. As always, he wore a worn-out jacket and carried an attendance book and a stack of handouts.
"Hey, everyone take your seats."
The students sporadically returned to their seats. Yuzuha and Akari, who had been deep in conversation by the window-side seats, also stopped and sat down.
"Today, we're introducing a new classmate."
The classroom buzzed.
"A transfer student?"
"At this time of year? That's unusual."
"A guy? A girl?"
Voices of friends flew back and forth everywhere. Kakeru raised his head too.
Doujima-sensei called out beyond the door.
"You can come in now."
Slowly, the door opened.
――――
The classroom's clamor fell silent, as if water had been thrown on it.
What appeared was a single female student.
She wasn't very tall. Maybe around 158 centimeters. Glossy black hair that nearly reached her waist swayed softly with each step. Heavy bangs and large fake glasses hid half her face, making her expression hard to read.
When she stood before the lectern, the violet eyes behind her glasses quietly surveyed the classroom.
"――I'm Haduki Hazuki. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Her voice was small, somewhat hesitant.
But――.
(*Huh?*)
Kakeru's fingers twitched on his desk.
The pitch of her voice. The soft resonance at the end of her words. That faint, habitual lilt that rose for just an instant.
(*Why...*)
Something deep in his chest sounded a warning.
(*Do I know this voice?*)
No, he shook his head. It had to be a coincidence. After all, Muna Hoshinova was a Vtuber. A voice processed through a machine couldn't possibly be the same as a real voice.
And yet.
Feeling his heartbeat inexplicably quicken, Kakeru simply stared at her.
"Your seat is by the window――let's see, in front of Aikawa. The very back, window side."
Where Doujima-sensei pointed was the seat diagonally in front of Kakeru. A spot that had been empty.
She――Haduki――gave a small bow, then quietly walked toward her seat.
The moment she passed in front of Kakeru.
He thought it was just coincidence.
Her long black hair swayed gently, and he caught just a glimpse of her profile. Behind the glasses, violet eyes were cast downward. That pale profile held a trace of something he felt he'd seen somewhere before.
(*It's my imagination. Surely.*)
Kakeru told himself.
Calm down. I'm just a fan. Getting this shaken up just because her voice is similar.
――But the cloudiness in his chest wouldn't go away.
――――
When first period ended, it was just as he'd expected.
"Aikawa-cchi!"
Her ponytail bouncing, Yuzuha charged toward Kakeru's seat. Akari followed quietly behind her.
"That transfer student, it seems like she goes home right after school! That's what a kid from the next class said~"
"Heh... is that so."
Kakeru gave a disinterested reply.
(*Ever since earlier, I can't get her out of my head.*)
Her voice. Her mannerisms. More than anything, that figure walking with a downward gaze somehow overlapped with the sparkling figure of Muna Hoshinova from beyond the stream screen.
"And and, this Sunday, Muna-sama's new song MV is being released! Apparently it's gonna be a YouTube premiere!"
"Ah, I know about that."
"As expected of Aikawa-cchi, so fast with the info!"
Yuzuha happily poked Kakeru's arm. Beside her, Akari quietly opened her mouth.
"Come to think of it, there's a rumor going around on social media that Muna-sama's real identity is a high school student. If it's true, that means she's active at around the same age as us."
Kakeru's heart thumped hard.
"Well, it's just a rumor. Besides, prying into a Vtuber's real identity is taboo."
Akari's narrow, sharp eyes narrowed just a little more. As if she were observing Kakeru's reaction.
"...That said, if she really were close to us, it would be interesting. For example――yes, if she were a student at this school."
An unpleasant sweat ran down his back.
(*Why does that transfer student come to mind right now?*)
It was coincidence. Absolutely.
"Akarin, what are you saying! There's no way she'd be at our school!"
"Right, it was a joke."
Akari said that and smiled, but her eyes weren't smiling at all.
Kakeru felt something stirring deep in his chest.
――――
School ended.
Kakeru shoved his hand into his desk drawer and grimaced.
(*...Ah.*)
His math notebook wasn't there.
He'd forgotten to put away the notebook that had been returned yesterday and left it in the library. The reason he'd been studying in the library was because Sakura had nagged him, "Study for once."
(*If Sakura finds out, she'll get mad at me again.*)
Kakeru hurriedly tried to leave the classroom――but he saw Sakura walking from down the hallway.
"Ah, Kakeru."
"Sa-Sakura!?"
"You forgot something, right? Your notebook. It was in the library."
Sakura held the notebook in her right hand. Her cherry-blossom-colored bob swayed.
"Th-thank you..."
"Honestly, you're hopeless if I'm not watching you."
Just as he reached out to take the notebook she offered――
"...Wait, huh?"
Sakura looked around the classroom.
"Weren't you just not in the classroom? I thought I'd bring it to you since your notebook was in the library."
"Ah, yeah, I just went to the bathroom."
Kakeru brushed it off vaguely. Even so, his heart wouldn't settle down.
(*Did Haduki already go home? Or...*)
"...Hmm."
Sakura stared at Kakeru with half-lidded eyes.
"Well, whatever. More importantly, that transfer student today was a really pretty girl, huh."
"Eh? Ah, yeah..."
"But she sits in front of you, so don't go bothering her too much. You always try to help people in trouble right away."
"Bothering her..."
"Here, your notebook. Anyway, I'm off to club."
Sakura practically shoved the notebook at him, then walked briskly down the hallway.
Kakeru just stared at her retreating figure.
(*Sakura... is she mad?*)
No, it seemed less like anger and more like some other emotion.
Eyes that seemed to sense something.
――――
Kakeru headed alone toward the library.
The library at the end of the second-floor hallway was almost deserted after school. At this hour, even the librarian, Mishima-san, was often back in the staff room.
(*Even I don't know why I felt like going back to the library. I already got my notebook back.*)
But his feet naturally carried him toward the library door.
He quietly slid the sliding door open.
The dusty smell of books and the silence enveloped him.
No one was there.
The evening sun streaming through the window dyed the spines of the bookshelves a deep crimson.
(*It was just my imagination after all.*)
Just as Kakeru was about to turn on his heel――
"――Thanks for coming to watch my stream again today!"
From the depths of the library, a voice rang out.
A familiar voice.
Sparkling, bright, the voice that always encouraged him from beyond the screen――Muna Hoshinova's voice.
(*Huh?*)
Kakeru instinctively hid himself in the shadow of a bookshelf.
"On my next stream, maybe I'll show just a little bit of the choreography for my new song~?"
Through a gap in the bookshelves, he timidly peered in.
In the very back of the library, in the shadow of a bookcase no one used――Haduki was there.
She had taken off her fake glasses and was smiling at her smartphone camera as if she were in the middle of a stream.
"Everyone, look forward to it! That was an announcement from Muna~!"
The quiet, docile Haduki she usually showed in the classroom was nowhere to be seen.
Right now, the person before his eyes was unmistakably the "Muna Hoshinova" he had watched through the screen every night.
(*No way――*)
His mind went completely blank.
(*The transfer student――was Muna.*)
He was thrown into confusion.
Muna Hoshinova was a Vtuber. Her face and real name were undisclosed, and among fans, "never searching for the real person" was an absolute rule.
What if this got out?
The confidentiality agreement held by Luminaster Production――the penalty for violation was fifty million yen. Since the Reveal Incident, Vtuber agencies had become abnormally sensitive about identity exposure.
Haduki's life would be over.
(*What do I do?*)
Panicked, Kakeru took a step back.
Clatter.
――By sheer bad luck.
His knee bumped into the book truck placed at his feet.
A loud noise echoed through the quiet library.
"――Wh-Who's there!?"
Haduki spun around as if jolted by electricity.
Her face was deathly pale, drained of color.
Her violet eyes were wide with terror.
"...Aikawa-kun."
The smartphone slipped from Haduki's hand as she recognized Kakeru. It fell to the floor with a small sound.
Time stopped.
――――
"Please... I'm begging you..."
Haduki clung to Kakeru's chest, trembling.
"Don't tell... anyone... If this gets out, I... I won't be able to be Muna anymore... I won't be able to... stay at school either..."
Her voice was shaking.
Tears spilled from her large violet eyes, dripping onto the floor and forming stains.
It was a degree of panic unimaginable from her usual quiet self.
"I... I just wanted everyone to have fun... but I hate myself, I have no confidence in myself... so I put on the mask called Muna, wanting to make everyone smile..."
A sob escaped her.
"Even someone like me... if I'm Muna, I can make everyone happy... Please, don't take that away..."
――Those words were far too painful.
But Kakeru realized immediately.
These words weren't lies.
She was trembling with the terror of having exposed her most important secret in front of him, yet even so, she was speaking honestly, telling him her true feelings.
The words someone speaks "at a time like this" are that person's true face.
(*This person is genuinely terrified. And yet, she doesn't lie. She doesn't make excuses. Behind the mask of Muna, there's a girl this pure, this easily wounded.*)
A warmth spread deep in Kakeru's chest.
――He remembered something from long ago.
Back in elementary school, when a friend he trusted had exposed his secret. Laughed at by the whole classroom, showered with curious stares, he had sworn that day never to open his heart to anyone again.
(*People who can't keep secrets are what I hate most.*)
Because he thought that, he understood painfully well the feelings of someone entrusting a secret.
――And then, a winter night in his third year of middle school.
On that day when everything looked gray, a stream he'd stumbled upon by chance while in his futon. Muna, from beyond the screen, had said, "Ever feel like you're all alone in the world? But you know, even on nights like that, if you look up at the sky, the moon is always there. As if it's telling you, 'It's okay.'"
How much had those words saved him?
――This time.
(*This time, I'll protect that person.*)
Kakeru slowly drew in a breath.
"――Haduki."
When he called her name, her shoulders flinched.
"I absolutely won't tell anyone. I'll protect your secret with my life."
Haduki's violet eyes widened in surprise.
"...Wh-why... how can you... say something like that...? You just met me..."
Kakeru looked straight into her eyes.
"A long time ago, someone exposed a secret of mine, and it made me feel terrible. Ever since then, I've decided. I'll treat someone's
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