"Forty-seven missed calls. A scandal exploding across every screen. And only one person who came to the door."
Minase Ren has it all—the face of a generation, a top-floor penthouse, and a "national sweetheart" image built to perfection. But when a tabloid drops photos of him in a secret date with his co-star, the internet turns on him overnight. There's just one problem: the photos are fake. And no one wants to hear it.
Trapped in his apartment, drowning in hate and missed calls from the peopl
In the Night of the Scandal, With You - False Scoop — The National Actor's Morning of Outrage
The smartphone kept vibrating in the dark bedroom.
Minase Ren opened his heavy eyelids. The phone by his pillow buzzed in fits and starts, its screen flickering on and off. Thin morning light slipped through a gap in the curtains, illuminating the dust motes drifting in the air.
(...What the hell is this?)
He reached out with a sleep-fogged hand. The screen, when his fingertips touched it, was faintly warm.
6:12 a.m.
Forty-seven missed calls.
For a moment, Ren thought he might still be dreaming. Yesterday's shoot had run past midnight—he hadn't gotten home until after three. His body was still heavy. His head was foggy. So what was with this number?
"...Forty-seven?"
Saying it out loud only made it feel stranger.
Top floor of Lumière Tower, a luxury high-rise in Minato Ward. A corner unit on the thirty-third floor. Three bedrooms, living room, dining room—eight hundred thousand yen a month in rent. Ren lived here alone. The soundproofing was flawless, the security airtight; paparazzi couldn't even get onto the grounds. And in a place like this, forty-seven calls since morning.
Something was wrong.
Ren sat up and pulled a thin cardigan over his black turtleneck. When he stepped into the living room, the lingering scent of last night still hung in the air. A half-read script lay on the table, open to a page bristling with sticky notes. Beside it, a half-finished coffee—a dried brown ring had formed on the inside of the mug.
The script's cover read *Confession in Blue*. A film scheduled to start shooting next month—a big-studio romance starring Ren. He'd been reading it in every spare moment between takes, working on the role.
He opened the curtains.
Morning Tokyo spread out below him. Clusters of buildings, moving cars, the distant expressway. The air was still cold. When he pressed his palm to the window glass, a chill seeped through.
The phone buzzed again.
This time it wasn't a call—a news app notification. Ren swiped the screen without thinking.
And his finger stopped.
"National Sweetheart Actor Minase Ren—Secret Date Photos with Co-Star Actress!"
It was a breaking story from the weekly tabloid *Scoop Japan*.
For an instant, Ren felt his heart stop. No—the opposite. His heart began to pound violently, and his fingertips went cold.
He opened the article.
There, lined up, were two-shot photos of Ren and Mizuhara Shiori. Mizuhara Shiori was the actress who'd played the heroine in the drama series Ren had starred in. The two of them, shoulders together, laughing. Their backs as they walked through the night streets. Their faces in profile, gazing at each other in front of an apartment building. Every one of them showed a distance only lovers would keep.
But.
"...What is this?"
Ren zoomed in on the photos. His fingertips were trembling slightly.
The photo of them walking through the night streets—he recognized the place. A back alley in Shibuya. Near the café *Le Poisson*. But he had no memory of walking there with Mizuhara Shiori. For that matter, the date—last Friday—Ren had been shooting at Aozora Studio Bay in Koto Ward. He'd left the studio at one in the morning and gone straight home in his manager's car.
The photo of them gazing at each other in front of the apartment building. That was wrong too. Ren's unit was the top floor of Lumière Tower, and the entrance was auto-locked. If someone had taken a photo from that close, the guard would have noticed. And then there was Ren's clothing. The Ren in the photo was wearing a gray coat. Ren didn't own a gray coat.
(It's a composite.)
Ren enlarged the photos again and again, studying the direction of the light. The light on Mizuhara Shiori's face came from the left. The light on Ren's face came from the right. The shadows were clearly reversed. The way the streetlights in the background and the outlines of the two figures blurred was unnatural, too.
(An amateur-level composite... no. Maybe it's precisely because it's amateur that people won't notice.)
Ren bit his lip. His deep amber eyes seemed to take on a faint golden glint of anger.
"Who would do this?"
His voice came out lower and drier than he'd expected.
At this point, Ren still thought it was nothing more than a tabloid fabrication. *Scoop Japan* was a mid-tier weekly with a circulation of a hundred twenty thousand, and it had reported on celebrity scandals before. He'd heard some of those stories were completely baseless. This had to be more of the same.
That was what he tried to tell himself.
But the screen kept betraying his hopes.
Within hours of the article going live, social media had erupted. "#MinaseRen" trended, and related terms surfaced one after another: "#MinaseRenDating," "#MinaseRenIsTrash," "#Traitor."
Ren sank onto the sofa and scrolled with trembling fingers.
"So Minase Ren was fooling around with women behind the scenes. Not the image I had."
"Guess the 'national sweetheart' label went to his head."
"Poor Mizuhara Shiori. She was just being used."
"I believed in Ren-kun. I can't anymore."
Thousands of abusive replies poured in. Some of them insulted Ren's family. He didn't want to look, but his fingers slid across the screen on their own.
"...It's a lie."
Ren laid the phone face-down on the table. The screen stayed up, notifications appearing one after another. Aozora Entertainment's managers. The drama's producer. The people in charge at his commercial sponsors. Calls from every affiliated company, ringing without pause.
Ren ignored all of them.
National sweetheart Minase Ren. Twenty-five years old. One and a half million yen per episode of his drama series. Thirty million yen per commercial. Eight million social media followers. With his flawless smile and impeccable manners, he was loved by everyone.
That was the "mask" Ren had built.
The real Ren was clumsy, sensitive, and bad at relying on people. Even when things were hard, he couldn't tell anyone. If he did, the perfect Minase Ren would crumble. He'd disappoint his fans. So he'd always carried it all alone.
And now the backlash was crashing down on him.
(I want someone to save me.)
A small voice spoke deep in his heart.
(But who?)
Ren had no one he could show his weakness to.
The phone buzzed again. This time it was a LINE notification.
From his mother.
"Ren, are you all right? I saw it on TV. Your father's worried too."
Ren's family ran a small inn in Atami, Shizuoka. His parents had once been buried in debt. The reason Ren had set his sights on acting was to pay it off. After graduating high school he'd moved to Tokyo, working part-time jobs while auditioning over and over. He'd failed countless times. Come close to giving up countless times. But he'd picture his parents' faces and get back on his feet.
He debuted, made it big, and started sending money home. The debt was almost fully paid off now. His parents ran their little inn modestly and looked forward to seeing Ren on TV.
And now those parents had seen his scandal on TV.
Ren typed into the reply field.
"Sorry to worry you. I'm fine."
He stopped his finger there.
He wasn't fine.
But he couldn't write that he wasn't.
Ren sat clutching his phone, unable to move for a while.
The silence of the room hurt his ears.
The air conditioner, the refrigerator, a distant siren—everything sounded absurdly loud.
Ren stood and went to the kitchen. He opened the fridge. Inside were the salad he'd bought yesterday and a half-finished bottle of mineral water. He had no appetite. But he felt like if he didn't put something in his body, he wouldn't last.
He took a sip of water and went back to the living room.
Outside the window, Tokyo was moving along as usual. The windows of the buildings glittered, reflecting the morning sun. Lines of commuters. Passing taxis. No one knew about Ren. No one was looking at Ren.
And yet, on the screen, tens of thousands of people were cursing him.
(Strange feeling.)
Ren closed the curtains.
The room went dark.
Evening came.
Ren hadn't moved from the sofa. He couldn't bring himself to turn off the phone, but neither did he have the courage to check the notifications—he just stared at the ceiling.
*Ding-dong.*
Suddenly, the intercom rang.
Ren's body jerked.
(Who is it?)
He looked at the intercom monitor, dreading what he'd see.
On the screen was a young man in a suit. Light-brown, fluffy hair—a little long, tucked behind his ears. Large, clear black eyes. Honest eyes that betrayed his feelings instantly. He looked about a hundred sixty-eight centimeters tall. Slender, wearing a black recruiter-style suit.
Tachibana Hinata. Ren's manager.
"Senpai, are you okay?"
His voice through the intercom was trembling slightly.
Ren couldn't answer.
Hinata was Ren's junior from university, and he'd only recently become Ren's manager. He was twenty-two. He'd been at Aozora Entertainment less than half a year. Bright, a bit of a goof, the kind of charmer everyone liked. But underneath, he was earnest, with a stubborn streak that wouldn't bend once he'd made up his mind.
Honestly, Ren found Hinata a little hard to deal with.
No—"hard to deal with" wasn't quite right.
(When Hinata's around, my mask feels like it's going to slip off.)
Hinata seemed to have a vague sense that Ren was playing the perfect actor. Whenever Ren was tired, whenever he was forcing a smile, Hinata would always look worried and say, "Senpai, don't push yourself too hard."
Those words stung Ren, somehow.
"Senpai, please open up. It's me. Tachibana."
Hinata's voice grew a little stronger.
Ren stared at the monitor, frozen.
(I can't let him see me like this.)
Ratty sweats, unkempt hair. A pale face from not eating. Bloodshot eyes, dry lips. The idea of showing himself like this to his junior Hinata was unthinkable.
Ren pressed the intercom's talk button.
"...Go home."
His voice was hoarse.
"Senpai!"
Hinata's voice lifted.
"Are you okay? Have you eaten anything? I bought some onigiri at the convenience store—"
"Don't need it. Go home."
"But—"
"Go home."
Ren ended the call.
On the monitor, Hinata stood staring at the door for a while. He was gripping the convenience store bag tightly in his hand.
At last, Hinata let out a small breath and spoke toward the monitor.
"...I'll come again tomorrow."
With that, Hinata quietly left.
Ren sat down with his back against the door.
"...Why'd you have to come?"
The muttered words reached no one.
He was glad Hinata had come for him.
But more than that, he was ashamed.
Hinata was his manager. If Ren went up in flames, Hinata would suffer for it at the company too. And yet Hinata had worried about him and come all the way to his home.
(What am I even doing?)
Ren hugged his knees.
The phone buzzed again.
This time it was a call.
When he saw the name on the screen, Ren's body went rigid.
Kamiya Tooru.
Vice president of Aozora Entertainment. Forty-eight. A man with graying black hair slicked back and sharp, narrow eyes. Publicly he passed as one of the industry's voices of reason, but Ren had long sensed a cold calculation behind Kamiya's smile.
(Kamiya-san...)
The call rang three times in a row.
Ren stared at the screen, unable to pick up.
He remembered Kamiya's smile. Only his mouth smiled—his eyes didn't. Those narrow eyes, only when they looked at Ren, would open slightly and take on a cold light. Ren found that unbearably frightening.
Eventually the call stopped.
Instead, a message arrived.
"Please come to headquarters tomorrow at ten a.m."
A short, businesslike note.
Ren set the phone on the floor.
He looked out the window.
Through the gap in the curtains, he could see the lights of Tokyo Tower. Orange light bled into the darkness of the night.
(Who had this article written?)
(Why was I the target?)
(What happens now?)
He knew nothing.
He could see nothing.
Ren sank into the sofa and, without turning on a single light, spent the long night there.
In a corner of the living room, the s
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