A-chan. Cover offices. 6th of May, 20XX

~*~

The industry can not only be ruthless but also filthy. The talents have to be perfect, beyond perfect. Not a single bad hair, not a single off-note, not a single blemish on their skin, unless it’s there deliberately. Nothing new under the sun.

But, it can be circumvented. It’s like an open secret, something people know happens, but wish to believe it doesn’t. The patrons have bottomless pockets, and some girls have -or think they have- no scruples. Some girls think they just have to act cute, maybe let some ugly bastard grope their tits and ass, swallow a couple of men and they won’t swallow their promises. Those are at least the terms of the spoken contract, the empty words those businessmen use to lure women into their dens. The second the girls realize it's not going to stop at just a peck, it’s too late for regrets. After that, all their little imperfections can be ignored, they can be corrected. Suddenly there are teachers available to help them with their dance moves and their voices. Stylists are available to fix their appearances. They get to shine like stars after the innocence fades from their eyes. Record deals, fame, money, people who adore them all around the world, all in the palm of her sponsors.

Nothing new under the sun.

I knew very well what happened, but back then my moral compass was compromised by my precarious living conditions. Virtue doesn’t outweigh an empty stomach. I rationalized it to myself by saying things like ‘All companies have some skeletons in their closet’, which is true to an extent, but I realized where I really stood once I saw the full extent of what went on behind closed doors.

Those deviants that you see get lynched are amateurs, those who got too sentimental or too careless. A couple of years ago, one of those sentimental amateurs made the headlines with his idiocy. Takashi-san.

I was still a fairly new hire, but I had a fair amount of responsibilities under my wing, if you can call doing the general managers’ work like that. While they sat around, I had to oversee talents, keep our deals and contracts and files nice and tidy, I had to urge a person in the next cubicle to check and email I sent them, the usual, corporate hell. Despite that the bags under my eyes were getting so big I felt my eyeballs would fall out, I was putting in an honest effort. The business of ‘Selling dreams to people’. We sold a dream to the girls, and the girls sold a dream to their fans.

How quickly a dream can turn into a nightmare.

I was leashed to Takashi at the time. Had to call him cabs, had to schedule his meetings, I was basically a glorified secretary. When his path crossed with Suisei’s, I was helping him sort out the endless applications of that week. VirtualDivA was planning the launch of its third generation of idols, Project Comet. The company asked for a full body picture and a resumé, of which the latter was more of a formality, if not an illusion made for luring people into a false sense of security. Almost none of the resumés I got were ever read, no matter the presentation or qualifications of the applicant, all that mattered was the picture, and Takashi’s approval. Two spots of that generation of idols were already taken by some candidates with the talent of nepotism. The rest would be the shareholders’ caprice. I remember reading the papers while Takashi sat and eyed the photos on a chair way too small for his figure, only for him to say something like ‘Her eyes are too weird’ and then tell me to throw the curriculum in the shredder. After some time, I resorted to just handing him the pictures, of which he usually kept half, and yet, he contacted none of those girls. None through me, at least. Back then I believed they just weren’t chosen. Nowadays I realize their names weren’t to be recorded on anything other than a hotel’s check in list. One afternoon, after handing him another batch of polaroids, he stopped and looked at one of them intensively. He leaned forward with his mouth agape, and his eyes jumped up and down as if they were trying to find new details with every look. I couldn’t help but smile. Usually, the applicants got him to grin or shake his head, but this time, he was taken aback.

That photo was of Suisei.

He had seen a lot of fine girls, the finest Japan could offer, but none were quite like that blue haired one, that one with the slim figure, it made something budge in him, he told me, she was the one, already in, we should get to designing her costume and printing her image for billboards already! I asked if he wanted me to read her introduction and he nodded, still with his eyes stuck to Suisei’s picture. Her resumé wasn’t anything special. It was a default Word template which I had seen countless times by then. Suisei wrote having been an entertainer twice. Once on Niconico (written as NicoDouga) with no name or link to a profile, and on a website called ‘SC’, but with no explanation what SC stood for, and again, with no sources to anything. There I berated myself, I thought I had already sorted out all the riff raff who sent low quality applications. She’s perfect, Takashi said. Please contact her, I want her to come for an interview next monday at ten.

Was her picture that thrilling? Maybe she sent nudes, it wasn’t an uncommon practice. Curiosity got the best of me and I snuck a peek. It was just a picture of a plain girl with blue hair. A schoolgirl outfit with the institution’s emblem covered. Her knees peeked from below a navy-blue skirt. A neatly tucked white shirt. Half her face was covered by her phone, the other let a mouth -not a smile- peek out. By any means, there wasn’t anything interesting or outstanding about her photo, except for one detail I had glossed over the first time. Her eyes.

They shone with resignation. A resignation to fear and yet move.

…

I was not present for the interviews for obvious reasons. I contacted the girls one by one, asking them to re-estate what they had said in their resumes and telling them where to go. It was a boring part of the process, but a necessary one nonetheless. I’d invite them over for a Teams call, I’d go over the initial bullcrap. Oh, you worked here? You do this? Well, we’re looking for that. Yeah, come to this place at this time, show up dressed in your best clothes.

I’m not supposed to ask questions out of curiosity. They don’t pay me to do so, and after the 10th or so interview, you begin going through the motions. I called Suisei, I gave her the time for the meeting, and to my surprise, I joined the call only to see that she was already there. Responsible, good. I told her what I was supposed to, but I was really waiting for the chance to ask her what her real job experience was. I should’ve done my homework, but to my surprise, someone else would do it after she became an idol.

A month or so later, we had the final selection, each with a stage name crafted for them. Kirara, Aoi, and Suzu. Suzu was Suisei’s stage name.

The announcement was made, and Suzu’s image was broadcasted for millions to see. Naturally, the internet was in uproar.

I hated to spend my free time on what were basically websites dedicated to gossip, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I learned things I didn’t even know about the people I was working with. There I finally got my answer about what “SC” stood for. SexyChatters. A website for camwhores.

It’s not out of the blue to see insane things online, but the posts I was finding were impossibly long, and terribly detailed. A nameless someone claimed to have met Susei ‘behind the costume’.

There they went on how Suzu, back then known as Suicom, wasn’t anything other than a small creator on NicoNicoDouga who made a few videos of her talking to a doll and bringing it with her on trains and restaurants.

The archive was lost, but the person claimed to have commented on them and to remember what her room looked like. A greenish wall, with a generic blue office chair and a desk. They also provided pictures comparing different images to prove it was the same room in which Suisei recorded herself talking to her doll, that she had fingered herself in.

According to that post, ssuitan_01 had been an amateur camwhore on SexyChatters, and once they had recognized her, they subscribed and sent requests. Multiple archived videos were uploaded with that post but I didn’t catch any of them before they got deleted.

So that’s what SC meant! Some girls did have shady stories trailing behind them. Suisei, I thought she was just another girl with another chance at life, but everything was cut short because of Takashi.

I had to attend things way above my paygrade. I never thought I would need to know first aid to work an office job.