Episode 2: How a Niche Idol Survives (2)
“…….”
It was a little past nine at night. I drove Harin to the appointed place.
Normally we would have taken the tinted black van the members always rode in, but today it was my personal car instead. Because of that, Harin wore a mask and sunglasses even inside the vehicle, her hat pulled low over her face just in case.
Her face was completely covered. Her clothes were not.
Skin-tight jeans that left every line of her legs fully exposed. A small, thin T-shirt that clung just as closely to her figure. It put the famous glamour of Harin’s bust on full display. The strap of her crossbody bag dug into the valley between her breasts, making her already large chest stand out even more.
I hadn’t told her to dress like this. I’d only said to come in something comfortable. Harin had taken those words and chosen these clothes. Perhaps she’d selected them carefully, knowing exactly where we were going and what for.
“…….”
Harin stared out the window in silence. She hadn’t said a single word since we left. I kept glancing sideways as I drove, trying to find something to say, but I had no idea what. I’d known Harin for over six years, yet this was the first time things had felt so awkward between us.
Six years…
It had already been six years.
The first time I saw Harin was when she was a high school freshman. Back then I was a brand-new hire, and she was a second-year trainee. A team had been assembled to create Sepia, and I handled every odd job for those kids—all the preparations, setups, driving, everything. I still remember how she always greeted even a bottom-rung nobody like me in a loud, cheerful voice.
Even then, Harin was already close to a finished idol. Her figure was much the same as now, and sometimes I thought her face had been even better back then. Her skills were better now, of course. And then as now, Harin was a girl whose diligence was bone-deep. She practiced so hard that I was certain she would have succeeded in any field, even if she hadn’t become an idol. I often drove her home after she’d practiced late into the night.
One day I asked if it wasn’t hard on her. Her answer was:
“You’re the one who has it harder, Manager, staying out late because of me.”
After debut, as the unnie and leader of Sepia, she led the others without a single complaint or raised voice. She was a girl whose character was fully formed. Age, profession—none of that mattered. She was someone you could truly respect as a human being.
But now.
“…….”
Now…
She was on her way to be held by a middle-aged man she’d never even seen. The dances she’d practiced until midnight, sweating. The body she’d always managed while enduring hunger. The makeup she’d prepared since dawn. Tonight, all of it would belong to some middle-aged man.
And I—after six years of watching over this girl by her side—was delivering her to that man.
“……Manager.”
After we’d driven a good while longer, Harin quietly opened her mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Did you… oppose this, Manager?”
I couldn’t give a clear answer. When the president first brought it up, I’d agonized over it again and again. But in the end, I hadn’t been able to say a word of opposition.
“…You didn’t, then.”
“…Sorry.”
“No. It couldn’t be helped, after all.”
After six years together, we both understood each other’s thoughts and the current situation without needing to spell it out. Harin understood better than anyone that this was the best option. That was why she was…
“…This is my first time.”
“What?”
“I said it’s my first time.”
The bombshell Harin dropped left me so startled I nearly lost sight of the road ahead. I looked over at her, but she was still staring out the window. Having a conversation like this with Harin was a first for me too.
Come to think of it, Sepia had never had a single scandal or rumor since debut. The kids managed themselves well, and we managed them thoroughly too. And I myself, as someone who’d raised these girls, had never looked at them with lecherous eyes. When it came to physical contact, I’d always kept my distance as much as possible. Even when managing them at the dorm, I was always careful so no talk would start.
The result of all that caution… was a sudden virgin declaration from a twenty-three-year-old idol in her prime.
“Does he know? That I’m a virgin.”
“…Probably not.”
“…Really?”
I didn’t know why she was asking something like that. I could only guess it was worry getting ahead of her.
I’d met the Music Center PD we were going to see a few times myself. More precisely, I’d met him a few times to beg him to put our kids on the show. Every time, I’d gotten the sense that this bastard was exactly that type—the type who never says what he wants, yet expects everyone around him to take care of it for him. Would telling a guy like that she was a virgin even help? I couldn’t predict.
“Manager.”
“Yeah.”
“Stop by a convenience store. Somewhere… with no people.”
“A convenience store?”
“…I don’t have any condoms.”
Screech—
I slammed on the brakes on pure reflex. Good thing there was no car behind us.
“A-ah, no. Why?”
“Because I never have any reason to use them normally.”
“Not that… um…”
“I don’t know who he is, but he doesn’t seem like the type who’d carefully prepare something like that for my sake.”
Harin’s words were spot on. That bastard… would hide even the condoms he had and play dumb.
“…Got it.”
In the end I turned the wheel toward a nearby convenience store. I parked in a corner of the lot where there were no streetlights.
“I’ll go buy—”
“I’ll go.”
The moment the car stopped, Harin opened the door. She swung her long, straight legs out of the car.
“No. Why? If something goes wrong…”
“It’s fine. My face is completely covered. And…”
Thud.
Harin slipped off her crossbody bag and tossed it onto the passenger seat, closing the door before she even finished speaking. She said something as she shut it. It sounded like, “I don’t want to make you do something like this, Manager.”
Harin didn’t return from the convenience store for quite a while. Had I raised her too purely? A flicker of anxiety even crossed my mind—surely she didn’t not know what a condom looked like?
And at the fact that this pure, diligent girl had gone to buy the condoms herself that would be put on the man about to take her virginity, my cock began to swell little by little.
Only now was it starting to feel real.
Harin was going to be held by a man. Our Harin was going to be alone in a hotel room with a middle-aged man. The Harin I’d looked after and raised all this time was going to have sex with a middle-aged man.
“…Ugh.”
My dick was already straining painfully tight inside my pants. Harin was still inside the convenience store. I wanted to jerk off right then and there, but I had to hold back.
…Instead I pulled something else from my pocket. A voice transceiver of the kind security teams and managers often used. I carefully switched it on and slipped it into a corner of the crossbody bag Harin had left behind. Then I fitted an in-ear monitor into my left ear.
When I gave the bag a light tap, a rustling sound came through the earpiece. Now, once Harin carried this bag into the hotel room… it would transmit every sound inside to my ear. Just in case. If anything serious happened to Harin, so I could rush in at any moment. That was the thought with which I’d prepared it.
“…Kh.”
But I knew the other thing perfectly well too. That from now on I would hear the sounds of Harin having sex with that middle-aged man through the in-ear. The battery usually lasted seven or eight hours. I was fully prepared to wait while listening to every bit of it.
Clunk.
The sound of a door opening, and the passenger side opened again. Harin stuck her ass out as she sat down. Her tight-jeaned backside flashed past my eyes for an instant.
For six years I had only ever looked at that. Tonight, one man would get to caress that ass.
“Here.”
Harin held something out. Coffee.
“So you don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
“…Yeah. Thanks.”
I took the coffee and set it in the cup holder. Looking at the plastic bag, she’d bought various other things as well. Coffee and drinks for herself. Some kind of medicine. Simple snacks. And…… condoms.
Six packs. No—six boxes. Three per box, so eighteen in total.
“…I didn’t know how many I’d need, so I just bought everything they had.”
Harin pushed all the condoms into the crossbody bag. The sound of the condom boxes brushing against each other came through the in-ear. At that sound, my cock swelled even harder. My hands tightened on the wheel.
“…Aren’t we… going?”
Harin, who had already buckled her seatbelt at some point, looked at me. Finally looking this way. Maybe Harin had relaxed a little too.
As I reached to start the engine, Harin called to me.
“…Manager.”
“Yeah.”
“…What time… until?”
“Eleven.”
And right now it was a little past nine-thirty.
“…I…”
Harin twitched one hand. She fidgeted, clenching and unclenching her fist over and over. Her other hand was still inside the crossbody bag. Something rustled against the contents, the sound reaching my ear.
“You know…… since we still have time…… that……”
Still not fully relaxed, maybe. Unable to get the words out properly. Behavior so unlike Harin.
“That…… Manager……!”
“Let’s go already.”
I started the engine.
“It’ll take a while to get to the hotel.”
I shifted my gaze to the navigation. Estimated arrival time showed 10:40.
“…Ah. ……Okay.”
Harin lowered her head and turned her eyes back to the window. After that, neither of us opened our mouths again until we arrived at the hotel.
The place where Harin would be held by a man for the first time.