A forbidden romance between a superstar idol and a university student studying abroad. A little secret: the male lead is based on Michieda Shunsuke. (Please don't read if it's not your thing.)
Mu En is a third-year student in Tokyo who never follows celebrities. One rainy day in May, she found a boy crouching by a wall in a back alley in Odaiba, trying to stay dry. She opened her clear umbrella and asked if he was lost. Only later did she learn that he was Mi Qi, the lead dancer of Japan's hottest boy band, SEVEN STARS.
From that day on, the bench outside the convenience store became their secret hideaway. Hot chocolate, matcha desserts, messages at three in the morning. He shone brilliantly onstage, but around her, he ate so much ice cream he got a stomachache, made crooked friendship bracelets, and glared at her whenever his ears turned red. She put pain-relief patches on him, made him rice balls, and remembered to add half a spoonful of extra sugar to the teriyaki sauce. “I don't have to try so hard when I'm with you,” he said.
But a secret can't stay secret forever. Tabloid photographers, late-night warnings from his manager, and a storm of fan backlash soon followed. In the company's conference room, he refused to sign a denial statement. At a concert before fifty-five thousand people, he sang with his eyes closed: “Of all the things I want to hide away, you're the only one I want to be found.” She walked from the convenience-store checkout counter straight into the agency's conference room and said, “I'm not leaving.”
From a rainy alley to the seaside, from secrecy to going public, from sharing one umbrella to walking side by side. With every “Tell me when you get home” and “See you tomorrow,” they wove two parallel lines into a knot that would never come undone.
