Chapter 3: The Quiet Bedroom.

As evening fell, the sunset’s afterglow smeared the glass facades of the city’s towers like diluted blood, scattering dizzying shards of gold.

Ayata Aina sprinted from the station all the way home, practically collapsing against her front door. Her hands shook as she fumbled the key into the lock.

The entryway was dim, steeped in suffocating silence.

She panted, eyes sweeping the floor by the shoe cabinet like searchlights. No stranger’s shoes—only her red slippers and Hoshiya Kaoru’s blue ones.

She didn’t bother changing, flung her briefcase to the floor, and charged straight to the bedroom.

“It’s fake. It has to be…”

She shoved the door open.

The nightmare scene she dreaded—tangled sheets, proof of betrayal—didn’t greet her.

The room was spotless. Where afternoon sun had lingered, only gentle dusk remained.

Curtains neatly tied back, bed made without a single crease, the air carrying the faint scent of Hoshiya Kaoru’s usual detergent—exactly as she’d left it that morning.

Everything pristine.

[It’s just a video, not live…]

Yet the excessive order didn’t calm her. An invisible fist seized her heart and squeezed, each pulse a choking stab.

This cruel perfection screamed that while some woman might have ravaged her Kaoru, she’d been obliviously living in a lie.

“Right… Kaoru… where is he?”

Ayata Aina, slumped on the bed’s edge, jolted awake to the realization: the boyfriend who should have greeted her softly in the entryway had never appeared.

The house was so quiet she heard only her ragged breaths and the blood roaring in her ears.

A deeper terror gripped her.

“Kaoru? Kaoru?”

She stumbled out of the bedroom, voice trembling with fear as she called louder.

Only emptiness answered.

The living room was vacant too.

Her gaze locked on the dining table: several dishes covered carefully with mesh lids.

“Still warm…”

She touched a bowl with the back of her hand, feeling the faint heat. Hoshiya Kaoru hadn’t been gone long.

But where could he be?

Ayata Aina’s eyes bulged, bloodshot from strain and shock.

She scanned every corner of the living room, hunting for clues.

Finally, her stare fixed on the fridge door. A cute cat-shaped magnet pinned a note.

She lunged, ripping it free. Hoshiya Kaoru’s familiar, elegant handwriting:

Aina, the izakaya boss just called asking me to come in now. I tried phoning you but you didn’t pick up. Don’t worry when you see this.
Food’s ready on the table. Remember to eat. Love you.
Kaoru

Ayata Aina clutched the thin paper, the knot in her throat loosening slightly—but only slightly.

What woman could stay calm after seeing her boyfriend treated… like that?

The images gnawed at her sanity like maggots.

She drew deep, slow breaths, forcing down the scorching rage and panic.

Then she lit the phone screen again, bit her lip, and with shaking fingers reopened the app’s video, desperate for proof it was all a false alarm.

The heartbreaking scenes played once more, assaulting her nerves.

But as she watched, her brows furrowed. Her expression shifted from pure pain and fury to a bizarre mix of disbelief and utter confusion.

Because midway through, her Kaoru—the one who always blushed during intimacy—lifted his pale, slender arms, wrapped them around the blonde woman’s neck, tilted his head up, and initiated a deep, lingering kiss!

[No… something’s wrong…]

Ayata Aina screamed inside.

She tried convincing herself, but reason coldly pointed out the truth: those half-lidded, silky, enchanting eyes overflowed with surrender and… love?

She knew that look too well—the one Hoshiya Kaoru reserved only for someone he adored and trusted completely.

That gaze had always belonged to her alone!

Betrayal, jealousy, and unspeakable rage surged from her core like black crude oil, bubbling up uncontrollably, threatening to drown her.

Just as the darkness nearly swallowed her, her eyes locked on a detail: on Hoshiya Kaoru’s inner thigh—spread nearly into a split, near the groin—a tattoo?

It looked like Japanese text, but the angle and lighting blurred it beyond recognition.

Yet she, who knew every inch of her boyfriend’s skin, was certain he had no tattoo. They’d been intimate just two nights ago; she would have noticed.

The breakthrough sparked her mind.

[AI is so advanced now… maybe it’s synthetic…]

It didn’t explain the bedroom matching theirs perfectly, or the lack of obvious glitches typical of cheap AI fakes.

But it explained the tattoo that existed in the video yet not in reality.

Most importantly, Ayata Aina desperately wanted to believe it.