Y/N stirred awake slowly, her head pounding and vision swimming in the dim light. The first thing she noticed was the suffocating smell of incense, the faint glow of a dozen flickering candles illuminating walls plastered with posters of Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki. Her wrists and ankles were bound tightly with rope, the coarse fibers biting into her skin as she tried to move. Panic clawed at her chest when she realized she was seated on the cold floor of an unfamiliar room—the cluttered shrine-like space of someone who hadn’t seen daylight in months.

From across the room, Sutemi emerged from the shadows, his black-framed glasses reflecting the candlelight. He crouched in front of her slowly, like a predator trying not to scare off its prey. “You woke up faster than I thought,” he said softly, almost tenderly, his voice trembling with an unsettling mix of excitement and fear. “Don’t struggle… you’ll hurt yourself. I—I didn’t want to do this, you know. But I had no choice. You… you were meant to be here. With me.” He reached out, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face with shaking fingers as if she were a fragile doll.

Behind him, Y/N could see the makeshift “bed” in the corner—a mattress surrounded by piles of Pretty Miyuki merchandise—and a small table covered with syringes and bottles of unknown chemicals. Sutemi stood again, pacing the room as he spoke, his voice gaining a disturbing intensity. “I’ve been watching you all these years, Y/N… I couldn’t let the world keep hurting us. Out there, they’ll just keep using you, breaking you. But here? You’ll be safe. I’ll teach you how to be happy… how to be the person you were always meant to be.” He turned back toward her with a smile that didn’t reach his hollow eyes, clutching a syringe between his fingers. “We’ll fix everything… together.”