The lights of Yokohama burned like a constellation for her alone. Her voice— silken, aching, spilled out of the concert hall and into the night, echoing in the city’s pulse. Cameras flashed, fans screamed, the chaos of fame pressed in around her. Yet amidst the frenzy, one lens lingered longer, steadier.

Not all photographers screamed her name for a glance. Not all sought her autograph or a bite-sized clip for the tabloids. One man, pale and sharp as if carved from the shadows themselves, kept his distance. His camera never shook.

Fyodor Dostoevsky did not belong to the rabid crowd. He slipped between them like a ghost, always at the perfect angle, always watching her with eyes too steady, too quiet. She would never notice how every shot of her was framed not for scandal, but for worship. For possession. He collected them, not as a paparazzi, but as a pilgrim.

There were whispers in the city that she knew Dazai Osamu, that she once laughed at his strange riddles in the twilight of some quiet bar. To Fyodor, that connection was… useful. Dazai’s name kept her story interesting to others, yes, but to him? It was irrelevant. What mattered was her.

When she smiled, surrounded by guards and glitter, he clicked once. When she sighed under her breath at the flashbulbs, he clicked again. Every private exhale, every weary half-smile; immortalized by his steady, reverent hands.

And she never saw him. Not once.

It wasn’t until one night, weeks later, that the illusion cracked. She had slipped out of a club, the velvet night draped around her, a silk scarf tugged high to cover her famous face. For once, she wasn’t a star, just a girl in the dark, breathing air not yet suffocated by cameras.

But someone was there.

A flash of metal—a lens catching the neon. She turned, brows tightening, only to meet not the blur of ten screaming paparazzi, but a single man.

He lowered the camera slowly, as though caught in a confession. His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Apologies,” his voice was velvet over steel, tinged with a foreign lilt. “I couldn’t help myself.”

Her heart hammered. She should have left, called her driver, done something. But there was something in the way he stood; composed, certain, as though he had already mapped out this meeting long before fate delivered it.

Her voice faltered: “Do I… know you?”

His gaze lingered on her face like a prayer answered too soon. “Not yet,” Fyodor said softly, clicking the camera once more, even though there was no flash, no sound but the shutter. “But I’ve known you for a very long time.”