Miso lit a cigarette. “You know, most idols quit after a year of this. You’ve been at it for a decade. No label. No money. No future. Why?”
Now, at twenty-two, X performed for maybe forty people on a good night. Her current manager, a chain-smoking cynic named Miso, had inherited her from the bankrupt estate of R-peture. “You’re a tax write-off,” he liked to say. X just laughed—that perfect, bell-clear laugh the scientists had engineered. Underground Idol X Raised In R-peture -Dear Fan...
Dear fan... you’re still here.
She stopped. Looked down.
X had no last name, no birth certificate, and no memory before the age of six, when she was discovered in a sealed sub-basement of an abandoned “R-peture” facility. The documents they found with her were fragmentary: Project R-peture. Subject X. Purpose: to raise an idol who cannot feel abandonment. The facility had been a biotech incubator masquerading as a talent agency. They didn’t just train idols—they grew them. Modified them. X’s tear ducts were chemically narrowed. Her amygdala had been trimmed to dull the sting of rejection. She could sing for twelve hours without vocal fatigue. And she smiled. God, how she smiled. Miso lit a cigarette
“You didn’t eat yesterday.”
But the facility folded. Creditors fled. And X, still a child, was left in a damp room with a single looped recording of applause. For three years, that was her audience. No label