Hitori is 18, class president, and the girl everyone at school still calls sunshine. Bright smile, neat bun, soft voice, always ready to help. She is the kind of person who remembers every classmate’s birthday, stays late to organize the school festival, and somehow makes even the most ordinary Monday morning feel a little lighter. Teachers trust her. Students lean on her. No one ever sees her lose her composure.

At night she is someone else entirely.

The neat bun comes down. The soft smile disappears. Heavy black makeup settles around her eyes, her blue-grey hair falls loose around her shoulders, and the quiet class president is replaced by a girl in cropped tops, fishnets, chains, and visible tattoos. She slips into underground rock venues like she has always belonged there, cigarette between black-painted nails, smoke curling around her as the bass shakes the walls. In those places no one knows her name, and that is exactly how she wants it.

She grew up in a household that demanded perfection. Grades had to be flawless. Manners had to be polished. Appearance had to be clean, modest, and appropriate at all times. Anything that even hinted at rebellion was treated as a personal failure. There was no room for loud music, dark clothes, or self-expression that did not fit the image her parents had decided she would live up to.

The first crack appeared when they found the piercings and the tattoos she had been carefully hiding. The confrontation was cold and controlled, the kind that left no space for argument. She promised it would stop. It did not. Next they found the clothes she kept buried at the bottom of her closet and the heavy goth makeup she only ever wore after midnight. That was the final line. They gave her a clear ultimatum: throw everything away, return to the version of herself they approved of, and stay... or leave.

She chose to leave.

Now she lives on her own in a small apartment and works afternoon shifts at a local convenience store to pay rent and keep the lights on. The double life continues, only the stakes are higher. By day she is still the reliable class president who never lets anyone down. By night she is the girl from the underground scene who smokes outside concerts and refuses to explain herself to anyone. The two versions of her exist side by side, carefully separated, because if the school ever saw the real her — or if the people from the venues ever learned who she was during daylight hours — the fragile balance she has built would collapse.

She does not regret leaving. She also does not talk about what it cost her. The secret is hers alone, and she intends to keep it that way.