The teaser had barely been up for ten minutes before the notifications started pouring in.
Likes, shares, retweets. Comments flew in faster than Laura could even process them. The group had gathered around the studio computer to watch the numbers climb.
"Look at that engagement," Zane grinned, phone in hand. "The fans are eating it up."
Sunny leaned over his shoulder, eyes wide. "Someone already made a GIF of that hair flip you did."
Zane smirked. "Of course they did."
Axel chuckled from behind his coffee cup. "You're going viral, man."
And he was. Nearly every comment was about Zane—his charisma, his presence, his look. A few scrolled by mentioning Sunny too.
"Zane and Sunny have such good chemistry 🥰""OTP material?? Hello???""I wasn't sure at first but now I'm obsessed with this lineup!!"
Sunny blushed and tucked her hair behind her ear. "They're just saying that because of the teaser's framing."
"You disagree?" Zane asked, leaning in, eyes teasing.
"I didn't say that," she murmured, smiling. He took the cue, draping an arm casually over her shoulders, and Axel whistled at them from across the room.
"Well, if you two start dating for real," Axel said with a grin, "I'm writing the theme song."
Laura, meanwhile, sat a little apart on the armrest of the couch, staring at the screen.
Not many comments mentioned her. The few that did weren't exactly kind.
"Laura never smiles, huh?""She always looks so distant.""Is she even into this project anymore?""Why's she barely in the teaser? Didn't she used to be the front?"
She read them in silence, one by one, while the others laughed about memes and ship names.
It wasn't that she wanted the spotlight. She never had. But being practically invisible? Being a problem in the handful of glimpses she did have?
Her stomach twisted.
"Hey, Laura," Axel called out. "You good?"
She nodded once. "Yeah. Just... reading."
Zane caught the edge in her voice. He glanced at her, briefly, but didn't say anything—not yet.
The praise, the noise, the light—it echoed all around her, and somehow, she felt further away than ever.
---
Laura finds herself alone in her room later that night, lit only by her laptop screen. The others have gone offline. Sunny had sent a heart emoji after their stream ended. Zane had texted a joke about Axel being a "secret romantic." Axel sent a playlist.
But Laura? She rereads the comments.
One in particular sticks:
"Didn't she used to be the front?"
Her fingers hover over her keyboard.She opens a new tab.Types slowly:"loss of taste no smell no emotion no interest in hobbies"
The autocomplete fills in for her.
She reads. Scrolls. Clicks a few things.And then, quietly... opens the website for a local clinic.
She doesn't tell anyone.She just picks a date.
And books it.
She sits alone in the stillness.A teacup beside her. Cold. Forgotten.She lifts it to her lips anyway. Drinks without flinching.No reaction. No warmth. No flavor.Just routine.
---
The clinic couldn't see her until next week. That's what the email said. One line. One sentence. And yet it echoed louder than most things lately.
Laura left the message unopened after reading it once.
Days passed. She kept to her routines—early mornings, clean rooms, plain meals, and carefully brewed tea.Except now, each sip felt heavier. The teacup, always warm in her hand, had gone cold.Still, she drank it.
Waiting. Wondering.Trying not to let it show.
---
It was a warm, sleepy afternoon when she passed Sunny and Amelia near the flower market. The two were wearing sunglasses and oversized hoodies, holding disposable cameras and laughing over something on Amelia's phone.
"Laura!" Sunny waved, bright as ever. "Where are you headed?"
Laura hesitated. "Just walking."
"Join us?" Amelia chimed in, already making room between them. "We're doing a nostalgia photo challenge—film rolls only, ten photos, no deleting."
Laura blinked. "That sounds... unnecessary."
"Exactly," Amelia said. "Come on."
Somehow, she found herself tagging along. Sunny handed her a lemon soda, which Laura sipped. It fizzed against her tongue but offered no flavor. Amelia snapped candid shots. Sunny posed like a pop star.
---
They ended up at a small dessert café. The place was cozy and pastel, with handwritten chalk menus and windows open to the breeze.
Laura ordered something soft and sweet—cream-filled taiyaki. She chewed slowly, smiling politely when Sunny asked how it was.
"It's nice," she said. The lie fell out too easily.
She kept her answers short, her laughter practiced. She didn't want to ruin their fun.Sunny never seemed to notice.
But Amelia watched her. Carefully.
---
Later, as Laura waved goodbye and turned down a quiet street, Amelia paused beside Sunny.
"She's not okay, is she?"
Sunny's smile faltered. "What do you mean?"
"I mean... she didn't taste that dessert at all. Barely reacted to the jokes. And the way she talks—like she's filtering everything through a checklist of what sounds normal."
Sunny looked down at her hands, twisting the camera strap between her fingers.
"I've noticed too," she said quietly. "But she never says anything. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she would."
Amelia nodded slowly, watching Laura's silhouette disappear down the sidewalk.
"Maybe it's time we asked."
---
The appointment was at 3:30. That left just enough time for rehearsal, as long as things stayed on schedule.
Laura arrived early.
She always did.
The studio was quiet, her reflection caught in the glossy lid of the piano as she sat and waited. The keys beneath her fingers felt colder than usual. Or maybe she was just imagining things. Either way, her hands hovered, then pressed gently into a slow warm-up scale.
Axel arrived five minutes later, humming something under his breath. "Morning."
She nodded. "Morning."
No questions. No conversation. Just habit.
Then the door creaked again—Zane, grinning like he hadn't just walked in fifteen minutes late. And Sunny, arm still tugging her coat sleeve up, eyes bright and unapologetic.
Laura's gaze didn't move from the piano. She didn't comment on their tardiness.Didn't even glance their way.
That, ironically, made Zane and Sunny pause.
Usually, there was a quiet little sigh. A "you're late again." A furrow of her brow. Something. But not today.
Laura just played the intro.
"...Should we start from the second chorus?" Axel offered, breaking the awkward silence.
"Sure," Laura said simply.
They began. But something about the session felt... off. Notes were right, technically. But the flow stuttered. Cues were missed. There were pauses where there shouldn't have been. No one mentioned it aloud, but they all felt it.
Zane glanced at Laura mid-practice, his usual swagger dimmed. Sunny chewed her lip, trying to follow tempo more precisely than she needed to. Axel, always the glue, kept pushing them forward with calm suggestions—but even he seemed distracted.
When they wrapped the final take, Laura stood quickly.
"I have somewhere to be," she said.
No one stopped her. No one asked where.
She left her tea cup on the stool. Still warm.
---
The door clicked shut behind her.
For a moment, none of them moved.
The piano keys still hummed from the final chord. Then the sound faded, and the studio fell into a heavy stillness.
Axel exhaled first. "She didn't even scold you for being late."
Zane leaned back against the wall, tossing a pick between his fingers. "Yeah… kinda eerie, honestly."
Sunny frowned, arms crossed. "She didn't even look at us."
"Do you think we did something wrong?" she asked after a beat.
Axel didn't answer immediately. He grabbed his water bottle, took a sip, then said, "She's been off lately. Not just today."
Sunny hesitated. "I've… felt that too. But I didn't wanna pry. I thought maybe she was just tired or stressed or…" She trailed off.
Zane's voice was quieter now. "She told me the other day that food doesn't taste like anything anymore."
Sunny's eyes widened. "What?"
He nodded. "Said it really casually. Like it didn't matter. But it did."
Axel's shoulders stiffened slightly. He looked toward the piano where Laura had been sitting just minutes ago.
"She's still showing up," he said, almost to himself. "Still playing. Still organizing everything. But she's not… here."
Sunny sat down on the edge of the amp case. "What do we even do? We can't fix this with, like… snacks and karaoke again."
"No," Zane muttered. "We can't."
A silence settled again, deeper this time. Less awkward, more sobering.
"She never told me before," Axel added after a long pause. "About the food thing. Or anything else. I just… thought that was Laura. Drinking tea, keeping quiet. Being the steady one."
"Maybe we never asked," Sunny murmured.
Zane tossed the pick into his case, expression unreadable. "Or maybe we were too busy being the noise."
They all looked at the empty piano bench.
She always filled the room when she played.
Today, it just felt… hollow.
---
The waiting room was quiet, humming with the low buzz of fluorescent lights. A few outdated magazines sat in messy piles on the coffee table. Laura sat upright in her chair, hands wrapped around a paper cup of lukewarm tea. She'd poured it from her thermos earlier, but never drank it. Now it had gone cold.
The receptionist had been kind, her voice calm, expression neutral. Laura appreciated that.
She waited.
Eventually, the door opened. "Laura Hirase?"
She stood.
The specialist—a man in his late forties with soft features and wire-rimmed glasses—greeted her with a polite nod. "Come in, please."
The room was neat but not sterile. A framed photo of a mountain hung on the wall. Soothing tones, likely chosen on purpose. Laura sat where he gestured, clutching her bag like a lifeline.
He didn't speak right away. Just opened her file. Scanned her intake notes. Then, he folded his hands, meeting her gaze without pressure.
"You mentioned on your form that you've been experiencing a diminished sense of taste and smell for quite some time," he said. "Is that still ongoing?"
Laura nodded once. "Yes."
"No changes? No moments of clarity?"
"No," she said, barely a whisper. "It's just… flat."
He nodded slowly. "And how long has this been happening, would you say?"
She hesitated. "Years, I think. Maybe for as long as I can remember. It just... crept in."
He wrote something down. "Any history of COVID-19? Any recent head trauma, sinus issues, medication changes?"
"No to all of those."
"Okay."
Another pause. The doctor's tone stayed even. He wasn't rushing. That helped.
He asked a few more questions—sleep patterns, diet, mood, routine. Laura answered them all, carefully, as if reading from a prepared list.
But when he asked:
"Would you say you still find joy in things the way you used to?"
Her answer took longer.
"I don't really remember how that feels," she said quietly.
The doctor nodded again, this time more solemnly.
"I'm going to be honest with you," he said gently. "Physically, from your symptoms and responses, this doesn't appear to be caused by a sensory malfunction. There's no indication of nerve damage or obstruction. That leads me to believe this is likely related to something psychological."
Laura didn't flinch, but her fingers curled tighter around her bag.
"What you're describing," he continued, "can be a sign of anhedonia—a condition where the ability to feel pleasure or enjoyment fades. It often appears in connection with depression or burnout. It doesn't mean you're broken. It means something in you has been under strain for too long."
Laura stared at the floor. The silence was heavy—but not crushing. Just… honest.
The doctor didn't push further. He simply slid a soft brochure across the desk.
"This doesn't have to define you," he said. "But I would recommend speaking with a therapist. We can work with you, step by step, to rebuild that connection—to yourself, to what you love."
She nodded slowly, eyes glassy but dry.
He didn't press for a second appointment. He just told her, sincerely, that she could reach out anytime.
---
The streets hummed with the late afternoon lull. Cars drifted by with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat, and somewhere far off, a bus hissed as its doors opened and closed. Laura didn't register where she was anymore. The sidewalk beneath her feet was just a thread she followed—unconsciously, aimlessly.
She wasn't walking home.
Or maybe she was. She wasn't sure. Her bag felt light on her shoulder, but her thoughts were anything but.
The doctor's words echoed in her head, repeating on a loop like a song she couldn't quite turn off.
"This doesn't have to define you.""We can work with you, step by step, to rebuild that connection—to yourself, to what you love."
She turned a corner without looking up.
"To what you love."
Laura paused at a crosswalk. The red signal blinked silently. She stared at it, eyes blank, mind racing.
Did she love anything? She'd said it without much hesitation earlier—"as long as I can remember"—but the weight of those words was only just settling now. Years. Years of drinking tea out of habit, not preference. Of eating food that was bland and unmemorable. Of smiling in the right places, giving compliments, expressing thanks—not because she didn't mean them, but because that was what people did.
She hadn't been acting. Not really. She was just… performing. The role she had always known how to play.
But Zane's question cut through again, sharp and jarring:
"What do you actually like, Laura?"
She let the words sink in like stones dropped into still water. No answers surfaced.
The light turned green. She crossed slowly.
Wind tugged at her sleeves. A bird perched on a streetlamp chirped twice before taking off. She didn't look up. Her eyes were focused somewhere inward, scanning her own memories, trying to find traces of something real. Something hers.
Maybe… maybe the doctor was right. Maybe this wasn't the end. Just the beginning of figuring it out.
Maybe a therapist could help her dig deeper—into all the layers she'd built up over the years. Layers of politeness. Discipline. Composure.
And maybe—just maybe—underneath it all, there was someone waiting to be found.
She walked. Not toward a destination, but toward a possibility. The breeze grew cooler as the sun began to slide behind the rooftops.
She didn't know where she was going.
But for the first time, she thought… maybe that was okay.