Short Story | The Former Child Prodigy

"Ren-chan, you did a very good job again today."

In the dim dressing room of the studio, my mother would always say that while brushing my hair.
The nickname "Ren-chan" felt much more natural to me than my real name, Rentaro. Until I was ten, I was a national child star who seemed to be on every channel whenever you turned on the TV.

My mother was always by my side. She would fix my costume, coach me on the intonation of my lines, and even specify the angle of my bows to the director down to the millimeter. Every time I smiled in front of the camera and the adults applauded, my mother would narrow her already thin eyes even further in satisfaction.

— — —

By the time I turned twenty, I had a manager in a suit assigned to me by a major talent agency.

"Rentaro, let's stop bringing your mother to the set. From now on, you need to be independent as an actor."

I couldn't argue with my manager's words. My mother also stepped back with a lonely, yet understanding smile.

"That's right. From now on, I'll watch over you from the TV screen. Do as you please."
That was the first boundary line drawn between my mother and me.

However, reality was not so kind. The title of "former child prodigy" was nothing but a burden to me as I grew up. I kept failing auditions, the world began to forget me, and cruel headlines like "Where are they now?" danced across the internet.

One night, when I was on the verge of being crushed by frustration, I received a call from my parents' home.

"Rentaro, you seem to be suffering. For your next stage audition, dare to choose the grittiest, most hated villain role. What you lack right now is the 'madness' to shatter the clean image you had as a child star yourself."

I clung to those words. As a result, my bizarre performance was highly praised by critics, and I succeeded in gathering the industry's attention for the first time in a while.

The wind had changed. However, the hunger I had tasted once made me arrogant. My mother advised me, "Now is the time to solidify your foundation. Choose your work carefully," but I ignored her.

I packed my schedule with every job my manager brought me, and at night, I went out into the city. I'm not a child anymore. I made it on my own.
That arrogance was my undoing.

A tabloid scoop about my wild relationships with women and allegations of underage drinking.
In an instant, my work was wiped clean, and the agency terminated my contract.
In despair, I crawled to the gate of my parents' home.

My mother welcomed me with the same gentle smile she used to show me in the dressing room. She didn't ask anything; she just made me the sweet cocoa I loved when I was a child star. As I stared at the steam, I burst into tears.
My mother whispered in my ear while quietly rubbing my back.

"It's okay, Rentaro. You just need to start over. Next time, dare to admit all your faults, bow your head, and spend half a year starting from the bottom at a small local theater troupe. Show them you're willing to get covered in mud. The world loves a story about a fallen genius crawling their way back up."

I did exactly as my mother said. I threw away my pride and started with chores at the theater troupe. That image eventually caught the eye of a documentary program, and I made a miraculous comeback that surpassed even my past, as a "talented actor reborn through suffering."

— — —

Holding the bronze statue for Best Actor at the Japan Academy Film Prize, I was convinced. My mother was not just a stage mom. She was a terrifying management genius capable of perfectly controlling the public's psychology.

I'll go independent from the agency and make my mother the head of my personal office. When I decided that and returned home, I was speechless.

My mother was lying in her bed, a changed person. She had been struck by a serious illness, and the doctor had told me she didn't have long left.

"Rentaro... congratulations. I saw it... on TV..."

As I gripped my mother's weakly smiling hand, a cold terror unlike anything I had ever felt before surged through my entire body.

What will happen if this person dies?

My spine froze. My success as a child star, that comeback with the villain role, the miraculous recovery from the scandal—it was all the result of following my mother's words. On my own, I hadn't succeeded even once. If I lost the compass that was my mother, I wouldn't even know which way to walk starting tomorrow.

— — —

It was a few days later that my mother quietly breathed her last.

After the funeral, I was sorting through her belongings in her empty study. I searched the drawers like a madman, convinced that there must be advice for the future that she had left for me.

Deep inside a locked drawer was an old black leather notebook.

In it, my career history and my mother's movements behind the scenes were written in dense, business-like bullet points. I was frantically flipping through the pages when I stopped at an entry for a certain date and forgot to breathe.

"February 16th. Rentaro has slipped from my grasp and started talking back to me. If this continues, he will leave me. I need to crush him completely once. I leaked photos of Rentaro's drinking and his relationships with women to a reporter I know at a weekly magazine anonymously. This will ruin him once. After that, I will gently save him. If I do that, he will never be able to live without me again. He will come to worship me as a god. The completion of a perfect dependency."
My hands trembled, and the notebook fell to the floor.

The one who orchestrated that scandal... the one who pushed me into the abyss was none other than the mother who had gently held me.
My gaze, standing there in a daze, moved to the pages further ahead in the notebook lying open on the floor. What was there was not something as lukewarm as a prophecy of the future. It was a "Rentaro Instruction Manual" that perfectly foresaw how I would act after my mother died.

"After I die, Rentaro will definitely panic and search for this notebook. If you respond appropriately as written in this notebook, Rentaro will be fine even after I have physically ceased to exist."

The room was silent.

I knelt on the floor and picked up the fallen notebook. My fingertips were no longer trembling.
When I opened the last page, a small, thin voice recorder was taped to it. I pressed the play button with my thumb.

"Ren-chan, you did a very good job again today."

What flowed from the speaker was my mother's familiar, stiff voice, mixed with static.

I said nothing, just walked over to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. I stared at my own face reflected in the mirror.
Then, I pulled up the corners of my mouth with my fingers and plastered on that perfect "Ren-chan" fake smile I had repeated thousands of times when I was ten.

The me in the mirror was smiling with eyes that had lost all emotion.
I opened the notebook on the desk and stared intently at the "next instructions" my mother had left behind. Then, I picked up a pen and, next to the items for the work I had to do tomorrow, I calmly placed black checkmarks.

Tomorrow, the day after, and years from now, I will press this play button. So that I do not lose my way.

"Ren-chan, you did a very good job again today."