In the crowded rush of Tokyo,
there lived a soft, gentle, always-positive girl named Yuki.
She was seventeen, yet still only in 9th grade at Yamazaki School & College...
her path delayed because her father wished her to master math and biology first. His hope was simple but heavy: that next year, she could take science and get accepted into a government girls' college to become a doctor.
Yuki wasn't beautiful the way magazines showed: she had slim shoulders, almost fragile arms that made some whisper "She looks unhealthy… she barely eats." Ordinary brown hair, soft light-brown eyes....not striking, yet not plain either. Just Yuki: quiet, hopeful, trying.
She had two younger sisters:
— Yuri, fourteen, in 7th grade, always loud and teasing...yet with dark humor
— Yoshiro, only seven, with babyish bangs and a toothy smile...always annoying Yuki
At home, Yuki's parents, Toruki and Matsuki, worried about her.
They never scolded her harshly, even if she lost a single mark out of a hundred. They gave her what she needed, kept their words gentle. Yet lately, they saw something different in her eyes: a quiet worry, shadows under her lashes, smiles that looked borrowed instead of born.
But Yuki kept her silence.
Something dark curled up inside her chest...too heavy to share, too sharp to swallow.
Matsuki, her father, had two phones:
— an iPhone 15 Pro Max he used every day.
— a Samsung Galaxy he once bought as a birthday gift for Toruki.
Toruki, set in her habits, never used it; she preferred her old iPhone, its settings memorized like prayer.
So sometimes, Yuki and Yuri played games on that spare phone together... tapping screens, giggling late into the night.
One evening, Yuki gathered her courage.
"Mom… I'm already eighteen," she began softly. "You said it's legal to have a phone then… can I have the spare one Dad bought? Just to test if I can handle it?"
Toruki crossed her arms, eyes steady on her daughter.
"And what if you can't?"
"Then… take it back," Yuki answered, her voice small, a shiver of fear hiding behind her words.
A long silence. Then Toruki sighed.
"Fine. But one wrong move… and you won't like what waits next."
"A-alright… Mom," Yuki whispered...filled with silent guilt too..which was kinda old enough
Toruki's hand hovered, then dropped the phone into Yuki's waiting palms. It felt heavy... more than just plastic and glass. New. Expensive. Full of unknown doors.
At first, Yuki kept to safe things: YouTube videos, soft anime music, chatbots that spoke like the characters she adored.
Then, at school, her friend Saki leaned over and whispered:
"You still don't have Facebook? Come on, I'll show you."
Together, they tapped the screen: new email, password, profile name.
Yuki chose "Yukiji Sama," after one of her favorite anime heroines....proud, stubborn , beautiful , historical , fierce, yet gentle inside.
"I did it," she thought, a spark of pride warming her chest. "I'm not as clueless as I thought…"
But behind that small victory lay a path she couldn't see yet.
A path not lined with cherry blossoms, but thorns.
A step, innocent at first... that would carry her somewhere far darker than she ever imagined.