Mine

Fifteen-year-old Ren Takatsuki has always lived with a world inside his head-a world of music, colors, and stories that refuse to stay silent. Ever since he was five
, melodies hummed in the quiet and scenes unfolded behind his eyes like plays waiting for a stage. But to his parents, those dreams were just a pleasant distraction, a "nice hobby" that would eventually fade. They have already chosen his path: a future of stability, respectability, and carefully measured success.

When Ren's family uproots their lives and sends him across the ocean to begin high school in America, he is told it is for his own good. A better system, they say. More opportunities. The promise of a brighter future. Yet the future they speak of feels heavy, colorless, and far from the life Ren imagines for himself.

In a new country where every hallway feels unfamiliar and every voice sounds sharper than his own, Ren must navigate the pressures of expectation and the ache of belonging. Classrooms buzz with ambitions he cannot share. Calls from home carry the weight of plans he never made. And yet, beneath the quiet struggle, his inner world refuses to die. Music still beats in his chest. Words still weave themselves into stories. The stage still calls to him, daring him to step forward.

Will Ren have the courage to nurture the spark of creativity burning inside him, even when the people he loves most demand he extinguish it? Or will he surrender his heart to a future written by someone else, trading art for approval, passion for certainty?