arisa nagase － 永瀬 愛里咲

june 18, 1993

gemini

actress － former child star

the bellevue apartment － floor 20

biual demiromantic

none

single

japanese-american

english (fluent) － japanese (fluent) － spanish (conversational) － french (conversational) － mandarin (basic)

@loveblooms (public) － @tokumei1806 (private)

ayaka miyoshi

risa Nagase was born in the summer of '93 in Los Angeles, California with a silver spoon in . Her father, Tomoya Nagase, was a popular singer in Japan until he decided to retire from the scene and establish I&N Talent Agency, a Hollywood-based mass media company fostering Asian talents and productions with his wife, a fashion model named Kaori Imai. The agency quickly gained its momentum, and Arisa's birth was highly anticipated by the public.

To keep the stardom running in the family, her parents ed her into the spotlight before she could even process the world around her. They entered her in child beauty pageants and auditioned her for child roles in movies, which contributed to her fame on top of being the only child to two powerful figures in the industry. Arisa spent a large portion of her childhood playing pretend in an equally fabricated environment they call filming sets.

Growing up, she had no one she could actually call a friend. Most, if not all the people working on set were adults － some of which were even older than her parents. She attended school, but she didn't feel like she fit in with the other kids. Most of them had only stared at her as if she had grown another limb and made little to no effort to talk to her (all they'd ever ask was for her to sign their notebook or anything they have in hand － and she didn't even have an autograph yet!). The fact that she could barely attend a day without having to leave early for filming had only isolated her more from her peers.

Arisa voiced out her worries to her parents, but all they did was tell her to be grateful for the life they have given her. Not every child was born with a life as luxurious as hers, and loneliness was just a small price to pay for it. She had it easy compared to everyone else. "Greater things are coming your way," they had told her, "so quit complaining and do your job."

On the other hand, she has received praise for her performance in every project she starred in. It garnered her more popularity and gave her parents' talent agency a boost in reputation. Money never ceased to flow wherever she goes or whatever she does. Everyone loved her. Her parents were proud of her. She had her path to success paved for her even before she was born, and all she had to do was smile for the camera and give the people what they wanted.

Her parents were right － she did have it easy.

ife started going downhill for Arisa when she had her first cigarette at ten.

She didn't have friends growing up, but there was a certain film director whom she frequently worked with. It was the twentieth day of filming for her first main role in a movie, and they were running on less than thirty hours of sleep per week ever since filming started. One afternoon, the director called for a short break and much to Arisa's surprise, took her outside the set with him for a smoke break.

The first thing he did was offer her a cigarette from his pack. Arisa looked up to see a sly smirk playing on his lips and refused it at first, saying that her parents would get mad at her if they caught her smoking.

"Ah, but they won't ever find out," he told her, "this will be our little secret, alright?"

So she reached out for the loose roll he had pushed out from the pack and hesitantly trapped it between her lips. She closed her eyes as he lit it for her and slowly inhaled－

The next thing she knew, the cigarette fell to the ground and her hands desperately searched for something to hold on to as her body lurched forward. Tears started brimming her eyes as she went into a coughing fit. The director had only given her a pat on her back and a chuckle. "It's okay, it's okay." Despite his words, Arisa did not remember hearing even the slightest bit of sympathy in it. "You'll get used to it one day."

Like the fool she was, she insisted on joining him again the next day for his smoke break. They told her parents that they were going to discuss a few scenes she was unsure of, and that was enough to convince them to look away. She demanded another cigarette, and of course, he willingly gave one to her. "Getting addicted, aren't you?" he said, a knowing smile curling on his lips. "That's alright. You're not a child star in Hollywood if you aren't ed up before eighteen."

Over time, Arisa began indulging in more substances when the industry people started demanding more from her. As a teenager, she started coming home less and spent nights in different hotel rooms instead. They introduced her to alcohol and hard drugs, which she instantly got hooked up on. Her parents believed that she was old enough to take care of herself and turned a blind eye against her personal life. She's making money and the family was well-liked by the public. And that was enough for them.

Her reputation in the industry began to suffer after she started using. The same people who introduced her to the substances she was addicted to turned their backs against her the moment she became "a pain in the to work with". She would often show up on set hungover or high, and they would shun her, as if it wasn't their fault to begin with.

Growing up in the entertainment industry made Arisa obsessed with her reputation, so she'd let the stress and burden consume her. And then she would use. She found herself trapped in a cycle of lasting misery and temporary euphoria at the young age of sixteen － but she would rather die than admit that it was a problem.

The public, like the great detectives they are, had suspected her of drug use when noticeable changes in her physique started emerging. Their suspicions were finally confirmed when information about her attending an AA meeting somehow made its way to news tabloids. Her public image went from being the industry's most loved child actor to "another child star gone wrong" in a blink of an eye. Many film producers decided that they did not want to take the risk and stopped giving her offers to star in their projects. Some of them had even pulled her out altogether.

It was at this point that her parents finally cared, albeit for the wrong reason.

The first thing they did was check her into a rehabilitation service near their home, which the paparazzis had also gotten a hold onto. Arisa then gained another reputation for frequently going in and out of rehab as she would always end up running away. Her record sobriety period had only lasted for a month. Pictures of her looking miserable in dimly lit alleyways circulated around the Internet. Her parents pulled her out of the industry and moved her around the country but to no avail. Her drug problem had only gotten worse ever since it started, and her acting career was pretty much doomed.

When Arisa turned 22, her parents sent her away to Japan as a last resort option.

s much as she hated to admit it, five years outside the US helped Arisa battle her addiction in a way. Her 27th birthday marked her fifth year of being clean, and eighteenth month of sobriety.

The people in Japan were initially against having her in the country, but public opinion gradually changed when she made appearances in local talk shows and displayed her determination to redeem herself and start anew (of course, she didn't mean it at first, but life works in strange ways indeed). Perhaps this was her only chance to step away from the entertainment industry, but Arisa soon came to the realization she had nothing besides acting.

Tokyo wasn't half as bad as Los Angeles, but Arisa would be lying if she claimed that it wasn't a on its own. But maybe the problem doesn't lie with where she is. Every place on Earth is a as long as she remains in showbiz, and she has been dying to throw it away for a better life.

But who is Arisa Nagase without the entertainment industry?

Five and a half years after she left for Japan, her parents summoned her back to the States to restart her career. She's back in Hollywood as an actress, forced to pretend as if nothing happened, but who's to say that her facade will last long?

There's no telling that Arisa won't spiral back into her old habits, especially when she has returned to the same environment that corrupted her in the first place.