CHAPTER 6
Combat power is what’s really important.
“Man, is it just me, or was that perfect?”
“I thought that went very well, too.”
Both Takeshi and Hikaru expressed satisfaction with their final rehearsal before the show. Sayaka didn’t have a single complaint this time, either. Alisa and even Nonoa, more or less, seemed pleased as well. Masachika was no different, genuinely feeling that this was their best performance yet. Furthermore, each member seemed more fired up than ever in the new outfits that Nonoa had made specifically for the show.
“That was incredible… I mean it,” uttered Masachika, deeply impressed, as he clapped.
“Come on, bro. You’re making it sound like that was the show. That was just practice,” Takeshi chimed in bashfully.
“Ha-ha. Yeah, I know. But seriously, I’m honestly impressed what a great team you guys make.”
“You’re the one who brought us together, Kuze.”
“Yeah, bro.”
“…Oh, yeah.”
“Did you seriously forget?!” joked Takeshi, making Alisa and Sayaka burst into laughter. Incidentally, Nonoa had stopped calling Masachika by his first name, since according to her, it didn’t feel right.
“All right, guys! I know it’s a little early, but now that we got our manager’s seal of approval, let’s head backstage!”
“Hold up, Takeshi. You’re forgetting something important.”
“Huh?”
“Seriously? You still haven’t decided on who the band’s leader is going to be, right?” explained Masachika, fairly surprised that Takeshi seemed genuinely confused, but the moment he finished his sentence, he noticed Alisa tense from the corner of his eye. Takeshi, on the other hand, seemed oblivious and was sluggish to react, to boot.
“O-ohhh, that. Right.”
“How could you forget something so important?”
“I wouldn’t say I forgot. Just…” He looked at Alisa. “In my head, Alya was already the leader, to be honest…”
“…?!”
As Alisa’s eyes widened in surprise, Hikaru chimed in to agree with Takeshi as well.
“I feel the same way. If anyone’s the leader here, it’s Alya.”
“…?! Hikaru…?”
After Alisa shot Hikaru a look of utter shock, he gently smiled back at her and added:
“Masachika was right when he said we make a great team…and I honestly believe that you’re one of the biggest reasons it all worked out, Alya. You have no idea how happy it made me seeing you approach everyone to make sure we all got to know each other. Plus, when you came up with our band name…”
Hikaru paused and bashfully scratched his cheek.
“While everyone else was prioritizing things they like, you were the only one who came up with a name that spoke to every one of us as a group, and I honestly feel like that influenced the direction our band took. That’s why…ever since that moment, you were the only one fit to lead, in my eyes.”
Alisa pressed her lips together, as if she were holding back powerful emotions, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Hikaru?! Come on, bro! Why do ya have to be Mr. Cool, saying all the right things here?! You’re making me look like an idiot!”
“Read the room, idiot.”
“Nobody has to make you look like an idiot.”
“Hey?!”
Both Masachika and Hikaru promptly chimed in with their swift counters to shut Takeshi down, since right when the mood couldn’t have been more perfect, he started complaining and ruined everything. Even Alisa seemed deflated.
“Anyway, that’s two votes for Alya. What about you two?”
Masachika quickly turned to Sayaka and Nonoa to regain control of the conversation.
“It would be in poor taste to vote against her after all that,” said Sayaka, shrugging, with a blank expression.
“Oh, Sayaaa. You can be honest with us.”
“Excuse me, Nonoa?”
“Oh, Sayaaa. You can be honest with us.”
“I didn’t ask you to repeat yourself!”
Everyone in the room chuckled at their heartwarming exchange.
“What about you, Nonoa?”
“Why not? Let’s do this, Leader,” she immediately replied while waving at Alisa. The spotlight was on Alisa as she began to tremble, but after closing her eyes and relaxing her expression for a few moments, she grinned confidently and clenched her fist.
“Okay, everyone. This is Fortitude’s first live show. Let’s do this! Is everybody ready?!”
Alisa raised her fist into the air while everyone, even Masachika…
“Yeahhh!”
“Y-Yeah!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…”
“Sure…”
“Guys, would it kill some of you to show some enthusiasm? And what was with the delay?” interjected Masachika, which was immediately followed by Alisa’s clenched fist slowly lowering as her shoulders gradually hunched.
“…!”
“See?! Look what you guys did! You embarrassed her! She put a lot of heart into that! She did something she has never done before, and now look! Stop bullying our leader!”
“Masachika.”
“Hmm?”
“Please shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Whoa… Look at the crowd. Dammit. I’m getting nervous.”
“Ha-ha-ha. Right? I think the crowd’s going to be bigger than this by the time we start, though. We seem to have gathered a lot of attention.”
“Yeah, man… A lot of people actually stopped me to talk about the band yesterday.”
Twenty minutes before showtime, everyone moved backstage. A slight shiver of excitement ran down Takeshi’s spine while he took a peek at the stage from one of the wings, but he soon turned to Masachika.
“Oh, yeah. We ran into Kiryuuin yesterday, which got me wondering… Did something happen between you two?”
“Kiryuuin? Which one? The guy? And what do you mean ‘Did something happen?’ That’s kind of vague.”
“Yeah, the guy. And I don’t know, either, man. He just kept asking over and over if ya were gonna be onstage playing with us…”
“…? What? Me?”
“Yeah.”
Masachika tilted his head in confusion, but after thinking about it for a few moments, he vaguely recalled Yuushou asking him something similar the other day. He had no idea why, though.
“I told him ya were the manager, so ya weren’t going to be onstage with us, and he, like, rolled his eyes and walked away all annoyed. Any idea why?”
“…No clue.”
“Oof,” another voice grunted suddenly, which immediately attracted the attention of both Masachika and Takeshi, where they found Nonoa with her eyes half-open.
“…? What’s wrong?”
“That poor little runner-up…,” she muttered, as if she were talking to herself, making Masachika frown.
“Poor little runner-up”? What the…? Something about this seems vaguely familiar…
Feeling fragments of the past coming to the surface of his mind, Masachika lowered his gaze, in search of the memory that would connect the dots, but Takeshi suddenly spoke and broke his train of thought.
“Oh, hey. It’s probably about time I go get Kanau.”
“All right, be safe.”
“You better be back before we go on.”
“Yeah, I’ll be back soon.”
Once Takeshi rushed off, Nonoa spoke up as well.
“A’ight, I’m gonna go grab Leo and Lea, then.”
“Who?”
“My little brother and sister. B-R-B.”
“Sorry, I think I’m going to go to the bathroom before we start…”
“Seriously?” Masachika shrugged as each member started to disappear one after another.
“…I guess waiting backstage for so long is just making everyone needlessly agitated.”
When he turned around, he coincidentally made eye contact with Sayaka, who immediately glanced at Alisa, then looked up and off to the side before suddenly turning on her heel.
“I think I’m going to go say hello to Leo and Lea, too.”
“Come on, you don’t have to do that.”
“Do what? I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“Hey—!”
Before he could even get another word out, Sayaka was gone, leaving only Alisa and Masachika backstage. There was something awkward about being alone with Alisa, especially since he was still rather embarrassed after being caught backstage alone with her just yesterday by someone who thought he was proposing to her.
“So, uh… I thought this team had a real sense of unity at first, but look at us now. Everyone’s gone. What do you think, Leader?”
But his lighthearted joke was met with silence, so being the moderately concerned manager that he was, he took a closer look at her, and his eyes opened wide.
“A-Alya?”
Her eyebrows were drooping, and the muscles around her eyes seemed tense. It was as if she were about to burst into tears at any moment. But when Masachika worriedly called out her name, she immediately lowered her gaze in genuine surprise while trying to hide her face. However, only when he saw her shoulders faintly trembling did his confusion finally reach its peak.
…?! I-is she crying? Wh-what should I do? Should I gently hug her? Wait, wait, wait. Only really good-looking guys can get away with stuff like that. Besides, I don’t even know why she’s upset, so maybe I should stand in the way so that nobody sees her crying?
The intense conflict resolved itself in his head in a mere second. He decided to go with a compromise and lend Alisa his shoulder instead, since it wasn’t as intimate as a hug. He approached Alisa and awkwardly placed her head on his shoulder, then started to rub her head as gently as he could, just like how Maria rubbed his.
“What’s wrong? Did being picked as the leader really make you that happy?”
When he put the only reason that he could come up with into words, he felt Alisa nodding into his shoulder.
“Am I going to be able to live up to their expectations…?”
Her trembling voice expressed a seed of doubt that stunned Masachika, and almost immediately, he was overcome with regret for how shortsighted he had been. At the end of the day, he alone was the one who gave her the task to surpass Sayaka and become the leader. That was the drive that drove Alisa to push herself as hard as she could to live up to his expectations, and yet all Masachika had done was get jealous. He didn’t even consider how much of an emotional toll this all must have taken on her.
I’m such an idiot…! Just because she makes everything look easy, that doesn’t mean that she’s not hurting on the inside! She has been so scared, and I’m an idiot for not even noticing that until now! Alya has never really asserted herself in the student council. She more or less has kept to herself, and yet she worked so hard to communicate and get to know four people who she wasn’t even friends with. I should have been there for her!
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