Declaration (6)
Ginza.
Arthur, after Tae-il got the better of him and sent a full thirty thousand yen up in smoke, knocked back his sake in great irritable gulps, his face sour with it. Deep annoyance lived in the pout of his lips and the spiteful set of his brows.
Rin plucked the cup from his hand as he went on pouring drink down his throat without so much as a word of conversation.
"Still fuming?"
"Yeah."
"Heh. Moments like this, and I remember you're still a child."
"You're the only person in the world who treats me like one."
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that."
Rin shot the seething Arthur a sidelong look and smiled, wicked as anything.
She knew what the two of them were to each other, and her manner said he'd had it coming — but an emotional betrayal and the vanishing of something you can hold in your hand do not feel the same at all. Arthur was still nursing the sting of it. Unmollified, he took the cup right back from her.
"I'm still not satisfied."
He emptied it, then bowed his head and pressed a hand to his brow.
"Think about it rationally. The single best chance an unknown has to become known...!"
He tore into the wagyu with a nervous, irritable chew.
An awl in a sack will pierce its way out. Talent, the old saying promised, could not stay hidden. Arthur did not believe a word of it. Hide a thing, and it stayed hidden. Perhaps not in the old days — but in the twenty-first century, he was thoroughly convinced, there was no such thing as talent that truly could not be concealed.
"Do you know how the world looks at live houses? Frightening places. Unsettling..."
"Places where society's trash gathers, too, no?"
"..."
Bands strewn on every corner did not, by itself, mean the world was a good one. Dazzling — the world that had seemed nothing short of dazzling in Arthur's eyes was, seen through anyone else's, a place only a little better than a gutter. And there he had watched them. Pitiful people who possessed the talent and still could not find the light, with no choice but to bury themselves.
That was the same reason he had once reached a hand out to Shoko.
Family. Arthur hated being bound by a thing like family, which had done his life not the slightest bit of good. Watching a gifted child like Shoko get jerked around by hers and fall to pieces was something he hated even more.
But Shoko had gone back. By her own choosing. As a friend he respected that choice, and still he could not say he truly understood her.
Why does everyone throw away the chances they're handed?
He had always seized, without a moment's hesitation, whatever opportunity fell into his hands. Choosing the best road and stacking success upon success, he had arrived where he was — because, as far as he could tell, no other road had ever been permitted to him. Even if, at present, sick to death of a schedule that left him gasping, he was resting in the guise of a VTuber.
Seeing him sulk, Rin gathered her fingers and poked him in the temple, again and again.
"Honestly. You're that upset that Tae-il kicked aside the chance you gave him? When you weren't even serious?"
"I was serious!"
"It wasn't just you trying to satisfy your own private appetite?"
"..."
Conscience pricked, and Arthur said nothing.
The hunger to succeed. For a man who had lived a paltry life next to the regard he received from those around him, it was the most violent feeling he had ever known.
A singer would not do. Arthur believed that, however far he went that way, he would never get past the clown.
Look. There was the oldest idol in the business — the top of the industry, a so-called national idol — jerked around by his agency and left sprawled in the dirt, issuing a public apology to the entire nation for the sole crime of having discussed a disbandment. There were women singers who had left brilliant careers behind them, and who, the moment a daughter died by suicide or a husband strayed, turned around and offered the nation an apology of all things, drowning in guilt. There were countless entertainers who became the punchline of comedians simply for the sake of getting famous.
You could not be satisfied standing where the clowns stood.
Higher. He had to climb higher still, until he reached the ringmaster's seat — the place of the one who sets the clowns to dancing.
"...I won't deny it."
What was her name again. Iris, was it. He had already forgotten the family name. But that voice remained, vivid, in the back of his mind.
"She's a monster."
"Who? The vocalist Tae-il has with him?"
"You of all people know this, Rin. The world is crawling with people who can sing well."
"True."
"But even singing well has its ranks."
Every one of them has a limit to their timbre. Every one of them has a limit to their volume. Every one of them has a limit to their range.
A human being is an instrument — not one brought into the world by an artisan's hands, but one a person is born already being. Set aside aliens like Dimash Kudaibergen, and there remains an absolute territory that no amount of effort or training can ever cross. The instrument called a human being does everything it can to display itself inside that territory, and no further.
"For one thing, the vocalist that Tae-il kid dug up is absolutely not the type who's only good in a single genre. Not a chance."
"Didn't you say the audio quality was terrible? You figured all that out just from listening?"
"Honestly, I talked her down a little because I didn't want to lose. But the moment I heard her, I wanted to see the real thing."
Arthur knew. In this business, a vocalist of real worth was a rare treasure that no fortune on earth could buy — precious by her mere existence.
"If I could have pulled her in..."
"If you'd pulled her in?"
"The client would have been a hundred percent satisfied."
He felt a deep regret that Tae-il's refusal had wrecked his own goal.
"I could have put my name on the credits with my head held high."
Not in some side role. As art director itself.
"Getting your name on a global game, even at the very bottom of the list, as art director. Who turns that down?"
"Fair point."
The world was full of hopefuls-in-waiting who got worked cheap by people calling themselves producers, and then vanished. A true gateway — a chance to make your name outright, without passing through their hands — was not so easy to come by. And if the man in question happened to cut a tall, handsome figure besides?
"That's headline material."
Whatever the occasion, all he needed was for his name to go up at some awards ceremony. Step onto the red carpet. Reveal himself, without shame.
"The spotlight would lock onto me in a heartbeat."
"You guarantee it?"
"I guarantee it. Wouldn't you, Rin?"
"Heh."
As Arthur saw it, that was the highest and best way he could climb within subculture.
"I'm confident in the finished product. All I need is to seize the opportunity. That's all."
Push just a little further from here, and the odds of landing commissioned work — film, animation, and the like — would rise sharply. He would become famous. And people would call him a successful producer. His ultimate goal was to become a giant who would remain in history, the way Tetsuya Komuro had.
"You want to succeed even more? While you've fled the field and you're hiding out, resting, in some place called VTubing?"
"Well..."
At Rin's question, Arthur kept his silence.
Rin smiled, bright and easy.
"Then why don't you take part yourself? That project I mentioned earlier."
Her whisper slipped into Arthur's ear like a devil's temptation. He set his cup down and frowned.
"Don't tell me. That bargain-bin idol-band project?"
"Mm. There are plenty of similar things these days. Our company's even backing a few of them, as an investor."
Arthur nodded. Among the circles Rin's company supported, several similar projects were being backed at the doujin level. The usual arrangement was to put a virtual idol out front and let the voice actress inside her do the actual work. Onstage, too, it wasn't the idol who appeared, but the voice actress cast in that virtual role, in the flesh.
The project Rin meant was the reverse.
"You mean, literally, raising idols and assembling a band out of them?"
"It's not that rare a format, is it?"
"True..."
For an ordinary idol, the main event is flashy performance — singing, dancing, and the rest. Among them there are occasionally those who can handle an instrument and pull off a band stage, but they aren't common. In Japan especially, where no one much expects an idol to show an artist's face, they are even harder to find.
"We're going back to where bands began."
"Where bands began..."
"Mm. Back to the days when the band itself was the idol."
She meant going back about half a century, to the era when the Beatles were taking the world by storm.
"Why are you suddenly sticking your nose into the idol business?"
Arthur was dubious.
"What's the upside? And you're making a girl group, you said? Their draw would be lower than your average local idol's."
"Why wouldn't there be an upside?"
Watching his lukewarm reaction to the contents of the project, Rin let out a little laugh.
Subculture. A standard so subtle it bordered on the absurd, when you actually examined it — and yet the great majority of otaku had concluded that they themselves were a part of it. In other words, whatever else the word might mean, in Japan subculture was, as a rule, otaku culture. Idols, Utauloids, games, manga, anime, and the rest. All of it the ground where Rin was active.
"In Japan, girl idols are effectively subculture's home ground. Which is to say — my turf."
"Hmm..."
"Besides, if it had been boy idols, the offer never would have come to me."
"Well, yeah..."
In Japan, the boy-idol field was clamped tight in the grip of K-pop idols and Johnny's. It was survival of the fittest, savage enough that a small or mid-sized agency could scrape together every pearl it owned, shove them into that arena, and still struggle to survive.
"We pick the most beautiful girls we can find, and we give those girls a story."
Rin dreamed of an idol band shining onstage, just like a virtual idol. She imagined the fans she would make — going wild for the idols she had created, waving their glow sticks, losing themselves in the cheers, screaming their calls.
"I'm going to cast them on faces alone. Perfectly."
"And skill...?"
"We'll grow that slowly. The ideal, of course, is girls who have the face and the talent both."
"Hmm..."
The faces of the band members Tae-il had assembled kept flickering in front of Arthur's eyes.
Must be nice, having luck like that...
How had he gathered nothing but girls like those and built a school band out of them?
Rin set down her chopsticks and drank her green tea.
"And then we teach them."
"Not exactly a hopeful storyline. I can already see the future. Half of them desert, and the other half fling down their guitars because they've ruined their fingers. Anyway. So. What comes after that?"
"We'll tie it into animation and every other kind of subculture media."
The current was slowly shifting into the age of the metaverse. Rin was aiming at the same thing.
"Watching you do the VTuber thing, I got a little interested in VTubers myself. I learned a great deal from it, thanks to that."
"I am getting an extremely bad feeling about this..."
"No. This really has potential. Investors aren't gathering for nothing."
Rin's eyes lit with a gleam that was anything but ordinary as she pressed him.
"You'll help me, won't you? Honey?"
"Hhh..."
Arthur swallowed the groan. Sadly, he had not a scrap of talent for refusing her.
The miserable, chaotic meeting had come to an end. Now it was time to part.
Into night air that had turned chilly now that the sun was down, Coco-ttang called out.
"Well done, Tae-il-boy, Iris-girl!"
"I never even gave you permission to drop the honorific..."
"Hahaha! Trivial! Trivial!"
"Well..."
Set against the present circumstance — standing face to face with a hulking man in a maid outfit — a dropped honorific was, admittedly, a small thing.
"Then Coco-ttang will be off first...!"
Thumb raised, Kizuka bared a set of teeth that were perfect to no particular purpose and went sprinting off toward the last of the twilight.
Iris was impressed.
"Wow. He's not seriously going home dressed like that? He's not your ordinary madman."
"He arrived dressed like that, too."
"I'm going to lose my mind..."
At Sarina's testimony, Iris was struck dumb all over again.
Coco-ttang. Libido Girls were the same — eccentrics you could dig into forever and never reach the bottom of.
"Haa. Honestly, thank god I at least got to meet Sarina-unnie. If I hadn't, this was about to be the worst day..."
"Thank you..."
At Iris's reaction, Sarina smiled shyly, as if it were an honor.
"But, teach— noona. Lending us the studio. You're really sure that's all right?"
"Mm."
Sarina nodded. That untroubled answer left Tae-il deeply uneasy.
Big O Pumpkin had recorded this comeback album, too, in the same old rehearsal-room studio. The gear was good, granted — but from the sheer lack of space on down, the reality was that it fell well short of a genuine recording studio. Iris had lavished praise on Sarina, calling her the Empress of Autumn and whatnot. The truth was that they were, quite literally, a concept band that only glittered in the fall. He couldn't help worrying about her.
"Um, that..."
"Shh."
Sarina smiled and stopped his lips — stitched all through with anxiety — with a fingertip.
"You can pay me back later. If you succeed, help me out a little."
"Me? Help you, noona...?"
"There's going to be a change in the band."
"A change?"
"Mm. A decision we reached after the members and I thought it over very carefully."
Sarina drew a long, deep breath.
"What?"
Tae-il froze, and Iris, ecstatic, cut into the conversation.
"Oh my god! Unnie, you're finally dropping the woman-of-mystery concept!?"
"Mm. And we won't only be active in autumn anymore, either."
"Noona..."
Sarina smiled gently and stroked the head of Tae-il, whose eyes were full of worry.
"Don't worry. I've decided to be brave, too."
"Brave...?"
"Mm. If I don't want my junior catching up to me, I have to find some courage of my own."
Smiling, she moved past Tae-il and took Iris's hand. The look in her eyes was serious — nothing ordinary about it.
"Unnie...?"
"I'm going to ask you a favor."
"I— if it's something I can do for you, anything...!"
"Please keep my foolish disciple on his feet."
"Excuse me?"
"He doesn't look it, but he's the type who pushes himself too far. He seems perfectly fine, and then, without fail, he causes a disaster."
"I think I know exactly what you mean!"
At Sarina's slander, Iris nodded violently, as if in complete agreement.
"Excuse me? I can hear you, you know?"
He was ignored. Ignored, Tae-il folded his arms and went sour.
"Please don't worry, unnie!"
"Mm."
They ignored the shout from the outfield completely and exchanged a promise that belonged to the two of them alone. For a long while after that, Iris went on being entrusted with Tae-il, the walking disaster. Throughout the entire process, Tae-il himself was thoroughly left out.
"Haa. Today was a seriously full day."
In the car on the way back, Iris lay sprawled with her head comfortably pillowed in Tae-il's lap, giggling to herself.
"Yeah? That's a relief. Since you had a good time."
"You, honestly..."
At his plain, dry answer, Iris let out something like a sigh.
"Hey. You tell me right now, in advance."
"Tell you what?"
"Bands you're close with, other than BARD and Big O Pumpkin."
"Uh..."
Tae-il counted on his fingers and rattled off three or four. Under Whale. Losers Metallica. SIN. And Lazy Bear. All of them known names in the indie scene — bands that amounted to something.
"I've heard of all of them. Do you still keep in touch?"
"Not really?"
Back in the days when Tae-il had practically lived at the live houses, they'd seen each other's faces constantly, and grown close as a matter of course.
"These days we're all busy. It's been quite a while since I've seen any of them. It'd probably be awkward."
"Reeeally?"
"Distant. At least, that's how it feels to me."
"Hmm."
Distrust sat in Iris's eyes. First BARD, and now Big O Pumpkin on top of that. His track record was already far too uncanny for her to take his word for it.
"It's true. Sarina-noona is the unusual one."
"Really?"
"She's my drum teacher."
"How'd you end up learning drums from unnie, anyway?"
"Well..."
Tae-il scratched his cheek, shy, as if embarrassed.
"I saw her onstage..."
Sarina had been cool. Mask on — and never mind that it was a single snare and pads for all the rest. A vocalist playing the drums and singing a song straight through, without a single break in her breath, had been a marvel even to Tae-il.
"I went up to her as a fan. And I wanted to get close. Because I was the only one who'd recognized the real her, the one nobody else knew."
"So you went up to her with impure intentions? You really are a pervert. Rotten clear through from the start, weren't you? From when you were little?"
"Why do you have to put it like that..."
Sheepish, Tae-il propped his chin on his hand and looked out the window.
"And..."
His first meeting with Sarina. Recalling it, he smiled as if with longing.
"She seemed a little like someone. That lack of confidence..."
"Like who?"
"..."
Tae-il kept his silence. Iris could roughly guess the answer that would come, so she didn't press him.
In a peaceful quiet, with no one intruding, the two of them passed the time at ease, idly fiddling with each other's hands and hair.
"Oh, right. Shin Tae-il. I just thought of something."
"What?"
"If that hulk was right, recording alone takes us about two weeks, yeah?"
"If we pack the schedule pretty tight?"
Even that was cut extremely close. The time Kizuka had first estimated was a full month.
Iris hummed through her nose.
"Hmm."
"Why? Were you in a bad mood, or is there something bothering you?"
"It's just, we..."
Trailing off, Iris calmly sorted through Yuuma High's peculiarities and its school rules in her head. A conclusion presented itself.
"At the Cultural Festival — like it or not, we're going to have to make it all the way to the Finale stage."
"The Finale? I mean, it'd be great if we got there, but... why?"
At his puzzled reaction, Iris smiled with a sly little wickedness, like a child whose prank had landed.
"Heh. Shin Tae-il. Are you, by any chance, curious right now?"
"Of course I'm curious...?"
"Hehe. But I'm not going to tell you."
Entirely on her own initiative, she teased him — resting the back of her hand against her chin, putting on her best fatally charming air. It was payback for the maid-outfit teasing he had subjected her to today.
Except—
"Pfft— pfhaha... hk!"
She had forgotten, of all things, that the cat-ear headband was still sitting on her head, and Tae-il found the laughter very hard to hold in.
She had no idea. Arms folded, one leg crossed over the other, she laughed her aloof little heh-heh all by herself, playing at nobility. At the sight of a young lady who was, to any eye, the sort to get caught the moment she let her guard down in the middle of a bluff, even Kiriko allowed herself a secret wry smile.
"Looks like this Cultural Festival just handed me one more reason to get famous~."
As if victory were already hers. Every time she hummed her pleased little tune, the black cat ears twitched and perked, again and again.