“The livehouse I usually go to has the most top-tier sound equipment I’ve ever seen, and the level of the bands is incredibly high.”
“Even though it’s definitely a bit noisy, in that environment, no one cares who you are or what you’re doing… That feeling is actually quite addictive…”
Yui Hori was still lecturing Mio Sato and Yuzuki Yasuda on her experiences and feelings about listening to performances at the livehouse.
The girls were all listening intently, and no one noticed that Koharu Miura, sitting right next to them, was clearly uneasy.
The girl with long, shoulder-length hair kept her head down, her bangs falling to veil her eyes, letting her thoughts drift away from the present.
‘The livehouse schedule has become sparse… followed by those recent big movements… and most importantly, it’s not because of anything else, but because they need to rehearse.’
Many elements were being stitched together. Was it all just a coincidence?
Koharu Miura remembered that Saturday, when she met Kiyono Arisa in the small forest of Central Park to return her handbag.
As a thank-you, Arisa had shoved a performance ticket into her hands.
It was an entrance ticket that looked quite sophisticated, printed with ornate, stylized lettering.
Of course, Arisa had said she ‘couldn’t make it’ and ‘keeping it was useless,’ which was why she gave it to her.
That ticket was for the Sugar Starlight Anniversary Live, an entrance pass for a show taking place at a livehouse.
‘The Sugar Starlight anniversary… the time it happens in the game… although I don’t remember the exact date, it definitely occurs around this month.’
In the game, after Kanzaki Sou finds out about this anniversary, many Common Route plots still unfold before the final exams begin.
Now, there were still a few months left until the final exams. Calculating the timeline, the anniversary of the idol group Arisa belonged to was right around the corner.
Koharu bit her lip.
Could it really be such a coincidence? It was hard to accept.
“Um…”
“Yui, do you know exactly what performance it is?”
Driven by a strange impulse, Koharu spoke up.
She couldn’t suppress her curiosity.
“Hmm?”
Yui Hori looked over, seemingly surprised that Koharu would be interested.
“…Well, I’m not entirely sure about the specifics, Koharu. The venue staff’s information isn’t always accurate. Most of the time, we just treat what we hear as rumors, like browsing gossip on a forum.”
“They say things like the high school girl working part-time at the restaurant upstairs is a hidden guitar master, the owner is a band manager who retired years ago, and there’s even a childhood friend who is now a Sony music producer… All that news is just stuff they spread around~”
‘Huh? What is that, a text adventure game?’
While Koharu was mentally complaining, Yui tilted her head.
Then, as if recalling something, the short-haired girl had an epiphany.
“Ah! But there does seem to be some confirmed news!?”
“They say it’s… the anniversary celebration for some very famous underground group?”
“It seems to be to celebrate their third or fifth anniversary or something! They plan to hold a particularly grand live event… I heard they booked the prime-time evening slots for two days.”
“Also, it’s been said they invited some bands that are usually resident at the livehouse to open and perform together.”
“Do you remember the name…?”
Even though she knew she didn’t want to hear the answer, Koharu still asked.
She couldn’t help herself.
When a person gets closer to something they find unacceptable, they seem to trend toward facing it with a sense of self-abandonment.
As for whether they eventually accept it or flee from it, that seems to be a problem for later.
“Something like…?”
“Hmm…”
“Uh…?”
Yui thought back and forth, causing Koharu’s heart to sink and soar in tandem.
“Was it called Hugo something or other?”
Yui frowned, trying hard to search for the name in her mind.
“…”
“— Hugo?”
“Wow, that’s pretty stylish. Must be from France.”
Mio Sato and Yuzuki Yasuda each added a comment.
Koharu followed up in a low voice. “Sugar…?”
“Ah, right!”
“— That’s the one!”
Yui’s eyes lit up, and she snapped her fingers. “Sugar Starlight!”
“That name sounds…”
“I feel like Hugo is more fashionable, haha.”
“……”
Although Mio and Yuzuki let out a laugh, Koharu’s mouth twitched. She wasn’t in the mood to find it funny that Yui had misremembered “Sugar” as “Hugo.”
Now she could confirm it. The livehouse Yui was talking about was the same place where Arisa’s group was going to hold their anniversary celebration.
‘There really is no escape.’
The plot was practically chasing her down and forcing itself on her.
“The name is a bit tacky, but from the sound of the scale, their skills should be decent!”
Yui continued to chat, and as she spoke, she pulled out her mobile phone to search.
“Found it, found it!”
She showed her phone to Mio and Koharu, who were sitting beside her. Since Yuzuki was sitting opposite them, she simply stood up and ran behind them to crowd in and look.
“I found the chat records in the group—their center… her name is ‘ALISA,’ right?”
“It says this anniversary celebration is centered around her performance.”
“— Wait a sec!”
After speaking quickly to herself, Yui started tapping furiously on her screen.
“— Ah… why is it like this…?”
Two minutes later, accompanied by her dejected voice, Yui placed the phone on the table.
“What’s wrong?”
Currently, the person most concerned about the details of this whole affair was Koharu. Seeing that Yui had put her phone down, Koharu asked hurriedly.
“They say you can’t buy tickets for that performance anymore… what a shame.”
Yui spread her hands with a look of regret. “It seems they’re already sold out.”
“Sold out? None left for sale? Isn’t there still a long time before the performance?”
“I’m not sure. Either way, it doesn’t say they’re available. The livehouse isn’t offering ticket sales anymore.”
“I really wanted to go and see… after all, it sounds like such a grand show.”
As she spoke, Yui pouted with some dissatisfaction. “It would be great if there was some way to get a ticket.”
Koharu sat in her seat, her hands tightening on her lap.
‘…Tickets that can’t be bought.’
Was it because they didn’t issue many tickets to begin with?
Or was there some other consideration…
Arisa was able to give her one directly. Was it just because she could easily get them, or was that ticket actually very precious?
Yui said the livehouse wasn’t selling them anymore, which meant her typing just now was asking someone relevant at the venue.
Even as the host venue, the livehouse didn’t have enough to sell?
‘So that piece of ticket paper, which Arisa casually shoved at me saying “throw it away if you don’t go,” is far more valuable than the way she treated it.’
That might be the invitation to the most important stage for Arisa—or rather, ALISA—in this world.
But…
Since it was such an important performance, a long-awaited anniversary celebration, then why would she, as the core center, look like she wanted to escape? Was it purely out of shyness?
But her reaction at the time wasn’t just that.
It couldn’t have been just shyness… there were clearly other emotions involved.
Koharu thought carefully.
‘That’s it.’
…It was a sense of self-abandonment.
She wasn’t reacting that way because she was shy; she reacted that way because she felt that ‘nothing matters anymore.’
Koharu recalled Arisa’s profile as she sat there with a gloomy brow, telling her, “Throw it away if you don’t go.”
Even though the mask and sunglasses covered most of her face, Koharu could still hear Arisa’s disappointment and avoidance in her tone.
Even with only a small area above the bridge of her nose visible, Koharu could still see the furrow between those beautiful eyebrows.
And… did her panicked flight on Friday night have anything to do with her self-abandonment regarding inviting people to the performance despite being the center?
Countless questions tangled in Koharu’s mind like a mess of yarn.
The key was to figure out exactly what happened on Friday… right?
If it was related to her attitude toward the performance, the mystery would be solved naturally. But if it wasn’t related—
Koharu frowned.
If there was no connection, would she still have to investigate what was happening between Arisa and the idol group?
‘That’s right.’
The long-haired girl suddenly thought of something she had found confusing before.
…Back when she and Sou Kanzaki accidentally ran into members of Sugar Starlight performing in the store street, she already thought it was strange.
At that time, Arisa was not in the performing lineup.
She had later assumed that Arisa was unable to perform due to time constraints.
Thinking about it now, she and Sou were in a state where they “accidentally met in the teaching building long after school hours and then went shopping.”
If there was nothing else, Arisa should have finished school long ago.
But Arisa wasn’t performing.
She hadn’t thought much of it then, but considering the doubts discovered now, if…
Was Arisa not there precisely because something had happened with the other members?
“— Koharu? What’s wrong?”
“!”
Koharu snapped back to reality.
She turned her head to see Yui Hori looking at her with a worried expression.
Mio Sato and Yuzuki Yasuda were also looking over.
Perhaps because Koharu had been silent for too long, Yui leaned in. “— Your face looks a bit serious?”
“Are you interested in that performance, Koharu?”
“Ah… n-no—no, maybe a little? No… I can’t really say—”
Koharu reflexively denied it, but after thinking about it, she immediately changed her tune. But even after changing her tune, she felt it wasn’t right, so she could only be vague.
“Um, I was just thinking that the world of underground idols is actually quite complex… and they even do anniversary celebrations. It seems pretty impressive.”
“I can’t even imagine what an anniversary celebration would look like.”
“— Right, right!”
Once Koharu said a few more words, Yui clearly stopped overthinking it and began to speak enthusiastically again. “Well, we can’t buy those tickets now anyway.”
“Rather than that, let’s discuss which sweet shop we’re going to this weekend!”
“Sweet shops again, again, and again?”
Mio frowned. “All you think about is eating. Watch out or you’ll eat yourself to death with all those sweets.”
“What~? Mio, you didn’t used to be like this—!”
“It’s the truth. Think about how many times we’ve gone to eat them these past few weeks. You have no self-control. It feels like you’re addicted and just keep eating.”
“Oh, it’s fine! Everyone has a second stomach for sweets…”
The conversation between her friends continued, and the topic quickly skipped from the livehouse to the latest TV dramas and gossip.
But Koharu could no longer blend in.
Her mind was entirely occupied by that ticket lying quietly in a drawer at home.
…Sou Kanzaki had also mentioned that there were suspicious people near the school recently.
There were so many points of doubt; her head was starting to ache.
The situation Arisa was in now involved potential problems with her idol group, a tendency to avoid inviting people to her performance, and a current fear of contact with others.
If things continued to develop this way and all these characteristics combined…
Would Arisa eventually end up ‘avoiding the performance itself’?
…In the worst-case scenario, if Arisa missed this anniversary because of her fear of performing, if ALISA did not appear on that stage…
What would happen to that underground idol group? Would they break up with Arisa?
And what would happen to Arisa if she lost her status as an idol?
‘The subsequent plot would probably become the polar opposite of the original… This is a mess.’
Given the current situation, that was the one direction she could not accept.
Koharu sighed softly in her heart.
The girl suddenly realized that what she held in her hand might not just be a ticket.
It was the switch for a plot point that was about to collapse.
She probably couldn’t just act as if she knew nothing and let things take their course.
…Before class started, Yui, Mio, and Yuzuki went to the restroom together.
Koharu, who had declined to join them, sat in her seat alone, staying quiet.
The long-haired girl lifted her head and looked out the window.
On the sports field, students who hadn’t yet returned to class were walking slowly.
It looked warm and sunny, a peaceful scene.
But in Koharu’s eyes, she could only see the hazy mist in the air.
‘How should I intervene?’
In the mist, Arisa’s eyes—crying and red behind those sunglasses—seemed to emerge, along with that back fleeing through the early night.
“Phew… ha…”
“— Why is being a background character more exhausting than being the protagonist?”
Having this thought one after another, Koharu talked to herself. She took off her glasses, slumped onto the desk, and buried her face in her arms, letting out a weak groan.
“……”
After a long while, she turned her face to the side, revealing eyes that were no longer shielded.
There was no cowardice or hiding.
Koharu’s gaze was firm.
…Even though she felt exhausted, Koharu already had the answer in her heart.
That answer had been set in stone the moment Sou Kanzaki stood in front of her to block the man harassing Arisa.
Even if it was just to not let that kindness go to waste, or to protect this hard-won daily life.
Yes.
‘There are some things that even a side character…’
‘…has to face…!’