Summary:

We (and Honoka) check in on Eli and her happy school life. As a bonus, we get to meet Anju and Eli's advisors.

Chapter 2: Rivals

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

"Not again," thought Alice Margarette, gritting her teeth. "Not that again."

But so it was. Her favorite advisee, though not on days like today, was complaining about fellow freshman Yuuki Anju. Again. She supposed she could see why the two prettiest, most driven, most talented girls at Touhou Gakuen would butt heads, but ...

"But they'd be so cute together." It really was a pity. Her girlfriend, Kosame Marisa, agreed with her. They'd paired the two for a performance already. It had seemingly backfired. The two freshman, who hadn't hit it off on meeting each other, seemed even more antagonistic now. And what had Anju done this time?

Apparently, she'd put up an authentic-looking, but fake, poster saying the first-quarter dance exhibition for noon was cancelled. Ostensibly, that was to drive attendance away to Anju's own weekly noon concert, but in reality, it was probably mostly aimed at Eli. Alice moved to defuse the situation. She held up her hand to Eli. She dialed Marisa's number, and immediately laid down the law. Fortunately, Anju had taken a dance appreciation class this term, to fulfill a requirement for her program. She had probably expected an easy class and grade, since her new self-initiated project was going to take her away from college and back to her high school a lot, and she needed to maintain her grades to be allowed to continue in it. So, Alice started with that.

"Hey Marisa, good news. Your little protege gets extra practice time this afternoon. She might as well not bother showing up, because either way she gets a failing grade for the day. Oh? I see. Then tell me, can someone be good at dance appreciation if they deliberately sabotage a dance presentation that everyone's been working very hard on, just so a few more people will see their weekly mini-concert? Yeah, me neither. If I did nothing, I think the kids in my class that are there because they want to be would give Anju some good, hard lessons in how to bully other students, after class .. If that's how you think it should go ... Gotcha. Okay, and another thing. Tell her we won't want her as part of the music for the mid term dance and music production. I know she thinks we can't do without her, but there are plenty of other composers who've been aching for a chance to show what they can do, and I am sure they are grateful to Anju for giving them the opportunity. That's really all I have right now. I gotta deal with my girl, you please deal with yours? Right, have fun."

Eli looked a little less infuriated, but Alice realized she was still fuming over the irrationality and unfairness of it all. She'd had to frantically phone dance students with the news that the exhibition was still on, and have them tell their friends and family. They'd been 15 minutes late getting started, not everyone hit their marks, and there were some empty seats. But all that had taken Eli out of herself and given her a new determination. She'd managed somehow to calm down and dance particularly beautifully, and the teachers and students and others who watched had all been impressed. Alice had had to be away at noon — she still had too many irons in the fire, but she'd gotten another teacher to video it, and she planned to watch it that evening. She'd just gotten back to see Eli standing in front of her office with a piece of torn, crumpled paper in her hand and angry tears in her eyes.

Eli never really felt like she got justice or even understanding in these situations. Alice had decided at the outset to tell her the truth: yes, Anju was usually at fault, and yes, her behavior was terrible. But it was also true that Anju was even more popular than Eli, and there was a reason: people felt that Eli was a strict, fun-hating hall monitor type, and that Anju was fun, loose and frivolous. So what Alice wanted Eli to do was look beyond the immediate situation and learn to loosen up. "Performing is more than precision and technique, Eli. That's what the people who decided you shouldn't dance in the upper ranks, and shouldn't bother relocating, were saying. The difference is, they didn't care about you, Eli, and I do."

Eli hated being reminded of that time.

She'd outdone literally everyone else at the audition. She'd done technical moves few girls her age could achieve. When the names of the principals and second principals were read, she felt a little crestfallen. Maybe she had been a little stiff in her pair dancing. Sometimes it was hard to relate to the other dancers. On principle, she'd avoided socializing. She despised girls who tried to get by on charm. She would be very unhappy telling her grandmother she'd only made soloist. They'd have to seriously discuss when and even if she'd relocate to study more, given the stipend for a soloist wasn't ... In the back of her mind was the thought that she hadn't heard her name. With a heart sunken into the floor, she realized the soloists had been named, and now the coryphées were being named. Just as she had that thought, she finally heard her name. There was no way she could join the company's training program with its training hierarchy as a coryphée — she, the best dancer there, had failed, somehow.

She looked around, not really ashamed of the tears filling her eyes. She glared right into the eyes of the main judge. He beckoned her over, and she stalked over to where he was. She had nothing to lose now by showing her anger and confusion. "You are a strong dancer, technically, Eli Ayase, but we can't use you. You don't dance well with others. Sometimes you are all smiles, other times you look like you'—re at the dentist. When someone tries to adjust you, you flinch like you're being molested. Your grandmother has given you a good start, and you've trained yourself well — but we think you won't allow us to break down that training and train you the way we want to, unlike the ones we chose. We don't like high-strung types that are primadonnas before they're prima donnas. A girl like you should go into some other form of dance, I think. Joining a settled classical ballet program even as a trainee? It's not for you. I am sorry."

Eli thought he was the stupidest bastard she'd ever encountered. He wanted cookies from a cutter, not stars. She twirled around and stalked away, before she could start cursing him, his family, and his stupid ballet company. It was, unfortunately the only one in that region of Russia that gathered trainees — the companies had divided up the territory unless there was a breakout star they all heard of, when they would compete to offer that individual a berth. Whether she liked it or not, her potential ballet career was in tatters, and she wasn't even out of middle school! Her mother had raised the idea of moving the family to her hometown in Japan. They hadn't discussed it much due to Eli's ballet training, but now she would say, "Please, let's go."

Yuuki Anju had had a sinking feeling when she saw Ayase Eli arrive at school her first day. She obviously wasn't going to be the prettiest girl at TouGaku any more. But she had resolved to get along with her. After all, if two beautiful girls spent a lot of time together, they ended up with more than twice the attention they'd get solo. But she'd quickly realized - Ayase didn't respect her at all. She had no use for pop music, and thought the costumes were silly and demeaning. So she, a ballet FAILURE, looked down on Anju, an idol SUCCESS. And that was not something Anju was going to ignore. Having come in peace, she decided it was more fun and satisfying to go to war.

That said, her adviser, Kosame Marisa, wasn't happy with her. She told her, first, that she was endangering her grades, and endangering her project, in consequence. And she wasn't doing herself any favors making the dance students hate her. "You need to leave her alone, Anju. We thought you two would perform well together — you complement each other a lot. We were wrong about that, but you're just being self-destructive now. I am putting a restraining order on you. If you don't leave her alone, you'll have a disciplinary hearing. Is it worth it all, just to make an honest, hardworking, very naive girl cry? There are better ways to do that that don't burn your education down around you, you know. And they're way more fun."

"Some people, if they refuse to respect you, you have to make them fear you. She's a snob. And did you make professor Alice Margarette cry?"

"From here, it looks like you made the dance students, who used to like you, hate you. And I don't see even Ayase fearing you, so much as wanting to strangle you. She's physically much stronger than you, if you want to go down that road. I thought your way was to use your wits. And as for your question — yeah, plenty of times." Marisa smirked in reminiscence.

"Girls .. can't be in love with girls, can they?" Alice asked, looking up with reddened eyes and a tear-streaked face.

"Who knows?" Marisa answered. She looked concerned, but when Alice hid her face in her hands again, she smirked. Landing this fish had been an epic battle that even the writer Hemingway would have respected!

When Alice Margarette had arrived in Japan from her small town in eastern Belgium she came as a prodigy and a genius. Her Japanese was quite good. Learning was what Alice did best. She had won prizes in sculpture, painting, music, poetry, dance and theater, and entered a secondary school for the arts in Brussels two years earlier than usual. A pair of teachers on holiday had discovered a shelf of deeply artistic dolls for sale at an inn they stopped at in the German-speaking part of Belgium. They were told that the innkeeper's daughter made them. Later, they encountered her, as the evening's entertainment was her playing stirring folk melodies on her violin. Asking her mother about the girl, she discovered she was the pride of their small town, involved in local dances and theater, entering poetry and sculpture and painting contests, and even helping her father with architectural designs around the inn. One of the designs she helped make won a prize after a photograph was sent in to a magazine contest in Brussels.

Impressed, the teachers arranged for her to board in Brussels and secured a full scholarship. At the school, she was a standout compared to girls two to six years older than her. Because she was good at all of the seven classical arts (they had to pry her architectural feats at home out of her), she was nicknamed "The seven-colored magician." and the epithet followed her to Japan when she enrolled at Touhou Gakuen. One of her acquaintances from school (she'd been far too busy to make any friends) had been accepted earlier at TouGaku. She told the other students about Alice, and the blonde foreign girl became a minor celebrity.

This didn't sit well with the school's already-resident prodigy, a Bohemian type who always dressed in black and white garb, reminiscent of gal fashion. She even wore loose socks because she'd heard high school gals were wearing them now. She decided the humorless, tightly wound girl - she couldn't be more than sixteen - was a rival to be reckoned with. She'd heard she was beautiful, to add insult to injury, but she wasn't ready for the sight of Alice's face turned towards her just as a ray of light came through the window after a cloud had moved aside. Wow. Marisa tried to tell herself it was just envy.

Nothing made Eli madder than being told to "loosen up" when there was injustice and illogic all around. But her adviser was right: she did care about Eli. So Eli had to try to listen. "Loosen up!" she said to herself. "What does that even mean!? Get drunk? That's what it means back in Russia. I don't have time to be an alcoholic like Uncle Vadya." Nonetheless. "Loose, loose, so loose. I am loosened up. I don't care anymore. See how much I don't care? Eat kittens, break all the windows in the conservatory, no problem!" Actually, she did feel a bit calmer, more relaxed. Maybe it was working. And - a pleasant surprise - her former schoolmate Kousaka Honoka had come to visit! Of course, since it was during the school week, she might have a question about something in the student council. If so, this would be the first time Honoka had done that, so Eli was inclined to help.

"Hi, Honoka!," she said, waving. Honoka dashed over and hugged her. It had taken her most of their year together in the student council to get used to that about Honoka, but by now it was more pleasant than uncomfortable.

"Eli!" Honoka exclaimed. "Guess what! I figured out how to save our school!"

Eli was puzzled. "You did?" She had beaten her head against that wall alongside Honoka, during the last month of the school year. Principal Minami had been very clear that the situation was unlikely to be reversed.

"Yeah, and Eli can help!" That was even more puzzling.

"I can? From here?" Eli asked.

"Yep! And I know it'll be popular because .. where is Non-tan ... anyway, I will go find her, but THAT"S the answer," Honoka said, pointing at a poster for Anju's A-RISE project. Eli immediately broke out in a cold sweat. Not paying attention, Honoka ran over to what looked like a middle-school girl with purple hair, looking at the trophies behind the glass near the dance studio. She led her back to Eli. "This is Nozomi! She's really smart and mature for her age. She likes the idea a lot. She says she has two kouhais that will really like it, too."

"Greetings, I am Toujou Nozomi," the girl said. She was certainly mature in one way: Honoka hadn't noticed, but her chest was bigger than Honoka's already - about as big as Eli herself. "And yes, Nico and Hanayo would be over the moon over this. Thank you for helping Miss Kousaka do this, Miss Ayase."

"Just what am I supposed to ..." Eli realized her worst fears had been realized. Now she had to disappoint two innocents. It was a pity Honoka's critical thinking didn't match her enthusiasm. "Oh!" she said. Honoka was still smiling happily.

"Listen, Toujou-san. Umm. Honoka .. this won't work."

Honoka looked stricken and Nozomi looked both of them over with a confused, somewhat wary expression on her face.

"Honoka, you need to worry about your future, not Otonokizaka's. You've done so much already, I was very proud of you, but don't let your heart get broken over it. And this — what, school idols? No, I think you can't do that at all. It's utterly frivolous. I .. I won't allow it."

Honoka was too stunned to react, but Nozomi started to walk away. She paused, turned back a little, and said over her shoulder, to Eli, "This isn't over."

Notes:

Questions:

1. Where did Alice Margarette and Marisa Kosume come from?
2. Why are Eli and Anju already in college?
3. Why is Nozomi in middle-school? Why do they call her 'Non-tan?'
4. Why are Nico and Hanayo even younger than Nozomi?
5. Why are they already close friends?
6. Where are Rin and Maki?
7. Why did Eli say 'No School Idols?'
8. Why is she Honoka's mentor in the Student Council?

Answers to last week's questions:

1.それは彼らの声優の年齢によるものです。
2.ほとんどの人はまだ高校にいません。
3.東放学園と麴町
4.＃1と同じ理由