Memory 2: Teacher and Student

I quickly exhale while dodging the strike I felt coming, quickly stepping out of the way and hearing a female voice grumbling, expressing shock at the actual dodge. I manage to regain my footing and turn around, immediately stepping back in case of a second strike, my hands moving to a guard position as if I was holding a sword out of muscle memory.

"You've got to be kidding me." I mumble, finding it's Uni. "I know you don't like me as a producer that much, but attempting to ambush me outside my own room is a little insane, don't you think?"

Uni only gives me an annoyed look. "I was just taking you to make the other CPU Candidates. You know, the equivalents of me for the other CPUs."

"And this necessitated hitting me?"

"It'll be easier if—"

I can sense her intent and sidestep in time while guarding with my arms, preventing a decisive blow to the back of my head that still hurts like hell. I think my vision almost blacked out for a second, or at least it's still blurry now. And that's even after preventing a direct hit...

"—you just slept while I brought you there!"

"We have pills for that, you know! If you really wanted me to keep quiet I don't mind taking sleep medication, geez!"

These goddesses are the real deal; there's no way I could ever hope to outperform them physically. It's only due to a sharpened instinct that I'm even keeping conscious. That last hit seriously rocked me to the core, I'd hate to see her when she's serious. If she was actually attempting to take me out, there's no way I'd probably even be alive right now.

"Excuse me."

I'm saved by the voice of reason, Kei. I don't think I could've taken another strike from Uni.

"We have a practice arena if you'd like to duke it out there. The staff work very hard to keep the halls clean and more importantly, in one piece."

Despite the fact I'm sure Kei isn't much more than an ordinary human and staff member, the punctuation and pronunciation of her words seem to hit Uni with more force than a wrecking ball, a small eep of distress escaping her lips.

"If you'd like to bring him somewhere, I know that while it may be inconvenient as he cannot fly, then please call a cab."

Uni only gives a "Hmph!" as she stalks off.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I rub where Uni struck me as Kei approaches. "Thanks for the save."

"I had a feeling when I saw Uni going towards your room, considering how there's nothing else of note in this wing of the building."

"She really doesn't like me, does she?" I mumble, shaking my head. "I think I have an idea on how to get her to at least be okay with me, but her attitude is making it hard."

"Well, I believe in you. Additionally, I came here to deliver some of the data you requested. I'm not sure I wholeheartedly agree with your decision to put Loudrex Sound and Entertainment as our primary contracting group, but I can see why."

"As long as you can understand, I think that's fine for now." I say with a nod, accepting the folder from Kei. "Though, I did want to talk to Uni. Do you have any idea where I can find her later?"

"I'll leave my position quietly."

I would say this is marketing, but frankly all advertisement is based in persuasion and perhaps suggestion. All of the craft is in making my message something that the other person wants to hear. The most powerful thing one can do to influence another person is get them to believe that everything was their idea, after all. I don't have to convince someone to buy a car if I have already primed and planted the idea within that they want to buy a car.

Therefore, now that I have planned out my approach, all that's left is the execution. First, was the hook, to which Uni immediately picks her head up from the magazine she was reading. This was the easiest part, considering how there was one thing she wanted to hear.

"On one condition, of course. I understand fully well you want me to leave, after all, but I have my own motivations."

"Like what, being around my sister? I'll have you know that she said that you two don't have a special bond."

Her facial expression and body language tell me this was clearly meant to be an attack. One that she assumed would hurt me or make me second guess being with Noire. However, with the kind of hurt that I've dealt with, even if I had placed some hope in that 'special bond', it probably wouldn't have fazed me. And more importantly, it's a trump card that I know I asked Noire to say that to her.

"That's nice. I wonder what could've prompted her to say that after her rather bold declaration the other day." I say, feigning ignorance.

"Maybe it's because she doesn't actually need you. I can do everything you can do."

Perfect.

Now that she's hooked on this idea, comes the next phase. Reeling her in to what I actually want. Sometimes, stubborn people are actually the easiest to deal with. Pride forces us to act in certain ways, because we do not want to admit we are wrong. The image we want to give others is a powerful tool in manipulation, persuasion, and overall in marketing. "Buy this to look beautiful", "If you have this bag you'll be popular", and so forth.

"Is that so? Care to put that to the test?"

"I don't need to. I know it's true. I know my sister better than you ever could." She says, standing up from the table. "So you can leave quietly, like you said you would."

"Then, I'm sure you'll be fine taking me up on my condition." I say, keeping a neutral position. "You see, Noire hasn't quite signed off on the idea for what her first concert will be like as we've been busy organizing her first single. The objective of it is going to be to build up hype and excitement for her single release. I have some ideas on how to best capitalize on it, but I haven't formalized it yet. The presentation is in three days. I will yield and leave my position quietly if you can come up with a strategy that Noire picks over me."

"I don't have to take this stupid challenge, you know."

I'm well aware of that; however, you've given me everything I need to know.

"I know you don't, however it appears that Noire still believes that I am better for being a producer than you." I can see the slight bitterness on her face after that. Perfect. "It is also in both of our interests; if you are indeed a better producer than me, then you should take the role. Therefore, I will go home faster and be out of your hair faster. Additionally, it lets you spend more time with your sister."

It would be too obvious to try to provoke her into it; anyone could see that one coming. But, I know what she wants—she wants to be with her sister, to have some semblance of acknowledgement, and so forth. I'm simply giving her an opportunity to get what she wants if she works with me.

"Don't you have the advantage? You've been on this for a few days." She says, narrowing her eyes at me. Obviously, she's still suspicious.

"Don't you have the advantage, knowing your sister better than I do and what will appeal to her more? Also, this is going to be the only time I offer this."

False urgency. It's a way to get people to make rash decisions. By making this the one and only chance, she has to take it.

"After all, once we really get the ball rolling after the first concert, it's best to stick with the same producer. Since we'll be in charge of coordinating all the various teams, it'll be troublesome to shift after the first concert."

"...what happens if you win?"

"Then I will ask that you stop asking your sister to fire me. It simply won't do if the teams I plan to gather to help put on shows keep wondering if I'll be fired and replaced because they'll rightly assume you have some sway over Noire's actions. It will impact morale and staffing, thus ultimately affecting the performance at Noire's concerts."

The important thing is to frame it all around Noire. Making everything revolve around her sister means it's easy to put things I want Uni to do in a positive light, as everything I want to do is for Noire's benefit, but ultimately my own as I can go home.

"...deal."

"Very well, thank you. I will see you at the presentation room in three days, and will forward the invite to your inbox when I return to my room."

"You better start packing your bags as well."

"But of course. I'm not so conceited as to believe I've already been chosen."

But I'm confident enough to know that I can at least put on a good enough presentation. I'd like to say everything was calculated from the start, but honestly I only came up with this plan about two days ago. I decided to wait until it was three days until the presentation, which was at ten o'clock in the morning, thus really only giving Uni about two days and a half days to prepare as it's currently three in the afternoon, in order to limit her capacity to put together a good presentation.

Now of course, she can put something together and her relationship with her sister can help her appeal, but ultimately it can create openings for me. Judging by Uni's diehard allegiance to her sister, there are things she will be bound to miss that I will see. After all, I can enhance my own presentation by poking at the holes in hers.

It's remarkably cutthroat, but I suppose that it's not exactly a low I'm not willing to stoop to. If anything, I wouldn't have tried this stunt if she had just been willing to work with me.

Of course, there was also some misdirection involved. While I told Uni I haven't formalized my approach, I had already gathered the data, graphed it out, prepared my analysis and arguments, and done most of the legwork to get a rough idea of the story I wanted to tell. I simply hadn't put it into a formal presentation, but it's not like anyone asked me what 'formalized' meant.

Hopefully this fixes things or at least smoothens them out. I dislike lying, even if it is simply omissions of truth and not outright lies, and manipulation in this context, as I'm well aware that marketing is all about influencing people's thoughts. But I prefer it in that regard, rather this underhanded and sneaky way of doing things. It's bad business, after all.

Regardless, the days seem to idle on by. While I'm mostly confident, I would say eighty percent chance that I'm chosen, I don't want to get too ahead of myself. I mostly make notes for myself on who to contact and who I need to start talking with first, since I'm sure Uni is going to throw away everything that I have if she wins.

"By the way, Noire, Uni has an intent to propose a strategy as well. I figured there was no harm in it." I say in our daily status update meeting, held at nine-thirty in the morning. At this point, it's only one day until our strategy meeting. Kei is also sitting in on it just so she's kept in the loop and can comment on its feasibility. While for us, money is no object, as Noire has kept saying in her appearances she does not want it to affect her running Lastation, I wanted to operate under an acceptable budget.

"Isn't that your job?"

"I thought it would be useful and like I said, there's no harm in it. She might pick up something I miss, knowing you better. So likely, she'll present first, then I'd like to present mine."

"She knows the meeting is happening?" Noire asks, stirring her coffee.

"She does seem to care about your wellbeing and wants to support you. It seems natural that Uni would know."

"Doesn't she not like you, still?" She asks further, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, but I'm hoping to use tomorrow's meeting as a way to convince her that I can help you. If you'll forgive me for that, I would sleep a little better. I prefer to be more honest and upfront about these sort of things, after all."

"Is there something you're feeling guilty about, then?"

I look Noire in the eyes. "It's not so much guilt as it is hesitation. However, I believe I cannot tell you what the circumstances are as it will affect your judgement tomorrow."

"Something is happening between you and Uni and it involves this presentation."

"That is the case. However, this event requires you to be impartial between our presentations. Thus, I cannot explain it to you until afterwards."

"Yes, you can." She says, leaning in towards me. "The fact I know about is already going to mess with me. Spill."

"Are you absolutely sure that you can still make tomorrow's judgement call in complete impartiality?"

"I think I'm very capable of making objective decisions. Now, spill."

"Uni and I are competing for the position of your producer. I offered her my wholly willing resignation should you choose her for the strategy we are taking tomorrow." I say, never faltering.

Noire scowls, pushing her chair away from me. "Seriously?"

"If she is a better pick than me, it benefits us all. You'll gain your shares faster and I can be out of your hair sooner."

"This is so stupid." She grumbles, using one hand to massage the temples of her forehead. "I know Uni cares for me and wants my attention, but this is ridiculous."

"Noire, if I may be so rude, how often do you spend time with your sister?"

"We eat dinner together every day, unless something comes up."

"Regardless of whether or not I'm chosen for the position tomorrow, please make an attempt to spend at least an hour with your sister two, if not three times a week, and once a month make plans to spend the whole day together." I say, getting an annoyed look from Noire. "I can't say for certain this will work, but I think you need to make some effort on your part to assuage her worries you aren't paying attention to her."

"Who are you to tell me how to act with my sister?" She asks, her pointed look starting to bore into my skull.

"No one, so forgive me for pushing my beliefs onto you. However, I believe that sisters and friends should be together as much as they can. That, and I think you'll find Uni becoming less clingy and insecure about you if she's convinced you won't just break off one day. Regular meetings, not just dinner, where you can take an afternoon break and just play video games for an hour or even walk around, I think, would help her feel more secure with her relationship with you. It'll help assuage her worries for when you start getting more attention as an idol, also lessening the chances she'll pull anything."

"You don't even know Uni that well."

"I don't, but it also can't hurt to try. However, if you think that my words have no weight to them, feel free to disregard them as someone just musing about family."

"You really don't mince words, do you?"

"I prefer to be as honest as possible. There is nothing more disgraceful than being a businessman who lies to his customers. That, and it will get you sued."

"Really have your priorities straight here, Takeo."

I chuckle, shaking my head. "Regardless, please make sure you make an impartial decision tomorrow. I know you summoned me here to become a producer, however if you believe your sister's strategy trumps mine, you must choose hers."

I get a nod of the head from Noire back. "I understand. However, next time, don't pull this kind of sneaky thing and spring it on me. I'd be more approving of it if you went through me first."

"Well, they do say it is better to ask forgiveness than permission, however I will do my best next time. Sorry, I let my own personal feelings get in the way of us acting as a team. I hope you'll look over it."

"I'll look over it if you give a good presentation tomorrow. Anyways, that should be all for this meeting, yes?"

"Yes, that is the last, if not impromptu, item off our agenda. Pending your approval tomorrow, I will get in contact with the as-previously discussed companies and start working out our deals. Additionally, I've already prepared for your full day study session for the day after tomorrow which should cover singing, dancing, and all of the idol basics, so please be sure to be diligent and pay attention."

"Heh, who do you think I am?" Noire says with a confident smile.

"I believe you are the idol I am producing, so while I trust in your abilities, I feel as if I ought to remind you." I say, Noire rolling her eyes. "If there is nothing else, then that is all."

"Well, good luck tomorrow, then."

"Thank you. I'll do my best."

Uni's strategy is fairly bold, going for growth as fast as possible while utilizing Noire's fame to quickly make a name for herself. It involves using a larger auditorium and stage where we can quickly host a hundred thousand people and using the headlines from that to generate more sales and larger venues.

She had a few graphics that weren't distracting, but overall lacked a lot of hard data behind it. There was some, the easily gatherable stuff, such as hashtag popularity history and search term historical trends, but because I had extra time, I could dig up some more.

Not to mention she clearly used personal appeal to Noire. Her language wasn't what one would see in a typical meeting; it was evident she was selling directly to Noire in an attempt to get chosen. Especially when she made the mention this was the shortest time consuming one, meaning that it wouldn't eat up a lot of time in regards to how long Noire would be taken away from her duties of running a nation, something clearly very important to her. Plus, the bigger and faster breakaway would allow them to gather not just the lost shares from MOB48, but also a chance to gain a bigger piece of the pie from the other CPUs. I hadn't quite factored that into my equation, but I don't know enough about the topic to really talk on it, so I wouldn't adjust accordingly.

Regardless, it was a decent, if not ambitious strategy. Uni seems to be incredibly confident in it as she sits back down.

I calmly plug my computer in and load up my presentation. Unlike Uni, my approach was going to be more holistic and organic. While a bigger timesink in the long run, my goal was not to get there as fast as possible, but rather to ensure we arrived there.

"Well, it feels slightly fitting then, in that I am taking an opposite approach to Uni's strategy." I say, hitting "Presentation Mode" and stepping up to the front of the room, facing Kei, Uni, and Noire.

"Simply put, I'd like to start small. Five hundred people for the first concert."

I push the button to advance the slide where my overview breakdown begins.

"What the goal of this is, is to create a sense of urgency and of exclusivity. I plan to invite a few key influencers, but they won't make a bulk of our audience. We'll instead allow for a raffle, but also importantly, we can have a few tickets won at events. For example, Noirestation. While Noire appears weekly on the show, we can schedule events that build hype to this first concert.

"We'll market it as Noire's first concert, an exclusive sort of deal, something that won't be broadcasted just yet to generate a sense of mystery and buzz. This way, when the second concert happens, we'll be able to drive sales higher, by constantly feeding on this need to get them before they're sold out.

"Now, you ask, Noire herself can move tickets. So why start small? Well, we know while there is a general interest in Noire and while the internet says that they'd like to see her as an idol, we have no way to actually predict what that 'interest' translates to in terms of ticket sales."

As if to highlight that fact, I display data on the screen regarding those hashtags along with polls regarding what interest in attending a concert from Noire, but show a big question mark over ticket sales data.

"One person with an opinion is worth ninety nine people who only have interest. What we should be targeting, to fill the stands, is people who have the opinion that they want to see Noire perform. If we can fill seats now, we can start marketing everything as sold out. Continuously sold out, over and over again.

"Because the one thing that will sink Noire's idol career is if we overstretch at the start and have a stadium with room for a hundred thousand and fill only fifty thousand. No one will care that fifty thousand people were there. People will care that half the stadium was empty, which will be spun as 'she wasn't really that special', if not worse. That, and if we have a hundred thousand seats for the first concert, it will drive a lot less urgency. Limiting the number of tickets creates an artificial scarcity, which we'll use to our advantage as to slowly build up Noire's reputation as an idol. If anyone wants to ask, our official statement will be that Noire is keeping in mind the budget and not wanting to use the funds that Lastation needs for the services it provides as that aligns with her current statements that she is prioritizing keeping Lastation running, which I'll touch on here."

I shift the graphics along to data gathered about several of our rivals' concerts, which was pulled by looking at their concert history and then analyzing the venues for the capacity. I marked which ones were sold out along with mapping out their general rise to stardom, which is clearly what we were going for but at an accelerated pace.

"Regardless of whether or not anyone questions it, I plan to only have small scale concerts while Noire builds out her full album. While a single can get us on the charts, we need a hell of a lot more than just a single to really make an impact. Besides, if we keep just playing the same songs at concerts, people will get bored of it. That's also why it's best to keep small, we can extend the life of this one single Noire will release until she's able to write up more songs.

"It will also make our spending a lot smaller overall. We'll be able to look at our profit margin and see what we're able to afford by mimicking organic growth, along with mitigating the risk of overshooting. And even if we overshoot, it means that less is coming out of Lastation's budget overall. The late term goal should be to become a self-sufficient group. It'll take a while for us to get there, but if we can keep that in mind it should prevent us from going overboard too soon.

"Also, as a final note, while I don't doubt Noire's ability to become an idol, a small scale concert will help us gauge interest. If we struggle to actually fill in all of those seats, we definitely have our work cut out for us. We can also use the recorded footage from the concert to analyze demographics and see our popularity across ages, thus allowing us to figure out where Noire appeals to and where we need to do more work to reach."

With that, comes the end of my presentation.

"If there are any questions, I'll take them now. Additionally, I've printed out the budget reports for the venue I was looking at along with what I plan to offer the staff I plan to recruit." I say, gesturing to the packet of papers next to my laptop. "I'm also about to wrap up on the kind of branding I'd like to have for Noire's idol career, going forward, but that will have to be for another time depending on what strategy we choose."

"I see." Kei says, standing up. "Thank you, Takeo, Uni. Noire and I will talk about which strategy we'll take. Hopefully we should have something by the end of the day."

Though while both of us nod, I can already tell that Uni's nervous. I didn't underestimate what she could pull, as I knew she'd pull out all of the stops in appealing to Noire. After all, the goal was simply to defeat me. But what Uni failed to realize is that she also had to appeal to Kei, who held considerable sway over Noire's decisions.

While time is money, what Uni forgot is that money is still money, and that an explosive sudden growth would require a massive upfront cost. It's a giant risk, after all. I didn't sell exactly to either of them, which was a mistake that I did make. I should have considered that a little more, but I banked hard, perhaps too hard, on Uni being too spiteful to make a clearheaded decision, leaving her full of openings. If she had decided to take my approach I'm sure that she would have knocked it out of the park.

However, I suppose that in a way, my strategy wasn't "I'm the better one", but moreso "Uni's is worse". Not exactly my favorite style of winning, but I suppose it's just what I had to do. But then again, budget is king for people running anything, so appealing to that budget definitely helped out in appealing to both Noire and Kei.

I suppose now all that's left to do, after asking Kei for a copy of Uni's slides, is to prepare for what one might call 'checkmate'.

My strategy, of course, was going to be amusingly as bold as Uni's. I'm fairly certain Kei understood what I was going to do, as she seemed hesitant based on the tone taken in her email to give me Uni's slides.

They'd really just be icing on the cake, anyways. I had taken fairly detailed notes on Uni's presentation and would be able to do what I planned to do even without the slides. It's just that having her own material to annotate would be useful.

Honestly, the harder part was trying to figure out how to get this to her without anyone else finding out. It took some discussion with the Basilicom staff to find Uni's mailbox, which is where they'd put her mail. While what I had left in there would obviously be coming from me, I would prefer if no one spilled, so my strategy there had been to ask where I could leave Uni a letter or a note if I had to ever contact her, then I returned about two hours later to actually put the material in the box.

From there, I went to my room and simply waited. All of the pieces were set, at least, according to how I envisioned the scenario playing out.

About an hour and a half later, I hear the definitely angry footsteps echoing outside my door.

"Just what is this?!"

I calmly stop typing as my door is thrown open by Uni, who in her right hand is clutching an annotated copy of her slides. Though, my heart sinks just a little bit, as she looks on the verge of tears.

"Was having my sister pick your plan over mine not enough for you?!"

It's almost a voluntary effort not to clutch my chest as the feeling of guilt echoes through me. While I had technically planned for part of this, the raw pain in her shout cuts deep. A hurt from losing, perhaps not just in terms of a competition of wits, but instead a competition of who knew her sister better. That despite all of their years of knowing one another, she still couldn't reach her sister. That kind of pain was... something I myself wished to never inflict on anyone...

"Did you really have to go and just kick me while I was down?! Don't get so full of yourself, I'll show you not to underestimate me, got it?! Then you'll really regret having been chosen!"

I take a deep breath, forcing myself not to interrupt her. First and foremost, right now she just needs to get all the frustration out of her chest.

As I stated, I had anticipated that she'd be mad, doubly so because I left a copy of her slides that indicated what she missed and common misconceptions she fell for. I just didn't… expect she'd be so passionate about it.

Come on, Takeo. You can still recover from this. It's not how you start, it's how you finish. You started this mess by goading Uni into this competition. See it through to the end. How could you face Noire if you left things the way they are, anyways?

"Uni." I say as she finishes, trying to keep an expression of calm. "...may I speak?"

"You better explain yourself!"

I nod, closing my laptop and turning to face her. "Then, allow me to begin. First, I wish to sincerely applaud you on your presentation today. No, that is not me being facetious. It's just that as noted, you fell into some common misconceptions regarding your data and some of the points you made."

"Y—"

"Miss Uni, I allowed you to finish speaking before I did. May I be granted the same privilege?"

As I get back into the flow, regaining control of the situation and of my own heart, I feel that I can emerge with my original objective in mind. Now that it's back in my hands, I can resume pursuing the original goal.

Regardless, part of why I kept silent was yes, that she would not have listened beforehand. But, it also allowed me to play politeness judo. By leveraging the fact that I was indeed the victor in our match, it granted me a sort of respect that she had to at least acknowledge, and by having listened to her entire impassioned speech, I could politely ask that she do the same, forcing her into a bad position. If she did, then I get what I want. If she did not, then it would hang over her head that I could potentially bring it up to Noire at any time, which might have Noire ask her to stay away in general while this idol business gets sorted out.

And for Uni, that's an absolute loss. Not that I'd be willing to go through with it, after seeing… this.

"Now, for why I did such a thing. I do not know the rules for which my summoning occured. I could be brought back at any time, that is an assumption we should make. I mean, we can assume that there are conditions; but we don't know what they are, so we can assume they can be met at any time, especially inconvenient ones.

"If that happens, all of my knowledge and insight goes away. I told all you when we met: I study marketing and a bit of finance. While you have a decent grip on it, you haven't studied it like I have as a trade and profession. Therefore, I would like to pass on my knowledge, expertise, and experience to you. So, in the event that I am whisked away in an untimely fashion, you will be there to take over for me with minimal impact to the current operations. I know you dislike me, but I would like to say this.

"If Noire were to want to learn how to fly a plane and there was an ace pilot ready to instruct her, I believe it would be in all of your interests to have Noire learn from the ace pilot rather than anyone else. Right now, there's no one better to teach you, and it's free. Additionally, as I'll be working firsthand with Noire, I will be able to teach you the inner workings of our operations which no textbook or other teacher can do. This will also help you take over my duties should I suddenly be unable to perform them.

"That is all I have to say to explain myself unless you have further questions, Uni."

"You… why didn't you just say that?!" She shouts, getting in my face. Her eyes are already slightly puffy and red. No doubt she was upset at losing, but while I had accounted for her being mad enough to confront me, I didn't think about how much pain it would cause. Or perhaps I just underestimated it, foolishly using myself as a basis.

"Would you have listened to me otherwise?"

"That's…!" She says, pulling away from me.

A very good point, I mentally finish.

"I won't apologize for my methods as that would be an empty apology. However, I will apologize for how upset you were. I miscalculated how much of a blow that would deal." I say, pulling a tissue from the tissue box and holding it up to her eye. "Hold still."

"Wha…!"

However, she does so, so I'm able to wipe the tears that were forming.

"I will also apologize for those." I say, tossing the tissue away. "If there is ever anything I can do to make it up to you, let me know. Aside from abandoning my post. You needn't give me your request now, but later on I will do my best to fulfill it when asked."

She's quiet at this, only staring at me with an expression of disbelief, her mouth slightly ajar.

"Ah, also in terms of reading, I would recommend this book for starters. Forgive me for seeming presumptuous, but I also ordered it in the event I lost." I say, picking up the paperback textbook, Foundations in Marketing Strategy Edition Twelve, with its simple light green cover complete with a picture of a stock graph.

"But… why?"

"Well, I think my pride would tell me that I have to go back to the basics. If I was defeated in my field of expertise, perhaps I had forgotten the fundamentals and thus needed to relearn them. I always kept the possibility of losing in my mind, after all."

"Really." Uni says, though there's an obvious sarcasm to it, her usual sting in her voice returning.

"Losing is a natural part of things." I say, closing my eyes and pushing away a bad memory. "You can't win every time, no one does. Not even the biggest successes in baseball or any other sport are always at their best. For every home run, there are strikeouts. I was confident that I wouldn't lose, but I was always prepared for the possibility."

"You say that, but from how you talk it's like you've never lost."

"I have, don't worry about it." I say, slumping slightly in my chair. "I've definitely lost before, don't doubt me on that. I wish I hadn't, because it was for something very important to me, but it's typically those times that we end up losing."

There's a kind of harsh and awkward silence that sets in after that, with Uni eventually breaking it.

"You're… kind of weird, you know that?"

I bite my lip, not really out of being called weird, but due to the memory surfacing of why I became this way, exacerbated by bringing up my 'loss' in the first place. However, I shake it off, shrugging.

"I suppose I am. Anyways, as per our agreement, please do not continue to pester Noire to have me fired. Now that we are moving ahead and I will be gathering our staff, moving together as a team will be very important."

"Right…"

The door opens again, with Noire at the door. "Takeo, I wanted to ask if you wanted to—"

"Oh, Noire, wonderful timing." I say, seeing an opportunity. "Uni, you were going to ask your sister if she was available for dinner tonight, weren't you?"

"I, bwha, wha—"

"We're going to be fairly busy, after all." I say, relaxing in my seat. "While I don't intend to run you ragged, Noire, being an idol and also running a nation is a lot of time out of your day. You won't have as much time to spend with each other, so it's important that you use every opportunity you can. I'm sure that whatever you were going to ask can wait, right, Noire?"

"Well, I suppose it can. Where did you want to go, Uni?"

"Oh, ah… er, well, there's that noodle shop we liked from a few weeks ago…" Uni says, clearly not having been prepared to be answering this question.

"Ah, okay. I've been meaning to go back there as well. I'll meet you in ten minutes in the lobby, okay? And Takeo, never mind, but make sure you eat, got it?"

"Yes, yes, don't worry. I'll eat after I finish this draft."

"I mean it. I'm going to have Kei check you're eating three meals a day at this rate. Anyways, see you in a bit, Uni."

With that, the door is closed, leaving only me and Uni in the room.

"Well, you should probably go and get ready to meet with your sister." I say, turning back to my laptop and opening it up. "You wouldn't want to be late. She strikes me as the kind of woman who likes punctuality."

"Right…" Uni mumbles, looking away as she clearly doesn't know what kind of expression to make regarding this situation. "And… thanks."

"It's fine. It's not like I was lying when I said that she'll be busy. Sisters, and well, family and friends, should spend as much time together as they can. Have fun."

Uni pauses before leaving the room without another word. I didn't plan for Noire to show up when she did, but part of life is learning how to adapt to new situations on the fly.

Well, overall, I suppose all's well that ends well. Though, I did reveal a bit too much to Uni, but it shouldn't come back to bite me. It can be swept up as just another weird quirk of mine.

Now then, just to finish this draft before I go looking for dinner. I was hoping to go to a ramen shop, but I suppose in order to avoid barging in on them, I'll just have to find a street stall...

So, that was a fun one. I modified the event that happens when originally you get KO'd to meet the candidates, mostly just to develop Takeo's character/hobbies a bit more. In that scene, it's hinted that Takeo practices kendo by guarding with a sword, which I felt was kind of a good pair with his very disciplined sort of character, but more on that in a later chapter. Also I wanted to illustrate the gap between them as Takeo notes that if Uni was actually trying to kill him he'd stand no chance; it's only that she's trying to knock him out (and, unbeknownst to him, that she's more of a gun user rather than up close and personal) and his physical discipline he wasn't immediately taken down. Led into an amusing segment where Kei is able to lay down the law, too.

I think this chapter felt a bit on the fast side, but it was mostly because while in my head Uni and Takeo would not get along/be friendly for a while, I didn't want the whole "Uni greatly dislikes him" to drag on. This was mostly just Takeo starting to break through to her, or at least leave her in a confused enough state where it's not almost-blind dislike.

This chapter also highlighted a bit more on Takeo's character, with his honest approach to things but also willingness to maneuver and manipulate. However, instead of spinning lies and having people act on misinformation, his style of doing things relies more on analyzing the end results of actions he takes. Rather than lie to Uni, he takes a more a direct approach and eggs her into a competition; and then after that, takes the action of showing her mistakes to her in order to get her to confront him. It almost blew up in his face, but ultimately he was able to recover. I don't know, as I was writing along it felt like an interesting dynamic; he's not ruthless, but is still willing to hurt some feelings to achieve the end goal, albeit with some limits. In the narration he knows it was going to hurt Uni, he just didn't expect it would hurt her that much.

Hopefully I kept everyone roughly in character; Uni was probably the trickiest for me to nail down. From what I remember playing the games she does seem like the most confrontational and there was a moment I debated having that scene play out differently where Takeo has to chase Uni down and finish the conversation, but that didn't seem very Uni-ish. I thought, based on how she acts, she'd stand her ground which is why she kept arguing with Takeo.

Anyways, let me know how I did; if I was way off base, then I am prepared to completely scrap this chapter and rewrite it. See you all next time! Also, stay safe, wherever you are, seems like Corona-chan's creeping everywhere.