CHAPTER 14

Sora Mo Kokoro Mo Hareru Kara

Uranohoshi High School,
Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture,
March 10

It was a week until Love Live Finals, and the girls of Uranohoshi High School were in high spirit, knowing that a few of them would go to Tokyo to bring the banner of Uranohoshi to national level. Talks about Love Live dominated every conversation after school. The thought that a small all-girl school from a rural fishing town actually had a chance to win a national competition made everybody lose their mind. Considering the smorgasbord of road blocks Aqours had to go over, this accomplishment felt a thousand times sweeter.

But Aqours was far from ready. Kanan developed a simple choreography so Aqours could pull it off seamlessly, but everybody seemed to not able to follow it. The middle progression was a modified polonaise where Aqours just had to divide themselves into 2 groups, cross the stage, and high-five each other. But no matter how many times they practice this maneuver, somebody had to screw up.

"It's not that hard, guys, it's just a simple walk," Kanan expressed her frustration. "All you need is focus on what you're doing."

"It's easy if it's just walking, but it is not, is it?" You snapped. "You have to sync with the music…"

"Don't blame the music!" Riko took You's comment as an offense against her composition.

"Alright, alright, not a big deal," Chika tried to defuse the rising temper among Aqours members. "Let's run it again, from Zutto koko ni…"

The girls took position, played the music, and rehearsed the choreography, but this time Hanamaru stepped too close to Dia. She overcompensated and crashed into Mari instead.

"Ittai nani o yatte imasu ka, Hanamaru?" Mari grumbled.

"Gomezura! Gomezura!" Hanamaru shrank. "I do better next time."

"Focus! It's not like your future has been entirely decided for you…"

"Hey, don't bring your personal problem to group affair!" Dia confronted Mari for her snide. "You have not been sharp either!"

"Oh, so it's my fault now?" Mari bit back.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Chika came to the center and pushed everybody back. "What are you talking about? Is there a problem that you are hiding from everybody?"

"It's not just for Mari. Everybody brings personal problem to practice, that's why we screw up every chance we have!" Dia said. "We are killing our own chance to win!"

Chika massaged her temple. Aqours was not new with misfortune, but this was an unfamiliar territory for them. They were working against the clock, and everybody should have put their body and mind toward Love Live Finals. Instead everything went the wrong direction. Dia was right, if Aqours failed to place in Love Live Finals, it was because of themselves.

"Alright, let's reset. Take it from the top."

Audible sighs filled the air as the girls rearranged themselves in starting position. Mari, Hanamaru, and Riko stood in the center, while the rest Riko started the background music, then Mari delivered her opening line:

Ima wa ima de kinou to chigau yo

Hanamaru followed up with a perfectly-sung part:

Ashita e no tochuu janaku ima wa ima da ne

Next was Riko:

Kono shunkan no koto ga….

It was right on time, but half a pitch lower.

"How could you miss that?" Dia snapped, completely break the sync. "This is your composition! How could you butcher your own song?"

"Everybody makes mistakes!" Riko didn't take Dia's criticism lightly. She was typically demure and polite, but it seemed like she was reaching a breaking point, like everybody else. "You made mistake! Who gives you the right to judge other performance?"

"We are cursed!" Yoshiko threw her arms up in the air. "The Fallen Angel Yohane had angered God once more and there is no repentance with it!"

"Guys…" Chika stopped the music. "Please, nobody's critizing anybody. We are all here because we want to win, but we can't win if we don't work together. We are running out of time. If we can't get over this, we can't win."

"We can't win, anyway," Ruby sat down on the floor, mumbling to herself. "Yon*Machi is going to win. We'll just go home with no credit, just like the last time. Nobody will remember Aqours anymore."

"Well, then, what do you guys want to do now?" Kanan blurted bitterly. "Do we want to forfeit?"

"Is that your solution for everything, Kanan?" Mari chimed in, adding mud to the already muddy atmosphere. "Are you going to forfeit the second time?"

"Do not forget I did everything for you!" Kanan went straight to Mari's throat.

Chika watched everything she had worked so hard disintegrated before her eyes, and she was helpless to stop it. She knew they were no where near the condition to win Love Live Finals, and they had only a week to practice, but if they kept going, she feared they would break into a melee. Something had to be done, and she only had one solution.

"Guys, we are tired, we are nervous, we are not ourselves. Let's call it a day. Let's go home."

"There's no more time," You suggested. "We only have…"

"I know, but we've been practicing for half an hour and we are going nowhere," Chika said with a heavy sigh. "I don't want to break us apart. Let's go home, sleep it off, and regroup tomorrow. Same time. Same place."

The rest of Aqours didn't say anything. Everybody felt guilty for contributing to this situation. But nobody could undo what had already been said or done. So one by one they packed up their stuffs and quietly left the practice ground.

Chika waited until You was the only one left, then sloshed to the floor and buried her head between her knees. She was very close to losing it, and she was thinking of blowing it off, crying her eyes out until there were no more tears to shed. But she held it back. This was not over. The fight was still on. She could cry anyway she wanted after the final (if they didn't win), but she was not going to give up now.

"Chika-chan, I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful," You sat next to Chika. "I even made it worse. But Kanan was patronizing me! So is Dia… gosh, Dia can be a real pain sometimes! She jumped on everbody for making small mistakes. Mari is snappy too. She even goes at it with Kanan. I don't know what's going on with the 3rd graders… I don't know what's going on with us. We are falling apart…"

"That's alright, You-chan," Chika muttered weakly. Her head was still buried between her knees. "Let's just go home and forget about this day. Ashita yo hare."

You rested her head on Chika's shoulder for a while, then quietly left the rooftop, leaving Chika alone.

Takami Ryokan
Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture,
March 10

It was close to midnight but Chika had been tossing and turning on her bed for a few hours, not being able to close her eyes. The poster of Honoka Kousaka from the Muse, beaming happily, seemed to be laughing at her. She used that poster for inspiration, that one day she wanted to be like Honoka. But the image felt like farther and farther away, and the only thing that poster did was to remind that she would never be Honoka Kousaka.

Sitting up on the bed, Chika reminisced the life of Aqours, from its inception at the front yard of Uranohoshi High School at the beginning of the school year, to its disappointing result at the Tokyo Idol Invitational, to its slow but steady rise, to its current state of falling apart. She didn't understand why everything had to come to this at the most critical time. It was very frustrating.

She knew what happened to Hanamaru. The guy she had a crush on abandoned her, and 'abandon' was too subtle a word. He 'cheated' on her, although they were never together. And she was still visibly shaken by it. Riko had a major issue with a rabid fan, which she swore would not affect her performance, but actually did. The third grader seemed to have a problem of their own. They hid something, and they avoided confrontation with her. Ruby and Yoshiko lost their confidence after the meeting with Yon*Machi. And Chika had a problem too. Yosetsu might not be able to come to the finals, and she tried to shrug it off, but she knew her performance suffered from it. She was still moving forward, but she was limping.

She leaned back on her bed and grabbed her phone. It was too much to handle alone, and she needed a company. She needed her hero, one that could take all these problems away and made her feel better. But she looked at the clock in her phone, then turned her phone off. It was late, and Yosetsu was fighting his own battle. He only had a week to prove whatever it was he had to prove so he could get out and be with her at Love Live Finals. The odds were not good, but she knew he was fighting for it.

Which brought her to a sudden realization: maybe Yoshiko was right. Maybe Aqours were cursed to fail. Honoka started Muse, rounded up her friends, saved her school, and won Love Live Finals like she was walking in the park. Everything fell into places quite nicely. She thought she could do what Honoka did, but she couldn't be more wrong. Lost electricity. Last place on Tokyo Idol Invitational. School concert and Love Live Prelim at the same time. And now this. Even Yosetsu, who gave everything to save a boat full of Japan's government member, got detention instead of commendation. None of them happened the way they should.

Covering her eyes with her arm, Chika remembered a song she worked on long time ago. She worked on it around the time when Aqours scored last place on Tokyo Idol Invitational, but never finished it. Now it seemed it was an appropriate notion for the entire situation.

Fune ga yuuyake wo wataru yo
Nayami wo mochisaru you ni
Watashi wa madamada ganbareru
Kieru nami ni katarou ka
Hora mou daijoubu!
Uchi made hashitte ikou
Omoshiroi koto shitaku natta to
Kimi ni tsutaenakucha
Uchi ni kaettara...

Chika looked at her phone again. It was late, but she didn't care. She couldn't take it anymore. She had to make that phone call. She dialed the number, waited with her heart pounding on her ear, then hear the click on the other end. She waited until the person greeted her, then spoke with trembling voice.

"I know it's late, but can we facetime?..."