You could excuse Nico Yazawa.
She'd had a disappointing life, true. Nonetheless, her mother had recovered from her collapse due to overwork when Nico was in high school, and her sisters and brother were doing well.
Nico was working two jobs in a Japanese economy seemingly in a perpetual recession. Her dreams of working as an idol had been drowned by a wave of obligations, exhaustion, and painful, painful reality.
She was wearing a mask - well, it was flu season. And sunglasses, maybe her eyes hurt. Her hat covered more of her than was usual, but that could be taste in hats. Nico was mortified. She'd had the beginnings of an idol trio, in middle and her first year of high school, but it hadn't gone anywhere. Nevertheless, she'd been in one magazine (in an article doing a survey of school idols) and her mother had put pictures of her performing all over her workplace, and Nico had sent out a promotional package for herself, so she was in the files of several agencies. She reckoned that was enough to disguise herself when she was at an addiction group. This one was for shabu-shabu, but it didn't really matter. Nico wasn't there seeking help for an addiction: she just wanted the voices to stop. The ones that came when she was alone and oh so lonely, demanding she admit she was a failure.
Unfortunately for her, a rather ravaged young woman who was, nonetheless, probably the prettiest girl she'd ever seen kept shrewd and suspicious eyes on her the entire time.
« Surprising to meet you here, Nico-ni! » the girl suddenly said to Nico, speaking quietly. Nico froze. It wasn't a nice smile the girl had, and she put finger quotes around the « Nico-nii » part, too.
Nico froze.
« I guess you did it in the wrong order, huh? You're supposed to have an actual career first, then flame out with shabu, but you did it the wrong way. I've never heard of you after that article in that low-rent magazine in my mother's office. »
Nico stayed frozen, but teared up.
« But then again, » the young woman continued, in a voice just as cruel but even shrewder, « You don't have a shabu addiction in the first place. I'd know. »
She held out her hands. Nico noticed discolouration on her fingers, possibly from holding a hot pipe. They were also trembling.
"Your pupils aren't dilated. Even if you are a poser, using mostly caffeine, and the methamphetamine is the secondary agent, you'd be drinking lots of coffee to compensate, and you're not. Open your mouth or I make a scene."
Nico complied, still frozen otherwise.
"No signs of any sores or gum issues. I'm the child of physicians, so I have an incentive to prevent that - but you seem to be all alone without anyone to answer to. And not well off, if this is how you dress to be among other people."
There was a pause.
"Are you lonely, Yazawa-san?" I didn't come here to spill my guts. I came here to pick up lonely girls like you. That's the only thing I can do that keeps my mind off shabu-shabu."
A still teary-eyed Nico felt compelled to nod. The other woman nodded back in satisfaction. She leaned over, into Nico's space. "Now make up some crap, and then we can leave."
Nico wasn't sure, when Maki chased her out of her messy flat at 1 a.m. and she had to take a taxi to hers, that her loneliness had really abated.
On her way to her first job, Nico was interrupted from reading an idol magazine (yes, the same one that had once included her) by a Gothic Lolita that somewhat resembled her. "I am the dark angel Nico-ane, and you are my first little demon minion."
Instantly, her mind flashed back to meeting a girl that also resembled her. A budding idol with, apparently, permanent chuunibyo syndrome. Some of the girls at her high school had had the idea to save it by becoming school idols, but without any inspiration, they were unable to find enough takers to form a group. Nico could sympathise, but the girl gave off otaku vibrations, and Nico had flinched away as if it were contagious. But she'd also been the only person, other than this new one, that recognised Nico from the magazine. "I assume you know the Dark Angel Yohane?"she said, seeking to put the weirdo on the defensive. It was a stab in the dark, but probably multiple-personality creepy otakus flocked together.
"Never you mind, Nico-ane has a proposition for you. Agencies, magazines? They're all Japanese crap. If there ever was a society that needs a wake-up - and no, I am not talking about your girlfriend's shabu addiction - it's this one. It's too late for you to be even an underground idol, and you wouldn't have the money to survive long enough to get a career, anyway. No, you need to keep on being a drudge, but no more weekend hours - those are reserved for Idol Club."
"Idol Club?" Nico felt like a patsy, but the question popped out before she could close her mouth.
Nico-ane leaned in, speaking quietly. "Your life might as well not exist. Don't take it badly, it's true for everyone. Our society is slowly fading, and it's incapable of changing. So whatever we do won't do any harm. It's like operating for cancer when everything else doesn't work."
Nico supposed she was baffled. What did that have to do with idols?
"Idols," the weirdo continued, as if reading Nico's mind, "can be influencers. Opinion leaders. Of course, they're careerists, too. Most of them impoverished like you, with people that depend on them. If you can get your sex friend to keep off the shabu, she can help there. But either way, Idol Club."
Nico couldn't say anything.
"Fearless, Nico. Once your family's more secure with Maki's help, and you've accepted you'll never have a traditional career? You can be fearless. You can sway the masses."
""Ummm. Nico? The masses? Towards what?"
Nico-and smirked. "Total chaos, of course. What else?" Then she suddenly stood up. "This is my stop. Meet me at midnight Friday at this location." She pressed a hand-written card into Nico's hand, saluted her, and debarked.
Nico had no idea what she'd expected from "Idol Club," but it didn't matter. The rules were rather straightforward, at first: no members could discuss Idol Club with the outside world. The competitions were torch songs. The rest of those present voted on the winner, and the loser had to do basically whatever the winner requested. Every girl involved loved girls, so what that tended to involve wasn't entirely unexpected. You couldn't hold back - coming through the door was a commitment to match off. Once a month, there was a duet fight: those were even messier once the winner had been decided.
Once her mortification had eased, which took over a month, Nico had to admit she felt revitalised. Her newfound confidence and some help from her mother got her a better job, so she didn't need to work two. Maki was amused to go to Idol Club, and stayed off drugs. She agreed with Nico-ane, and contributed to the Yazawa family fund matter-of-factly.
Maki had an amazing voice, and improvised her own songs, so she almost always won, and the additional opportunities for sex only contributed to her drug rehabilitation. Everything was mostly satisfying, and Nico was almost at peace. Then Nico-ane revealed the second part of her scheme.
By that point, the Idol club had included seven girls from Otonokizaka, Nico's old high school. It turned out that Maki Nishikino had been a first-year there when Nico was a senior, already working almost full time and with no energy to notice first-years.
It also brought nine girls from Ura-no-hoshi high school, and the return of "Yohane," whose real name was actually Tsukushima Yoshiko. Surprisingly, she disavowed any knowledge of "Nico-ane," though when Nico showed her a photo of the woman, she stared at Nico with an odd expression on her face, then complimented the eccentric Nico-ane on her look.
Several of the girls who attended Idol Club paired off. One of them, Umi Sonoda, had been pining for her friend Kotori Minami for years, but afraid to express herself. Idol Club removed her inhibitions, and in thanks, she gave Nico a bow-and-arrow set tailored to her small stature, lesser strength, and small hands. The arrows had heart shaped arrowheads, painted red, and Umi called them "special love arrows," and said you should concentrate on winning your love and hit the centre of the target.
Shockingly, all of Nico-ane's predictions came true: the Idol Club, without being revealed to the public, subverted, first the Idol Industry, then the political structure. Agency after agency went bankrupt, and newer, edgier ones sprung up. The LDP got wind of the source of the disruption, and tried to ban independent idols in the Diet, in the name of protecting young women.
It turned out that the worst exploiters of young women, both in regular agencies and independent managers, were all heavy contributors to leading LDP candidates, and the bill backfired.
The incoming Democratic Party decided the LDP had gone temporarily insane, and never bothered with idols, even as the country quietly began spreading anarchy and disruption.
Nico finally cornered Nico-ane and had it out with her. It turned out that there were no limits on where the gothic Lolita would take Japan, even into utter ruin, which would be "amusing." Nico owed her a great deal, so it was with eyes so filled with tears that it made it difficult to aim, that she took one of Umi's arrows and put it into Nico-ane from behind.
The psychosomatic pain she suddenly had made it feel as if she'd struck her own heart.
Strangely enough, there were no repercussions whatsoever after Nico fled the scene. When she got to her and Maki's flat, all her girlfriend said was, "Finally."