Stagnation

After the play had ended, Momo, Sadako, Ryosuke, and Ai had all met up backstage once again, with Momo and Sadako having even helped with the breakdown on an impromptu basis. Once all was said and done, the four of them were talking among themselves outside of the front gates of the school, Ryosuke having changed back into his school uniform. “Thanks for pitching in, guys,” he told Momo and Sadako. “You know, we could use the help tomorrow night, too. If you’re interested, you’re more than welcome to come down and help.”

“I can’t,” Sadako replied. “I’d love to, but I have a TV appearance early in the morning on Sunday before concert rehearsals, so I have to go right back to my dorm to sleep when the play ends.”

“Oh yeah,” Momo then remembered. “You’re going on that variety show with Yuna-chan and Miyako-chan, right?”

“Correct,” Sadako nodded. “The three of us are going to play a quiz or something. I’ll get more details when we go in that Sunday. I’m honestly surprised they only asked for three of us and not the whole group.”

Ryosuke then asked Momo, “What about you?”

“I can come down and help,” she replied before switching to a more hush-hush tone. “Speaking of events, A TO Z SIX has two concerts coming up next weekend after the Sunday show we talked about earlier. I can get you two tickets to come along to one of our shows next week. They’ll be in a concert hall in Akihabara.”

Ryosuke replied, “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, why not? Consider it a payment for helping out tomorrow.”

Ai thought about it, knowing she did not have anything planned next weekend, but wondering what her parents would say. “I mean… I could go, but my parents would be a little weirded out by me just venturing into the heart of the city alone.”

“Oh, you don’t live on campus?”

“Nope,” she shook her head in response to Momo. “My family lives close enough to Maruyama that I’ve been able to just commute here. Some days, if I wake up early enough, I even walk here.”

“Lucky,” Sadako replied to her, jealous that she lived nearby. “My family lives all the way in Shizuoka, so I have to live on campus.”

“Living on campus isn’t a bad thing,” Momo pointed out. “I certainly don’t mind it.”

“Well, going back to the concert,” Ai also pointed out. “Like I said earlier, my own tastes in music aren’t really… I don’t know, aligned? I guess the music you guys make is not the same as what I usually listen to.”

“Hmm? What kind of music is it, then?”

Ai then pulled out her phone and swiped to a song she liked, setting it down to show everyone what it was. “Here’s one of them.”

“Wait a minute,” Momo remarked. “It’s seven and a half minutes long?”

“That’s not super long by my standards,” Ai explained. “It certainly doesn’t feel like that when you listen to it. Besides, I like songs that are a lot longer.”

Ryosuke immediately picked up on what the genre of the song was as it began to play. “Wait a sec, this is prog rock, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

Sadako, having heard of the term before but not being too familiar with it, asked, “Prog rock? You mean like those really long songs from the 70s and stuff?”

“Yeah,” Ai replied with a chuckle. “Well, sort of.”

“I’ve only heard of a few longer songs,” Momo remarked. “I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was long, but this is something else. You said you know even longer ones, right?”

“Bohemian Rhapsody is a good song, but it’s by no means a super long song. I know songs that are over ten minutes. A few even last for an entire side of a vinyl record, about twenty minutes or so. Those ones tend to be broken down into sections that don’t all sound the same, but it’s still counted as one so-“ Ai then paused, realizing she was going on and on to a group of people who may not have been as interested in the music she listened to as she was. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know when to stop when I get going about music…”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Momo assured her. “Listen, Inuyama-san, I like music, too. Hell, if anything, music is the one thing I like the most about being an idol. Getting behind a mic and singing your heart out is so much fun. It makes everything else that goes along with it worth it.”

“Like what?”

“The interviews, the meet and greets, the variety shows, the modeling, everything else that doesn’t really have to do with making songs.” Momo admitted, “Sadako-chan already knows about this, but I find most of the other stuff that goes along with being an idol tiring. If I could, I’d just make music and talk about music, not talk about random hobbies or what I did today at some variety show only interested in my looks.” Momo looked over at everyone else, feeling as though she had overshared. “Well, I mean… I usually don’t tell just about anyone that stuff, but some recent events have me thinking about it a lot.”

“I know what you mean,” Sadako realized. “Was it from last week when we had three appearances on TV in a row?”

“Yeah. I was so tired out between that and recording sessions that I barely left the dorms for the following weekend. I spent almost a whole day in bed.”

“Sounds like you want something different,” Ryosuke pointed out. “I get it. Doing the same old shit for three years doesn’t lend itself to being exciting.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” She then looked down at the song that was playing and said to Ai, “I gotta say, this song sounds pretty good, Inuyama-san. Can you send me the band who made it?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Ai replied as she grabbed her phone. “Can I just get your number? I can text you the band.”

“Here it is.”

As Momo and Ai exchanged phone numbers, Sadako remarked to Ryosuke, “Going back to what Takaha-… I mean, Momo-senpai said… I didn’t exactly have the best week with the group.”

Ryosuke, curious, asked her, “Hm? Why not?”

“So I’ve been playing the guitar for about two years now, and I wouldn’t say I’m great, but I’m decent enough. I play it on the side, and I haven’t really used it for anything. I asked our company if maybe I could play guitar on one of our songs.”

“Wait a minute,” Ryosuke then said. “Takahara-san told me about this. They said no, right?”

“She did?”

Momo, hearing her familial name, whipped her head back around and asked, “I what?”

“Yeah, Takahara-san told me you were pretty pissed off at your management company for rejecting your attempt to play guitar on A TO Z SIX’s music.”

“So she did…”

Momo, fearing that she had offended Sadako, said, “I’m sorry, Sadako-chan. It came up in conversa-“

“It’s fine,” Sadako assured her. “As long as no one else knows about it, I won’t be mad. I know Sakamoto-senpai will keep his lips sealed.” She then turned back to Ryosuke and continued, explaining what happened from her perspective. “So yeah, they turned me down. In fact, they told me that I really should focus less on the guitar and more on singing and dancing. They said I don’t really have a use for knowing the guitar in the group since we have session musicians already playing our songs, at least the parts not made on a computer program.”

“That must have sucked. I’d be pissed.”

“I was, but I just kept my mouth shut. I’d rather not cause an incident.”

“You know, speaking of music…” Ryosuke then looked to Ai and mentioned, “I’m actually into some of the same bands Inuyama-san is into, or at least I’m getting into them. The idea of a song telling a story like a play fascinates me.”

Ai, excited that someone else was finally beginning to understand her, replied, “Really? You like prog rock too?!”

“What I’ve heard of it sounds really good.”

“I may have to give more of it a listen,” Momo then added. “Wanna play us another song, Inuyama-san?”

“Sure thing!” Ai then shuffled to another song, this one being from the same artist as before but now a full ten minutes long. “This one tells a pretty cool story. It’s about a young boy who gets killed by a young girl with a mallet, but his soul is trapped in a box. One day, when the girl is older, she accidentally opens the box, and his spirit jumps out and ages rapidly. This causes him to feel a lifetime of attraction to the girl in a few seconds, and he demands the now older girl to touch him before someone else comes in and destroys the box, killing his soul.”

Everyone else was stunned by this story. Momo remarked, “He… What?!”

Ai, once again feeling embarrassed, replied, “Damn it, I got in over my head again, didn’t I?”

Sadako asked with a hint of horror in her voice, “Someone really wrote a story like that?”

“On second thought, I’m not surprised,” Ryosuke replied to her. “There are some pretty out-there songs. I’m familiar with some plays and musicals with even weirder plots.”

“Whatever the song is about,” Momo then said as she listened to a short flute solo within the song. “It sounds really good, actually. I like whoever’s playing the flute there.”

“That’s the lead singer of the band,” Ai explained. “He would play the flute when he wasn’t singing.”

“If we did songs like this, I’d certainly be more enthused with making music these days,” Momo then chuckled as she turned to Sadako. “I can only do so much of the same song over and over again with slight changes.”

Ai asked her, “You’re that bored of it already?”

“I’ve been an idol for four years, Inuyama-san,” Momo pointed out. “I love making music, but a change of pace and genre would be nice.”

“Interesting…” Ai then got up, telling the group as she stopped the song they were listening to, “Well, I gotta go home. I’ll see you guys on Monday at school.”

“On that note,” Sadako then added as she began to leave. “I’m gonna head back to my dorm, too. Bye-bye!”

“Looks like we’re all going our separate ways for the night,” Ryosuke remarked to Momo as the two remained by themselves. “I gotta say, Inuyama-san’s taste in music seems pretty different from most people here at school.”

“You can say that again,” Momo laughed. “You certainly wouldn’t expect that from a girl our age. I bet a lot of boomers would compliment her.” She then admitted, “But I can’t lie. The music she played is actually pretty good. I’ll have to add that band she mentioned to my playlists.”

“Who knows? If you listen to it enough, maybe you could tell your management to make a song like that.”

Momo laughed harder than before, finding the remark absolutely absurd. “You really think our label would agree to A TO Z SIX making songs like that? Hell, I don’t think we even have songwriters familiar with stuff like that. They shot down Sadako-chan playing guitar on a preexisting song. What the Hell makes you think they’d agree to release a song we write ourselves, especially one as weird as that?”

“Okay, yeah, that’s fair. Still, though, I think your voice would suit that kind of music.”

“Maybe it does. Who knows?” Now that everyone else was out of range of them, Momo admitted, “In all honesty, I’ve thought about leaving A TO Z SIX quite a bit recently, Sakamoto-kun.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I don’t want anyone else to know about it, but I’ve put serious consideration into leaving when I graduate high school.”

Concerned, Ryosuke asked her, “Why? I thought you loved making music.”

“I do. It’s everything else about being an idol that I’m starting to note like, Sakamoto-kun. The interviews, the restrictions, the lack of creativity, the lack of control, the constant eyes on you from everyone, all of it. I’m sure you know about the whole dating ban and shit, right?”

“I sure do. I’ve seen enough scandals about idols being caught with boyfriends to know it exists.”

“It's stuff like that that is starting to irk me. I may be young, but I’m still a woman, and I still have needs. I also know that they do it so we can sell a boyfriend experience to the people that listen to us, almost always the men.”

“Almost?”

“There’s some women mixed in,” Momo shrugged. “There always is. The company is more than happy to have our fans either delude themselves into thinking we’re their girlfriends or have them think we’re all girlfriends with each other. That said, I don’t know how they’d react if one of us actually was gay or something. That’s one question I’d rather not have to find out the answer for, because I fear it wouldn’t be pretty.”

…

Back in her dorm room, Sadako opened up a magazine and was reading the pages of a magazine on her bed. As she flipped through them, she found herself to be rather keenly interested in their contents. She whispered under her breath, “God, I want to be her so bad…”

The magazine in question was in fact one meant for adults, and not a high schooler such as herself. The front cover prominently featured a young woman just a few years older than Sadako in a rather small red bikini, barely covering up her chest and crotch. The inner pages, meanwhile, featured her and many other women in various states of dress, ranging from white t-shirts with short-shorts to no clothes at all. Anything above the waist was fair game to be shown in this magazine, although anything in the crotch region was not exposed per law. Some of the women were on the more petite end, while others were very well-endowed.

Regardless of how curvy or lean they were, Sadako was turned on by the girls’ bodies. She looked down at her own chest and remarked, “Some days, I wish I was a bit bigger, even if there are some issues with it…” She was by no means as flat as a board, but she was definitely nowhere near as well-endowed as some of the women in the magazine, with Momo also surpassing her. As she continued to read the magazine and look at the images, she not only imagined being those girls, but also being close to them. She imagined being right in front of them and touching them herself. She would have given anything to do that.

Then, right as she was about to reach her free hand into her shirt and under her bra, she heard a knock at her dorm room door and panicked. Her roommate, another girl in her grade, asked her in a somewhat distressed tone of voice, “Sadako-chan, are you in there?”

“Yeah!” Sadako quickly stashed the magazine under her bed and fixed her shirt, jumping up from the bed and opening the door to let her roommate, a girl with glasses named Asuka Fukami who was aiming to be a model, walked in. “Hey there, Fukami-san. What’s up?”

“I’m not having a good night,” Asuka replied, sitting down on her bed. “Me and my boyfriend broke up.”

“Wait, really? Man, that sucks.”

Asuka took her glasses off and wiped away tears. “He fucking dumped me when we went out to eat, like… Right after we left, he said he couldn’t do this anymore, and he said he was sorry, but… What the fuck?” She then began to cry. “I fucking hate him! How could he do this to me?!”

Sadako sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. “There, there, Fukami-san. I’m here.”

“I gave him everything, everything I had, and that wasn’t enough?! I even had sex with him, and I just… God damn it…” Asuka continued to cry, hurt by what had happened. “Takagawa-san, I’m sorry for just dumping this shit on you. I just need someone to talk to. I gave that boy everything, but what have I got to show? Nothing but a broken heart!”

“I know, I know. Fuck him, okay?”

“Yeah, fuck him…”

Sadako felt terrible for her. Asuka had been going out with this boy for about half a year, and the two had had a serious relationship prior to that moment. Though she herself had never been in a relationship and could not be due to her status as an idol, she still sympathized with her. Asuka even brought up this point, remarking, “At least you don’t have to worry about some boy breaking your heart, Sadako-chan.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

…

May 12, 2024

Sadako was joined by Yuna Miyazaki and Miyako Yabusaki, two fellow members of A TO Z SIX, on the set of Sweet Sunday Morning, a weekly variety television show. Because the show was to air live starting at seven-thirty in the morning, everyone had to be in by six to prepare. As Sadako put on a small bit of makeup, Yuna asked her, “Sadako-chan, how was that play you and Momo-senpai saw?”

“It was pretty good,” she replied. “We met up with one of the actors afterwards. I guess he and Takahara-senpai are in the same cla-“

“Him?”

“…Yeah?”

Miyako also noticed that Sadako had referred to a boy. “Better not let the wrong people hear that, Takagawa-san.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Sadako assured them. “Chill out.” She then yawned before remarking, “God, it’s too early for this shit. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a nap in before we do soundcheck for the concert tonight.”

“We should be able to,” Miyako assured her. “Barring any unforeseen circumstances.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Yuna warned her.

Sadako then turned to her right and opened up her guitar case, pulling out a red and white electric guitar and putting it on before sitting back down. “We got a few minutes before we need to head on. Mind if I pass the time with this?”

Yuna assured her, “Go ahead.”

She then began to strum a few notes, followed by her playing part of the group’s latest song, I Can’t Resist You. Since she had no amp, the only sound was that of the strings. Miyako, recognizing the song, asked her, “Wait a second, isn’t that our new song?”

“Yes,” Sadako replied as she continued.

Confused, she then asked, “How do you know it by heart already?”

Sadako stopped playing and looked up at her. That question stung, given what had happened. She remained silent as she tried to form an answer, prompting Miyako to ask her, “Sadako-chan, what’s wrong?”

“It’s because I wanted to play the guitar for that song,” she then explained in an emotional tone. “And I practiced as hard as I could for what was written down… I practiced, I practiced, and I practiced, and yet when I asked, they said no.”

“Who said no? Tomoe-san?”

“Oma-sama,” Sadako replied, referring to Masaru Oma, the A&R Executive of Time Clock Records. “He shot that idea down hard. No matter what I did, he said no. Tomoe-san was apprehensive, but wanted an opinion from him before he made a decision.”

“I’m really sorry,” Yuna replied, feeling bad for her. “We had no idea.”

“I’m not really supposed to tell you any of this. Only Momo-senpai knows besides me and you two. It’s been bothering me for the past week.”

“I can’t believe he turned you down,” Miyako added. “You sounded great.”

“They wanted their own in-house musicians to work on the song. In fact, Oma-sama pointed out to me that my job was to sing and dance, not play an instrument. That’s kinda why I haven’t been super excited for this TV appearance or the concert tonight.” She then got up and put her guitar away. “Oh well, though. We got a job to do, girls.”

Then, an assistant on the show walked in, telling them as she gripped a clipboard in her right hand, “We’re ready. Head on out.”

“Let’s go,” Sadako told Yuna and Miyako. “I’ll talk with you guys more later.”

…

On the set of Sweet Sunday Morning, the host, a middle-aged man who had made a career as a comedian, introduced the three girls to cheers from the audience and from the co-hosts. “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Sweet Sunday Morning! I’m your main host, Kanda Yoichi, and today we have three special guests for our show! Say hello to the wonderful Takagawa Sadako, Miyagi Yuna, and Yabusaki Miyako of A TO Z SIX!”

The three idols waved to the audience with smiles on their faces. Sadako in particular said to them, “Hello, everybody! Thank you all for coming to see us!”

“Thank you for coming on our show,” replied the host. “Now, I understand A TO Z SIX will be putting out a few new songs soon. Is that correct?”

“Indeed,” Miyako replied. “We put out a new single a few weeks ago, and we’ll be putting out another one very soon. We hope to have an EP out with a total of six songs on it very soon as well, including both of the new singles, so please be on the lookout for the new EP and the new single coming soon.”

“Good to hear,” replied the host. “Now, the reason we brought you here is because you three will be playing a music quiz…”

This was par for the course for Sadako and the others. These variety shows had, as their genre name implied, a variety of things that they would have their guests do. Sometimes, if all six of them were appearing, they would do a song together. Other times, especially if only part of the group could make an appearance, there would be interviews. Sometimes, they would play games, like the quiz she was about to do. While she had been briefed on what the questions were beforehand, she was not told the order they would be asked in nor the answers, and as such, how she answered them would be improvised. Considering she had been doing this for a little over three years, she was confident in how she presented herself.