A Storm Is Approaching

The high school gym hall hums with the chatter of students, parents, and curious locals packed into foldable chairs. The summer festival is a big deal at Hoshikawa High—a chance for the Light Music Club and other performers to shine despite its strict faculty rules: no excessive noise, no "disruptive" acts, and no chaos.

Most bands play it safe, churning out J-pop covers or shaky originals with forced smiles and awkward banter to mask missed notes. A few stumbles through their sets, earning polite claps or pity laughs. But the crowd buzzed with restlessness, craving something to jolt them out of the monotony.

In the dimly lit backstage stood Liliane: Aria Amatsuka, Seiko Nagase, and Rikuro Hasegawa. The trio huddled in a corner, their instruments battle-ready, but their nerves fraying. Aria grips her Ibanez GRX40—its candy apple red color gleaming under the dim lights.

Her jet-black hair's bang falls over one eye. "If they hate us, fine. At least we make them feel something." Her tone was low but laced with a sharpness.

Seiko, slinging her soda-blue Ibanez TMB100, smirks while tweaking her multi-effects pedal for her signature beefy, distorted bass tone. "Aria-chan... try not to deafen the audiences, ok?" Her smile was earnest—but she knew Aria would do it anyway.

Rikuro, sprawled on a crate, spins a drumstick. "Y'know what? Let's just blow those shits away," he scoffed.

Nobody laughed. But nobody disagrees either.

But they have a shared doubt: What if their hardcore shoegaze sound—modeled on Ling Tosite Sigure's melancholic rage—alienates everyone? Even if they performed, would that change their mind when Liliane stormed the stage?

The stage MC's voice booms through the backstage curtain, catching the trio off-guard. "And now, introducing: Liliane!"

The crowd claps politely, expecting another safe act after the success of the all-girls pop-rock band that just charmed them with their bubbly covers. They have been trained by three acts of safe, pleasant music.

As Liliane steps onto the stage, the air shifts before they play a single note.

Aria wore a black blazer over a ripped band tee, her red GRX40 slung over her waist. Seiko sports a leather jacket and boots, her soda-blue TMB100 glinting on the stage light. Rikuro's tattoos peeking from his sleeveless brown vest slump behind the school's battered Tama kit.

Their casual suits scream defiance, radiating an aura of awe and intimidation that hushes the gym. They don't greet, wave, or introduce themselves to the audiences. They just set themselves up.

A hush fell over the gym, anticipation thick in the air.

Something is different from this trio.

Rikuro tests the kit—a sharp snare smack, booming kicks, and shimmering cymbals that vibrate the folded chairs.

Seiko plugs in her bass multi-effects; the distorted hum that comes out of the PA is nothing like the clean, friendly bass tone the crowd usually hears all the time.

Aria set her multi-effects unit for layering lush reverb and a modulated clean tone to channel her Toru Kitajima-inspired feral intensity.

Aria steps up to the microphone after adjusting its stand's height. Her visible eyes were scanning the audience.

"We're a budget Ling Tosite Sigure, but mentally ill." Aria deadpans into the mic.

A few chuckles ripple through the crowd, unsure if she was joking or not. But she refuses to further elaborate.

She looks back at Rikuro—he gives her a single nod.

TWANG!

The first note opens like a wound.

Aria's clean guitar solo erupts from the amp, a cascade of modulated notes drenched in hall reverb and echoing delay—each pluck ethereal yet haunting, filling the gym from wall to wall. She gently shakes the GRX40's tremolo bar, coaxing out a ghostly waver that feels like a calm before the storm.

The crowd freezes, caught off-guard by the sudden beauty. Seiko's bass hums softly, with a clean and warm undercurrent.

Silence hangs for a beat, the reverb echoing through the gym. Nobody moves a single bit.

Until Rikuro's hi-hat explodes into eight escalating hits, each one hit harder than the last. And Aria launches into neck-breaking strums, her GRX40 screaming with a boosted overdrive.

Rikuro's drums thundered, each snare and tom hit precise yet apocalyptic, while Seiko's grungy bass groove—accompanied by aggressive picking—locks in the beat through Aria's overdrive.

The gym shakes with their controlled chaos, a far cry from the prior pop-rock fluff. They dive into Ling Tosite Sigure's Secret G, a haunting anthem of raging melancholy.

They don't play it safe.

Not even a bit.

Aria's head thrashed as she ripped through the chords, her black hair swinging forward. Seiko stomped one boot on the edge of a PA speaker—her TMB100 snarling, and her bass stance dares the crowd to look away.

The gym shakes—the walls are actually shaking.

The first verse hits:

I want to hear the sound of you, a mechanical creation.
The image of you, drawn near the 7th fret, and the metallic cry.
"I'm emotionless; don't expect anything.' Should I imitate someone else?
Even the waveform of radiation you drew is so dramatic.

Aria switched from a boosted overdrive to a clean modulated patch—her plucks never lose their precision, and the tremolo bar shake adds a desperate edge to every phrase.

When her voice came in, it was something the crowd wasn't prepared for: soft and cracked with longing, like she was drowning in the song's lyrics.

Seiko's backing vocal rises underneath it, low and seductive—a scarred angel threading through Aria's grief, giving it somewhere to rest.

Some arms begin to rise across the crowd. Nobody instructed them. Not even Liliane. It was less voluntary than either.

Or rather, a primal instinct.

The second verse amps up:

I've become accustomed to the sound of machinery.
The cries of you and me, connected by a thin thread of intention.
'I'm ordinary, don't expect anything.'
I don't have anything to protect. Will I ever get to hear your signature arpeggio again?

Aria's voice grows. Still delicate at the core—but becoming powerful. The fractured voice stretched over something much larger from underneath.

The bridge slows with a tricky tempo shift. Rikuro's kick falters for a split second, barely recognized, and Seiko's bass slides off a note. But Aria's clean pluck pulls them back into the groove without breaking the pace.

The crowd doesn't notice; they are too busy standing. They swayed their arms, swept up in Liliane's raw energy for the first two minutes without realizing it.

The final verse hits, Aria strumming with a low, desperate wail.

I threw you away, yet we remained connected.
Dancing in boundless space, infinity resonates.
You became truly alone for the first time, trembling as you played.
Alone, you are a secret boy.

The final chorus explodes. Aria flips to a boosted overdrive patch, her GRX40 roaring with the brutal weight of the effects chain unleashed at once. Seiko's distorted bass snarls upward, and Rikuro's drums pound like war drums.

Every strum, pluck, and smack carries a mass that shouldn't be possible at this tempo with just three members.

Aria unleashes a primal, guttural scream. Not into the microphone—but through it. Her voice cracking with angst sounds less like a performance but more of a confession.

Seiko raises her vocals with a powerful yet melodic voice, a haunting ethereal beauty running through the chaos that makes it more devastating than ever.

Gorgeous in its fury. Catastrophic in its precision.

As the chorus fades, Aria drops to her knees. She is aggressively thrashing her head, down-picking her GRX40 with raw aggression. Seiko banged her head; her grungy bass groove locked in relentlessly. And Rikuro unleashes a final drum solo, controlled and primal, both at once, before bringing it down.

After a final aggressive strum, Aria pushed her GRX40 against the amp, letting it screech with feedback. That flinched the audiences, forcing them to cover their ears. The wail tore through the gym like something alive. She screams one last time, raw and unfiltered, before cutting the mic.

Liliane had finished her performance.

There was a brief silence.

But suddenly, the gym erupts in deafening cheers. Not just polite applause, nor the reflective clap that had greeted every band before them. This was something they had never seen once in their lifetime—loud, sustained, and unfiltered.

This wasn't a safe high school performance—it was alive. The audiences weren't expecting to feel something in the first place, but Liliane had proved them otherwise.

"Thank you very much, Hoshikawa!" The three of them huddled into the mic and spoke in unison, breathless. "We are Liliane; we'll see you next time!"

Aria kills the amp's feedback. They grab their gear and casually stride backstage to roaring applause, still figuring out what just happened to them.

Backstage, Rikuro slings an arm around both of them. "Dude, that's literally sick! We should take that to a live house instead!" Despite the exhaustion, his enthusiastic grin never falters.

"The bridge was shaky, though." Aria's response remained flat as she poked his cheek with a cold glare, but her lips curled into a smirk.

Seiko laughed. "Oh, c'mon, Aria-chan! At least we had fun, right?" She winked.

Aria rolled her eyes. But she doesn't disagree.

They quietly slip out through a side door. Maybe grabbing some drinks from a vending machine or sprawling somewhere distant from the gym's noise, the teachers' careful oversight, and the sound of whatever band is closing out the festival with something safe and palatable.

But Aria's mind is still onstage.

She wasn't just playing Secret G. She was living it—pouring her raging frustration at the world's mediocrity into every note and every scream.

Seiko felt it too; her bass was a distorted rebellion against the ordinary school life she'd been handed for years.

And Rikuro's drums were his defiance of a future that had tried to fit him neatly into a box he'd been fighting against.

For one evening, Liliane transcended being a high school band performing at a festival; they were the storm breaking free.