Harsh Critics

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Edited by RedPandaChick

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The interrogation lasted ten minutes. Although Mr. Mochizuki asked similar questions to what he had asked the first time I had come, he added a few more specific to the current situation.

"That wraps it up for now. Thank you for your cooperation," he said. "Your findings will be of great help to solve this case once and for all."

"I'm just doing anything I can to prevent something similar from happening again, whether I'm the victim or anyone else."

"That's good to hear," he smirked.

I stood up to head out. However, he stopped me.

"Mr. Miyahara," he called me. "May I get a little personal?"

I expected anything but that.

"Sure…," I replied.

"You trying to start a new company after failing is commendable. It's even more admirable that you're willing to dive into the unknown with such a line of business."

"Thank you."

Still smirking, he looked away from me. This is weird.

"My daughter told me about your group several days ago. She wanted to go to your show yesterday but neither her mother nor I could find the time to go with her, so she wasn't able to go."

My mind suddenly became blank.

"I just wanted to ask you to keep it up. The country could use something new and exciting to make the people happy."

At a loss of words, I merely replied, "We will."

He nodded at me and I walked out of the room. I returned to the lobby, where the Huma talked to a man. I approached Aki, who sat on one of the many chairs, and we headed out of the police station.

"How did it go?" she asked as we walked down the sidewalk.

"In short, he asked us to wait and be careful. Not the outcome I was expecting, but that's for the best, I hope."

"I hope that as well."

"Something weird happened, though. The agent told me that his daughter wanted to go to our show yesterday, but they couldn't take her."

"Seriously? He told you that?"

I nodded and she grinned.

"Doesn't that make you happy?" she asked. "More and more people know about us."

"Yes. It's amazing that we're growing this fast, although we had a huge boost. It's now up to us to grow even further."

She suddenly wrapped her arm around mine as we walked.

"Talking about growing," she said, "did you see the reactions to the album last night?"

"I tried to, but I was too tired to understand what I was reading."

"Let's see them together, then."

We headed to HQ and arrived a few minutes later. Even though we were a couple of hours early, we started looking through all the reactions we could find. Most of them were positive and some of the others were plain insults. Only a few of the reactions were valid critics we could use to improve.

The positive reactions talked about the songs being cute and emotional. No pictures of the girls appeared anywhere in the album, but people still mentioned that they were cute.

People blatantly insulting others on the QNet was something I could never understand. I understood they felt brave because of the anonymity, but not their thought process to do something like that. They attacked the songs and even the girls, probably looking for a reaction.

I was the most interested in the properly formulated critiques. Some blogs even wrote reviews and gave a score to the album.

"Six?!" Umi yelled as I told her the average score I had found.

I had called all of GIMA's employees to the dance studio. The girls sat on the floor; Aya, Tomokazu, Miki, and Satō sat on the chairs; and Butcher stood next to the door. I stood in the center of the room.

"How dare they give it a six?" Umi continued to complain.

"Calm down," I said. "It's an average. The scores actually fluctuate a lot. Aya and I took the time to gather some of the most useful points. Aya, please read the first one."

"Yes," she replied. "The issue we found the most was that the overall story the songs try to tell is in the middle of nowhere."

"What? They tell a proper story," Umi grumbled.

"They mean that there's no main topic for the album," I said. "It's true that we chose one very late in the making."

"The story is the main topic," Umi added.

"I agree with Umi," Risa said. "Each song talks about different things, but the story of the album progresses with each one."

"I understand where the critic comes from, though," Aki joined. "Yes, there's progression, but that doesn't mean it's a topic."

"There are many albums that make no sense when you try to understand them," Sanae commented.

"But that can be a topic on its own," Aki replied.

Umi seemed to get more upset as the argument went on, so I decided to stop it.

"Enough," I said. "We'll just make sure to properly choose a topic next time. Also, most people don't care about the lack of a topic, although it might affect their opinion even if they don't realize it. Aya, read the next point."

"The songwriting is very good overall and the sound quality is good enough. However, the production is barely acceptable."

Suddenly, Umi stood up and walked towards the door, but I grasped her shoulder as she walked past me.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"I'm not going to stay here to be made fun of."

"Yes, you're going to stay. We are all here to see how we can improve."

"You've only been reading bad things about my work."

"We are not reading critiques for the choreography or the show for a reason. You did most of the work for the album; you're the person most responsible for it. Yes, they are harsh, but they say good things too. We can learn from them as long as they are useful."

She frowned at me for a moment before walking back to her spot and sitting down. Even though I knew that was her personality, I began to worry about her.

We continued to read more critiques for the next hour. Among them, people complained about the availability of the album, so I decided to commission Jun to make videos with simple animations for each song. They also complained about the girls not having personal social media, but I didn't want to give the girls such a burden yet.

We also told everyone that we had already received requests to perform shows in a few places, obviously making everyone happy. Depending on how those shows did, I would make a decision about one of the plans Tomokazu and I had come up with: having a fan meeting.

After a few hours of discussions, we returned to work. The girls and Satō kept practicing; Miki worked to come up with ideas and ways to improve the quality of the songs; Butcher sat next to the main entrance to guard it; Aya continued to manage our social media and email accounts; and Tomokazu brainstormed to come up with ideas for merchandise and dove into doing research other bands. As for myself, I needed to take care of the requests we had received.

I also took a glance at the earnings we had made with the number of streams we had gotten for each song. Although we made some money, it was far from being enough to cover the monthly expenses. Still, anything we made would give us more time to stay afloat.

Only thirty minutes remained before the workday came to an end. I kept worrying about Umi, so I called her to the office. She arrived a few minutes later. She walked through the glass door and glanced at Aya and Tomokazu before approaching me.

"What do you want?"

I sighed. "We need to talk about your attitude."

"My attitude? Isn't it enough to act nice in public?"

"Not for me. I want to maintain a peaceful work environment."

She frowned and opened her mouth to talk, but I interrupted her.

"I also worry about you."

No words came out of her mouth, yet her frown remained.

"I'm not asking you to change your personality, that's one of the things that will attract more fans, but it's not good that you get upset by almost everything. It's not a good attitude to have towards life."

Her frown loosened. "What do you know about my life? It's none of your business as long as I do my work properly."

"I'm not asking you this as your boss, I'm asking you as your friend."

"Oh, you're my friend now? Tell me one thing you know about me apart from my personality."

I stared at her. "You never want to share things about your life, how am I supposed to know things about you?"

Her frown returned. "You never asked."

I stood up and hit the desk. "You know I did!"

She seemed startled for a second, but she composed herself.

"You didn't. I eventually answered all of your questions, but then you stopped asking them. I don't need your pity. You want to fix my attitude while you don't even know me and you think we are friends just because we work together. Do I need to say more? I'm going home."

Her frown loosened once again when she glanced at Aya. She walked out and I sat down to let out a long sigh.

"You were doing well at the beginning," Aya said. "It's been a while since I've seen you this upset."

"It's the first time I've seen him like this," Tomokazu added.

I couldn't look them in the eye.

"I'm sorry. I really care about her and she just… doesn't want to cooperate."

"You shouldn't be apologizing to us," Aya said. "She's going to be hard to crack. You're going to need plenty of patience."