The rehearsal hall had been stripped bare of its usual life, its mirrors shrouded behind heavy curtains and its floors polished until the harsh lights gleamed on every terrified face. Rows of folding chairs filled the space, packed with the three hundred girls who had survived the first performance. It should have felt triumphant, but the silence told the truth: this was not victory. This was sentencing.
Rika sat stiffly between Kana and Akari, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles glowed white. She could hear her heartbeat louder than the hum of the lights overhead, louder than the shallow breaths and whispered prayers of the girls around her. Three hundred. That number rang in her ears like a bell tolling. By the end of today, half of them would be gone.
