Excited as they were, Ainz and Rimuru each put together a disguise.
Ainz went with the same black-knight look as last time, while Rimuru — who'd gotten some item or other from Ainz — managed a humanoid form, only to wrap it head to toe in a full suit of armor as well.
The result looked like a heavy medieval knight, fully encased from head to foot.
"Alright, let's get one thing straight before we go," Yuto said, delivering his final reminder. "When we meet Hatsune and her friends, behave. Especially you two — Ainz, Rimuru! Remember the word: calm."
Singling them out left the pair looking a little sheepish.
Once everyone had nodded and agreed, Yuto gave a small nod of his own — and with a single thought, the whole group vanished from the restaurant.
It looked exactly like a teleportation scene out of a movie: no trace left behind, just a light breeze drifting through, as if the place had always stood empty.
...
Yuto had visited Ainz's and Rimuru's worlds before, but both had been medieval-style fantasy settings.
This was his first time stepping into a modern one like Hatsune's.
He and the others stood on a street that felt at once familiar and strange, watching the crowds flow past.
Now and then someone would point in their direction — hardly a surprise, with Ainz and Rimuru looking like two cosplayers.
Glancing around, Yuto took in the sleek modern buildings and the bustle, as busy as Shinjuku at its peak.
Giant LCD screens on the high-rises played promo clips of Hatsune and the others on a loop: Hatsune, Megurine, and several faces he didn't recognize — the other guests at this concert, most likely.
"Someone hand me a phone. I'll call Hatsune," Yuto said offhandedly, and Ainz stepped forward of his own accord.
His towering frame stood well over two meters, and the menace radiating off that pitch-black knight's armor was almost too much.
He stopped a passing man, who immediately panicked, then slipped into the stranger's mind and had him obediently produce his phone.
Yuto chuckled at the sight but said nothing, taking the phone and dialing the number Hatsune had given him.
It rang two or three times before someone picked up.
"Hello? May I ask who's calling?" Hatsune's voice came through, with a thread of caution running under it — an idol fielding an unknown call had every reason to be wary.
But the instant Yuto spoke, she burst out laughing, and that wariness evaporated without a trace.
"Hatsune, we've arrived."
"Boss! That's wonderful! Where are you?"
The question left Yuto a little stuck.
How was he supposed to know where he was right now?
"Ah — Boss, I'm sorry! I got so excited I forgot you're not from this world…"
"It's fine. I'll ask someone in a second."
He reassured her, then turned to Ainz.
The man under his control immediately rattled off their current location, and Yuto relayed it down the line.
Hatsune's voice turned bright at once. "Perfect! That's the city we're performing in — we're all here right now. Boss, get the full address and I'll send someone to pick you up."
"Sure."
Once they'd hung up, Yuto deleted the call from the log and slipped the phone back into the dazed man's hand.
Ainz released his grip on the stranger's mind, and the man shook his head, utterly bewildered, with no idea what had just happened.
He was still puzzling over it as he wandered off.
"The walls and screens around here are all plastered with Hatsune-chan's ads!" Rimuru — currently a short, squat medieval knight, round as a winter melon and faintly ridiculous — gestured at the buildings.
"As expected of Hatsune-chan," Ainz intoned, deep and grave.
He'd thoroughly settled into the cool-villain act by now, dropping his voice and weighting every word; combined with his skeletal overlord frame, he really did give off the air of a major antagonist!
"She really is popular," Yuto said, looking around with a sigh.
He still remembered the day the girl had first walked into his restaurant and introduced herself as a small-time celebrity.
Clearly that had been a complete lie.
With promotion on this scale, anyone short of a top-tier superstar would never see this kind of coverage.
"Oh! Look — there are so many girls on the street dressed like Hatsune-chan!" Rimuru pointed again.
You could tell from their faces they weren't all from the same country, yet every one of them was styled after Hatsune — further proof of just how famous she was.
Imitation that crossed borders like this was something only a world-class star could inspire.
'Could it be… that Hatsune was actually a global superstar?'
The thought crossed Yuto's mind, though even he found it a little hard to believe.
After a while, a long black luxury car pulled up in front of them.
The driver stepped out and asked for Yuto's name; once it checked out, they knew this was the ride Hatsune had arranged.
Everyone climbed in, and under the envious, astonished stares of the passersby, the car eased away from the curb.
"I wonder what Hatsune's other sisters are like. Will they be as cute as her?"
"They definitely will! Look how gorgeous Megurine is — the rest have to be just as good-looking!"
"What an incredible car…"
"Shouko, you know, if I ran I'd be faster than this."
"Kanna-chan is amazing!!"
"I can do it too!"
"Whoa!! Tohru-onee-san is amazing too!!"
The chatter filled the car.
Yuto smiled faintly, elbow propped against the door, cheek resting in his hand.
He didn't join in — but in truth he was just as curious as the rest of them, quietly looking forward to whatever this meeting would bring.
...
The car drew near an enormous stadium.
Through the windows, Yuto and the others could see huge promotional posters and electronic displays crowding the area, every one of them showing Hatsune and the rest.
Several streets along the route had been sealed off entirely, with hundreds of guards and police patrolling and standing watch in coordinated lines.
The scene was hardly less intense than a visiting head of state — only far louder and livelier.
On the drive over, the woman behind the wheel had filled Yuto in on Hatsune's standing in this world.
Innocent and girlish as she looked, Hatsune was the top idol here — not one of the top, but the top, with no qualifier attached.
Her fans spanned the entire globe, a billion of them, a full tenth of the world's population, and that was why she'd earned a title: the World's Number One Princess.
The fan group those people had formed even called themselves the Princess's Knights, sworn to protect their princess.
Once he understood that, Yuto froze for a second.
He finally grasped how laughably small his earlier guesses had been.
A princess with a billion fans — that was so far beyond any ordinary word for "celebrity" that the word simply didn't apply anymore.
Her sisters had their own fan groups too; none of them rivaled Hatsune's reach, but their numbers were still staggering, large enough that you could line each one up against the population of a small nation.
"That's incredible security," Yuto murmured, watching the personnel beyond the glass.
"This is a charity concert with half a million spectators live, broadcast worldwide on top of that — the total audience could pass four billion," the driver said with a light smile.
She wasn't only a driver, she handled a good deal of Hatsune's affairs as well.
"For an event like this, a lapse in security would be a fatal problem."
"So Hatsune-onee-san is really that amazing…" Shouko breathed from the back seat, sounding half in a dream.
Rimuru and Ainz had started fidgeting again, unable to keep still.
Tohru and Kanna didn't know the human world deeply enough to follow the details, but even they could see the others were anything but calm.
"Hatsune-chan! You're the best!"
"The World's Number One Princess! Whoooo!"
Cooped up in the car or not, Ainz and Rimuru had already begun cheering.
Ainz had spent the early part of the ride playing it deep and solemn, but a little coaching from Rimuru had loosened him right up — which was only fitting.
They were on their way to a concert; what was the point of brooding?
Watching the two of them throw their hands in the air, Yuto laughed softly.
There was something irresistibly funny about that grim, heavy armor paired with such giddy celebratory gestures.
With a screech of brakes, the car reached its destination: the backstage area, where the performers were doing their final makeup and run-throughs.
It was one o'clock now, and the show began at two-thirty — an hour and a half left, which wasn't much.
"Hatsune-chan's waiting for you inside. Go in through the back door; there are signs the whole way," the driver said.
She still had to park, so once she'd pointed them in, she pulled off on her own.
The group gathered at the stadium's rear entrance.
Shouko was still anxious — and its no wonder, since a sweet, sheltered girl like her had never seen anything on this scale before.
"Here, hold my hand," Yuto said gently, folding her small hand in his.
It worked... the nervousness eased visibly from her face.
He glanced around at the rest of them — Ainz and Rimuru buzzing, Tohru and Kanna unbothered as ever — and gave a quiet laugh.
"Let's go."
With Shouko's hand in his, he led the way through the back entrance, the others falling in behind.
Signs marked the backstage route, and they reached the door to the performers' hall in short order.
The guards there moved to stop them, but before Yuto could say a word, Hatsune's voice rang out from inside, bright with delight.
"Is that you Boss?!" The door swung open and there she was, beaming in surprise, and the guards tactfully stepped aside.
"Hatsune. We made it," Yuto said with a soft nod.
She wore the same silver-white stage outfit she'd had on the day she first walked into his restaurant; it made her look impossibly cute and full of life!
"Come in, come in!" Her twin tails swung as she turned, threw the door wide, and led them inside.
The moment the door opened fully, Yuto took in the room and the people in it — every last one of them, man or woman, strikingly beautiful.
Luka stood at the center in a silver-white outfit matching Hatsune's, her expression serious and focused, though even that couldn't dim her looks.
Off to one side he noticed a gray-haired girl, her hair wound into two round loops atop her head and joined like a sideways figure eight, wearing an old-style dress that suited her so well she seemed to glow.
There were the yellow-haired twins, a boy and a girl, both delicate and adorable.
A long-haired girl in a fiery-red athletic dress carried herself with a bright, dashing energy, the little cowlick on her crown softening it with a touch of cuteness.
A white-haired girl with a short cut, and another beyond her, and another — the deeper into the hall he walked, the more dazzling faces filled his view.
He felt a flicker of awe, but no real surprise... they were idols, after all.
Beauty came with the job!