Team A's first practice was scheduled for Wednesday at nine in the morning.
Aoi arrived eight minutes early, which she thought was reasonable.
Reina was already there.
Of course she was.
She was standing in the middle of the practice room with her arms crossed, staring at her own reflection in the mirror like it had said something slightly offensive. Her bag was on the floor. Her notebook was already open on top of it.
How long has she been here.
Has she just been standing there staring at herself this whole time.
Do not ask. Do not ask. Do not—
"How long have you been here?" Aoi asked.
( -_-) Reina : *doesn't look away from mirror*
"Since eight."
"That's an hour early."
"I know."
"...Why?"
"I wanted to look at the room."
Aoi looked around. It was a regular practice room. Mirrors on one wall, sprung floor, a speaker in the corner. Nothing particularly interesting about it.
"And? What did you learn from looking at the room for an hour?"
Reina finally turned.
"The acoustics are slightly better on the left side. The floor has a soft spot near the back right. And the mirror has a slight distortion at the bottom third, so if you use it to check your lower body form, you'll be calibrating wrong."
A beat of silence.
( o_o ) Aoi : okay. she actually learned things. from looking at a room.
"That's... actually really useful," Aoi said.
"I know," Reina said, and picked up her notebook.
— — —
Mika arrived seven minutes later at full volume.
"GOOD MORNING TEAM A, oh it's just you two. Hi! Are we early? Are we the first ones? We're totally the first ones."
"Sora's not here yet," Aoi said.
"Or Yuna," Reina added without looking up.
"Okay so we're third and fourth. That's fine. That's still good. Being early is good." Mika dropped her bag and immediately started stretching with the energy of someone who'd already had three coffees. "Did you guys talk about the assignment yet?"
Aoi blinked.
"What assignment?"
( ^o^) Mika : *pulls out a printed sheet from her bag*
"They sent it last night! We have to prepare a team performance for the first evaluation in two weeks. Sixty seconds minimum. We pick the song, we pick the formation, we do everything ourselves. No coach until the last three days."
Aoi stared at the sheet.
Two weeks.
Five people who barely know each other.
No coach.
Okay.
Reina had already taken the sheet from Mika and was reading it. Her expression didn't change but she flipped to a new page in her notebook.
"Song selection first," Reina said. "Everything else depends on that."
"Agreed," said Aoi.
"Ooh, what if we do something upbeat? Like really high energy? First impression is everything—"
"Or something that shows range," Reina cut in. Not rudely. Just factually. "High energy is easy to fake. Range is harder to hide."
Mika opened her mouth. Closed it.
( ^^;) Mika : she's not wrong but also ouch
The door opened. Sora walked in.
She looked at the three of them, nodded once, put her bag down, and started stretching.
( . .) Sora : *no words. just vibes.*
Two minutes later, Yuna slipped through the door looking slightly out of breath.
"Sorry, sorry, the train was late, I ran from the station."
"You're on time," Aoi said. "Practice doesn't start for four minutes."
"Oh." Yuna exhaled. "Okay. Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize for being on time," Aoi said.
Yuna blinked like that was a concept she was still processing.
( ; ;) Yuna : nobody has said that to her before probably
— — —
Song debate lasted forty-five minutes.
Which was forty minutes longer than it should have.
Mika wanted something with a catchy hook. Reina wanted something technically demanding. Aoi kept trying to find a middle ground and getting overruled from both sides. Sora had not said a single word but had, at some point, pulled out her phone and was showing them a song without explaining why.
They listened to it.
It was good. Really good, actually, a mid-tempo track with a strong chorus and enough space in the verses for individual moments.
"...Sora, where did you find this?" Aoi asked.
Sora shrugged. One shoulder.
( . .) Sora : *shrug*
"I like it," Yuna said quietly. It was maybe the third thing she'd said all morning.
"It works," Reina said, which from her was basically a standing ovation.
"OKAY YES this is cute I'm in—" Mika started.
"Hold on." Reina set her pen down. "Before we decide, we need to talk about the formation. And who takes which part."
The room got a little quieter.
Because everyone knew what that conversation actually meant.
It meant: who gets the center. Who gets the lines that matter. Who gets pushed to the side.
Here we go.
— — —
"Center should go to whoever has the strongest stage presence," Reina said. "Not the highest score. Not seniority. Stage presence."
"And you think that's you," Mika said. Not accusingly. Just directly.
"I think it's probably me or Aoi," Reina said. "Based on what I've seen so far."
Aoi looked up.
"You're including me?"
"Your audition pulled focus without you trying to. That's not nothing." Reina said it like she was reading from a report. "Mika has energy but it's surface-level right now. Sora is technically strong but closed off. Yuna hasn't shown enough yet."
Silence.
The kind that had weight in it.
( ._.) Mika : surface-level. surface-level. okay.
( ._.) Yuna : hasn't shown enough. okay.
"You can't just say that about people to their faces," Aoi said.
"Why not? It's accurate."
"Because it's not just about being accurate, Reina. It's about—"
"We have two weeks," Reina said. "We don't have time to be careful about feelings and end up with a bad performance."
Another silence. Longer this time.
Mika was looking at the floor. Yuna had gone very still. Sora was watching Reina with an expression that was unreadable but attentive.
And Aoi was looking at Reina, at the way she said all of it without any cruelty, without any satisfaction. Just. Said it. Like facts.
She's not trying to be mean.
She genuinely doesn't understand why that lands the way it does.
Aoi turned to Mika and Yuna.
"She's bad at wording things," Aoi said. "But she's not wrong that we need to figure this out fast."
( -_-) Reina : *glances at Aoi* ...I'm not bad at wording things
( -_-) Reina : *goes back to notebook*
( -_-) Reina : *is absolutely bad at wording things*
"So." Aoi looked around the room. "How about this. We each run the chorus once. We watch each other. Then we vote, including voting for ourselves if you genuinely think it should be you. No hard feelings."
A beat.
"That's fair," Yuna said softly.
"Fine," said Mika, though her jaw was a little tight.
Sora nodded.
Reina had already stood up.
— — —
They ran the chorus five times. One person at a time, center position, everyone else watching from the side.
Mika went first. She was good, genuinely good, sharp timing, bright energy, the kind of performer who made you smile without knowing why. But Reina's word kept sitting in Aoi's head: surface-level. Like the performance was reaching out to you instead of pulling you in.
Reina went second. No warmup, no adjustment, just stepped to the center and did it. Clean, precise, controlled. Every movement exactly where it was supposed to be. It was almost unsettling how complete it looked. Like watching something that had already been decided.
And then — for about six seconds in the middle of the chorus — the air in the room changed.
A pressure, faint but unmistakable, that made Aoi's next breath come slightly slower than the one before. The temperature didn't shift. But something did. Like the room had decided to pay attention whether it wanted to or not.
Then Reina hit the final count, and it was gone.
Gold. Consistent, controlled, not yet full depth. But there.
( o_o ) Aoi : oh.
( o_o ) Aoi : so that's what that looks like up close.
Sora went third. And this was the one that made the room go quiet in a different way.
She didn't do the chorus the way it was written. Not wrong, just slightly her own. A half-beat pause here, a tilt of the head there. Small things. But they made the whole thing feel alive in a way that was hard to explain.
Oh. She's been holding back this whole time.
Yuna went fourth. Her hands shook slightly at the start. Aoi noticed. But the moment the music hit the chorus, something clicked, like a switch flipped somewhere behind her eyes. Her voice was the strongest in the room. Not the flashiest. Just the most real.
When it ended, Yuna looked immediately at the floor, like she was embarrassed she'd let that out.
( ^ ^) Aoi : yuna. yuna what the heck.
Then it was Aoi's turn.
She stepped to the center. Looked at herself in the mirror, the one with the distortion at the bottom, which she now carefully avoided.
And she thought about the song she'd written at two in the morning. About standing in front of a door that wasn't hers.
She did the chorus.
When she finished, nobody said anything for a second.
Then Mika said, very quietly: "Oh."
— — —
The vote wasn't what Aoi expected.
"Reina," said Mika, which surprised everyone including Mika a little. "I mean, she's the most complete right now. I'm not there yet." She said it like it cost her something, but she said it.
"Sora," said Yuna. "Her version felt different. In a good way."
Sora looked at Yuna. Then wrote something on a small piece of paper and held it up.
It said: Aoi.
( . .) Sora : *still no words. just a piece of paper.*
"Reina," said Reina, which was not a surprise.
Everyone looked at Aoi.
"Reina," Aoi said.
Reina looked at her. Something flickered across her face, too fast to read.
"Three votes Reina, one vote Sora, one vote Aoi," Mika announced. "Reina's center."
Reina nodded. Opened her notebook.
"Then here's what I'm thinking for formation—"
"Can we take five minutes first?" Aoi said.
Reina looked up.
"We've been going for two hours. Five minutes." Aoi looked at the rest of the team. "Mika, you okay?"
Mika had been quiet since the vote. She looked up and smiled, and it was almost the same smile as always, but not quite.
"Yeah. I'm good." A beat. "She was right, wasn't she. What she said earlier. About me."
"She was partially right," Aoi said carefully. "About right now. Not about always."
"Yeah." Mika pulled her knees up to her chest. "I know. I just— I didn't think it would sting that much."
( ;__;) Mika : being perceived accurately is somehow worse than being perceived wrong
Across the room, Reina had gone to get water. She came back, set a bottle next to Mika without saying anything, and sat back down.
Mika stared at it.
"...Did you just—"
"Hydration affects performance," Reina said, eyes on her notebook.
( -_-) Reina : this is me apologizing
( -_-) Reina : i will not be saying that out loud
Mika looked at Aoi. Aoi gave her a small nod.
Mika picked up the water bottle.
"Thanks, Reina."
"Mm."
A few seconds of quiet. Then Mika, very softly, almost to herself:
"I haven't produced aura yet. Not once. Not even a flicker."
Nobody said anything. Because there wasn't anything to say that would make it smaller than it was.
Aoi hadn't either, she realized. Not in any run today. Not once in two weeks of practice.
I know what it is. I've felt it before — that warmth, that thing that happens when I stop thinking.
But knowing what it is and being able to do it on purpose are completely different things.
— — —
They ran the formation twice more before calling it.
Nothing was clean yet. Mika kept rushing the second beat. Yuna kept making herself smaller than she needed to. Sora was doing her own thing in a way that was either going to be brilliant or a disaster. And Aoi was still figuring out how to share a stage with someone as complete as Reina without disappearing next to her.
Two weeks.
Okay.
It's fine.
On the way out, Yuna fell into step beside Aoi in the hallway.
"Hey," Yuna said. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"When you were at the center just now." She paused. "What were you thinking about?"
Aoi considered lying. Then didn't.
"A door," she said.
"A door?"
"Long story." Aoi smiled. "Ask me again in a few chapters."
Yuna blinked.
"...Chapters?"
"Never mind."
( ^^;) Aoi : that was a weird thing to say. moving on.
Behind them, Reina was still in the practice room. Aoi glanced back through the small window in the door.
She was running the center part again. Alone. From the top.
She already won the vote.
She doesn't need to keep practicing.
...But she's going to anyway, isn't she.
Aoi stood there for a second longer than she meant to.
Then she turned and walked away.
Tomorrow they had practice again.
And Aoi had a feeling that by the end of two weeks, every single one of them was going to be someone slightly different than they were today.
Whether they were ready for that or not.