A crowd of over thirty thousand people was staring at us. It was a sensation I had experienced twice before, but the intensity of that thrill hadn't diminished one bit compared to the first time.
This time, I was focusing on the guitar. Though I provided chorus backing during the high-pitched segments, this song was fundamentally Yokishi's stage.
My mission was to pour my soul into the guitar solo that resided at the end of "Tears."
"Waaaaaaah!!!"
As I gripped the microphone briefly to signal the start, the cheers from the audience filled the stadium as if they might pierce the very sky. Their faces were brimming with anticipation for Enfants Terribles.
'What kind of stage will they show us this time?'
That was the collective thought of the 36,500 spectators in attendance.
I brushed the reaction aside for a moment and handed the mic to our muscular drummer, Yokishi.
"Whatever you're feeling right now... you can let it out to the crowd."
"Hey man, you're the frontman. They'll probably hate seeing a guy like me doing anything other than just banging on the drums and singing the parts I'm told to."
Though the performance hadn't even begun, Yokishi's mind was clouded with worry. In a conservative Japanese society, he had faced relentless persecution and contempt simply for being of mixed-race descent. The scars left by that reality weren't the kind that healed easily.
"And yet, you want me to speak..."
But the microphone was already in his hand. He knew I was a man of my word; if he tried to give it back, I'd probably chuck it off the stage or lie down and refuse to play until he did it.
What was he feeling right now?
Excitement. A physical rush.
After a lifetime of being sidelined by discrimination, he was now receiving the roar of a massive audience. He channeled that emotion into his sincerity and shouted to the crowd.
"Move with the music!!!"
The skinhead bassist and the blonde handsome youth couldn't help but burst into laughter at those words. This was a brutal track plastered with high notes ranging from A4 to B4 from the very intro—a literal "insane" song—and he was asking them to just move with the music? To top it off, the climax spiked all the way up to a C5.
For a man like Yokishi, Japan had never truly felt like his homeland. His mother had been treated with disdain despite being Japanese just for marrying someone from a distant land, and he himself had never been able to fit in with anyone.
Because of that, his only friend had been the drums his father left behind. The muscular drummer was now drenched in sweat, singing with raw sincerity.
His father, the only person who truly understood him, had left for a distant land with a smile, only to be taken by the cruel beast known as war. He had promised to say his "hellos" when he returned, telling his son he didn't need to say "goodbye" yet—but his father's final greeting had come in the form of a cold corpse. He had died while trying to save a comrade who had stepped into a minefield.
The U.S. military awarded his father a medal, but no piece of metal could ever fill the void he left behind.
The audience watched Enfants Terribles' stage with looks of genuine shock. Since the band had mostly performed upbeat music until now, this was a scenario the spectators could never have imagined.
Some crowd members expressed dissatisfaction, but others were completely immersed, listening intently to the story of one man's life. Truly great music is often born when a person's life is poured into the notes.
Farewell is a constant shadow lurking in all of our lives. The audience began to project their own loved ones onto the song. The initial murmurs of complaint vanished, replaced by a venue filled with people reminiscing about their pasts.
As Yokishi sang, he thought of his father.
Though his father had passed when he was young, he had never truly left Yokishi's heart. The memories his father left behind still influenced his path today. That was the weight of a familial bond.
As the muscular drummer's piercing high notes concluded, the strings swelled, and the guitar solo of the blonde-haired youth began. While playing, I thought of Ai—the girl who grew up without a family.
A fragile child who grew up without parents and didn't truly understand the concept of a "bond," causing her to fear people while simultaneously craving connection more than anyone else behind a facade of strength. If Yokishi sang for the longing of those already gone, I played for those left lonely by their departures.
I gripped the pick short and used palm muting to manipulate the resonance of the strings. Through these nuances, a guitarist transmits emotion to the audience. In my past life, I had been a guitarist specialized in these very technical "tricks."
As the song ended with Yokishi's monologue-like finish, the arena was swallowed by silence. Spectators were either shedding tears as they recalled their own memories or tilting their heads back with closed eyes, trying to keep their emotions in check.
Enfants Terribles had completely overwhelmed AAA (Idol Group) even in this third stage. They had showcased the absolute pinnacle of emotional expression achievable through band music.
The three performances Enfants Terribles gave during the ASAYAN Semi-Finals would remain legendary, cited as the definitive textbook for bands for years to come.
That fleeting moment when Enfants Terribles held the stage was nothing short of the single greatest golden age the Japanese music industry would ever know.
Just as everyone sensed an inevitable victory for Enfants Terribles, the results began to flash across the screens behind the stage.
[AAA (2) vs. Enfants Terribles (1)]
An unbelievable result appeared on the screen.
The one most shocked by this was Nishijima of AAA.
'Weren't we the ones getting completely overwhelmed during this stage?'
By any metric—crowd reaction or raw skill—they had been crushed. The audience began to buzz with confusion. Amidst the brewing chaos, the blonde youth stepped toward the microphone.
"Everyone, please look at the screen behind me!"
Suddenly, the scoreboard vanished, replaced by a video recording with audio.
"The winner has to be AAA. You understand?"
"We can't be sure about that yet..."
"Listen, do you have any idea how much money we've pumped into raising those AAA kids? Our boys aren't getting the attention they need. We need them to reach the finals at least so we can squeeze some profit out of this, don't we?"
The video contained a threatening conversation between an executive from AAA's agency and the PD, alongside a history of text messages exchanged between them. This content was broadcasted live through ASAYAN, reaching over a hundred million people across the Japanese archipelago instantly.
Watching this spectacle, the ASAYAN PD let out a refreshed, satisfied smirk. ASAYAN was a program that would rather commit whistleblowing and internal exposure than yield to threats. This fact would likely be the key to the show's long-term survival.
'It's mutually assured destruction, you bastards.'
Only then did the real results of the Semi-Finals reveal themselves.
[AAA (0) vs. Enfants Terribles (3)]
The Semi-Finals were a total landslide victory for Enfants Terribles.
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