“You know what. We were having a conversation?”
“Sure, but you have to share thoughts like these as soon as you have them! It’s not the same otherwise. Hey,” Mio continued, looking back to Yuna and Rinka, “do you two want me to put in a word with our agency for you? I know for a fact you’ll have a ton of fans in no time if you give it a try! You think so too, right, Maki?!”
“You know what...? Fine,” Makina sighed. “You really never change, do you, Mio?”
Ah! She gave up! Apparently, Makina had been in the same group with Mio for long enough to have a pretty solid grasp of her personality. No wonder Makina hadn’t been surprised by her outburst.
“Oh, but you totally sucked, Maki. It was super obvious you weren’t even paying attention, and you dropped out of sync a few times too. Your timing was so bad, it was like you were trying to get in their way! And when you weren’t the one in front, you looked so stiff, I could barely even believe it was you.”
“Ugggh,” Makina groaned.
I’d thought that things had gotten a little less intense for a moment, but then Mio pivoted on a dime to go back on the offensive. Suddenly, the atmosphere went right back to excruciatingly uncomfortable.
You know...I never would’ve guessed it at first, but I’m starting to think that Mio might be the sort of person who says whatever she’s thinking without considering the consequences at all? It’s like she’s barging through this encounter with all the conversational skills of a charging wild boar! And looking back, it kind of feels like most of the things she’s done so far have been off the cuff and impulse-driven...?
“It was weird, though. The way you were acting today, you seemed so...so...different. Like you weren’t the Maki that I—that we—know at all,” Mio continued.
Makina was silent.
“The Maki I know is a perfect super-idol who does everything flawlessly without batting an eyelash. You keep it up backstage too, and take practice more seriously than any of the rest of us. You never screw up, and you never let your nerves get the better of you. You’re basically invincible...but at the same time, you still have that certain something that makes idols endearing. I always knew that you were the sort of person who deserved to be a top idol, and I was happy to get to support you as your second-in-command.”
It was instantly clear to me just how much faith Mio had in Makina—and now that I thought about it, that was one thing that Mio had been completely consistent about from the start. She’d made it very clear that she and her fellow idols needed Makina. Of course that meant she held Makina in incredibly high esteem.
That was also, however, why she had no reservations about saying that Makina had done terribly when she saw it that way. The higher the expectations you had for someone, the easier it was for them to disappoint you. Mio had been watching her more intently than anyone—and by “her,” I mean the idol Maki Amagi.
Makina was still silent. She hadn’t said a word.
Makina...
She’d barely reacted at all ever since Mio had turned the conversation around on her. I quickly realized, however, that it wasn’t that Makina didn’t care. She was just keeping her emotions on a tight leash—hiding them away. She looked unmoved and expressionless at a glance...but there was something bitter in her eyes that made me suspect she was enduring a painful surge of emotion. On the one hand, it seemed like Makina was rejecting Mio with every fiber of her being, but on the other hand, that very fact just went to show how significant Mio’s presence was in her mind.
Mio had kicked things off on a really harsh note. She’d softened up her delivery quite a bit by now, but it still felt like she wasn’t getting through to Makina in the way she wanted to, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Makina’s stonewalling set Mio off again. We’d end up going through the exact same process, from the top.
And in that case...there’s only one choice!
“Hey, umm, Mio?!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah...? What, Yotsuba?”
“What did you think of the performance?!”
“Huh?” Mio grunted, turning to face me with a look of indignant incomprehension.
Makina looked over at me as well, apparently just as confused. Yuna and Rinka blinked with astonishment, and I assumed that if I’d taken the time to glance at Koganezaki, she’d be in the same boat. They weren’t wrong to react that way, of course. My question had been so sudden and so seemingly clueless that anyone would.
“Uh,” said Mio. “Yotsuba? We’re kind of in the middle of—”
“I risked getting expelled to sneak you into this school, didn’t I?!” I exploded! “And I told you that, right?! I told you how dangerous this was! And what did you do? You strolled on out of the gym the second the concert was over without saying a word to me! And then just when I realize you’ve disappeared, I learn that you decided to barge in here and ambush Makina! Do you have any idea how risky that was?! Did you have a plan for how you’d make it up to me if you ruined my life with this stunt, or were you just gonna wing that too?!”
“Y-Yotsuba?” gasped Yuna.
“L-Let’s calm down, okay?” said Rinka.
“Shut up for a minute, you two! I’m really, really mad right now!!!”
That’s right. I’d thought as hard as I could about how I could shift the prevailing mood in the room...and the solution I landed on was to flip the heck out. It was the only solution, in fact! Flipping the heck out would solve everything!!! After all, the natural response when you encounter someone who’s acting out in an even louder and more intense way than you are is to lower your own intensity level...or so I read somewhere, at some point, I think.
Makina and Mio were unmistakably the stars of this particular show. This was their conflict—their stage. If we let them continue along the path they’d been traveling so far, though, they’d keep talking past each other forever. The only way to break the stalemate would be for some unexpected outside factor to throw things for a loop. And that factor...was me! If someone who had nothing to do with the dispute shoved her way into the middle of it and started flipping her lid, then of course they’d be too flustered to carry on with their endless argument!
“And while I’m at it,” I continued, “what was up with you storming into this classroom like that?! Right, Koganezaki?”
A pause ensued.
“What?” Koganezaki finally said.