“Of course it’s at lunch. Could you come to our room? We’ll prepare food for you.”
We have to go all the way over there? I can’t say I’m a fan of the thought... Is it an issue to hold it in the cafeteria? Well, I suppose they would hold it there if they could.
Not a lot I could do, really.
“All right. We’ll see you at lunch, then.”
This was also part of our job, after all.
I spent the next classes still trying to fend off sleep and eventually, it was lunchtime. Reliared and I rushed toward the junior production crew’s office—well, more like clubroom—far away from the main school building. Despite how we referred to them, they were a club on paper, so “clubroom” was the most suitable term for where they resided. It did sound like they were paying club fees as well.
“It’s been quite a while since I was last here,” Reliared remarked.
“Same for myself.”
When was the last time I was here?
Some of the seniors met us outside and led us to the room and we sat down at the table. Apparently, not everyone was here yet—a lot of the members were busy doing maintenance checks on their gear. They all looked quite exhausted, no doubt because of their recent harsh schedule. Unfortunately for them, the road ahead would be long.
“Sorry we’re late.”
The students gradually filtered in with Wagnes arriving last. He must’ve been busy with various tasks for the recording.
“Ah, Young Master Neal!”
Or not.
Reliared was the happiest I’d seen her in a while as she excitedly called out Neal’s name. I was happy for her.
Yes, Wagnes had brought my brother to the meeting. Three others as well. They looked like they were a mix of elementary and middle school students—there was even a girl with them. Neal was both the smallest and likely the youngest. Add in Char Gaul, who had been working on various things behind the scenes, and that made five—suddenly, it clicked what I was looking at.
They must be the Wingroad team.
“These five will be the Wingroad pilots we mentioned before. Thought it would be good to bring them all here so you could meet them.”
My assumption was correct, it seemed. They would be the team performing the formation flight before the professional team.
“Let’s get the meeting started, shall we? Please, eat your lunch while you listen.”
We all ate the sandwiches that someone must have ordered from the cafeteria as we listened to Wagnes speak. Apparently, they would begin recording the formation flight rehearsals starting today. They’d already acquired the skiffs they needed and a place they could practice, and Cedony—who had provided everything to them to begin with—had even supplied them with a professional engineer. Actually, talking about them like a simple provider seemed inaccurate. They were practically sponsoring the team by this point. We’re really becoming indebted to them.
“We’d like you two to join in whenever you can,” he said to us. “Just now and again is fine. We’ve already gotten permission from Miss Hilde, so...”
So even Hildetaura had accepted this, had she?
“Why?” Reliared asked directly. I was indeed curious myself.
“You already have two interviewers right there, don’t you?” I pointed out, nodding at Kikirira and Josecotte nearby. Right now, those girls were the faces of the junior crew. They certainly weren’t the unfamiliar faces they once were, so there was no reason not to use them.
“I hate to put it like this, but it’s the difference in popularity. If we ask the question of who would attract a greater viewership, you two definitely have more pull. Right now, people are almost too passionate about the martial arts tournament. Sure, what we would be showing would technically be related to it, but they’re likely to change the channel to watch something else. We might end up with no one watching it at all. But we have to at least try and grab people’s attention.”
Ah, so it’s to attract viewership. Honestly, it wasn’t that we were more popular, we’d just put in more hours. We were familiar faces to the magivision audience because we’d been in the industry for longer. If you asked me, their popularity was actually rising at an unnatural pace... But now wasn’t the time to think about that.
“I understand. If that’s the case, I don’t mind helping,” I said. It was more personal for me given I outright had a relative participating to hype up the tournament. I naturally wanted to support him.
Though I wasn’t actually sure if it was necessary. The stars of the Wingroad performance would be the team here—in other words, my brother. Apparently, Wagnes and his crew weren’t aware of the popularity of Neal Liston, the successor of the Liston family.
Neal had only occasionally appeared on magivision, so it wasn’t always immediately obvious, but his popularity was incredible. He’d been gaining more and more passionate fans ever since his first appearance. The moment someone became his fan, they never stopped. It was very likely that he had even bigger spenders in his base than us girls.
And now, someone like him had decided to fully enter the magivision industry. I was even starting to fear his future a little. Just what would happen if Neal’s popularity continued rising endlessly? It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think it could inspire an incident we’d never imagined.
With that thought in mind, it became difficult for me to criticize Lynette for wanting to instruct Neal in matters of chi, however half-baked her teachings. Neal needed to be able to protect himself should anything happen to him.
“Of course, I’ll join too! At least...I want to, but I’m so busy...”
Reliared had no reason to refuse, except for the problem of her schedule. She only had one body; it would have been impossible for her to participate in two recordings at the same time.
I’d have to ask for adjustments to be made to my schedule myself. I doubted they’d refuse once I told them it had to do with Neal. Bendelio was the manager for the Liston production crew right now. He was a crafty one—he would definitely cooperate, I was sure of it.
And if he didn’t cooperate, then I’d just find a way to fit it in myself. I’d do it by force if I had to.
Altoire’s martial arts tournament had become an event of international scale. We now had the chance to debut Neal Liston, the next head of the Liston family, on this grand stage. It was impossible for Bendelio to refuse.
“Of course it’s fine.”
And to no one’s surprise, Bendelio naturally accepted my request to make space for my brother’s recording with no hesitation.
I’d gone to the royal broadcasting station with Reliared again today after school. We split up at the reception and went to our respective production crews’ staff rooms. They’d managed to acquire a space to serve as a provisional broadcasting station while away from home where they could do postproduction work and hold meetings.
The Liston, Silver, and Altoire production crews were all working together right now, so it was useful to have a place where we were all gathered so we could easily hold joint meetings.
I was pretty sure the format would change as we went. Generally speaking, recordings belonged to the station who took it to begin with, so any highly confidential recordings being leaked would be a nightmare. Under normal circumstances, outsiders should be kept as far away as possible.