“Let’s not just stand out here on the street talking,” Himeno Lily said, before leading took Boruto and his teammates to a brand-new high-rise condominium in the new town. As they slipped through the brightly lit, glass-walled entryway, the concierge stationed there simply bowed, entirely unfazed by Lily’s attire.
Lily held up an ID card when they got in the elevator, not bothering to push any buttons. Boruto scratched his head at this, only to discover that the elevator went straight to her apartment. When the doors opened with a ding, he found himself looking into her living room.
“Huh? Uh? What about our shoes?” The lack of an entryway baffled him.
“You can just leave them on,” Lily replied.
It was almost vulgar how large the tiled living room was. The space was filled with a TV as big as a futon and a grand piano that was pink for some reason. Stuffed rabbits and bears sat snugly together on an expensive-looking leather sofa.
As Boruto whirled his head back and forth to take it all in, Lily put some tea on and then moved a number of the stuffed animals to the top of the piano to make space for them all to sit on the sofa.
Boruto took a sip of tea and grimaced. “It’s sweet!”
“It’s chocolate tea. Cute, isn’t it?”
It seemed that those strange creatures known as idols were driven to seek out cuteness even in their tea.
Boruto stared incredulously once more at Lily sitting before him. Wavy golden hair, sharp purple eyes. Himeno Lily herself, from the other side of the TV screen.
“So maybe you could explain things to us then?” Mitsuki asked, looking straight at Lily. He didn’t touch his tea. “Could you tell us why on earth you would go so far as to dress up in a cat costume to talk to us?”
“Right.” Her voice somber, Lily set out a piece of paper the size of a business card. “This arrived for me this morning.”
The short message was written in slanted characters, as if with the help of a ruler: If you don’t cancel Bewitching Macaron Night, we will kill Himeno Lily during the show. This is your first and final warning.
“Bewitching Macaron Night?” Sarada raised a doubtful eyebrow.
“It’s the name of my upcoming show,” Lily replied.
“There’s the possibility that it’s a prank,” Mitsuki suggested, examining the card. “Did you talk to your agency about this?”
“I haven’t said anything yet!” she cried. “I don’t want to tell them. My agency’s hardheaded. They’ll cancel the show.”
“I think that’d be the right choice, though.” Sarada’s gaze was cold.
“I have to do the show!” Lily scrunched her face up in a pout. “All the fans who are on this journey with me… If I up and cancel right before the show, I just know they’ll leave me!”
“They’re not going to leave you over something like that,” Boruto muttered.
“Idol fans are creatures of extremes!” Lily leaned toward him forcefully. “They only have two settings: they love you or they hate you. They watch my every movement. If I mess up in any way, any way at all, they’ll happily cut me loose.”
“Still, it’d be better to put in a proper request through the formal channels,” Sarada said gently.
Lily shook her head. “The Hokage’s wise! Do you really think he’d let the show go on just because a selfish idol like me wants it to? I just know he’d cancel the whole thing!” she said, displaying some self-awareness.
“So you came to talk to us instead,” Sarada said.
“Yes. I thought I could get a ninja to protect me behind the scenes if I went and asked one directly. And…and you’re Team Seven! You’re special! Boruto, the oldest son of the Seventh Lord Hokage, with Hyuga blood in his veins! Sarada, Uchiha descendant, daughter to Haruno Sakura, a student of the Fifth Hokage! You—you’re kind of a mystery, Mitsuki. I don’t know much about you, but I get the feeling that you’re something super special! Also, you all seem really nice!”
“You’ve really checked us out.” Sarada looked doubtful again.
“That last reason is probably the whole of it, hm?” Mitsuki muttered, exasperated.
Boruto felt exasperated too. Although he was normally happy to listen to praise being heaped on him and his family, he could feel nothing but suspicion in this situation.
Lily’s purple eyes filled with tears. “If it’s about money, I can pay. I haven’t used any of the salary I’ve been getting since I became an idol. I’ve saved all of it.” She thrust a check out at them.
“It’s not about money—” Boruto started, and then spotted the row of zeros squeezed onto the check. One, ten, hundred, thousand… He whistled under his breath. How many Extreme Ninja cards could he get with all this?
“We can’t take money for an unofficial mission!” Sarada’s voice brought him back to reality.
“Yeah. We can’t take that,” Mitsuki agreed.
“What?!” Lily opened her eyes opened wide and put a hand to her mouth. “Does that mean you’ll take my case for no pay at all?!”
“How is it you only hear what you want?!” Sarada shouted. “It means we…won’t…do it!”
“Please…” Lily’s bottom lip quivered. “I’ll do anything. Oh! How about I get you some VIP tickets for my concert?!”
“Why would we want that?!” Sarada’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
Setting aside the matter of pay, Boruto’s mind immediately leaped to Himawari and how her eyes had shined as she sstared at Lily on that singing show. He was sure she’d be crushed if something happened at the concert, or if Lily had to stop performing for good. And not just Himawari. All of Lily’s fans in the village of Konoha.
“H-hey!” Boruto said awkwardly. “Let’s take this one! We can’t just leave a person in trouble like this!”
“What? Where is this coming from, Boruto?” Sarada regarded him suspiciously.
“N-nowhere. It’s just, as ninja, we can’t exactly let this go.”
“I wasn’t saying we should do nothing,” she sighed. “But if we’re going to take a mission, it should be after we talk to the Lord Hokage.”
“The Hokage’s in a tough place, though. He’s responsible for the village. He can’t really take risks, y’know? This is exactly when we genin gotta step up and be more flexible about stuff!”
The image of Sasuke flitted through the back of his mind. Boruto was behind Sarada and Mitsuki in their training, but if they succeeded in guarding Lily while Sasuke was away, Boruto was sure his teacher would see how skilled he really was.
“Well, you do have a point.” Sarada’s attitude softened in the face of his powerful enthusiasm. “What do you think, Mitsuki?”
“If Boruto says he wants to do it, then I’m happy to go along with that.”
It was settled. Boruto was grateful to his teammates and the value they placed on their friendship.
Sarada finished her chocolate tea. “Okay. We gotta make a plan then.”
“Where’s the venue?” Mitsuki asked.
“Konoha Dome!” Lily gleefully pulled out a pamphlet. “They just finished it last month! It’s that dome-shaped stadium. The polycarbonate roof opens and closes, so it can be totally open air, and the concourse is decked out like a hotel. It’s a total dream venue! It’s got a fifty-thousand person capacity!”
Bam!
Sarada slapped a hand on the low table, making the cups jump. “That’s way too dangerous! Fifty thousand people means every assassin in the world could walk right in and hide in plain sight. You’re practically asking them to kill you!”
“That’s why I want to hire you,” Lily protested. “Oh! Right! Is that thing about the Uchiha clan using the Sharingan to look for suspicious peo—”
“My eyes are not some kind of surveillance camera!” Sarada looked like she might be about to pop a blood vessel.
“So, like, Lily?” Mitsuki said after a few minutes of quiet thought. “Your top priority is to sing, right?”
“Yes!”
“Not be in the spotlight or have everyone looking at you, right?”
“Yes!”
“Are you going to be singing live?”
“No! I’ll be lip-syncing, of course!”
“I see,” Mitsuki murmured, and turned his gaze toward Boruto. “Then we’ll just have to have Boruto do the heavy lifting.”
“What?” Boruto raised his eyebrows.
Mitsuki patted his shoulder. “You’re going to take the stage dressed as Lily.”
“You’re doing it wrong, Boruto. You have to be more catlike in that final pose. Show the audience your toe beans. Be all ‘meooow.’ And you have to really put your hips into it when you’re blowing kisses. Otherwise the love won’t reach the people in the back.”
“I seriously have no idea what you’re even talking about…” Boruto’s shoulders slumped, and a ribbon attached to the Alice band on his head slid down to the ground. Tortured by the spectacle of wearing high heels, he still managed to squat down and pick it up. He was wearing the outfit Lily had planned to wear to Bewitching Macaron Night: a puffy dress that reached down to the middle of his calves, a checkered jacket, and silver stiletto heels with sequins sewn on top, as if they weren’t already sparkly enough already.
“You can do this, Boruto. The success of our plan is all up to you.” Mitsuki offered up this bit of encouragement as if he were entirely removed from the situation. Boruto glared at him.
Believing it far too risky to let Lily take the stage, Mitsuki had proposed that they use a double instead. Boruto was the lucky stand-in. Disguised as Lily, he would stand in the spotlight and move his mouth while the idol spoke from the wings between songs. Meanwhile, Sarada would search the crowd with her Sharingan, and Mitsuki would grab anyone who looked suspicious.