“You… you’re serious?”

Amaya Uyehara nodded, smiling down at the young songwriter. “It’s all set. Between Nabiki and our team here, we’ve been busting butt to make this happen for you guys. We’ve got temporary holds on all the venues, and we’re starting to work on travel logistics. It’s gonna be tight, it’s gonna be hectic, but…” 

She placed her right hand on Ranko’s back as the redhead stood hunched over the desk reading the packet of paperwork, offering her a plastic ballpoint pen with her left.

“... you’re a signature away from going on international tour.”

Ranko raised her eyes from the contract to the huge periwinkle sectional couch that dominated Amaya’s office, where her bandmates all sat with excited expressions painted across their faces. “And you guys are sure you think we can pull this off? We haven’t even heard all the details yet.” She set the pen down on the table next to the unsigned document, blushing at the rattling sound it made when the shaking left hand holding it made contact with the oak tabletop. 

Nabiki rose from her position, seated atop one of the end tables on the edge of the sectional next to Shinji, and strode to the far wall. “Let’s walk through it, ‘kay? Amaya, you got that map?”

Taking the west side of the Oceanic regional map the record executive handed her, Nabiki unfolded the pamphlet and began affixing it to the huge whiteboard that dominated the wall with a series of clear acrylic magnets. Amaya took the other side, reaching high above her head to hang the northeasternmost corner, her yellow blazer sliding up her back to reveal the black blouse she wore under her suit.

Picking up a long wooden dowel from the aluminum marker rail at the base of the whiteboard, Nabiki snapped it against the map along the southeastern edge of the largest island of the Japanese archipelago. “Okay. First leg of the tour, in March and April. We start here in Tokyo on March 21, back at the Budokan. Ranko, you won’t quite be on break yet, but it’s a Saturday, and it’s local, so we shouldn’t have too many issues with your school.”

Nabiki leaned the pointer against the wall for a moment, slipping off the burnt-orange suit jacket she wore and handing it off to Ranko to hold. Its padded shoulders were hampering her movement as she moved the pointer. Now in just a black silk blouse and the matching orange pencil skirt, she strode back to the wall and reclaimed her pointer. 

“Okay. Not gonna lie, guys. Last week in March is gonna be busy as hell. We stay close to home for a few days so Ranko can get through graduation. We’re in Osaka on Tuesday the 24th, Ranko’s graduation ceremony is the 25th back here in Minato, and then the next day, we play in Kyoto. Fukuoka on Saturday the 28th, and then we have a week off to reconfigure for international travel.”

“Damn,” Ken said, leaning back on the couch between Jacob and Ariel and crossing his denim-clad legs. “Fukuoka’ll already be the furthest from home I’ve ever been!” 

Nabiki grinned. “Well, brace yourself, buddy, because on April fourth, we’re rocking Honolulu!” 

“Yes!” Emi giggled, leaning to her left and squeezing her roommate around her shoulders. “Beach time, baby!”

Crash laughed, nudging Ranko’s forearm with his fist. “Bring some damn sunscreen this time, will ya, girl?!”

Ranko giggled, leaning to her left into her guitarist’s torso as he hugged her about her bare shoulders. His leather jacket was cool to the touch, and it made her shiver despite the mauve sweater dress she wore. “Aww, you don’t want to take care of me if I go all crispy critter on you? What kind of friend are you, anyway?!”

Laughing, Nabiki shook her head and continued, leveling her pointer stick to the northernmost of two islands due east of Australia. “Anyway, after Hawai’i, we’re in New Zealand for one show, and then hop over to Australia. Jake, we tried to build in a little down time there so you can visit with your family. If you fly out right after the Auckland show on the night of the eighth, you’ll have almost five full days off in Australia before our first show in Melbourne on Monday the thirteenth. We bounce out to Perth that Wednesday, and then we’re back to the east coast. I know, it’s a lot of back-and-forth travel, but the fifteenth was the only day we could get a decent venue in Perth.”

Jacob Trimble waved off her concern with the back of his left hand. “Please. You’re giving me a whole week back home. I can handle a couple short flights. This is amazing. Thanks, Nabs.”

“Two weeks, actually. After Perth, we’ll play Brisbane on Friday the seventeenth and then we wrap the first leg of the tour with a pair of shows in Sydney on the nineteenth and twentieth. Our team will ship all the tour equipment to the Philippines and stick it in storage, and everybody comes home. Ranko starts college. Jake, let us know if you want us to get you a later flight home than everybody else, so you can spend a little more time with Zoe and your parents.”

“Will do,” he replied with a grin. “I’ll talk to everybody this weekend and work out a plan.”

“Okay,” Nabiki continued. “On to our second leg, in August. We’re mostly island-hopping through the Mekong area here, starting with shows Saturday the first and Sunday the second in the Philippines. Ranko, your school lets out for break that Friday, so I’m afraid you’re gonna be doing the first show a little jet lagged, little sister. Pack some energy drinks.”

Ranko gave a little salute of acknowledgement with her hand as Nabiki’s pointer moved southwest to another archipelago. 

“We left a little extra time here for travel. It’ll give you a bit more downtime, but we were mostly concerned about shipping the gear all over the place on the water. You’re in Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday the seventh, and then Bandung on the tenth and Medan on the twelfth.”

“Three shows in Indonesia? Surprising,” Ariel said, adjusting on the couch between Jacob and Emi. 

Nabiki shrugged her shoulders. “We based the stops on three factors: sales of Phoenix Rising, cities with populations of at least half a million, and places where we could get venues with the right timing such that we could put together a reasonable travel path. We were trying to avoid sending you guys back and forth and wasting a bunch of time and money on unnecessary flights.”

Shinji nodded. “Makes sense. I didn’t think we were that big in Indonesia, though.”

Ranko smirked. “When I’m done, we’re gonna be big everywhere, Edgy.”

The bassist growled, shooting her a glare. “I really wish you’d stop calling me that, Ranko.”

“I know. And people in hell want ice water,” Ranko said through a giggle. “Anyway, Nabiki, what’s next after Indonesia?”

Ranko’s elder sister moved her pointer slightly east on the map, from Medan, Indonesia to a nearby peninsula. “One hit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the sixteenth, and then we hop down and do a two-night stand in Singapore on the twentieth and twenty-first.”

“Wait, hold up a sec.” Jacob asked, raising his hand with his eyebrows arched in curiosity. “They have koalas in Malaysia? I thought they were only in Australia!”

“Kuala Lumpur. KU-al-a. It’s the name of the capital city, dummy! Do we have to teach these stupid boys everything?!” Emi threw her empty plastic soda bottle at the green-haired boy. It bounced off his forehead with a hollow bonk and skittered across the floor, where Ranko scooped it up and tossed it into the blue plastic recycling bin on the floor next to Amaya’s desk.

Shaking her head as she rested her forehead in her palm, Nabiki laughed. “I swear, you guys. Anyway, after Singapore, we finish the second leg of the tour in Cambodia on the twenty-fifth, Bangkok on Friday the twenty-eighth and Hanoi, Vietnam on the thirty-first. Ranko, it’s gonna be awfully tight getting you back overnight in time for class on September first, so you might want to think about sticking to afternoon classes for that term or you might miss a lecture. Sorry.”

Nodding, the redhead retook her seat on the armrest of the sectional sofa next to Crash. “If it’s just one class, it’ll probably be okay. The first day’ll likely just be getting books and shit anyway.” 

The band’s manager bobbed her head in reply. “Yep, and worst case, you could probably ask Shiori or somebody to pick up some stuff for you so you’re all set when you get back.”

Man, it’s good to have friends who care enough to help, Ranko thought with a bright smile.

“So that gets us to the third third of the tour, in December,” Nabiki continued. “Ranko, sis, you’d better invest in some warm clothes. It’s gonna be chilly as shit in China, especially in the mountains.”

Ranko nodded, blushing at having been singled out for her sensitive skin even as the rough texture of the cheap upholstery scratched uncomfortably against the backs of her legs. “I’ll ask Izumi to take me shopping. I’m sure she’ll be devastated.” 

“We start off in Chengdu, way out here, on the first,” Nabiki said, tapping the dead center of China with her pointer rod. “Then we cut across to Xi’an on the third and do a two-day weekend stand in Beijing on the fifth and sixth.”

“I have to say,” Amaya said with a slight shake of her head. “I really don’t understand Chengdu. It’s big enough, I suppose, but it’s so far out of the way, out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I know,” Ranko replied, a bit sheepishly. “But I just… I’d really like to visit there. I haven’t been out that way in a long time. It was the only city I asked for on the whole tour.” I have something I need to do there. Something I need to know.

The record executive gave a little hmm of begrudging approval. “And that’s the only reason it made the list. I’m not sure we’ll be able to sell it out, though.”

Crash scoffed, waving her off with a dismissive huff. “Please. You put Ranko Tendo in a twenty-thousand-seat venue on fucking Venus, stick a microphone in her hand, and it’ll be packed.” Ranko answered him with a goofy grin of gratitude.

“So, the thing with December is, the travel won’t be super bad with just ten cities, but the schedule’s pretty packed because we’re doing two shows in four of them, for a total of fourteen performances compared to just eleven on the first and second legs. The demand is just too high.” Nabiki smiled. “Our girl’s just too popular to fill an arena just once in the bigger cities. That starts in Beijing on the fifth and sixth like I said, and then we’ve got another two-day stretch in Shanghai on the ninth and tenth before hitting Shenzhen on the twelfth. We weren’t really gonna do Shenzhen, but it just made sense considering we’re going to have to travel all the gear overland right through it anyway to get from Shanghai to Hong Kong, where we do another two gigs on the 14th and 15th.” 

“Nice,” Shinji said, pumping his fist excitedly. “That’s gonna be a hell of a spot for us, I think. Lot of English-speakers out there.”

Amaya nodded. “An astute observation, Shinji. We actually seriously considered adding a third show on the sixteenth, but the venue was booked.”

“And besides,” Nabiki said, “We need a little extra time to get the gear into Taiwan with all the extra scrutiny of freight they do there, and we have a show booked in Taipei on Friday the eighteenth.”

Ranko’s eyes widened. “Man, you all really thought of everything, didn’t ya?”

Her elder sister cocked her head to the side with a wink and a self-congratulatory smirk. “Beats the hell out of letting you poor, helpless booboos get stranded in the middle of nowhere with no instruments because nobody bothered to do the research ahead of time.”

Hitomi leaned back on the couch, bouncing the toes of her right foot on the ground excitedly. It caused her left leg, which crossed the right at the knee, to oscillate nearly into Shinji’s lap. “What about Korea? Please tell me we’re doing Korea.”

Nabiki grinned, giving her fellow brunette a sharp nod. “Two shows, the twentieth and twenty-first, at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul. Seats just over 25,000, and we expect to sell out both shows. And then after that, we bounce you over to Sapporo on the 23rd to bring you home in time for Christmas.”

Ranko raised her hand. “Hold up, Nabiki. That’s only thirteen shows. You said there was gonna be fourteen…”

Nabiki giggled brightly. “Well, look who’s paying attention!” She snapped her pointer stick loudly on the whiteboard through the map, right back where it started. “Our last show of the Wildfire Tour is back here in Tokyo, on Christmas Day.”

Emi squealed loudly, squeezing Hitomi’s hand. The blonde practically vibrated with excitement. “We’re gonna do a Christmas show! Ohmigods!”

“But, how, Nabiki?” Ranko stood, stretching her arms and back as she walked the six paces across the room to join her sister. “You said we’re at the Budokan, and they’re doing that Christmas play thing there. We’d never get set up in time after it ends!”

Amaya grinned. She knew Ranko would be excited. “You’re at the Nippon Budokan for the first show, but for the Christmas finale? You’re booked at the new Tokyo Dome. Which seats fifty. Seven. Thousand.” 

Ranko turned to Amaya, her mouth hanging open. “You don’t think we can really get that many, do you?!”

Nabiki threw her arm over Ranko’s shoulder. “Honey, with the corporate sponsors and stuff being local, I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t sell out within an hour.”

Ranko slumped back against the wall as if the wind were knocked out of her. Her backside clipped the aluminum rail under the whiteboard, knocking it to the floor and spilling several dry-erase markers across the carpet. “Fifty-seven thousand people, coming to see me? I mean… holy shit.”

Crash joined her against the wall, pulling his best friend into a hug. “Maybe, just maybe, after you see Firebirds all over the eastern hemisphere screaming your name for thirty-six nights, and come home to a shelf full of Japan Record Awards, you’ll believe me when I tell you what a fucking star you are.”

“Speaking of the Budokan, Ranko, are you ready for Monday? Any last-minute questions?” Amaya leaned down as she spoke, picking up the marker rail and re-attaching it to the base of the whiteboard on the wall.

Ranko blushed a deeper shade than the dusty reddish-pink hue of her sweater dress. She really wished the Yokai folks had been able to schedule the release of the Dapper Dragons’ second album for a different day, but she’d declined to mention why she would have preferred a later date. The sooner we get it out there, the sooner we can start to make some real money, she thought hopefully.

“Nope,” Ranko said as she strode back over to the round table at the center of the room. She snatched up the black pen, scrawling the kanji for orchid girl in the blank at the bottom of the last page of the contract. 

“I’m ready.”