The moment we stepped into the green room Johnny couldn’t help but get excited. He made sure to take in as much of it as possible, and to jam as much of the complimentary food into his mouth as possible. Kei and Shinsuke were on edge. I’d left out that we’d have a window to play one verse of our lead single from the album until the day after, and they were not happy to find that out. Crunch time arrived. So we all got together and practiced in the studio thanks to Kashiwagi’s help. We ran it through for hours until we were one-hundred percent happy with the way it sounded.

That Sunday morning we piled into the shitty company van and were bussed down to the studio an hour away from our hometown. It was a tight fit in the back, and Kashiwagi was listening to an album that had a birthdate earlier than mine. When we arrived, we were ushered into through the front door and up some stairs to the waiting room.

Not the best time to be nervous. The wait was just making things worse.

Johnny spoke with his mouth full of buffet, “On national TV for our first real gig, that’s some serious clout.”

“It’s not really national, the audience will be big, but not that big.”

“Whatever.”

I looked over to Kei, who was seemingly on the verge of a full-blown breakdown for some reason. I always thought he was the one with the coolest head out of all of us. Shinsuke was as nervous as he usually was before we went out to play to a crowd of people. “It’s normal to get nervous. There’ll be a live audience of a few dozen people so just focus on them and we should sail through it no problem, right?”

Easier said than done Miyako.

“I guess you’re right,” Kei sighed, “Don’t look straight into the camera and it may as well not be there.”

“As soon as we start playing, you’ll forget all about it,” Shinsuke assured him. “I hope.”

“This is the clubs last hurrah, so let’s do it right.”

The applause was deafening. The lights were blinding. We were escorted out onto the set of a morning TV show for our prefecture. The set was a colourful vomit mishmash of shapes and icons that I didn’t recognize. There was a small set of bleachers to the left of a desk where a panel of four people were sat. I’m not, nor was I ever a morning TV person. I’d only learnt their names during the crash course that Kashiwagi gave us in the minutes before.

I took the right most seat, with Johnny, Shinsuke and Kei lining up next to me. The applause died down. The panel took a moment to banter with each other before turning to us. The host, Yuuta, singled me out first. He was an older man with thinning hair and a kind face. His trademark was the way he shrivelled up when laughing at something.

“A little young to be getting into showbiz, aren’t you?”

“What’s your excuse? You don’t look a day over thirteen.” My joke landed and earned a chuckle from the audience. My sharp tongue was just something I liked to use when I didn’t know what else to say.

He cut straight to the chase on the next question, “I’m sure everyone at home would like to hear your side of the story on that video that took the internet by storm a few months ago. For those not in the know, here’s a quick recap.”

He segued into showing the same video that had caused all of this trouble in the first place again. It was shown to us on one of the TV screens on the set. Being a spectator to my own poor behaviour was too revealing for my liking, and I could feel myself becoming flush as the embarrassment started to get to me. The video ended with the man fleeing, and the audience gasping at the events that unfolded.

“Shocking scenes there. And we received a lot of messages from watchers across the prefecture who’ve had similar experiences. Has this happened before?”

“Thankfully that was the first time it ever happened to us. But I wasn’t expecting it, our town is usually pretty quiet. It’s been getting busier and busier recently.”

One of the female panellists, Hinata, lined up the next question, “Why did you decide to take a stand there?”

“What really upset me was that it was happening to my sister. We’ve been through a lot recently, so seeing people giving her trouble was very upsetting. They were trying to predate on her, hoping that she’d fold and go with them, and I don’t want to imagine what’d happen then.”

Yuuta was visibly uncomfortable with how I’d described it, “Strong words.”

“I don’t think there’s much benefit to softening the seriousness of what this was. That’s how these people operate.” He nodded for the sake of being polite more than anything else, but Hinata seemed to be on my side. “I’ve always been a bit… standoffish, but these kinds of people wilt under pressure very easily.”

“We’ve seen from the police commissioner that people shouldn’t try to escalate situations like this.”

“He’s probably right. What I did was entirely emotional.”

Yuuta took back the lead, “Not the usual kind of emotions we see on this show.”

“Women are allowed to get angry at things too.” The crowd applauded my obvious rhetoric.

“And who are your friends here?” Hinata asked.

“I’m Johnny. We’ve been in the school’s music club together for years.”

“Kei.”

“Shinsuke.”

“So tell us a little about yourselves, and why you decided to try and release your own album? Very ambitious for a group of students.”

“We’re not planning to make a career of it right now,” Johnny explained, “Call it a coincidence, but a lot has gone on recently that made us think of it as something we could do. We were approached by our producer after playing a gig at our local festival.”

“We wanted to do something big as our last act as the club,” I continued. “A local talent agency got in touch with us and asked us if we’d like to use their studio.”

Hinata nodded, “And what kind of inspirations went into the album?”

“This is a very personal album for all of us, not just because it’s ours, but because a lot has happened recently for us – and that has found its way into the lyrics of our music. I want to keep my card close to the chest, but recently I’ve gone through a loss in the family. That changed a lot about me and my situation. Everyone had a say, but Kei and Shinsuke aren’t much for song writing.”

We’d run out of time to make our case, Yuuta cut in to move things along. “Well that sounds very exciting! And for all you folks at home, don’t change the channel because our young superstars here are going to be performing an exert from that album when we close the show.”

I nodded and gave him a pleasant smile. It made me want to barf.

The rest of the show was a mixture of inane commentary, clips a few months past their sell-by date taken off of Twitter, and random interjections by the panellists. Mercifully we’d come on at the tail end of the two-hour block. Sitting there and looking pleasant was tough enough already. When they finally cut to the ad break, we were waved over to the stage area to get ready.

“You feeling alright Shinsuke?” I asked.

“That was the hard part, let’s impress some people.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Kei cheered.

“Is this blows up, I’m going to have cheated myself out of the frontman spot,” Johnny mused.

“Don’t start this argument again,” I moaned, grappling with the microphone stand. “Just like we practiced. Put on autopilot and let’s get it done.”

The crowd applauded as the lights rose again and bragged people back into the show. We nervously stood by our weapons of choice and waited for the word to start. An agonizing five minutes passed by before Yuuta finally started to wrap up the programme.

“Thank you for joining us this morning! We’ve had some fantastic guests today, I hope that everyone watching at home has a great day, whether at home or at work. To lead us off, here is Seifuku, with a song from their upcoming album, take it away.”

Johnny didn’t wait for us to be ready, which was probably a solid idea. Less time to think about it meant less chance of freaking out. I stepped up to the microphone as the guys started playing. This one was for Shinsuke.

 I just hoped that everyone else appreciated it as much as we did.