“I refuse,” Reina said.

Their Producer ran her hand through her dark hair, combing the end of it carefully. “I know this is sudden, but the three of you need to trust me on this decision.”

“When you scouted me, you told me I’d be able to perform at the top soon. This group won’t do that.”

“That’s a little early to say.”

“Is it? One of these girls is never on time and the other one can’t perform in front of a crowd.”

Hana looked away after that comment, looking down at her shoes. Reina probably didn’t know that part of the reason why she had messed up in the first place was because of the overwhelming presence she had given off as they passed each other.

“That’s because your definition of ‘on time’ is over an hour early,” Akari spoke up.

“I would rather be working with more professional people than what you’ve given me,” Reina ignored the girl who had just spoken to her.

“Producer-san,” Hana said, interrupting the two. “Why did you choose to put the three of us together? It’s not like I’ve ever worked with Fukuyama-san before.”

Their Producer sat back in their chair. “Simply put, I think this unit can bring out the best in each other.”

“How so, if you could be inclined to tell us?” Reina said. Normally she was much more courteous with talking to her superiors, but it seemed this situation had broken past her ability to stay polite.

“The three of you are bound together through your interactions with Watanabe-san,” the Producer turned her monitor to face the three of them.

A click from her mouse started to play a recording from the NeoStars very first appearance on stage as part of 765, with Reina and Akari both dancing to Sayoko Takayama’s song. Hana was immediately taken back to that moment as she watched the two, reliving the fierce competition they had between each other despite only being back up dancers.

“The two of you push each other to do better. I think we can use this rivalry to help you improve,” the Producer continued. She then looked at Hana, who did her best to maintain eye contact. “Meanwhile with Kanagawa-san, I can tell that the two of you are already very close to each other. Am I correct in saying this?”

“It’s true,” Hana responded. If anything, she was relieved to be working with Akari more. They were both good friends, and the redhead had already saved one of her performances in the past.

“And who is going to be the center for this unit?” Reina asked.

“Three of you will need to make that decision,” their Producer responded. “The Supernova Project won’t have an official concert until every group has received a CD release, so until then, you will be performing in mini-lives.

“How long do we have until our first performance?”

“In a few weeks, the first three units will be making a live television appearance. It’s enough time for every unit to get acquainted with each other and also prepare their acts for the live. Your personal songs will be coming in the next week or so, depending on how long the composer and lyricists will take.”

Hana looked over to her left, seeing Reina with her arms crossed in her seat. While she didn’t seem angry at the situation, the girl definitely seemed to be displeased.

“We will do our best,” Akari said.

“I also plan on having girls appear on other events such as variety shows and meet and greets to serve as promotion for this concert, including the three of you.”

“Thank you for the opportunity,” Reina said. She was speaking politely again, as if she hadn’t just insulted two of her coworkers a minute ago.

“Your first album will be the third to be released. Before that will be an album with Sonoda-san and Ellingham-san.

“Is it safe to assume one of them will also include Otokura Natsumi?”

Their Producer nodded. “I wanted to show continuity between lives. That means the backup dancers from our first performance and then those who performed in our mini live will be getting focus.

“I won’t disappoint,” Akari said.

“You haven’t yet,” the Producer smiled. She looked at her watch. “That’s all that I wanted to say to you today. However, I will update you in the upcoming week as your songs finalize so we can get them recorded. In the meantime, your practice should be starting soon.”

Akari and Reina got up and left the room quickly, although Hana stayed behind.

“Is there something you’d like to talk about?” their Producer asked

“I’m sorry,” Hana replied. “There’s just a lot of information for me to unpack now.”

“That is understandable.”

Hana still had some lingering doubts about being chosen, but this was the best time to express them. “Are you sure I can do this? I… just feel that compared to Fukuyama-san and Akari-senpai I’m not good enough to perform with both of them.”

“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

“It’s just such a big opportunity for me despite messing up the show on Saturday.”

“I wouldn’t say you messed up the show,” her Producer responded. “While you did have an unfortunate start, your fellow idols were able to help you recover. In the long run, it ended up being one of the more memorable performances in spite of the bad things that happened.”

“Are you just saying that to be nice?”

“At the end of the performance, when it was you on that stage with the guitar and piano accompanying you, you were still shining. When you auditioned you mentioned how you wanted a second chance at being an idol. The love story you’re looking for may as well have started last weekend.”

Hana looked away as she felt some heat rising to her cheeks. She didn’t expect her Producer to remember what she had said all those months ago, and after hearing someone else say it to her she felt a little embarrassed for saying it in the first place. “Th… thank you,” she said quietly.

“Were you scared to perform? I still don’t know why you froze up like that.”

“There was just a lot on my mind before I started performing,” Hana responded. “With so many good performances before me, I didn’t want to make them look bad with my own. All the thinking got to my head and before I knew it, I missed my mark on stage. With no one else there for me, I just froze.”

“We’ll need to fix that in these next few months, but I’m sure you can overcome this.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t think you could overcome these issues.”

Hana nodded, smiling to herself as she felt a little more reassured about the situation. She got up, bowing before she left for practice. “Thank you for everything. I’ll do my best”

Leaving the room, she ran into Akari waiting for her outside.

“What took you so long?” she tilted her head slightly to the side, her hair moving along with that motion.

“I was just talking to the Producer about the performance,” Hana responded. “Where is Fukuyama-san?”

“She’s already in the practice room. She probably started without us.”

“I guess we should join her then.”

Practice for the day consisted of an hour of singing, followed by two hours of dance practice. Because they didn’t have any songs to perform yet, they went over the ones from the mini-live. Hana’s dancing was definitely worse than the other two’s, but she did her best to keep up with the other them despite how much better they were than her.

“Stop, stop” their dance trainer said, clapping her hands together.

As the music came to a close, Hana finally had a chance to catch her breath. Her breathing was a lot heavier than usual, probably from the extra effort she had been putting in.

“That’ll be all for today, good work everyone. I can already tell your performances together will be promising.”

“Thank you for today,” Hana bowed to the instructor.

With practice over for the day, she walked over to the shelves in the practice room to gather her stuff before going home. She went to get a drink from her water bottle, but nothing came out of the squeeze bottle’s red nozzle.

Reina walked up to her, handing her a new water bottle. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Hana responded quietly. As much as she would’ve wanted to, she couldn’t do anything to hide her exhaustion from the older girl.

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Akari said across from them, wiping her face with a towel.

“I can’t have any of you passing out on us from overexertion,” Reina said. “Considering the timeframe we have with each other, we can’t allow any setbacks.”

“You ruined the sentiment.”

“Either way, I’ll be leaving now,” Reina grabbed her things quickly and left the room, putting in her earbuds before she even opened the door.

“It’s not just you,” Akari said to Hana, pulling the front of her practice shirt back and forth to cool herself. “Ah, that last song really wore me out.”

Hana sighed. “I didn’t think we’d go through everything so thoroughly on the first day.”

“First day for the unit, but a few months into being an idol.”

“You make it look really easy.”

“I’m actually exhausted,” Akari laughed. “The thing keeping me going until practice finished was that my mom told me she’s cooking a big dinner to celebrate the concert being a success.”

“That sounds nice,” Hana responded. “I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in a long time. At least not since I moved here.”

“I’m going to be leaving now,” the trainer said as she started to walk towards the door. “Make sure to lock everything on your way out if you’re the last ones here.”

“Yes ma’am,” the two responded.

Akari looked at her phone. “I think I need to get going now.”

“That’s okay, have fun at dinner!”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Akari waved as she opened the door to the training room. “I’ll make sure to invite you over some time soon.”

Today, the training room had only been used by a handful of people compared to the large groups of over a dozen that usually occupied it. With no one else in the room, there wasn’t much for Hana to clean up. She straightened her hair in the mirror and left to write at the roof of the office.

She hadn’t been up there in over a month, but she wanted to be able to take in a breath of fresh air without actually being on the street. With how late practice had gone until, there weren’t any other people in the office aside from the assistant, who was busy working on something while his headphones were on.
Climbing the extra flights of stairs felt a little difficult after today’s practice. As she put in a little more exertion than usual to open the door to the roof, she had a feeling that she was going to wake up sore in the morning.

As it turned out, she wasn’t the only girl who was still at the office.

At the other end of the roof, Reina was still dancing after hours of practice and after an already successful performance. While the other girl’s body moved along to a melody Hana couldn’t hear, she recognized moves from a routine they had practiced earlier.

From behind, Hana could only watch in awe as Reina danced even better than when they were all dancing together. Every move looked more refined and purposeful than when they had gone over the dance routine half an hour ago. She was illuminated by the moonlight and the reflection the office’s “765” sign gave off.

She only stopped after turning for one of her moves and pointing away from the crowd. In this case, she pointed directly at Hana.

Hana slowly put up a hand to wave hello. In response, Reina took one of her earbuds out of her ear and started walking towards her.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her light blue eyes looked right at Hana, who struggled to keep eye contact.

“I’m sorry, I thought you had already left,” Hana responded.

“My ride said she’d be coming soon. In the meantime, I was practicing.”

“Do you ever think you’ve practiced enough? Even when I first met you, you were also practicing after everyone had already finished.”

Reina didn’t respond to her.

“I mean, you’re already really good,” Hana admitted. “Doesn’t that mean you can take a break sometimes?”

“Kanagawa-san, why are you an idol?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t think it’s a hard question,” Reina said. “Why are you an idol? What makes you a necessary part of this company?”

“I…. I’m here because I want to,” Hana tried to think of a better reason, but it was hard to come up with something immediately. She had been expecting an answer to her own question.“Well, being an idol was a dream of mine ever since I was a little girl.”

“Then we have the same dream.”

“Really?”

“Us, and probably half of the other girls in the company, and even more in other companies, and countless others who can’t make it past the first round of auditions.”

“Oh.”

Reina shifted her weight to her other foot. “What I’m saying, is that it’s easy to have a dream. The amount of effort you put in determines how close you can be to achieve it.”

“Is that why you’re always working so hard then?” Hana asked. “Even though you’re already so talented.”

“I work hard because I know that if I don’t, there’s someone just as willing who will take my place,” Reina responded. “I’m sure you know what that feels like with how your last company turned out.”

Hana didn’t know what to say back to her. She hadn’t told anyone about this, not even Akari. Only the Producer and other staff knew about her past because it was required to know.

“You were fired because you couldn’t sing one day, correct?” Reina kept talking in the absence of a response from Hana. “Your best quality is your voice, and a year later you still can’t seem to be able to sing in front of an audience. It’s ironically tragic.”

Hana looked at her feet, although there wasn’t much to see in the growing darkness. “...why are you bringing this up?” she asked. “I just wanted to be friends with everyone here and have a fresh start.”

“I’m just talking to you about the real world,” Reina responded. “Can you really say you’re proud of that performance? Are you satisfied with the fact that if no one stepped in to save you, you would have never finished it?”

“I…” Hana couldn’t disagree with her, but at the end of the day, she was still able to perform. “We did the best we could with that situation. I’m happy with that.”

Reina sighed. “You won’t get very far if you settle for mediocre. Don’t take this conversation personally, but if you’re going to keep performing as you did in the live house, then you’ll end up exactly the same as all of the other bright-eyed idols I’ve met throughout the years: jobless, still chasing that dream despite their failure.”

“I won’t,” Hana responded. She wasn’t entirely sure about that statement. “...I can’t.”

“You’re in a unit with me now,” Reina said. She looked away as her phone buzzed with an incoming call. “Don’t bring me down. Top idol is my only goal. This is all that I have for myself.”

She left without saying anything else, leaving Hana alone on the roof of the office.

The pink-haired idol sat down on the rooftop, leaning back against the door and looking up at the stars that were starting to come out. They had months before their next concert would be, but now she had doubts that her unit could even survive until then. In just a few weeks, they’d be getting another chance to perform.

That wouldn’t be enough time for them to get ready.

It was going to be a lot of work before all of them could meet eye to eye.