Since we wanted to make the announcement exactly at noon, the entirety of the GIMA staff arrived an hour early—save for the accountant. As always, we met in the dance studio because it was the most spacious room.
Although we had sent a draft of the announcement to the advertising company—which owned many spots on the busiest streets of the country—to be reviewed, Jun was still working on the art thirty minutes before it went live. They were small details, of course; it would've been illegal to change the entire concept.
Meanwhile, Aya reviewed all of the text that was going to appear in both the advertisements and the social media posts, including a short FAQ.
I kept an eye on everything that was going on. Seeing the information scattered through our social media made me realize we needed a place where we could post everything related to us in an organized manner so that fans knew where to find the information. That way, it also would be easier for other companies to find our contact information, but that had to wait; I had to focus on the announcement.
When fifteen minutes remained, Aya scheduled the posts to be published at the same time, and Jun uploaded the finished version of the announcement in the many formats the advertisement spots needed after we all reviewed them with him.
The only thing left to do was to wait. I thought five minutes had passed, but it had only been one.
"Kaito," called Sanae, who sat on the wooden floor with the rest of the girls.
"Yes?" I replied, sitting on a chair along with the rest of the team.
"We didn't want to ask this because we know it'll be problematic, but we'd love to go see the announcement in person."
"I actually don't know if it'll be problematic. A lot has happened since you were all together in public last. I guess you'll be recognized, but it also might be the last opportunity you have to do something like this without a crowd surrounding you."
The five of them stared at me as I sat in thought, looking down at the floor. It took several seconds for me to say, "Wear a cap and tint your glasses to be more discrete. Make sure to stick to Butcher the entire time, okay?"
With the biggest of smiles, they stood up and approached their bags hanging in the corner of the room. Luckily, they all had caps from when Tomokazu requested samples for the merchandise, which didn't have more than Blostars' flower logo. There were so many that we all ended up with one to shade our faces from the summer sun.
One minute later, they seemed ready to go.
"Record it for the rest of us," I said.
Astra asked, "You aren't coming?"
"We would draw too much attention being a group of twelve people."
She ran to me and pulled me by the arm. "I know, but you have to come because you're our manager."
I stood up but stopped after a few steps. "I can't. I'm your manager but I'm the CEO of the company as well. I need to stay in case anything happens after the announcement."
Umi added, "She meant that you're the reason we are all here and it wouldn't be fair for you not to see it."
My mind went blank. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't…"
Astra pulled me again. "We don't care, you're coming with us."
Not wanting to hurt her, I didn't try to stop her. Before realizing it, I was one step out of the room.
From the hallway, I shouted, "Aya, please keep an eye on—"
"We will, don't worry," she replied.
Once downstairs, Aki put a pink cap on my head and I quickly tinted my glasses black. Not even giving him an explanation, the girls asked Butcher to come with us.
Eventually, Astra stopped pulling me along. I explained to Butcher what we were doing as we reached the monorail station, which we took to Nova Shibuya: one of the most famous commercial districts in the country that had the busiest crossing in the city.
Several people in the monorail glanced at us multiple times but didn't approach. Although it was good seeing our supposed blending outfits working, it also was a bad sign we had already been recognized.
We got off a little over a minute later. After walking downstairs, the crossing was only one street away. Many people kept glancing at us as we walked down the sidewalk.
"Maybe we should split," I suggested. Even though there was only one Butcher, I could protect them for the one minute we were going to watch the announcement as long as no crowd surrounded us.
Astra instantly refused, "No, we are going to see it together."
Even the girls were surprised to see her acting like that.
We reached the crossing and stood on the wide sidewalk, busy as always. Although I didn't know about the girls, I didn't frequent the center of the city. It still was stunning to see thousands of people swimming across the crossing and to get your face shone on by hundreds of advertisement spots. However, it was especially imposing to stand here knowing an announcement about my company and group was about to be shown on those screens.
None of us said a single word during the three minutes that remained until noon, which soon turned into seconds. I could feel my heart in my throat as I watched the clock tick on my glasses.
The number eleven switched to twelve and the minutes to zero. Most of the spots changed at the same time and our announcement appeared on the medium-sized screens—which still were huge—since renting one of the four big screens was insanely expensive.
We hadn't recorded all of the songs, yet we knew there had to be at least fragments of some of them. With that in mind, we rushed to record the fragments Umi believed to be the most impactful, from the songs about their pasts, over the course of three days.
The cover art for the song Sunbeam Supernova was the first thing to appear. In it, Astra's capsule was drawn at the bottom and a supernova was drawn above it. The art was accompanied by the song playing in the background and the text "Astra's Sunbeam Supernova" on top of the image, emphasizing Astra's name.
Only a few seconds later, the art and the music transitioned into Rain In Heart: Umi's song about her past. The art was very literal to the title, as it showed a hollow, purple heart with Umi's silhouette sitting inside it and playing the guitar while rain poured down.
Risa's song was the next one to come up: Silent Harmony. Two flowers stood in the middle of the cover art with a black background: one was blue and short, while the other one was golden and taller.
Transitioning again, it was the turn for Aki's song: Drowning. Its art was completely red, with a sea even redder at the bottom. However, Jun didn't add the drowning silhouette he had planned to add since Aki didn't want to make herself look like the victim in the context of the song, which was reasonable. Instead, Jun drew Aki's green eyes above the sea. Even though they were barely visible, they were creepily beautiful, and we all loved it.
Lastly, Sanae's song started playing and the cover art appeared. It was the same as Risa's but with the roles swapped. The blue flower was bigger and brighter, while the golden one was shorter and dimmer. While they were very simple pieces of art, we believed no more was necessary to convey the emotions they wanted to share.
Abruptly cutting off, the screen became white and black text appeared. "Featuring a special guest."
The three seconds Jun had managed to animate started playing. In it, Aeryx's hair waved in front of the camera, while her face stayed out of frame. We didn't want to reveal who it was yet since we hadn't recorded the song, and we wanted to keep the surprise—as obvious as it was.
Finally, the album's release date appeared, along with its cover and our social media accounts.
The announcement ended, just to enter the loop for the week we had paid for. Although the announcement had lasted less than thirty seconds, it felt like an eternity. Nonetheless, it was more than enough for me to understand Astra; it wasn't a simple announcement.
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