The Simulacrum - Chapter 90~ Part 3

Ah. The long-awaited school festival of Blue Cherry High. It was a day full of bustle, and fun, and romance, and…

“Leo! Come quick, there’s trouble!”

“Oh come on! I just finished fixing the lights! What is it this time?”

Angie visibly shuddered in response to my shouting, though to be fair, I pretty much had to be yelling to let my voice be heard in the noisy backstage.

“The back entrance is getting clogged again! There are too many people trying to get in! We need a boy to set them straight right now!”

“Just ask Josh then!” I responded while doing my best to organize the dozens of electric and audio cables lying on the ground so that hopefully nobody would trip over them.

“He can’t! They are holding the fort at the main entrance with Pascal!” Angie shouted back. “I’d go and help them, but I have to change!”

“It’s that late already?” I glanced at my phone, and let out the mother of all groans. “Bloody hell, it’s already this late? Go change quickly, the concert is starting in twenty minutes!”

“Roger!”

With that, the energetic Celestial scampered away to the back of the gym, where we set up a portable tent so that the girls could change into their costumes in relative privacy.

Anyhow, I made sure that all the connectors were secured, and as I left the backstage, even my thoughts were nearly drowned out as I collided with a wall of cacophonous noise coming from the hundreds of attendees crammed into the gym. Needless to say, preparations for our class performance were in full swing. In fact, things were kind of wildly over-swinging at the moment, due to the fact that nobody expected that we would be drawing in a crowd this size.

When Mrs. Applebottom originally told us that the school festival would be open to the public, I thought she only meant the families of the students. I was wrong. I expected maybe a hundred of our school mates to attend our concert, but I seriously underestimated the hype our announcement of an idol-concert generated over the weeks. I had a sneaking suspicion it was heavily fanned by the four creepy amigos and their network of ‘red blooded males’, as they called it, but without evidence, it was little more than a hunch. Though to be honest, the fact that they had been camping out since last evening to be the first in line, and that they were currently standing in the first row while decked out in a whole set of crazy fan gear, from headbands to glow-sticks and flags, certainly made my suspicions more justified.

In any case, the crowd was swelling by the minute, and just as Angie was telling me, the back entrance of the gym seemed to be the most critical area at the moment. By the looks of it, the two placeholder girls stationed there couldn’t deal with the veritable flood of guests. Without further ado, I dove into the sea of loudly idling attendees and tunneled my way over to my destination with the stoic determination of an especially damn-deficient rhinoceros.

“LISTEN UP, YOU UNRULY SIMPLETONS!” I bellowed the moment I arrived, drawing everyone’s attention to myself. “IF I DON’T SEE A SINGLE LINE IN FRONT OF ME IN THE NEXT THIRTY SECONDS, NOBODY IS GETTING IN! HAVE I MADE MYSELF CLEAR!?”

As expected of placeholders, once clear instructions were given, they followed them without any protests, and in a couple of seconds, they formed up into a tidy line.

“Thank you! Make sure you show your wrist band to the ticket inspectors, and get moving!”

After some initial hitches, things soon became orderly, and I could let out a sigh in relief.

The ticket wrist bands were Elly’s idea, and while at first I thought it was just going to be a cute role playing element, it turned out she was extremely serious. Through dad-in-law’s connections, she somehow procured an entire box of them, and they completely sold out before the school festival. Granted, we were selling them at a nominal fee, but looking back on it, I should’ve expected a crowd like this. As always, hindsight had an annoying habit of rearing its ugly head when I was least expecting it. Though again, I guess that’s what hindsight was all about…

While I mused on this, the line slowly thinned as the stream of newcomers slowed to a trickle, and for good riddance, as I was pretty sure we’ve already reached the gym’s capacity… twice over.

Admittedly, I could certainly understand why everyone would be interested in our event. With the support of the Dracis’s and their record label, we had a professional setup one wouldn’t really expect from a high school production. The stage already felt like something of an overkill, but we even had a full set of enormous speakers, multiple remote-controlled colored spotlights hanging from the scaffolds, a laser-show globe, and even three different smoke machines. Elly had spent a long time explaining what each one of them did, and how a fog machine was entirely different from a haze machine, but let’s not get into the gritty details right now.

“Good work, Dunning.”

I glanced over to the source of the unexpected compliment, and found Armband Guy standing there. Though, on second look, calling him by his usual nickname was a misnomer this time around, as he currently wasn’t wearing his arm band, opting for a waiter’s uniform… combined with a high-collared vampire costume. As far as I could gather, their class couldn’t decide whether they should make a haunted house or a café, so they went with a haunted café.

“Thanks for the help,” I responded with a thin-lipped smile. “I think we’re over the worst of it, so you can return to your class if you want.”

“No need. My class suspended its operations for the duration of the concert. In fact, I believe every class had chosen to do the same.”

“That would certainly explain the number of students wearing costumes in the crowd…” I muttered as I glanced over the roiling ocean of people in front of me. I tried looking for familiar faces, but it was hard to recognize anyone in the dim lighting and with all the artificial fog drifting about. “Now that I think about it, where’s Judy? Last I’d seen her, she was inspecting tickets at the main entrance, wasn’t she?”

“Sennoma was called backstage a while ago. I thought you would have met her there.”

“I guess we missed each other. Maybe she’s helping Elly and the others getting into their costumes?”

My curiosity roused, I was just about to Far Glance her way, but was interrupted by Pascal asking, “Dracis is performing on the stage today, is she not? Are you not going to the front to watch her?”

“I… suppose I should?” a responded a touch uncertainly, and he honest to goodness patted me on the back.

“Just go. I will stay here to keep things orderly.”

“What about the main entrance?”

“Bernstein should be able to handle it.”

“… In that case, don’t mind if I do.”

He nodded, and I rolled up my proverbial sleeves before wading through the crowd again. The big rush was over, the lights were working, and the instrumental background music told me the concert was about to begin at any minute, so I shamelessly elbowed my way to the very front of the audience. It was only then that I realized that the gap I found in the first row was all thanks to everyone keeping half a step of distance from the creep quartet, but I figured so long as I ignored them, everything would be fine.

Then, as if everyone was waiting for me to arrive, the lights went out, the ambient music was phased out, and then… The show began with a BOOM! And I meant that literally. That was both startling and a little alarming.

I was pretty sure nobody said a single word about pyrotechnics to me, and— wait! Are those flame jets?! What the actual, Biblical hell, princess?!

I crossed my fingers, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t trigger the fire alarm and wash the concert away, and miraculously enough, nothing happened. Or rather, nothing unplanned, as in the meantime the spotlights came to life and our trio of idols burst forth onto the stage.

Elly, Angie, and the class rep were wearing matching outfits consisting of short, frilly dresses, with simple vests and enormous bows on their lower backs, thigh-high boots, and loose detached sleeves. All of them had black as their base color, with red, blue, and violet highlights, respectively. Their hairdos naturally also received some touch-ups, and Elly even got her nostalgic hair drills back, making the trio even prettier than usual. It was more or less as expected. This was an idol concert, so cuteness was the name of the game.

Well, at least until the music started. Maybe I should say, ‘As expected’, but the princess’s preferences naturally influenced our choice of genre, and the audience’s surprise was palpable when instead of a cutesy love song, the sound of an electric guitar lead into… a metal cover of a popular cutesy love song. Sure, Elly’s tastes were there, but we obviously wouldn’t depart that far from the beaten path.

The crowd’s confusion was soon washed away by the thumping of the bass, and by the time the princess started singing, the concert was already back in full swing. Since she was the only one with any background in music, Elly had to do all the heavy lifting and sing the lead vocals on every song, while Angie and Ammy would mainly just dance and do backup vocals during certain parts. The hyperactive Celestial was naturally way more into the dance parts, while the class rep preferred to focus on the singing, so on average, they provided more than adequate support for the blonde girl in the middle.

Speaking of her, I gave my full attention to my girlfriend, and the rules of convenient timing once again showed their hand, with the lights switching around to focus on her, just as she started on the second chorus.

Let us be clear on one thing: I would sooner commit seppuku with a rusty grapefruit spoon than to say something as trite as ‘I fell in love all over again’, but I had to admit, seeing her having a blast on the stage made me feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy emotions. I was genuinely happy for her, and I even felt a tinge of pride, even though I knew it was completely unwarranted.

Elly dreamed of being a singer, and the fact that the conflict with the Knights was actively holding her back was the main reason why I was still working on resolving it. Well, that, and avoiding any potential battles of mortal danger, but it was mostly the former. I would’ve really loved if I could say this performance was the result of my hard work, but that would’ve been disingenuous.

A concert was one of the more common high school cultural festival tropes, and I had little to do with it being chosen for this event. As for safety, even if the Knights were still prowling at large, we were at the heart of the local Magi territory, still on high alert after repeated incidents. There was literally no way an attack could happen, so recruiting the Penny and Co. did little, if anything at all, to raise the security of this performance. At most, this served as a trial run, a glimpse at my ultimate end-goal, and I’d be lying if I said seeing my girlfriend singing her heart out in front of an audience didn’t make me even more motivated than before.

Unfortunately, all good things had to eventually come to an end, and the same was true for today’s main event. The trio on the stage cycled through the nine songs we practiced one by one, all of them metal covers of popular pop songs I’d naturally never heard of before. The girls were very insistent about their popularity, so I left the playlist in their hands and focused on the more tangible parts of the organization process.

Still, I could at least recognize the last song, and after the final bombastic chorus, the stage lights were supposed to dramatically cut out on the last beat. They didn’t.

That was a pretty lame spot to have technical difficulties, and I was just about to head to the backstage to figure out what went wrong when the spotlights focused on Elly again.

“Thank you, thank you! You are all breathtaking!” She waited for a moment for the cheers to quiet down, then exclaimed, “We still have a very special performance left for a very special someone!”

That… definitely wasn’t in the script, but before I could get any more baffled, I was outright bamboozled when another set of stage lights focused on the curtains in the back, and out walked Judy, dressed in the exact same costume as the rest, save for the pastel pink highlights. She also had her hairdo touched up, and wore her favorite bow as well. Combined with the costume and the light makeup on her face, she certainly didn’t pale in comparison to any of the other girls on stage.

I was still in the process of digesting this development when she stood next to the princess, and the music started. It was a slower melody, and it didn’t take me long to recognize it as a Dragon Prodigy power ballad we listened to while putting together the song list, but it wasn’t the included in the final cut. It was a song about the hardships of true love and how one had to just smash through all obstacles in the way. It was also, unsurprisingly, a duet.

Case in point, my girlfriends began to sing in tandem, Judy’s sonorous and rich voice perfectly complimenting Elly’s cheery, fluttering soprano. It started out slow at first, but this was a power metal song we were talking about, and a long one, and with each bridge, the tempo became faster and the performance more bombastic, whipping the audience into a frenzy that easily matched the fervor of the main event. As for me…

“Well, crap. I think I just fell in love all over again…”

I had no other choice but to look for a rusty spoon now, I supposed, but I couldn’t find any. Instead, when I glanced over at the quartet on my left, my eyes met with those of Mr. Bowl Cut.

We didn’t share a single word (not that we could, considering the thumping bass and the screaming crowd), yet he casually reached out towards me, holding a pair of red and green glow sticks.

I accepted them, and if this was a manga, this would’ve been the point where the art style changed and we both turned into JoJo characters to symbolize something about manly friendship or what have you. I refused to have any of that, so I quickly overlaid the mental image with a chibi version of Ichiko in her fox form happily chasing a chibi version of a terrified Penny around the base, and everything was right in the world again.

Still, as I looked at the glow sticks in my hands, I couldn’t help but feel a little iffy. I mean, I certainly wasn’t the easily excited type, so wouldn’t waving these around like an idiot be completely incongruous with my character?

Such doubts lasted only until I glanced up, just as my girlfriends struck a pose together at the end of the second chorus.

“Consistency is overrated…”

And with that, I threw my hands in the air, letting the mood of moment carry me, hoping it would last as long as possible.