"Halstadt-san? It's about time," the manager called, stiffening. "W-where's your drummer?!"
"Watashi Desuuuuu," Kaede skipped in on cue.
She struck a pose with a peace sign, the high school culture rubbing off on her. Konrad wasn't a fan, but it still earned her a relieved sigh. The poor manager had aged a decade since they met.
"Thank God," he said, wiping his sweat. "Didn't want another delay like Hoshi-san's band—"
Without looking up from her relentless bass lines, Yuki-san snorted.
"So they ditched the original name, too? Sellouts."
There was no edge to it, but she didn't laugh, either.
She kept playing, her fingers already blistered. And they were yet to enter the stage.
Konrad's hands trembled, too.
"Anyway," the manager said, looking him in the eye. "Anything I should say in your intro?"
A gulp. He already hated what he was about to say.
"Nope, let me handle it. Tell me when."
From Kaede's expression, he could tell they'd fight an uphill battle. Maou was also nervous, and Yuki-san played until the last moment as if nothing else mattered.
"Okay, then like, now?" The manager could decide if that was a question or a statement.
The cheering would never end out there.
Whether the first song had finished or not was hard to tell.
No ceremony, no last moment morale-bolstering speech. That guy wasn't leaving space for them, either. Konrad grasped Kaede's gaze and guided it to Yuki-san's fingers.
He didn't need telepathy, she understood. Skipping closer, she grabbed the bassist's fingers.
It must have looked like a calming gesture for an outsider, but a lot more was happening.
The concentration on Kaede's face, and the sheer surprise on Yuki-chan's.
"Let's go," the dragoness whispered before stepping away, the blisters already gone.
Damn, Konrad wanted to learn that spell—
But it had to happen another time.
"Let's go," he repeated, gathering the band with all the fake confidence he could muster.
He gripped his notes hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
Right as they reached the stage, the other band came down with legs wobbling. Again, Kaede's face told him more than her words or even telepathy could. But the crowd was loud.
All things considered, they had a tough opponent.
"Okay," he mumbled, climbing the first step. "I've got this. Give me like twenty seconds, then come up behind me. If all goes well, I'll finish my speech by then."
Too optimistic? He turned the notes invisible for everyone but him.
There was no time to memorize it, but reading it from a paper would have made him look bad.
He couldn't afford that. Sympathy. That was all that mattered.
If the audience hated them no matter what, they would lose. Not the mana alone—he thought about Yuki-san's future too. Which was a terrible idea. He put even more pressure on himself.
Too much to handle.
But at the edge of the stage now, the Immigrant Band was close behind him.
What was he thinking? His naming sense—
No. A deep sigh, and one last big step. He estimated the distance, squeezed his eyes shut, and wouldn't open them until he reached the mic.
Fuck. That was a lot of people, their cheers dying the moment they noticed him.
"Shit," Konrad let it slip, his voice echoing in the silence. Well, no backing away now. "Hi, um, this is way too nerve-wracking. Last I was this nervous when in the classroom for the first time."
Huh? He butchered that, even while reading the lines.
Why did he still half-improvise everything?
"I'm sure y'all know the feeling," he said. "Want to get your high school debut right. Then, you switch schools and have to do it again. Ugh. Now, imagine doing the same in another country."
Dead silence. But silence was good. It meant there was no booing, either.
"T-that's what I'm trying to do. Know it's lame, but I wanted to make a good first impression. And you all came for Hoshi-sama, so, well, uh—wasn't that first song a banger, by the way?!"
That earned a few confused cheers.
Not for him, of course. Not yet, but that was a start.
He didn't want to stretch it out for too long.
A change of pace. That's what he needed. And the band was already in place behind him.
"Anyway, I'm rambling," he said, shaking his head. "What I wanted to say—we're the Immigrant Band, and we're here 'cuz Japan's the best country in the world. And, uh, I guess because—"
Kaede took the clue and knocked her drumsticks together.
Konrad discarded his notes, and then—his guitar came to life.
His skin already prickled.
"Don't wanna be an American Idiot—"
The distortion ripped across the silence of the Underground Club.
Those girls wrapped in pink could only blink.
The replacement pickups had an even better sound than before. Perfect for this song. And Yuki-san's rough screaming of the second line was the perfect complement to it, too.
She sang it in Japanese, shocking the audience further, all open mouths—
And they were killing it.
By the end of the first verse, the magic through his veins was a wild flood.
It was unlike anything he had felt before, here or Kasserlane.
They didn't get the cheers the other band got. But Konrad had put all his emotions—anxiety, fear, hope—into it, and the audience resonated with them. With him. With his soul.
The rhythm was impeccable. Yuki's fingers flew over the bass at insane speeds.
Konrad missed a few notes, but who cared?
The improvised lines Midori-kun put in had more life than anything he'd ever done, too.
"Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alienation—"
It wasn't a new song or the most popular one, but it fit their situation like a glove.
The crowd, cheering or not, shook their heads with the rhythm. The atmosphere was still cold, but it was warming up to them.
He could almost feel it as the ambient mana flowed into him.
The reluctance. The determination not to like them. But at least for now, they couldn't hate them, either. And Konrad lost himself in the flood. The outside world ceased to exist.
It was only he, the rebuilt guitar, the song—
And his like-minded comrades.
By the time of the solo, that included parts of the audience, too.
Their horizons broadened. The mana was intoxicating.
That was his drug.
He didn't need sake to feel good, to be in the moment, and outside of it all at once.
And as the song ended, there was only silence.
A shallow, shocked, ear-ringing silence as if someone turned the heater off in the cold wind.
They all stood there, trembling and out of breath.
No cheering, but it was also the exact absence of booing, too.
"W-why did they stop?" someone in the audience muttered, everyone looking confused.
Even the manager missed his cue, stumbling onto the stage moments too late.
"Well, uh," he didn't know what to say. "This was the Immigrant Band. Give 'em a round of applause while Hoshi-san's group takes the stage again."
Reluctancy. Sporadic clapping.
The spell broke—but something changed.
For the first time, Konrad felt the music, the actual, the real thing.
And he had hope that if all the stars aligned, they might actually win.