My Stepsister Is the Idol Everyone Wants to See novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Ten Seconds Each, Again
The new stage was in the basement of a Koenji music cafe, four steps up and two meters wide.
It had a velvet curtain that did not close all the way and a poster for last month's folk duo still taped to the wall.
Emi had passed the cafe a hundred times on her way to the station.
She'd never once gone down the stairs.
Now the line for tickets ran up the stairs, along the street, and around the corner of the bakery.
"A hundred and ten," Misaki said, with a clipboard and a satisfied face. "We sold out in four minutes. I'm not allowed to be smug about it, so I'm just going to stand here."
"You're smug."
"It's a very quiet kind."
Tsubomi Seven stood across the back of the stage in new jackets with their old names sewn on the cuffs.
Nobody had chosen the order.
For once, Kokone was not in the middle.
She stood at the left end of the line, in a plain white blouse and a skirt, and she had asked Rina to stand at the center.
"It's her turn," she had said, and Rina had gone red and said it was a terrible idea and taken her place.
There was no president and no tape on the floor.
The timer was a kitchen timer shaped like a rabbit, borrowed from Kokone's mother, who had flown home from Hokkaido and now sat in the front row with a thermos of broth.
"For the staff," she'd said, and handed Emi a cup before anyone could argue.
The doors opened at noon.
The fans came in quietly, a little stunned to be inside a room so small.
The girl with the cereal box sign walked up first.
She held out the sign, which had been laminated.
It said: We came anyway.
"Hello again," Kokone said, and took both her hands. "Did you come in the rain?"
"No," said the girl. "It's sunny."
"That's much better."
Emi stood beside the stage, holding no card.
She was in the green store shirt, because she had come straight from the last hour of a shift, and nobody had told her to change.
She watched the line move.
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