The rest of the week passed too quickly.
Devon Yu reminded them, "We only have three weeks left to get the first demo working, if we split the time evenly among the six."
Danika volunteered, "I could work on this more. I don't have to use my scheduled days off.
Paul groaned, but chimed in with, "I could do half days."
Devon immediately refused to approve the extra hours. "We all need to recharge and come back to it after a break," he insisted.
--
Underneath didn't cancel the last concert of their weekend series, to Danika's dismay. Even though the others seemed like they were on their way to recovery, Shinichi seemed much worse than he had been all week. When she opened her mouth to ask him if he was sure for the third time that evening, she stopped herself and covered her face.
Shinichi laughed, which made him cough. She uncovered her face and looked at him worriedly.
"Danika, it's alright, you can say whatever you want," he told her with amusement.
"I was just going to repeat myself and ask if you were sure," she explained with a sigh.
"I'm fine," he began, and then corrected himself, "I will be fine. I'm not so bad that the suppressants won't work, and we've changed the song line up so that we take turns and someone will be resting between songs more than usual. We'll also have three intermissions."
She sighed again. This aspect of his job had never occurred to her. It seemed that pop stars really couldn't call in sick unless they were practically dying. His manager had been in and out several times a day, checking if any of them needed anything at all, and bringing nutritious drinks with every visit. He had messaged the members every few hours to check on them too.
She could kind of understand his nervous hovering though. In a way, his whole job was to keep Underneath ready to perform. If they cancelled a concert, it would affect his future and income too. But it felt like it would have been easy to blame him for making them work when they weren't well.
She didn't want to add her own hovering to the list of things that Shinichi needed to deal with while he wasn't feeling good, so she told him, "I understand."
"Want to skip playing tonight and just cuddle?" he asked hopefully.
"I will," Danika agreed promptly.
Shinichi laughed until he started coughing again, and wheezed, "I said want. If you want to play, we can, I don't mind."
She sighed again and scooted close enough to hug him. "I don't care about playing tonight, although I told Jade I'd try to get the King of Cats to talk to him… but it's fine! I just wish you didn't have to push yourself so hard."
"I think that about you plenty often," he replied with amusement.
She pulled back and protested, "I've never worked so hard when I've been so sick."
"So hard? So you have pushed through and worked on something when you were sick?" he asked teasingly.
It was spoiled a little by the way he coughed again, but Danika gave him a wry smile. "More during school. My work before this job was mostly short term enough that I could just not take something new if I felt bad, but it only happened a couple of times."
He reached out and pulled her into his lap easily enough to convince her that he really was just suffering mostly surface discomfort from his cold. "Okay. I won't keep pushing if I start to feel really bad, as long as you don't push yourself too much while I'm gone either," he bargained.
"I won't!" she insisted.
He reached up and pressed his finger between her eyebrows and demanded, "Then stop making this wrinkle. You've been frowning every time you mention something from work the last few days."
"It feels like we won't have enough time to make it good enough," she admitted.
"Just keep trying, you can do it," he encouraged.
"That's what I ought to be saying to you isn't it?" she asked wryly.
"Mmm," he made a thoughtful noise and hugged her tighter. "Or, you could spend the whole evening cuddling with me and not worry about saying anything?"
"Okay," she agreed.
"What about Jade and the cat?" he asked.
--
Danika logged in before breakfast and sent a friend request to Jade, after sorting through the usual list of JadeJunky, JadeAdmin, and JadeBot type names of people who were closer to her vicinity. There weren't actually too many of those, and she was fairly confident that the single human "Jade" online was the correct one, since he could effectively stay logged in infinitely.
Before she could resume the mission from the King of Cats, which she thought would give her the highest chance of meeting him, MatchlessMinion's cat appeared with an agitated message that read, "Oh, good, you remembered! I think everything is ready, but we'll need at least two of the three guild leaders available if we have to make any last minute changes!"
Danika cursed aloud and Shinichi reached over and took her phone from her. "Oh, right. The Sugar Wings play at noon, right?" he asked.
"Yeah," Danika agreed after a moment of mentally checking her calendar.
"I probably won't be allowed to talk by then, but I can be logged in until 4pm," Shinichi said reassuringly as he returned her phone.
Jade accepted her friend request and sent a message with the little default bird messenger: "I have spoken with the cat."
The message was annoyingly short and obscure, rather like the traveling merchant when he'd reached the end of what he would say, or some of the things the King of Cats would say. After a moment Danika decided that it meant that he didn't need her to get him a meeting with the King of Cats anymore.
While they ate breakfast they had their characters travel to the venue in Tianxia. The place was actually rather crowded even at this early hour. Not that the outer ring was packed, but there weren't any places that ZipZing passed where she couldn't see anyone else.
Ryuske came down the stairs as Shinichi was getting ready to leave. All he said to his adopted son was, "Take it easy when you can."
Shinichi just nodded, but Danika asked, "Are you headed out too?"
Ryuske was dressed less casually than usual. He grinned at her and replied, "Not the way you mean it, but I'm playing as the warm up for the Sugar Wings today."
Shinichi gazed at Ryuske doubtfully, but he only said, "Not too warm."
For a moment Danika thought that he was insulting Ryuske's playing somehow, but Ryuske laughed and agreed, "I'll keep it down."
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Shinichi walked back to her and kissed her before whispering, "A good warm up makes the group that follows them sound better. Concerts where the warm up is better than the main performance get horrible reviews."
"Ah," Danika replied. She was still a little confused, but it sounded like Shinichi had no doubt at all that Ryullusion could steal the show from the girl group.
--
There really were a surprising number of people playing as crafters in 'Living Jade Empire', Danika thought again.
MatchlessMinion met her in the space behind the stage and instructed her to carry a pile of fabric that glittered like her own wings into the changing room of the girls in 'Sugar Wings'. She wasn't quite clear on why they needed a changing room, when clothing was equipped through your menus, but she didn't argue. She quickly deposited the pile of garments into her tail ring and zipped along the backstage corridor.
The Sugar Wings girls were all playing as fairies, without any other modifications to their appearance, and Penname was reigning like the queen of the changing room, as she applied her skills as a master Aesthetician. Each of the older girls obediently followed her instructions, but she seemed both polite and confident.
Quicksilver skated back and forth, but only occasionally added a calm comment or instruction. After a moment Danika announced her presence, "Hey, MatchlessMinion sent in outfits?"
One of the girls jumped, but Quicksilver replied cheerfully, as though she had known that ZipZing was there all along, "Ah, good!"