Sunlight flittered in through the windows of the café as Minami, Juri and Saki sat at their typical table.
Saki had her usual orange juice, Juri her usual croissant and Minami her lemonade – although today she felt like a strawberry lemonade instead of a normal one.
"I think we should open a Hivideo account and post our covers, and then we can post our performances and practices later on. What do you guys think?" Minami flipped through her notebook to find an empty page, ready to write down their ideas from today's meetup.
"Let's just wait until we find an actual name."
Juri leaned back in her eat and began twirling her hair in her fingers.
It was curled today, as opposed to its usual straightness, which was pretty, but caused extra distraction for Juri.
"Minami's pen hesitated against the page, "Didn't we….decided on Kissiks?" She stared at Juri, a puzzled look appearing on her face.
"Yeah but, I don't want to be called Kissiks. I don't really like it. It sounds bad. So it's just a temporary name. Don't you think it would be a bad idea to create a Hivideo account with the wrong name?" Juri's eyes remained locked on the curl she was playing with.
Minami glanced over at Saki, who just sipped on her orange juice and shrugged.
"Well, if you don't like it, let's come up with a new name! What name do you want?"
Minami wrote at the top of the page, 'NAME IDEAS' and scribbled 'Kissiks' with a '2' beside it, underneath. She readied her pen, awaiting Juri's suggestion.
Juri simply shrugged, "I'll have to think of something later."
"But Juri! We need to come up with a group name. We should post things to our account." Minami protested.
"I don't think so. We'll just post them to our own personal Hivideo accounts. Why would we post to an account with 0 followers and have to build it up from scratch when Saki and I already have a following? We have more followers than you do anyways."
Minami started tapping her pen against the blank page in annoyance, "I guess that makes sense. Okay…ummm," she wrote down 'POST ON OUR OWN ACCOUNTS' in the book, "What song should we do? I think we should do Midnight Kiss. Since we are Kissiks…for now…I think it's fitting as our first song!"
Saki nodded in agreeance her pigtails bobbing along with her head, "I really like that one! But ONLY if I get the line that goes, 'Swing on the Moonlight, Kiss in the Moonlight~'" she sang the line with a high pitch cutesy tone that exuberated excitement, "That one is my favorite!"
Minami smiled and wrote it down in her notebook, "You can have that one! I don't mind, I just want the 'Our sparks are like stars in the sky, infinite and exciting~'" Minami sang the line like Saki had done, but with an airy tone that lacked support but still expressed the feeling of love and happiness.
Juri made a disgusted face and put a finger in her ear that was closest to Minami.
"Is that okay?" Minami double checked.
"Yeah yeah! I think you sound great on that line!" Saki smiled as Minami wrote down that she would receive that solo.
"Which do you want, Juri?" Saki tilted her head, noticing that Juri hadn't spoken in a while.
She hesitated before answering, "I don't want to do that song. Instead," she grabbed hold of Minami's book and yanked the pen out of her hand, crossing out what Minami had previously written and jotting down new things as she spoke, "we're going to do 'On our Way' from their album."
"Wait! That's a ballad song! I can't do ballads very well!" Minami attempted to grab her book and pen back but Juri moved them out of her reach.
Minami clutched her black lace skirt anxiously.
She lacked the support and lung capacity to hit and hold the notes in that song.
It was one of their more difficult songs, with them being praised by the media for their surprising vocal skill. Skill that Minami did not have.
Juri ignored her, "Saki and I will take the first and second verse and Minami, you can take the background parts and the bridge. Then, obviously, we'll make the chorus a group part."
"Okay! I'm good with that!" Saki pulled out her phone and pulled up the song, "I'll do the lyrics and send them to you guys right now."
"No! I don't want to do that. I'm not good at ballads, I can't do the bridge in that song either, and the background parts aren't even solos…" Minami's forehead wrinkled and her bottom lip pouted as she spoke out in protest.
It was a song she liked, and she did sing it often in her room, however, she was painfully aware at how terrible she sounded.
Alone in her room with no one else to hear her was fine, but to upload it online would be a disaster! There was no way she would sound good.
"Fine….you can take the…" Juri thought for a moment, "…opening line and I'll take the bridge," she then turned to Saki, "Did you get that change?"
"I did!" Saki didn't look up, busy tapping away at her phone.
"I really don't want to do that song though, I'm not going to sound good…" Tears stung the back of Minami's eyes, frustrated that she wasn't being listened to.
"Well, Saki's already pretty much done with it, just do this one and we'll do another one later. It's not like it's going on the 'official account' right? So who cares?"
Minami's shoulder's slumped, her white puffy sleeves seeming to droop along with her mood, "I guess….."
"What about positions?" Saki asked, "Main vocal and all that?"
Juri laughed and combed her hair with her fingers, "I'll be the main vocal, obviously and-"
Saki cut her off, "I think that Minami should be our leader!"
Minami looked up in surprised, a smile spreading across her face, "Really? Me?"
Saki nodded and smiled back, "Yeah! You're the one that came up with the idea to form a group, it's your group! So you should be the leader!"
Minami nodded enthusiastically, "I'll be the leader then!"
Juri smiled, "Yeah, I think you'll be good as the leader. That means from now on you have to organize and do everything."
Minami took that opportunity to grab her notebook and pen back, which she proceeded to wiggle in the air, "I think I've got it covered."
★ ★ ★
After two months, the cover was finally posted on each of their accounts.
Juri had the most followers and of course got the most views, Saki had the next most and got quite a lot of views, while Minami only got a handful.
Minami scrolled through the comments on Juri and Saki's videos since hers had yet to receive any.
None of them said she sounded bad, which was a relief, but none of them mentioned her either.
"Saki! This is so good!!! You all sound good together!"
"Wow Saki! You really did so well on this one."
"OMG I LOVE this song, good choice Juri!"
"That solo at the end was awesome Juri! You hit that note PERFECTLY!"
Feeling pretty defeated, she logged into a game she played online called, "Star Idol." It was where she had met Juri, Akina, Saki and Naoto.
The game allowed users to sign under one of three fictional agencies and complete tasks and quests to debut. Members were able to debut solo or form a group if they were of the same level bracket.
There were other activities and mini games such as training your character's skills, appearing in commercials and movies, and even performing.
It was the place she could best get her fix at being an idol. Her character was doing pretty well in the game and she had gained a decent following.
There were also a lot of other people who played that were fans of 5year and were also interested in becoming idols.
She joined one of the lobbies.
[NAMIN HAS JOINED THE LOBBY]
She recognized a few of her in-game friends that were there.
"Hey, Namin! What's up?" one of the players posted in the group chat. Namin was Minami's character's name and while she started off strictly using that name as her own in the game, it didn't take long for her to reveal her actual name.
Although everyone in game still referred to her as Namin.
"Oh, I did a cover of one of 5year's songs with my friends! Do you guys want to hear? I'm excited about it." It wasn't a complete lie, she WAS excited about where the group was going to go and WAS excited about where it was going to lead.
Although, she wasn't excited about how she sounded.
"Yeah, let's hear it!"
"Send it to me!"
"I want to hear!"
She sent the link in chat, excited at how many people were willing to listen, "Don't forget to tell me who your favorite member is! Heehee~"