A few months had gone by singer their argument over who was the favorite had occurred. They'd slowly started speaking to each other again and eventually things returned to normal.
Since no one was able to come up with a new group name, Kissiks had been officially decided. Thus, Minami had gone ahead with creating their official Hivideo account and they planned a new cover.
This time, it was one they had all agreed on, The Dawn by 5year.
It was Minami's audition song and while she hadn't passed that audition, she didn't receive any negative feedback from the judges panel on how she performed, so she felt very confident in it.
The deadline was two months from now and she decided to try her best and perfect it to show her improvement from their 'On Our Way' cover.
She sat at her computer and opened the lyrics document that Saki had made, then pulled open her recording program and plopped the mp3 into it, ready to practice.
After doing some vocal warmups and some stretching, she played the song.
"Your first appearance before me, like the first light in the sky, The Dawn! My first love in my life, like the rose-pink light, The Dawn~"
"Oh! Hey! That actually sounded pretty good!" she exclaimed out loud.
She continued to practice it again a few times before hitting record. After finishing it, she edited the audio a bit, removing any background noises and filtering out any hard noises such as S's or P's.
Then she listened to it back along with the mp3.
"Good job Minami! Really, this is your song! You sound so good!"
She patted herself on the back and smiled, excited and confident at the release of this cover.
"I wonder how our other cover is doing so far?" She opened up her internet browser and promptly typed in the address to their account.
Their cover was not there. However, there was one with Juri, Saki and another girl named Airi.
"…What?" She clicked on the video.
It was the three of them singing Moonlight Kiss. She felt her breath catch in her chest. The video had over a thousand views and loads of comments.
"Wow, you guys blend really well!"
"I think this group will go far, I'm looking forward to seeing your other covers!"
"Airi, Juri, Saki, you three are a perfect blend."
She grabbed her phone and quickly called up Juri.
"Hello?" Juri asked in a bored and somewhat annoyed tone.
"Juri? Umm, I saw that you and Saki uploaded a cover on Kissiks' account with…" she double checked the name on the screen, "…Airi. Why did you do that?"
Her voice was trembling and she was once again fighting back tears.
'There's an explanation, there's probably a really good explanation, it was probably uploaded to the account on accident.' She told herself.
While she had been the one to make the account, she had shared the log-in information with both Juri and Saki so they could easily upload their own solo covers and practice videos in the future.
However, she had never intended for them to upload random cover videos, it was for the group activities only.
"It was for fun, we wanted to do it."
"But…when did you decided to do it? Because I wanted to do Moonlight Kiss for Kissiks and you said no, but now you did it with Airi and didn't even ask me to be in it and then you uploaded it to our group's account.
You didn't even upload our group's actual cover. It's confusing to me why you would do that." The trembled had spread from her voice to her body and her phone tapped against her ear as a result of the uncontrollable sensation in her hands.
"Juri sighed on the other line. "I didn't think you'd want to be in it. Besides, it was for FUN. FUUUUNNNN," she put an unnecessary amount of emphasis on the 'N', "We've done one cover and you're already making it not fun. If you're going to make it not fun, and keep this up, then we can just not do the group and I'll delete everything. You tell me what to do."
Minami's eyes widend, "Why are you…reacting this way? I do want it to be fun. I'm just confused why you're telling me you didn't think I wouldn't want to be in it, when I specifically said that was the song I wanted to do, and you vetoed it. I feel like you just didn't want to do it with me. I really wanted to do that song and I'm hurt that you didn't let me and then did it with someone else…"
She paused and took a deep breath, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear in an attempt to distract herself from the emotions that were starting to take over her.
"This is my group," Minami continued, "I put it together, I named it. I would appreciate it if we didn't have random covers on the account, that's not the purpose of it. Airi's not a member, and now she looks like one because you uploaded it onto the group account. You didn't even put the cover with me in it up, so she looks like a founding member…that's awkward and makes me uncomfortable. So, take the one with Airi down and upload it to your individual account and then let's remove the one WE did from our individual accounts and switch it to the official. Then, anyone who wants to relisten to it, when they look it up, they'll be directed to the official account. Sound good?"
Minami exhaled sharply, proud of herself for managing to say all that and getting it all in one go without stuttering or bursting into tears.
"Okay, look. If you're going to throw a fit like a baby about it, I'll take down the one with Airi," Juri laughed before continuing, "But Saki and I want her as a member in the group, so it was supposed to be like us introducing her. But I'll just take it down and I guess we'll just introduce her in the next one. I also don't think we should delete them from our accounts, it doesn't make sense to now. We've accumulated a lot of views so it just makes sense to keep them there. You don't sound good in it anyways."
Minami's heart skipped a beat and she clutched her phone tightly, "No."
"Excuse me?" Juri sounded surpised.
"I don't want Airi in the group. I don't even know her. I want it to be just us three like we originally agreed. I would appreciate it if you would ask me before adding a member in. We need to agree all together, I don't want her in the group. I'm the leader and that's final."
Minami could practically hear Juri rolling her eyes through the phone, "Okay, whatever. We'll just start over with The Dawn then."
"Okay, I'm working on m-"
Juri hung up before Minami could finish.
Minami, frustrated, dialed up Naoto.
He answered with a sleepy voice, "Yeah?"
"Haha….were you napping…?" Her voice was sullen, she was trying to keep back her tears. She felt bad for having woken him up if that was the case.
He yawned, "Nope, just sleepy." That wasn't true, he had indeed been woken up from his nap, but he didn't want her to know that. "What's up? You sound upset."
It was obvious to him that something was wrong. She didn't sound chipper like she usually did.
Minami burst into tears and explained her conversation with Juri.
"I just! Don't get it!" she gasped for air in between her sentences, "Why is she! Doing that!"
"Hmm…" he shrugged to himself, "I dunno."
"We used to be best friends before!" Minami sobbed into the phone, "We would talk more than anyone else about our dream and talk about collabor…" she gasp sharply, "…ating after we debuted and how!" she gasped again, "We would hold a joint concert!"
"Mhmm, mhmm" he said in a comforting manner, urging her to continue.
"And now, she's replacing me! With Airi! Who even is Airi?!" She covered her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs, feeling guilty for having just unleashed all her feelings on him.
"She met Airi on that new game we've been playing. They've been pretty close recently." He scratched the back of his head, not completely sure he should've relayed that information.
"What…."
"Mmm….yeah. They've been up talking almost all the time."
"When was….that?"
"We play almost every day. Didn't you know?"
They both sat there in silence. Naoto could feel the tension through the phone and he felt uncomfortable at the awkwardness.
"You guys have been…playing without me?" Minami bit her lip and clutched her fingers against her knee.
"Huh? I thought you were busy." His tone was of genuine confusion.
"No…I was never even invited."
"What the-? Juri keeps saying that she's asked you to come play but you refuse saying you're busy working on group stuff."
"…No….she hasn't asked me at all…" She started sniffling, and using her muscles to try and stop the next cry that was about to come on.
"I'll have a talk with her next time okay? You should get some rest. Text me if you need me." Naoto hung up before she could respond, which she was in part thankful for because she didn't have to hold it in any more.
She pulled open her messaging app and sent a message to Saki.
[Minami] "Saki? Did you know that Juri was purposefully not inviting me to play with you guys?"
[Saki is typing…]
[Saki is typing…]
[Saki is typing…]
Minami waited for half an hour when finally Saki responded.
[Saki] "Whoa really? I didn't know!"