Arc-2 SS-07

“Everyone! Let’s fire it up!”

“Got it!”

“Of course!”

The fifth-gen members were huddled together, working themselves up before going on stage. I stood a little apart, left out of that heated circle.

“…Rina, I’m counting on you too!”

“Eh? Yeah, of course…”

The one who called out to me was fifth-gen leader Arisa Shigekura-san. At nineteen, she was the oldest in fifth-gen and had come from the ff・Fortissimo affiliate training school, so she was made leader and ended up interacting with me the most.

That was probably also because she had barely made twenty-first in the Reiteisai popularity poll and just managed to get a nickname and join Seven Satellite. Still, it was only work-related; we basically never had private conversations.

Well, with the other members I had even less. Right now they only glanced at me after I answered Arisa-san. Honestly, I just wanted the gen-unit part to end so I could go back to the internal group Sistema Solare.

There were plenty of people there I could have light chats with.

“Sigh…”

Making sure my talking teammates wouldn’t notice, I let out a small breath, and someone else’s conversation reached my ears.

“Don’t say that. I was trying to loosen up the tension a little.”

“oh my, sorry.”

“Ahaha.”

The sixth-gen, who had debuted almost four months ago in August. They were already gathered in the wings too, scheduled to go on right after us fifth-gen.

Among those eight, my eyes fixed on the two who stood out. Nozomi Nanazawa-chan and Mikuri Kayanuma-san-chan. They were casually chatting with the other six sixth-gen members.

To me, that felt utterly incomprehensible.

First, Nozomi-chan.

The refined young lady from a good family was already starring in commercials. For a rookie, that was unprecedented except for me.

Moreover, the commercial she appeared in was for a company connected to her family. From my experience, something like that should have created friction within sixth-gen.

Yet looking at them now, their relationships seemed completely different from us fifth-gen. Was it because of that other girl?

Mikuri-chan had also co-starred in Nozomi-chan’s commercial earlier. She had only been in a supporting role there, but another commercial where she was one of the two leads had just started airing.

And the other lead was Miho Miyashita-san from Innocent Smile, what a lineup. A stunning beauty who came from reader-modeling, known to pretty much everyone from my age down a bit.

Lately she had been expanding into dramas and commercials, gaining fame among young boys to men in their thirties. Any commercial with her was guaranteed to become a hot topic. Co-starring with her should definitely breed jealousy even within the same group.

Yet Mikuri-chan, just like Nozomi-chan, was casually chatting with her gen-mates. What was different about me?

From the very beginning I had felt walls around me, so maybe the starting point was already different. Or perhaps it was the leader.

I had known sixth-gen leader Shion Owada-san since our affiliate training school days, and I never thought she had that much idol talent.

But when it came to mediating between multiple girls who wanted to be idols, she seemed to have considerable skill.

The girls who entered the training school all had confidence in themselves. That was exactly why they paid the huge fees to join an idol training school. Naturally, when many such girls gathered, a certain amount of conflict was inevitable.

Shion-san had worked with the training school staff to smooth those conflicts out. It would not be wrong to say her presence guaranteed the peace of the training school. Her influence had been that great, as one of the older and longest-enrolled students.

Even now she probably still held strong sway over affiliate training school graduates around her age or younger. Because someone like Shion-san was leader, sixth-gen might be staying united.

If only she had been chosen for fifth-gen. I couldn’t help imagining that. There had actually been information that she made it to the very final selection round.

Because me and Arisa-san, two affiliate training school graduates, were picked for fifth-gen, Shion-san ended up not being selected.

Upper management’s decision that three girls from the agency’s own training school in one generation was too many was infuriating. If she had been in fifth-gen, my idol life might have been different.

Thinking that, I kept watching sixth-gen, Shion-san and the others laughing together as they loosened their tension.