Another day began at HQ when Butcher received Aki and me at the entrance. Even though five of us lived under the same roof now, it wasn't necessary for us to leave and arrive together.

Before Aki could kiss me, I kissed her on the cheek first. She seemed surprised the first time I did it, but she quickly grew used to it. A broad smile spread from cheek to cheek on her face as she walked upstairs, and so did my lips while I headed to the office.

Aya, Tomokazu, and I greeted each other as I walked through the room to sit at my desk. Just like the last several days, I had to work on making sure the tour would not fall apart before it could even begin, and keep it like that for almost three months.

Nothing could've prepared me for the number of details and people I needed to be aware of. Even with Aya's and Tomokazu's help and trying to keep it as small as possible, quality had to be compromised ever so slightly.

Many venue managers contacted us after the last concert with Aeryx. The agreements they offered us were the same: get paid more in advance but get less share in ticket sales, or the opposite. Only one of the venues tried to slip a scam through that none of us caught at first glance. Luckily, our accountant noticed it before we signed it.

Once there were enough venues for the tour, it was time for me to arrange the dates in a way that would help us spend the least amount of money on transportation costs. The stage design hadn't even been completed and we had already estimated the costs to be too high.

Speaking of stage design, Miki, Jun, and I worked together to come up with one that could be adjusted to work at every venue since their shapes and sizes were quite different from one another. Although there were many designs to make, they didn't require us to buy and prepare more equipment than we had planned to.

"Aya, is there anything scheduled for tomorrow?" I asked.

"Ah, I believe there is. Let me double-check," she replied. "Yes, the makeup artist is coming tomorrow at noon to choose the makeup the girls will wear throughout the tour."

I leaned against the backrest of the chair and crossed my arms.

"Why?" wondered Aya.

"The stage assemblers just told me they will assemble the entire stage for the first time and we could go see."

"Can't they send you a projection of it?"

"That's how we've been working so far, but it's good to test it in real life as well."

Aya squinted her eyes and looked down at her desk for a moment.

"Only Miki, Jun, and you need to go check to make sure that everything is okay, right? You don't have to be here for the entire makeup process."

"I wanted everyone to go see it."

"You can always show it to us on a call. Or you could keep the surprise for the first day of the tour."

Thoughtful for a second, I sat up straight and replied, "That works too. Besides, there might be something wrong and another test might be needed. I hope not, actually. Renting a warehouse that big must be absurdly expensive."

"True," she said. "Whatever you choose, it'll be a good decision."

Meanwhile, Satō and the girls were finally able to complete the choreographies for all the songs in AURAS, but they were far from being finished.

They needed to improve their stamina since the concert was going to be more than double the length they had performed before. They also needed to practice double the amount of choreographies.

To top it off, they had to work with Aya and Tomokazu to come up with content to post on their social media profiles and ideas for merchandise.

Everyone in GIMA had work to do. Even Butcher helped us choose a small team of bodyguards that he was going to be in charge of. Although it took a while to find the right people, it was worth it, because our lives could depend on them at some point. Or even our families' lives.

The makeup artist arrived a couple of minutes after the workday began. Finding someone willing to work under a three-month contract wasn't hard in this day and age. We had to because we didn't have space to hire a single soul long-term.

Since one of the walls of the dance studio was a huge mirror, we headed there for the artist to try makeup on the girls. Even though we didn't want anything extravagant, it was going to take a while. Then I realized it was going to take even more time when the artist got started on Risa once she was done with Astra.

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Sadly, I had to leave five minutes into the application of Risa's makeup. Miki, Jun, and I met at the entrance of HQ to leave for the warehouse, which was twenty minutes away.

We stepped inside just to be met by an echoey hall, its size compared to a thousand-people venue. Boxes and cables covered half of the concrete floor as people wearing casual outfits—with yellow helmets—checked them.

We hadn't taken more than a couple steps before the owner of the company saw us and ran toward us.

"Mr. Miyahara, it's nice to meet you again," he grinned.

We had only met once before since it wasn't necessary to see each other in person to get the work done; we just communicated through messages and calls. I liked his enthusiasm.

"Likewise," I replied. "These are the two other people I've mentioned before: Miki, the stage technician, and Nagata, the stage designer."

Although we were going to hire a professional lighting technician for the tour, Miki still had to work on it during the early stages of the creation process.

"It's a pleasure to meet you two," the owner bowed.

Miki and Jun responded by bowing as well.

"What's the plan for the day?" I asked.

The owner answered, "We finished unloading all the equipment just a few minutes ago. The team's now checking everything is in order before starting the first assembly. We want to go through the four variations, but it might not be possible in the six hours we have."

"It won't hurt to try."

He grinned. "I like the spirit. Would you like me to introduce you to the whole team?"

"Of course."

He asked everyone to approach us. They gathered around us in less than a minute.

"Guys, these people are part of Blostars' team: Mr. Miki is the stage technician, Mr. Nagata is the stage designer, and Mr. Miyahara is the manager and the company's CEO. Please listen carefully to their requests and answer every question they ask."

"Yes!" they replied in unison.

The owner was about to continue talking, but I interrupted him by approaching the worker in front of me. I bowed in front of her and asked her name and job, then I did the same for the other eight workers.

To be honest, what I did wasn't something I would've done before, but I knew doing something as simple as this would boost morale. Aya also told me that it was a nice way of gaining respect from the public if it ever came to light. Aside from that, remembering a few people wasn't going to hurt me.

Once finished, the owner asked them to resume their work and begin the assembly of the biggest stage.

Miki, Jun, and I supervised the entire process as closely as possible. We asked as many questions as we could and tried to form suggestions out of the answers. We got a few, but half of them were refuted immediately for logical reasons. They were the experts, after all, and it showed.

The assembly was done in a little over two hours. It wasn't a good sign to try all the variations, but we were going to be able to try the most important things.

Jun and I inspected every corner, while Miki checked the lighting, sound, and video equipment. We were going to use screens for the first time. The biggest arrangement—the current one—had four screens; two tall ones on either side of the stage and another two at the back. The other three arrangements either had no screens on the sides or just one at the back.

Although the floor of the warehouse was completely flat, part of the stage was a platform tall enough for people to crouch beneath. Even though most venues had their own platform to assemble the stage on, a good portion of them didn't have one.

We would've liked to test more things, but there wasn't much time.

The three of us approached the owner once we were done inspecting the stage and talking with the workers.

"What's next?" I asked. "Disassembling?"

"That's correct," the owner answered. "We want to make sure everything is good and we also want to calculate how long it'll take."

"Perfect."

"There's one thing we want to test before disassembling everything, though. You see, confetti cannons are… a peculiar request. To be honest, it's the first time we've been requested to use them."

That didn't surprise me in the slightest. Confetti was rarely used in the world and, if it was used, it wasn't made of paper because of the lack of resources. Instead, it was made out of a very thin layer of a complex compound. It wasn't cheap, but we wanted to get as close as possible to the antique, Y2K feeling. To achieve that, we weren't going to use holograms either. At least for now.

The owner continued, "We'll need to test them several times to make sure they are reliable and safe, but that means we'll need a lot of confetti."

"That's fine, just make sure to add it to the expenses report."

"We will, don't worry about it."

The main reason we had chosen this company to make and assemble our stage was because of their transparency. They weren't the most reputable, cheapest, or expensive ones; they were in the middle. However, other companies wouldn't offer any transparency at all. The ones that did had very little reputation or they were too expensive. So far, it had been a good choice.

We continued to work with the rest of the stage arrangements. As expected, we couldn't try the last one even though we skipped the disassembly of the rest of the arrangements.

Four hours and a couple of lunch breaks later, we were done. The company packed everything back into boxes, then Miki, Jun, and I returned to HQ.

Less than an hour remained of the workday when I arrived at the office, yet Aya was able to surprise me.

"Any news?" I asked her.

"Yes, in fact. A TV channel invited us to their show."