Akane had tried three times to get up, but her inebriated teammates kept pulling her back, sometimes physically. “What’s the matter? Are we not cool enough for you,” Fumiko mewled drunkenly.
“Look, girls, I just need to go find our waitress, alright? I want some food.”
“She’ll show up eventually,” Saki howled obnoxiously.
As Akane frantically searched the room for Ranko from her seat, she heard the band begin taking their places on the stage and recalibrating their instruments. Ariel darted between the stage lamps, frantically adjusting the filters on them as if his setup for the evening had been disrupted by a last-minute change. Exhaling in relief, she sat back down. At least she’d have a little time to work herself free of the girls while Ranko was on stage.
And then, it began.
She first heard Shinji’s bass guitar, starting to play a solo that sounded like it should be the opening theme of a spy movie. Akane didn’t recognize it, turning her chair to face the stage, her face a mixture of curiosity and worry.
Behind the bar, Yui exhaled heavily. “Well, shit.” She spun a double shot glass into her hand and reached for the bottle of tequila on the top shelf. Carrying it carefully, she stalked around the bar, leaving several patrons waiting in line for service. They groaned in their frustration as she passed. Yui snapped back. “Hey, I haven’t taken a break all week; so just give me five damn minutes, okay?!”
Yui approached the volleyballers’ table, placing the shot in front of Akane. “Here. You’re gonna want this.”
Raiko groaned angrily, holding up her still-empty glass. “Hey, where’s ours?!”
Saki slid her empty glass across the table so hard it almost fell off the edge at Yui’s hip. “Yeah! That other bitch never brought ‘em!” Yui ignored them entirely.
“Yui! What’s this? You know I don’t drink!” Akane looked at the little glass of clear liquid incredulously as the music intensified.
The blonde nodded with a knowing smirk, despite her very real concern. In the next four and a half minutes, there would either be healing or fireworks, and she had no idea which to expect. She had really hoped her little sister would have talked to her girlfriend before it came to this. “Oh, give it a minute.”
If the verse and a half I heard yesterday is any indication, you’re gonna want the rest of the bottle. She should not be up there when she’s this pissed.
As she spoke, Ranko stepped up onto the stage, wearing a nearly floor-length black trench coat she’d borrowed from Hana without explanation. She had the collar popped, hiding the majority of her face that wasn’t already obscured by her dark sunglasses. She crept from one side of the stage to the other on her tiptoes, miming looking around every corner as if she feared being caught committing a crime.
In a moment, the synthesizer and lead guitar joined the tune, and it morphed into more of a bubblegum pop beat, and Ranko took a deep breath, a tinge of fear cracking through her fury. I’m sorry, Akane, she thought to herself. I’ve tried to tell you, and I couldn’t make you understand. This is the only way I know how. Please forgive me.
She turned her eyes upward to the excited crowd, buzzing in anticipation of the impromptu premiere of the Dapper Dragons’ second original song. She began to sing in a slightly nasal pop twang as her hips rocked slowly and suggestively, seeming to snap into place before reversing direction.
“You say you’re not sorry that we’re lovers, babe. Why’d you hide me underneath the covers, babe? You tell me I don’t have any flaws, but then, why’s my stuff still locked up in your closet, then?” Ranko remembered the photo frame in the drawer, and her missing poster that she still hadn’t even found, and spat her fury into the microphone. Take everything in here, and put it in there, right, Crash?
“You tell everybody that there’s no one here, and lock the door and touch me and it sends me to the stratosphere.” Ranko made a show of biting her tongue suggestively at the last line. She silently thanked Mr. Iwato; she had really struggled to find a rhyme to end that verse until his earth science lecture last week. Each of the lines syncopated the first four notes, the remainder slithering out of her saucily in an almost burlesque rhythm. She traversed the stage from side to side, exaggerating the swaying of her hips as she walked. It was quite the juxtaposition, seeing her moving in such a provocative manner while wearing the least revealing costume imaginable.
“I don’t understand the need for this mystique. If I’m so good for you, why do you sneak?” The last word was carried in the highest register Ranko could muster, and the crowd roared in appreciation of it.
Akane watched, transfixed, biting her lip nervously. Ranko hadn’t told her she was writing something new, and judging by the first few lines and the tone of the evening, Akane didn’t expect she was going to love what she had to say. Any one of about a dozen words, had Ranko chosen to include them, would have sunk her right where she stood in front of most of the starting lineup of her volleyball team.
Ranko held her finger over her lips in a “shush” gesture, but not close enough to her face to impede the wireless headset microphone. She sang in a high-pitched pop princess voice, similar to what she’d use when she was covering Paula Abdul or Madonna. She popped her shoulders back and forth in time with the lyrics, so quickly that the observer almost saw her body instantly move from one position to the next without going through the space between.
“Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, don’t get caught! You don’t want anyone to know about this thing we’ve got!” She clicked her tongue a bit to punctuate the end of the last word. “Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, don’t tell yet, and let ‘em think it’s just the temperature that makes you sweat!”
Ranko made a show of wiping her brow with the back of her hand, fanning herself with her fingers. She pulled the pink elastic band out of her ponytail, shaking her head to let her flame-red cascade of hair fall loosely around her shoulders. She popped off her sunglasses, tossing them back over her shoulder to Ken at his drum set, and then, with a playful wink to the center of the crowd, she slid the trench coat down her arm and flung it to the side of the stage, revealing her pink bodycon minidress. Without the floor-length coat, the pink chunky heels she wore also came into clearer view. If she was trying to make a statement, she certainly had everyone’s attention, and the first few words of the next verse were almost inaudible over the screaming fans voicing their approval.
“You act like you’ve started hearing wedding bells.” Ranko placed her hand on her heart as if moved by some unseen gesture. “Still, your friends try to hook you up with someone else. When they’re next to you, it’s like you don’t know I’m alive.” Her hand left her chest, and she extended her palm outward as if pushing someone away. “The second that they look away, you push me into overdrive. I can’t help it, falling underneath your spell. You’re the best at kiss, and kiss, and never tell!” She shook her head side to side violently as she sang the last two words.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
She covered her eyes with her hands, again leaving space for the little plastic boom of the microphone. “We’re living in a game of hide and seek.” Her hands moved into an almost exasperated shrug. “If I’m so good for you, why do you sneak?!”
Reiko smirked, leaning over to the distraught-looking freshman stiffening in mortification at her table. “Bitch can’t bring out a drink to save her life, but she can damn sure sing, huh?”
Running her right hand over every curve of her body, Ranko looked down at the crowd with a pouty expression as she swayed, thrashing her wavy hair back and forth on her shoulders with a pronounced sass. Not for all the money in the universe would a single person in the room other than Akane have believed for a millisecond that the creature holding court on the stage had ever been a man. Had Akane not been so utterly shaken by the lyrics, she might have almost been impressed with how convincing she had become. Ranko wasn’t usually above adding a little sprinkle of sexiness into her performances, mostly because she liked the response it got out of the crowd, but this was something else entirely. She wanted to appear so desirable it hurt, and she was sparing no effort in doing so. As far as Akane was concerned, it was working.
“Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, no one knows how many nights I’ve lay here begging you to hold me close. Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, tell those lies, and don’t admit the way my body leaves you hypnotized.”
Ranko licked her lips gently. She tried not to let her eyes linger too long at once, but she was aware of Akane’s every breath even as she danced. Every note, every motion was precisely calibrated to drip of weaponized lust and sharpened to a razor’s edge. The catcalls from the crowd were almost unbearable for Akane to hear, but Ranko seemed to be encouraging them, as if she wanted a certain someone to know without a doubt that there was no shortage of folks who would be plenty proud if they had the chance to be with her. Standing behind her, Crash sighed, shaking his head as he strummed his guitar. He knew for certain how badly she was making some of the men in the room squirm, because he was one of them.
Ranko closed her eyes, running her right hand down her neck and between her breasts toward her abdomen. She stopped just above her waist, but very few in the crowd, least of all the woman that was the subject of the song, had any doubt what she was implying.
“You made me your dirty little secret, then, you made me your dirty little freak again. I’m a good girl; prim and proper innocence. They don’t see your fingers creepin’ up my dress.” Ranko slid her left hand up her leg, letting just the very tip of her thumb slide under her skirt, and the table of college guys at the front of the stage went berserk.
“I’ll keep quiet for you, baby, it’s okay. Hold my breath so they don’t hear you take my breath away. The way you touch my body makes me weak.” She let her shoulders and arms go limp for a split second to punctuate the line. “If I’m so good for you, why do you ssssssneak?!”
Without turning her eyes from the stage, Yui smirked knowingly from her standing position a few meters away as she recognized the sound of an empty shot glass slamming to the table to her immediate left. Told ya, kiddo.
“Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, hide your face, so no one figures out it’s you touching my special place!” She covered her wide open mouth with her wide open right hand, flashing a look of surprise in her eyes and gasping audibly in the half-second between the lines as if her innocence had just been shattered by something entirely untoward.
“Sneak, baby, sneak, baby, you’re my dream! That’s why I’m buried in my pillow when you make me scream…” Ranko raised her eyes to the ceiling as she sang the last three words, affecting her voice to sound less like a pop singer on a stage, and more like she did when she was experiencing a particular form of blissful torture with which Akane had recently made her so well-acquainted.
Akane wanted to crawl in a hole and die of humiliation. The singer’s facial expression, meanwhile, changed to one of almost sadness. Akane hated to see Ranko look like that, but, at least she no longer looked like… well, that.
“You don’t seem to notice how it gets to me that you won’t let them know you’re sleeping next to me. Every heartbeat, I am under your command. What I’d give if you’d let them see you hold my hand. I’m your candy, baby, drip me off your arm. Let them talk, babe, we ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong.” Ranko gave a little shrug as if pleading her case. ”You say you think I’m perfect and unique, but if I’m so good for you, why do you sneak?”
Ranko dropped to her knees at the front edge of the stage. She had asked for what she wanted. Now, as both the music and her voice dropped into a key a third of an octave lower, she could only beg for what she needed.
“Speak, baby, speak, baby, tell them please, the way your whisper in my ear can put me on my knees. Speak, baby, speak, baby, say it’s true that you’re okay with people knowing I belong to you. Speak, baby, speak, baby, say you’re mine, and send another little shiver up and down my spine. Speak, baby, speak, baby, say I’m yours, and I don’t have to be your lover just behind closed doors.”
Rising back to her feet, Ranko took a deep breath. To everyone else in the crowd, it appeared as if she was gearing up for a big finish. Akane knew better. She’d seen that expression on her lover’s face many times over these last few months. Ranko was trying to hold herself back from crying.
“I’ve done my best at playing mild and meek, but I’m tired of these teardrops on my cheek. All I want is you beside me. All you want to do is hide me. Babe, if I’m so good for you…”
She held the last note for nearly three full seconds in the highest register she could manage before delivering the final four words in a quietly sorrowful lower octave. “Why do you sneak?!”
The musical outro ended with the same spy-like theme with which the track had begun, and the crowd began to roar their approval of the new song’s unexpected debut. However, the girl on the stage wasn’t quite done. Ranko had written the song in anger, but when she turned her head to look at Akane’s gobsmacked face across the room, it wasn’t anger she felt anymore. All that remained was regret and hurt. My gods. What have I done?
A jagged black trickle slowly inked its way down her cheek from her right eye as she took one last quavering breath. Her eyes locked on Akane’s in the center of the crowd, and everyone else in the building faded from her consciousness. She would finally say the words she’d been searching for all this time. Here, surrounded by her friends, her family, and her fans, on the little wooden platform that was the foundation upon which she had built her entire new life, she had finally found the courage to do so.
Her voice trembled softly as she sang with no musical accompaniment whatsoever over the still-cheering horde, delivering one final line that hadn’t appeared on the lyric sheet she’d given to Crash when she’d asked him to compose the music.
“One day, you’ll believe it’s not a game to me. Maybe then, you won’t be so ashamed of me.”
~~~ END BOOK FIVE ~~~