We were all sat in the office a few days later. Kashiwagi had tried to keep the figures from us until he knew how well the album had sold. While it made sure that the numbers were accurate it did nothing to calm my rattled nerves. Shinsuke had a lot riding on this, this was his chance to get away from his parents financially.

Kashiwagi sat at his desk and booted up his monitor. My heart froze as he navigated his computer for a minute, before stopping with a pensive look on his face.

“Well?” I asked, “How did we do?”

He cracked. Kashiwagi couldn’t help but smile and leap out of his chair, “It went amazingly! We sold nearly two-thousand of them.”

“So wait that means…”

We’d sold the EP at a lower price of seven-hundred yen to try and entice people.

“We made over a million?” We exploded into celebration on the floor of the office. It was beyond anything we’d expected when we first signed up to this stupid scheme. Most of it was going to Shinsuke, but he was notably silent while the rest of us jumped around like a pack of idiots. Kashiwagi just sat there and grinned at us.

“Well done, well done.”

Sure, he wasn’t set for life. But a million yen for a high school student was a lot of money. Deposit and rent on an apartment money. We settled down, a sheen of sweat on our brows from a combination of adrenaline and exertion. Shinsuke had to cover his face in his hands. “You okay dude?” Johnny asked, patting him on the back. He nodded.

Kashiwagi flipped the monitor around and showed us the statistics, “I was really blown away by how much word of mouth the EP got. That and the talk show really boosted people’s awareness. And we’re not even close to done yet, people have started posting reviews on some pretty big websites.”

“Really? Do they have anything nice to say?”

“A few sevens, one eight. People really like it. We might see this curve get a little steeper if the momentum keeps up.”

Johnny was beside himself, “I can’t believe that people really bought an album from us. This is crazy.”

Kei collapsed back onto the couch, hands outstretched, “I told you we were good.”

“Really damn good!” Johnny yelled, “This is great, I’m so pumped! We should totally make another!”

I pierced Johnny’s balloon with a pointed statement, “Don’t you have exams to study for?” Johnny slumped over. He always struggled with studying. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you out buddy.”

“Ah man, I don’t want to study, or do any exams.”

“Tough shit, we have to.”

Shinsuke stood up from his chair, having suppressed whatever tears he wanted to shed at the thought of being filthy stinking rich. “Alright. Let’s study. I’m going to go crazy thinking about this now.”

“Does this guy even have a bank account?” Kei snickered.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“There’s no way I can focus like this,” Johnny lamented.

----------------------------------------

The four of us, and by that, I mean the other three, had nominated my house to be the location of our meetup. After school we locked up the clubroom for what may have been the last time, grabbed our books, and went on a hike down to my house.

Kei whistled, “I’ll never get used to this house. Seriously, did we just go back an era?”

“It’s not that old fashioned. You see houses like this all the time in the countryside.”

I invited them inside, “Where do you want to go? Dining room, or my room.”

“Your room? Isn’t going into a girl’s room forbidden?” Johnny joked.

“As long as you don’t try to smell my bedsheets, I think it’ll be fine.” As we passed the door to my bedroom I opened it and showed them the inside, “I have nothing to hide.”

“That’s something that people with things to hide usually say…”

“I keep it clean, and I don’t keep anything dirty in there either.”

I set up a small table and we all gathered around for our study session. To be honest working with other people was just distracting, but it was good to have a moment together that wasn’t packed with talk about putting the EP together. “One million yen.”

Shinsuke shook his head, “You guys are crazy.”

“Hey, you were involved with this too.”

“The school’s going to go nuts.”

Kei shrugged, “I’d bet that million that they won’t even find out if we don’t tell them. They’re not exactly on the ball when it comes to modern technology.”

“But we went on TV to promote it,” I sighed.

“What are they gonna’ do? Expel us? Give us detention?”

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked, “You could probably move out and be safe for a year or so.”

“I don’t know,” Shinsuke mumbled, “I don’t want to go crazy and spend it all in one place. No matter what I’m going to have to put up with this until graduation.”

“University?”

“There’s no way I can get into university with my grades.”

“You never know.”

“I guess.”

“Find a job somewhere, move out when you do,” Johnny suggested, “Make that money go as far as you can.”

“Aren’t we forgetting something?” I aired, “What about all the work we did for Kashiwagi? Unless you guys are out.”

Johnny fell back onto the floor, “Well shit, I don’t just want to say that the band is done for. I mean, we worked so hard to get there.”

“But will we have time for it? A lot of these clubs drift apart after school,” Kei replied sombrely. “We’ll all get boring office jobs and be good little members of society like they want us to be.”

I didn’t want that. Since the very beginning I’d done what I’d done with the intention of breaking out of what I was before. I didn’t want to be like everyone else, I didn’t want to be what people thought I should be. I was the only one who could make that decision. “We can’t always count on the albums being successes. Maybe we can be part time rock stars instead.”

Johnny sat back up, “It’s all conditional on Kashiwagi pushing us, isn’t it? Or someone else coming along and thinking that we’re worth the time.”

“True.”

“What a season though. Releasing an album, finding out that magic is real.”

“It’s a little bigger than magic…” Shinsuke had that right. We’d somehow proved the existence of god. Or one of many gods. Not that anyone outside of our small circle of friends and family would believe us about it.

“Who’s to say what’ll happen in a couple years? Shinsuke might get a university place, I might be a CEO. Or we might take off and do this music thing instead. Not much use worrying about it right now, because we’ve still got exams to clear.”

I flipped to the next page, “Kashiwagi will tell us when the week is out, I’m sure. He was talking a lot about this low budget music thing.”

Johnny was rightly sceptical, “Didn’t it only sell because you beat up a pick-up artist?”

“Maybe that’ll be his big strategy for all of the artists he manages.”

The conversation died out as we went back to doing our work. I did have a lot to think about, and it was hard to focus on the material when so much about my future was up in the air. Kashiwagi didn’t strike as the kind of man with lots of ambition. He was comfortable with his little agency and all of what that entailed. He was getting caught up in our own excitement about our school project finding an audience.

Johnny chewed on the tip of his pen, “Who do you think is gonna’ cry at graduation?”

Kei pointed at me, “Miyako, definitely.”

“Hey! It’s going to be Johnny. Have you ever tried watching a movie with him?”

“Shut up.”

“As soon as the violin picks up, this guy is wiping his eyes with his sleeve.”

“Shut up.”