Apple Hair

Chapter 34 - SEIYA🔥

"So we don't actually have any magic," I say. "How are we gonna create a magical performance? We gotta figure out something, bumbai we start looking like fools on stage."

Kaden ponders this in the dance practice studio. "We have an hour before vocal class. Why don't we go somewhere else? This place reeks."

Corrin lifts his arm sheepishly. "Sorry."

Kaden cracks a grin. "Not you."

On the way out, David flips through the pages of our original book—the one from when Shar got us Jollibees. Damn. It's been a while. We have other books now, and our fan cafe, but we always go back to the one that started it all.

"What's your favorite thing we wrote in there?" I ask him.

He tilts his head from side to side, but otherwise ignores me. That buggah. I guess we haven't made up from the grocery store shitstorm.

In the elevator, Van presses the button to the penthouse floor. We go to the indoor garden, and we sit on the stone benches between the gardenias and hibiscus. The sweetness makes me forget about the sweat of the practice room, and the sunlight through the greenhouse-like space invigorates me. With David and Van on one bench, and me, Kaden, and Corrin on the other, we face each other. Almost like we're hiding within the flowers.

"It's not like we're wizards," I say, like we've never stopped talking. "We can't summon anything to the stage."

"Magical can have many meanings," Kaden says. "CEO Kim didn't specify."

"He didn't," Van agrees.

"How about we just dress up like magicians?" Corrin says. He laughs. "We can make it the theme of our show. We can get wizard hats... robes...."

"How are we going to dance in robes though?" Kaden says, knitting his brows.

"Maybe just the hat," Corrin says.

I snicker at that. "Epic..."

After twenty minutes of talking nonsense, I raise a finger in the air, swirling it around. Like I actually have a wand or some shit. "We can do what we do best. Introduce people to the dream world."

David clenches his fist. "Is that even possible?"

"We already did it once," I say. "Giving everyone a dream. We can do that again."

"I thought we knew that it was the ghost who did that," David says.

"We were still a part of it," I shoot back.

Kaden stands up, staring in the direction of the sea. "It could work. It will be a really big risk though. We have no idea if it will actually manifest, not even a percentage to go by."

"We can write a major part of our story on stage," Corrin says. "That will really get the crowd going!"

David flips through his book again. "I know." He gets that really sexy smile. "We haven't properly introduced our fans to the world yet. It's always been the five of us as characters. We need to let our fans into the universe."

"Properly," Kaden repeats. "I can see that happening. That means we have to find a name for our fans."

"They're already calling themselves AHs online," David says.

"Aws?" Van says, squinting.

"No, like our acronym," Kaden says. "Maybe we should write them into the narrative in the intermission. Between our... three or four songs?"

"Looking more like three," Van says. "We want to perform originals, and we don't have very many."

After talking for the rest of the hour, we decide to welcome our fans into the universe on stage. We don't know exactly how it will look like, but we bet on the dream world appearing and really freaking out Merlin Kim. Or at least convincing him that we are pretty magical.