103. Love Live!

"Don’t worry. I believe all the effort you’ve put in will be rewarded. I’ll hurry over right after school tomorrow, okay? I hope I can make it in time for your performance."

After reading Kotori Minami’s message, Jiang Yu thought for a moment before replying like that.

"Ah, thank you so much. We’ll do our best! [smile]"

After going together with Honoka Kosaka and Umi Sonoda to Kanda Myojin Shrine, where they usually trained their stamina, and praying to the gods for tomorrow’s performance to go smoothly, Kotori returned home. For some reason, she was the first to send Jiang Yu a message. Even after finishing it, she checked it carefully several times before finally sending it.

Looking at his reply, a faint smile appeared on Kotori’s face. She had the strange feeling that his messages carried a kind of reassurance.

It was like... childhood friends who met by chance again after a long separation, and naturally became one another’s confidants. Because she did not want her friends to worry, Kotori had never spoken to Honoka Kosaka or Umi Sonoda about the unease and fear hidden in her heart. Yet with this boy, whom she had initially found rather unpleasant at first sight, she could pour it all out.

"By the way, what is the name of the school idol group you formed? I’ll go vote for you~ [laugh]"

Jiang Yu switched his phone screen back to LINE and sent Kotori that message. Just a moment ago, he had taken the time to search for information on Love Live! through Google. There were a little over one hundred thousand results, so it could certainly be called a hot topic. After a quick glance through Wikipedia, he roughly understood the nature of the competition.

Simply put, it was a grand event created specifically for school idols, roughly comparable in importance to Koshien in baseball. The organizers were the record label Lantis and Dengeki Bunko.

The former was the main instigator of the event, and its purpose was obvious enough: to discover promising idol talents among school idols, then use the popularity gathered through Love Live! to launch them as genuine idols. As for the latter, being a light novel imprint, Jiang Yu could not quite make sense of why it would take part in such a competition with the flavor of an audition.

The outcome of Love Live! was decided by ranking idol groups according to votes cast online.

This Love Live! was not being held for the first time, either. It had already been held once two years earlier. Unfortunately, the winning group had graduated the following year, and those girls had not signed artist contracts with Lantis. Instead, they had bowed out at the height of their brilliance and gone off, each to the university of her dreams.

Then, for some reason last year, the grand school idol event was not held at all, leaving many school idols and fans deeply disappointed. Early this year, however, Lantis announced well in advance that Love Live! would be held again in the summer, reigniting the enthusiasm of the school idols and fans who had been waiting for a year.

Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this year’s Love Live! would be a far grander affair than the one two years ago. As for the voting Jiang Yu mentioned, it was of course not the voting for the Love Live! competition itself, which had not yet officially begun, but rather a school idol ranking website created by the event’s organizer, Lantis. The condition for appearing in Love Live! was to rank within the top twenty among all school idols.

Kotori stared at the message Jiang Yu had sent and blinked. Only then did she suddenly realize that she had never told him the name of the school idol group formed by herself, Honoka, and Umi. She quietly stuck out her tongue, making a cute expression that certain someone was not worthy of enjoying, and began typing her reply to Jiang Yu’s question.

But... what was voting? Kotori was filled with deep confusion. Clearly, the school idol group that had been formed on a mere whim for now—Muse—did not seem to have grasped this crucial piece of information.

Jiang Yu looked at his phone, which had not replied for quite some time, and was about to turn off the screen and put it back in his pocket when the phone suddenly vibrated again and lit up. He opened the message, naturally finding Kotori’s answer.

"Ah! I’m so sorry. I completely forgot to tell you the name of our group before. How rude of me... If Umi-chan found out, she’d probably lecture me again, wouldn’t she? Anyway, our group’s name is Muse. It was chosen after Honoka-chan’s idea to collect suggestions at school, and in the end we adopted that name. Well... though in truth, only one person actually gave us a suggestion~ What does Jiang Yu-kun think of the name? [expectant]"

Jiang Yu read her message carefully and found that the only useful information in it was that their idol group was called Muse. As for the girlish sentiment tucked in between the lines... Jiang Yu admitted he had not quite gotten it. Or maybe he had.

Still... Muse? Wasn’t that the collective name of the nine ancient goddesses of the arts and sciences in Greek mythology? If so, the person who came up with the name did not lack imagination after all.

...

At that very moment, a girl with purple twin tails and a generously curved figure felt, for no reason she could explain, as though someone was thinking of her. She glanced around the empty room, let out a helpless sigh, and deciding it was probably just her imagination, turned her attention back to the tarot cards before her.

She believed that the answer Eri wanted... no, the answer she herself wanted as well, would surely be revealed within the tarot cards. It had to be so. On this point alone, the girl possessed unprecedented confidence.

...

Honoka Kosaka lay against the window frame, staring at the scattered stars in the night sky, lost in thought.

I have to make this succeed! Honoka thought to herself. Writing songs, even if they were not her own; memorizing the dance steps, in which she had truly worked very hard; and even the stage outfits had been gathered together, though those still were not her doing. The three of us have already worked so hard... It is wonderful that we have been able to keep working together all this time! It is wonderful to have had effort!

I hope... everyone can feel that way too. Whether it is the teachers and classmates at school, our families, or other people out there. Hard work will never be in vain!

"Honoka! Aren’t you going to bed yet?" Her mother’s voice called up from downstairs. Honoka answered loudly, "I’m going to sleep right away!" Then she drew the window shut, turned off the light, and prepared for bed.

Tomorrow will absolutely succeed! Right?

...

Umi Sonoda stood in the moonlit corridor, staring blankly at the clear pool in the courtyard, at the swaying shadows of the trees, at the water ladle rising and falling, at the bright splash of water blooming upon the calm surface.

If you truly put your heart into something, there is nothing that is impossible... right?

...

Jiang Yu carried on a round of discussion with Kotori about the name Muse, and discovered that she herself did not seem to understand it very well either, which made him want to complain.

You don’t even know what your group’s name means, and yet you want to become the greatest idol group in the hearts of countless otaku?

Wait. Did that sentence just reveal something?

And why, exactly, am I so familiar with the nine Muses from Greek mythology? Could it be because of the sequel to that signature game made by my last-life company—the one the worst game company in France took two full years to release?

Hey now, that’s a huge information dump, protagonist-kun!