Music for the Silence

Everyone's Stage

It was another day at CiRCLE for Shizuka. It was late in the afternoon, and the girl was in the stage hall on a ladder, dusting the ceiling and other higher places as she tried to get her mind off of the things that happened to her. It was not just about yesterday with the conflict between Afterglow and Roselia, which resulted in Ran getting hurt trying to outdo them in cleaning their studio room, but also earlier today. What happened? Well...

******

It was morning, and there weren't as much customers as there were now. During this little free time she had, the mute was going over the requests Yukina and Ran had for their respective band's upcoming performance. She had a good idea of the set up the two wanted, but without the actual equipments in hand, as well as seeing the scene in person, she had a bit of difficulty perfecting the image they had.

"Shizuka!" came a shout in front of her, so sudden that the poor girl jumped and dropped her pen in fright.

Shizuka looked and saw Kokoro and Hagumi from Hello, Happy World!, or HaroHapi, standing before her.

"K-Kokoro! Hagumi! Wait up!" came another voice. Shizuka looked behind the pair and saw Misaki and Kanon running, catching up to their bandmates. For some reason, the sight seemed quite familiar to her.

"Fueee... Kokoro-chan, Hagumi-chan... You two are too fast..." Kanon panted.

"Ah! Sorry, Kano-chan-senpai, Mii-kun! We went on ahead without you two..." Hagumi apologized.

Misaki was still panting quite a bit, as she said, "... Ne-... Next time... Give us a little warning... before running off like that..."

Shizuka did a quick head count and realize there was one person missing from their band. "Where's Seta-san?" she wrote to them.

"Did someone call for me?" came a voice behind her, causing the mute to jump and press herself against the counter, and she turned and saw, to her increasing surprise, Kaoru behind her.

"Ah! Kaoru! There you are~!" Kokoro cried in glee.

"Eh?! No way! How long were you there?" Hagumi asked.

'Took the words right out of my mouth,' Shizuka thought.

"For a while now, watching over this shy, cursed, little kitten," Kaoru answered, glancing at the part-timer at the second half.

Shizuka pointed to herself in confusion at the description.

"'Shy' I get, but why 'cursed'?" Misaki asked for her.

"'Why'? Is that not obvious? This little kitten has lost her voice, unable to say a word or even make a peep. All she can do to get her feelings across is to write," Kaoru explained. When she said it that way, it would make some sense to Shizuka then, for the reason she was mute was due to trauma. "Alas, if the little kitten would permit it, I would be glad to do what I can to help break this curse~" As Kaoru said that, next Shizuka knew, the guitarist of HaroHapi tilted her head up, and brought her face close to the mute's.

Shizuka blushed and hastily slipped away from the flamboyant actress. Next HaroHapi knew, the girl rushed into the building.

******

Yes... Since then, the girl had been trying to avoid Kaoru all day. If there was one thing she learned in life, it was to be aware of people like her. With Kaoru's character, it was easy for Shizuka to deduce that she must be quite popular in her school, and Shizuka had gone to plenty of schools to know how fans often get if someone like her hangs around with someone as popular as Kaoru, especially if something like what happened earlier occurs. She would much rather not face the wrath of another group of crazed fans.