Mischievous Function

Off-Centered

A few minutes later...

Dot approached the entrance to the café and looked around for Mic. Sure enough, she found Mic sitting in a booth in a corner, hunched over and reading a small piece of paper while occasionally taking a sip of her coffee. She gripped the shopping bag of snacks tightly in her hand and took a deep breath before walking over to her.

"Uh...hey."

Mic glanced up at Dot upon hearing her voice and straightened her back. "Oh. Hey, Dot."

"You, uh...you good?" Dot asked while nodding toward the bench opposite Microphone.

Mic nodded and pulled her feet back while Dot slipped into the bench. She sighed and stayed silent for a while, staring at her paper as Dot waited patiently. "You don't...have to answer if you don't want to," she offered quietly.

But to Dot's surprise, Mic shook her head and let out a small, mirthless laugh. "Have you ever done something...really, really stupid, Dot?" she asked.

Dot raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Well, yeah. Who hasn't?"

"Heh." Microphone shut her eyes and hung her head, a sad smile on her face. "Well, the thing is...when you do something really stupid, you...you, uh, tend to do more stupid stuff after that. And then you do more stupid stuff, and more stupid stuff, and...well, you get where this is going."

Dot nodded and asked in a low voice, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Honestly, no," Mic chuckled as she leaned back, resting her head on the booth and staring up at the ceiling. Before Dot could interject, though, she added, "But I'm going to have to eventually, so I might as well do it now, while I've still got a mature adult here."

She heard Dot snort and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Adult, maybe," Dot snickered with a shake of her head. "But mature? I highly doubt that."

Mic let out a small laugh as well and shut her eyes, losing herself in thought for several seconds. Dot waited for her to say something, but when the silence finally became too much for her, she started the conversation herself. "Um...Suitcase told me that, uh...something happened?" she asked. "Something that made tomorrow your last chance to perform."

Mic's eyes flew open and she stared at Dot, who quickly added, "She didn't tell me what it was, don't worry. And you don't have to, either. I just thought it might help to, uh...get some feelings off your chest. Take your mind off it for a while, you know?"

Dot frowned as Mic suddenly chuckled again and flung a hand up in the air for a bit. "Trying not to think about life is what got me here in the first place," she scoffed. "Nah, yeah, uh...well, something did happen. And...well, yeah, tomorrow would probably be one of my last chances to perform on stage. Uh...heh, you—you wanna know something, actually?"

When Dot nodded, she continued, "I, uh...I actually wasn't into Joylese culture or music at all before this week. I'm really more into rock and metal and that kind of stuff. Uh...heh, most of my performances were really just shredding a guitar while headbanging and occasionally screaming into the mic. I didn't know much about dance, I didn't know anything about managing a musical group—heck, I didn't even know how to organize a group until Aqua volunteered to help show me, bless that little girl's heart. I don't know what I would have done without her."

Microphone stared down at her slip of paper again before smiling sadly again. "But I guess the point is...I was desperate. I...well, I've always been, uh...desperate, I suppose—in many different ways. I guess—well, not 'I guess', I know—I just wanted to perform in front of a large crowd one more time. And...well, I found out that a Joylese song would get us—or, heh...I guess me—the largest audience. But the solos were all filled up, so I tried to get my friends to join me. They finally did, but—guess what, that division was filled as well. I mean—at that point, I was just hella desperate. Obviously, I was so desperate—"