Second Life

Chapter 6: Friends on both sides

It was quiet in the guild hall on Saturday morning. Strange for anyone who knew anything about the guild. No fights broken out and no drunk karaoke singers on the stage yet. There was no loud gossip or catcalls quite yet or any chatter at all for that matter. Then again Natsu had walked in just a moment after the hall was opened for the day. The sun itself was barely making it's appearance this morning as he opened one of the large doors into the dimly lit guild.

As he expected, only one person was present. Mira was seated at the bar laying against her arms. But as soon as she heard the doors close behind Natsu, she perked up, turning to face the pinkette. "Morning Natsu." She greeted with a sleepy yawn. It appeared that she had been on duty to open the hall today.

"Hey Mira." Natsu smiled, sitting next to her at the bar. She was half slumped over, a mug of coffee before her as she tried to wake herself up. "Late night?"

"That's an understatement. Every time Sting or any visitor is here the parties last longer." She replied with a fond smile. "And it's only going to get busier from here out. There's only two weeks until the open house and harvest festival."

"I wonder why Gramps decided to have them on the same day." Natsu wondered aloud. Usually he would have them on separate days, not that the pinkette was against having them together.

"Well that band, Serenity, is expensive to hire so he poured the jewels for one day and decided to push the two events together." Mira sat up, her spine cracking lightly as the stiffness worked its way out when she stretched. "No doubt trying to save up a little for the damages from the brawls that can and will break out."

"Oh come on. You know the old man is quite fond of those brawls." Natsu said with cheerful sarcasm.

Mira giggled, thinking back to the one the previous night. "No kidding. He even joined in in the last one."

"Happy said he completely wiped the floor with Gajeel and Gray." Natsu chuckled.

"That's to be expected if you make a chair fly into his face." Mira added with barely contained laughter. "That look on his face was priceless."

"Too bad I left early then." Natsu sighed, "I missed the best part."

Mira took a deep breath calming herself, "Why did you leave? Last I saw you were having a good time."

Natsu shrugged off her question, "It was nothing big. I just wanted to leave early." It wasn't a lie. Though it was mainly due to his recording session in a few short hours and he needed to be up early. Not that he'd tell her that. "Dragon Slayers gotta rest sometimes too."

"That's true." She said with a smile. Mira stood, picking up her mug before moving around to the other side of the bar. "Would you like some coffee? It's still fresh."

"Sure. I'm gonna need all the energy I can get." Natsu sighed. He wasn't sure how long the recording session would be but if he were to venture a guess then it would be all day. That was fine with him, it was just the matter of who he would be with today. He mentally sighed.

Natsu was recording his entire album today with five songs that weren't released over the radio. Those songs were the big selling point and he had only given the music scores to the musicians in charge of him last week. But the group were fast to pick up on a new song and were always ready with the instrumentals once the date for recording came around. Of course it wasn't as if Natsu couldn't play any instruments at all. He was actually quite good at playing the guitar and piano so in his slower songs or those with lengthy guitar solos, he recorded those song's instrumentals himself.

Overall, Natsu was satisfied with his career as a singer and enjoyed it along with his job as a guild mage. In the past several months he was ecstatic to find a balance between the two. However, he wasn't stupid enough to believe that he could hide his identity as Night for much longer. At least not from the one person who holds his heart.