The midway point of the concert offered a brief respite for Adah and Emi—very brief, in fact. They had about thirty seconds to run to the rear of the stage, take some swigs from the water bottles waiting for them there, and mentally prep for their duet. Meanwhile, Rika and Ami left the stage and returned to the tent. This duet was a good chance for them fix any discomforts their wardrobe or makeup was causing them and to catch their breath away from the eyes of the crowd. Though, even their break wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes.
Adah’s own break wouldn’t arrive until Rika’s solo—not that she planned to hide away during that either. Luckily, she had a feeling her whole team would want to nap during their car ride home.
“You ready?” Adah asked Emi through a magic channel once they returned to center stage.
“You bet,” Emi answered.
“I won’t be holding back,” Adah said. “I won’t let you outshine me just because you asked.”
“Sorry,” Emi said in return. “It won’t matter.”
That was exactly the kind of response Adah wanted to hear. It seemed that the crowd was in for another treat.
“Good luck,” Adah said, a smile plastered across her face.
She and Emi stood back to back, which served as the cue for the tech crew to play the next music track. This was Caged Bird, a duet for Adah and Emi written by Rika, and one they could only bring to its full potential with her blessing. At the end of the day, it was simply another fantasy. It just happened to be one which would titillate their fans.
While a mysterious and fleeting melody played in the background, Adah addressed the crowd. Setting the mood for this song was essential.
“Can you keep a secret?” she spoke in a hushed voice, one that her microphone barely registered.
The response from the crowd was more of a murmur than a cheer this time around, but that was exactly what Adah was hoping for. The plan was for this duet to show the fans something they had never expected to see. They should feel uncertain about what Heartbreak meant with that opening line. Although they didn’t have much time to theorize—the music soon swelled and Adah began to sing in earnest.
“I’ve found myself a wary robin, a songbird that won’t sing. A pet with some promise, let me take you underwing.”
Adah pushed her voice to its limits here. Every other song in the setlist asked her to sing with some intensity, so even if the notes were difficult to hit, she didn’t have to worry as much about controlling her voice. This duet, however, was a technical challenge that required her to produce a full sound despite a softer vocal texture.
“You’re used to getting what you want, but you won’t get that from me. A sour poison princess, cloy and cling—I’ll still be free.”
Emi’s voice eclipsed Adah’s. As soon as the first few words came out, Adah knew who would be taking the lead in this performance.
Emi’s delivery in the prior song must have been a preparation for this moment. She expressed herself with the same clear and strong tone—a sound that ripped through the air. Her voice hit you like she was singing right next to your ear, with not a single wave of vibration lost on the way. The fans would be brought to a standstill upon hearing a voice like that from the member they least expected it from.
The strength of Emi’s singing, along with the content of the lyrics in these opening lines, surely caught everyone’s attention.
This song pushed not only Adah’s voice to its limit, but also her character as Heartbreak. Thematically, it was a twisted love song between Heartbreak and Raindrop. It required a certain suspension of disbelief, given the much more real relationship between Heartbreak and Lyrika, but this sort of thing wasn’t uncommon among even the more traditional magical girl groups. Music was another means through which to tell a story, and the versions of Heartbreak and Raindrop in this song were like actors in that story.
The lyrics of Caged Bird portrayed a Heartbreak who had grown more wicked due to her loneliness—a loneliness perhaps exacerbated by never meeting Lyrika in this narrative. Upon encountering Raindrop, she sought to control and own the girl, expressing her “love” through possessive indulgences. Raindrop would reject each of these advances and refuse to become another caged artifact of Heartbreak’s obsession. The song was a battle played in back-and-forth lines that increased in emotion until a climax, during which Raindrop would reject Heartbreak once and for all. The beautiful singing voice that Heartbreak wished to hear at her leisure would eventually be used to beat back her attempts to lure Raindrop in.
As she and Emi approached that climax, Adah had to admit that the real Raindrop was defeating her just as decisively. She was playing keep-up with Emi through the whole song—both when it came to singing and performing.
During her lines that would lead to the climax, Adah walked up close to Emi and reached out to stroke the girl’s cheek. This interaction was a sequence they had planned. Since the song could be interpreted as Heartbreak’s attempt to seduce Raindrop, this kind of casual physicality could rile the fans up without straying into exploitive territory. When Adah’s hand touched Emi’s cheek, the other girl was supposed to slap it away, which would transition naturally into her solo to close out the song.
But the one who slapped Adah’s hand tonight was Raindrop, not Emi. She moved her arm in a flash and the resulting hit popped with a smack loud enough that the whole crowd surely heard it. Adah’s arm flew back, and she could feel a stinging deep in her palm. Emi—no, again, it had to be Raindrop—stared into Adah’s eyes for a single beat before turning and strutting away. For that brief moment their eyes met, Adah felt her throat clench.
Emi had taken a risk. They’d never acted this scene out so aggressively in practice, but Emi must have decided this was what felt right in this moment. She must have known the power behind that slap would catch Adah unaware, and that it would even hurt, but she trusted that Adah could handle it. In the middle of a performance, there was no time to explain your reasoning if you wanted to switch things up. You had to trust that everyone else on the stage with you would understand your intentions. Tonight, Emi’s meaning had been clear.
Until this song came to an end, this stage belonged to her.
Adah was perfectly happy to give it up. Emi had earned it. Adah hadn’t noticed before, but the crowd was looking more blue than it had earlier in the night. She spotted a few purple lights in the darkness, but nearly every penlight had shifted to Emi’s color. A more cynical observer could argue that the crowd had recognized that this was Emi’s solo and switched their lights on account of that. As far as Adah was concerned, Emi had dyed them all that color from the very start of her performance.
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However, Emi wasn’t looking at the lights. Her eyes were fixed on a spot just above the crowd, where a camera lens glinted as it caught the moonlight.
Adah almost laughed. Emi didn’t need to worry about that guy one bit.
Maybe it was because Adah was so enthralled by Emi’s performance herself, but the cheers that filled the park after their duet ended sounded louder than any before.
“Thank you,” Emi said to Adah. She wore a smile that probably wouldn’t fade until she fell asleep tonight.
“I didn’t do a thing,” Adah said.
One duet would lead into the next, so after a final wave to her fans, Emi exited the stage. She passed Rika on her way, and the two of them exchanged a quick high-five as they walked by one another. The applause from the crowd picked up again as Rika took her place next to Adah.
“That’ll be tough to follow-up,” she said. Adah wasn’t sure what to make of her tone.
“How do you think I feel?” Adah said back. “I’m going to get overshadowed twice in a row.”
“What kind of talk is that? Wherever I go during this, I’d better feel your hand in mine.”
That wasn’t merely a figure of speech—Adah and Rika had decided to set their performance apart from Adah’s duet with Emi by staying connected through the whole song. If Caged Bird was a twisted love story, then Break Through was a pure one. For all its truncated lyrics that demanded to be shouted more than sung, Break Through ended in a gentle confession. Whereas Emi slapped Adah’s hand away, Rika would clasp it tight within her own.
Despite being on stage for a second duet, Adah’s heart felt the most at ease it had all night. She was the most familiar with this song out of the whole setlist, not to mention most fond of it. Besides, the majority of its technical difficulty rested on Rika’s shoulders, starting with her wordless opening melody.
Just like in the recorded version, Rika began by weaving meaningless syllables together in an ethereal string. Hers was a voice that belonged on the banks of the River Styx, a final farewell from the world of the living. Singing in such a manner must have been tough enough when recording, when Rika could retry over as many takes as she needed until she was satisfied. Doing it live was a whole other challenge. With no lyrics to lean on, no meaning to distract the crowd from the raw material of her performance, Rika would need to believe in the quality of her voice alone. Whatever help Adah’s hand could offer her in that moment, she was happy to provide it.
Though, Rika also received some help from the fans. This was the one song some of them had known about prior to the concert, and they had come prepared to show their love of it. A mass of red penlights moved through the air in a practiced swooping motion, keeping in rhythm with the song’s beat. As long as those lights moved, Adah and Rika could trust the fans were enjoying this performance.
From there, the chanting momentum of the song carried them through like a trance. Adah and Rika were as familiar with the song as their fans were, and once they got into the groove of their verses, they performed almost without thinking.
They had no true choreography for this song, but with such a foregrounded beat, it was easy to fall into a rhythm of dancing about. They would fling themselves apart, stop themselves by grasping the other’s hand, then pull themselves back together. Over and over, they threw themselves across the stage, always returning to each other’s side in the end.
The one planned moment in this performance came at the song’s end, when Heartbreak and Lyrika recognized their feelings for each other in their final shared line. In their music video, all suggestions of a kiss had been obscured by shadows, or the leaves of a tree, or some other obstacle. Tonight, a different kind of shroud would hide the girls’ faces.
Adah summoned her scythe in her free hand and called upon its magic. The blade of black smoke flowed out from its handle, forming a barrier that blocked Adah and Rika’s heads from the audience’s view.
When that final line came—“I want you”—no one in the crowd could know exactly what happened behind the scythe’s blade. Adah was happy to leave it up to their imaginations.
For her own sake, though, Adah did peck a kiss on Rika’s lips as the music faded away.
“Couldn’t help myself,” she said to her partner.
“If you ask me,” Rika said, “you did help yourself.”
“It was for good luck.”
With that, Adah relinquished her scythe’s power and exposed her and Rika’s faces once more.
Only one challenge remained before the finale.
Adah waved to the crowd and spoke to Rika through a magic channel, “Do you want any fanfare? I don’t have anything planned, but I can hype you up.”
“Thank you,” Rika said, “but I only need one thing from you now.”
“I’ll be watching.”
Even though Rika had asked for this opportunity, Adah felt a twinge in her heart as she exited the stage. Leaving each song’s performers by themselves was purely a practical decision. Those who weren’t singing did it to give the audience’s full attention to those who were. It wasn’t a rule or necessity, but it was how the team had agreed to handle their duets. Naturally, the same practice would apply to Rika’s solo. She would be alone on that stage.
The time between their duet and Rika’s solo extended longer than any other break during the show. Since this song hadn’t been part of the original setlist, the tech crew didn’t have it prepared ahead of time. They would need to swap off the original setlist, then load and configure this new backing track. That left Rika with time to introduce the song herself.
“I’ve been singing for a long time,” she said to the crowd, “but this is the first time I’ve truly performed. Lyrika… I… for me, it’s always been hard to sing in public. Something about it takes away everything I thought I had. It doesn’t matter how much I practice—everything I built up, I would lose it all as soon as too many eyes looked at me. All my work vanishes, like it never mattered. I feel so powerless. I hate it.”
A murmur passed through the crowd again. Though, these hushed voices were motivated more by confusion than intrigue. Perhaps they were wondering if this speech was another performance.
“That probably doesn’t make any sense,” Rika continued. “I’ve been singing all night. But I’ve only managed to get this far because of my team. Well, that might be true for more than just singing.”
Through her earpiece, Adah heard the tech crew signal they were ready to start the track whenever. Rika must have heard it as well.
“As much as I love them,” Rika said, “that’s not good enough for me. Tonight, I’m going to stand here alone. Right now, I want to see how far I can go. If I’m doing well, please cheer for it. If I stumble, then cheer even louder. No matter what happens, I’m not letting anything take this song away from me.”
Rika closed her eyes and straightened her back. The instrumental for her solo began to play.
Adah didn’t know what to expect; this was her first time hearing this song, as well. The music that filled the air was faster in pace than she anticipated. It began with the kind of mystical melody that was characteristic of Rika’s songwriting, but soon rolled into an upbeat tempo as a synth keyboard tapdanced along a sequence of high notes. This was the kind of style that could work as a theme song for a light-hearted romance series, and surely would demand some equally swift singing from Rika.
As Rika sang her first lines, Adah realized why she had chosen a song like this for her solo.
Rika wasn’t interested in showing off how stable her voice was, how clearly she could hit the notes in her range, the precision of her breath control, or anything like that. This solo wasn’t a technical showcase and it wasn’t meant to wow the fans. It was meant for Rika to have fun.
And it looked like it was succeeding.
Rika’s voice swung from note to note, carrying one lyric into the next without enough break to worry about how the first had turned out. She was flying along with the melody, and her body was responding to the freedom she had granted her voice. She was light on her feet and fluid in her movements, her body seeming to touch the stage only in fleeting moments, like a leaf skittering along the road as the wind blew it along.
The first verse and chorus passed in such a whimsical manner before the song broke into an instrumental interlude. This was the first moment Rika looked at the crowd. Her eyes opened slow, but grew wide enough that her shock was apparent even at a distance.
Adah saw it, too.
Every single light in the crowd had turned red. And these lights weren’t hovering politely in the air—they were pumping up and down, waving in circles, and going wild in just about every way physically possible.
The crowd took this interlude as an opportunity to let Rika know what they thought of her performance.
There was no mistaking their chant: Lyr-i-ka.
If Rika had any stumble during this song, it came only as she witnessed all those red lights. She picked up the second verse perhaps a beat late, not that any of the fans in that crowd would care. Even if they did, she recovered instantly, and flew to the final chorus on a fairy’s wings.
“I’m taking back every word that was drowned in my worry,” Rika sang, “I need every precious piece to tell my story.”