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keith_ltd2022-01-16 08:53 pm
runawayballista) wrote in keith_ltd2022-01-16 08:53 pm
Live at the Mile High Club! Chapter 10
Fandom: BanG Dream!, Scum Villain
Title: Live at the Mile High Club!
Summary: The Mile High Club is in dire straits, but Shang Qinghua finally figures out how to make her comeback as Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky—she just has to make sure Shen Yuan doesn't connect the dots. Mobei Jun is warned against meddling in company affairs, but she's determined to find out what Linguang Jun's real angle is.
Six Balls just really wants to see how fancy Mobei Jun's toilets are.
End notes
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Shang Qinghua had existed mostly in a fog since Linguang Jun’s unannounced visit, crushed under the weight of a thousand debts. She still hadn’t solved the Airplane problem, couldn’t afford to take a salary, and also couldn’t afford to pay rent next month…and there was no way she was going to be able to make that loan repayment to Northern Holdings. Not on time, anyway. They might be able to make it up in ticket sales over the next couple of weeks, but then what about next month’s payment? They’d be perpetually behind at this rate, and how long could Shang Qinghua keep that up? The words capitalized interest repeated themselves over and over in her nightmares, a hellscape of jeering spreadsheets dripping like Dalí clocks. And worst of all, during that unannounced meeting, Linguang Jun had deposited her briefcase onto the Yamabuki Bakery cream buns Shang Qinghua was saving for breakfast and squashed them beyond recovery.
She really had no fucking idea what she was going to do.
Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure if Yuka had even seen the very-out-of-place suit enter or exit the building, and subsequently was avoiding her. The thought of explaining their now even worse financial situation to her slap-happy manager was just too daunting to bear.
Even without the live house’s finances hanging over her head, there was no shortage of work to do in preparation for this weekend’s show. Shang Qinghua became increasingly scarce in the live house outside of her office, pasting on a probably unconvincing fake smile whenever she had to talk to one of her staff. She hadn’t answered a text from Marina in two days, and she’d barely poked her head out at Shen Yuan’s last visit. Shang Qinghua was too harried to notice the disappointed turn of Shen Yuan’s mouth when her magnanimous invitation to sit down and talk about her critiques with her was turned down with a strained smile and a hurried apology.
Getting into evening, though, Shang Qinghua was developing a crick in her neck from hunching over at her desk all day. She looked at her watch—the Mile High Club’s office was a depressing little windowless affair—and realized it was nearing on dinnertime. Her stomach gave an unhappy grunt, reminding her she hadn’t eaten lunch, either.
She jumped as someone kicked open the office door—Yuka dragging a dolly of equipment deemed as junk from their most recent inventory. It was the first time Yuka had actually seen her slippery boss in a couple of days, and while it would be a stretch to say that anyone missed her, it was true that her absence had been felt during equipment strikes and the other job tasks Shang Qinghua was usually actually there for. Her initially negligent glance snagged on Shang Qinghua’s haggard face and she stopped, her brows drawing down.
“You look like shit.”
“I know,” Shang Qinghua said with a falsely cheerful smile. Her voice cracked, though, too tired to maintain the facade. Yuka’s eyes narrowed.
“What the hell happened?”
“It’s just really hard to sleep in my apartment since the fire, okay?” Shang Qinghua let her voice wind up into a whine. She was too tired to keep up the pretense of Everything Is Fine. “Everything still smells weird and I keep having the same recurring nightmare about leaving the stove on.”
It wasn’t a totally dishonest answer. Those were all true things. They just weren’t, probably, the things Yuka was actually asking about. Immediately put off by her whining, Yuka waved her off with a grimace.
“Forget I asked. Studio B needs breaking down. And tell the kid with the sunglasses that if I find crumbs on the snare again, she’s banned from equipment rental.”
“We can’t afford to ban anyone,” Shang Qinghua said, pointing at the dolly full of junk equipment. Most of it had been unearthed in a back closet somewhere, half-rusted, dusted or otherwise nonfunctional. But some of it was recording equipment that had finally just aged out and given up the ghost. It was going to get harder to book recording studio rentals now that their last good mic had died out. Some of this stuff they were going to have to replace. Eventually.
Yuka cast a puzzled glance at Shang Qinghua’s back as she went off to do as she was told without further whinge or worry, then noticed the plain black T-shirt she was wearing not only had a few holes along the hem, it was also inside out. Yuka rolled her eyes.
“What a fucking mess,” she said, and started unloading the dolly.
Shang Qinghua gave Six Balls a halfhearted lecture about containing her food in the practice studio, although it was less a lecture and more a warning that it was only going to piss off the grumpy manager, and then sent the teens packing while she finished cleanup. She fished a broom and dustpan from the supply closet and set to sweeping up the snack mess.
She’d only been at it for a few minutes before the studio door opened again. Shang Qinghua looked up from where she was crouching over the dustpan to see Mobei Jun. She looked…displeased? How the fuck was Shang Qinghua supposed to tell, this teen had a better poker face than even Yuka!
“Oh, uh—forget something?” she started to say, but Mobei Jun shut the door with such decisive firmness that she actually flinched back. It wasn’t like she slammed it, but she didn’t have to. Shang Qinghua wobbled but remained on her feet, but didn’t straighten up from her crouch. As a result, she was looking up at Mobei Jun a lot more than usual. She was going to pinch a nerve in her neck at this rate. It was only when Mobei Jun stepped forward that Shang Qinghua clocked that expression as angry, and in an instinctive attempt at backing away, she toppled over onto the floor. The contents of the dustpan scattered once again in a flurry of crumbs. Shang Qinghua scrambled back as Mobei Jun took another step, hitting the wall.
“You will not,” Mobei Jun said coldly, “under any circumstances, allow this live house to go under.”
Shang Qinghua, mouth already open and at the ready to protest, make excuses, or plea for her life, blinked.
“How do—I mean, uh—you really don’t need to worry about—”
The last syllable escaped her mouth as a squeak and then died out as Mobei Jun’s face darkened. Fuck! What had she done to piss off the second scariest kid in Proud Immortal Demon Way?
“I know about the debt,” Mobei Jun said, and kept going even as Shang Qinghua opened her mouth to ask how. “I know that the Mile High Club is at risk of folding before the end of the year. You will not let it happen.”
You say that, but do you have any idea what it’s like to run a small business?! Shang Qinghua found herself suddenly sweating. What the hell! Didn’t this week throw her enough curveballs already? Where was Mobei Jun getting her information from, anyway?!
“I’m trying, okay?” The little outburst beat out any other, more dignified reply Shang Qinghua might have come up with. “But it’s really hard! I’m busting my ass pretty much nonstop to put together shows, and it’s like trying to swim out of quicksand! Trust me, I don’t want to close, okay? I was forced into this position anyhow, it’s really not my fault!”
Mobei Jun silenced her with a hard look. “Let me clarify,” she said, crossing her arms coolly. “I will make sure you do not let it happen.”
A chill shot straight up Shang Qinghua’s spine, and she couldn’t help but cower at the cruel irony of being put in the same position with one of her teenage patrons as the menacing CEO. She wanted to cry a little on the inside. What did Mobei Jun want from her? She was already doing her best!
Having said her piece and left her impression, Mobei Jun turned to leave. Shang Qinghua was halfway to groveling but caught herself, starting to push herself to her feet. “Hey—uh, does the rest of the band know?”
Mobei Jun stopped at the door. She thought of Luo Binghe and said, “No. And I won’t tell them.” She paused. “Your shirt is inside out.”
Shang Qinghua watched her leave, a confusing cocktail of relief and terror curdling in her stomach. What? The fuck??
“What the fuck?” Yuka said behind her. Shang Qinghua startled, her T-shirt halfway over her head. “What are you doing? Stop that.”
“My shirt’s inside out, I’m just fixing it!” Her voice was partially muffled. “Besides, what’s the big deal, we’re both—”
“Stop,” Yuka said. Shang Qinghua had no other choice but to pull her shirt back down, still inside out. Yuka jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “What did little miss ice queen come back in here for? She said she forgot something, but I didn’t see her bring anything else back out with her.”
“Uh…” Shang Qinghua didn’t really want to say. It might tip Yuka off that there was something really wrong. “She just wanted to thank me for always cleaning up after them. You know, Six Balls and her snacks and all.”
“We are banning eating in the studios,” Yuka said with a sharp jab of her finger into Shang Qinghua’s shoulder. Then her mouth flattened into a thin line. “Okay, so what did you say to her? Because before she left just now, she paid up for their studio time for the next two months.”
Shang Qinghua blinked.
Mobei Jun had said she’d make sure Shang Qinghua didn’t let the live house fold. Was…that supposed to be a pledge of support and not a threat?
She was at an immediate loss as for how to feel about that. She gave Yuka a helpless shrug and a baffled look. Yuka, to her relief, just rolled her eyes and moved along to things that actually merited her attention, leaving Shang Qinghua alone in the studio.
Shang Qinghua finished sweeping up the mess and moved to put away the keyboard still left out. Meiyin was usually pretty good about making sure they cleaned up, but she’d been dealing with a Six Balls and Sha Hualing snack disaster double combo, and Shang Qinghua had told her it was fine, to just go on ahead. And actually, an excuse to linger in the still quiet of the practice studio was kind of nice.
Meiyin had once made a passing comment that her keyboard setup at home was a little barebones. With the way she managed the other members of the band and her general sisterly demeanor, Shang Qinghua had the impression that she came from a big family. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that her equipment rentals were usually on the more experimental side. The FM synthesizer she’d borrowed this time was a classic, perfect for experimenting with new sounds, and it was still on, preserving the presets she’d created during rehearsal. Shang Qinghua ran her fingers over the keys. Ah, so Meiyin favored that crisp, bell-like sound, with reverb and just a touch of delay; Shang Qinghua had heard her use it in their last show. It really lent a nice gothic sort of tone to Proud Immortal Demon Way’s sound in combination with their distortion-heavy guitars.
She found herself fiddling with the operators, idly trying to see if she could recreate one of her favorite presets from one of her own instruments. Man, this equipment was way better than anything she’d ever personally owned, though. Even with her myriad if humble collection, she’d probably opt to rent something with a few more bells and whistles too, given the opportunity. It wasn’t just the instruments, either—while the Mile High Club might have been kind of ratty compared to its brethren, it still had professional mixing equipment, licenses for more DAW software and Vocaloid voicebanks than Shang Qinghua had ever dreamed of owning, an aging but otherwise pretty robust studio computer…
Shang Qinghua lifted her hands from the keyboard and slapped herself in the face five times.
She owned a venue with a recording studio! With all the gear anyone might need to make music! Except vocals, sure, and it was kind of small and smelled like aged cigarette smoke, yes, but it was otherwise totally functional!
So why had it only just occurred to her that she could actually use any of the Mile High Club’s equipment to make Airplane’s music?!
As a menial employee, free access to the studios had not been a perk of the job when she’d first started, and since assuming ownership, she’d been too busy with the hustle to really consider it. Her home studio had been perfectly adequate, after all. Plus, she’d been doing everything she could to keep her life as Airplane totally separate. None of her staff even knew she was a musician—not that any of them cared.
But this was different! It was becoming, kind of literally, a life or death situation—or at least an eat or starve situation, and Shang Qinghua really needed to get back on track with Airplane’s career. She’d already suspended her Patreon for the month, but that at least gave her time to build up some buffer material. Maybe she could even recreate some of the work she’d lost in the fire. And with all these Vocaloid voicebanks…Shang Qinghua’s eyes glazed over a little bit. She could totally render video on the studio computer. She could flesh out her concept album in ways she hadn’t even dreamed before!
To say that everything was coming up Airplane would really have been a stretch, but it was still an improvement. If nothing else, Shang Qinghua was going to get back to making music.
Saturday’s show, while not a sellout, went smoothly, even in spite of the fact that all three acts were new to the Mile High Club’s stage. This meant Shang Qinghua could spare herself some worrying and focus on what was really important right now: her own music.
She couldn’t do anything about the payment to Northern Holdings that they were absolutely not going to make even with Linguang Jun’s additional “grace period”. No amount of staring at spreadsheets was going to change that fact. But she could stay in the studio until well after hours, pulling late nights that occasionally turned to very early morning starts at the office. Yuka’s only comment on the subject was that Shang Qinghua needed to take more showers, and if she wasn’t going to do the rest of them that courtesy, she shouldn’t bother coming in.
It was really starting to come together. Realizing the near-endless possibility of using studio gear to make Airplane’s music had imbued her with a new sense of hope and direction. She wasn’t eating or sleeping as much as she ought to, but that was fine; she was getting so much done! And thanks to Yuka’s assistance, they already had a lineup filled out for their next show, and while there was plenty of work to do to keep it up, it did ease some of the manic driving pressure Shang Qinghua had come to associate with prepping for shows. She felt like she’d plugged into a charger for her creative batteries. In reality, it had only been about a week or so since the fire, but it felt like an eternity when she thought she’d be on indefinite hiatus. She spun out a handful of mostly finished tracks, just lacking that final polish, and, even though she could only partly recreate her lost work, managed to come up with another half dozen or so sketches to flesh out. Another week, and she'd be able to announce to her fans the date of her planned return from hiatus. It was still going to be tight until then, and next month’s rent was still not a problem she had solved, but she was just going to take it one day at a time.
The future was looking a little less dim for the Mile High Club’s event calendar, too. Poppin’Party was scheduled for an audition this week, and they’d probably really draw a crowd when they played! It was a good opportunity to give the smaller and less experienced acts like Moon Dew another chance to play without worrying about them drawing in enough customers. Besides, Shang Qinghua thought that Poppin’Party might get along with those girls. It’d be kind of cute if they became friends. And that would build the live house’s reputation too, wouldn’t it? Becoming known as the kind of place where beautiful new friendships in music bud and bloom…anyone would kill for that kind of atmosphere!
And Proud Immortal Demon Way, a mascot band if the Mile High Club ever had one…well, they were coming along. Shang Qinghua was getting some tense vibes with Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun, and she’d noticed Luo Binghe’s absence from a few rehearsals. She wasn’t totally sure where that was coming from. Sure, things seemed a little off lately, and their sound still had that rough, uneven edge to it, but maybe they’d finally start to bloom, too.
Hey, at this rate, she might even manage to impress Marina, whenever she got around to coming to a show. She didn’t really feel the need, per se, Marina was already well aware of the kind of loser Shang Qinghua was. But it’d still be pretty neat. And maybe Peerless Cucumber would finally give them a review above room temperature.
The most devastating loss of her work in the fire was easily the material she’d been putting together for her concept album. She had a bunch of stuff saved to the cloud, sure, but it was like, lyrics and commission art and stuff! She couldn’t afford a subscription for enough storage space to keep her audio files and renders on the cloud, too. Some of that, too, she could recreate, but…it also presented an opportunity to start something fresh and new. Not that she was going to totally scrap the few notes and what she could remember enough to recreate, but the landscape of possibility had changed. With the Mile High Club’s resources at her disposal, she could diversify the voices for her characters pretty literally! And…the truth was, even though the Mile High Club had its own recording studio, some of the equipment was a little outdated, and the soundproofing could use some fixing up, and they were kind of missing a single good microphone…anyone with enough money to rent a recording space was going to go somewhere nicer. So this seemed like a fair trade off to Shang Qinghua: she wouldn’t take a salary, and she could monopolize the recording studio as much as she wanted.
Going home was depressing, or at the very least not very restful these days, and Shang Qinghua wound up spending most of her waking hours—and some of her sleeping hours—at the live house. There was just nothing comforting about a half-ruined apartment, especially the scorched area where her desk had been, and every time she passed one of her neighbors in the hall she could feel the dirty looks boring into her back. If she could afford to move somewhere else, believe her, she’d already be packing up!
It wasn’t as though the Mile High Club wasn’t an ambiently stressful place, but she was inured to it by now. She could function within it. And actually, all the studio time was making it less of a stressful place, even if she needed to be sleeping more. After all, the live house was at its best when it was filled with music, and while Shang Qinghua wasn’t playing on stage (yet), she came to find something deeply satisfying about her time in the studio.
“Shang Qinghua?”
She immediately jerked out of her composing reverie, jostling her headphones off as she looked up. She hadn’t even noticed the studio door open, nor the pointed rapping of a fan on inside of it. Shen Yuan stood in the doorway, closed fan in hand, looking expectantly at her.
On instinct, Shang Qinghua immediately put her hands behind her back as though to hide them, although in actuality all she’d been doing was banging out some tunes on a keyboard. Shen Yuan lifted her eyebrows.
“Your manager said you were back here.”
“You were looking for me?” Shang Qinghua said, surprised. Shen Yuan spread her fan over her face, waving it slightly.
“Well, you weren’t in your office like you usually are,” she said distantly. Shang Qinghua blinked. Could it be that…Shen Yuan actually wanted to hang out with her?
If she did, it was probably only so she could talk at Shang Qinghua about whatever blog post she was working on at the time. That seemed to be the primary subject of conversation with Shen Yuan whenever Shang Qinghua stopped to chat with (check on) her, or, as had become the case the last couple of times, when Shen Yuan called her over.
She’s already giving you free drinks, okay? Now you need to monopolize her time too? She’s obviously busy with work all of the time! Don’t be so entitled!!
Alright, so she didn’t look very busy right now. Before she could reply, Shen Yuan said with interest, “I didn’t know you played the keyboard.”
“Oh, well, piano, technically. I took lessons on and off growing up.” Shang Qinghua replied, to her own horror. She cursed her own traitorous mouth and furiously backpedaled. “But, uh—that was just when I was a kid, I haven’t touched a real piano in years, haha.” That was true, at least. “I’m not, like, a musician or anything…”
She wanted to slap herself in the face. Why didn’t she use the same “oh, I just dabble” line she’d used on Mobei Jun! It wasn’t like wanted Shen Yuan to think she was cool!
Unfortunately, her disclaimer had not dispelled the light of aloof interest in Shen Yuan’s eyes. “Play me what you were playing just now.”
Shang Qinghua winced, both because this was the last thing she wanted to do and because with that little demand—a normal person would have asked!—Shen Yuan had stuck the landing with the himedere vibe for once. The effect was tangible. Yes, yes, 10 out of 10, gold medal, now get lost and forget you ever saw her playing the keyboard!
She tried to stall. “Ah, haha, nah, I’m not really any good, and it’s just a sketch, not like, a completed piece or anything! Honestly it’d probably sound like garbage to, uh, such refined ears!”
“You’re playing something you wrote?”
Shang Qinghua bit her tongue, for real, on purpose. It fucking hurt, but maybe it’d stay in check now. Why would she say that! She’d had her headphones in, there was no way for Shen Yuan to know she was playing one of her own compositions! She could’ve just played the chords from one of any half a dozen pop songs she could remember off the top of her head and Shen Yuan would undoubtedly be left unimpressed by her lukewarm performance and lose all interest! Someone needed to take the shovel from her hands, she couldn’t stop digging her own fucking grave!
Shang Qinghua was still trying to come up with a negative description for her own music that wouldn’t be directly plagiarizing Peerless Cucumber when Shen Yuan pointed her fan at her. “I’d like to hear it. Go on, play.”
She really didn’t want to, though, is the thing!
But the weight of Shen Yuan’s expectant gaze bore down on her like the merciless rays of the sun, and while there were a whole host of things she could think of immediately that would get her out of this conversation immediately, there were none that wouldn’t put her relationship (the Mile High Club’s relationship) with Shen Yuan at risk. She did consider the merits of a bathroom emergency, but for once her stomach was behaving itself, and she was more concerned about ensuring the realism than she was about what Shen Yuan might think of her. But in the end, she decided to save the butt problems excuse for the future, and unplugged the headphones in resignation.
She quietly flipped the preset back to the standard piano sound instead of one of Airplane’s more signature-sounding synths. With any luck, it’d sound different enough as a faux-piano piece that Shen Yuan wouldn’t recognize it.
She could have played anything, sure, but almost everything she had ready-to-hand was either something Shen Yuan would instantly recognize as an Airplane work or something she was planning on using in Airplane’s work very soon, and thus could not be played for Shen Yuan. All she was left with were the sketches she’d been working on for the concept album. And it was just a sketch, still—if she really had to scrap it, she would, but maybe she could make it just vague enough that Shen Yuan wouldn’t find it memorable.
It was barely a page’s worth of music, anyway. Shang Qinghua considered playing the piece out of time, but last-minute decided that the stiff tocking of a metronome would do better to obscure the feel of the music. She wiped her sweaty palms on the hem of her shirt as discreetly as she could. Haha, performance anxiety? From Shang Qinghua, who hadn’t attended a piano recital since she was nine? Likelier than you think.
It’s Peerless fucking Cucumber, she reminded herself as she set her fingers lightly down on the keys. It’s not like her opinion really matters that much!
The melody had a clear, almost somber quality to it when played with the standard piano sound as opposed to the reverb-heavy synth she’d been using to eke it out. Shang Qinghua had intended to play it badly—well, a little off, at least—but her fingers moved almost automatically in time with the metronome, the notes sounding out clean and bright. She winced to herself as she lifted off the last note, not because she’d butchered it, but because she’d just played it better in front of Shen Yuan than she had managed to all afternoon by herself.
It was because she’d been doing all that practice, obviously!
But it was still a pretty simple piece of music, unrefined, meant to be incorporated into some greater whole. Shang Qinghua cleared her throat, readying a pathetic little spiel about how she was merely a humble erstwhile pianist with no real talent to speak of dicking around when she looked up at the sound of a clap.
Quietly but decisively, Shen Yuan was giving her just the tiniest bit of applause. Shang Qinghua suppressed a grimace. Of all times to break out the slow clap! She’d just played 30 seconds of music, it was barely worthy of a single clap! She would have sworn that Shen Yuan was just doing it to be a jerk, but…she was smiling?
It was just a little smile, more in the eyes than the mouth, but it was definitely a smile!
“Nicely done,” Shen Yuan said. “It’s succinct, but it has a lot of promise.”
Of course it’s succinct! It’s just a sketch! Shang Qinghua wanted to roll her eyes, but her ego was acutely honed to pick up on even the littlest scraps of praise, and absorbed it all hungrily, and instead she let out a moronic little laugh and said, “Ah, yeah?”
Shen Yuan tapped her chin with the tip of her closed fan, looking somewhat pleased. “It’s very melodious—it catches the ear, but there’s unresolved tension in it. It makes the listener curious to hear where it will go.”
The more time Shang Qinghua spent with Shen Yuan in person, the more it became clear to her that Shen Yuan wrote just like she spoke—or maybe it was the other way around, maybe she’d spent years practicing human speech with comment wars and blog posts before emerging from whatever basement she’d cocooned herself in as some kind of glamorous social butterfly. Either way, that review-like tone and wording had a peculiar effect on Shang Qinghua, the same shivering, brain-bending rush from when she’d listened to Shen Yuan talk about Airplane’s music to her face.
Fuck!
Of all the things Shang Qinghua was expecting, she really hadn’t expected Shen Yuan to like her music!
This was the same person who, week after week for years, had hounded her comments page and posted blogs dissecting her music and all the ways it was disappointing to her arcane standards. While she was a frequent flyer, yes, she was hardly Airplane’s only critic, and Shang Qinghua’s feelings about Peerless Cucumber’s blog posts could usually be described with one of the following emojis: 🙄 😆 🤨 🥱
And she had the face to stand there with that oh-so-cool and dignified air, pushing up her stupid hipster glasses, deigning to bequeath praise upon Shang Qinghua’s crown! If you’re really an expert on Airplane’s music, then shouldn’t you be able to recognize her composition style! Don’t you have any idea who you’re talking to, Earless Cucumber!
But of course she didn’t, and Shang Qinghua needed it to stay that way, so she could only put on a self-effacing smile that she hoped looked suitably “embarrassed by praise” and say, “Aha, yeah, well, it’s not going anywhere. Like I said, I’m really not a musician, I just dabble, you know—”
Shen Yuan lifted an eyebrow. Ah, fuck, she’d used the “I just dabble” line too late. Now it just seemed like an attempt at modesty instead of a brush-off, and Shen Yuan’s interest only sharpened.
“You have a gift. You should nurture it—especially when you have the perfect incubator. You could become a part of Tokyo’s sound too.”
She regarded Shang Qinghua with a look of aloof interest. Shang Qinghua was beginning to feel like her ego was not actually the focal point of this conversation, although she was largely distracted by the recurring sense of cognitive dissonance that she was coming to associate with these conversations.
That’s exactly what she wants, okay! Stop making her spew out all this faux humble crap! The irony was too much. Shang Qinghua restrained the urge to smash her face onto the keyboard.
“Uh—sure, sure, maybe. I’ll think about it,” she said hastily, searching for a way to end this conversation as quickly as possible. “Anyway I was just about to pack it up, I’ve got a—a meeting, you know, business meeting, boring accounting stuff, haha, all those numbers, am I right? And you’ve probably got a blog post to write, yeah? So just ask Yuka if you need anything ‘cause I’ll be busy, you know, in my business meeting so I’ll catch you later okay bye!”
By the time Shang Qinghua finished speaking, she had already unplugged the keyboard, stuffed her notes under her arm, and fled the room. Shen Yuan watched her retreating back with mild bemusement, then touched her chin with a slight frown. Some people just didn’t recognize an opportunity even if it danced around naked in front of them.
“Momo, aren’t you gonna come get dinner with us?” Six Balls asked around the lollipop in her mouth, sticking her drumsticks in her bag. They’d had an extra long practice, and the snacks from Six Balls’s family convenience store had only gone so far. Now they were a collection of very hungry teens with a curry chain connection, and as long as Sha Hualing didn’t try to demand free meals out of any very confused and underpaid cashiers who didn’t know her by face, Hell’s Bells Curry would be their dinner destination.
In the early days when they first formed as a band, Sha Hualing had eagerly tried to establish her family’s restaurant chain as the ideal place for post-rehearsal review meetings. But the group’s tendency to escalate their volume during their impassioned moments, plus Six Balls’s compulsion to improvise a drum kit out of anything, had resulted in them being (nicely) asked to leave on multiple occasions. Meiyin’s family, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind the noise at all—possibly because there were more people living in that sprawling old house than seemed probable, and they walked and talked over each other at almost all hours of the day—and if you didn’t mind the fact that the beauty parlor was run by a clan of fringe mystics who loved to dote on their guests, then you could play in their talisman-studded basement-slash-meditation room as much as you liked. Meiyin’s family, as she explained on their first visit to the beauty parlor, had a tendency to get a little noisy in their enthusiastic rituals, and the basement provided a convenient place to practice it where it wouldn’t bother their neighbors. Each of the girls in Proud Immortal Demon Way found the atmosphere at Meiyin’s place comforting in their own way. But Meiyin could tell that Sha Hualing was put out, a little slant of jealousy, so Meiyin had suggested that they meet at Hell’s Bells for dinner some of the time. They went to different schools for the most part and could use some time to socialize outside of practice, after all. And aside from Sha Hualing’s developing hobby of bribing the servers to switch out Mobei Jun’s food, it worked out pretty well that way.
But Mobei Jun had turned to walk the opposite direction from the rest of the band. She paused, a hand on the strap of her bass case.
“Flyers for our next show,” she said. “I had copies made. I just need to stop at home to get them. I’ll meet you all at Meiyin’s later to hand them out.”
Sha Hualing pouted, preemptively defeated once again. She stamped a foot on the sidewalk. “No fair! You’ve been bailing out on us way more than usual lately. You totally have to hang out with us this time!”
Meiyin placed a hand on Sha Hualing’s shoulder. “You know, I think we can probably pass on a review meeting today. Why don’t we go with Mobei Jun so we can help her with the flyers, and then we can all get dinner together?”
“But I’m hungry now,” Sha Hualing whined. Six Balls produced a KitKat from somewhere in her jacket and held it out. Sha Hualing bit down on it with a muffled and sulky thanks. Meiyin smiled sweetly at Mobei Jun.
“We can either get dinner with Mobei Jun later, or get dinner without her now,” she said. “I think I’d much rather prefer her company myself. Besides, we probably shouldn’t let her haul all those flyers across town by herself, hm?”
Mobei Jun was just starting to say it’s not necessary when Sha Hualing’s eyes lit up with renewed interest. “Hey, we’ve never actually been to Mobei Jun’s house before. Except for Binghe, right?”
Luo Binghe, leaning against a telephone pole with her arms crossed, cast a sidelong glance at Mobei Jun. “She lets me crash at her place sometimes when I don’t feel like going home.”
“Then it’s settled,” Sha Hualing said with a smug smile. “We’re stopping at Mobei Jun’s house before dinner!”
“Which train do we take to get to your place, Momo?” Six Balls asked immediately after, crunching on her lollipop. “What station’s in that direction? Don’t think I’ve ever gone that way before.”
Mobei Jun, who had opened her mouth to decline their company, wavered slightly. She wasn’t in the best of moods, and in those times, she tended to want to stay away from people until it passed. Not to mention, she preferred to keep Linguang Jun as far from her personal life as possible. But looking at her friends, who all looked eager to lend her a hand—even Luo Binghe didn’t look opposed to the idea—it might not be so bad to have them along as moral support. And they didn’t necessarily have to meet her aunt, either.
When they arrived at the gates, Sha Hualing’s mouth hung upon as they stared up the stone-paved walkway across the massive lawn that led to Mobei Jun’s house. Sha Hualing turned an incredulous look on her.
“What the fuck!” she sputtered. “I knew you had money, but you never told us you were mansion with its own postal code rich!”
She took off one shoe and thwapped Mobei Jun in the arm with it, but Mobei Jun caught her firmly by the wrist and wrenched it from her grip. Only after she had peeled Sha Hualing’s fingers away did she offer it back.
“It’s the family business,” Mobei Jun said blandly. They started up the steps, and then she stopped.
“You don’t have to come inside.” She gestured to a small collection of chairs around an umbrella-shaded table off to the side on the impeccable lawn. “Wait here. I’ll be back shortly.”
“I’ll go with you,” Luo Binghe volunteered, and it was clear from her tone that no would not be taken as an answer. Mobei Jun knew this was a gesture of support, and it was true that Luo Binghe knew the house and was the only member of Proud Immortal Demon Way to have met Linguang Jun. Mobei Jun was nodding in concession when Six Balls piped up.
“Me too,” she said, pulling the demolished lollipop stick from her mouth. “What if you tried to carry too many flyers and got a papercut? You wouldn’t be able to play. Besides, I wanna see how fancy your bathrooms are. I bet you have super high tech toilets.”
Alright, well, if Six Balls needed to use the bathroom, Mobei Jun wasn’t quite cold enough to tell her to hold it. Meiyin patted Sha Hualing on the head and steered her over to the chairs.
“We’ll wait out here,” she said, just as Sha Hualing protested, “Totally unfair!”
“Don’t worry, Shasharin, I’ll bring you a souvenir,” Six Balls assured her.
“You will not,” Mobei Jun said patiently, and started up the walkway. Six Balls winked at Sha Hualing over her shoulder and skipped a few steps to catch up to Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe.
The house was no traditional residence, but rather something relatively modern and Western-styled. The vaulted glass ceiling over the atrium-like entryway where they removed their shoes let in a flood of cloud-dappled light from overhead, making it feel even more spacious. Six Balls chewed on her lollipop stick as she un-velcroed her Heelys, looking about with a curious eye. It was true, they’d always known Mobei Jun was the Rich Friend in their group. She always paid the difference on their ticket quotas without so much as a word; if Six Balls hadn’t seen her do it, Mobei Jun probably wouldn’t ever have mentioned it. She didn’t flaunt her wealth, unlike the rich kids Six Balls knew from her school, but Mobei Jun also never hesitated to cover dinner for everyone the second Sha Hualing opened her mouth to complain about her allowance. She always paid for Luo Binghe, of course, something that escaped no one’s notice, but was never commented on. It would only make Luo Binghe feel self-conscious anyway.
Still, while Six Balls had never been under the impression that she’d be letting a mouth go unfed if she didn’t sneak sandwiches into Mobei Jun’s bag, she definitely hadn’t imagined that their bassist lived in the kind of house that looked like it needed a full staff to keep clean. Why the huge house, anyway, aside from being rich enough to have it? Obviously Mobei Jun wasn’t responsible for the house, but Six Balls never got the impression she came from a big family. She hardly talked about her family at all, really, which was okay. That was just the kind of band Proud Immortal Demon Way was: no one ever had to share what they didn’t want to. They might bicker sometimes, and Luo Binghe’s mood could flip at the drop of a hat, but that much was agreed upon. Everyone in the band was there for their own reasons, but what they all had in common was that they’d joined the band to have a place to get away.
Maybe it was the vast sense of emptiness in the house Mobei Jun wanted an escape from. Maybe that was why she’d been reluctant to let anyone come with her. If she decided she wanted Six Balls to know, she’d likely just say so.
Mobei Jun pointed her in the direction of a bathroom after they climbed the first flight of stairs, and Six Balls scurried off with a salute. To her mild disappointment, the toilets weren’t anything really out of the ordinary, just really expensive-looking and with a larger than usual array of bidet options to choose from. The bathroom was even equipped with one of those Sound Princess things so no one could hear you pee, even though the door was way too far from the toilet for that to ever be a concern.
While she was washing her hands, Six Balls took note of the little drawers and cabinets in the bathroom. They turned out to mostly hold supplies, although a few were empty. Grinning with her tongue between her teeth, Six Balls dug a pack of gummies out from her bag.
Once she had hidden an individually-wrapped peach gummy in every cabinet, she slipped out of the bathroom and immediately found herself lost in the massive house. She was about to text Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe for directions when she heard a snatch of conversation, and she followed the voices instead.
“We were just leaving,” Mobei Jun said in a clipped tone as Six Balls peeked her head into the room—not a bedroom, but a study. But probably Mobei Jun’s? There was no way she only had one room to herself in this whole house.
Standing not far from Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe, and much closer to the door, was a tall woman Six Balls had never seen before but who had the clear mark of family resemblance. Well, it did seem just as unlikely that Mobei Jun had the entire house to herself. The lady was smiling at Mobei Jun, her posture open, but Six Balls couldn’t detect a hint of kind intent. She leaned away from the room as though pushed back by an icy wind.
“So soon? But you hardly spend any time at home.” Linguang Jun was too polished to pout, but there was a slight tone of admonishment in her voice. And then, before Six Balls had so much as made a sound, she turned and pinned the drummer to the spot with that smile. “Oh, hello there. Is this one of your music friends, Mobei Jun? Really, why don’t you have her stay for dinner instead of going out? You never bring your friends over.”
Six Balls could not help but notice that she seemed to be ignoring Luo Binghe’s presence entirely. Luo Binghe’s eyes narrowed, her grip on the stack of flyers white-knuckled. Six Balls swallowed.
“Linguang Jun,” Mobei Jun said, drawing the lady’s attention back to her, “as I was just saying, we already have plans. I’ll be home early enough to finish my homework.”
“I just worry that you’re not getting enough sleep,” Linguang Jun sighed, while Six Balls debated whether she should try inching into the room, or if it’d be better to stay here in case Mobei Jun needed a man on the outside. “All this time with your friends on top of band practice and student council meetings? It just seems like a lot for one high school student.”
Mobei Jun’s expression didn’t change. She only nodded to Luo Binghe and Six Balls and said, “Binghe, take the flyers and Six Balls out to wait with the others. I’ll be out shortly.”
Six Balls was morbidly curious, but Linguang Jun gave her the heebie-jeebies, and she definitely wasn’t going to argue with Mobei Jun in this situation. Six Balls took a sheaf of flyers from Luo Binghe and, with just one more backwards glance, followed her out of the house.
As soon as their footsteps faded into the distance, Linguang Jun smirked and tucked a rebellious wisp of hair behind her ear.
“Really, Mobei Jun, if you’re going to have friends at all, try to have better taste. What do that girl’s parents do for a living, work in a factory? Just look at her shoes. And do you really think it’s appropriate for you to be seen socializing outside of school with the sort of delinquent who lives in a group home?”
Mobei Jun’s jaw tightened. Linguang Jun’s smile broadened by fractions.
“Oh, did you think I wasn’t aware of your little charitable arrangement? You really don’t need to be worried about what I think, though. Your school, on the other hand…isn’t that sort of thing against the rules?”
Mobei Jun narrowed her eyes and picked up the last sheaf of flyers. She wasn’t going to stand here and let Linguang Jun bait her into a pointless argument. Linguang Jun could report her to her school for breaking the rules—something that could easily jeopardize her position as a student council member—or she could just dangle this taunt uselessly. It wasn’t likely that Mobei Jun could influence her one way or another; an argument would only be entertainment for Linguang Jun in the end. Mobei Jun didn’t get into petty fights, either.
She moved for the door without saying anything. Linguang Jun let her pass. Mobei Jun counted the seconds in her mind as she walked out of the room.
“Just one more thing before you go,” came Linguang Jun’s coaxing voice, right on cue. Concern, criticize, change the subject. Mobei Jun stopped. “I couldn’t help but notice the unusually high credit card charge on your last statement. I’m sure you don’t need me to lecture you on responsible spending habits.”
“No,” Mobei Jun said, not turning around. “I don’t.”
“I hope you’re not so naive as to think you can save that place from going under with your pocket change,” Linguang Jun said, her eyes boring into the back of Mobei Jun’s head. Her tone didn’t change. “Do your friends even know? Ah, of course they don’t. I’m sure you think you can take care of it all on your own.”
Mobei Jun turned where she stood, her expression dark. “You don’t need to go back to the Mile High Club.” Her voice was even. “You’ve already done what you came to do. I don’t want to see you there again.”
She didn’t wait for a reply before she turned back and strode swiftly for the staircase, flyers in hand. Linguang Jun had to have some other game in mind besides just personally tormenting her niece—she was smarter than that. Mobei Jun would find out what it was, and whatever it took, she was going to find a way to put a stop to it.
End notes: six balls & mobei jun is the kind of character interaction that really only makes sense within the context of a niche AU that takes willful liberties with minor characters but you know what? i love it, and it is important to me
Title: Live at the Mile High Club!
Summary: The Mile High Club is in dire straits, but Shang Qinghua finally figures out how to make her comeback as Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky—she just has to make sure Shen Yuan doesn't connect the dots. Mobei Jun is warned against meddling in company affairs, but she's determined to find out what Linguang Jun's real angle is.
Six Balls just really wants to see how fancy Mobei Jun's toilets are.
End notes
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Shang Qinghua had existed mostly in a fog since Linguang Jun’s unannounced visit, crushed under the weight of a thousand debts. She still hadn’t solved the Airplane problem, couldn’t afford to take a salary, and also couldn’t afford to pay rent next month…and there was no way she was going to be able to make that loan repayment to Northern Holdings. Not on time, anyway. They might be able to make it up in ticket sales over the next couple of weeks, but then what about next month’s payment? They’d be perpetually behind at this rate, and how long could Shang Qinghua keep that up? The words capitalized interest repeated themselves over and over in her nightmares, a hellscape of jeering spreadsheets dripping like Dalí clocks. And worst of all, during that unannounced meeting, Linguang Jun had deposited her briefcase onto the Yamabuki Bakery cream buns Shang Qinghua was saving for breakfast and squashed them beyond recovery.
She really had no fucking idea what she was going to do.
Shang Qinghua wasn’t sure if Yuka had even seen the very-out-of-place suit enter or exit the building, and subsequently was avoiding her. The thought of explaining their now even worse financial situation to her slap-happy manager was just too daunting to bear.
Even without the live house’s finances hanging over her head, there was no shortage of work to do in preparation for this weekend’s show. Shang Qinghua became increasingly scarce in the live house outside of her office, pasting on a probably unconvincing fake smile whenever she had to talk to one of her staff. She hadn’t answered a text from Marina in two days, and she’d barely poked her head out at Shen Yuan’s last visit. Shang Qinghua was too harried to notice the disappointed turn of Shen Yuan’s mouth when her magnanimous invitation to sit down and talk about her critiques with her was turned down with a strained smile and a hurried apology.
Getting into evening, though, Shang Qinghua was developing a crick in her neck from hunching over at her desk all day. She looked at her watch—the Mile High Club’s office was a depressing little windowless affair—and realized it was nearing on dinnertime. Her stomach gave an unhappy grunt, reminding her she hadn’t eaten lunch, either.
She jumped as someone kicked open the office door—Yuka dragging a dolly of equipment deemed as junk from their most recent inventory. It was the first time Yuka had actually seen her slippery boss in a couple of days, and while it would be a stretch to say that anyone missed her, it was true that her absence had been felt during equipment strikes and the other job tasks Shang Qinghua was usually actually there for. Her initially negligent glance snagged on Shang Qinghua’s haggard face and she stopped, her brows drawing down.
“You look like shit.”
“I know,” Shang Qinghua said with a falsely cheerful smile. Her voice cracked, though, too tired to maintain the facade. Yuka’s eyes narrowed.
“What the hell happened?”
“It’s just really hard to sleep in my apartment since the fire, okay?” Shang Qinghua let her voice wind up into a whine. She was too tired to keep up the pretense of Everything Is Fine. “Everything still smells weird and I keep having the same recurring nightmare about leaving the stove on.”
It wasn’t a totally dishonest answer. Those were all true things. They just weren’t, probably, the things Yuka was actually asking about. Immediately put off by her whining, Yuka waved her off with a grimace.
“Forget I asked. Studio B needs breaking down. And tell the kid with the sunglasses that if I find crumbs on the snare again, she’s banned from equipment rental.”
“We can’t afford to ban anyone,” Shang Qinghua said, pointing at the dolly full of junk equipment. Most of it had been unearthed in a back closet somewhere, half-rusted, dusted or otherwise nonfunctional. But some of it was recording equipment that had finally just aged out and given up the ghost. It was going to get harder to book recording studio rentals now that their last good mic had died out. Some of this stuff they were going to have to replace. Eventually.
Yuka cast a puzzled glance at Shang Qinghua’s back as she went off to do as she was told without further whinge or worry, then noticed the plain black T-shirt she was wearing not only had a few holes along the hem, it was also inside out. Yuka rolled her eyes.
“What a fucking mess,” she said, and started unloading the dolly.
Shang Qinghua gave Six Balls a halfhearted lecture about containing her food in the practice studio, although it was less a lecture and more a warning that it was only going to piss off the grumpy manager, and then sent the teens packing while she finished cleanup. She fished a broom and dustpan from the supply closet and set to sweeping up the snack mess.
She’d only been at it for a few minutes before the studio door opened again. Shang Qinghua looked up from where she was crouching over the dustpan to see Mobei Jun. She looked…displeased? How the fuck was Shang Qinghua supposed to tell, this teen had a better poker face than even Yuka!
“Oh, uh—forget something?” she started to say, but Mobei Jun shut the door with such decisive firmness that she actually flinched back. It wasn’t like she slammed it, but she didn’t have to. Shang Qinghua wobbled but remained on her feet, but didn’t straighten up from her crouch. As a result, she was looking up at Mobei Jun a lot more than usual. She was going to pinch a nerve in her neck at this rate. It was only when Mobei Jun stepped forward that Shang Qinghua clocked that expression as angry, and in an instinctive attempt at backing away, she toppled over onto the floor. The contents of the dustpan scattered once again in a flurry of crumbs. Shang Qinghua scrambled back as Mobei Jun took another step, hitting the wall.
“You will not,” Mobei Jun said coldly, “under any circumstances, allow this live house to go under.”
Shang Qinghua, mouth already open and at the ready to protest, make excuses, or plea for her life, blinked.
“How do—I mean, uh—you really don’t need to worry about—”
The last syllable escaped her mouth as a squeak and then died out as Mobei Jun’s face darkened. Fuck! What had she done to piss off the second scariest kid in Proud Immortal Demon Way?
“I know about the debt,” Mobei Jun said, and kept going even as Shang Qinghua opened her mouth to ask how. “I know that the Mile High Club is at risk of folding before the end of the year. You will not let it happen.”
You say that, but do you have any idea what it’s like to run a small business?! Shang Qinghua found herself suddenly sweating. What the hell! Didn’t this week throw her enough curveballs already? Where was Mobei Jun getting her information from, anyway?!
“I’m trying, okay?” The little outburst beat out any other, more dignified reply Shang Qinghua might have come up with. “But it’s really hard! I’m busting my ass pretty much nonstop to put together shows, and it’s like trying to swim out of quicksand! Trust me, I don’t want to close, okay? I was forced into this position anyhow, it’s really not my fault!”
Mobei Jun silenced her with a hard look. “Let me clarify,” she said, crossing her arms coolly. “I will make sure you do not let it happen.”
A chill shot straight up Shang Qinghua’s spine, and she couldn’t help but cower at the cruel irony of being put in the same position with one of her teenage patrons as the menacing CEO. She wanted to cry a little on the inside. What did Mobei Jun want from her? She was already doing her best!
Having said her piece and left her impression, Mobei Jun turned to leave. Shang Qinghua was halfway to groveling but caught herself, starting to push herself to her feet. “Hey—uh, does the rest of the band know?”
Mobei Jun stopped at the door. She thought of Luo Binghe and said, “No. And I won’t tell them.” She paused. “Your shirt is inside out.”
Shang Qinghua watched her leave, a confusing cocktail of relief and terror curdling in her stomach. What? The fuck??
“What the fuck?” Yuka said behind her. Shang Qinghua startled, her T-shirt halfway over her head. “What are you doing? Stop that.”
“My shirt’s inside out, I’m just fixing it!” Her voice was partially muffled. “Besides, what’s the big deal, we’re both—”
“Stop,” Yuka said. Shang Qinghua had no other choice but to pull her shirt back down, still inside out. Yuka jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “What did little miss ice queen come back in here for? She said she forgot something, but I didn’t see her bring anything else back out with her.”
“Uh…” Shang Qinghua didn’t really want to say. It might tip Yuka off that there was something really wrong. “She just wanted to thank me for always cleaning up after them. You know, Six Balls and her snacks and all.”
“We are banning eating in the studios,” Yuka said with a sharp jab of her finger into Shang Qinghua’s shoulder. Then her mouth flattened into a thin line. “Okay, so what did you say to her? Because before she left just now, she paid up for their studio time for the next two months.”
Shang Qinghua blinked.
Mobei Jun had said she’d make sure Shang Qinghua didn’t let the live house fold. Was…that supposed to be a pledge of support and not a threat?
She was at an immediate loss as for how to feel about that. She gave Yuka a helpless shrug and a baffled look. Yuka, to her relief, just rolled her eyes and moved along to things that actually merited her attention, leaving Shang Qinghua alone in the studio.
Shang Qinghua finished sweeping up the mess and moved to put away the keyboard still left out. Meiyin was usually pretty good about making sure they cleaned up, but she’d been dealing with a Six Balls and Sha Hualing snack disaster double combo, and Shang Qinghua had told her it was fine, to just go on ahead. And actually, an excuse to linger in the still quiet of the practice studio was kind of nice.
Meiyin had once made a passing comment that her keyboard setup at home was a little barebones. With the way she managed the other members of the band and her general sisterly demeanor, Shang Qinghua had the impression that she came from a big family. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that her equipment rentals were usually on the more experimental side. The FM synthesizer she’d borrowed this time was a classic, perfect for experimenting with new sounds, and it was still on, preserving the presets she’d created during rehearsal. Shang Qinghua ran her fingers over the keys. Ah, so Meiyin favored that crisp, bell-like sound, with reverb and just a touch of delay; Shang Qinghua had heard her use it in their last show. It really lent a nice gothic sort of tone to Proud Immortal Demon Way’s sound in combination with their distortion-heavy guitars.
She found herself fiddling with the operators, idly trying to see if she could recreate one of her favorite presets from one of her own instruments. Man, this equipment was way better than anything she’d ever personally owned, though. Even with her myriad if humble collection, she’d probably opt to rent something with a few more bells and whistles too, given the opportunity. It wasn’t just the instruments, either—while the Mile High Club might have been kind of ratty compared to its brethren, it still had professional mixing equipment, licenses for more DAW software and Vocaloid voicebanks than Shang Qinghua had ever dreamed of owning, an aging but otherwise pretty robust studio computer…
Shang Qinghua lifted her hands from the keyboard and slapped herself in the face five times.
She owned a venue with a recording studio! With all the gear anyone might need to make music! Except vocals, sure, and it was kind of small and smelled like aged cigarette smoke, yes, but it was otherwise totally functional!
So why had it only just occurred to her that she could actually use any of the Mile High Club’s equipment to make Airplane’s music?!
As a menial employee, free access to the studios had not been a perk of the job when she’d first started, and since assuming ownership, she’d been too busy with the hustle to really consider it. Her home studio had been perfectly adequate, after all. Plus, she’d been doing everything she could to keep her life as Airplane totally separate. None of her staff even knew she was a musician—not that any of them cared.
But this was different! It was becoming, kind of literally, a life or death situation—or at least an eat or starve situation, and Shang Qinghua really needed to get back on track with Airplane’s career. She’d already suspended her Patreon for the month, but that at least gave her time to build up some buffer material. Maybe she could even recreate some of the work she’d lost in the fire. And with all these Vocaloid voicebanks…Shang Qinghua’s eyes glazed over a little bit. She could totally render video on the studio computer. She could flesh out her concept album in ways she hadn’t even dreamed before!
To say that everything was coming up Airplane would really have been a stretch, but it was still an improvement. If nothing else, Shang Qinghua was going to get back to making music.
Saturday’s show, while not a sellout, went smoothly, even in spite of the fact that all three acts were new to the Mile High Club’s stage. This meant Shang Qinghua could spare herself some worrying and focus on what was really important right now: her own music.
She couldn’t do anything about the payment to Northern Holdings that they were absolutely not going to make even with Linguang Jun’s additional “grace period”. No amount of staring at spreadsheets was going to change that fact. But she could stay in the studio until well after hours, pulling late nights that occasionally turned to very early morning starts at the office. Yuka’s only comment on the subject was that Shang Qinghua needed to take more showers, and if she wasn’t going to do the rest of them that courtesy, she shouldn’t bother coming in.
It was really starting to come together. Realizing the near-endless possibility of using studio gear to make Airplane’s music had imbued her with a new sense of hope and direction. She wasn’t eating or sleeping as much as she ought to, but that was fine; she was getting so much done! And thanks to Yuka’s assistance, they already had a lineup filled out for their next show, and while there was plenty of work to do to keep it up, it did ease some of the manic driving pressure Shang Qinghua had come to associate with prepping for shows. She felt like she’d plugged into a charger for her creative batteries. In reality, it had only been about a week or so since the fire, but it felt like an eternity when she thought she’d be on indefinite hiatus. She spun out a handful of mostly finished tracks, just lacking that final polish, and, even though she could only partly recreate her lost work, managed to come up with another half dozen or so sketches to flesh out. Another week, and she'd be able to announce to her fans the date of her planned return from hiatus. It was still going to be tight until then, and next month’s rent was still not a problem she had solved, but she was just going to take it one day at a time.
The future was looking a little less dim for the Mile High Club’s event calendar, too. Poppin’Party was scheduled for an audition this week, and they’d probably really draw a crowd when they played! It was a good opportunity to give the smaller and less experienced acts like Moon Dew another chance to play without worrying about them drawing in enough customers. Besides, Shang Qinghua thought that Poppin’Party might get along with those girls. It’d be kind of cute if they became friends. And that would build the live house’s reputation too, wouldn’t it? Becoming known as the kind of place where beautiful new friendships in music bud and bloom…anyone would kill for that kind of atmosphere!
And Proud Immortal Demon Way, a mascot band if the Mile High Club ever had one…well, they were coming along. Shang Qinghua was getting some tense vibes with Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun, and she’d noticed Luo Binghe’s absence from a few rehearsals. She wasn’t totally sure where that was coming from. Sure, things seemed a little off lately, and their sound still had that rough, uneven edge to it, but maybe they’d finally start to bloom, too.
Hey, at this rate, she might even manage to impress Marina, whenever she got around to coming to a show. She didn’t really feel the need, per se, Marina was already well aware of the kind of loser Shang Qinghua was. But it’d still be pretty neat. And maybe Peerless Cucumber would finally give them a review above room temperature.
The most devastating loss of her work in the fire was easily the material she’d been putting together for her concept album. She had a bunch of stuff saved to the cloud, sure, but it was like, lyrics and commission art and stuff! She couldn’t afford a subscription for enough storage space to keep her audio files and renders on the cloud, too. Some of that, too, she could recreate, but…it also presented an opportunity to start something fresh and new. Not that she was going to totally scrap the few notes and what she could remember enough to recreate, but the landscape of possibility had changed. With the Mile High Club’s resources at her disposal, she could diversify the voices for her characters pretty literally! And…the truth was, even though the Mile High Club had its own recording studio, some of the equipment was a little outdated, and the soundproofing could use some fixing up, and they were kind of missing a single good microphone…anyone with enough money to rent a recording space was going to go somewhere nicer. So this seemed like a fair trade off to Shang Qinghua: she wouldn’t take a salary, and she could monopolize the recording studio as much as she wanted.
Going home was depressing, or at the very least not very restful these days, and Shang Qinghua wound up spending most of her waking hours—and some of her sleeping hours—at the live house. There was just nothing comforting about a half-ruined apartment, especially the scorched area where her desk had been, and every time she passed one of her neighbors in the hall she could feel the dirty looks boring into her back. If she could afford to move somewhere else, believe her, she’d already be packing up!
It wasn’t as though the Mile High Club wasn’t an ambiently stressful place, but she was inured to it by now. She could function within it. And actually, all the studio time was making it less of a stressful place, even if she needed to be sleeping more. After all, the live house was at its best when it was filled with music, and while Shang Qinghua wasn’t playing on stage (yet), she came to find something deeply satisfying about her time in the studio.
“Shang Qinghua?”
She immediately jerked out of her composing reverie, jostling her headphones off as she looked up. She hadn’t even noticed the studio door open, nor the pointed rapping of a fan on inside of it. Shen Yuan stood in the doorway, closed fan in hand, looking expectantly at her.
On instinct, Shang Qinghua immediately put her hands behind her back as though to hide them, although in actuality all she’d been doing was banging out some tunes on a keyboard. Shen Yuan lifted her eyebrows.
“Your manager said you were back here.”
“You were looking for me?” Shang Qinghua said, surprised. Shen Yuan spread her fan over her face, waving it slightly.
“Well, you weren’t in your office like you usually are,” she said distantly. Shang Qinghua blinked. Could it be that…Shen Yuan actually wanted to hang out with her?
If she did, it was probably only so she could talk at Shang Qinghua about whatever blog post she was working on at the time. That seemed to be the primary subject of conversation with Shen Yuan whenever Shang Qinghua stopped to chat with (check on) her, or, as had become the case the last couple of times, when Shen Yuan called her over.
She’s already giving you free drinks, okay? Now you need to monopolize her time too? She’s obviously busy with work all of the time! Don’t be so entitled!!
Alright, so she didn’t look very busy right now. Before she could reply, Shen Yuan said with interest, “I didn’t know you played the keyboard.”
“Oh, well, piano, technically. I took lessons on and off growing up.” Shang Qinghua replied, to her own horror. She cursed her own traitorous mouth and furiously backpedaled. “But, uh—that was just when I was a kid, I haven’t touched a real piano in years, haha.” That was true, at least. “I’m not, like, a musician or anything…”
She wanted to slap herself in the face. Why didn’t she use the same “oh, I just dabble” line she’d used on Mobei Jun! It wasn’t like wanted Shen Yuan to think she was cool!
Unfortunately, her disclaimer had not dispelled the light of aloof interest in Shen Yuan’s eyes. “Play me what you were playing just now.”
Shang Qinghua winced, both because this was the last thing she wanted to do and because with that little demand—a normal person would have asked!—Shen Yuan had stuck the landing with the himedere vibe for once. The effect was tangible. Yes, yes, 10 out of 10, gold medal, now get lost and forget you ever saw her playing the keyboard!
She tried to stall. “Ah, haha, nah, I’m not really any good, and it’s just a sketch, not like, a completed piece or anything! Honestly it’d probably sound like garbage to, uh, such refined ears!”
“You’re playing something you wrote?”
Shang Qinghua bit her tongue, for real, on purpose. It fucking hurt, but maybe it’d stay in check now. Why would she say that! She’d had her headphones in, there was no way for Shen Yuan to know she was playing one of her own compositions! She could’ve just played the chords from one of any half a dozen pop songs she could remember off the top of her head and Shen Yuan would undoubtedly be left unimpressed by her lukewarm performance and lose all interest! Someone needed to take the shovel from her hands, she couldn’t stop digging her own fucking grave!
Shang Qinghua was still trying to come up with a negative description for her own music that wouldn’t be directly plagiarizing Peerless Cucumber when Shen Yuan pointed her fan at her. “I’d like to hear it. Go on, play.”
She really didn’t want to, though, is the thing!
But the weight of Shen Yuan’s expectant gaze bore down on her like the merciless rays of the sun, and while there were a whole host of things she could think of immediately that would get her out of this conversation immediately, there were none that wouldn’t put her relationship (the Mile High Club’s relationship) with Shen Yuan at risk. She did consider the merits of a bathroom emergency, but for once her stomach was behaving itself, and she was more concerned about ensuring the realism than she was about what Shen Yuan might think of her. But in the end, she decided to save the butt problems excuse for the future, and unplugged the headphones in resignation.
She quietly flipped the preset back to the standard piano sound instead of one of Airplane’s more signature-sounding synths. With any luck, it’d sound different enough as a faux-piano piece that Shen Yuan wouldn’t recognize it.
She could have played anything, sure, but almost everything she had ready-to-hand was either something Shen Yuan would instantly recognize as an Airplane work or something she was planning on using in Airplane’s work very soon, and thus could not be played for Shen Yuan. All she was left with were the sketches she’d been working on for the concept album. And it was just a sketch, still—if she really had to scrap it, she would, but maybe she could make it just vague enough that Shen Yuan wouldn’t find it memorable.
It was barely a page’s worth of music, anyway. Shang Qinghua considered playing the piece out of time, but last-minute decided that the stiff tocking of a metronome would do better to obscure the feel of the music. She wiped her sweaty palms on the hem of her shirt as discreetly as she could. Haha, performance anxiety? From Shang Qinghua, who hadn’t attended a piano recital since she was nine? Likelier than you think.
It’s Peerless fucking Cucumber, she reminded herself as she set her fingers lightly down on the keys. It’s not like her opinion really matters that much!
The melody had a clear, almost somber quality to it when played with the standard piano sound as opposed to the reverb-heavy synth she’d been using to eke it out. Shang Qinghua had intended to play it badly—well, a little off, at least—but her fingers moved almost automatically in time with the metronome, the notes sounding out clean and bright. She winced to herself as she lifted off the last note, not because she’d butchered it, but because she’d just played it better in front of Shen Yuan than she had managed to all afternoon by herself.
It was because she’d been doing all that practice, obviously!
But it was still a pretty simple piece of music, unrefined, meant to be incorporated into some greater whole. Shang Qinghua cleared her throat, readying a pathetic little spiel about how she was merely a humble erstwhile pianist with no real talent to speak of dicking around when she looked up at the sound of a clap.
Quietly but decisively, Shen Yuan was giving her just the tiniest bit of applause. Shang Qinghua suppressed a grimace. Of all times to break out the slow clap! She’d just played 30 seconds of music, it was barely worthy of a single clap! She would have sworn that Shen Yuan was just doing it to be a jerk, but…she was smiling?
It was just a little smile, more in the eyes than the mouth, but it was definitely a smile!
“Nicely done,” Shen Yuan said. “It’s succinct, but it has a lot of promise.”
Of course it’s succinct! It’s just a sketch! Shang Qinghua wanted to roll her eyes, but her ego was acutely honed to pick up on even the littlest scraps of praise, and absorbed it all hungrily, and instead she let out a moronic little laugh and said, “Ah, yeah?”
Shen Yuan tapped her chin with the tip of her closed fan, looking somewhat pleased. “It’s very melodious—it catches the ear, but there’s unresolved tension in it. It makes the listener curious to hear where it will go.”
The more time Shang Qinghua spent with Shen Yuan in person, the more it became clear to her that Shen Yuan wrote just like she spoke—or maybe it was the other way around, maybe she’d spent years practicing human speech with comment wars and blog posts before emerging from whatever basement she’d cocooned herself in as some kind of glamorous social butterfly. Either way, that review-like tone and wording had a peculiar effect on Shang Qinghua, the same shivering, brain-bending rush from when she’d listened to Shen Yuan talk about Airplane’s music to her face.
Fuck!
Of all the things Shang Qinghua was expecting, she really hadn’t expected Shen Yuan to like her music!
This was the same person who, week after week for years, had hounded her comments page and posted blogs dissecting her music and all the ways it was disappointing to her arcane standards. While she was a frequent flyer, yes, she was hardly Airplane’s only critic, and Shang Qinghua’s feelings about Peerless Cucumber’s blog posts could usually be described with one of the following emojis: 🙄 😆 🤨 🥱
And she had the face to stand there with that oh-so-cool and dignified air, pushing up her stupid hipster glasses, deigning to bequeath praise upon Shang Qinghua’s crown! If you’re really an expert on Airplane’s music, then shouldn’t you be able to recognize her composition style! Don’t you have any idea who you’re talking to, Earless Cucumber!
But of course she didn’t, and Shang Qinghua needed it to stay that way, so she could only put on a self-effacing smile that she hoped looked suitably “embarrassed by praise” and say, “Aha, yeah, well, it’s not going anywhere. Like I said, I’m really not a musician, I just dabble, you know—”
Shen Yuan lifted an eyebrow. Ah, fuck, she’d used the “I just dabble” line too late. Now it just seemed like an attempt at modesty instead of a brush-off, and Shen Yuan’s interest only sharpened.
“You have a gift. You should nurture it—especially when you have the perfect incubator. You could become a part of Tokyo’s sound too.”
She regarded Shang Qinghua with a look of aloof interest. Shang Qinghua was beginning to feel like her ego was not actually the focal point of this conversation, although she was largely distracted by the recurring sense of cognitive dissonance that she was coming to associate with these conversations.
That’s exactly what she wants, okay! Stop making her spew out all this faux humble crap! The irony was too much. Shang Qinghua restrained the urge to smash her face onto the keyboard.
“Uh—sure, sure, maybe. I’ll think about it,” she said hastily, searching for a way to end this conversation as quickly as possible. “Anyway I was just about to pack it up, I’ve got a—a meeting, you know, business meeting, boring accounting stuff, haha, all those numbers, am I right? And you’ve probably got a blog post to write, yeah? So just ask Yuka if you need anything ‘cause I’ll be busy, you know, in my business meeting so I’ll catch you later okay bye!”
By the time Shang Qinghua finished speaking, she had already unplugged the keyboard, stuffed her notes under her arm, and fled the room. Shen Yuan watched her retreating back with mild bemusement, then touched her chin with a slight frown. Some people just didn’t recognize an opportunity even if it danced around naked in front of them.
“Momo, aren’t you gonna come get dinner with us?” Six Balls asked around the lollipop in her mouth, sticking her drumsticks in her bag. They’d had an extra long practice, and the snacks from Six Balls’s family convenience store had only gone so far. Now they were a collection of very hungry teens with a curry chain connection, and as long as Sha Hualing didn’t try to demand free meals out of any very confused and underpaid cashiers who didn’t know her by face, Hell’s Bells Curry would be their dinner destination.
In the early days when they first formed as a band, Sha Hualing had eagerly tried to establish her family’s restaurant chain as the ideal place for post-rehearsal review meetings. But the group’s tendency to escalate their volume during their impassioned moments, plus Six Balls’s compulsion to improvise a drum kit out of anything, had resulted in them being (nicely) asked to leave on multiple occasions. Meiyin’s family, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind the noise at all—possibly because there were more people living in that sprawling old house than seemed probable, and they walked and talked over each other at almost all hours of the day—and if you didn’t mind the fact that the beauty parlor was run by a clan of fringe mystics who loved to dote on their guests, then you could play in their talisman-studded basement-slash-meditation room as much as you liked. Meiyin’s family, as she explained on their first visit to the beauty parlor, had a tendency to get a little noisy in their enthusiastic rituals, and the basement provided a convenient place to practice it where it wouldn’t bother their neighbors. Each of the girls in Proud Immortal Demon Way found the atmosphere at Meiyin’s place comforting in their own way. But Meiyin could tell that Sha Hualing was put out, a little slant of jealousy, so Meiyin had suggested that they meet at Hell’s Bells for dinner some of the time. They went to different schools for the most part and could use some time to socialize outside of practice, after all. And aside from Sha Hualing’s developing hobby of bribing the servers to switch out Mobei Jun’s food, it worked out pretty well that way.
But Mobei Jun had turned to walk the opposite direction from the rest of the band. She paused, a hand on the strap of her bass case.
“Flyers for our next show,” she said. “I had copies made. I just need to stop at home to get them. I’ll meet you all at Meiyin’s later to hand them out.”
Sha Hualing pouted, preemptively defeated once again. She stamped a foot on the sidewalk. “No fair! You’ve been bailing out on us way more than usual lately. You totally have to hang out with us this time!”
Meiyin placed a hand on Sha Hualing’s shoulder. “You know, I think we can probably pass on a review meeting today. Why don’t we go with Mobei Jun so we can help her with the flyers, and then we can all get dinner together?”
“But I’m hungry now,” Sha Hualing whined. Six Balls produced a KitKat from somewhere in her jacket and held it out. Sha Hualing bit down on it with a muffled and sulky thanks. Meiyin smiled sweetly at Mobei Jun.
“We can either get dinner with Mobei Jun later, or get dinner without her now,” she said. “I think I’d much rather prefer her company myself. Besides, we probably shouldn’t let her haul all those flyers across town by herself, hm?”
Mobei Jun was just starting to say it’s not necessary when Sha Hualing’s eyes lit up with renewed interest. “Hey, we’ve never actually been to Mobei Jun’s house before. Except for Binghe, right?”
Luo Binghe, leaning against a telephone pole with her arms crossed, cast a sidelong glance at Mobei Jun. “She lets me crash at her place sometimes when I don’t feel like going home.”
“Then it’s settled,” Sha Hualing said with a smug smile. “We’re stopping at Mobei Jun’s house before dinner!”
“Which train do we take to get to your place, Momo?” Six Balls asked immediately after, crunching on her lollipop. “What station’s in that direction? Don’t think I’ve ever gone that way before.”
Mobei Jun, who had opened her mouth to decline their company, wavered slightly. She wasn’t in the best of moods, and in those times, she tended to want to stay away from people until it passed. Not to mention, she preferred to keep Linguang Jun as far from her personal life as possible. But looking at her friends, who all looked eager to lend her a hand—even Luo Binghe didn’t look opposed to the idea—it might not be so bad to have them along as moral support. And they didn’t necessarily have to meet her aunt, either.
When they arrived at the gates, Sha Hualing’s mouth hung upon as they stared up the stone-paved walkway across the massive lawn that led to Mobei Jun’s house. Sha Hualing turned an incredulous look on her.
“What the fuck!” she sputtered. “I knew you had money, but you never told us you were mansion with its own postal code rich!”
She took off one shoe and thwapped Mobei Jun in the arm with it, but Mobei Jun caught her firmly by the wrist and wrenched it from her grip. Only after she had peeled Sha Hualing’s fingers away did she offer it back.
“It’s the family business,” Mobei Jun said blandly. They started up the steps, and then she stopped.
“You don’t have to come inside.” She gestured to a small collection of chairs around an umbrella-shaded table off to the side on the impeccable lawn. “Wait here. I’ll be back shortly.”
“I’ll go with you,” Luo Binghe volunteered, and it was clear from her tone that no would not be taken as an answer. Mobei Jun knew this was a gesture of support, and it was true that Luo Binghe knew the house and was the only member of Proud Immortal Demon Way to have met Linguang Jun. Mobei Jun was nodding in concession when Six Balls piped up.
“Me too,” she said, pulling the demolished lollipop stick from her mouth. “What if you tried to carry too many flyers and got a papercut? You wouldn’t be able to play. Besides, I wanna see how fancy your bathrooms are. I bet you have super high tech toilets.”
Alright, well, if Six Balls needed to use the bathroom, Mobei Jun wasn’t quite cold enough to tell her to hold it. Meiyin patted Sha Hualing on the head and steered her over to the chairs.
“We’ll wait out here,” she said, just as Sha Hualing protested, “Totally unfair!”
“Don’t worry, Shasharin, I’ll bring you a souvenir,” Six Balls assured her.
“You will not,” Mobei Jun said patiently, and started up the walkway. Six Balls winked at Sha Hualing over her shoulder and skipped a few steps to catch up to Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe.
The house was no traditional residence, but rather something relatively modern and Western-styled. The vaulted glass ceiling over the atrium-like entryway where they removed their shoes let in a flood of cloud-dappled light from overhead, making it feel even more spacious. Six Balls chewed on her lollipop stick as she un-velcroed her Heelys, looking about with a curious eye. It was true, they’d always known Mobei Jun was the Rich Friend in their group. She always paid the difference on their ticket quotas without so much as a word; if Six Balls hadn’t seen her do it, Mobei Jun probably wouldn’t ever have mentioned it. She didn’t flaunt her wealth, unlike the rich kids Six Balls knew from her school, but Mobei Jun also never hesitated to cover dinner for everyone the second Sha Hualing opened her mouth to complain about her allowance. She always paid for Luo Binghe, of course, something that escaped no one’s notice, but was never commented on. It would only make Luo Binghe feel self-conscious anyway.
Still, while Six Balls had never been under the impression that she’d be letting a mouth go unfed if she didn’t sneak sandwiches into Mobei Jun’s bag, she definitely hadn’t imagined that their bassist lived in the kind of house that looked like it needed a full staff to keep clean. Why the huge house, anyway, aside from being rich enough to have it? Obviously Mobei Jun wasn’t responsible for the house, but Six Balls never got the impression she came from a big family. She hardly talked about her family at all, really, which was okay. That was just the kind of band Proud Immortal Demon Way was: no one ever had to share what they didn’t want to. They might bicker sometimes, and Luo Binghe’s mood could flip at the drop of a hat, but that much was agreed upon. Everyone in the band was there for their own reasons, but what they all had in common was that they’d joined the band to have a place to get away.
Maybe it was the vast sense of emptiness in the house Mobei Jun wanted an escape from. Maybe that was why she’d been reluctant to let anyone come with her. If she decided she wanted Six Balls to know, she’d likely just say so.
Mobei Jun pointed her in the direction of a bathroom after they climbed the first flight of stairs, and Six Balls scurried off with a salute. To her mild disappointment, the toilets weren’t anything really out of the ordinary, just really expensive-looking and with a larger than usual array of bidet options to choose from. The bathroom was even equipped with one of those Sound Princess things so no one could hear you pee, even though the door was way too far from the toilet for that to ever be a concern.
While she was washing her hands, Six Balls took note of the little drawers and cabinets in the bathroom. They turned out to mostly hold supplies, although a few were empty. Grinning with her tongue between her teeth, Six Balls dug a pack of gummies out from her bag.
Once she had hidden an individually-wrapped peach gummy in every cabinet, she slipped out of the bathroom and immediately found herself lost in the massive house. She was about to text Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe for directions when she heard a snatch of conversation, and she followed the voices instead.
“We were just leaving,” Mobei Jun said in a clipped tone as Six Balls peeked her head into the room—not a bedroom, but a study. But probably Mobei Jun’s? There was no way she only had one room to herself in this whole house.
Standing not far from Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe, and much closer to the door, was a tall woman Six Balls had never seen before but who had the clear mark of family resemblance. Well, it did seem just as unlikely that Mobei Jun had the entire house to herself. The lady was smiling at Mobei Jun, her posture open, but Six Balls couldn’t detect a hint of kind intent. She leaned away from the room as though pushed back by an icy wind.
“So soon? But you hardly spend any time at home.” Linguang Jun was too polished to pout, but there was a slight tone of admonishment in her voice. And then, before Six Balls had so much as made a sound, she turned and pinned the drummer to the spot with that smile. “Oh, hello there. Is this one of your music friends, Mobei Jun? Really, why don’t you have her stay for dinner instead of going out? You never bring your friends over.”
Six Balls could not help but notice that she seemed to be ignoring Luo Binghe’s presence entirely. Luo Binghe’s eyes narrowed, her grip on the stack of flyers white-knuckled. Six Balls swallowed.
“Linguang Jun,” Mobei Jun said, drawing the lady’s attention back to her, “as I was just saying, we already have plans. I’ll be home early enough to finish my homework.”
“I just worry that you’re not getting enough sleep,” Linguang Jun sighed, while Six Balls debated whether she should try inching into the room, or if it’d be better to stay here in case Mobei Jun needed a man on the outside. “All this time with your friends on top of band practice and student council meetings? It just seems like a lot for one high school student.”
Mobei Jun’s expression didn’t change. She only nodded to Luo Binghe and Six Balls and said, “Binghe, take the flyers and Six Balls out to wait with the others. I’ll be out shortly.”
Six Balls was morbidly curious, but Linguang Jun gave her the heebie-jeebies, and she definitely wasn’t going to argue with Mobei Jun in this situation. Six Balls took a sheaf of flyers from Luo Binghe and, with just one more backwards glance, followed her out of the house.
As soon as their footsteps faded into the distance, Linguang Jun smirked and tucked a rebellious wisp of hair behind her ear.
“Really, Mobei Jun, if you’re going to have friends at all, try to have better taste. What do that girl’s parents do for a living, work in a factory? Just look at her shoes. And do you really think it’s appropriate for you to be seen socializing outside of school with the sort of delinquent who lives in a group home?”
Mobei Jun’s jaw tightened. Linguang Jun’s smile broadened by fractions.
“Oh, did you think I wasn’t aware of your little charitable arrangement? You really don’t need to be worried about what I think, though. Your school, on the other hand…isn’t that sort of thing against the rules?”
Mobei Jun narrowed her eyes and picked up the last sheaf of flyers. She wasn’t going to stand here and let Linguang Jun bait her into a pointless argument. Linguang Jun could report her to her school for breaking the rules—something that could easily jeopardize her position as a student council member—or she could just dangle this taunt uselessly. It wasn’t likely that Mobei Jun could influence her one way or another; an argument would only be entertainment for Linguang Jun in the end. Mobei Jun didn’t get into petty fights, either.
She moved for the door without saying anything. Linguang Jun let her pass. Mobei Jun counted the seconds in her mind as she walked out of the room.
“Just one more thing before you go,” came Linguang Jun’s coaxing voice, right on cue. Concern, criticize, change the subject. Mobei Jun stopped. “I couldn’t help but notice the unusually high credit card charge on your last statement. I’m sure you don’t need me to lecture you on responsible spending habits.”
“No,” Mobei Jun said, not turning around. “I don’t.”
“I hope you’re not so naive as to think you can save that place from going under with your pocket change,” Linguang Jun said, her eyes boring into the back of Mobei Jun’s head. Her tone didn’t change. “Do your friends even know? Ah, of course they don’t. I’m sure you think you can take care of it all on your own.”
Mobei Jun turned where she stood, her expression dark. “You don’t need to go back to the Mile High Club.” Her voice was even. “You’ve already done what you came to do. I don’t want to see you there again.”
She didn’t wait for a reply before she turned back and strode swiftly for the staircase, flyers in hand. Linguang Jun had to have some other game in mind besides just personally tormenting her niece—she was smarter than that. Mobei Jun would find out what it was, and whatever it took, she was going to find a way to put a stop to it.
End notes: six balls & mobei jun is the kind of character interaction that really only makes sense within the context of a niche AU that takes willful liberties with minor characters but you know what? i love it, and it is important to me