Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Kento, if your knee is hurting, you should take a break from lessons.”
     Kento was sitting on his bed peeling a cold compress off of his knee when a chestnut-coloured bob jumped into view. Kento looked up to see his roommate, Tomoya Komatsu. His large chestnut eyes were watching him worriedly.
     “You’re already an amazing dancer, Kento. One day off isn’t going to do anything to you. Don’t worry about the new bits of the routine ? I’ll teach you when I get home.”
     “I’m fine!” Kento snapped.
     Tomoya was considerate and kind, but they were still rivals. Besides, although they were in the same grade, Tomoya was still a year younger than him. Kento was too proud to allow himself to learn dance routines from a junior.
     Kento shoveled up his overgrown hair and began tearing off the cold compresses with vigour.
     “Have you thought about wearing a knee support?” Tomoya suggested hesitantly.
     “I won’t. If I do, it would make people think even more that I’m injured or something,” Kento said shortly, unrolling the legs of his chinos and picking his backpack off the floor. “Let’s go. The bus is coming.”
     “Oh, you’re right!” Tomoya checked the time on his G-Shock watch and leapt up. “The bus only runs every half-hour during the day here. I’ll go ahead!”
     Kento watched the boy burst out of the room before slowly slinging his backpack over his shoulders. Then, he broke into a walk, trying not to put too much weight on his right leg.
     For the past month or so, the pain in his right leg had been bothering him.
     “Damnit, during such an important time, too…”
     Kento was part of an entertainment agency called Sion Promotion. At sixteen, he was still talent-in-training. Today, he was only one of many background dancers for a senior duo called DZ.
     Last week, Manager Shimoda had summoned everyone and announced that the agency was planning to debut a new four-member group six months down the road. The members would be selected out of this group through an audition.
     That was why, right now, every lesson counted.
     Since last night, Kento had kept cold compresses on his knee and had rested, which was probably why the pain had subsided a little. He breathed a sigh of relief.
     He exited the room and walked down the long hallway to the entrance.
     The dormitory was large-scale, housing two people per room and up to two hundred people in total. Each room was about forty-five square metres, with private bathrooms, showers, and toilets. A long row of twenty-five rooms flanked each side of the narrow hallway in the two-storey building. Kento shared a room at the end of the first floor, which meant he had a considerable way to walk to the entrance.
     “I should hurry.” Kento glanced at his watch and broke into a run.
     Eventually he met a man walking his way, wearing a suit and carrying a large black bag.
     The man was about five-foot-seven, not very different in height from Kento. But his slender figure was noticeable even with his suit.
     “Who could he be?”
     The rules were rigidly enforced in this dormitory, and even family members could not enter without permission. It was only natural, the dorm head had told him: after all, they were in charge of students from all over the country. Meetings with parents were supposed to be held in the meeting room located in the wing between the school and the dorms. The recreation room and dining hall were also located there.
     The man was wearing a fashionable brown suit. He certainly did not look like a repairman.
     “Who’re you?” Kento eyed the approaching man suspiciously. The man widened his eyes in surprise and touched the frame of his glasses with a finger.
     “Are you a student here? Don’t worry, I’m not anyone to be suspicious of.” The man smiled as he ran his fingers through his wavy hair, which was parted down the middle. From afar, he had looked like a mature man in his suit, but his smiling face was open and innocent, and his eyes, though sharp, were not cold. His eyebrows were thin and his chin delicate. Kento thought he looked pretty, like the actresses he often saw at the dance studio.
     I wonder if he’s someone’s older brother.
     “Where are you going?” Kento asked.
     “I’m on my way to the infirmary.”
     The answer made Kento even more suspicious. He glared at the man.
     “The infirmary’s not inside the dorm.”
     “Yeah, but if I’m coming from the back gates, the dorm is a shortcut. You’d agree, right? Anyway, excuse me.”
     The man was right; the infirmary was conveniently located between the school and the dorm as to be accessible if any dorm resident fell ill. If this man had frequent business with the infirmary, Kento decided he probably wasn’t a suspicious character. He let his gaze slip away from the man’s back as he dashed for the entrance.

     Shonan Private School was a combined junior and senior high school offering a total of six years of education. The senior high school division was further divided into General, Athletic, and Performing Arts streams. Although it wasn’t officially affiliated to N. University, N. University admitted students from Shonan with a faculty reference. For that reason, many students at Shonan had ties to the entertainment business, and athletic students were also scouted from all over the country. About a quarter of them lived in dorms.
     Kento had transferred here in the second term of ninth grade. Now, two months in so far, he had had no time to enjoy student life, and still had no friends. But he and his roommate, Tomoya Komatsu, naturally began to spend time together since they were part of the same entertainment agency.
     Today, they had left class early together to go to dance lessons. Kento and the other background dancers were up to their eyeballs in dance lessons since DZ’s nationwide tour was about to begin.
     Tomoya was already at the bus stop, waiting for him.
     “Hurry, hurry!” he urged Kento when he appeared at the school gates. The bus arrived just then, and they both boarded.
     “Thank goodness,” Tomoya said.
     “Yeah. Good thing we made it.”
     “No, I meant thank goodness you’re part of the group now.” Tomoya sank into a seat and chuckled. “You know, I never liked leaving class early by myself. It stands out. I wasn’t bullied about it or anything, though,” he added. “It’s just that… when you say you’re in the entertainment business, people are a little more critical of you.”
     “But there are tons of people here who are in the entertainment business,” Kento said.
     Tomoya wrinkled his brow in disagreement.
     “There are a lot in senior high school, but not that many in junior high.”
     “…I see.”
     Kento wasn’t quite as riled up about it. He was very much used to not fitting in. He had always stood out in class, being a year older than the rest of his classmates since elementary school, due to certain reasons.
     “Anyway, enough about that.” Tomoya took out a pack of gum from his pocket and passed a stick to Kento. He chewed on one himself as he picked up where he left off.
     “Who do you think will make the audition?”
     “We won’t know until it’s over,” Kento said unconcernedly. Tomoya stared up at him.
     “You’re lucky, Kento, you’ll probably make it. Mr. Mori scouted you himself.”
     Tomoya was talking about Nobuyuki Mori, the managing director and son of the female president of the production company.
     Kento’s mother owned a small boutique on Omotesando, a high-end shopping district, and Kento often hung out there after class. Nobuyuki Mori had stepped into the boutique one day, accompanying a female personality affiliated with the company. That was when the two had met. Mori had sweet-talked Kento’s mother into letting him scout Kento for Sion Promotion.
     “That doesn’t matter. An audition is still an audition,” Kento said as he chewed his gum. “Anyway, look at you. Your whole family is involved in music. And you’re a good singer.”
     Tomoya wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
     “But it’s classical music. That doesn’t count.”
     Tomoya’s father was a professor at a college of music. His mother was a piano teacher, and his two older sisters were in vocal programs at music school. They were a family of born and bred musicians.
     “I hate classical music. It’s not catchy, and it’s boring.”
     Kento figured it must sound that way if you had to listen to it every day.
     “Your family is way cooler,” Tomoya said. “Your dad’s a photographer and your mom’s a fashion designer. You’re like a TV-show family,” Tomoya said enviously.
     “I guess it is if you put it that way, but in reality it’s pretty different.”
     His father, Ikuto, was indeed a photographer; however, his subjects were rather dull ? archeological remains or things related to anthropology or other specialized academic fields. He often submitted work for a famous science journal published by the American Geographic Society.
     His mother, Hisae, designed textiles ? the dyeing and patterning of fabric. She played a more backstage role in terms of fashion. But she was now a sought-after designer, currently working in London for an up-and-coming designer. Their family currently lived apart, with each following their dreams.

     The headquarters of Sion Promotion, where they were both affiliated, was located in Shinjuku.
     A year ago it had transferred out of a rented office in the Aoyama building into one of the high-rises at the south exit of the station. The agency used to rent a dance studio in Shimokitazawa, but now had its own studio in the new office for dance lessons. Members of the agency were now free to come at any time to practice.
     The dance studio, at a spacious 150 square metres, was like a gymnasium. A part of the wall had a mirror and a barre. DZ’s concert tour was planned for the winter holidays, in addition to out-of-town concerts on weekends starting in December. That meant lessons were becoming steadily tougher.
     A professional dance team formed the core of the troupe of background dancers. Kento and his junior team had to dance to eight songs, including the opening and finale.
     As he danced along with Uehara, the choreographer, he felt the sweat begin to stream down in droplets.
     The exhilaration was indescribable. The lessened pain in his leg only spurred him on; Kento let his boundless energy flow to the tips of his hands and feet as he went through the routine.
     “Looking good, Kento,” Uehara said, clapping him on the shoulder.
     “Kento, stop stealing the spotlight,” grumbled Ryusuke Kawara, one half of the DZ duo, in a joking way as he popped in from the doorway. “You need to tone down your dancing, or else you’re going to outshine us both.”
     Mori, who was beside him, smiled behind his glasses and gestured for Uehara to lean in and listen.
     “I think the results are in,” he murmured into Uehara’s ear, which of course went unheard for Kento.
     “Right. Along with him, I’d vote for Nishimura and Oka as potentials.”
     “I was just thinking the same thing.”