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Being cooped up in her apartment wasn't so bad after Sodachi had moved. With the money she was earning from Ave Mujica, in addition to the monthly stipend Sakiko still gave her, Sodachi had an unfathomable amount of money to spend. Initially, she had wanted to live an ascetic life, putting it all into savings for retirement. Eventually, however, she realized that even if she increased her monthly spending fourfold, it was nothing compared to the money coming in.
If nothing else, she could afford a nicer apartment.
No longer some run down one-room thing out of the way of anything. She had an apartment in a highrise downtown. Right next to a train station and with dozens of stores surrounding it, it was a massive quality of life improvement.
The apartment itself was great, too. Sodachi didn't need more than one bedroom, but she had been able to convert one of the additional rooms into a performance space. Another turned into an office for studying. It was more than she would ever need. She could live the rest of her life here.
That turned out to be more apt than she thought.
After Ave Mujica broke up, Sodachi found herself retreating from life. She still went to school, but she had to drag herself along the way. And once the bell rang, she would race home. She had never enjoyed the rumors surrounding her at school, about the band and her role. After the breakup, however, they felt far more cruel.
So Sodachi found herself spending most of her time at home. She barely even cooked for herself. She did the bare minimum. She would cook when she wasn't able to find sufficient vegetarian meals at the nearest convenience store. She did her shopping in the middle of the night, which certainly didn't help. Even more so now, Sodachi ran from any possible celebrity encounters.
Sodachi didn't want to meet fans. They were only a reminder of what had fallen apart.
Despite how dubious she had been about Ave Mujica at first, the band had changed her life. Sodachi looked back on her existence before as a sad and pathetic thing. She didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t imagine it.
What was she supposed to do with herself now? Going to practice, media appearances, playing shows… While Sodachi had never been entirely comfortable in the limelight, that was better than being a nobody. She couldn’t go back to performing as a session musician for high school bands that would never release a second song. Not just because she was too famous for that now— if she did want to go back to session work, her asking price could now be ten times as much as before, or even a hundred times more— but because she knew it to be lesser now.
At least she didn’t have to worry about money. In the aftermath of the band breaking up, Sakiko had approached Sodachi to tell her that she would maintain the monthly payments from the Togawa Corporation. She knew Sodachi’s situation and didn’t want her to suffer from a sudden sharp drop in income. When one month became the next, Sodachi even noticed that Sakiko had stapled an extra zero to the end of the amount.
It was a nauseating amount of money. Sodachi didn’t know what to do with it.
Wake up, eat, go to school, come home, eat, and sleep. That was her entire day. There was nothing between these steps for her. Sleep, school, eat. Sleep, school, eat. Sleep, school, eat.
Sleep, school, eat, and rot.
It was while she was in that dire state that her doorbell rang out. Sodachi never had guests; so few people even knew where she lived, so she could narrow the potential candidates down to less than ten. Even her own father didn’t know she had moved.
With a groan and a sigh, Sodachi dragged herself out of bed and towards the door. Looking through the peephole, she wasn’t exactly surprised to see Umiri and Nyamu on the other side. Through the door, she heard their chatter.
“— she’s not here right now?”
“She’s definitely here. Where else would she be? We know she doesn’t have a life.”
Painful words, but Nyamu was hardly wrong… With that, Sodachi swung open the door to greet her unwanted guests.
“Yo.” Umiri greeted her with a casual wave.
Already, Sodachi regretted opening the door. She knew she looked awful. She had only just rolled out of bed, and that was after weeks of not taking care of herself. Her hair was ratty and unkempt. Without realizing it, she had greeted her guests in her pajamas.
It was good that her guess about them being other members of Ave Mujica was right. Sodachi would have hated to greet a stranger like this. Nyamu and Umiri had seen Sodachi in her underwear dozens of times in changing rooms. This was only more embarrassing because of her disarray.
“Wow, you look like shit.” Unlike Umiri, Nyamu didn’t hold back. Sodachi just stared back at her, dead-eyed, as if to say, “Yeah, I know.”
Sodachi invited the two of them in. She started preparing tea, then scrounged around until she found a hairbrush. That problem, at least, was most immediately fixable.
So while she fought against the endless knots and tangles that made up the rat’s nest on her head, she sat down to talk to her ex-bandmates.
Umiri started the conversation. “We were about to go shopping. I figured we should invite you.”
“Shopping…?” Sodachi shrugged. “Why? I’ve never been one to care about clothes shopping all that much.”
“Yeah, we can tell,” Nyamu giggled. She was being honest to a fault.
“I think you should leave your apartment. You look miserable.” And so was Umiri. But then she shrugged, “Besides. Shopping is fun.”
“Is it…?” Sodachi shook her head. “It’s all just running around, making sure things fit, and spending money. There’s no joy in that.”
“...Girl, have you ever gone shopping that wasn’t with your parents?”
Sodachi was tempted to tell Nyamu a little more about herself, just to make her feel bad for that remark, but she held back. “I have. Many times.”
“Have you ever bought clothes that weren’t chosen for function?”
Sodachi shrugged. She was beginning to understand Nyamu’s point, but that made her feel awkward. “Well, no… but I don’t see the point in bothering with looking nice. I mean, have you seen me?”
“Yeah, I have. That’s why we’re here to fix you.” Next to Nyamu, Umiri nodded. “You could be quite cute if you put a single modicum of effort into your appearance. Focus on your nails, put on some stronger makeup, maybe dye your hair blonde…”
“You just want me to become a gyaru!”
“Well, you’d make it work.”
Sodachi groaned. “So you’re forcing me out of the house so we can be shopping.”
Umiri raised her hand like a kid in school wanting to be called on. After Sodachi stared at her for a moment, she said, “Well, actually, we were going to go shopping on our own, but decided to bring you with us after we left.”
“So I was an afterthought, too…”
Umiri nodded. “Yes.”
Sodachi looked down at her tea which was rapidly cooling. Then, in a single gulp, she downed it all. “Fine. I’ll go get ready.”
The better part of an hour, they were finally out the door. Of course, getting ready had happened in stages.
After heading into her bedroom to change, she emerged, only to be summarily rejected by Nyamu. Another twenty minutes passed as the influencer painstakingly touched up Sodachi’s makeup. It was, in a word, unbearable, even if Sodachi had to admit by the end that she looked better for it.
Umiri used the time to surveil Sodachi’s closet. She never said anything, just made an occasional grunt of understanding, but that was still terrifying.
As they were on their way out of the building, Nyamu and Umiri kept whispering between each other. Whatever scheme they were concocting between them clearly spelled disaster for Sodachi.
Several hours later, and several hundreds of thousands of yen lighter, Sodachi had a whole new closet in her hands. She did have to admit that the clothes were nice, and Nyamu did a good job of figuring out what suited her, but…
Wasn’t that such an exorbitant waste of money? Even with everything that had been coming in, this was still a solid dent to Sodachi’s savings.
At least she fared better than Umiri, who seemed proud of the fact that she had spent all the money available to her.
Sodachi had always assumed Umiri was a fairly ascetic person, from what she observed. The girl didn’t eat much and her personality was mellow, if eccentric. She was always well-dressed, but Sodachi had assumed she was fairly normal about fashion.
Whatever the case may be, those two ex-bandmates of hers had gone all out. In addition to all the money Sodachi had spent on clothes, Nyamu even insisted on buying Sodachi makeup. It wasn’t like Sodachi didn’t bother with makeup ever, but she saved it for the special occasions… Nyamu seemed to disagree with that notion, though, and insisted that Sodachi put more effort into it. No surprise, coming from the makeup influencer.
Sodachi had to admit that it was nice. She hadn’t had any real friends before Ave Mujica. Acquaintances, sure. There were the other bands she played in, but those relationships were strictly professional. While she had never felt all that close to the other members of Ave Mujica, even just going shopping with them outside of band activities was something special.
“...I guess I see what you were trying to make me see.”
“Hm?” Umiri had a single french fry sticking out of her mouth like a cigarette. It was one of the four or five she had eaten this meal.
Nyamu seemed equally confused. “Eh? What do you mean?”
Sodachi shrugged a little, then shrank into her seat. She had figured they would know right away what she meant, so it felt awkward that she had to explain. “Oh, just… shopping. I had more fun today than I had with shopping before. It felt different.”
“Probably because you were getting clothes for your own enjoyment, right? Instead of just buying them for function.” After Umiri finished talking, she began eyeing a sixth french fry.
“Yeah…”
Nyamu giggled. “Knew it. You have potential, girl. Maybe I can get you in some of my vids for a makeover. Something like ‘Painfully Generic Girl Made Beautiful.’”
“Hey.”
Nyamu snickered. “What? It’s true.”
“Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you need to say it,” Umiri responded. After a moment, she set the french fry she had been eyeing back on Sodachi’s tray.
“Hey!” Sodachi groaned. “You don’t need to remind me of my own failings…”
After that sober remark, Nyamu and Umiri turned to look at each other. They couldn’t help but feel bad after that… so Nyamu spoke up and said, “Say, why don’t we head back to your place after this? I wanna try dressing you up!”
Sodachi smiled a beleaguered smile. Even if she didn’t know what the future of Ave Mujica would hold, she was at least glad that she had gotten people she could call friends out of the experience. People in her life who would drag her out of her apartment when she was rotting away were certainly better than nothing.
Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t still be scared of whatever it was Nyamu was planning to do to her for the internet's amusement.