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The crowd littered the stage. They all lined up across the platform where Amber and the Manor crew would perform.
“Oh god”, Amber said, eyeing at the audience from the side view. The Bandstand haven't even had this much visitors in it's whole lifetime. Every performance would have only up to 20 people on the seats. This one however, was an entirely different story.
How was she going to perform in front of thousands, if not millions, of people?
Amber then remembered one of Lumi’s many words that she had always recited like a litany. “Pain makes you grow, and suffering refines you.” Is this performance going to be challenging? Yes. Would she learn from it, even if it will go badly? Why, also yes. She can always grow. Amber recalled a certain scene, when she brought out the topic to the light.
She was in a moderately small room with a couple metal tables and artificial lights. Amber, Draco and Damian were sitting while talking about their ambitions. Damian, in particular, brought out a plastic food container with a homemade pozole inside. Bull generally allowed people to eat their own foods, so it was permitted.
“Oh, it took like… years to finally produce and air our first ever song.” Draco said, fidgeting with his dragon keychain.
“It was shitty as hell though,” Draco ceased fidgeting. He looked his displeasure at Damian, who was devouring the pozole, with a fierce frown. “Ahem, sorry Draco, but the truth had to be told. Your voice just wasn't cut out for it.”
“Shut up,” Draco added in. “You won't trust him, right, Amber? Of course I wouldn't do that,” He whispered to the fire performer as he directed his thumb at Damian.
“Ah, resorting to your old ways now, huh. Not taking any accountability whatsoever. Once the youngest sibling, always the youngest sibling.” Damian chuckled. The vision faded back onto the stage.
Amber breathed in. She took out a lighter from a counter nearby and activated it. The inferno shifted over it's metal container, wrapping itself around with a continuous motion of sheer energy. When her torch girded next to the fire, the newborn blaze of the staff danced alongside it's twin.
The crowd cheered as Amber marched to the stage with a burning fire staff. Sparks hovered across her face; in spite of the danger the performance could possibly bring, she was still determined to fulfill her main goal.
The main goal was, however, not success, but failing, and in doing so, being proud of it. Whether she’ll throw a major party cluttered with endless bottles of Champagne, raving iridescent lights and the most earsplitting karaoke campaigns or just getting herself a Coca Cola, it's all up to herself.
Amber's not going to be like Draco, who does everything under the sun to hide his years of progress behind his good-for-nothing persona. She will grow so much she will go beyond her limits. And by growing, she will show people what real progress looks like. Through struggle and persistance. But the thing is, how far would she go to reach the goal…?
Lumi towered over her, as the drums stood, ready to be played by the blunt morning stars of hers. At Amber’s left, Draco maintained an upright posture with his guitar, and again, a grin painted on his face. At her right, Damian gripped a microphone, with not one, but two earmuffs on top of each other atop his head. “You've got this, Amber!” He shouted from a distance.
“You too, hah.”
“Are you ready.” Lumi whispered over her.
“Hahaha, uh…” Amber remembered the times where she'd gotten too overconfident. She closed her eyes. Pain makes you grow, she reminded to herself. Don't be ashamed.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she twirled her morning stars, “1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4!”. Lumi started out by a simple melody of a drum beat.
Amber raised her fire staff. She strolled towards the audience and bent her knee to the ground. The people gaped at the flaming staff as if it were a jingling key; countless cameras pointed at the stick. Amber swung the torch around herself, switching free hands in the process. Then she twirled it through her legs and spun the staff with her own bare fingers. The people remain seated in silence.
She moved her bent knee backwards, now as she stood straight now. The torch sat horizontally in front of the audience. It's one end burned while the other didn't. Amber’s free hand had pivoted toward the open blaze, carefully distancing from it to prevent catching itself aflame. Her palms were trembling. She was nervous.
Amber noticed that Lumi’s drum beats have sped it's tempo up to the point of near unrecognizability. Intentional or not, it doesn't matter. Now, don't mess up the timing, one voice in her head said. It won't matter if you do though, another spoke. The result isn't evident unless she acts.
Her free hand touched the fire and dashed to transport it to the unlit end. The drum beats have gone back to a normal speed with same rhythm again, while occasionally adding in some kicks for extra flair.
Breathe in, breathe out, she thought. You will succeed. No, you will create such an experience that succeeding will seem like an afterthought.
No matter if you fail, you will be proud, whether the performance’ll work out or not.
Sparked with ambition, Amber turned from the torch to the crowd. She started spinning the stick as if it were a propeller; a halo of pure molten inferno appeared in front of the populaces' cameras. The guitar’s roars began to sing as she twirled the staff, and propelled it ahead to the skies!
Her hand reached out to grab the flying halo, but she hadn't felt anything. And suddenly, the audience screamed.
“THE DRUMS,” Yelps and screeches and cries for help made a major spectacle. “THEY’RE BURNING!” What, what is burning, she thought as she turned her head around. Wait, no…
“no, no, no, NO…”
Amber stood in front of Lumi’s office block. The placid, pitch-black sky was filled to the brim with almost-invisible shining dots that resemble a fire’s unfortunate sparks. The cool wind wrapped her body around. She stood at the dorm’s porch, eyes directed to the door. It smelled of coins. Copious amounts of gifts swallowed Amber’s arms as a whole; bags of chili peppers and tempered chocolate and seafood and Coca-Cola sodas and pies, everything was there, surrounded in the warm embrace of her wrists, since she thought that the ground was too cold and that would ruin the food.
Why did I do this, she thought. Failures were supposed to only impact the performer. And neglecting that itself is a failure on Amber’s act. She guesses that although some limits may be restricting and need to be shattered someday, some of them shall never be broken. That situation seemed like the prime example of why.
Looking away, the performer lifted her knee to knock on the dorm’s door.
Knock, knock. The door remained static.
An another knock ensued. Now Amber thought about how rude what she did was. That, layered with the accident that happened yesterday, made her feel as though she was a fraud. Maybe she should just leave the gifts at the porch anyway and leave a note explaining how stupidly incompetent… wait, no, inexperienced she was and that she will improve later on. Pain makes you grow, right?
“Who is this,” Lumi’s faint voice echoed through the metal.
“I… uh… Amber.”
The door went silent afterwards; only a gentle breeze of the wind and the chirping of the crickets could be heard. The performer looked down at the objects surrounding her arms. A note could really help right now, she thought.
Amber didn’t do anything but replayed that same incident in her mind over and over again. The screeches of the audience and the levitating halo of fire and the major scandal the entire thing made overall… It was gut-wretching. Had she went way too far? Amber wondered, her eyes gazing at the night sky.
Perfectionism is a double-edged sword, she deemed. It’ll help you achieve success, but it will also drain you in return. The performer’s brows furrowed.
The help won't even be this substantial either.
In most cases, you’ll absolutely burn out. You can't even express your feelings outwards, since you've crafted out this “perfect” image of yourself who does everything right, the fire performer thought as she pictured Draco, who had a golden shining crown atop his helmet while dancing on roses thrown at him by fanatics like Edgar.
Amber’s clumsiness has prevented her to develop this dangerous persona, but the perfectionism remained ingrained to her mind. It’s pressure bolstered every time a mistake occured in her performances. 20-ish people at the Bandstand weren't enough to notice these; however, it would still feel like being laughed upon whenever she’d slip up.
This time, she tried to attempt something different. Reworking an entire framework of how she sees miscalculations is of course, difficult. It led to a colossal scandal being constructed right in front of her. But she wouldn't back down just because of an incident. She has made the decision to improve naturally, and she will push through, through struggle and persistance. She wouldn't let herself maintain this flawless, fabricated persona that she yearned for in the past. Progress will be shown and celebrated. Not hidden. She'll keep making mistakes, while also knowing when a situation was going too far.
Amber’s arms have gone cold. She turned around; the cool door was trying to open, but the gifts have blocked it from moving any further. The fire performer, having been pulled away from her thoughts, took a step back.
The door opened. Lumi’s face was a light shade of red from the first-degree burns. She wore a dark nightshirt, embellished by white hand-drawn weaponry. Surprisingly, the art looked pleasing to the eye. But what concerned Amber the most was that her hair were not some platinum white curls that cascaded down her shoulders, but actually a dirty blonde pixie cut. Feels weird seeing her true hair, especially after she ripped the wig to put out the fire. She stood wide-eyed, gaping at the presents.
“I’m sorry,” Amber confessed at the drummer, “I'm sure you'll buy a new drum set soon. I… I’m geniuenly sorry that my mistake hurt you.”
“…”
“It's okay to feel angry at me,” Amber offered the bags to Lumi. The performer's not perfect, she's not supposed to have a flawless image after all. “I'll not do that again, I promise,” she put a hand on to the drummer’s shoulder. “Because pain makes you grow, too.”