The group drew plenty of stares in turn — surprise, curiosity, confusion.
The others took it fine, but the weight of all those eyes set Shouko trembling again.
Yuto tightened his grip on her hand just slightly as she looked up, he smiled and ruffled her hair, and her face went red in an instant as she pressed close to him.
"Hey! Hatsune! Are these the people you invited?"
"What an adorable little girl!"
"The young man leading them is really something."
"That one in the black armor is so tall…"
"The short one next to him is oddly cute…"
"It might be rude to say, but — he really does look like a winter melon."
"When did Hatsune-chan even meet them?"
Whispers rippled through the hall as everyone filed in.
Hatsune had told them in advance that she'd invited some guests, so no one was thrown — just curious about who exactly these people were.
"Let me introduce everyone! These are the friends I mentioned!" Hatsune drew them to the center while Luka made room.
She started with Yuto, and with a crowd this size she kept things discreet, saying nothing about the restaurant's stranger wonders — just that he ran a small place of his own.
No one minded the modesty of it; they only studied him with open curiosity.
The first to step forward was the gray-haired girl, and something about her put Yuto instantly at ease — her clothes, her whole style, all of it straight out of home.
"Hello, everyone. My name is Luo Tianyi. I'm from China." She finished, then blinked those lovely eyes up at him.
For reasons she couldn't quite name, she felt an extra warmth toward him, the comfort of running into someone from your hometown, threaded with just a hint of something distant and unfamiliar.
"Hello. I'm Kamisaka Yuto. I suppose I count as Chinese too," he answered, switching to Chinese.
He'd somehow ended up in another world's Japan and built a restaurant there, but his sense of belonging still pulled hardest toward home.
"Oh, I see!" A pleased, knowing look crossed Tianyi's face — and then her small nose twitched.
She'd caught a scent.
Her eyes slid to the gift boxes in his hands, and though she was too polite to ask, that gaze said 'I want to eat that' about as plainly as words could.
Yuto couldn't help but smile. The idol in front of him was a bit of a glutton!
"Right — I made some snacks before I came. Let's share them around," he said, picking up the cue smoothly.
Hatsune's face went flustered.
When she'd run to the door to meet him, she'd been looking at his face and never noticed what he was carrying; if he hadn't just mentioned it, she probably still wouldn't have.
"Boss… honestly…" she said, with that exasperated, half-spoiled tone.
"It's nothing, really." He only shook his head and smiled.
The girl in front of him was already past waiting, her eyes locked on the boxes — not a shred of the poised idol about her now, just an ordinary girl who wanted a treat.
"I made taiyaki, croquettes, flower cakes… which would you like?" He opened the boxes one by one, and as the smell spread it pulled a small crowd over, drawn in by the fragrance to peer at what was inside.
"It smells amazing…"
"Ah! That flower cake is so cute!"
"I want one…"
The reactions filled Yuto with a quiet, warm satisfaction.
Tianyi's pale throat bobbed; she'd been fixed on the rose flower cake for a while now.
She loved snacks to begin with, and something this pretty and this fragrant was almost more than she could bear.
But just as she was about to speak, a cool voice cut in, it was Luka.
"You go on stage in a little over an hour. Is now really the time to be eating? Go and get your own things ready!" She wasn't only Hatsune's older sister; she was the big-sister figure for this whole group of girls, and her authority carried real weight.
At that even tone the gathered idols scattered like startled birds — all except Tianyi, who lingered, still hungry for that flower cake.
"Tianyi, come on, let's go! Eat after the show, or Big Sis is going to be mad!" Her good friend Yuezheng Ling — the one in the fiery-red athletic dress — hauled her off by the arm.
Tianyi being dragged away looked exactly like a kid at the mall who'd spotted a toy only to get tugged off by her mother, there was something helplessly funny about it.
Yuto turned to Luka with an apologetic look.
He'd been all set to hand out the snacks, and then one sentence from her had cleared the room.
It left him faintly awkward.
Luka sighed and let out a small, helpless breath, and as her stern face relaxed she turned even lovelier than before.
"Boss, I'm sorry. Eating before a performance throws off their condition on stage — it's a serious taboo."
She apologized, and there was nothing for Yuto to do but pack the snacks away.
He'd never performed himself, so he'd had no idea.
"Sorry. That was careless of me," he said.
"There's no need to apologize. I understand you meant well. We're the ones who should be thanking you," Luka replied, perfectly sincere.
"Mm! Luka-onee-san is right!" Hatsune chimed in.
"Then I suppose they'll have to wait until after the show. Could you keep these somewhere warm? They won't taste as good once they've gone cold."
At his words Luka nodded, called over a staff member, and made the arrangements; the man accepted the boxes with a respectful bow and withdrew.
An ordinary idol could never carry herself the way Luka did — they were still bound by their agencies and the rest of it — but once you reached her and Hatsune's level, you were more or less free to do as you pleased.
"How about I show everyone around? I can introduce the others while we're at it," Hatsune offered with a smile.
Ainz and Rimuru nodded so hard their heads nearly came loose!
No one else objected, and Yuto accepted with a smile of his own.
The girl walked them through the hall, and the round trip let Yuto put names to a good many faces — the Kagamine twins, IA, Tianyi, Yuezheng Ling, Yanhe.
They came from different countries, but all of them belonged to the same company, and the major shareholders behind that company were Luka and Hatsune themselves.
...
By the end of the tour Yuto's expression was still calm, while Ainz and Rimuru were beside themselves.
What there was to be that excited about, Yuto honestly couldn't say.
Maybe this was just what it meant to love the two-dimensional world.
The dragons stayed unruffled, and Shouko's face was full of yearning and admiration — for a child, idols this radiant really did look like a future worth dreaming toward.
As the clock ran down, everyone in the hall moved into their final preparations.
Yuto and the others settled in a corner, and Hatsune, long since finished with her makeup and with a little time to spare, came to chat with them first.
She stayed until fifteen minutes before the show, when she finally had to leave them and rejoin the main group
After that, staff guided Yuto and his companions out of the backstage area and into the main arena.
Seats stretched out densely in every direction, and a good portion of the crowd had already filed in.
The places Hatsune had set aside for them were right up front, with the best view in the house.
Everyone sat, and the waiting began.
The concert was almost here.
"What are you two…" Yuto trailed off, staring at Ainz and Rimuru beside him.
Three minutes to showtime.
The stadium was packed solid and the security was all in position — and at that exact moment, the two of them had tied red headbands around their heads, each one printed with chibi drawings of Hatsune and the rest.
Yuto didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.
"We've got to cheer for Hatsune-chan, obviously!" Rimuru thumped its chest twice, the armor giving off two dull metallic clangs.
"Right! If I don't cheer for Hatsune-chan at a time like this, I'll regret it for the rest of my life!" Ainz declared, every bit as worked up.
Hearing him reach all the way for "regret it for the rest of my life," Yuto gave up trying to say anything.
He only sighed and waved his hand.
Second by second the arena's energy mounted.
The doors had long since been shut.
Hundreds of thousands of spectators ringed the vast space, and from above they looked like a churning sea — roars, shouts, screams, laughter, every shade of human excitement that existed, all of it gathered here.
This wasn't a crowd anymore.
It was a whirlpool!
Anyone who stepped inside would be swept along whether they liked it or not.
It was a volcano mid-eruption, the blast already drowning out reason.
Yuto took it in, genuinely shaken.
He'd never witnessed anything this feverish — here the very idea of the individual had dissolved, leaving only the enormous swells the mass threw up, a sight that would rattle anyone.
Then a tremendous sound boomed down from overhead.
Countless faces tipped upward, Yuto's among them, and what he saw shook him further still.
The stadium had been an open-air oval, but now two great steel panels were sliding across to seal the opening above.
Slowly the arena sank into darkness, as though night had fallen, and the crowd's noise swelled higher.
Darkness tends to breed a senseless edge of panic and agitation — the old flaw of every creature that moves toward light, a memory carried down from ancient times.
And just as the crowd's emotion neared its breaking point —
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Lights flared awake from every corner of the arena at once, like bombs going off, and set the whole place alight.
Dozens of beams converged on the central stage — and there, beneath them, a group of figures stood perfectly still.
Hatsune and the others!
In that instant, everything boiled over.
Screams tore loose from the entire stadium, a roar like the end of the world.
Beside Yuto, Ainz and Rimuru had already melted into the screaming mass, each yelling louder than the other.
Shouko, tucked safe against him, looked around wide-eyed and thrilled, and even Tohru and Kanna — calm the whole way through — were moved at last.
Dozens stood on that stage, all idols Yuto had seen backstage, but Hatsune led them, with Luka and Tianyi just behind, the formation fanning out into an inverted pyramid that widened toward the rear.
Drones overhead carried the image out to the world at the same moment, and beyond the stadium walls billions watched, screams answering back from every corner of the globe.
Then Hatsune opened her mouth.
Her silver-white outfit threw back the stage light in a dazzling sheen, and anyone who looked at her was pulled in; she was the single brightest thing in that place and time!~
She began with no accompaniment at all — a soft, unguarded voice, like a spring breeze arriving the moment the snow starts to melt.
The song carried an ache to it: the cruelty of hating yourself when nothing goes the way you want, and, folded underneath, the quiet truth that being able to feel that pain at all means the strength to grow is already inside you.
The whole arena fell impossibly still, hundreds of thousands listening in silence to that one voice as the girl in the light made of sunshine itself.
Then, slowly, the music came in.
The drums began to land, each beat striking straight into the chest.
The guitar entered, then the bass, and when the sound reached its mark Hatsune lifted her voice again.
The idols behind her broke into dance, every one of them looks like a butterfly, with Hatsune at the very front, all of them smiling so brightly the joy spilled outward into the crowd.
Even on a stage this monstrous she showed not a flicker of nerves, and from below Yuto silently praised her.
Ainz and Rimuru, meanwhile, were both arms in the air and bellowing, like a pair of gorillas loose from a zoo — and somewhere along the way they'd acquired glow sticks, which left Yuto thoroughly puzzled.
The whole arena screamed and surged, and the strangest part was how unified the shouting turned out to be:
"Aaah! Wife! My Hatsune is my wife!"
"Like hell! Hatsune's my wife!"
"Back off! Don't insult Her Highness the Princess!"
"I'm dead — Big Sis Luka is sooo cool! Yuri me! Yuri me!"
"My one and only, Luo Tianyi! Awoooo!"
"My wife's so beautiful! Yanhe sounds incredible!"
Out of every shout from those hundreds of thousands, the word wife turned up again and again — regardless of the shouter's gender — and Yuto could only shake his head at those simps.