Chapter 140: The Stage Is Yours

The music video for A Singer's Love Song was truly nothing more than an ordinary live performance video. In Aozora's words, it was "as simple as making a rice ball." There was no audience, no storyline, and not even a backing band. All there was to it was a singer holding a guitar, sitting on a high stool, and singing into a standing microphone placed right in front of him.

To stretch for an explanation, since the theme of the song was "A Singer's Love Song," the absolute protagonist was, of course, the singer himself.

Throughout the entire shooting process, Watanabe Riku stood below the stage, gazing at Aozora up on the stage with the expression of a proud parent witnessing a young bird leave the nest. When the video's director announced that filming had wrapped, Watanabe Riku initiated a round of applause. "That was magnificent, Aozora-kun."

Aozora set down his guitar. "You flatter me, Watanabe-san."

That afternoon, having finished filming before four o'clock, Aozora ultimately failed to accept Watanabe Riku's invitation to stay for dinner, and naturally, he did not get to meet Watanabe Riku's wife, Asakura Naoko. Although it was somewhat discourteous to visit their club without greeting the hostess, he had only met Asakura Naoko two or three times before and had no particular relationship with her. Thus, he let the matter rest.

When Watanabe Riku drove them to the station, he expressed considerable regret. "I had originally hoped to properly play the generous host and treat you to an authentic Kansai meal. What a pity. There are so many differences between Tokyo and Kansai dietary habits, you know."

"Regarding that, I heard someone mention it before—that here in Kansai, whether people eat okonomiyaki or takoyaki, they always have it with rice." Aozora racked his brains and remembered this bit of trivia. He had picked up this piece of "knowledge" in his past life while watching a certain perpetually shrinking detective, learning it from a dark-skinned Kansai local. Whether it was true or false, he couldn't really say.

"Isn't eating okonomiyaki with rice a matter of course?" Watanabe Riku said in a tone that implied it was the most obvious thing in the world. "When I first went to eat mixed-grill okonomiyaki with some friends from Tokyo, I ordered an extra bowl of rice, and they treated it as a strange habit. So I just answered them like this: 'Isn't it only natural?'"

"I suppose that's what they call geographical differences," Aozora smiled and said.

***

After purchasing JR train tickets at the station, about forty minutes later, Aozora and his party got off at Osaka Station, then transferred to the Yotsubashi Subway Line and alighted at Hommachi Station. Exiting from Exit 2, it took only two or three minutes of walking to see the destination building.

The Osaka Festival Hall was a concert hall located within the Festival Tower, having been built and put into operation as early as 1958. Because of its exceptional acoustic qualities, numerous symphony orchestras and theatrical troupes regarded the venue as a prized stage for their performances.

Holding a concert was truly no easy feat. Things that seemed completely natural when imagined became fraught with difficulties when actually put into practice. Aside from the basic necessity of booking the venue well in advance, when it came to personnel, one first had to assemble a live backing band. Although Being’s singers maintained a low profile, concerts still had to be held; and while Being employed plenty of musicians, they had to take turns sharing the pie. If personnel happened to be stretched thin at any given moment, support musicians had to be hired from the outside.

Once the band was secured, harmony vocalists had to be determined, and photographers, videographers, security personnel, and stage crew for the day of the concert had to be booked in advance. Thanks to the fact that he was a rock singer, he was at least spared the hassle of dealing with backing dancers.

Having solved the human resource issues, the next step was to formulate a detailed schedule for the concert in advance. This included how the stage lighting and sound would be arranged, how the stage would be designed, the entrances of the singer and the band, and various timing milestones.

Stage design and the like were easy enough to handle. Given Being's unpretentious style and the fact that the venues were relatively small, there was not much to worry about. The only thing that required careful verification was the matter of timing milestones.

For instance, the concerts Aozora was going to hold were scheduled to last an hour and a half. Excluding the opening and the encore segments, the duration of each song, the exact sequence of the tracks, when the live talk would begin after a certain song, how long it would take to finish, and whether there was a need for a costume change in the middle—all of these had to be strictly timed.

Furthermore, to prevent unexpected incidents from occurring before the performance started, an emergency contingency plan had to be prepared in addition to this primary proposal, just in case something actually went wrong and they were left completely stranded without a backup.

Aside from these necessary preliminary preparations, Aozora, as the singer, had to protect his voice and physical health during the period leading up to the concert, participate in the design of the concert merchandise, and confirm the performance workflow and stage effects.

As the date of the concert drew closer, the staff would install and tune the lighting, sound, and other equipment in the venue, the musicians would re-record the song backing tracks, and the stage effects would be verified in advance. By then, Aozora would also have to transfer his main battlefield to the concert venue to conduct rehearsals before the official opening.

One could say that until the very last show at Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall was completed, every single day of his schedule would be extremely busy.

Yet these matters, which felt utterly troublesome just hearing about them, amounted to no more than a mere three venues and five concerts—not even a nationwide tour spanning forty-three prefectures and taking nearly a year. He hadn't felt it so profoundly before, but now experiencing it firsthand, Aozora deeply understood just how hard touring maniacs like Namie Amuro had it. Especially since she was a singer and dancer; the physical stamina consumed by each of her concerts was vastly greater than that of someone like him who merely sang.

Today was the scheduled equipment inspection day for the venue, and with no scheduled performances, they were granted entry.

Although they had come to Osaka under the banner of a field inspection, at this stage, there was no role for a singer like him to play. All he could do was step onto the stage and get a feel for what it was like to stand up there.

***

...As expected, the feeling was truly marvelous.

No matter how insignificant a person might be, the moment they stepped up here and looked out toward the audience seating, they would get a sense of being at the very center of everything. He recalled the performances he had watched—the musicians playing with abandon on stage, the audience enjoying themselves thoroughly off stage—and now, he was about to become the protagonist of this stage.

Even though this venue was merely a small house with a capacity of twenty-seven hundred people, it felt like stepping onto the first rung of his ladder as a singer. Starting from here, he would slowly conquer one boss after another until he finally stood upon the stage of the Tokyo Dome.

No wonder people who dreamed of entering a certain university would make a point of visiting their desired campus; experiencing the reality of the place firsthand was indeed the simplest and most direct way to psyche oneself up and offer encouragement.

"Aozora-san, please come this way first. We need to take measurements and photographs of the stage now," Ueda reminded him.

"Understood! Coming down right now." Aozora quickly reined in his thoughts, stepped off the stage, and took a seat in the fourth row of the center section.

Another accompanying staff member, whose surname was Takayama, asked with a smile, "How does it feel?"

"Quite perfect," Aozora said, looking at the stage. "It already makes me feel an urge to get up there right this instant."

***

By the time they left the concert hall, it was already eight-thirty in the evening. Although they hadn't been able to eat the authentic Kansai cuisine promised by Watanabe Riku, Aozora treated, and the group still managed to find a Kansai-style restaurant. However, since they had to rush back to Tokyo that very night and couldn't afford to miss the return Shinkansen, they simply grabbed a quick meal and headed toward the station before nine-thirty.