Chapter 151: Lying Without Changing Expression

"So Amioshi-san still remembers Miss Kawamoto." Yuki Uemura teased him.

Amioshi stiffened his neck and answered decisively, "Of course. She was the first singer I ever discovered."

"Indeed. On the day we filmed the live session for Miss Kawamoto, I was the one who sent the crew over," Yuki Uemura recalled. "That young man with the surname Uchida actually blushed when I asked him where he lived. One of his companions had to answer for him instead. It was truly the first time I'd ever seen someone so shy."

Amioshi pictured the serious-minded young man who had once solemnly informed him that he didn't know how to shape rice balls, and smiled. "That young man is certainly interesting. I wonder if he'll ever enter the film industry."

"Judging by my intuition, probably not."

"There's really no need to use intuition to judge something like that..." Amioshi couldn't help but chuckle. Even so, he couldn't help agreeing with Yuki Uemura's intuition in his heart.

...

After not seeing her for a while, Kazuyo Kawamoto's hair had grown a bit longer. In the past, when she looked through the glass window of the recording booth at Amioshi and the sound engineer in the control room, she would still show a hint of timidity. But now, she looked quite confident and at ease.

"Amioshi-san, how did today's recording sound?" Kazuyo Kawamoto asked proactively after stepping out of the booth.

Amioshi nodded and put down his headphones. "Quite good. One could say your progress has been astonishingly rapid. I checked with Director Okazaki, and your debut single is scheduled for release on October 2nd. So from here on out, we're going to get serious."

"October 2nd..." Kazuyo Kawamoto calculated mentally. "That's about two months away. We still have plenty of time."

"That may be true, but please don't let your guard down too much," Amioshi reminded her.

"Of course not!" Kazuyo Kawamoto replied promptly. "Oh, right, I went to the fireworks display at the shrine with Mami-chan the other day, and she mentioned that her debut single is scheduled for November."

"In that case, doesn't that make you her senior?"

Kazuyo Kawamoto laughed. "Hearing Amioshi-san put it that way, I suddenly feel a lot more imposing. Still, October and November aren't really all that different, are they?"

...

Kazuyo Kawamoto re-entered the recording booth holding a cup filled with warm honey water. While waiting for her to adjust her state, Amioshi exchanged pleasantries with the recording engineer monitoring the session. "Ueshima-san, you've been working hard lately."

"Not at all, this is just part of the job." Ueshima kept his head down as he checked the faders on the control console. He was a man in his fifties with a thick beard and a somewhat disheveled appearance.

At that moment, Kazuyo Kawamoto made a gesture through the glass indicating she was ready to begin. Amioshi nodded, exchanged glances with Ueshima, and put his monitoring headphones back on.

After listening to Kazuyo Kawamoto sing through a few more times, Amioshi took off his headphones. Without needing to speak to her through the intercom, he simply waved goodbye through the glass and walked out of the recording studio.

When he reached the end of the corridor, two girls of similar height came walking toward them, chatting and laughing. Upon spotting Amioshi and the accompanying Yuki Uemura, the two girls instinctively glanced at them. Then, one of the girls stopped in her tracks, rather rudely raised a finger to point at Amioshi, and instead of saying "Amioshi-san!", blurted out, "...Panda-san!"

"Considering you still remember that so clearly." Amioshi twitched an eyebrow.

...

As if completely unaware that her previous action had been somewhat discourteous, Daikan Ami picked up right where Amioshi left off. "Of course. It was my first time ever meeting someone who asked, 'Do you like pandas?' as a greeting. And that person happened to be the very famous Amioshi-san."

"Oh, right, my name is Ami Daikan, and this here," she grabbed the arm of the girl beside her and pushed her slightly forward, "this is my friend, Yoshimi Yoshimura, who is also working here as a backing vocalist."

"Amioshi-san, and that gentleman, hello." Although Yoshimi Yoshimura looked a bit more rebellious on the surface, giving off the impression of a somewhat unruly delinquent girl, in reality—perhaps due to being tempered by the working world at an early age—she was far more observant and tactful than Daikan Ami, who was the epitome of a pampered child.

"Hello," Amioshi returned the greeting. "Though, the two of you certainly look quite leisurely."

"That's because we really don't have anything to do right now," Ami Daikan said with an innocent tone. "Right, Yoshimi-chan?"

Yoshimi Yoshimura nodded. "Even though I don't really want to admit it, that's indeed the case."

"Since both of you are doing backing vocals here, your singing must be quite good, right?" Acting on a sudden whim, Amioshi invited, "If you don't mind, would you let me hear your audition?"

...

"An audition? Why?" Yoshimi Yoshimura asked rather directly.

"Well, you see, I'm currently collaborating with Sony to launch a new artist. Her new single is in the middle of a heated recording process, and I'm looking to select some backing vocalists for her." Amioshi lied without changing expression.

"I see. In that case, there's nothing more to discuss. We're backing vocalists to begin with, so Amioshi-san could have just called us over directly without all the fuss."

...

The recording studio Kazuyo Kawamoto was using was inconvenient for this purpose, so Amioshi quickly found the studio manager and borrowed an unoccupied recording room. He didn't even need a sound engineer; he took charge of monitoring the session himself.

"Amioshi-san, what should we sing?" the two girls asked.

Amioshi thought for a moment. "Are you two familiar with Wink-san?"

"When Wink-san was at the peak of their popularity, I was in middle school, and all the girls at school were racing to imitate the choreography for 'Lonely Tropical Fish'," Yoshimi Yoshimura said.

Ami Daikan nodded along. "That's right. Back then, I spent all day trying to imitate Wink-san's expressionless faces during performances, though since my threshold for laughter is too low, I could probably only keep it up for about ten seconds each time."

Wink was a female idol duo that debuted in 1988. They once achieved the glorious feat of claiming three spots simultaneously in the top ten of the Oricon annual single charts, sweeping the entire country from the late eighties to the early nineties. The group's defining characteristic was the expressionless faces of its two members, Shoko Aida and Sachiko Suzuki, combined with mechanical choreography resembling dolls on a music box.

However, the lifespan of girl groups was naturally short, and coupled with the rise of bands entering the nineties, the survival space for idols was repeatedly squeezed. Due to poor judgment by their record label, Wink underwent a series of transformations, shedding their signature expressions and dance styles. From a highly distinctive idol group, they were turned into an ordinary duo of vocalists, and their sales began a precipitous cliff-like collapse. In May of this year, their newly released single sold a mere six thousand copies.