125: Bashing
(Wh–what’re they…?!)
(Crazy:B! What the heck are they thinking! This is awful!)
(They’ve always caused all sorts of mayhem on stage—)
(But now they’ve started bashing other idols too?! That’s been a taboo ever since SS last year, though!)
“As you guys may know, people’re criticizing Crazy:B as some kinda pests here in this dreamland we call ES!”
“It must be hard for all our fans who support us, but apparently those hot shots think we’re an eyesore ♪”
“To the public—and to ES too, we’re just bad news!”
“And yet those happy-go-lucky ‘allies of justice’ in Ryuseitai won’t touch us with a ten-foot pole!”
“We even went out of our way to invite them to Idol Royale, offered to have a head-on battle between good and evil, yanno?”
“But calling us evil then turning around and denying it? Don’t just talk behind our backs! Come get your hands dirty for once!”
“You guys can see for yourselves what they said on Hallhands, can’t you?”
“They were so professional and so formal! All like ‘Oh, we’re busy, so we can’t!’”
“Gyahahahaha ☆ Makes me laugh for real! You guys ever seen an ‘ally of justice’ on TV just being straight-up evil for a reason like that?!”
“Well in the end, looks like they’re just a buncha hypocrites pretending to be on the side of justice!”
“They’re just some fakes playing make-believe heroes! All that lip service they’ve been giving you at their lives? It’s aaaaaall a big lie!”
“There’s no such thing as an ally of justice in this world! They’re just some clowns who decided to look the part for their jobs!”
“You’re are shocked, aren’tcha? Disappointed, let down?”
“We’re in mourning too, yanno—I mean, I’m a guy, and when I was a kid I really looked up to all those heroes on TV!”
……?
Aira. Just now, what is this “hii-ro” that Nii-san was talking about?
Uh—you don’t know? Oh right, you didn’t even know what idols were—
So everything Amagi Rinne is saying right now is just gibberish to you?
No, how should I put it… Nii-san had a bad habit of sneaking out of town to go to the city, and he’d learn all sorts of bad things there.
That’s why he’d often be punished by being locked in a zashikirou.1
Zashikirou? What?
…Wait, do those things really still exist in this day and age? Actually, I kinda feel like I’ve heard a similar story before, too…
“It’s sad, but that’s the real world for ya! There’s a sequel to this little exchange on Hallhands too, and lemme tell you, it’s a masterpiece—”
(Oh. Amagi gave me the signal. So we really are doing this, then. This is absurd—)
(But as we discussed, I’ll display the forged text on the screen.)
“Ta-daaah! Take a good, long look! Here’s what Ryuseitai had to say!”
“‘We really are too busy to perform with you, but we’ll reconsider it if you add a little extra something to our pay—’”
“‘—And of course, rewrite the script so that justice wins!’”
“And get this! Then they asked for ten times the amount of money from a payout you’d get from official ES DreamFests!”
“Gyahaha! Even though they know damn well we’ve got the bigwigs on our asses—”
“And that we’ve been forced into poverty! And they’re still out here tryna threaten us!”
…Hm. If what he says is true, that’s terrible. Chiaki-senpai gave off such a lively impression, so to think he’d engage in such foul play as coercion—It’s unexpected, for sure.
No, no! There’s no way that’s true! What are you, a sheep? You actually believe all that? Seriously, Ryuseitai is—
“I know what you’re all thinking—crazy, right?! While ES is protected by their enormous amount of capital, those guys are throwing around cash to boost their image bit by bit.”
“And to think this little conversation on Hallhands might’ve never been publicized!”
“As many of you may know, ES uses its own currency and communication network to make itself and its surrounding areas look like some independent nation!”
“These idols paint themselves in sparkles and glitter, but under all that glitz and glam they’re covering up their dirty little secrets and playing nasty tricks on their own people!”
(All right. And here, we unveil the video of the Summit.)
(Because CosPro’s Vice President Saegusa is standing up as he gives his speech, 2wink is still on camera…)
(But they’re not very noticeable, so it’s good enough.)
“—How’s this for ya?! Hyaha, you recognize every last one of ‘em, don’tcha?”
“Look, there’s UNDEAD! And Akatsuki! fine and Knights from the Big Three, too!”
“And who can forget Switch, who held that whole publicity stunt acting like a damn charity for all those poor underachievers?”
…?
“These are the guys who pull ES’s strings from behind the scenes! These are the true colors of that ‘idol utopia’ they sing the praises of!”
“Just a creepy-ass secret society waiting to invade our nation and envelop us in their evil schemes!”
“What a shitty group, huh? Acting like a buncha idols and letting us shower ‘em in love and adoration—”
“It’s like they’re invading the country while they pull the wool over our eyes and exchange everyone’s love for cold hard cash!”
“We just gonna stand here and take it?! Nah, we’re not letting ‘em get away with it!”
“That’s why I raised my voice! That’s why I stood up and raised my fist! To bring revolution to this rotting idol industry!”
“Right now, we’re still just a buncha weak little bugs! If they bring down the hammer on us, we’ll be squashed in no time flat!”
“But yanno—we all learned a lot today, huh? About the true face of idols!”
“Don’tcha remember when they suddenly came outta nowhere and snatched up a part of our country? And now they’re acting like they’re totally independent! That’s what ES is all about!”
“But now we know better, and now we can fight back. Instead of sitting here and waiting out a disaster, we can wage war against the evil nation! And we, Crazy:B, are the suicide squad sent in for your sake!”
“We’re gonna destroy all these rotten ‘idols’—and then we’re gonna become the real idols!”
A 座敷牢 (zashikirou) is a barred room inside one’s home which was used to confine criminals, the physically disabled, or the mentally ill, especially during the Edo period. It’s a privately operated form of house arrest where a section of the family’s home is partitioned and locked to deprive the prisoner of freedom, prevent them from going outside, and cut off their relationship with the outside world. In most cases they were not intended to punish the person, so they were comfortably furnished.