Kaja Lando March 9th, 20XX

“Shh, We can’t bother Destia.”

I scolded Tillo as he stumbled over an empty paint can and created a ruckus, but honestly, I didn’t need to. Judging by the earnest expression on Destia’s face and the energetic way she argued with Ms. Bevan.

The brightly dressed adult looked somewhat frustrated as Destia pushed the fluffy dress she’d brought onto set away, but she still paid attention to the board Destia held in her face.

The cameras were rolling, and the other four people at the table would occasionally pitch in their ideas when they needed to but otherwise left the floor to Destia and Ms. Bevan.

I wasn’t too sure what her channel would be about, but it looked like they planned on following the idea Ms. Bevan had proposed in our earlier meeting. That meant that today would focus on Destia pitching her vision to the adults and planning on how to bring it to life.

I’d only taken a sneak peek of the planning sheet that Annora had brought around, but that had been enough to floor me. The budgets listed on that page had larger numbers than I had confidence in counting up to, and Destia’s had been the largest.

While I didn’t feel any type of way about the difference, it made me doubly curious about what the others were doing.

“Kaja! Tillo!”

Tillo flinched as Mrs. Mantas’s voice rang out over the speakers and paged us back to our studio. We’d only gotten an hour break for lunch and costume change. While it wasn’t too long or too short for a break, all the people running around frustrated me. Things would have moved so much faster if Tillo and I could have used our powers.

“Ah, we need to get to get to makeup.”

Tillo looked tired as he pulled me along. We’d changed earlier, so we only needed to let them draw on our faces.

They’d opted for a brighter look for me and had dressed me in a bright yellow shirt and bright blue overalls. I had a flower in my hair, and my eyeshadow was an almost garish highlighter colour with glitter everywhere. I regretted how I’d gone to school lost week since that was where they’d gotten the inspiration.

They’d gone easier on Tillo and had dressed him in a dark green shirt under the same overalls as me. The makeup was virtually the same, but the naturally darker colour made it look less clownish. I could tell he slightly resented me for it, but I couldn’t apologize since he didn’t verbalize his complaint.

Still, aside from the lengths of our hair and the different colours we had on, we looked exactly the same. While Tillo and I didn’t take care to dress differently, we’d never matched as much as we currently did.

Tillo tended to like heavier jewelry than I did, from chokers to dangle earrings and lip and nose piercings. I’d convinced him out of the piercings, but he usually incorporated them into whatever form he chose for disguise.

I somewhat felt bad for the costume departments since they had spent so much time choosing earrings for us only to realize we both only had a single ear pierced, but I hadn’t budged on letting them pierce the other.

Tillo cared more about it than I did, but as long as it was important to him, I would fight for it as well.

We’d already filmed a few segments yesterday, so today was mainly refiling what we’d messed up and finishing up the last two segments.

The first segment had been a general ‘what’s going on in the world’ part. We’d given announcements of what upcoming projects a few celebrities from Volui were doing and what Aaron had scheduled. We’d highlighted a few other celebrities, but they hadn’t gotten nearly as much time as the stars affiliated with Squire and Volui.

The second segment had been theories, where we put up pictures like Joyce and Aaron leaving the airport and theorized what they could have been doing there. I’d felt awkward about it at first, but Tillo had been such a natural.

The third had been a sports segment, where I had to read off progress about teams I’d never even heard of till now. But I recognized one name that Vanessa had seared into my brain. We’d had to reshoot that scene since the director had said I was too enthusiastic about one particular team.

What we were shooting today was an interview with Vanessa as the curator of the account we ran. Wed all talked about it and had all voted on having Vanessa act as our figurehead. I was worried about how it would turn out, but I trusted Joyce wouldn’t make me do anything that would hurt my friends or me in the future.

Mrs. Mantas stood behind the cameras with a scary expression on her face and monitored Tillo and me as we argued over whether a particular singing group would renew their contracts with their company.

I knew her face was just naturally bitter like that, but it still made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t like she’d been mean to either Tillo or I in the past, but she’d been unnecessarily harsh on Destia, and I was not too fond of that. Even if Destia and I weren’t particularly close, she was still ‘one of us’.

I’d created positions for my friends so I could get them on the payroll and not one-sidedly profit off of their hard work as much as I already was. I figured we could use the account to hype up our new channel, and I could help my friends out as well. It was a win-win situation.

Addy had been reluctant to have her name listed so publicly and had put her older sister’s name and bank information down, but it was better than nothing. I didn’t know why she was so wary, but it wasn’t like Tillo and I hadn’t been as careful at some point.

Out of the four of us, only Niki had lived in the upper part of the city. I didn’t know where Addy lived, but I knew it wasn’t anywhere to be envious of. Vanessa lived in her school dorms, but her family lived in another country altogether. I wasn’t sure about the details, but she’d never volunteered any information about it, which was rare for a chatterbox like herself.

I wondered if she’d told her best friend Alice, but I somehow doubted it. She looked up to that other girl so much that I worried for her sometimes. Maybe already being involved with Squire would help her somewhat overcome the groupie complex she’d developed.

I looked back to how we’d been a few months ago and compared it to the comfort we had now.

I was getting soft, and I honestly didn’t know if I could go back to living to how I’d been before after being treated so well, but hopefully, that would never have to happen.