Joyce Knightly March 10th,20XX

While my baby sister forced herself to expose the terrible nature of her agency, a heart-wrenching sense of guilt flooded through me and threatened to make me pass out.

“My- my group has or had five members. We all trained together, danced together, sang together, and lived together. We would go to sleep at two in the morning and be up by five so we could get to the training grounds. In all that time none of them cared to tell me what was going on with them.”

Great Jedeyi.

She hadn’t even gotten to the worst part yet, but she burst into tears again and tried her best to stifle her wails so she wouldn’t bother the other kids in the other room.

When I’d told her I wouldn’t be spending a dime to help her, I hadn’t realized it would discourage her from coming to me when things got so bad that she could barely talk.

My dearest baby sister, who always ran to me at the slightest affront, now seemed like a completely unfamiliar person. The thought of her persevering anything she couldn’t immediately resolve on her own had never even occurred to me.

Aaron got up and grabbed her a glass of water so she could continue, and we could figure out exactly what had gone wrong. Although Cherry could be a drama queen, she wouldn’t be like this over anything trivial.

“The leader of the group got pregnant with the bloody CEO; can you imagine? She tried to hide it, but someone bumped into her hard and she nearly miscarried. Thankfully, both she and the kid are okay, but the CEO pulled her out of the group so she could rest. Our lead singer just up and ran away since she got tired of having her paycheck withheld.”

“They’re withholding your paycheck?! For how long? And how could you not have told me?”

My voice came out much more accusatory than I intended, but I was so angry I could barely speak. What sort of company had I let my sister go into?

While I hadn’t chosen it on my own, I’d at least performed a proper background check and had thought it was a safe and legitimate choice. My information network rarely ever failed me, but I couldn’t believe it had chosen something so essential to show how weak it could sometimes be.

Cherry flinched and shrank into herself like she was used to being yelled at.

I further saw red, and Aaron put a hand on my shoulder to hold me back from storming out of the room and crashing that company to the ground. No, I would do that anyway, but I needed to hear all of my baby sister’s grievances so I could see how far I should go.

“Sorry, I wanted to tell you, but things really weren’t that bad! We could all eat fine thanks to the money Aaron sent me, and the other girls would buy what we needed from the money they got from their solo work. The company owned the dorms we stayed at! and they would pay for our costumes and lessons….”

She tuned into the horrified expressions on our faces, and the faux hopeful one she’d painted onto hers quickly fell off.

“It was terrible, but it felt fine since we were all together. I really thought we were all close, but I guess I was the only one. Another girl, our lead dancer, broke her foot yesterday and all the backup dancers got stuck in the next town over and can’t make it until the thirteenth.”

Her group’s allocated performance time was early on the twelfth, so they would be much too late. But then again, even if they made it, there just wasn’t enough of the main group to perform.

“What about the fourth member?”

Aaron suddenly asked after the missing member from Cherry’s growing list of tragedies that had befallen the group.

Cherry shook her head in despair.

“She left to try and convince the event organizers to let us perform on the later on the thirteenth but that’s the close to the last day of the festival and most of our group isn’t here… we aren’t that popular either.”

Although she spoke of her group member’s hopeful plan, she looked decidedly pessimistic and like she had given up.

I would deal with the issues later, but I wanted to let her perform the music that she had practised and worked so hard on. She had even composed a part of the song, so I knew she had been very excited about it.

“Call her back here, and try to get into contact with the other one that ran off, guarantee that she’ll get every cent of what she’s due and more if she can make it back here before tomorrow. As for you, go practise with your member and be ready to perform on the fifteenth.”

It would draw some suspicion that such a new group was performing on the last day of such a decent-sized festival, but anyone that wanted to object would have to go against me and the full might of Kingdom.

Since Cherry wasn’t just my baby sister but was also the youngest child of the family, I had no qualms in abusing its power on its behalf.

While I didn’t expect her to jump to the tasks I’d given her, I’d hoped she would at least cheer up a bit. But she was still lost in her throes of tragedies and sat stock still on the comfortable chairs. She didn’t even reach for her phone.

“I know what you’re trying to do but its honestly impossible.. Neither I nor the other girl; Her name is Tenzin by the way, are great enough singers to pull off the song on our own, and the choreography needs at least four of us to pull it off. The choreographer could fill in a spot, but the other dancers don’t know that part of the choreography and won’t be able to learn it in such a short amount of time.”

A small thump echoed from the doorway, and the light wooden doors swung open to reveal an abashed-looking Destia and Archer.

Eva barged into the room and pushed herself onto Aaron’s lap, then shoved the tablet up into my face. The screen showed Cherry and her other group members dancing in casual clothes, and the song filtered out of the speakers.

An utterly unrelated thought that I needed to regulate how much time the eight-year-old doll spent on that tablet crossed my mind, but that wasn’t what she wanted me to think.

Eva pointed to Destia and then to Cherry.

Destia can help.

Her overwhelming mental voice that I hadn’t heard for a while stripped away all other things in my head, and the idea bloomed.

Destia was a pretty girl, and she was more than physically capable of pulling off such complex choreography, not to mention that she and Eva had already taken an interest in learning it. She would be a completely ideal replacement for the missing members.

The only issue was time since, unlike the others, her school hadn’t closed down to recover from the terrorist attack. I would ask her if she would be willing to take some time off from school to help my little sister. Or maybe I would tell Aaron to ask her so she didn’t feel pressured to accept. While I wanted her to say yes, I was aware of her admiration for me, and I didn’t want to use it to make her do something she really didn’t want to do. She respected Aaron, but I hoped she could say no to him if she really didn’t want to do it.

The innocent and unaware eighteen-year-old looked shy as we had caught her eavesdropping, but couldn’t find a time to smoothly escape.

“But what about the last member?”

As much as Eva would likely be willing to fill in the last position, she was just too young, and her body was still weak from her previous lifestyle. It would be a blessing if she didn’t faint after the first few seconds of rigorous activity.

Even though I’d asked her, I wasn’t expecting her to have an answer. However, the little angel surprised me by lifting a finger and pointing at her burdened older brother.

He didn’t look surprised when she did so, and slowly nodded while making eye contact with me. So he had been ‘listening.’

I was absolutely grateful for his offer to help, but Cherry looked confused as she watched me hold a silent conversation with the two siblings.

“Cherry, go into the room and take a nap. No, call Tenzin and have her report here and then take a nap. I’ll have a solution by the time you wake up.”

I would wreak havoc as soon as the festival ended, but I didn’t want it to pass and for one nasty individual to mar her dream and passion for performing. While I couldn’t guarantee her a perfect performance, I could at least help her have fun.

Taking over a festival of this level would be a task if I stuck to using Squire’s resources, but I was sure my older brother wouldn’t mind me dipping into his pool if it was for Cherry.