The old man carefully walked upstairs and stepped into his house; the building right next to ours.

I stood still, unconcerned about the burning noon sun rays. The new glass door allowed me to see the girls standing behind it. They were going to have a thousand questions, so I finally stepped forward to go inside.

They were speechless and so was I. Although I had planned the renovations, I hadn't seen them in person.

"Everything looks so white and… empty," Astra said.

"It's a miracle the renovation company did all of this on time," I replied. "We'll have to arrange everything by ourselves. Also, we saved money by not paying for that extra service."

"It's so different," Risa continued, looking deeper into the hallway.

"Is it even the same building?" Sanae added.

Both of them frowned as they slowly walked forward.

"Yes, it is the same building," I answered. "Three walls were removed and another three were added. Your old dance room is going to be replaced by a reception area and a tiny storage room, and the living room is now divided into two offices and a hallway."

"Reception area?" Umi wondered. "Random people are going to come in?"

I nodded. "Investors, delivery people, people coming for job interviews, people with questions, potential new associates, and many more. But no visitors."

Umi merely looked away.

Sanae and Risa stood in front of us, beside the renovated stairs. I approached them and they still seemed troubled.

"I would've loved to keep everything as it was, but we need to use the space as much as we can. I'm sorry," I apologized. "It's also a shame to lose the vintage style the building had."

"We knew this was coming," Risa replied. "It's just harder letting it sink in than we expected."

"I understand."

We remained silent for a moment before Sanae burst, "Enough grieving. What's the plan?"

I smirked. "As I just said, this is going to be the reception area. Right now, it's filled with boxes with our stuff, but there will be a desk and some chairs or sofas. I'm not good at decorating, so I'll leave that to someone else."

"That means there must be a receptionist," Aki said.

"Certainly. There's no priority for this, however. For now, we'll just make the room pretty to give a good first impression. And the storage room is the one just over there, also filled with boxes. As you'll see in the two other new rooms, there are no doors yet because there wasn't enough time, but they will be placed in the next few days. Questions?"

They all glanced at each other and said nothing, so we walked deeper into the hallway to arrive at one of the new rooms.

"The reason this room is quite big is that Aya, Tomokazu, and I are going to be sharing the same office. As you can assume, there are going to be desks, computers, cabinets, and that stuff."

We turned around and stepped into the opposite room.

"This is planned to be the art and sewing office but, since it's going to take some time to equip it, and the second floor will take another week to be renovated, you'll use it as a temporary dancing room."

Aki's eyes sparkled. "There's going to be an office dedicated to art and sewing?!"

I nodded. "We're going to need a lot of artistic work and we'll be able to design and make our own costumes."

She suddenly jumped at me to squeeze me. I hugged her back but stopped when I realized the awkward situation we were causing.

"Also, the bathroom wasn't renovated at all since it's completely usable. There's no priority for it and making it pretty is insanely expensive. The only downside is that we'll have to walk through this office to get to it."

We walked back to the reception area and stood next to the stairs.

"Should we take a look at the second floor?" I wondered. "It's not renovated, but the structure isn't going to be changed."

"Up to you, Boss," Aya replied.

I stared at her, frowning in confusion, and everyone chuckled. We headed upstairs and arrived in the small hallway. First, we entered what used to be Butcher's butchering and storage room, now empty.

"This is going to be the recording studio," I said.

Umi immediately raised her gaze and stepped inside. She inspected the room while we stared at her with smirks on our faces.

"The size is good enough," she said.

Good enough, she says.

"But it smells awful."

"Well, just yesterday there were dozens of dead animal corpses hanging from the ceiling," Sanae replied, "Of course, it's going to smell awful."

"Dead animal corpses?"

"Butcher's a butcher, remember?" I added. "Anyway, the smell will be gone by the time we occupy the room. Let's continue."

We stepped out into the small hallway and I explained that the bathroom on the second floor was going to stay a bathroom too.

Only two rooms remained, so we stepped into the biggest one first.

"This is going to be the gym," I said.

"Gym?" Astra wondered.

"That's right. As of now, you've only been exercising by practicing, but what you do is physically taxing and it'll be even more so when you perform entire concerts. In fact, we should all exercise so we can work at a hundred percent all the time."

Sanae and Umi looked like they had been given homework right before the holidays. I shared their feelings, but it was something that had to be done.

We stepped out, but Sanae and Risa stayed inside. Everyone else walked into the last room while I turned around.

"Sanae? Risa?" I wondered.

"Sorry, we're coming," Risa answered.

"It's weird seeing our room like this," Sanae added.

"Wait, you had a room?"

Both of them stared at me.

"Of course," Sanae said.

"Didn't you sleep in your old dance room? You even had clothes in there."

"Because we were too obsessed with becoming idols that we spent all day in there. We didn't want to lose any time," Risa giggled.

I smirked. Unbelievable.

We caught up with everyone else in the last room. It was about the same size as the unit we were renting.

"And this is going to be the dance studio," I said. "Questions?"

Astra raised her hand and asked, "How much did everything cost?"

"You don't want to know and I don't want to think about it," I smiled.

"How much longer will it take to finish everything?" Aki asked.

"About a week."

"What are we going to do until then?" Sanae asked.

"And what is the plan after that?" Umi added.

"You have me at gunpoint here," I giggled. "Practice and more practice. Aya, Tomokazu, and I will work as usual. Then, the first thing we are going to do after the renovations are complete is to finally hire a choreographer and a sound engineer. Only then we'll be able to set a release date for the album once and for all. Does that sound good?"

The girls nodded.

"Good," I continued. "You won't practice today, though. We'll all work to arrange everything we can on the first floor, so let's not waste any more time and get started."

We headed downstairs and began by organizing the recycled plastic boxes. We brought everything we were going to need to the front and pushed the rest to the back. Since most of the stuff was from Umi's studio and we couldn't arrange it yet, most of the boxes stayed in the back.

We helped each other as we took stuff out of the boxes, going from one office to the other. We rebuilt the old table we had and built the two new ones which were supposed to go into the unit I had just rented to use as an office, and placed them in the CEO and marketing office. Then we did the same with the three new chairs. The five old chairs went into the temporary dance room as did the giant mirrors.

Even though it wasn't much, it took us almost the entire afternoon to do everything. There was still an hour of work left, but I decided to let everyone leave early.