“Italicized” = Signed

“Regular” = Spoken

Italicized = Yō typing

= Someone else typing

…

Yō’s POV:

Chika had finally gotten cleared to be able to perform with us again. It had been a long wait. Everyone was glad that she finally was back with us. We hadn’t really done too much without her. There were a few small competitions here and there, but that was it. We didn’t want to release any new videos without her able to be in them.

It was slowly drawing closer to the end of our time. We didn’t have too much longer until we had to get 100 students to apply. I think it’s only three months away now. It’s obvious we are all starting to feel the strain from it. It’s hard to not think about it when it is just around the corner.

The last time we checked, there were only about 50 applications. Our school was still set to shut down after this year. And there wasn’t much else we could do about it. How on earth could we get 50 more students to apply in three months? Look at how long it had taken us just to get 50. It’s looking bad for all of us.

We had decided to try and push out a few new dance videos and stuff. Hopefully it could give us an increase in exposure. Now that Chika was back in action, we all were working even harder for this.

Today was another day of practice. We had started work on the song and dance we wanted to do at Love Live. While it would be something after the applications closed, we couldn’t forget about it. It was a pretty big event. And, if we managed to get to 100 students, we needed something to show for it.

That being said, trying to work on that while also working on other stuff was starting to stress everyone out. We had a lot on our schedules every single day. We barely had any free time anymore. It was tough. But, no one was complaining. We knew we needed to do this if we wanted any chance at reaching our goal.

Right now, we were doing partner work. We were running through the chorus parts that were the same for everyone. It was easiest to do it in pairs of three. One person would dance and the others would look out for mistakes and point them out so it could be corrected. It had been working out for us this far.

Currently, Riko was the one dancing. We had split into years. I’m not very good at helping. Sure, if she does the dance moves wrong, I can tell her that, but if it’s the timing, there’s no way I can figure that out. That’s all on Chika to do.

“Yō? You ready to try it?” Chika asked me.

Looks like a Riko is done. Guess I’m up next. I nodded and swapped places with Riko. This still feels a bit awkward. I always feel really stiff and clumsy even though I’m not. Well, that’s what I’m told. I guess it’s the worry since I can’t hear the music.

…

Two hours later, we were done for the day. We were all chilling at a cafe. We normally would go here after practice to unwind. Everyone was happily chatting away. Chika was busy looking at something on her phone. No one else had struck up a conversation with me. And, they weren’t signing again.

I had even started wearing my implants again, but it really didn’t do much. I could hear some stuff, but trying to process what exactly they were saying was hard. I wish I was good at lip reading like I used to be.

Chika tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at her. She held out her phone. I looked at the screen. It was a conversation between her and someone else. Looks like we got chosen for a pretty big event. It was almost like a preliminary for Love Live. Most groups that went to it first went to this event.

“When is it?” I asked.

“Next weekend.” Chika replied.

My eyes widened, “That soon?”

Chika nodded, “A group just dropped out so they needed a replacement. We were next on the list.”

So, we were one group short from getting chosen to begin with. That’s really good. But, it’s so soon now because of this. Can we manage? Even if we do an old song, would we be able to? We’ve been putting so much effort into other things that trying to throw another song in at practice would be tough.

“Do you think we can do it?” I questioned, “It’s a little too soon.”

Chika shrugged, “Why don’t we see?”

With that, she started calling for everyone's attention. Once everyone was looking at her, she started explaining everything. At least she was nice enough to use sign language even though I already knew this stuff now. It got the others to communicate in it, thankfully.

“We would have to cut something out of practice to fit a song in.” Dia stated.

“Can we manage to do that?”

“This is a really big event. We should try to attend it if we can.”

“We need this. It could really help boost our ranking and everything.”

It seemed like everyone was in favor of trying our hardests to fit it in. They continued discussing what exactly they could change in our practice schedules to fit another song practice. It was taking a long time. I didn’t realize it would be this complicated to do.

I guess everything is important at this point in the game. We need to do as much as we can to get people to see us. Obviously, we still have to moderate our posting. If we shove too much out, it would make people think we were extremely desperate. We have to keep our posts minimal, but still enough. That was already tough to do by itself.

After a bit longer of discussion, we came to a conclusion. We had been planning to try and make a small video, but we would scrap that idea and use that time for refreshing our memory on an older song. Now, we just had to figure out what we wanted that song to be.

I really hope this works out. It would really help us. This is one of the biggest events outside of Love Live. Almost all the groups that attend it do get pretty popular. I hope we can get the same outcome from it.

But, that means putting in a lot of work. Hopefully after this event we could maybe find some time to take a break. Maybe even after the event we could spend an extra day or two in the town and just relax? That might be something to think about. It would probably do us all good to take a small break.

So, competition, here we come!