#ouropro chapter 1

Yawn, snore, snooze, bluh. This was all incredibly boring, but then again, what wasn't these days? Manami didn't care when people were getting erased from the world or whatever, and proceeded to have mediocre days ahead.

She didn't appreciate being woken up, but shrugged and quickly forgot about her annoyance as she made her way to the bottom of the staircase. Oh, wow, someone actually died? Man...That was something, huh?

What caught her attention more than anything was what the cobra was saying. Investigate a murder? What were they, cops now or something? What a turn of events. So, they were actually going to have to do something about this. Great.

Honestly, taking a ride on the roller coaster seemed to be rather appealing at the moment. She rolled her eyes then stared down at the body. Yeah, she recognized this guy. She recalled having a few awkward conversations with him, but he wasn't really interesting. 

The next day, sometime in the early evening, your Student ID summons you to the ballroom again. Monocobra awaits. Everyone files in, looking pretty irritated. The robot, on the other hand, seems pretty upbeat.

Manami followed along with everything silently but complacently. She had no protest whatsoever to the events going on. She had been generally staying in one place doing essentially nothing with her free time, after all.

She almost reacted when Monocobra talked about losing all their work. Oh, how that would sting. If he actually meant their actual work. From the way he was speaking, he implied it was just their public status that would disappear. What did Manami care about public status? Was she even very well known, especially compared to the others? Most likely no. 

As the days had gone by, the apprehensions that Hokori had over their new life had whittled away significantly. Each day, he'd either spent his time alone locked in his room, or clinging to Tokiyo for safety, lying in wait for something, anything to happen. But nothing... ever happened. There was no murder to speak of- thank whatever god is out there for that, but his fears had left the pit of his stomach inch by inch until nothing was there at all. Nothing but boredom. The new living situation wasn't ideal, by any means, but there hadn't been any murders. Perhaps barring a few shows that they'd already missed, things would be just fine.

Of course, that's when Monocobra decides to up the stakes.

Wordless for once, he'd followed quietly in Tokiyo's shadow until they parted ways. The words hung low in his throat, but he never found the ability to verbalize them, and so he simply didn't.

Even now they don't find their way into the paper, only known as meaningless scribbles that are symbolic of nothing. Of course, it's not as if it's too dissimilar to another sleepless night, aside from the fact that he doesn't have the words to from songs or even coherent sentences. Rising to his feet, he crumples the paper and chucks it at the wall, barking out his first word all night in the form of a curse. Who cares if it's well after midnight? He's already on his way down the hallway to Tokiyo's room.

"Toki-san? TOKI-SAN? TOKI-SAN?!"

The fuck is going on?

The events of the previous day seemed like a nightmare, if even that. Maybe just an odd dream with a few prophetic undertones about how shitty of a person Hokori's bandmates think he is (self-betterment or something), but he wakes to find that unless he's still dreaming, that simply isn't the case. Seriously, he's not a shitty person at all. He doesn't need self-betterment! Oh yeah, and he's waking up to the walls of that pink room that he fell asleep in just a few hours ago. It was probably one of the loneliest nights he'd suffered through in a while, the usual tossing and turning and rampant thoughts exacerbated by only being to focus on if his bassist is okay or not.

He hopes that he'll run out into the hall and finally wake up to the harsh light peering through the blinds of his tour bus.

But that isn't the case either. He's lucky that his 'dream self' took the time to get dressed and straighten his hair.

That was a series of things that happened. Manami remained relatively disinterested in the beginning, though she absolutely hated being paired up with somebody for dancing. Especially Toshi. She'd much rather have someone nice like Tamashi dance with her, but she made no audible protest.

At least it didn't last that long. Manami couldn't even be bothered to respond to the lights going out then coming back on in an ominous and foreboding shade of red. Wait a sec. Was that a snake? Or, a cobra, she guessed, but that was still kind of a snake, wasn't it?

It...was a robot. That was disappointing. Manami much preferred living snakes as opposed to fake, fake, animatronic ones. Still, she was sort of curious and was now watching things unfold more attentively. Ouch, that's gotta smart for Monogoose, huh? That was a little embarrassing.

Frankly, Manami didn't have much inclination to leave this place. However, when the word 'killing' was mentioned she narrowed her eyes. Killing...? Her attention was focused solely on the cobra and his words.

What did she do upon the new robot's departure? It was hard to read Manami's expression, and she made nary a single movement for anyone inept at reading body language. After a long, long pause, all she whispered was a single word.

"Killing...?"

She took a few steps backward. Not necessarily stumbling back or anything, but just kind walking back like she was trying to sneak out of the place. She didn't realize there was someone there, though, and ended up walking right into someone else! 

Alright, who was it that was standing there in the first place? Manami slowly turned around to face them, the same expression on as before.