If she bothered enough to, Manami might have let out a sigh. Of course nothing was going to stay good, not in a stingy place like this. Still, she was a little annoyed this time. Just as she was about to go and maybe see what Midori was up to...'That cobra better have something good to say', she thought.

Manami looked at the motive messages. Huh. So you didn't know who they belonged to, huh? If that was the case...The typist only shrugged in response. It didn't particularly matter much to her.

Or...did it? If you looked hard enough, one could tell there was definitely something weighing on her mind.

"...So...This is it? How lame...These are all pointless. They have to be..."

Holy Toledo.

Is this...?

Akito was left, staring at the aisle labelled "Baking Goods". Had he gone to Heaven? Shoot, had he been a murder victim? Who was the killer? Who would avenge him? Would anyone care? Damn, he didn't even have time to frown. Instead, his eyes glazed over the various lineups of baking related goods. It called to him, the way metal did, but... fluffier. Softer. Not so violently, for the most part, which appealed to one half of him. Hey, it wasn't like they were going to have a metal-smithing aisle. This would do.

Akito clucked his tongue, though, realizing that in the midst of spontaneous teleportation, he hadn't brought his Easy Bake oven companion. He missed it, thoroughly, but nonetheless was already picking out various ingredients and piling them.

What, ho! Anyone care to bake some cookies?

"I... What?"  

Staring down at the body- the definitely real, stenching dead body- Yo's face was hardly her casual mask. She looked uncomfortable and completely disbelieving. No, rejecting.  

The whole concept of the motive announcement, and then the announcement itself, was way too bizarre for Mizuki to handle. In all honesty, he spent most of the time watching the snake and not listening to what it had to say, but he caught most of the pertinent points--blah blah, ssomeone'ss got to kill, lose all your fame and fortune, blah blah, lots of hissing. Someone needed to take that thing to speech therapy.

By the time everyone was able to mill around and talk again, Mizuki still stood alone, smoothing down the front of his jacket and trying to puzzle out what kind of bizarre meaning this held. Surely the thing couldn't actually turn people invisible, but it couldn't take away anybody's fame or anything either, it was just a snake. Not that he had much to begin with. Mizuki's own recognition levels were at an all-time low, maybe for the whole school--his name was in the news a few times if he was mentioned at all, and his face was a totally anonymous one, sad to say. Maybe if he was more famous he wouldn't have to keep explaining his dumb talent. Either way...the whole mean aspect of the show was ratcheting up for sure, but that didn't mean he had anything to worry about, right? Right.

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. 

"Woah, okay, does that guy- robot-?? Does that snake really think a bunch of teenagers are going to murder over that? I mean, psh, we might be famous, but... "

Who was she even talking to? Glancing around mid-sentence, at the wide ballroom and all its inhabitants, she wondered if anyone was even listening. Either way, she wasn't one to leave people hanging.

"This is like... a social experiment, right? Haha, I figured it out. We might be famous, but no one's going to try to MURDER anyone over it! Besides, being invisible is pretty cool. Nobody to harass you over stuff, or ask for attention, and... you can totally sneak into the girls' locker room."

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.