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Who: Himeko and Miyume
Where: In front of the dorms -> Karaoke in town
When: Wednesday, April 12th
What: Karaoke appointment (Social Link)

It was Wednesday and classes were finally over. Himeko had been rushing out of her classroom earlier than usual. It made her happy that she was able to persuade some of her ‘fanboys’ ,as she liked to call them, in class into doing her part of today’s classroom cleaning.
While leaving the school building she wondered why she hadn’t thought about doing something like that way sooner. She never quite liked cleaning, as it just consumed a lot of time and wasn’t a very fun thing to do in general.
However, the only real reason she more or less skipped it today was because of an appointment she had made with one of the first year students.
She had been looking forward to this for a whole week now and having to deal with something as depressing as cleaning before going would just spoil the fun for her.

Ever since she started her idol training at a young age, there had been almost no time for anything fun. She didn’t complain about it even once. Becoming an idol was her goal in life, after all. But she had always tried to imagine how it was to spend some time with friends after school.
Chatting, laughing, eating out in one of those fancy fast food restaurants and most importantly wearing the same school uniform as everyone else, of course - Just like in those high school dramas she watched every now and then.

Today, she would finally enter a karaoke center again. She was more than excited for it. In fact, she had been sneaking out of home to go and sing some karaoke in Tokyo a few times before. Still one of the best memories she had shared with her former best friend. But memories were the only thing that she had left and even though several years had passed already, it was still too hard to believe what she had lost back then... But she was happy that she could go once more and maybe even enjoy a bit of an ordinary high school life here in Kobe from now on.
While thinking about all of those things, Himeko reached their arranged meeting point in front of the dorms pretty early. Miyume, the girl she had an appointment with, didn’t seem to have arrived yet so she decided to just wait, watching some of the other students passing by.

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It wasn't until Miyume had reached the dorm lobby that she reached the embarrassing realization that she had no idea what Himeko looked like. Or that Himeko might not know what she looked like. She'd been so preoccupied lately that it hadn't even occurred to her to even ask around. With any luck, Himeko had thought to ask around about her instead. Miyume wasn't particularly difficult to find with a physical description. There probably weren't many first years with hair as long as hers that walked with canes.

Miyume left the building, pausing outside the door to look around to see if anyone might look like they were waiting for someone else. Spotting a girl, Miyume approached her.

"Are you Uehara-san? Uehara Himeko?" she asked gently. "I'm Hazama Miyume from class 1-ro."

Himeko stood there waiting for quite a while. She even started to wonder if the other girl would really be coming or not.
Watching other students passing by, she suddenly realized that she had never seen Miyume before. This was definitely embarrassing. What if she already passed by a few times and Himeko just didn’t recognize her?
She started to panic a little. It would have been way cleverer to figure out what she looked like before coming to the meeting point.

She was just about to leave her position to start some kind of search operation, when a girl approached her. For a moment Himeko looked at her carefully before answering.
She was really pretty, which made her secretly a little jealous.
“Ah yes! I’m Uehara Himeko from class 2-ha …So you are Miyu-tan,then! Nice to meet you!”, she was striking her usual cute pose while smiling cheerfully at the other girl.

"Nice to meet you, too!"

So this was Himeko. Miyume couldn't say she was particularly surprised to learn a girl that seemed cute online was just as cute in person. For a moment, Miyume wished she was that cute, too.

"I hope you weren't waiting long. Are you ready to go?"

“No, not at all! Just a few minutes!”, Himeko said. In reality, she had been waiting quite some time already. But she didn’t feel like spoiling the mood.
“Sure! Let’s go, then!”, she continued, still admiring how pretty the other girl was.

While slowly starting to walk towards the gates of the school grounds, she fished some printed papers out of her bag and showed them to Miyume with a bright smile.
“Look, Miyu-tan! I’m totally prepared for this!”, the printed papers turned out to be small maps with instructions on how to reach various karaoke boxes in the region.

“Since arriving here, I’ve never really left the school grounds.”, she started her explanation. “But this one here...”, she pointed at one of the karaoke boxes on one of the various papers she had. “Seems to be pretty near to Chitoku.”, all in all Himeko’s whole planning looked plain chaotic. But she clearly had a lot of fun comparing all the small maps with each other.

Chaotic as Himeko's planning might have been, it was still enough to impress Miyume. The extent of her own planning was sorting out medication doses for each day of the week with a pillbox. Miyume smiled warmly as she looked over the maps. She toyed absently with a lock of her hair then pointed to the karaoke box closest to Chitoku.

"How about this one?" Miyume asked.

Himeko's excitement and enthusiasm were infectious. What had initially begun as a vague effort to 'get out more' was starting to shape up to be much better than she had anticipated.

"It's less of a walk and the shorter the trip, the more time we have for fun when we get there."

Himeko stopped for a moment and compared the map Miyume had suggested, with the one she had picked out.

“You’re right! Miyu-tan, you really are clever!”, she shouted out in surprise. “This one is much nearer! Alright! Now we only have to get there!”, she was definitely excited for their karaoke trip and confidently stepped forward, right into town.

Even though, her general sense of direction wasn’t the best, she took the leading position, as always.

Himeko wasn’t the leader type. She lacked a lot of qualities a leader needed to have and therefore was better off being led by someone else.
But since she kind of enjoyed giving other people orders, she would never accept that on her own.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for Himeko, Miyume was very much a follower perfectly content to let the older girl take the lead. Whether it led them to their destination or somewhere else entirely, Himeko would be in charge of their adventure.

Being called clever did bring a bright smile to Miyume's face, so rarely did she hear compliments on her intelligence. She played with the ends of her hair as she walked and tried to think of something interesting to say.

"How are you enjoying Chitoku Academy so far, Himeko-chan?"

She realized that the other girl didn’t seem to have any objections in her taking the lead. Himeko naturally took this as approval of her position and started to guide Miyume. She wasn’t quite sure if they were headed in the right direction, but then again Kobe wasn’t as huge as Tokyo. Nothing could go wrong.

They would reach their destination sooner or later...theoretically.

“It’s fine, I guess.”, she replied to Miyume’s question.
“I can continue my idol training and yet, it feels like I’m having a normal school life for once.”, she had decided to come here out of the blue when the invitation came, hoping to distance herself from everything she had to face at home. Her parents weren’t happy with her choice at first. But they indulged, eventually.

“What about you? Do you like it here?”

"It's very different here," Miyume admitted. "It's still a little weird."

Miyume fussed with her hair a moment. She wondered if she'd ever grow used to not having Ayana and her mother looking over her shoulder every minute they could spare it. When those two couldn't make time, her grandparents took up the vigil. She sighed.

"I'm not used to having so many choices or so much room to make mistakes in."

Freedom was kind of addicting, she thought.

Himeko carefully observed Miyume while she was speaking.
Being on her own so suddenly had been a strange experience for her as well. But not having her instructors and family around was also kind of refreshing. They were still trying to ensure that she didn’t do anything extremely stupid, by sending her mails on a regular basis. However, they should know better by now. She had never been the obedient kind of girl in the first place.

“I’m sure you get used to it, soon! It can be fun to have so many choices and making mistakes is something normal, right?”, she said, facing Miyume with a bright smile.

“We should just concentrate on having fun today! Karaoke, karaoke~~!”, she excitedly added after a little pause. “It should be right in front of us, if I’m reading the map correctly...”, she stared at the small map slightly confused. Instead of a karaoke box there were some bars and an arcade in front of them. “Maybe the map is old? Or the karaoke box moved somewhere else? “

Miyume peered at the map in question, comparing it to the location in front of them. It looked like they were in the right spot. Either way, Himeko was probably right, she reasoned, though honestly, she didn't have the best sense of direction herself.

"What does the other map say? Or we could go to next closest one," she mused out loud. It wasn't the end of the world and now that she was out and about getting a bit of exercise and fresh air, Miyume did feel better. As long as she didn't overdo it, she should be fine, she thought.

After thinking it through for a moment, Himeko had a close look at one of the other maps she was carrying around and showed it to Miyume. “Let’s try this one, then! It’s a little bit further away but still near enough.”, she said confidently and began to move.

She really tried harder than before, comparing the route they were going with the one on the map and reading the instructions on how to reach their destination several times. Still, she wasn’t quite sure if they were on the right path or not.

“Don’t worry, Miyu-tan! If we can’t find it, I’m going to ask around! Local people will surely know something.”, she started a conversation again, after they walked for a while.
Maybe it would have been a good idea to ask someone right away, instead of searching the unknown area on her own. Himeko, however, was still sure that she could find what they were looking for without anyone telling her where to go.
Asking for help also meant that she was a less good leader after all and she simply refused to accept that.

Miyume liked cute people as much as the next Japanese person. However, she'd been unprepared for just how adorable Himeko really was. Just being around her made her want to smile. Her senpai struck her as very hardworking and determined, much more so than Miyume herself. There was something inspirational about the other girl's presence that made her want to work harder, too.

"Those all sound like great ideas, senpai," she said in an encouraging tone, following after her the best that she could.

She found herself smiling at Miyume calling her ‘senpai’. Secretly, Himeko liked being looked up to, as long as it was because of her own talents.
She had only met a few underclassmen, who had actually called her ‘senpai’ once or twice, until now. This had most likely to do with her outer appearance. She naturally looked pretty young for her age, but her overall styling did indeed put the emphasis on that slightly childish image as well.
Maybe, telling everyone to call her cute names and not using any honorifics was a reason for that,too...

They walked for a few more minutes, in which Himeko was even more energetic and spurred on by the other girl’s encouraging words.
However, she always made sure that Miyume could follow without any problems.
Then, she suddenly stopped in front of a rather small sign.

“We did it! Look, it’s written there! Karaoke is only a few more meters away!”, she said, excitedly pointing at the sign. “That was expected, though. I’m a great leader after all!”, she continued with a shameless self-laudation.
Being all excited over the find of the sign, she almost forgot that they still had a little walk to do to reach their destination.

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