"Do I really have a chance of surpassing you someday?"
Faced with Shinomiya Kaguya's increasingly direct hints, Miyauchi Hiyage blinked and offered a hint of his own. "Who can say what the future holds? Maybe you'll get something even more miraculous than a Senzu Bean before you know it."
Shinomiya Kaguya spread her hands. "If only I were that lucky. Anyway, let's leave the binding vow at that. I've already made it, after all. It's not as if you can undo it for me."
Miyauchi Hiyage said nothing more. He gestured for Shinomiya Kaguya to do as she pleased, then lowered his head and returned his attention to tuning the instruments.
At the same time, he was waiting to see whether Shinomiya Kaguya would follow up with something more direct.
Making a binding vow wasn't necessarily a terribly serious matter, but it certainly showed sufficient commitment.
Yet even after Miyauchi Hiyage finished what he was doing, Shinomiya Kaguya still said nothing. Perhaps she hadn't figured out how to begin.
Checking the time, Miyauchi Hiyage broke the silence. "I'm done tuning everything, but there's still a while before our performance. Before then, I'm planning to take Guanghua and our friends from Asahigaoka around the festival. Want to join us?"
Although this music festival had only a month of preparation, and most of the participants were newcomers or newly formed groups, Shinomiya Kaguya had put considerable effort into creating the best possible stage for the girls in the group chat.
With Double Bocchi's dark battle-of-the-bands segment added to the mix, the scale of Shinomiya Kaguya's production could rival major international music festivals.
The only question was whether the newcomers could withstand that pressure, when they probably didn't even know why Shinomiya Kaguya had invited them to a concert of this caliber.
Under