Funeral Lilies Conjured With a Sleight of Hand - Track 6

Chihiro, we can loot those guys over there! Let’s go!

Woah, hold on a sec! There’s another team behind us! If we push in, it’s GGs…!

Oh. Annnnd we choked…

…Sorry, my bad, I messed that up. Let’s go again–

Huh? Did you log out, Chihiro?

Yeeep. That’s a wrap for me! You weren’t locked in at all, Tao.

If this keeps up, I’m gonna derank after I just hit Masters!

…S-Sorry.

Something’s bothering you. It’s written all over your face, y’know.

Urgh… That bad?

What’s up?

I think… I might’ve overstepped Kuguri-san’s boundaries.

Kugurin’s?

I tried to get Kuguri-san to talk to me about his past… Even though he probably doesn’t want me to do anything like that.

Ohhhh…

It just… kinda feels like I did the same thing that used to piss me off the most.

I used to be on TV as a kid. My classmates used to pester me a lot about it.

Like, how much I got paid, or if my parents were making me do it, and stuff like that. It was all sorts of questions out of curiosity.

Despite hating it when people did that to me… I think I just did the same thing to Kuguri-san.

Tao…

How can I say this… I kinda think poking your nose into people’s past is pretty low.

Umm… are you sure? Like, what you’re feeling isn’t just curiosity, is it?

I… know how that feels, since I dealt with it before. A bunch of randos running their mouths like they know you totally gets old after a while.

But that’s not what you’re doing, Tao. You were worried about Kugurin because you wanted to be there for him, right?

…Uh, well, I guess? I just got struck by some kinda deja vu when they mentioned him being a genius…

We’re paired together for the filming, and Kuguri-san seemed unmotivated, so I thought maybe there was something I could do…

When Kitami-chi brought up the piano, Kugurin had this look on his face I’ve never seen before…

……

Kugurin is still a part of our unit, so I want to learn more about him too. I think it’s pretty normal to feel that way.

So it’s not just being curious. At least, that’s what I think.

I’m actually pretty happy that you care about Ev3ns this much, Tao. Sorry about what happened with Kugurin, but yeah…

Chihiro…

(He’s right… Goz also did that for me, even though back then I thought it was none of his business…)

(And I know… he only did that because he was worried about me and Taiki…)

Obviously you shouldn’t snoop around other people’s pasts if they don’t want you to, but…

Wanting to be there for him… isn’t really a bad thing, is it?

I mean⁠—you could try really hard not to step on any landmines, but like… it’s kinda hard to do that if you don’t know what those are.

I really did tick off Kuguri-san, and I want to apologize, but… I don’t know much about him in the first place.

……

Well… this might be stooping a little low, but we cooould look into things about Kugurin.

Look into him, huh… I dunno about that.

If anyone would know anything, it’s probably Raitin, buuut I don’t really wanna make him deal with all that.

If someone went behind my back to look into me but told me they did it because they wanted to be there for me, I’d be happy about it and understand where they’re coming from.

But like, if something is bothering Kugurin, then wouldn’t you wanna know what it is? It could be useful in the long run.

……

Then, should we go you-know-where?

We’re… here?

Are you gonna be okay, Tao? Especially after… ¹

Ah, yeah. I dunno what I’m expecting to get out of what we were looking into back then, so… let’s set it aside for now.

What we’re looking into today is Kuguri-san’s past, right?

Mhm! I’ll say a secret apology in my head! Sorry for snooping in advance, Kuguriiin!

Ahaha. Right, I’ll say an apology in my head too.

Argh, we’re getting nowhere. This one’s another article about him being appointed as the Ward 14 mayor. The rest is just about his arrest…

Kugurin’s got a pretty unique name, so I thought we’d get results quick, but… this is one tough cookie.

I tried looking up stuff like “piano, Kuguri” and “genius boy, Domeki” and got no hits. Why?

Hmm… Did he go by a different name back then? Or did everything on him get scrubbed?

Or maaaaybe… he covered his past up~? He could’ve gotten his entire record wiped if he’s good with that kinda thing.

Like how some agencies “drama proof” their idols before they debut.

I see. I wouldn’t put that past him. I guess we won’t find anything no matter how hard we look, then…

Nope! It’s too early to give up on this.

Just ‘cuz his real name isn’t giving us any results, doesn’t mean that any nicknames or titles he had won’t.

Like if I was gonna ego search myself, I’d use “Smiley Cutie”~♪

Man, you’re an ego searching pro.

…Hm. Do you think this would work, then?

“Reincarnation of Franz Liszt”…

Woah. We actually got something.

Huh? Whazzat?

Looks like data for an e-book. Uhh…

“How To Raise A Genius”…?