Kawaii princess's Arc

Chapter 21 of 54

The choir was still ringing in her ears when Kawaii Princess stepped outside the hall and saw the news. A flyer fluttered against the ice rail. Her rival had set up a practice yard across the road, and a stacked harmony was already drifting from it. Kawaii Princess crossed and found a wide ring of concentric stone circles, each step marked with carved ice points where planted singers stood. At the center sat a crystal trophy shaped like balanced stones, a placard beneath it claiming the stacked-harmony trick as the rival's own. The voices climbed in the same shape she had built. By broadcast night, the judges would call it tired. She did not argue. She walked back to the empty lot where she had first taught the twelve fans their lines and dragged out a small frosted wooden stage. She nailed her torn scraps along the railing, carved the date into the post, and painted one plain word across the arch: ORIGIN. Then she sent every fan she had to stand beside it and sing the harmony out loud, for free, to anyone passing. By dusk, the crowd at the rival's stone ring had thinned and drifted to her wooden stage. The rival's trophy still glittered, untouched, but the song around it had gone quiet. Kawaii Princess had kept the move — yet now every voice in town knew the trick by heart, and she would need something new to close the broadcast.