Stepping out of the convenience store, a late autumn chill rode the night wind blowing from the direction of the station. She zipped her jacket all the way to the top, walked a few steps along her familiar route toward her apartment, and then veered off into a narrower alley at a fork in the road.
The alley where the entrance to the Wings of Freedom headquarters lay. The chalk writing on the wooden sign on the door had been updated today. The wing design had been redrawn, and next to it was a new line of small text: Debut Successful! The exclamation point was drawn incredibly large, instantly recognizable as Kohinata's handwriting.
Qiluo pushed open the fire door to the underground base, only to find the sofa area in absolute chaos.
Kohinata sat cross-legged on the central sofa with three phones splayed across her lap, each displaying the back-end interface of a different social media platform. Typing with her left hand and swiping with her right, a lollipop dangling from her mouth, she yelled inarticulately, “Hurry, hurry, hurry! Is the account bio ready yet? Boss said it needs to feel youthful and energetic, like an idol!”
“Boss said to write: ‘The wings that await freedom descend here,’” Amamiya leaned against the armrest of the sofa, holding her own phone. The same sentence was displayed on her screen, her thumb hovering over the send button. “Added. Sending.”
“Wait, wait, wait, don't send it yet!” Night Sakura lunged from the other side. Her mask was askew on her forehead, and she had forgotten to adjust it, nearly tripping over the leg of the coffee table.
She slammed her laptop onto the coffee table, the screen displaying a rough cut of the newly edited combat footage. “The video hasn't finished rendering yet! The statement and the video have to be posted at the same time, otherwise there won't be any hype with just text! Amamiya, where did you put that re-recorded self-introduction?”
“What self-introduction?” Amamiya raised her sleepy, half-open eyes.
“The one where I had you look at the camera and say, ‘Hello everyone, I'm Amamiya from the Wings of Freedom’!”
“Didn't record it. Too embarrassing.”
“You—” Night Sakura took a deep breath, then turned her head toward the doorway. “Ah, Lightweaver is here! Perfect, perfect timing. Come over and help me look at this part—”
Qiluo stood at the doorway, still holding a bag containing tomorrow's breakfast. She stared at the scene before her.
The Wings of Freedom is better off finished.
“...What exactly are you doing?”
“Making a video!” Night Sakura dragged her over to the coffee table and turned the laptop screen toward her. “Come here, come here. The combat video of the Wings of Freedom's debut is going up tonight. This is our official public unveiling. You were one of the key participants, so you have editing review rights.”
Qiluo directed her gaze to the screen. The footage showed Amamiya's twin kodachi slashing in from the side in a clean, swift motion, her blades drawing a beautiful arc of light across the Erosion Body's carapace. The next shot was Kohinata swinging her hammer to shatter the core, with the web of light threads closing in overhead in the background, intercepting all the erosion spores mid-air.
There was no shot of Lightweaver's face, only a close-up of her hands. Qiluo suddenly realized that this "review right" might be a trap.
“I cut out all of your face shots,” Night Sakura said, raising her hand with a sincere expression. “I only kept two close-ups of your hands and a distant shot of your back. There's absolutely no way anyone could recognize you. Unless someone can identify a person just by looking at their fingers.”
“...”
You never know.
Night Sakura lowered her hand, leaned over the computer again, and tapped on the keyboard a few times. A newly created account homepage popped up. The avatar was still blank, the bio contained the line of text Amamiya had mentioned, and the follower count was zero. “The account is set up. We'll post it as soon as the video is rendered.”
Misa Tachibana, who had been sitting in the corner looking at her tablet, finally raised her head. She rested the tablet on her lap, her finger sliding slowly across the screen as she reviewed the draft of the final statement that Night Sakura had just uploaded to their group chat.
The light from the desk lamp accentuated the dark circles under her eyes, but she sat a bit straighter than usual.
“Lightweaver,” Misa Tachibana said, handing the tablet over. “Take a look at this.”
“Even though it still feels like we're a group that hasn't thought anything through or prepared anything!”
“But... the word ‘freedom’ happens to sum us up perfectly—because we are, after all, a flock of birds that have escaped from various forms of confinement.”
“So, starting today, we will officially meet everyone as a real group! From now on, we'll slowly share our battles, our daily lives... and some... well, more serious things than you might expect.”
“Please join us... as we document a journey from a daydream to becoming real idols!”
Qiluo raised her gaze from the screen, meeting Misa Tachibana's calm eyes. Misa didn't look away, only nodding slightly. Qiluo handed the tablet back to her and said, “This is fine. No need to change anything.”
Kohinata slapped her thigh and pulled the lollipop from her mouth with a sharp pop. “Great! We've got the bio, we've got the debut declaration, and the video is almost ready! Let's decide on the avatar while we can! We can't post this with a default gray avatar!”
“Use the wing design,” Amamiya suggested. “The one on the door.”
“I drew that one with chalk. It'll be super blurry if we blow it up. Plus, I only touched up the colors this morning, and I haven't even wiped off the chalk dust yet.” Night Sakura nudged her laptop aside to clear the middle of the coffee table, then spread out several rough doodles. There were outlines of wings, crossed swords and hammers, and a circle of stars.
Just as they were about to reach a consensus of "let's just draw whatever and put it up," Misa Tachibana put down her tablet and pulled a flat tin box from the storage pouch on the side of her wheelchair. The box's paint was chipped in places, and its corners were worn smooth and shiny. She opened the lid to reveal a metal emblem lying quietly inside.
The emblem wasn't large, about three centimeters in diameter. On the front was an embossed wing design with clean, smooth lines, though the edges showed obvious signs of wear, as if it had been rubbed repeatedly over the years. Engraved above the wings was a tiny star-shaped mark, and below them was an extremely thin, curved horizon.
Misa Tachibana placed the emblem in the very center of the coffee table, and several heads crowded in to look at it in unison.
“This is White Night's emblem,” her fingers gently brushed over the worn edges. “When I retired, the Association revoked my ID and permissions, but I made this emblem myself. They couldn't take it away. It's been sitting in this box for all these years.”
Night Sakura straightened up, her gaze shifting from the emblem to Misa Tachibana's face. Her lips parted, but she swallowed her joke, picked up her phone to snap a photo of the emblem, and opened an editing app to crop it. “This is the one.”
A few minutes later, the video finished rendering. Night Sakura hit the send button, and the first official public post appeared on the Wings of Freedom's social media account.
The three of them reposted it one after another, adding the caption: “Debut successful! The Wings of Freedom officially takes flight today!”
Rate on N.U.
