Girls' Wishing Tree

Since then, Rupa, the bassist of Zhihe Band, has shared a house here, releasing music online under the name "Red Ginger" and making a living by working.

This time, Zhi joined the band again because he believed in Ying's vision, but the band was still on the verge of disbanding.

"Tomorrow, let's go to the shrine," Rupa suggested after Zhi calmed down a little.

"Okay, let's go tomorrow." Zhi knew that Sakura had no bad intentions in this process, so he agreed to continue working at the shrine.

"Oh, right, there's something I want to tell you. Besides the drummer who played the show the day after, there was another drummer who left a message for Red Ginger online, also wanting to join our band. Because he's a man, I declined—I just want to tell you that, apart from the Meow Dream incident, the Live itself wasn't that bad."

"I know. How could a song written by Sakura and Momoka be bad? Nina might be a little green, but her vocals are nothing to sneeze at."

"Then what we just need is a drummer?" Rupa said, following Zhi's words.

"Well, you're right. But..."

"No buts. Let's talk about this at the shrine tomorrow."

The next day, the shrine.

Rupa and Zhi did not wait until noon to go to work as usual, but went there two hours early. Rupa also brought some snacks for Ying as a gift for her visit.

They found out that Sayu had taken over the job temporarily, said hello to Sayu, and went straight to the shrine.

Sakura was sitting under a cherry tree playing the violin. When she saw the two people enter the shrine, she stopped what she was doing.

"Ying, I'm sorry for the inconvenience I've caused you these past two days." Rupa began to apologize to Ying.

Ying was a little surprised - she didn't expect that Rupa's first words when they met would be to apologize to her directly.

"No need. You can adjust your mood. It won't matter if Sayu does it for a few days." Sakura took out two tickets: "RAS's live performance, please go and see it together - it will also be Hanazono Tae's last performance as a support guitarist for RAS."

Rupa took the two tickets and said, "Thank you. We will... go and take a look at the event."

"RAS hasn't found a suitable guitarist yet. Momoka might be their support guitarist for the next three months of performances." Ying said Momoka's situation.

Chi's eyelashes fluttered, and he looked at the ground at Sakura's feet: "Momoka...are you quitting the band too?"

"This is considered a part-time job, so your band should continue as usual. Momoka plans to be a backup guitarist for a while, and she'll also be looking for a suitable drummer. I spoke to her yesterday, and she's more interested in the recognition of a musical philosophy than the drummer's skills. Nina has to attend cram school for the next two months. Her grades have been reported back home, and her sister has come to Tokyo to look for her."

Zhi's mouth curled up slightly. "There's really no other way. I'll just wait for them for two months. It's a good time for me to calm down and create some of my own works."

"The girl who came into the lounge last time was called Ijichi Hongxia. She came to the shrine. I listened to her drumming and her basic skills were okay, but not as good as Meow Meng's. Her advantage is that she has a really nice personality and likes your band. If you want to give it a try, I can invite her over."

at the same time.

Taoxiang, who was carrying a shoulder bag, lowered the brim of her hat and looked at the girl with long black hair sitting opposite her.

"Are you really not going to try out for our band? You said you were filming a TV show and weren't available. You should be free now, right?"

The black-haired girl was wearing an outfit that was a bit exaggerated but still in line with her JK identity. She rested one elbow on the table with the back of her hand on her chin, and the other hand was stirring coffee with a long spoon. She had a very sweet smile.

"Momoka, I've been following your band and I want to play drums too. But lately, grandma's been saying that the new generation of artists have great performing talents. She's been talking to me about my band plans and always mentioning how good that Wakaba kid is. I have to behave myself in front of her."

"I'm planning to work as a support guitarist for RAS for a while. I'm really impressed by CHU^2's perseverance in pursuing her own musical ideals." Taoxiang took a sip of coffee. "Of course, the compensation she offers is also very reasonable."

"Oh? You just asked me if I was willing to play drums, why are you going to disband Rock Dance?" A hint of gossip flashed in the black-haired girl's eyes.

"We're not disbanding. We're just taking a break to write songs and find a drummer. I promised the shrine maiden at the Sakura Shrine that I'll participate in the next Sakura Festival. Before that, I want to put my Diamond Dust experience behind me and learn more. Subaru, are you really not going to reconsider this?"

"That's too much! I'm still a fan of DiamondDust." Subaru stopped stirring his coffee. "I'll contact you if I can go."

Momoka raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing Subaru's claim that he was a fan - the two of them didn't meet at a DiamondDust event.

"I was just kidding." Subaru finished his coffee in one gulp, looking very happy. "Let's go. I'm going to the performing arts school."

"Which one?" Taoxiang asked one last time, still unwilling to give up, wanting to confirm which one was a lie, "I'm a fan" or "I can go and will contact you".

"Guess." Subaru turned around and waved to Momoka with his back to her: "See you later~"

Chapter 101 Spring, Sakura and Crychic: 3. She is a half-demon

"I'll go back tomorrow." Guo Yu put down the compass in his hand: "I really didn't find where the dirty thing is this time. Ying, I will come again."

"It's easier to get another visa after signing once. If it doesn't work, I'll send you an invitation letter." Ying patted Guo Yu's shoulder: "Anyway, thank you for coming here specially for my sake."

"I will find a way to help you with the practice of vows—" Guo Yu suddenly cut off his words and stared at the door of the training room.

At this moment, Lenai walked in from outside, dragging her guitar and effects board. Her heterochromic eyes were slightly narrowed, her upper lip was pouting, and her lower lip was slightly pursed, making her look particularly like a cat.

"Lena, are you ready to play the guitar?" Sakura came forward.

"Wait—" Guo Yu grabbed Ying's wrist: "She...is not right."

Ying turned her head and glanced at Guo Yu. The little nun took out her whisk and assumed a defensive posture, as if Lenai was something dangerous.

"I say... do you have any misunderstanding? She has been playing guitar with me and has come here many times. How could she be in danger?" Gao Muying said to Guo Yu in Chinese.

"She... has a demonic aura." Guo Yu said cautiously.

Sakura focused her demonic power into her eyes and looked at Le Na standing at the door. To her surprise, Le Na's heterochromatic pupils were indeed shrouded in a rich demonic power.

However, Ying's nervousness only lasted for less than a second. She pushed Guo Yu's hand away and walked towards Le Nai again: "I believe her, she will definitely not hurt me."

"What a disgusting smell." Lenai tilted his head slightly and twitched his nose twice.

Sakura was certain that Lena was also connected to the supernatural, but she didn't care—she could sense the "purity" within Lena. Even with demonic powers, Lena could still be described as crystal clear.

"Lena, this is my friend from China. He will be going back tomorrow." Ying explained to Lenai.

"Play guitar." Lenai walked to the guitar speaker, opened the pedalboard box on the cart, took out the pedalboard with both hands, and skillfully connected it to the speaker.

Guo Yu stood there, staring blankly at Lenai who was familiar with the place.

Lenai adjusted the effects board before taking out his guitar, opening a folding stool, and sitting down with his guitar in his arms. His fingertips quickly tapped out a melody on the fretboard, just like a cat using the pads on its paws to step out a string of notes on the staff.

"Cat." Guo Yu slapped his forehead and shouted.

"Hmm?" Gao Muying took down the bass from the wall and glanced at Guo Yu: "What's wrong? Le Na does look a bit like a cat."

"She is half demon, half human, half cat——"

"Alright." Ying covered Guo Yu's mouth. "Let me play a song for you. I don't want to know what you said. By the way, didn't you say you can play the suona? Can you play it for me before you leave?"

"Uh... I don't know any of your songs, and I don't understand Japanese..." Guo Yu said a little embarrassedly after Ying took her hand away.

"Do you recognize musical notation?" Gao Muying took out a sheet of music and said, "Just play the vocal part on the track above."

"No...I can't." Guo Yu's voice became softer: "I only know the simple musical notation."

Ying had no choice but to teach on the spot: "In terms of time value, there is not much difference between the staff notation and the simplified notation. The biggest difference is that the staff notation is more suitable for presenting chords, while the simplified notation is more suitable for indicating playing techniques. The line below the five lines of the staff is the Do in the key of C. If there is a B symbol on the line, raise it by a semitone. If there is a B symbol, lower it by a semitone. If you encounter a natural symbol, restore it. Another way is to find the Do according to the key signature. For example, this song has two Dos, it is in the key of D major, so move the Do up two positions..."

Le Nai said nothing, just played the guitar. After half an hour of teaching, Ying finally understood one thing: even if one had a basic understanding of simplified musical notation, it would be impossible to sight-read the staff notation if one tried to cram at the last minute.

She had no choice but to take out a piece of paper, transcribe the vocal part of the five-line music into simple notation and hand it to Guo Yu: "Why don't you try this song?"

Although Le Nai doesn't understand Chinese, he can understand the music score.

She took the sheet music from Ying and quickly began playing the guitar part. Ignoring Guo Yu, who was looking at the music, Ying played the bass with Le Nai. Bass wasn't her favorite instrument, but with Le Nai, she always had fun playing it.

Regardless of Lenai's connection to the monsters, she has the ability to make the performance more "enjoyable." When Sakura first asked Lenai to play guitar, she just wanted to take in this "stray cat" from Space, but the more she worked with her, the more she felt it was a musical enjoyment.

The two of them played the song twice before Gao Muying turned her attention to Guo Yu who was standing aside with the simple music score.

"This song is too difficult." Guo Yu's face had turned red - she said she could play the suona, but when Ying took out the simple music score, she couldn't play it.

Sakura suddenly remembered something, opened her phone, looked through the chat history with Goto Ichiri, and began transcribing a song at a very fast speed.

"Pigsy Carrying His Wife on His Back".

The original music of this song uses suona, and the arrangement also conforms to the more traditional Chinese scale arrangement. If you have some basic knowledge of suona, you should be able to pick it up.

Lenai practiced the piano while waiting, showing no impatience, only occasionally glancing towards Guo Yu.

Sure enough, Guo Yu was much more adept at playing this song than the previous one. He could play it all according to the simple score. Although there were still some flaws in his technique, he could be considered to be able to play the suona.

Sakura and Lenai also played along with her music.

After finishing a song, Guo Yu put down the suona and licked her slightly dry lips - this was her first time playing with others. Before, she only played it for fun when she was bored.

And she also discovered something.

Playing music with others is actually beneficial to my spiritual practice.

Guo Yu rolled her eyes, as if she was thinking about something. Ying had already pulled her attention away from Le Nai and ignored her, but continued to play with Le Nai as usual.

"It's fun, let's go." After the two played a few more songs together, Lenai began to pack his equipment back into the box. "I'll come again next time when she's not around."

"She's going back to China tomorrow. Lenai, have you ever heard of a monster?"

"Are you talking about candies shaped like monsters, or training camp ghost stories?" Lenai put her index finger on the corner of her mouth, looking puzzled.

"...Forget it." Sakura waved her hand at Lenai with a complicated expression: "I'll write a new song for you next time."

If Lenai was a youkai, then Lenai would have seen through her obvious demonic powers long ago. Since Lenai didn't want to bring up the subject, she pretended not to know and continued to be friends with Lenai, brought together by music.

Chapter 102 Spring, Sakura and Crychic: 4. Tokyo JK, cold-resistant!

The weather in Tokyo is already winter.

Sakura really doesn't understand why JKs in Tokyo are still wearing uniforms including short skirts in winter, and they don't wear thermal underwear under their skirts.

The winter clothing of Hanaoka Girls' Academy includes a thick plaid skirt. The fabric is indeed suitable for winter clothing, but it is somewhat a pipe dream to expect such a short skirt to block the cold winter wind.

As a tree demon, Sakura is not afraid of the cold, but when she saw Hikawa Hina swaying in front of her in a school uniform skirt, she felt goose bumps starting to appear above her knees.

"Hi, PasPale is always welcome to come and play. You don't have to come over and ask me."

"Actually... there's one more thing I want to trouble you with. The agency has formed another idol band besides PasPale. In many ways, this band is too similar to PasPale."

In Sakura's impression, Hinata wasn't someone who was afraid of challenges. She didn't know why Hinata showed such strong resistance to a similar band.

"It's just another band with a similar style, right? PasPale has already taken over part of the idol band market, they won't be that easy to replace."

Hinata lowered her head, and a gust of wind blew her bangs.

After a few seconds, she spoke again: "Ying, the agency may want to break up PasPale, so they formed a similar band, but I don't want everyone in PasPale to separate-"

Ying was very surprised to hear the news. PasPale was currently on the rise, and their initial fanbase had solidified. Dismantling the band was not a good idea in any way.

Hinai explained, "The agency believes that it would be more appropriate for us to develop separately. Launching a similar idol band every year can also continue to bring popularity to the agency. The old band only needs to come out occasionally to harvest sentiment."

Ying frowned. PasPale's office didn't leave a good impression on her.

When the band was first formed, they forced Maruyama Aya, who had little stage experience, to lip-sync, and the equipment also caused problems. Once the band started to recover a little, they began to increase the frequency of their individual activities and downplay the existence of PasPale as a band. Now, they have even created a new band to try to replace them.

It seems that although bands led by such agencies seem to have more abundant resources, in terms of autonomy, they are not comparable to bands formed by a few people and then commercialized.

"Hiina, your contract..."

Ying didn't say it explicitly, but her meaning was clear: she didn't want PasPale to continue working at the firm.

"Alas," Hinata sighed. "The name PasPale belongs to the agency. If we quit, we won't be able to continue activities under it. Furthermore, both Shirasagi Chisei and Maruyama Aya have non-compete agreements. If they want to pursue acting within a few years of leaving the agency, they'll have to pay a hefty fine—more than you can earn from a few live performances."

The system prompt sounded at this time: "The system can issue a task to help Ricai leave PasPale."

"Don't make trouble. PasPale is not at the point where the team needs to be disbanded." Takagi Sakura took out the amulet from her pocket and shook it in front of her neck.

Sure enough, the system immediately became quiet.

"Hina-san, you're at the shrine too!" a vibrant voice called out from the torii gate. The voice was so recognizable that Sakura knew it was Kasumi speaking without even turning around.

She turned around and saw Kasumi and Arisaki.

It was normal for these two to come to the shrine - their first live performance was the day after the RAS performance, and Sakura was going to perform as an opening guest. So far, they had only communicated online and had not sat down to discuss the performance.

"Ying, we're here to confirm the song list with you."

"The set list is the two songs I sent you. We performed it at Starry last time and the response was pretty good. This time I plan to change one of them. I'll take down 'Zhaojun Going to the Frontier' and replace it with another lyrical piece. By the way, the venue at Starry is small, so I can do without a microphone. But there are more than 500 people in the venue you have arranged, so a microphone is needed. Just make sure that the microphone stand can face the pipa. Don't use a vocal microphone. Get me a small-diaphragm condenser microphone." Ying quickly repeated to the two of them what needed to be communicated.

Hinata nodded to the three of them and said, "Then I'll be heading back. I look forward to next year's Sakura Festival, where PasPale can perform again."

Sakura waved at Hina and turned her gaze towards Kasumi and Arisaki.

Hanasakigawa's winter school uniform is not divided into two parts like Hanaoka's, but the skirt of the dress is not long enough, at least it certainly cannot cover the knees.

Kasumi and Arisaki didn't wear stockings under their skirts. They just covered their ankles with winter socks and wore a pair of fleece shoes.

The JKs in Tokyo are really cold-resistant.

"Come to the training room, I'll play it for you." Ying led the two into the training room - there were tatami mats on the floor, and it was also equipped with air conditioning, and the temperature was more than ten degrees higher than outside.

Sakura took out the pipa, sat on the tatami, hugged the instrument and started playing.

The sound of the piano rang out in the training room. Kasumi and Arisaki listened very attentively. When the performance ended, they both clapped together. The little stars in Kasumi's eyes were about to pop out.

"This instrument sounds amazing! Is it similar to a guitar?"

"Its resonance is quite special, and the sound-producing principle is not much different from that of a guitar. Three of the strings are nylon, and only the thinnest one is steel. If you're interested, you can give it a try." Sakura handed the pipa to Kasumi.