章 358: Medan
"I'm just a regular girl, but I have real big dreams, and every day, some more are coming true, it seems!"
Ranko flounced across the front edge of the stage in her glittery white dress, not shying away from the flash of cameras in the front few rows of seating owing to the white athletic compression shorts she wore under her knee-length costume. Her eyes lingered for just a moment on a brunette in her mid-twenties seated in the front row, about a third of the way from center at stage right. She wore a long, navy blue empire dress with a wide white sash tied in a large bow at the small of her back. The folding chair to her right was vacant.
"I mean, I'm not Madonna, and I'm sure not Cher, but I'm out rocking Medan tonight! I'll see YOU there!"
Ranko pointed outward to the crowd with both of her hands, inviting a wave of cheers and applause from the rows of covered outdoor bleacher seating lining the west side of Teladan Stadium. She covered her heart with both of her hands in gratitude, blowing a kiss to the crowd. Carefully, she dabbed at her forehead with the back of her hand, willing the spirit of Izumi Sando to teleport itself from Tokyo and double-check her makeup after she'd removed the worst of the sweat dripping toward her eyes.
"Even if I'm flustered, it means everything that you take time to listen when you hear me sing! I just can't express how grateful I am that you'd be out here roasting in this heat to see a regular girl like me!"
The redhead swayed in place, pausing the song before its final line to bask in the adulation of thousands of Indonesians. That, and to wait for confirmation from her team that they were ready to proceed. Deciding to share the love with the people who brought her to where she was that night in the heart of North Sumatra, she stepped back toward the musicians, extending her hands toward Crash and Jacob and encouraging the crowd to applaud for them as well. On her left, Utaru and Emi repeated the simplistic choreography for Regular Girl as Jacob looped back and played the last few bars of the song again, with Hitomi and Sanyo mirroring them on the right.
"Nori's got him, Ran-chan," crackled Ariel's voice in the earpiece of Ranko's headset.
Ranko smiled excitedly, nodding her head as she turned her eyes back to the crowd. Again, her eyes lingered on the young woman in the front row for a half-second longer than the others in the audience.
"Making music with my friends for you is honestly the greatest thing that's ever happened to a regular girl like me!"
The young songstress beamed in the crowd's revelry as the song ended with a hard hit from Shinji Yokota's bass guitar. Well, that, and stuff like this, she thought with a wide smile. I thought Nabiki's fan club idea was ridiculous, but if it makes this kinda shit happen, it's all worth it. She glanced behind the curtain at stage left, receiving a thumbs-up gesture from her orange-haired roadie and the Indonesian man standing next to him in a black sport coat and matching slacks.
Next to them, a barrage of camera flashes strobed from the hands of a blonde in a denim miniskirt and a pink tank top that read yes, mistress across the front. It was one of a series of new shirts Nabiki had added to the merch stands for the second leg of the tour highlighting individual songs. Thank the gods Ariel didn't give her a headset, though, Ranko thought as she nodded in Natsuko's direction. I wouldn't be able to hear myself think all night, with that chatterbox in my ear.
Soon, though, strobe lights flickered not just from stage left, but from the entire front of the stage and the trusses surrounding it. The video screen, which currently featured footage of Ranko pressed against the fish counter of the grocery store by a mob of excited Firebirds, faded to black and her bright pink signature again scrawled across the stage in transition.
"I gotta tell you, Medan. You're impressing the heck out of me. I mean, it's hot as hell out here, and it's wearing me out, but you guys?! They told me there's something like fourteen thousand people here tonight."
Indeed, the stadium's capacity was just north of twenty thousand, but the seating across the entire east side of the great oval was covered with great black tarps. The stage faced west, which would have prevented anyone seated on the east side from getting a decent view anyway, and Nabiki said sometimes it was better to sell fewer tickets and be able to call the show a sellout.
"But, I was in Bandung on Monday night, with about twenty-seven thousand Firebirds in the crowd, and I gotta tell ya…" She leaned forward as if trying to keep a secret, holding the back of her hand up to her left cheek as if trying to keep someone on her left from hearing her whisper. "You guys are getting way louder. Don't tell 'em I told you, though!"
The open-air stadium erupted in sound as the audience responded to her compliment. Behind her, Ranko's signature wiped right from the video screen, and a new clip began to play. It featured a darkened, cavernous room, the camera panning slowly up to the center of the floor. There was no furniture and no windows, and the hardwood floor was filled with thousands of white pillar candles, all lit. The gentle flicker gave an orange hue to the whole of the scene.
"So, this next one is one of my favorites. It's really special to me," Ranko began, slowly walking the length of the stage and waving to the crowd as she spoke. She wanted to ensure that everyone got as good a view of her as possible for at least part of the show. If there were fourteen thousand people in Teladan Stadium that night, she intended to make contact with all twenty-eight thousand eyes at least once.
"See, this thing I do up here, it's hard. It takes a lot out of you, sometimes. And, it's not like a job at a restaurant or an office, where if you have a bad day, you can sort of suck it up, keep your head down, and get through it. You gotta be all smiles, all the time, and that can be tough sometimes when there's a regular girl under the makeup and the glitter at the end of the day that has her own problems and her own worries. So, to do this job, you gotta find something you can think about that makes your heart soar, even on the crappiest day. Oh, don't worry, guys - tonight's not one of the bad days. I'm having a blast out here tonight with you!"
And you're about to see why.
Again, the crowd cheered supportively, though Ranko paused only a few seconds to allow them to respond before continuing. "Well, I found my something, except it wasn't a some thing. It was a some one. Someone whose light can burn through the shadows on my darkest days. On the days where I don't have it in me to smile and dance on a stage somewhere halfway around the world, all I have to do is think about the person waiting for me in that little one-bedroom apartment back home in Tokyo, and my heart just fills with music."
The audience whooped in anticipation, having mostly discerned what was coming, but Ranko confirmed their suspicion. "This one's called You're My Song." As she spoke, Hitomi darted behind the curtain to stage left, motioning to the man in the sport coat waiting with Norio. As she did, Lance Riker stepped out from the door leading to the hollow under the stage, ducking his head under the steel beams holding up the platform. He walked about a third of the way around the stage from stage right, standing with his back to it and watching the crowd. His eyes fell on the empty chair in the front row directly in front of him, next to the woman Ranko had eyed throughout the performance of Regular Girl.
"Before I sing it, though, I wanna introduce you to somebody: a really special friend of mine, who lives right here in Medan. Firebirds, give it up for my buddy Aabid Ridjali, would ya?"
Hitomi led the man in the sport coat out to center stage, holding his hand. When the pair reached Ranko, she reached out and gave him a tight hug. She'd been excited to meet him ever since reading the letter he'd sent her back in June, to the fan mail address printed on the back of the monthly Firebird newsletter. The building at that address also housed another business: a tiny little hole in the wall of a dive bar in the Minato district of Tokyo.
The woman in the front row gasped in shock, covering her mouth with her hands as she glanced over at the empty seat her boyfriend had occupied until the start of Regular Girl.
"Turns out," Ranko continued after releasing Aabid from the hug, "You're My Song is Aabid's favorite of our songs, too. You wanna tell everybody why, buddy?" As she spoke, Hitomi handed Aabid a handheld microphone, motioning to the switch on its shaft to show him how to turn it on.
"My, umm…" Aabid swallowed hard, his nerves getting the better of him for the moment, but Hitomi rubbed his back reassuringly through his polyester jacket. Norio, meanwhile, descended the stairs off the left side of the stage, darting around the front of the stage with a video camera in his hand and dragging its long black cable behind him in the grass.
"My girlfriend's name is Tjandra Song," Aabid said haltingly, a wide smile on his face. The candles faded from the video screen, instead displaying a video feed of Aabid and Ranko as he spoke. "And she means the whole world to me. So, You're My Song is our song."
The young woman seated just in front of Lance fanned her face with her fingers, trying in vain to dry her tears.
Ranko's smile could have outshone the sun even if it had not set behind the bleachers two hours earlier. "You… maybe wanna help me sing it for her, Aabid?"
The crowd roared and whooped as Hitomi handed Ranko a second handheld microphone. The entire shaft of the device was covered in silver glitter, sparkling radiantly in the stage lights as she raised it to her lips. The singer heard a tiny click in her ear as Ariel dropped the volume on her headset microphone to zero, leaving its earpiece active for incoming communications from the team. Behind her, Crash's guitar began a gentle tune, and Jacob's synthesizer began singing in its grand piano voice. Ranko soon joined it with her own.
"Did you know… the way time stops when our eyes meet? The way that everything else fades out of my mind? Did you know… I hear your name in each heartbeat? That you're the one my soul was always meant to find?"
Hitomi swayed next to Aabid, giving him a reassuring nod and checking to ensure the red light peeking out between his index and middle fingers was lit. He raised the microphone, and Hitomi grabbed it, quickly pulling his hand another few centimeters away from his mouth before he could utter a sound to help ensure he would produce a clear sound as he sang.
"Did you know I've never felt this way before? I didn't know that it was possible at all. Did you know, no matter how much I get, I want more? The more you raise me up, the harder that I fall!"
Ranko nodded to him with a bright smile, and then did so again a beat later. On the third nod, the pair began the chorus together. Their harmony wasn't perfect, owing to just one rehearsal with the trembling fan the day before. Neither was Aabid's singing talent likely to net him any record deals anytime soon, but no one in the audience seemed to care, least of all the flabbergasted woman in the blue dress seated in the front row.
"I hope you did, but if you didn't, I wanna tell you endlessly. Don't want a second to go by that you don't know you are the very best of me. Some people say my life is music. They hear me sing, and they're not wrong. But when they see the joy I feel up on this stage…"
Ranko waved sweetly to the crying woman in the front row as the pair finished the chorus. Hope you're not the kind to get embarrassed easy, Tjandra, she thought with a soft smile.
"I'm just the singer. You're my song."
"Aabid Ridjali, everybody!" Ranko motioned to the man at her left with her open hand, inviting the crowd to adulate him as the video screen behind her transitioned back to the steadicam shot of the candles.
"Did you know I'm not the person that I was," Aabid sang alone, "and I have changed
so many things inside of me? Did you know that I'm so proud of that, because it made my arms a place that you could wanna be?"
Ranko beamed brightly, nodding in encouragement to the terrified man as she took over the second verse from him.
"Did you know that I feel safest when you're holding me? You are the shelter I can build my life beneath. Did you know that I can feel your love re-molding me? I need your presence like the very air I breathe…"
With a bit less confidence than before, Aabid's voice re-joined Ranko's for the second chorus.
"I hope you did, but if you didn't, I wanna tell you endlessly. Don't want a second to go by that you don't know you are the very best of me. Some people say my life is music. They hear me sing, and they're not wrong. But when they see the joy I feel up on this stage…"
Ranko turned toward the young woman in the front row. "I'm just the singer."
Aabid stood frozen on the stage, trembling as he clasped both of his hands around the microphone. "Y-you're my song."
The redhead flipped the switch on her microphone with her thumb, resting her left hand on Aabid's back and leaning over to him. "Go ahead," she said, giving him a nudge forward with her hand. Behind them, the image on the video screen changed from the sea of cameras to the live feed from the camera in Norio's hands, focused squarely on the woman in the blue dress.
"Tjandra," Aabid asked squeakily into the microphone over the beat of You're My Song, seeming far more nervous than he had when meeting his favorite pop star. "Would you… marry me?"
The crowd roared in jubilation as the woman on the video screen covered her mouth with her hands and nodded in the affirmative.
"Yeaaaaaah!" Ranko whooped into her reactivated microphone, hugging Aabid tight around the shoulders. Lance reached up from his position in front of the stage, gripping Emi by her hips and lowering her in his powerful arms down to the grass.
Emi's skirt flared up around her waist as she was deposited onto her feet. She smoothed it quickly before reaching down for Tjandra's hand. "C'mon, honey," Emi said, pulling the newly-engaged young brunette to her feet and leading her toward the steps at stage left.
The music continued behind Ranko, and she playfully nudged Aabid in the ribs. "Hey! Get in the game, buddy, we got another verse to do!" While she had implied that the pair would sing the third verse of You're My Song together, she stood silently glowing as her fan serenaded his wife-to-be while she was led up to the stage by Emi Kimoto.
"Did you know that everything is falling into place? That my life is finally starting to make sense? Did you know that my whole universe is just your face? I never dreamed I'd find a love half this intense. Did you know the way I crave the sweetness of your lips? The way I ache for you each second I'm alone? Did you know that there's a magic in your fingertips, and when you touch me, anywhere we are is home?"
Ranko grinned from ear to ear as Tjandra joined her and Aabid on the stage. The brunette threw herself into Aabid's arms, the thump of her chest slamming into the microphone in his hand reverberating through the arena's massive speaker system.
"I hope you did, but if you didn't," Ranko sang, watching with pride as Hitomi offered Tjandra a congratulatory hug. "I wanna tell you endlessly."
The crowd watched on the massive video screen behind the performers as Aabid handed his microphone to Hitomi, reaching into the left pocket of his coat. He pulled out a small white box, opening it to reveal a small diamond ring. Tjandra extended her quivering left hand to him, and he wiggled the ring free of its padded slot in the box and slowly slid it down her third finger.
"Don't want a second to go by that you don't know you are the very best of me," Ranko sang with bright eyes, watching the storybook moment she and her fan club had facilitated unfold before her on the stage.
"Some people think my life is music," Ranko belted as the couple's lips met in a kiss, Tjandra's arms wrapped tightly around Aabid's neck and his arms around her waist. "They see me sing, and they're not wrong."
Aabid broke the hug and Hitomi handed him back the microphone. He took it in his right hand, holding his new fiancee's hand with his left.
"But when there's magic happening up here on stage," Ranko sang proudly, walking behind Tjandra and giving her a side hug with her right arm on the opposite side of Aabid. "I'm just the singer…"
Aabid turned to his bride, all smiles as he peered down into her eyes and leveled the microphone to his lips. "You're my song."
"Aabid and Tjandra, Firebirds! Let's hear it for 'em!" Ranko grabbed the enjoined hands of the newly-engaged couple as the music ended, raising them upward as if blessing their union. A raucous cheer rained down on the pair from just over fourteen thousand of their countrymen.
With another tight hug from Ranko for each, the couple was escorted to stage left and behind the curtain by Hitomi and Emi, both dancers giggling and fawning over the bride-to-be. "Listen, you guys," Hitomi said once the quartet was out of view of the audience, "Come backstage after the show. Ranko wants to talk to you two for a few minutes and get some pictures. Talk to Norio, the guy with the camera down by your seats. He's got some passes for you. Sound good?"
The sea of candles slowly faded from the video screen behind Ranko, again transitioning to a black star field. Her signature began to scrawl across it again, the leading point of the invisible pink marker spelling out her name in romaji letters raining yellow and silver sparks of glitter down the screen toward the stage as if the word was being etched into the stars with a fairy's wand. A loud plop echoed from the speakers as the entire outline of a pink heart appeared at once at the end, under the trailing edge of the letter o at the end of Ranko.
"Holy shit, Firebirds! Can you believe that just happened?! How fucking cool was that?!" She spoke through her headset microphone, having sent her sparkly handheld backstage with Hitomi.
To Ranko's back right, Sanyo began wheeling a large, round black object forward onto the stage. A thin white mist rolled from its base as it was dragged into position over the asterisk marked on the stage floor with fluorescent orange tape.
"I mean… I suppose it's not that surprising that magic happens at my shows. After all…" Ranko raised her right hand, snapping her fingers a few centimeters from her ear. As she did, a two-meter column of green flame blasted upward through the bottomless black cauldron to her right, and the star field image behind her on the video screen shattered like glass to reveal a scene of an antique two-story building interior that could have been a bookstore or a library.
"I got that witch-craaaaaaaaaft…"
"So listen, you two, I friggin' better get an invitation to the wedding," Ranko said, squeezing Aabid and Tjandra tight in her arms as Natsuko snapped another picture. The flash from her Nikon camera reflected slightly off of the plastic backstage pass badges dangling from fuschia lanyards hung around the Firebirds' necks. "Aabid's got the address to send it to."
"Miss Tendo," Aabid said, turning to the fuku-clad singer with his face absolutely aglow with joy. "Thank you so much for doing this for us."
Ranko waved her hand at him dismissively. "Are you kidding? That's one of the most awesome things I've ever done onstage. I'm so glad you asked me." She motioned to Aabid with her thumb, turning to Tjandra. "Listen, this guy's been an absolute gem while we've been setting this up, so, treat him good, yeah? You got a keeper here." Over her shoulder, another series of camera flashes flickered in the little VIP lounge, which had been cleared for a few private moments with the band and the newly-engaged couple.
Aabid blushed deeply as he listened to Ranko's words for his bride. "I'll try, Miss Tendo," Tjandra replied in English, bouncing excitedly on her heels.
"Ranko, please. And, I got no doubt of it," Ranko said with an ear-to-ear grin. "You two are so flippin' cute together. You got this! Hey, listen, this has been so great! I wish I could hang with you guys all night, but I gotta talk to my team for a second, and then, I need to say hey to some other folks that are waiting. We're gonna put these pictures in the next newsletter, so you can frame it up when you get it, okay? It'll be a cool souvenir, I think."
Receiving nods of assent from both of her new friends, Ranko ushered the pair toward the double doors. "Follow Zoe there, with the pink hair. They're gonna take you around front and get you whatever you want from the merch stand. Call it an early wedding present."
As the pair followed the newest Dapper Dragon out into the hallway, Ranko shouted a single word in Indonesian after them, having only just then remembered it. "Selamat!"
Aabid and Tjandra waved behind them in thanks for her congratulations in their native tongue, and Ranko stepped forward to address the bouncy blonde with the camera. "Hey, Natsuko? Listen, I wanna thank you for helping this come together. I wanna do more of that kind of stuff when we can. I know there's a limit, but… Connecting like that with people, that's what this is all about for me, ya know?"
The president of the Dapper Dragons' official fan club nodded. "You got it! I'll keep an eye out for any other fan mail where we can do something special, and in the meantime, maybe we can just surprise random people with a gift package, something signed or whatever, once a month when we do the newsletters?"
Ranko beamed. "That's a great idea! Get with Nabiki when you get home, and let's start setting that up. You're flying back tonight, right?"
"In the morning. And yeah, will do," Natsuko said, a wide grin on her face. "You want me to let the rest of the meet-and-greets in?"
Ranko shook her head. "Not yet. Just give me a quick minute. I gotta try to find a phone."
Natsuko's face took on a shade of concern. "Are they beeping you, or something?"
The redhead reached into the pocket of the denim jacket slung over the back of her chair in the little dressing room, pressing the button on her pager to check the most recent notification. "No, and that's the problem. I can't seem to get a hold of anybody back home. It's been a couple days now."
With a little wave of her hand, Natsuko crinkled her nose and shook her head. "Oh, they're just busy with job interviews and stuff."
Ranko's eyes widened and she lowered the can of high-octane energy drink from her lips, a little chuckle escaping her throat. "The what now? Come on, Natsu. You're gonna have to try harder than that to trick me. I know better. They'll never leave. They're gonna bury Yui behind that fucking bar."
Natsuko gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. "My gods… they didn't tell you?"
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