Promptober 2026 Day 9: Sparkle
In retrospect, I’m not surprised that I noticed her. She stood out. Or, I guess I should say that she stood out to me. I don’t know if anyone else notices that kind of thing. But–
Sorry. Let me back up.
The second day of Golden Week was a show night.
The house was packed. The weekend before a long holiday was always like this, but tonight, it was for an especially good reason:
Roselia.
God only knows why they were playing RiNG, instead of any number of bigger venues they could easily sell out. You can’t throw a rock at Hanasakigawa without hitting a Roselia superfan - their guitarist is an alum - so I was at least a little aware that they had played a lot of their earliest shows at a place like RiNG. Maybe it was nostalgic for them.
And we were opening.
After almost a year of MyGO, after everything we had been through together, things like this didn’t really throw us off anymore. But it was by far the biggest crowd we had ever played for. We were all a little jittery going in. For the first time in almost six months, Anon spent twenty minutes in the bathroom backstage sounding like a hairball-prone cat. As she emerged, I handed her the cup of cola that I had just finished stirring an Ohta’s into.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Thank Tomori. She had the medicine,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Yeah.”
“Pay attention to me, pay attention to the Stray, and you won’t get lost,” I assured her.
And it WAS fine, of course. By the third bar of Hekitenbansou (Tomori’s favorite way to open a show), we were locked in, right where we belonged.
Then I noticed her.
Between songs, Tomori talks to the crowd. The house lights come up and she looks out over the room, and she says something about the song we played, or the song we’re about to play… and it always comes out like poetry.
Her voice is… magic. It feels like she's casting a spell on the entire assembly.
In those moments, everyone can feel her gravity.
That's how I noticed the girl in the white dress.
Because she wasn't looking at Tomori, she was looking at me.
Like I said - In my defense, she was hard to miss. She was tall, with a pixie shock of bleach-blonde hair, and a white sequined dress that sparkled and glittered in the kaleidoscope of light. She looked… familiar, somehow, like I had seen her before that night.
Our eyes met. Immediately, her face broke open into a smile, and I moved on, still scanning the crowd. It was just a moment. Just an instant. Nothing anything could hang their hat on. Nothing anyone else would even have noticed.
But I noticed it. And so had she.
And then, we were done. Roselia blew the roof off the place as we watched from backstage - because how often do you get to do that? Then we filed out into the night.
I want to be clear - I wasn’t looking for that girl. It really was just one small moment in time. My mind was already onto the next thing, and the thing after that. The train timetable, seeing Tomori off. Seeing my parents at home.
“Shiina-san.”
Leaning up against the wall around the corner from the back door, cigarette dangling from her fingers. I could see her clearly now - she was even taller than I had thought. She might have been my sister’s age, or maybe a little older. Even in the relative dark of the sidewalk, she seemed to glow.
“Good show tonight,” she said with a smile. Her Japanese was fine, but strongly accented with something I couldn’t place.
“Oh, um… thank you,” I said. A couple of steps behind me, Tomori had stopped to stare.
For a moment, nobody said anything. She seemed to take us both in. Then, she pushed herself away from the wall. The cigarette butt slipped from her fingers, and she stamped it one with one booted foot.
“Good night,” she said. “‘til next time.”
Then she left.
Bewildered, we stared after her.
“Taki-chan… did you… know her?”
“No,” I said. “She was in the crowd, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before tonight.”
“She knew your name– maybe she goes to your school…?”
“Didn’t she look too old to be in high school?”
“...maybe so.”
I traded a mystified look with Tomori, then we resumed our walk to the train - but I couldn’t shake the feeling: The girl looked familiar.