Chapter 2 : Abuse Tolerance

Did I mention my brother is in Uni, well barely. Apparently since he had been creating the book he was even further behind, he was probably already very behind. 

"Look you have to do lesson two but I can't be there because I have to finish this assignment." my brother says sitting down at the table staring at his book with a dead expression. 

"However we can" says Sid and Samarchi in unison sliding into the room down the handrails. Did they spend the night here? I wonder to myself.

"Don't you have Uni work too?"

"Nah ah. We knew that you would be too useless to help your poor sister so we, as good citizens naturally would, finished all the semester work yesterday" they say casually. But isn't it only week 3, that means they did 10 odd weeks of content in a day. 

I look at them reluctantly, even my brother looks at them like he doesn't know whether he trusts them. 

"It's fine, I'll go with them" I say reluctantly, I couldn't face Connor if I failed. They start smiling. My brother hands them the book hesitantly. Sid stares at it intently like he has just been given the keys to the universe. I already feel my stomach drop, and it doesn't help that I can already see the regret in my brother's eyes as he looks at me with pity. 

…

"So what's the lesson for today?" Samarchi calls out to Sid while driving.

"Did my brother say you could take his car?" I ask, because I believe it is a fairly reasonable question.

"Who do you think we are, we don't need permission." Sid replies with a sassy voice.

"This looks like a good lesson." Sid continues not elaborating on the car. 

"What?" We ask Sid simultaneously.

"Abuse tolerance" For some reason Samarchi's face lights up.

"How do we train that?" I asked hesitantly, not really wanting to know the answer. 

"Enter a singing contest where you play the guitar, about a song about how you hate the audience and the judges." Sid says, smiling maliciously. 

…

After performing in a random contest that seems to be held every Sunday. yes, the judges hated her scoring her 0, except the fifth who seemed impressed with her performance giving her a 10 out of 10. He was a bit weird, he was wearing a turtleneck with a suit with sunny's that looked like small reading glasses. The crowd booed her and pelted stuff onto the stage throughout the concert as she followed the script attached to the book. 

"Honestly i'm impressed you finished the script" Samarchi says disappointedly. 

"No need to worry, look, we got hot springs now it says." Sid says positively. However no reply came, Sanaka looked down with her eyes fixed open.

"Do you think she's okay?" Sid says, prodding her arm.

"Of course" 

"You're right, the book wouldn't have anything wrong in it." Sid says stroking the book.

"But we will do part two of the training tomorrow after school." Samarchi says parking outside of Sabiti's house. 

…

I wake up the next day after completely wiping my memory of the events that happened yesterday. My brother is apparently still doing uni work so the idiots take me to school. For some reason they stopped off at the bakery so I am probably going to be 30 minutes late. 

However I walk in through the gates of the school, it's a fairly decently looking school I can say, it has a fair amount of greenery for a school I believe. I see Hayate is coming in at her usual time. 

"Why are you here so late?" she asks as we walk alongside each other. Hayate gives off the vibe of a good student but she really is not. Even now people would think that this is her first time late, has she ever been told off?

"Just my brother's friends. Why are you late?" she laughs slightly.

"How is your practice going?" she asks seemingly avoiding the question. I shudder slightly but I keep my composure.

"Fine I guess"

"What are you practicing? I have some videos of dances I could give you if you wanted."

"Facial expressions" I kind of reluctantly say. She raises her eyebrows and does a stupid triple blink. 

"Facial expressions? What you don't know how to smile" 

"Just look at this." I say confidently walking through the hallways. I practiced this look for quite a while now so I should have it down pat. 

As I walk through her eyes fixed ahead she sees all the gazes turn around to her transfixed on me. 

Mana, one of my short friends. runs over to us, should I stop the face in case I get swarmed?

"How did you get that black eye?"

I dropped my mouth not too much, how did I forget about my black eye from the boot that came flying onto the stage. I remember now I erased my memory, I shouldn't have been so efficient at the memory removal. 

"Didn't you see this?" I Say looking at Hayate with a slightly cross face, well that's what I believe.

"Oh, that was on the other side of your face." she says, doing a cute little smile while also trying not to laugh. I sink to my knees screaming 'why' in my head.

"How did you get it?" but I didn't actually hear that as I had already blacked out. 

…

Here we were in another class. Hayate was talking away with Connor and the stupid twins again. I started reminiscing about my hatred towards Connor. 

"Sanaka" 

"E to the power of t " finishing off the Mr Sobers sentence. He doubles guesses himself for a second.

"That is correct, I was just telling you to face the front instead of Connor."

No please tell me that he had not said that. After the class erupts in laughter as another person is caught looking at the acclaimed Connor. 

Another memory deleted from my memory.

…

"Do you know where the trials are held?" Hayate asks, as we walk out of class. 

"I'll figure that out closer to the date, it is apparently important that I get this training done." I say thinking of what horrible training I have to me, like what is part two of abuse training. 

"But the Trial is in three days and it is pretty close." 

I then proceed to calmly ask her to repeat herself. Well that was in my perspective.

Well maybe I should've been paying attention better when she was telling me. After saying goodbye as I sprint off we speed off back home. 

I ran into the house, my brother sitting there studying where I left him last. "I only have three days" I yell 

"So" he says, trying to look cool.

"I'm not prepared you idiot" I say, shaking him like a rag doll. Looks like he is about to give up trying to look cool.

"Look, I knew your trial was in three days. That's why I prepare the most essential quick working training things for your first three. All you have to do now is finish off the abuse tolerance training and then we can work on the basics with quick fixes." he says, readjusting his head after I stopped shaking him. 

"You actually planned that far ahead, and you knew that." 

"It's in the book." he says as he closes his laptop and moves away from me.

We all do a mental 'ah, its the book"

"To the mobile" Sid calls out pointing towards the door like an idiot.

…

We are sitting in the car to the next location

"Okay where are we going?" I ask timidly. 

"To Kayan hot springs" Sid asks looking at the book. The hot springs are pretty nice, hopefully this couldn't be a horrible experience, Is what I knew was a total lie but I kept with it anyway.

"Nah, we need to go somewhere beforehand" my brother says quite diabolically.

I was thinking of asking why, but I've decided it was not for the best.

However, Sid says anyway this time "Male clothing." 

We arrived at the place, it's not somewhere where we would find ourselves on normal occasions. The shop looks all sparkly and shiny with men that seemed to be dressed up as women. Well you wouldn't be able to tell if someone showed a picture of them. We walk into the shop greeted by rather a ugly lady or a man dressed up as a lady. Actually i think she's just an ugly lady, the others seem to have come to that conclusion too. 

"How may I help you"

"She needs to look like a man but still be noticeable as a girl." 

"That's quite an odd request." the lady says, looking at me. "I'll go fetch some stuff"

"Why do I need to kinda look like a guy?" I ask once again not really wanting to know the answer. 

"I'm sorry Sanaka, if you thought the other task was bad then this is a hundred times worse." My brother says, his eyes almost showing sympathy.

"The aim of this task is for you to sit in a male hotspring, the truth is that everyone will be looking at you. Wondering why she in here. And also the fact is that some of them may just be weirdo's." 

"How is this going to help me with my performance?" 

"Think about it. The gaze of all those people will be a hundred times worse than the judges gaze you won't even know they're there." My brother says he is a genius. The person arrives with different outfits. After trying all of them. Some of them were quite weird, but the lady seemed weird so that was kind of expected. 

After finishing up at the store with the outfit prepared we were on the road. The car ride was intense, the others looked as if they were about to do the same thing as I. 

I don't know what to do, why has God done this to me? It feels as if I might vomit. Is this what it takes to become an Idol? Has every Idol done this, I should have never looked down on them? These were just some of the many thoughts going through my head currently. 

"Here is some advice from the book" my brother says, snatching it from Sid who seemed to grasp onto it with all his strength.

 "The most common way to get over stage fright is by imagining people naked. Well that's easy because they will be" Did my heart fall even more? I forgot about all the naked men there. My brother sensing that the advice has made it worse. Goes to another line in the book. 

"The main thing to conquer this is confidence, someone like Messi would be able to go into a girls' change room unfazed, because he is Messi and he has Messi's ego. Which you are fairly good at already. Tayaki when we were growing up thought she was the greatest person to ever touch foot on the planet. All you have to do is be egotistical" maybe my brother has a very minor point. 

"Plus, You already did the music concert, you are already prepared enough, just keep thinking how much better you are than everyone else because none of them are as smart as you, it will be fine."My brother says as we arrive at the hot spring. 

"That was some good advice," Sid says, making a crying face. 

"What a good brother, sending his sister into being tortured." Samarchi ads.