Amagi Brilliant Park: Volume 1

by Shouji Gatou

  “This is not okay at all,” the manager of the company that ran Kajinomoto Stadium lamented at the emergency conference that was called for the stadium’s affiliates. “The fire itself was small... but the firefighters used a lot of water putting it out. We can’t blame them for that, of course, but it flooded the stadium’s electrical facilities and several nearby installations.”

  A series of slides presented heartrending shots of the damage done: a worker, trying to pump out thigh-high water; a firefighter, in front of a charred-black electric panel, yelling “Get out of here!” at the cameraman.

  “We’ll have to replace all of the panels around it,” he concluded regretfully. “The parts themselves aren’t terribly expensive, but it’s an old facility, so it’ll take over a week to get replacements in, at the earliest. We’ll also have to run a full inspection of the undamaged parts to prevent a repeat incident... and there are only so many personnel who can do that.”

  “So, you’re saying...?” a representative from Kajinomoto Stadium’s biggest investor asked, rubbing his temples.

  “I’m saying there’s no way we’ll make it in time for the opening game in two days,” the manager said flatly. “The match starts after 5:00 PM, so we’ll need lighting, but we can only generate the bare minimum of electricity right now. In the unlikely event that we could get the grounds barely lit, we couldn’t do anything else, not even warming up the franks in the concession stands.”

  “This is outrageous...” the representative objected vigorously.

  “We don’t have a choice,” the manager told him. “There’s precedent for canceling matches due to hurricanes and earthquakes; we should write up an announcement to that effect.”

  “But it’s the opening match! It’s their J1 inaugural, and they’re facing a high-ranked team from last year...” the representative trailed off. “Everyone’s going to want to see it! There must be something we can do...”

  An uncomfortable silence hung over the conference room.

  The tickets were already sold. How much would it cost to refund all the ticket holders and prevent a riot? The fire insurance certainly wouldn’t cover it.

  “We’ll have to talk to the League and see if we can adjust the schedule,” the manager finally said. “I believe there’s precedent for weekday and back-to-back weekend matches.”

  The room flew into an uproar.

  “You can’t do that! It’s too hard on the players! We can’t put that burden on them!”

  “It’s one thing to do it for a hurricane, but for a simple fire...!”

  “We had to beg for that broadcast time slot! We can’t just...!”

  The conference had descended into a free-for-all, with everyone yelling out whatever was on their minds.

  “Um, excuse me.” Eventually, the legal adviser for one of the sponsors raised his hand. He normally didn’t speak very often, and the only opinion he ever offered when asked was “It sounds good to me.”

  Nobody was going to listen to him just because he raised his hand.

  “Um, excuse me!” he said again.

  At last, the group stopped arguing and turned their eyes to him.

  “What is it?”

  “I think we have an old contract for an eventuality like this. Hold on a minute, let me see...” The adviser began fiddling with the tablet in his hand.

  The older members scowled at the gesture, while the man’s peers craned their necks out in interest, curious to see what app he was using.

  “Ah... yes, here it is,” he finally said. “An advertising deal forged in 1993 between Kajinomoto Stadium, Chofu City, Amagi City, and Maple Enterprises...”

  “Maple Enterprises?” someone asked.

  “The company that operates Amagi Brilliant Park,” the legal adviser explained. “You remember them, don’t you? They’re an old amusement park in Amagi, one city over.”

  The majority of those present, perhaps remembering it from more prosperous times, gazed up at the ceiling and nodded. “Oh, I remember. They did have an amusement park, didn’t they?”

  “And it’s still running? Huh...”

  “I mean, we still had old posters for it in our stadium, didn’t we?”

  “Now that you mention it...”

  While the group murmured among themselves, the legal adviser continued: “Here’s the relevant part of the agreement. It appears that Amagi Brilliant Park has a stadium on its grounds, and according to the contract, if anything happens to render our stadium unusable, they’re supposed to offer us use of theirs for next to nothing. All we need to do is cover the cost of utilities. In exchange, we just had to offer them a discount to advertise in our stadium...”

  It seemed that they were allowed to use the amusement park’s soccer venue for free. The League representative did some more checking and found out that, surprisingly, the stadium was usable. Stadiums for official games were held to strict standards, but the park’s had passed those standards every year.

  And so, the Kajinomoto Stadium executives offered their opinions:

  “Now, just hang on a minute— Our stadium has a seating capacity of 50,000. And since it’s the opening day game, it’ll be nearly sold out. There’s no way some random amusement park venue can hold them all!”

  “But, according to the attachment, their maximum attendance is pretty much the same...”

  “Oh, please! I’ve never heard of a stadium that large in Amagi. It’s got to be an exaggeration.”

  The executives’ doubts were natural... But, what if it was true? One man in attendance, the team’s general manager, raised his hand.

  “But if it is usable, then it’s perfect,” he said. “It’s just one city over, after all. It would keep confusion to a minimum. Why don’t we just call Maple Enterprises and see?”

  “Well... fair enough,” one of the executives concluded. “...Go on, do it.”

  A secretary nodded, looked up the number, and placed the call. For a few minutes, the only sound in the conference room was the secretary’s voice, explaining about their dire situation and the contract to the person on the other end of the phone.

  As the rest of the group watched, the secretary spoke a ‘thank you’ and then hung up. “I spoke to the park’s manager.”

  “What did they say?”

  “We’re free to use it any time. They can even accommodate the whole crowd...”

  About an hour after the call, a dozen or so Kajinomoto Stadium representatives stopped by Amagi Brilliant Park to investigate the venue. It would seem odd for the school-aged Seiya to introduce himself as acting manager, so they got a member of the cast named Wrenchy-kun to show them around instead. Wrenchy-kun, from the Mechanical Nation of Zola, was a member of the maintenance crew who typically kept the park facilities in working order. On orders from Seiya, he’d spent the past week cleaning and preparing the giant stadium for use.

  As his name would suggest, he basically looked like a giant wrench with arms and legs, but the Kajinomoto Stadium people didn’t seem to notice anything strange about him. This was, apparently, thanks to the power of the strange amulet that members of the cast wore to help them live their lives outside the park.

  Seiya and Isuzu, acting like part-timer clerks, followed after Wrenchy-kun. A group of men in suits walking around with a bizarre wrench monster in their midst—it was an utterly bizarre sight.

  Perhaps it was his craftsman’s spirit, but despite his cute-sounding name, Wrenchy-kun wasn’t the smiling type. His tone was gruff as he ran through his explanations:

  “Roughly speaking, there are four entrances,” he said. “We should be able to match the seating assignments on the tickets with just a few slight adjustments.”

  They went over the procedures for getting fans to the stadium, potential concessions and kiosk locations, the number of bathrooms, routes for bringing in equipment and materials, player facilities and lockers, the state of the pitch itself (of course), commentator and broadcast booths, electric displays, advertis
ing equipment, lighting facilities, and everything else.

  “If we hire a mobile base station, we should be able to accommodate cell phone reception, too,” Wrenchy-kun told them. “It’s at least a 30 minute walk from the two train stations, so we’ll need to charter a lot of shuttle buses. ...That’s all.”

  It was more than an hour before Wrenchy-kun wrapped up the tour of the second park’s stadium.

  “It’s not perfect. It’s not perfect, but...” the club GM, who’d come along, mused, before sinking deep into thought for a few seconds. “...Ah, excuse me,” he said, apologizing for the unintended pause. “I think it could work, don’t you?”

  “The facilities certainly seem to be adequate. But I wonder if it would be too confusing to throw them into an unfamiliar stadium unprepared...” the League official, who’d also come along, added nervously.

  They were all worried. When facing a decision that had no precedent, hesitation was inevitable.

  “Anyway, we’re going to head back for now,” one of the visitors said. “This isn’t the place to make a decision.”

  “Of course,” Wrenchy-kun grumped. “But try to let us know as soon as possible.”

  The Kajinomoto Stadium representatives thanked the park representatives profusely, then hurried away.

  “Hey, kid... I’m not gonna push you on this, but...” As their car pulled away, Wrenchy-kun produced a cigarette, seemingly from nowhere, and lit it. It was a surreal sight, to be sure, but Seiya had grown accustomed to things like this in these past ten days. “...Did you know this would happen?”

  “Like I told you in the garden,” Seiya answered evasively, “I got magic from Latifah.”

  “Hmm... What was it, precognition? Well, never mind... If I’m gonna be busy, I’d better get things ready...” Wrenchy-kun walked away, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up.

  “I thought your magic let you read minds,” Isuzu said once they were alone together.

  “That’s right,” he confirmed.

  “So you couldn’t have seen the future,” Isuzu observed.

  “Maybe not,” Seiya said, his tone blank, and then swiftly walked away towards the general affairs building.

  Less than an hour later, they received a call from Kajinomoto Stadium: “We want to use it. Let’s hold negotiations as soon as possible.”

  Muse had finished her second performance of the day and was heading down the underground passageway for a late lunch at the employee cafeteria. Suddenly, Tiramii came running towards her from the opposite direction.

  “Big news, mii! Big news, mii!” He seemed agitated about something.

  He bumped into another member of the cast, spun into the wall, fell, then ran towards her again, rubbing his bumped head and shouting “Mii! Mii!”— It was rather forward, but also charming.

  At least, that’s what she would have thought if he hadn’t spent her first year at the park sexually harassing her. As a result, her response was merely polite. “Are you all right, Tiramii-san?”

  “You’re so kind, Muse-chan,” he praised her effusively. “Would you please rub my bruise, mii? Not the one on my head, the one on my stomach. Actually, it’s a little lower than that...”

  Creep, she nearly whispered out loud, but bit back that urge and simply asked: “Well, what’s the big news?”

  “Ignored again, huh, mii? ...Well, that’s okay,” he concluded. “Anyway, it’s huge, mii! Melody Shibasaki is gonna hold their opening match at the second park stadium!”

  Muse had little interest in soccer, but even she was surprised by this. “The J-League team? Why?”

  “There was a fire last night and they can’t use Kajinomoto Stadium, mii,” Tiramii bleated. “We had some old contract with them, so they’re gonna use our stadium instead! We’re like a pinch hitter, mii!”

  “Ahh...” Muse recalled that Tiramii was a fan of Melody Shibasaki. He was probably excited to have them playing at his workplace.

  Tiramii noticed Muse’s blank expression, and chuckled smugly. “You just don’t get it, Muse-chan. To get to our stadium, they’ll have to come through AmaBri, see? And it’s the opening match. We’ll be getting tens of thousands of visitors, mii!”

  “Wait, do you mean...” Grasping what Tiramii was saying at last, Muse’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s right!” he exulted. “We might hit our attendance goal, mii!”

  The word that Kanie Seiya had used back in the rooftop garden—“miracle”—flitted through the back of Muse’s mind.

  That afternoon, there was a flurry of activity backstage: negotiating with the staff from Kajinomoto Stadium; planning the route to the second park; scheduling personnel increases to get the stadium fixed up; arranging shuttle buses to carry the fans from the station...

  They were all complicated tasks. Plus, they didn’t have much time—they had all of 48 hours to get everything done.

  Onstage, the cast were restless; while backstage, they were rushing this way and that, bellowing at each other, and trying to get everything in order to receive the crowds.

  They cooperated readily with the visiting stadium staff and worked together earnestly to solve the little problems. When a bigger problem arose, Kanie Seiya would run in, giving orders with aplomb: “Do this,” “Do that,” “We’ve got something ready for that,” and the like.

  Recently, Isuzu had been acting as Seiya’s secretary, which meant that she was around him often enough to notice something odd in his behavior: Has anyone else noticed that he’s a bit mechanical today?

  “Oh, right. What’s today’s attendance?” Seiya asked Isuzu later, just before midnight. Normally, attendance numbers would be the only thing he thought about, but now they seemed to have almost slipped his mind.

  “2,087,” she told him automatically. “Almost exactly the same as yesterday.”

  “I see,” he said, his eyes locked on the clerical work in front of him. He seemed neither relieved nor disappointed. In fact, he didn’t seem to be feeling anything at all.

  [Today’s park attendance: 2,087. (62,710 from goal) / 3 days left.]

  The next day, things were even more chaotic. The game’s change of venue had been announced on all available platforms the night before, and there was no going back now.

  The backstage area was packed, not just with negotiating staff, but also with workers bringing in materials for the day-before preparations. There wasn’t enough parking for all the vehicles needed, either, which caused congestion issues.

  Despite all that chaos, the park still had to remain in normal working order. Even cast members who would have spent most of their time onstage were deployed to the stadium as “reinforcements” whenever they had a free minute.

  After giving out balloons to guests arriving at Entrance Square, Macaron returned backstage, only to be immediately ordered, via radio, to head to the stadium’s B-wing and help out Nakamura Construction. He ran over in a hurry, and one of the workers beckoned him over and asked him to help out with a kiosk they were building.

  “Why do I have to do this stuff?” he muttered to himself, while climbing the steps with a heavy appliance. There was a queue for the service elevators, so he’d been told to use the stairs if he could.

  “...Y’know, I’m happy for the help, kid. But couldn’t you lose the costume?” the elderly worker carrying the appliance with him asked.

  Ah, that’s right. I forgot to wear my Lalapatch Charm. If he’d had it on, he would have appeared as a regular human staffer, but unfortunately he’d left the amulet in the locker room. Well, it didn’t matter now.

  “Park motto,” he answered shortly. “There’s no one in the suits, ron.”

  “Listen to you, talking like you’re hot stuff,” the worker scoffed. “This ain’t Digimaland and you ain’t Mackey, y’know?”

  “I really hate hearing that name, ron.”

  He had just finished strenuously hauling the heavy appliance to the kiosk when he saw Tiramii tottering by. The little pink mascot was
carrying a large coil of electric cable, and seemed ready to topple at any time. “Mii... mii... so heavy, mii!”

  Passing by in the other direction came Wanipii, who was pushing a cart. It was filled with cardboard boxes, which were, in turn, full of goods to sell. “Outta the way, outta the way! Get outta the way or I’ll kill you, pii!”

  It was one thing for Wanipii to be helping out—he never had much to do onstage, anyway. But to have headliners like himself and Tiramii splitting their time... would things really be okay in the park?

  Just then, Moffle himself walked past. Things had been so chaotic today that this was the first time Macaron had seen him. “Hey,” he said, by way of a greeting.

  “Moffu.” Moffle was carrying a clipboard, and seemed to be running some kind of inspection. Maybe he’d been put in charge of directing the support personnel which the park had provided? “That’s all we need from you, Macaron,” he said. “Go back onstage, fumo.”

  “I ran all the way here, carried one thing, and now you want me to go back? Give me a break, ron...” Macaron griped, but Moffle was unfazed.

  “Things are chaotic right now, fumo. Just ride it out until tomorrow,” he said, with all the ease of someone discussing the weather.

  “You seem a little subdued, ron.”

  “Do I, fumo?”

  AmaBri’s stadium would be taking over for Kajinomoto Stadium, which had been rendered unusable by a fire. If the people attending the game were being counted as park entrants, they would score tens of thousands of visitors in a single night. It was like a miracle had dropped into their laps. The entire cast was thrilled. Not even Macaron could stop his heart from fluttering in excitement.

  And yet, Moffle didn’t seem to share the sentiment. He just seemed to be walking through the work he was given, completely impassive. It didn’t make sense.

  They had known each other for a long time, of course, so Moffle seemed to guess what Macaron was thinking, and shrugged. “Well, we can talk about it another time, fumo. For now, just focus on your work,” he said simply, then left.