stories

[espansivo]

「Anyone can write a book, the book known as "life"!
Let me read it, and if it's boring I'll toss it aside, like an arrogant critic!」

Substories
○ Substory 1 (Summer) - anzu finds leo on request of tsukasa.
○ Substory 2 (Summer) - leo returns to yumenosaki properly and reunites with knights... meeting tsukasa in the process, unfortunately.
○ The Paradise Within The Box (Summer) - tsukasa meets leo at night while the king is performing by himself, some sort of odd street performance with no audience. leo invites him to sing with him, but by the end tsukasa's so frustrated he declares that he really will overthrow such a "troublesome" person; leo invites him to try.
○ Musical Composition (Fall) - while composing some Sweet Tunes, he ignores tsukasa's words about them not going to a live that day and ends up arriving in full uniform anyway. anzu informs him about the situation and he complains about the mundanity of it, but sings anyway: a "solitary ensemble". he calls his voice dissonant and tells anzu she can run off, but she explains that as a producer she'll listen to the end; leo likes the unexpected answer and sings more.
○ On Paper With A Pen (not translated)

Second Year
○ Reminiscence * Monochrome Checkmate - leo breaks his arm protecting a cat and befriends eichi tenshouin in the hospital in his second, beginning a tragedy. when he's able to return to school he finds he's been chosen to be the new leader of his swollen unit (renamed to its original "chess", the unit leo originally joined and loved), and that begins to be a lot of infighting due to the way the dreamfes system begins to work.

both eichi and sena share the opinion that others are just using leo for their own convenience, even if leo doesn't recognize or accept it since he's such a kind, naive person in that way, but they're right; as chess becomes strong, more and more people begin to resent them, resent leo. chess becomes knights officially on paper, and so begins the final "judgment" eichi sets up as the student council president.

leo ends up talking to the other unit before it began to work something out, tired of fighting and of these stifling lives that seemed to leave him in a slump, and realizes those two had been right all along; he has something of an epiphanic meltdown on stage and swears himself to sena alone, who'd treasured him and worked so hard and treated him so kindly, the only person he could trust.

in the end, it broke him, and he became a shut in.

○ Lionheart - a novel that takes place during his second year, before the big live at the end of checkmate. it explores izumi's thoughts on leo and the small cues of leo's stress as it layered on him again and again. later on he visits leo while he's a shut in to get a signature for the DDD and sees what the brilliant king of knights had become.

Third Year
Spring
○ The Return of Mr. Festival (Madara Mikejima Substory) - after trying his best to return to yumenosaki, freezing, and ending up running away from home after being pushed by his father's tough love, leo finds himself lost with no money, no phone battery, no way back. he thinks about just dying out there, how it might be better just to be gone and forgotten, no longer a burden on anyway, when madara appears and he claims himself saved. they're old friends. leo's able to get in contact with his family and assures his little sister ruka that he's eating and fine.

madara quizzes him on his disappearance from school and is brushed off for the most part, and then decides that leo's coming with him to egypt since he'd only returned to japan to report somethings. it's essentially a kidnapping. but it's definitely something leo needs.

Summer
○ Concerto - leo's back in japan and goes to an unusual concert madara invited him to in order to start paying him back for the kindness and love he showed him while they were abroad together. he bumps into keito and ends up running away, but later on stands on stage and performs a requiem he'd created on the fly -- one dedicated to himself, the way mozart did.
○ Sportfes 3 - summary

Fall
○ Rebellion! The King's Horseback Ride - shortly after his return, he decides to throwdown with his old unit by creating a temporary one consisting of himself and three powerhouses -- the leaders of ra*bits and "fine" respectively, nazuna and eichi, as well as akatsuki's second in command kuro. he claims that if this new, "changed" knights couldn't defeat them, then he'd disband them immediately; as the "king", he has every right to do so. the reason why is because he was terrified at how things had changed, because if they were weak then they shouldn't drag along and if they were strong enough to survive he could leave it in their hands fully and without protest. sort of like ending one life and beginning another, without guilt. tsukasa, the youngest of the knights and the one who'd sent anzu out to look for him in the first place, has had qualms about leo since the day they met and accepts this proposal.

... his seniors are concerned because it's leo they're going against, genius composer he is, but assure tsukasa not to worry. especially once tsukasa begins to regret his heated words against leo that'd ended up sparking the conflict in the first place. knights is the unit he chose, of course he'd want to keep it; leo meets him king to king on stage during this "judgement" and they battle. leo loses and says, as promised, whatever tsukasa wants of him -- whether it's to leave or anything else -- he would do without question, and to his surprise tsukasa demands he stays in knights, as the king, in order to atone for the time he wasted before, to take responsibility and not run away.
○ Robin Hood - a few days after their "judgement" leo turns up at the archery hall, claiming it's a place he can concentrate when there's something on his mind. he also finally remembers tsukasa's name. good for him. he's apparently actually very good with a bow, and laughs at tsukasa's inability to shoot anything because, essentially, he's trying too hard and needs to loosen up. tsukasa complains that if he were doing his specialty -- mounted archery -- then he'd hit the mark, and after accepting leo's offer to be his horse he does manage it.

anzu comes by a little bit after with a box full of kittens, evidently the children of little john, an old friend of leo's. anzu's taking care of them since leo doesn't really know how to and it's revealed that the reason leo was composing was for these kittens. he says they've got different tastes and hearing than humans, so it's been a challenge, but he's got it now!

in exchange for taking care of the kittens, he's teaching anzu the basics of composition, so she can take care of things as a producer; tsukasa expresses an interest as well, in order to better understand leo, but the king of knights denies him it because he needs to focus on what's in front of him, and if there's anything ahead that tsukasa can't do on his own he can turn to knights. they'll eliminate whatever it is.

tsukasa thinks it's weird he's saying such leaderly things and leo takes minor offense, but understands that it was different than his usual attitude so the other became uneasy. when asked why she brought them to the archery hall, anzu explains it's for safe keeping; animals aren't allowed on campus, so they'd be taken away if found out by those investigating the increase in stray dogs. the reason the archery hall allows it is because it's considered "extraterritorial", or a paradise without law.

it's at this point keito comes in and greets little john warmly, surprising tsukasa; leo teases keito about looking like a straightlaced guy when he just wants an area to hang too, and questions about DEADMANZ, an old unit he was in with rei. keito asks him to forget that name in exchange for othello, and tsukasa asks after it.

leo brushes through a bit of knights' history: generally unknown to the outside, knights actually went through a bunch of name changes through its surprisingly long history (from chess to a number of other board games like backgammon and othello, then back to chess when leo took over) and ended up having something of an internal conflict over the course of the year, the details of which are given in checkmate, until only "knights" remained. he wouldn't have minded if the name hadn't been inherited in the end, since it carried such a bloodied history, because a rose by any other name smells just as sweet essentially, but he calls tsukasa out by full name for thinking them important.

he thinks he'd be happier than expected if they continue to use it despite that past, though. if they shouldered it and became beautiful, shining knights. he realizes that's why he's kept on for so long after the fact and claims he can die happily, settling the mood into something melancholic as he plays with the cats. he ends up apologizing to tsukasa and saying he'll act as leader proper, composing songs for them, and that he'll try to sing and dance as well.

leo ends up explaining the whole extraterritorial thing too, how there'd been terrible people in the archery club so keito abused his power in the student council to make it a lawless place so they could get rid of those people, calling themselves "robin hood" to hide their identities since, as students and idols, they could get in real trouble with the violent methods they sometimes had to use.

tsukasa and leo end up using the cats as a way to talk to each other after naming them after the members of knights. tsukasa asks "leo-san" not to disappear, as there'd be many people who'd miss him, and leo says he knows that. he considers leo-kun the kitten to be clever and understanding, while tsukasa expresses that the kitten's simply lazy and without a care in the world; leo teases the tsukasa cat, called well-mannered and lovely by his namesake, that he needs to be a little more childish and learn to have fun. leo promises to work hard and reclaim -- to expand the territory they'd had before as idols before he relinquishes his crown, calling tsukasa a spoiled child when the other tells him he'll work him as hard as a workhorse to that end.
○ Festival * Graceful Fleur de Lis
○ Raising Curtains! Dark Knight Halloween - ritsu sleeps on him and he talks a bit about retiring from being an idol, but it's far from being a reality as long as he's in school
Teddy Bear (Being Translated)

Winter
○ Dance on Ice
○ Brilliance★Knights' Star Festival - tsukasa and leo spot arashi standing quietly in front of a cenotaph, which is essentially a grave dedicated to many people. they're often monuments built after wars, and that's no exception here; leo explains that despite the general peace that encompasses yumenosaki academy now, there were students who committed suicide after their dreams were torn apart. knights talks about the "starlight festival", (star festival for short) and plan briefly for it, then leo decides they need a christmas party!!!

and under the guise of getting goodies, drags arashi out to confront him, saying he can't trust someone he doesn't really know with his back. knights is a family now. it's because of arashi that it's like that, that it has the sort of atmosphere that leo actually enjoys, the reason he returned. so he wants to hear whatever it is that's on arashi's mind, no matter what it could be, and with that determination manages to get the truth of arashi's visit and troubles out of him.

starfes begins. knights soar through the preliminaries wonderfully with a ten win streak and settle for a rest, but they don't get much of a break before mika kagehira of the unit "valkyrie" ends up spilling a lot of his personal worries to arashi, who's friends with him; arashi apologies because he'd like to help mika with his troubles and after that the rest of knights decide to help as well, izumi and leo going to fetch shu itsuki (the leader of valkyrie) while the remaining three buy time

... somehow the gremlin that is leo tsukinaga manages to carry shu through the snow and to the dreamfes where everyone's waiting. what a beefy little bean.

mika and nazuna have a short fight about valkyrie, nazuna's hurtful leaving of them and what this all means now with nazuna wearing valkyrie's uniform again, and after that's resolved leo and izumi reunite shu with the rest of his unit. the preliminaries go well and knights fall into the second half of starfes, singing with all their heart.
○ Clash of Arms! Opera of Moonlight Romance - leo volunteers himself a tsujigiri after overhearing anzu and eichi's talks of an opera, already composing the music and script to go with everything; he's been in the music industry, so he knows what's needed to make a proper opera show, a lyric drama. he talks a bit about retiring from idol life still, but doesn't think it's a bad idea to show off for juniors, to stick around and teach anzu how to write songs, especially as he's going to graduate soon enough. he trusts the younger guys to take care of his knights as they have since he ran away
○ Snowball Fight (Not Translated)
○ Sweet & Bitter
○ Fortune Banquet

Spring of Next Year
○ Beauties of Nature - knights get called for a gravure shoot at a kachouen: a theme park that allows guests to interact with flowers and birds. a parrot escapes its cage and leo, who is apparently "specializes" in imitating bird calls, manages to return it safely.