Reyson and Clair doing some projects on the side.

---

Personal Project

---

Reyson had decided not to go to the arcade today, but was still getting his rhythm game fix by playing games on his computer. Clair, already dressed to go out, made a pit stop to Ray's room to let him know he was leaving, when he spotted him tapping furiously to the notes on the screen. As the song he was currently playing ended, Reyson took off his headphones, turning towards Clair.

"Hey, you leaving?" He asked.

"Yeah, another night on the town."

"Sounds good. stay safe-have fun." The wolf said as he turned back to song select. Instead of leaving, Clair stayed, watching him for a few moments before asking out of curiosity:

"You know, you play a lot of these rhythm games... Have you ever thought about making your own?"

Reyson's ears flickered, registering his question. He continued shuffling through song select as though he didn't care.

Suddenly, as though a spark had set off in his eyes, the wolf instantly closed the game he was playing, and opened a blank document. He started furiously typing a long list of bullet points, lost in a level of focus even Clair had never seen before. As cats do, the Curious Clair peeked over Ray's shoulder to see what he was jotting down. The main headers read "Mechanics", "Judgement windows", "UI", "UX", "Layout". They were blueprints and ideas for a rhythm game. Clair was astonished at the level of detail that Ray was already putting into these ideas, as he was fairly sure that the wolf had probably never really thought about any of this until he had just mentioned it-some of the ideas listed were already quite nuanced and complex, and text was filling the document with a degree of verbosity that Clair hadn't even seen when Reyson was still talkative.

Eventually, the relentless assault of keys on the keyboard crawled to a stop as Reyson typed in the header labeled "Music". He scratched his headfur and put his hands on his chin, visibly at a loss for what to do for music. Suddenly, another lightbulb went off, and Clair suddenly found both of his arms being grabbed by Reyson...Wait, when did he even stand up?

"You can compose music." Ray said to Clair. Not a question. Clair tried to stammer out a response.

"I-uh, yeah, of course I can, but what-" Realization dawned on the cat. "-...oh no."

"Help me." Reyson asked... or demanded... It was hard to tell which at this point.

"I-right now??"

"Can be later...Right now is better."

"B-but i'm already about to-"

"Please." Reyson's ensnaring grip was still pinning Clair in place, and he had no hope of escape. As the ensnared feline looked into his friend's determined gaze, he gave up and sighed.

"Okay, okay. I'll call some of my college buddies too. I'm sure some of them wouldn't mind contributing some songs you can use."

"We." Reyson interjected.

"We?"

"Your Idea. Your music... mostly. Our game." Reyson continued staring straight into Clair's eyes. Oddly enough, even though he knew that Ray would be doing most of the heavy-lifting by programming basically all of the game, the thought that he was immediately acknowledging the project as theirs and not his own made him much more receptive to the idea. With a defeated laugh he pushed Reyson's arms away.

"Alright, where should we get started?"

...When they finally completed the project, titled "Resounding Pulse", over a year later, they were able to release it as a game on Beam, the go to PC gaming platform, and managed to sell a surprisingly large number of copies: In the tens of thousands, despite it being essentially an indie game. It did so well, in fact, they even added a few song pack DLC updates for it later on that also did pretty well in sales. Clair and Ray both saved most of their earnings, though they each indulged a bit in the profits they earned, Ray spending some more time at the arcade, and Clair on snacks, as well as some more CDs to add to his growing collection.

---

Career Change

---

Clair trudged into his apartment, exhausted. It was another day where the management at the club had asked him to perform. He never refused, since the pay they offered was quite good, but playing music for such a large venue was certainly taxing. He had definitely gotten better at it as he continually accepted the offers to play music for his favorite club: he could now play a full set of 4-5 songs before needing to stop for the night, which substantially increased his pay as well.

As he closed the entrance door, he noticed that the light to Ray's room was still on. Curious, he peeked in to see that Ray was watching some videos.

"Ray, isn't it late for you? You should be heading to bed, what are you watching anyway?" Reyson saw Clair come in and gestured for him to take a look.

It was Clair's most recent club performance. It had already been posted online and had already garnered quite a few thousand views despite being posted just a few hours ago.

"Dang... these videos are being uploaded faster and faster. The internet sure is something..." The cat mused. Reyson then paused the clip and pulled up another video, putting them side by side. The second video was of a male idol group that was quite famous. Reyson played the clips together, before pointing to the idols, then to the clip of Clair, and then to Clair himself.

"Wh-You think I could be an idol!?" Reyson nodded. Clair stepped back in disbelief

"No way! I couldn't do something like that!" Reyson stared at him, then pulled up another video. This one was of a well known Beastloid (a synthesized vocal pack, usually with a beastman avatar that would sing and dance along) named Valtt*. He then repeated the finger pointing gesture that he did earlier.

"No! Not that either!"

Reyson cocked his head at his friend.

"What do you mean why not!? I, I couldn't... I...

...

...

...you know...?"

**Clair's character archetype is loosely based on the well known UTAUloid, Waltt.

---

It took a lot of training and calls, but Clair was able to eventually use his connections with his friends to secure a contract with a smaller male idol group, and started doing regular performances under the stage name Clear Rays. He quickly became quite popular among the masses and got a lot of attention. Every once in a while, Reyson would attend his concerts to cheer him on as well.

After a few performances, however, Clair canceled his contract, much to the dismay of the fans he had quickly garnered, as he wasn't ready to become such a big celebrity so quickly. Despite his extroverted nature, there was definitely a limit, which Reyson noted when Clair came back from a live show one night and immediately collapsed onto the couch.

With Ray's help though, he created a Beastloid model of himself which he used when producing new music and released animatics as music videos for new songs that he would release, which ended up being much more comfortable for him as he did not have to be in front of a live crowd regularly. Clair still did performances at his local club, since the music was more of the center of attention, and the attention that Clair did receive was more of the kind of physical attention that he enjoyed.

...Despite all this, he still works at the fast food restaurant near Game Engine, where he was actually promoted to a supervisor position just a few weeks before his birthday, only to be demoted back to a regular staff member when he became busy with idol work, and helping with Reyson's game (not that Clair complained, he wasn't particularly keen on making it big in food service.)