Busking
"Haah..."
Tae-il blew into his cupped hands. At the sharp drop in temperature, a white plume of breath billowed up and up into the sky.
Plants, animals, people—everything under heaven was changing its clothes, one careful layer at a time. Even in early autumn, the dawn bit cold, and Tae-il, who felt the chill more than most, cast a worried look at Ayane.
"Ayane, you're not cold?"
"Nope!"
Ayane rubbed the faintly reddened bridge of her nose and nodded. Autumn had come on in a hurry. It was early, and the walk to school ran down a quiet street with hardly a soul on it, which only made the air feel sharper. Inside his pocket, Tae-il gently worked his thumb over the hand Ayane had laced with his.
"Think we can hold off on hot packs a little longer...?"
"I'm fine. We might want them a bit once practice starts, though? Our hands have to stay warm, and sweat cools off so fast."
"Fair. I'll ask Asakura-sensei later if we can get a set out of the budget."
"Hehe."
"And why are you two the only ones giggling over there?"
Left out on her own, Sakuya stared at the pair with a flat, sullen look. Ayane made a show of linking arms with Tae-il.
"Heh. Because Sakuya got shy and turned him down first, remember?"
"That may be, but..."
When Sakuya glared, thoroughly unsatisfied, Tae-il offered his free hand as if it were nothing at all.
"Want to hold it? I run hot. My hands are pretty warm."
"Nnh—!"
Sakuya sucked in a useless breath, visibly swayed. If school had been even a little farther, she would have grabbed that hand without a second thought for who might be watching.
"Grrrgh..."
Her fist trembled—and in the end she let the chance go. She would wait for another time.
"Heh."
Basking in her own superiority, Ayane laughed in Sakuya's face without a shred of mercy. Sakuya's eyes narrowed to a glare.
"Don't get cocky. My turn's coming soon enough."
"Hmph."
The Cultural Festival wasn't far off. Soon they could stop walking on eggshells around the school, forever making sure the Light Music Club didn't catch any trouble—and the other students had already half-noticed the peculiar something between them anyway.
"Just you wait..."
"Bleh."
Ayane stuck her tongue out, petulant as anything. No matter how close they'd grown, rivals stayed rivals. Deep down, Sakuya envied her: the way she hid behind the title of childhood friend and touched Tae-il as boldly as she pleased, without once looking over her shoulder.
"Tae-il. Um, later..."
"Hm?"
"At practice, let me hold it. As a hand-warmer!"
"Haha. Sure."
It wasn't a difficult request, so he nodded. Part of him still wondered, Is this really okay?—but the right to turn his bandmates down had never been his to begin with.
And there was a reason for that.
A few days earlier, Rena had gotten the full story from Iris of how the recording session had been secured, and she was appalled.
"Hey, hold on. What did you just say? Maid outfits!?"
Iris, nothing short of the ringleader, tested the air, then quietly pressed her palms together and apologized.
"E-ehehe... sorry!"
"You crazy bitch!"
"Kyaa! I'm sorry, Rena-chan! I think my brain just shorted out for a second back then!"
"Then it shorted out! What else would it have done!?"
Rena swung her sticks in a fury and drummed them against Iris's back, one blow after another.
Is that supposed to be a tsundere?
Watching Iris get pummeled, Tae-il sank into a profound meditation on the definition of the word.
"Shin Tae-il liked it too, you know!"
"Shin!?"
"Hey—don't you dare dump this on me now!"
When the fire jumped to him, he panicked. Rena stopped swinging and fell into a deep, troubled thought.
"Shin..."
"Love over friendship? Rena-chan, you're terrible..."
"You be quiet."
A maid outfit was embarrassing. That much was true. But if no one else saw it—if only Tae-il did—wasn't that a gain in its own right?
Torn, Rena turned to the other two, who had been sitting there in full spectator mode, and asked what they thought of maid outfits. Unexpectedly, both Sakuya and Ayane were all for it.
"Maid outfits? I think that sounds great, actually."
"Ayane too."
"Why are you two so breezy about this...?"
Iris, who had made such an enormous fuss over the very same outfits, sighed as if she were the only strange one in the room. Sakuya answered with a laugh.
"No, think about it. When else in my life am I going to get to wear a maid outfit this openly?"
An exceedingly otaku way of looking at things.
"Honestly, back in middle school, at the Cultural Festival, everyone kept trying to shove me into a butler uniform..."
She let the old regret slip: deep down, she had wanted to wear one at least once before she died.
"Well, Sakuya's an otaku, so fine. But Ayane? Isn't this kind of thing a little shady?"
"Is it? If Shin-chan likes it, Ayane doesn't mind at all."
"Ah. I see. Of course you don't."
Iris's gaze went cold.
"Hm?"
The bright little smile was shamelessness itself.
"Kkh—!"
The shame rebounded squarely onto Tae-il. He ducked his head as if hunting for a mouse hole, utterly at a loss.
"Forget it!"
After a long stretch of agonizing, Rena pattered over at a run and plopped herself down on his lap.
"If the other kids don't see it, I'm fine with it!"
"R-Rena..."
"But if it leaks, I'll kill you."
"Yes, ma'am..."
Cold sweat beading, Tae-il swore in front of everyone that he would never let it get out. Only then did Rena break into a smile.
"Okay. But I have conditions. First—the skirt can't be too short."
"Ehh..."
"Shut it, gloomy girl. Nobody needs you bragging about those long legs."
"And no designs with a cutout over the chest."
"Ehh..."
"You too, chesty beanpole—quiet!"
Thus Rena struck down the two villains holding forth on the subject of sexy maid outfits.
"And last..."
She shot a razor look at Iris, who had the most indecent figure in the room while acting as if she didn't.
"...nothing that plays up our figures, either. Absolutely not."
"Rena-chan!? Why are you looking at me when you say that!?"
Iris protested the injustice.
"There's more!"
"More?"
"If we wear the maid outfits, Shin's the only one who gains anything..."
Her argument ran like this: they would be accepting the invisible threat of a leak, so there had to be something in it for them as well, by way of compensation.
"Um. We are a band, you know...?"
"Hey now!"
His timid mutter was instantly routed by Rena's snap.
"Oh, hey, everyone—how about this?"
"For the time being, he says yes to pretty much anything we ask!"
She praised herself on the spot for what she considered a brilliant proposal.
"If we do that, the wish tickets lose the whole point..."
The moment he muttered it, Rena turned on Ayane as if she had been waiting.
"Gloomy girl! You still have a wish ticket left?"
"Ah!"
Ayane clapped and nodded. Grasping, more or less, what Rena was scheming, Tae-il rushed to head her off and objected with everything he had.
"This is cheating!"
Of course.
"Ayane's in favor!"
"Me too. No reason to vote no."
"Iris?"
"I-in favor...?"
"Hands up!"
As ever. A minority opinion never so much as sprouted in front of the majority.
People in short sleeves grew noticeably scarce. The girls were starting to switch into long-sleeved sailor uniforms, or simply throw a cardigan over their shoulders, and unlike summer—when bare legs had been everywhere—stockings climbing past the knee were turning up all over the place. Summer might have been the season of skin, but autumn was no slouch as a season of fashion.
And midterms were right around the corner. Which was another way of saying—
"We don't even have ten days left until busking!"
The countdown to Tales Tale's glorious busking debut had begun. At Iris's declaration, it finally started to feel real that they were a band in earnest.
"Busking, huh..."
Sakuya, for whom playing guitar even at rest had become a habit, kept on with a face that still couldn't quite believe any of it. Smooth strokes, and fingering so clean there was nothing to fault. She was a different girl from the one who used to memorize the chords and still play with her head down, confidence gone, shrunk in on herself. This Sakuya trusted what she could do. Chin up, shoulders open, there was ease in the playing now, and the confidence showed. Her skill had reached the point where Tae-il only needed to glance over when she shifted frets, nodding along as he listened. All of it was the fruit of effort. With no real competitions in the fall, she could pour herself into the music without holding anything back, and that had worked entirely in her favor.
She looked over at Tae-il, who was deep in thought about the synth and the other sounds he meant to lay into the song he'd been writing.
"Tae-il, what about my performance at the busking...?"
"Hm? As long as you don't hurt yourself?"
"Boring..."
She pushed her lips out a mile, then dangled her pick and flicked the strings in a few sharp twangs. At the sheer volume of her discontent, Tae-il gave a wry smile.
"Sakuya, you look cool just standing still and playing with a little snap. The girls are going to scream their heads off."
"Ahem!"
Sakuya covered her mouth and cleared her throat.
With a little snap...
Checking herself in the full-length mirror attached to the art room, she played with her face as blank as she could make it.
Too showy?
The motion felt a little big. She tilted her head and looked to Tae-il.
"Try it up on the high frets."
"The high frets?"
"Yeah. Elbows tucked in against your waist and the body. Picking wrist resting light over the bridge... yeah. Right there. That posture."
Maybe because she was so tall to begin with, arms long and loose, she looked the part at once.
"Stay like that, and only reach toward the headstock when you actually need the fret. Ride the rhythm from there, and..."
There wasn't a guitarist alive who wouldn't look good that way. Tae-il smiled, thoroughly pleased.
"I-I'll try?"
She was as cute as a baby showing her parents how to walk. He grinned and nodded.
"Whoops..."
Nerves, maybe—the very first note came out a clunker. But she didn't freeze the way she used to. She carried the phrase on as if nothing had happened, and the Telecaster's signature twang folded even the mistake into the performance. Very Sakuya. No rush, no strain; she simply climbed up onto the rhythm and stayed there.
A pro out there doing it for a living would still have found it nowhere near enough. Tae-il was not that kind of judge.
Sakuya's barely been learning guitar a little over two months.
And not even bass—guitar. Not a rhythm guitar shuttling chords in the back, but a lead, playing melody. She was still stiff from learning it off the page and playing by memory, but reaching this level in all of two months was more than enough to earn the word genius. Tae-il smiled, warm with it.
Iris and Rena, who had been off to the side talking busking, drifted over before long and settled in to watch.
"Guess we don't have to worry about Sakuya anymore?"
"Yeah."
"Nothing to worry about on my end, either."
"Obviously. Who do you think Rena-chan is? And Ayane's been getting better and better lately, too. Hehe. I'm looking forward to it."
"Yeah. So am I."
With that weight off her shoulders, Iris didn't look worried about the busking in the slightest.
Unlike Tae-il.
Will this be all right...?
The others didn't worry him. The reason he had marked Sakuya so closely all this time was a dream—a bad feeling he couldn't shake. A vague, mirage-like thing, a phantom that vanished the moment he reached for it. But in that dream Sakuya had been sunk in regret, and he hated the thought of seeing her cry because of it.
If she has to cry, then I'd rather...
Not from sadness, not from grief. He wanted her to cry because she was so happy she didn't know what to do with herself. That was all he hoped for. And thankfully Sakuya was on track now, so he could set that particular worry down.
What had him by the ankle now wasn't Sakuya at all. It was Iris.
Iris's stage trauma. Will she be all right...?
Feeling his eyes on her, Iris looked back with a smiling squint.
"What? Got something to say?"
"No..."
Tae-il had no idea how a person was supposed to beat a trauma. Search the internet and it was mostly nonsense; the advice that actually helped was either impossible to put into practice, or it started with go see a psychiatrist.
And the truth is, Iris doesn't even realize it's trauma...
Telling someone to overcome a wound they hadn't even recognized was a hopeless kind of demand. In the end, the only thing he could do was believe in her. As if to still a tremor, he took Iris's hand and held it tight.
"Shin Tae-il...?"
He could feel the unease. Iris lifted her head, puzzled, and their eyes met. Both of his hands folded over her right.
"Let's give it everything. Busking. The Cultural Festival. Everything still ahead of us. All of it."
"Why are you being all embarrassing out of nowhere?"
Iris smiled, shy, and scratched at her cheek. She didn't pull her hand away. As if she had read the worry straight off him, she covered her mouth and whispered.
Sweet. For a moment Tae-il mistook the whisper itself for something hanging in the air, soft as the warmth of her perfume.
"You two in the audience! Eyes on me!"
Sakuya barked at them without stopping the song. Rena, who had been lost in the rhythm and savoring every bit of it, glared at the pair with the full sulk of the betrayed.
"Hey. Iris, that right there is cheating."
"Wha—?! I'm innocent! Shin Tae-il started it!"
"Shin! Punishment! Lap. Now."
"Urk."
"S-so unfair, keeping it all to yourselves...! If Ayane's not here, I'm getting in too!"
Rena claimed his lap all over again. Sakuya came hopping over in a fluster, careful not to catch the strings, took the spot Rena had left, and leaned slantwise into his shoulder with a pointed little question.
"Tae-il, you didn't forget our promise from this morning, did you?"
"Ah..."
Sakuya stole one of his hands.
"Ah."
The warmth covering the back of her hand disappeared, and Iris, oddly disappointed, leaned into his shoulder instead.
"I'm starting to feel a sense of crisis myself."
Tae-il was quite sure the crisis she had sensed had nothing to do with busking. Sakuya snickered.
"Don't worry. When we record, we'll serve you properly, just like good maids. Right?"
"Serve? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Ehh. Isn't that a little too perverted...?"
"Watching you react only makes it scarier..."
The three of them stayed tangled all over Tae-il until Ayane got back from her public-morals rounds.
"Aaah! What are you doing without Ayane?! We're supposed to be practicing!"
"Good. The spoilsport's here. Shall we actually get to practice?"
"You little shrimp, that is so unfair—don't tell me you waited for exactly this...!"
"Tae-il, living hand-warmer."
"Huh? Uh, yeah."
"Ayane was out walking around, so I'm cold...!"
And then—
Passing in the hall to see whether the kids were actually practicing, Asakura stole a glance into the art room and murmured, to no one at all:
"...Am I getting old? My side's been awfully cold these days."
Autumn. Cultural Festival or not, busking or not—the season had come when even a workaholic could feel the chill along her side.