Busking (4)
"Uh..."
Iris was thrown.
The moment class let out she had come pelting all the way to the art room, pouring sweat, her heart light at the thought of playing with the others—only to walk into an atmosphere that ran completely against her mood.
For one thing, Tae-il was bright, as if someone had swapped him for a different person.
"Haha."
He was like the sun.
Rena, by contrast, wore a face as dark as if a storm cloud had settled over it.
"..."
Iris let it pass. Rena's expression sinking as exams drew near was hardly anything new.
Rena-chan I can write off, but...
The problem was Tae-il.
Iris shifted her gaze to him.
"Heheh."
Whatever had him so pleased, he was grinning in a way that set her teeth on edge, his face gone slack and foolish. She hadn't caught it at lunch—of all times, he'd been off with the animal-keeping club. His condition was past explaining. In the end, unable to swallow her curiosity, Iris caught Ayane as she was passing and asked.
"Ayane, did something happen to Shin Tae-il?"
"Mm. Ayane doesn't really know either..."
Ayane shook her head. If anything, the most curious of them might not have been Iris at all, but Ayane herself.
"Shin-chan's been like that since yesterday."
"Since yesterday?"
Iris turned her eyes back to Tae-il.
"Hehe."
He was grinning vacantly, like someone who had lost his mind.
Iris's expression hardened.
"Should we make him rest in the nurse's office...?"
Sakuya, finished tuning her guitar, threw an arm around the pair and wedged herself between them without warning.
"I don't think Tae-il's in bad shape. He got through his usual workout this morning just fine, in that exact state."
"While grinning like that?"
"Yeah. It was a little weird. I tried to stop him, and he just kept running at an overpace until he flat-out collapsed."
Sakuya added that he had gone down from exhaustion and still hadn't lost the smile, which had been a little frightening.
"He kept grinning like that in class, too. I think the teachers called him out a few times."
Of course, not even a teacher's reprimand had cracked that smile. Later on, the teachers themselves seemed unnerved by him grinning away, and took to treating him as if he simply weren't there, smile or no smile.
Iris's face grew grave.
"Has Shin Tae-il broken...?"
With the busking right around the corner, a broken leader was a full-blown emergency for Tales Tale.
"Didn't he go to Yoyogi Park yesterday to scout the spot where we're busking?"
At Iris's look—something must have happened out there—Ayane's brow creased.
"Mmm..."
Another girl?
Once upon a time, maybe not. These days, Tae-il was more than capable of it. When it came to his faithlessness, Ayane had lost her trust in him a long time ago.
Shin-chan, really...? Again?
Ayane glared at him, suspicion written all over her face. But her signature crisis-detection sensor didn't so much as twitch, and she couldn't bring herself to doubt him on nothing.
"I don't know..."
"Hmm. Something's going on, but what on earth is it...?"
Taking the members' dubious stares all at once, Tae-il beamed and called out.
"All right! Looks like everyone's ready. Let's practice!"
"Suspicious..."
With nothing she could put her finger on, Iris kept sending him that odd look even as she dutifully set up for ensemble practice.
"Rena-chan, you okay?"
"No problem."
Rena shut the textbook she'd been poring over in a bid to dodge makeup classes and straightened her posture.
"Rena, mind counting us in?"
"Yeah."
Rena clicked her sticks together.
The ensemble started at once.
Unlike Iris, who sang easy for the sake of her voice, the others were dead serious. Keep at a thing long enough and it gives. Even a band that had been hopelessly sloppy on Autumn Love Song alone was slowly starting to take on a proper shape.
Good.
Tae-il didn't need to make any major adjustments from the middle. As if they had been one from the start, the members locked together as naturally as gears. There was room to breathe in the playing.
It wasn't Tae-il. Centered on Rena the drummer, the performance moved forward solid and unshaken. Everyone seemed to know exactly how their own sound was coming across. All his hammering on the fundamentals had paid off.
They're incredible.
Iris, who had worried the others might grow anxious as the busking drew near, could only marvel. Tae-il's eye had been right.
Rena she could set aside. She had watched her working, right there beside her, the whole time. Honestly, even to Iris, Rena's practice load looked harsh enough to be cruel. And on top of that she was drawing whenever she had a spare moment...
If it were me, even two bodies wouldn't have been enough.
Iris was frightened by how hard Rena was working for them, and deeply grateful.
But she hadn't expected Ayane and Sakuya to keep up as well.
Their heads are up.
Back in the early days of ensemble practice, both of them had gone round-shouldered, with no faith in their own playing. Every time they played, their bodies locked stiff with nerves, and their heads simply would not lift. Now it was different. Ayane and Sakuya, once too busy checking their own parts, had room to look around.
I have to give something back...
The reason they were working so hard was, in all likelihood, Tae-il. But there had to be some feeling meant for Iris in it too. There had to be.
They all know what I'm dealing with.
She was happy. And proud of them. She didn't know if she even had the right to feel this way, but the members were unbearably dear to her.
And so, the closer the ensemble came to completion, the deeper Iris's worries grew along with it.
Break time.
Sakuya, who burned through calories fast, asked before heading to the school store to quiet her empty stomach.
"I'm going to the store. You guys want anything?"
"Cola?"
"Then I'll have black tea."
"Cola and black tea. Okay. But Tae-il, drinking cola too often isn't good for you, you know?"
"Make it a zero cola..."
"Mmm. I wonder if that even makes a difference.... All right, got it."
At Sakuya's scolding, which called a nanny to mind, Tae-il ducked his head.
"Ah, Sakuya! I'll go with you!"
"You too, Iris?"
"Yeah! Today's on me!"
"Ooh."
Thanks to that, Sakuya—whose wallet had long since seized up—shot her a thumbs-up.
"While we're at it, should we grab some snacks?"
"It's autumn. There might still be some steamed buns left."
"Steamed buns sound great!"
The moment the two headed off for the store, Ayane, who had been checking her phone, scrambled up as well.
"Shin-chan! Ayane's going to go see Sakurako-senpai real quick!"
"Hiiragi-senpai?"
"Yeah! I'll be right back, so if the others show up, tell them!"
"Got it."
In the blink of an eye, everyone was gone.
"Suddenly it's just the two of us."
"Yeah."
With the three of them out, only Tae-il and Rena were left in the art room. Tae-il figured this was his chance and asked.
"Rena, you got a minute?"
"Well, as you can see, time I've got plenty of. Why?"
"So, um..."
Having called her over, he hesitated.
It'll be fine, right?
He got practice videos from Rena every day. He understood better than anyone that she was working far harder than he had ever expected. Laying a burden on her beyond the music was a choice that gave even Tae-il real pause. But knowing what he did of the others' sense of aesthetics, there was no one he could ask but Rena.
There really was no other way.
After fretting, he finally opened his mouth.
"I was hoping to get your help on the design side."
"Design?"
"Yeah. A band logo, matching outfits, that kind of thing."
It was something he could only ask of Rena, who came from the art world.
"Ah. I get the gist. The urgent one is the logo, right?"
Tae-il nodded.
"Matching outfits—honestly, since we're a school band, just wearing our uniforms already gives us a rough sense of unity."
A school uniform was a student's formal dress, and a privilege. Most occasions, celebratory or otherwise, could be handled with a uniform alone.
"Outfits, and whatever merch we make later—once the logo exists, the direction pretty much falls into place."
"Aren't you thinking way too far ahead?"
"Haha. Getting ahead of myself?"
"Well, I'll think about it anyway. Got a design in mind?"
Tae-il moved his hands clumsily, sketching something in the air and calling it a drawing.
"Since it's Tales Tale, a T, a little like a tail...?"
"That's a pretty half-baked idea."
"Urk..."
Rena let out a short laugh.
"Fine. I'll take a crack at it. Happy?"
"Rena, you're a god!"
"Yeah. Worship me properly."
Putting a genius painter to work for free never came cheap.
"I love you, O Great Painter!"
"Pfft—hahaha!"
Tae-il making such a fuss over a single logo was so ridiculous that Rena burst out laughing.
"I should still bring you some references, right?"
"Well, yeah."
To meet a client's demands, the more reference material, the better.
"Got a style you want?"
"Hmm..."
What came to Tae-il at once was, of course, Burning Blaze's intense logo. True to a band written into a story, it was decked out in flames like some guild crest, ridiculously ornate.
No way it'd come out like that...?
Back in the day there had been plenty of visual-kei and metal-leaning rock acts, so exaggerated designs had sold well enough.
"For now, I like simple stuff. Like Nirvana."
"Nirvana?"
"Yeah, so roughly like this..."
He searched it up and showed her on the spot. Beneath the plain Nirvana lettering, a lopsided smiley face, drawn looking somehow cheap and wretched.
"It is cute."
Rena snorted a laugh. Seeing the reaction, Tae-il brightened.
"Right? It's not too much even printed on clothes, so I heard it sold a ton—kids, old folks, everybody."
"Meaning we have to factor in the merch selling, too?"
"Mmm. I guess it comes to that."
Designing however your heart led was easy. Designing so that it sold was hard. It had to be distinctive enough to carry a real style, a real atmosphere—or else simple, while still stirring the urge to buy.
Above all.
"If you're selling it as merch, showing a sense of belonging matters, so..."
"Personality does count for a lot."
"I'll think it over. It's not urgent."
"Okay."
Looking over the logo examples Tae-il had shown her, Rena smiled faintly.
Drawing.... This side really is more comfortable.
Tae-il was fidgeting, worried that even this might be a burden, but Rena was unfazed. She really was a painter, it seemed.
"Shin, you know..."
"What?"
"Is there anything else?"
"Anything else?"
"Stuff to do with drawing, like this. Something I can help with."
"Uh..."
At a question that came out faintly raw around the edges, Tae-il hesitated over his answer.
Of course there was. A music video. He wanted to fill it not with live footage, but with illustrations and drawings, the way Inudong and the other singers in this scene uploaded theirs. He had several reasons for preferring drawings to live action, but cutting costs was, naturally, the main one. Animation, though, was brutally labor-intensive, even if you treated it like doodling.
I've been deliberately not bringing it up...
Was now really the right time?
To the hesitating Tae-il, Rena lifted her head and fixed him with a pleading look.
Ah.
His eyes went wide. From Rena, wearing that earnest gaze, the image of Yuuya—who looked nothing like her—somehow rose up.
"Um..."
He got the words out with difficulty.
"I had been thinking about a music video..."
"A music video?"
"Live action seemed like it'd be a bit tough..."
They could have made one on the cheap, the way students do, but even then there were too many problems. For instance: if they turned Autumn Love Song into a music video, who on earth would act in it? Run it cheap, and there was always the option of dragging in friends from school—provided, of course, that he had any friends who were boys. Holding auditions after they got famous was another possibility. Tae-il didn't hold out much hope in that direction.
If they wanted to cut costs even more ruthlessly, they could cast the members as every single character. The male lead would almost certainly be Tae-il, by unanimous vote. Setting aside whether he could act, the image fit well enough. The real problem was the female lead.
It'd be a war. No question.
Tae-il shook his head. He had no choice but to conclude that 2D art really was the best.
"A music video..."
"I-I'm not asking you to animate the whole thing. More like dropping the frame rate and stringing a few cuts together..."
"Yeah. That's fine. It could be a chance for Sakuya, too."
"...Rena?"
"You've got a storyboard?"
"J-just a little. Concept stage...?"
"Flesh it out and send it over. I'll take a rough look and put a decent skeleton under it."
"I'd love that, but... are you sure you'll be okay?"
Unlike Sakuya, who—practice aside—had suddenly found herself with time once there were no competitions to enter until next spring, Rena was busiest at the end of the year. First she had a solo exhibition to prepare as Honjo Rena. Unofficially, there was the winter Comic Con. And on top of all that, she still had to practice as Tales Tale's drummer.
"You don't have to push yourself just because I asked..."
"I'm not pushing the way you're worried about, so it's fine. I've got my own plans."
Rena smiled softly and started searching up famous bands' logos, one after another.
"..."
Looking at her like that, Tae-il couldn't bring himself to object.
Rena's eyes shone blue.
Strangely enough, these days she looked happier sketching logos and music-video drafts than she did when she was behind the drums.
Tae-il swallowed dryly.
I might have to ask someone for a little help...
The problem wasn't Iris alone. It sat upstream of the playing itself. Leave things as they were, and he could see it already—a creak that would give way, sooner or later, into a serious collapse.