Busking (5)

Rena took up a pencil and dashed a plausible-looking logo across her sketchbook, careless and sure.

A hand that had repeated the motion thousands of times, tens of thousands, drew each line without a tremor.

One. Then two. Then three.

Every time her hand flicked across the page, another logo draft snapped into being. Like a goblin bringing its magic club down in a single swing, a finished piece appeared on the blank paper in the space of a blink.

They were drafts, closer to roughs than anything else, and this wasn't even digital work—yet Rena's hand never hesitated. Confidence lived in every gesture. It was a boldness worlds apart from Tae-il, who could sit agonizing for two hours, three, without ever setting down the first letter.

So this is Rena's talent.

Watching her take something conceived entirely in her head and set it down on paper, concrete and whole, he felt her gift as a painter with perfect clarity.

"Hmm..."

She spun the pencil between her fingers, studying the rough she'd drawn, then let out a troubled hum and turned to him.

"Shin. What kind of tail do you like?"

"A fluffy one?"

"No preference on the animal?"

"Nope."

"Mmm. A fluffy animal tail..."

Nothing in particular seemed to come to mind. Rena frowned, thinking it over, and Tae-il added, "If a made-up animal's fine, what about something like a nine-tailed fox?"

"Mofu-mofu?"

"Haha. Yeah. Mofu-mofu."

Taking the suggestion, she drew several tails spilling over the English lettering of the logo.

All nine would be a bit much...

She'd only put down about four, with the number of members in mind, and already the mark looked lush.

"Something like this?"

"Oh."

Two versions sat side by side: tails drawn off to the edge like a trademark, and tails wrapped entirely around the logo and the letters until they became the background.

"This one's gonna be hard to read, though, isn't it?"

"That's why I was thinking of a fox silhouette too. Like this. Roughly the back of a nine-tailed fox."

Even a motif that could easily have turned cluttered came out remarkably clean once it passed through her hands. Tae-il couldn't help being impressed.

"I like both."

"Okay. Then we'll take these and get the others' opinions later..."

The logo meeting wrapped itself up in a flash.

"We'll set a separate time for the MV. That okay?"

"Uh, yeah..."

The rest of the members would be showing up soon. Rena closed the notebook with the air of someone finishing up, and Tae-il asked, "Rena. Drawing still comes easier for you, doesn't it?"

"Well, yeah?"

Like it or not, it was a relationship ten years in the making, worn threadbare. It could grate the way a marriage grates once the rut sets in, but comfort was something you couldn't help.

"Have you ever burned out while you were drawing?"

"Burnout..."

Burnout. Put another way, a syndrome of utter lethargy—what happened when someone who had thrown themselves into a thing with excessive drive suddenly went limp under too much fatigue and stress. Back in Korea, people sometimes called it a reality-check moment. Anyone who created ran into the illness at least once.

Tae-il had been through it a few times in his past life. A slump arrived without warning, and when he couldn't climb out of it, burnout followed; for a while he wouldn't even keep a bass nearby.

"You have, then?"

Rena gave a bitter smile and nodded.

"Did you get over it?"

"Mm."

She gave the pencil a quick spin.

"Less got over it, and more... ran away?"

"Ran away?"

"I couldn't look away from it even when I hated it. So I cheated."

If Rena and contemporary art were a married couple, Rena had been having an affair on the side.

"Once the stress let up, it felt doable again."

"I see..."

That was what being a pro meant. No matter how badly you wanted to run, too many interests were tangled up in it to flee carelessly.

In the end, Tae-il was the same.

No—he had run all the way to the end, so he might have been even more pathetic than she was. Grinding his teeth and holding on until he broke: that was the limit of Shin Tae-il.

"But why are you asking? You having a hard time lately?"

"Ahaha..."

"We haven't even started and you're already like this? Iris would have a fit if she heard."

Rena shot him a sharp look and scolded him. He scratched the back of his head.

Hmm. What do I do...

He glanced at the clock. The members who'd gone to the school store would be back any minute. He wanted to keep talking, but it didn't look as if they could go any further on this subject.

Later. Just the two of us...

That Rena had lost interest in music was obvious. Tae-il could see it plainly. The problem was that no decent way of fixing it came to him either.

While his thoughts deepened, Iris came back into the art room with her arms full of something.

"Yahoo! We got vegetable steamed buns!"

"What about the meat?"

"Sold out! All of it!"

"How am I supposed to eat bread with no meat."

"So I also got the sausage bread Rena-chan likes!"

Iris dumped snacks and bread across the table in a clatter. Sakuya came in behind her, drinks cradled in her arms.

"Haa. I told you not to run, and you sprinted the whole way..."

"Ehehe."

"If Ayane had seen you running like earlier, she'd have docked you points on the spot."

"C'mon. We're in the same band, she wouldn't..."

For the record, she wouldn't is exactly how people get themselves killed.

"Haa."

Sakuya sighed and held a cola out to Tae-il.

"The cola you asked for."

"Thanks."

"It might've gotten shaken on the way, so be careful."

"Ah, yeah. I will."

He cracked the can carefully, and carbonation hissed up against his fingertips.

"Tae-il, you want a vegetable steamed bun? There's red bean too."

"I'll eat whatever you give me."

"Oh? Then maybe you'd also like this kind of bun... ahk!"

Sakuya put on a wicked smile and struck a pose that seemed meant to show off her chest, as if she were about to flip up the hem of her clothes. Rena promptly kicked her in the shin.

"Watch it."

"Rena, you're so mean. Hnn..."

"You're asking for it."

Under that fierce stare, Sakuya whimpered and folded.

"Hehe. Sakuya, you're just too obvious, you know?"

Iris cut in between them with her arms folded for all to see. Her chest swayed. Sakuya pointed at her.

"Rena, isn't she even more obvious and indecent than I am?"

"Barely... safe."

"This is discrimination!"

"O-obvious and indecent?! Excuse you! If I were, Ayane would've called it out ages ago!"

"Maybe Ayane's given up. If it were on purpose, sure. You can't blame someone for how they were born."

"Wh-what are you even saying...!"

"She's right. You can't blame someone for how they were born."

"Rena-chan!?"

In the space of a moment, the bait flew in every direction without a pause.

They're not on bad terms.

Tae-il smiled faintly. Sipping his cola, he stole a glance at Rena, caught between the two of them, getting yanked around and yanking right back. She looked like she was having fun. There was none of the slump from a moment ago in the Rena chattering with the members.

Maybe.

Maybe what she needed was a different angle.

I should get some advice myself.

For the first time, Tae-il felt the weight of being leader settle heavy on his shoulders.

If Rena's sick of music, that's probably a hundred percent my fault.

Tae-il looked back over his own past.

Even as he'd steered her toward drums out of a prejudice carried over from the original story, he had worried, quietly. Music demanded more from the body than people thought. The longer a performance ran, the heavier the toll. Take the most representative instrument of all, the piano: the gap between women and men at the keyboard was already stark. Drums, among them, could fairly be called the final boss of physical demand.

He remembered the weight of Rena's body, light enough to lift in both hands.

Far too light...

He felt it keenly every time she ended up in his arms. It wasn't a joke. Rena really was as light as a feather. With apologies to Ayane, comparing the two almost felt unfair. He guessed she probably didn't even clear forty kilograms.

For a frame like hers, learning drums takes innate talent and an absurd amount of effort.

Just working the bass pedal made her whole body jolt. That was an enormous disadvantage. Percussion used the entire body, so holding your center of gravity mattered more than anything. Someone with weight, or a trained core, would have a much easier time of it. Rena was different.

The human brain was remarkable, but it wasn't omnipotent. Add one more thing to keep track of, and concentration came apart with frightening ease. For someone as light as she was to hold her center while playing drums took more strength and focus than anyone would imagine. She had been playing in harder conditions than the rest of them.

Of course, the worry had been needless. Rena was far better than he had thought. She'd been born with the sense of rhythm a drummer needed, and once her skill began climbing by leaps and bounds, Tae-il found himself driving her harder without quite meaning to. Her playing rose in plain view, and she followed along without complaint.

Maybe...

She had obeyed him readily. Maybe, in the process, too much stress had piled up the other way.

"What do you think, boss?"

"A difficult problem."

The owner, checking over a guitar at the counter, tipped his chin at him. Tae-il straightened.

"As you know, a band isn't a solo act. It's joint work. You move forward with other people."

"Right..."

"Naturally, once you're working with several people, all kinds of problems tend to crop up."

Musical visions could collide. Personalities might simply not fit. Bands being what they were, scandals over private lives blew up often enough, and every time, one person's conduct damaged the group. More than a few got expelled outright.

"And every time, the band enters a trial."

"A trial?"

"Most bands won't collapse so long as the frontman holds, even if they swap the rest of the lineup whenever they feel like it."

Whatever anyone said, a band lived and died by the influence of its frontman, the face out front. Skill could keep you afloat somehow, but every time a frontman left, the whole thing shook hard.

"Usually the frontman is the one who sets the band's color, composition included, so it isn't a problem. But what if the frontman and the member handling production are two different people?"

"It'd come apart slowly. The reason a band gets recognized as artists is that they produce themselves."

"Right. That band would run into backlash on a completely different level from simply trying to change."

If their luck was bad, they might shatter like a ship driven onto a reef.

"That's why a leader's role matters."

Creation was one conflict after another. A band was a group where collisions were inevitable, and the leader had to mediate them well.

The owner stroked his beard and gave Tae-il a sidelong look. The boy's talent was outstanding. Charming those attractive young ladies and leading them down this path was proof enough of ability. The problem was exactly that.

So long as he doesn't get himself stabbed to death over it...

The owner's gaze crept downward. If the boy was impressive in that department too, he might actually be capable of a truly leader-like kind of power.

Unaware of what the man was thinking, Tae-il asked in perfect innocence, "What did you do whenever conflict came up, boss?"

"Us, you mean? We fought."

"Sorry?"

Thinking he'd misheard, Tae-il dug at his ear. The owner chuckled and drove the point home.

"We fought until the blood flew. There was even a guy who used an instrument as a weapon. Cheap move."

"A-an instrument...?"

"Yeah. Petty bastards. Wouldn't use their own—they'd grab someone else's and swing it."

Now and then a band with an aggressive stage show smashed an expensive guitar for the spectacle. But swinging one at a person? The image alone was horrible enough to chill his blood.

"Yeah. My five-hundred-thousand-yen Les Paul died a glorious death right there. Mm. Still pisses me off, thinking about it."

The owner himself was perfectly calm.

"F-five hundred thousand..."

"Still, it got resolved well enough. I even got compensation, by way of apology. There it is. That one."

He pointed at the only guitar in the rehearsal-studio lobby enshrined inside a glass case.

"That one?"

"Yeah. The very symbol of my childish youth."

"Pretty expensive, for something childish..."

"We'd done fairly well, for a metal band. If the vocalist hadn't up and gotten married and run off saying he was going to be a teacher..."

The owner clicked his tongue and went back to checking the guitar.

"Anyway. I've got one piece of advice for you."

"No matter how good the relationship, nobody gets through without a single complaint."

"I don't really want to fight with the girls..."

"Then sacrifice something."

"Sacrifice?"

"Well, you don't have to worry about it. Those pretty young ladies will take care of things just fine on their own..."

"Sorry?"

The owner mumbled past the answer, and Tae-il's face went puzzled.

"Well, conflict starts for all kinds of reasons. What I'm saying is, you handle it differently each time."

"True..."

He didn't think the problem Tales Tale was facing now would be solved by picking a fight for no reason, the way the owner described. All of it was tangled up in personal trauma, burnout, stress.

"Even so, you still have to talk it out in the open."

"Talk, you mean?"

"This is just my experience, but nothing's as dangerous in a relationship that you mean to keep as assuming you already know."

Jumping to conclusions, filling in the blanks—that came from a peculiarly human arrogance.

"I'll give you this much. That's an act of deceiving the other person."

"I have no intention of deceiving the girls."

"Good."

Whatever it was, talk to them directly and settle it. That was the owner's advice.

After his shift ended, Tae-il called Coco-tan—no. Kizuka.

The friendship was recent, but the man had also promised to handle their recording, and Libido Girls' reputation had been excellent for ages, so the trust ran deep. Above all, among the people Tae-il could actually reach, Kizuka Kyota was the one with the longest career in bands.

The irritation was immediate, baked into the tone before Tae-il had even finished asking.

"Uh... yes."

"Haha. Well, the thing is..."

He hid what needed hiding and asked for advice about a member who'd crashed straight into a wall of disillusionment.

"What do you mean?"

The question was vague enough that Tae-il tilted his head.

"Yes."

Tae-il already knew. In his past life he had heard the grievances of working professionals more times than he could count, and this life was no different. Through bands he'd grown close to while drifting from live house to live house, he had learned just how grinding their days were. Japan's band scene only offered a slightly wider crack for a person to squeeze into than Korea's. Anyone back home who heard him say so would have called it the complaint of a man with a full stomach and gotten angry—but turn the positions around, and a band's life was grueling all the same. Japan had built its live infrastructure well, so opportunity lay open to a great many unspecified people. The competitors were just as numerous. And packs that caught the smell of money and set out to exploit them were scattered everywhere.

"Steady quality, and diligence."

Why had Sarina hesitated to debut as a professional? Because an after-work band, unlike a professional one, struggled to meet that demand for consistency.

"These days there are a lot more ways to put yourself out there, though. It's gotten better."

"..."

Tae-il offered a moment of silence to the unspecified masses who had suffered a visual assault at the hands of a muscular, middle-aged maid's furious dance.

Even a break had to come after you were on track. Chances were few. Miss one, and there was no next—because scavengers lay in wait for that same opening, and there was no end of them.

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Band members all worked hard. Even where no one could see, they didn't forget they were part of the band. They took the skill built that way onto the stage and shouldered even a little of what the frontman or the vocalist had to carry. Unseen or not, everyone was trying. If they weren't, they couldn't have kept enjoying music in the first place.

"...I'm handling all of the production myself."

"They help a little with lyrics."

"Nothing..."

Once, in passing, Iris had muttered something.

"Our band would be complete garbage without Shin Tae-il, wouldn't it?"

Tales Tale depended on him far too much. Ayane was studying music theory on her own, trying, but it would be a long while yet before she could lighten his load. And in the meantime, what were the others doing? Practicing their instruments. Their fundamentals were still lacking, so they just kept practicing that and nothing else. At the start, Tae-il had thought that was the right answer.

But.

Kizuka ran Libido Girls with his bandmates strictly as a hobby. Married, with two daughters, and still climbing onstage in women's clothes—he loved that hobby that much.

"That's..."

Bands these days were remarkably tight-knit, because friends who had made music together since they were young gathered again, met again, and rose. Even so—

A role.

Thinking it over, Tae-il realized Tales Tale had no such thing. Only positions had been assigned.

"A role..."

"Haha. Don't expect too much..."

In ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other words—

"P-poof...?"

The call cut off clean. Tae-il looked at the screen of his phone and let out a short laugh.

"A role, huh..."

Music wasn't the whole of a band's life. Famous artists were the same way, and so were bands: the frantic, heated work only kept going because countless people helped carry it.

"Like Senior Yuuya..."

Usually they were called staff, but colleagues who carried a band's work beyond the music itself definitely existed.

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A catalyst, and a role.

He had been considerate of the members. Paradoxically, that consideration might have treated them like machines that simply played music.

Right. Even in the original, Rena didn't only handle drums.

The answer had been surprisingly close by.

Because the time hadn't been right, because he hadn't wanted to burden them, he had hesitated over plans and schedules he now unrolled in his head all at once. At the same time he forcibly wedged in an arrangement meeting that hadn't existed.

"Since it's come to this..."

He would ask Sakuya for help—Sakuya, who would grant anything if it was his request. He checked the time. She would just be finishing at the gym and heading home.

"Ayane! I'm stepping out for a bit...!"

"Eh? This late?"

"I'll be right back, so go ahead and sleep...!"

He grabbed his hoodie, hugged her once, tight, with the promise that he'd return soon, and ran out of the house.

"Th-this feels like... something...!"

Go ahead and sleep. And a hug, right before he walked out...!

Feeling as if she had become a wife waiting on her husband, Ayane simply flushed red, and was happy.