Busking (8)
Once you left the streets packed with bars, quiet came to Japan's roads relatively early. While the sun was up, though, the city was remarkably alive.
Tae-il settling their busking in the afternoon, before it grew late, had never been a choice. It was inevitable. There was also the small matter that every member was a minor, which made busking in a park deep into the night a little difficult.
This was Tokyo, already swarming with illegal busking. If a group that looked underage to anyone with eyes kept playing late, the police were bound to appear, guardian or no guardian.
At any rate, Tae-il had agonized over the hour and the spot, but the members couldn't have cared less.
"So this is where we're busking?"
"It's really cramped."
"Huh? Isn't it pretty spacious? People are walking right through. Oh, someone's dancing over there. Is that breakdancing?"
"It is cramped. Cramped like a little kid's heart."
"Whaaat?"
"Bleh."
Rena and Ayane launched into a chase that spun around Sakuya and Iris. It was a pleasant sight. Sera watched the noisy faces of Tales Tale and smiled warmly.
"For a first busking, none of you look nervous at all. Nerves of steel."
"Not really. They might be doing it on purpose."
"Hehe. Even if they are, they're cute."
Yuuya, setting up a camera beside Sera so they'd have footage to keep, paused what she was doing. Tales Tale was chattering and playing. Sakuya wore a troubled smile, while Iris simply gazed at the members as if they were adorable. Rena huffed and puffed, genuinely furious, chasing Ayane, who had discovered that teasing Rena was fun. Busking was right in front of them, and still everyone looked like they were enjoying themselves.
"Just like you said, Sera. They're cute."
"Right?"
When Yuuya agreed, Sera laughed softly.
"Sera! Quit playing around and come help over here!"
"Coming!"
At Fuyuko's call, Sera shot Yuuya a fleeting wink.
"I'll go help my sister for a bit, okay?"
"Go ahead."
Sera trotted off toward the van where Fuyuko and Tae-il were hauling the gear.
"Enjoy yourselves..."
Enjoy your youth.
Fiddling with the lens, Yuuya sought out Tae-il, who was carefully working up a sweat as he carried the load. She lifted the camera and focused. His face filled the expensive DSLR Fuyuko had all but wept over buying. The shutter clicked. Yuuya stared blankly at the photo she had taken of him, then smiled, satisfied.
"Yeah. Enjoy yourselves."
In her own way, Yuuya had found something to enjoy too.
"Haul this over there."
"Okay."
"If you flip it and it breaks or gets scratched, figure your allowance and two months' pay are gone."
"It's that expensive!?"
"Taichi."
"The one Ayane uses is relatively cheap. Sakuya's and Iris's together are probably over six hundred thousand yen."
"This is why private-school kids...!"
Of course, that meant over six hundred thousand even sold secondhand. Iris's things looked expensive even to Sera, a college student, so she could let that pass—but she hadn't known Sakuya's share was pricey too, and it startled her.
"Wait, was Sakuraba a rich young lady as well...?"
"They're Iris's."
"That surprises me more..."
Something that felt plenty expensive even by an adult's measure, given away without a second thought. Faced with spending as generous as Iris's chest was large, Sera was struck dumb.
"Maybe I should get friendly with the Arisugawas too...?"
"Hey."
"Kidding, sis."
As if to say a future teacher would never do such a thing, Sera laughed brightly and pulled the loaded hand truck along.
"Haa."
Fuyuko shook her head.
"Did I call her for nothing?"
"No."
Tae-il denied it with a wry smile.
"Something I realized recently, working my part-time job."
"What?"
"Even if they're still green, it's better to have one newbie around."
Unless someone had set out to make trouble on purpose, one extra pair of hands in the middle of a rush made more of a difference than you'd expect.
"That so?"
"Yes. Thank you, Asakura-sensei. You saved me."
"Don't get all grateful out of nowhere."
When Tae-il offered his thanks, Fuyuko snorted and heaved a tom-tom the size of a person's head out of the trunk.
"Hup—!"
"I'll help."
Tae-il helped her shift another load safely onto a second hand truck they had ready. After moving the tom, Fuyuko patted her stiff lower back and shoulders and caught her breath.
"Honestly. What am I doing, suffering out here on a weekend."
"You're probably going to be doing it often from now on."
"Make Sera do it, not me. She's got a license too."
"She isn't our advisor."
"Want me to make her one? Deputy advisor."
"Abuse of power."
"Power exists to be used, you cheeky brat."
Fuyuko narrowed her eyes, rapped Tae-il lightly on the head, and glared.
"This is why you asked me to be advisor, isn't it?"
"Ahaha..."
Tae-il hadn't exactly been aiming for it, but Fuyuko's personal vehicle was remarkably useful. A band is heavier to move than a reasonably famous celebrity or idol. Instruments aside, the amp, the pedalboard, and a laptop alone already demanded a large carrier. Add drums and a synthesizer on top of that, and you started longing for a moving truck. Tae-il had even considered getting a license purely for hauling gear.
If Fuyuko transported the instruments and the members traveled separately with Kiriko or by public transit, the move stayed comfortable. In the original story, too, Sera had put in solid work as the driver of that same vehicle.
"Hey. Grab it."
"Yes."
The two of them lifted the bass drum. It was the most important piece of the kit, so the hands in cotton work gloves were especially careful.
"You said the drums have to be set to Honjo's specs?"
"I know how."
"Yeah?"
Tae-il was unfazed. Fuyuko shook her head.
"Listen. When you debut with a major label, wear a stab vest at all times so you don't get stabbed to death."
"What? What kind of thing is that to say in Japan?"
Every so often some unhinged criminal set off a stabbing or a threat, but on public safety alone, wasn't Japan a peaceful place right up there with Korea? Fuyuko scoffed at him.
"Safe, my ass. You've never once set foot in the slums in Osaka, have you?"
"Slums... oh!"
At the word, a light bulb flickered on over Tae-il's head.
"I think I saw it on TV. I heard the redevelopment projects improved things a lot?"
"It's still a slum."
From where Tae-il stood, Fuyuko didn't seem to hold any warm feelings toward Osaka.
"And you're wrong about one thing. This is a country where a former prime minister got shot and died."
"Mm."
A former prime minister, shot dead by someone from the Self-Defense Forces. Tae-il had nothing he could say to that.
"Taichi. You don't really know how fanatical idol fandoms are in Japan, do you?"
"Not exactly. I've studied a lot myself."
"Studied what?"
"The growth of Japan's music market, the changes, the way it flows..."
"Ever watched their concert footage?"
"I went through the Johnny's side pretty thoroughly."
"Look it up when you have time. The live at Nissan Stadium in particular will blow even you away."
At Fuyuko's advice, Tae-il nodded. It only meant carving a few more lines into the list of references in his head, hardly grueling labor.
"Is concert footage enough?"
"As if. Look up articles on the members yourself while you're at it. It's advice from an adult, so take it to heart."
"I will."
After sending Tae-il off with the hand truck loaded full of the drum kit, Fuyuko perched on the lip of the trunk.
"Hot. It's hot..."
Fanning herself with one hand, she looked up at the sky. Fine weather. Hardly any clouds, and the sky a clear blue. Even with the heat loosening as autumn drew near, a little labor left her soaked through with sweat.
"I'm wiped... I want a beer."
Whether it was the thirst or not, a cold beer had come over her all at once. She wiped the sweat away with her sleeve, then watched from a distance as the group began setting up in earnest.
"Flashy. Real flashy."
A cluster of pretty girls in every color, huddled together and fiddling with instruments—eyes were drawn whether you wanted them or not. Even the band due to play beside them had forgotten its own business and was staring this way.
"Good grief."
Fuyuko swallowed a dry laugh. Watched from afar, it was comedy beyond comedy.
"Anyone looking would think they were a manufactured idol group."
"Wouldn't they."
Fuyuko lifted her head. Some unfamiliar young man was blocking the sunlight falling on her with his own body.
"Who are you?"
"Hyun Toseong."
"Korean?"
"Yes. An acquaintance of the boy over there."
Toseong's finger pointed precisely at Tae-il.
"So the kid did have people he knew."
Fuyuko snorted and set an e-cigarette between her lips.
"Hoo. I'm the light music club advisor that brat roped into this. Asakura Fuyuko. We won't be seeing each other often, so call me whatever's easy."
"Haha. You're pretty laid-back."
At the blunt reply, Toseong smiled awkwardly, and the woman beside him—apparently his girlfriend—poked her head out.
"And you are...?"
"I'm Toseong's girlfriend, So Baekya! You can just call me Hakunong, my cosplayer name...!"
Toseong clapped a hand over Baekya's mouth.
"Korean names are strange, every last one of them."
"We're on the unusual side even in Korea."
"Like a DQN name?"
"Haha."
Toseong nodded and drew a beer from the convenience-store bag in his hand.
"Oh? Not bad sense for a young guy."
"I heard you going on about beer earlier."
"You came specifically to watch the show?"
"It just sort of happened..."
Toseong looked at Tae-il with a wistful gaze. A band. He didn't want to remember, and yet, looking back, he had piled up a fair number of good memories himself. If only the ending had been a good one, the band might still have lived inside him as something beautiful.
While Toseong was lost in that recollection, his girlfriend Baekya smashed the mood to pieces.
"Wow, a real-life harem. I've never seen one of those."
"..."
He couldn't argue. Back when Toseong had formed a band with his friends, they had caught both rabbits—skill and looks—and learned firsthand what it meant to be at the height of popularity. The funny part was that Korea's band scene was so bleak they failed even then. Just as Tae-il said. In the band world, the idea that true talent can't stay hidden was, in Korea alone, nothing but a worthless delusion.
Even so, Toseong had never seen anything like this. What he had pictured was something like what he himself had done—a male-heavy band, men packed in shoulder to shoulder. Not a girl-group band this unbearably fresh.
"How many of them even are there...?"
"Five."
"F-five...?"
If you can play an instrument, you're popular. That line, which lingered like an old saying, was half grounded in fact. But five was too far. Absurdly too far. An ugly scene of men fighting each other over a single woman would have been more realistic.
"My god..."
At the scale of Tae-il's accomplishment, Toseong let out a stunned breath. Fuyuko took his reaction like a bar snack and knocked back her beer.
"Kah! Now this is beer. When busking's done today, maybe the afterparty should be an izakaya..."
"That's all of them, right?"
"Hm? Well, far as I know, that's everyone."
"Meaning?"
"That there might be more."
Fuyuko shrugged. Toseong laughed emptily.
"What is the world even coming to..."
"If the people involved are happy, that's fine, isn't it?"
"You think that's possible...?"
Toseong was worried. This wasn't something you settled just because you were all right with one another. You had to hold your ground against the way society looked at you—and while holding down a job as public as a band's, close to being entertainers.
"Well, more than that, let's watch them play. They're a band."
"Ah. You dodged it."
"..."
What mattered in a band was not the gossip tangled up with its members, but playing that stole the audience's ears, and manners on a stage. Toseong believed that firmly.
"How is it now?"
"Good."
Rena tapped the finished drum setup with satisfaction. Indoors and outdoors—the environment had changed completely, and yet the distance between her and the drums, and the height, were exactly the same. Because her senses were sharper than anyone's, Rena could feel that sameness all the more clearly.
Shin's looking out for me more than I thought.
A strange lift wrapped around her. Even in the studio, she was glad that the moment of setup was the one time she could have Tae-il's attention all to herself.
"Want to just check the sound? We're outside, so it's probably going to feel completely different from everything we've played indoors."
"Okay."
Rena worked the pedal slowly and loosened up, checking from the basic rhythms she had learned through the fills Tae-il had been tutoring her on lately.
"Yeah. It's different."
The sound was definitely different. Indoors, her whole body had shaken hard. Outside, the resonance felt as if it spread a little farther.
"Still, not unfamiliar enough to tangle my hands."
"Good."
Busking was, quite literally, close to raw. You didn't get to use big, beautiful, expensive amps, and whether anyone even used a pedalboard depended on the person. There wasn't much time to spare, either. The gear on the whole was light and cheap, so next to a proper stage you were performing in a thoroughly poor environment.
"The drums are all right, at least. But a band doesn't work just because one person is good."
"You mean I have to listen carefully?"
"Yeah. Your job is a heavy one, Rena."
Tae-il kneaded her shoulders. Even playing outdoors, the drum's role stayed the same. No matter what anyone said, the lead on a band's sound and genre—the reins themselves—belonged to the drums.
"Tae-il, can you help over here for a second?"
"Be right there!"
He turned to Rena in a hurry.
"Think you can do it?"
"Well..."
It was a question, but his eyes were full of trust. Her shoulders felt heavy. Strangely, though, she felt no real burden in that trust. Rena turned over what Tae-il had said in the car on the way to Yoyogi Park.
"I can cover most mistakes. Of course, if you panic because you messed up, it gets hard for me too."
Ensemble playing was like that. The moment any one person started making mistakes, it showed whether you wanted it to or not. Tae-il covering a mistake meant papering over it somehow. It wasn't a perfect answer.
"I'm not Doraemon."
"What about vocals?"
"I can't do a girl's voice."
"Too bad. Even if you cross-dressed, your voice would give you away."
"Tch."
At the reply, thick with Tae-il's irritation, Iris broke into a bright laugh.
"Same goes for the drums. I'll bring pads, at least, but covering a drum mistake is hard."
When he had said that, Tae-il was looking straight at Rena. The drums couldn't be covered. Even if she slipped, Rena would have to paper over it herself, and the best course was still not slipping at all. The weight grew.
But—
So what.
Rena shrugged, as if Tae-il's worry were nothing much. He couldn't help her. She was a little jealous, but she wasn't disappointed in the slightest. It wasn't that he could and simply wouldn't. Pure and simple, Tae-il's ability—carrying rhythm guitar and synth, and enduring the drums on top of that—was far too much to ask. Maybe that was the limit of being human.
Which was why.
Answer that trust.
"Don't worry, leader. I'll pull it off no matter what."
Rena smiled, wide open, as if telling him to just watch.