Idle Talk Aside
Katsura Asobi.
It was the shop Katsuragi Hotaru, father of Katsuragi Ayane, had carried on through the generations of his house. Not so very old, perhaps, and yet it was a venerable establishment boasting a full hundred and fifty years of tradition, with a respectable crowd of regulars to show for it.
Today, unusually, a closed sign hung where the open sign ought to have been.
Inside, though, the place was anything but quiet. Ayane, the proprietor's daughter, had asked to bring her friends and throw a party.
"Hngh...!"
"Dear, why are you crying?"
Yuuna patted the back of Hotaru, who was sniffling like a child, and soothed him with an awkward smile.
"It's the first time our daughter has ever brought her friends to my shop...!"
"Anyone watching would think our girl was some hopeless shut-in."
"That's not it...!"
If she'd been a son, he might have said it with pride. A daughter, though, was a delicate thing. In this day and age, a family that ran a sushi shop might not be something she was proud of at all. Hotaru had turned it over in his mind more than once. If his daughter truly was ashamed, should he throw the whole long tradition out, tradition be damned? And that damned prospective son-in-law was so mad for music he didn't look the least bit interested in carrying on a shop with history behind it. Was a family trade that had lasted nearly two centuries really going to end here? Hotaru had despaired. But at his daughter's earnest plea, he felt every one of those worries wiped clean away.
"Now I won't have to tell Brother Younghoon I'm jealous of the salarymen every time we go fishing...!"
"So that's why Mr. Younghoon's face sours every time he looks at you..."
A company man and a man who worked for himself. A relationship doomed to eternal opposition.
Fishing buddies really are something.
Thinking it a wonder the two hadn't come to blows by now, Yuuna turned a bright smile on Ayane and her friends and simply watched.
"Hmm."
From a distance, Yuuna's eyes caught it all the same. Every gaze in the room ended on Taeil. Honey practically dripped from them—or else they fumbled, as if trying to hide what they felt. The girls might have thought they were being subtle, but they couldn't fool Yuuna, a seasoned adult whose instincts in matters of the heart ran deep.
A pity. Every one of them was a formidable girl, more than a match for her daughter. And at the same time, she worried—that someone among them would go unchosen, and be hurt for it.
"As expected, our future son-in-law is no ordinary fellow."
"Hm? You mean Taichi?"
"Mm. It's nothing. You just hurry up and make the sushi. I'll handle the tempura."
"O-oh! I'm counting on you!"
Perhaps she could feel her parents' unshakable faith. Ayane was buzzing. The mere fact that the afterparty was being held at her own family's shop had put confidence in her.
This is Ayane's home ground!
She, who had always felt a little outmatched by Rena—young, and already wealthy—and by Iris, who was rich, lifted her cup with her head held high.
"Everyone, let's toast! Cheers!"
"Hold on, kids. This is barley tea, right? I'm a little scared, is all."
Seeing Ayane oddly flushed, Fuyuko had Sera check the cups, just in case.
"Yeah. Sis, this is barley tea."
"Is it?"
Reassured, Fuyuko sat down. Last time they'd been lucky. No guardian had witnessed it, and Kiriko had been flexible enough that they'd barely scraped by. But as an educator, letting a situation like that happen again was not desirable in the least.
"All right. Shall we drink, then?"
Relieved, Fuyuko undid a button and rolled up her sleeves.
"Ahem. Then, before we toast, perhaps Asakura-sensei, as our advisor, would grace us with the toast?"
Iris tried, ever so casually, to shove the troublesome part onto someone else. Fuyuko shot her a sidelong glare.
"...Sly little fox."
"Hehe."
Iris laughed loosely and stuck her tongue out, as if begging to be let off. Strangely, it put Fuyuko at ease. Even Iris, who sang with the polish of a veteran, still had a cute side left that belonged to someone her own age. Fuyuko nodded readily.
"Fine. It's not like it's hard."
"Yahoo! Asakura-sensei really is the best!"
"Save the flattery."
Fuyuko snorted a laugh and raised her cup.
"Anyway, good work on your first busking. You did better than I was worried you would."
"Mm-hmm. I thought it was really good, watching. It reminded me of trailing after the kids who had bands back in my school days."
"The crowd was on fire, too."
Sera and Yuuya chimed in from the side, heaping praise on Tales Tale.
"Y-you're making a big deal out of something obvious! Right, Iris!?"
"E-ehehe..."
"Rena, I think this one's broken."
"My fault for expecting anything from a pig..."
Watching Iris, gone shy and laughing like a broken machine, Rena let out a sigh. She didn't mean it. She shared the same proud glow of having pulled it off without a single mistake.
"Of course it is! Everyone practiced so much! Right, Shin-chan?"
"Yeah."
They were all glad to have come through the live in one piece, and yet they blushed and grew shy. Taeil alone stayed unruffled.
"A major debut was your goal, wasn't it?"
"Yes!"
Iris answered with force, face flushed, both fists clenched tight.
"Well. I have no idea whether it'll actually happen or not."
"Sakuya!"
"But if it doesn't happen with this lineup, that'd be kind of... you know?"
"Right, right!"
Seeing Iris's eyes shine like a child's, Sakuya covered her mouth and trembled all over. Anyone could tell she was holding in a laugh. Watching Iris—bold one moment, instantly tamed the instant the band's future came up—everyone swallowed their laughter as one. Only Rena, who had been watching in silence, leisurely downed her barley tea.
"Quit nagging. We're going to succeed no matter what, pig."
"Don't call me a pig!"
"Ayane doesn't particularly mind if we fail, though?"
"Ayane!?"
Watching Iris flinch and squeeze out a tear, Ayane giggled and leaned against Taeil's shoulder.
"What does Shin-chan think?"
"We have to succeed."
"Then Ayane will work hard too! Because Ayane wants Shin-chan to be happy!"
"Thanks."
Taeil stroked her head. At that, Ayane rubbed against his hand like a dog being petted by its owner.
"Ugh...!"
Iris flushed and looked away. Jealous. She had absolutely not just thought that. Probably.
"A-anyway! Please wrap it up, sensei!"
"Honestly."
Fuyuko, who had been quietly sipping and watching Iris bang every drum she could find, raised her cup high.
"To be honest, I'm a complete outsider to all this, so I really don't know whether you can climb all the way to the majors..."
A gaze that was half indifferent and half this might be fun swept over the members of Tales Tale.
"Correction. With you lot, it looks like you've got room to spare. You damned bundles of personality."
"Hehe!"
"It's weird when you praise us, teach..."
"You wanna die?"
Fuyuko drove a fist into the top of Taeil's head. Then she snorted and called out.
"To success!"
Cups met with a bright clink, and the afterparty began in earnest. True to a proper banquet, the long table was packed with every kind of tempura and a colorful spread of sushi.
"Is it really okay for us to be here...?"
It was a Japanese feast you'd hardly ever see even in Korea. Toseong glanced around, uneasy. For someone whose idea of sashimi was stopping by a raw-fish place with friends for a plate of flounder while drinking, the spread was a truly intimidating sight.
Smack!
Baekya slapped him square across the back as he hesitated.
"So what! We were formally invited! Toseong, you want some of this? Oh my god, it's tuna belly!"
At the sight of the plump, crimson otoro, white-marbled and gleaming, Baekya's eyes lit up and a thread of drool trailed from her mouth.
"Sigh. Look at you. What a mess..."
Toseong wiped the tempura crumbs from her lips with a handkerchief. Baekya closed her eyes like a little kid and offered him her mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Hehe. Thanks?"
"Eat slowly so you don't get sick. If raw food does a number on you in a foreign country, you're the one who'll suffer."
"I'm fine! I've got a stomach of steel! I once ate grilled centipede and was totally okay!"
"...You've got quite the stomach."
While Toseong shook his head at a girlfriend's eating habits he'd rather not have known, Taeil sidled over.
"Mind if I join?"
"Ah."
Taeil settled quietly into the seat across the table.
"You sure it's okay for you to be over here?"
Toseong stole a glance. Fortunately, the members of Tales Tale were chattering away without paying them the slightest mind.
"Haha. They're all good kids."
"Looks that way."
Toseong downed his sake without another word.
"Kah. This drinks well."
When he smiled, declaring the liquor genuinely good, Taeil looked curious.
"Hyung, you think the alcohol tastes good? I didn't, really."
"That's because you're still young. Get older, and liquor starts tasting sweet."
"There it is! The drunkard's repertoire! The exclusive line of alcoholics who call tasteless booze sweet!"
"I'm serious, though. Baekya, you like drinking too."
"I only like makgeolli and wine! Beer and soju, not so much!"
"I'll give you this—you've got expensive taste."
"There's plenty of cheap wine, you know!?"
"And is that cheaper than beer and soju?"
"Let's clam up. Clam!"
Watching the two bicker over the taste of liquor, Taeil scratched his cheek with an awkward smile.
I know what alcohol tastes like...
He couldn't very well confess that he'd drunk plenty in his previous life. He'd never once even blacked out.
"So. What's the reason you've graced us with your presence, leaving that lovely harem of yours behind?"
"H-harem...?!"
At the word, Taeil denied it with everything he had, waving his hands.
"W-we're just close! Probably..."
"Ah. That kind of concept?"
A laugh slipped out at acting that couldn't have been clumsier.
"Well, if you're going to hide it, hide it properly. I could tell the second I looked. The way those kids look at you. The way you look at them. Honey was dripping off it, plain as day."
Toseong crunched into a shrimp tempura and propped his chin on his hand.
"You know our band, so you know Mingi, right? That guy got tangled up with nothing but a shitload of women, same as you, and it gave him an eye for this stuff. These days I can tell at a glance."
"You can tell just by looking!"
"Hyung Mingi was two-timing out in the open, though..."
No Mingi. His position had been vocals and rhythm guitar. His singing, like Iris's, was a cheat from birth, and as for guitar, he hadn't particularly wanted to study it in any depth, so he'd never gotten too ambitious about it.
Wow. And rich, on top of that.
He hadn't been the main vocalist, but in a lot of ways he overlapped with Iris. The difference was that his personality had a slight problem, and he two-timed openly—and the women had allowed it. In his previous life, when Taeil first heard about No Mingi's love life from Seongil, he'd been dumbfounded, demanding what kind of bullshit that was. Now, though, he didn't feel especially qualified to blame No Mingi.
"But Hyung Mingi was rich, and he was good-looking."
"Good-looking? You sure you don't mean he looked like some smug, pretty-faced gigolo?"
"Ah! Toseong, that line is a classic defeat flag...!"
"Tch."
Toseong clicked his tongue. Through no will of his own, he'd had plenty of experience being misunderstood on account of a feminine image.
"Some of us are sick to death of guys hitting on us every single day. And some people have a girlfriend and still whine that the women never dry up."
"A-ahaha..."
"You think that's funny? Because of that guy, I seriously wondered 'should I cut my hair?' dozens of times."
Long-haired and slender as the rocker Kim Kyung-ho, Toseong was forever being mistaken for a woman by men who saw nothing but his back. Add a face that was pretty for a man and a voice that came out delicate, and from his school days on—field trip or training retreat, it didn't matter—the moment he was entered in a cross-dressing contest, first place was practically guaranteed. Of course, the man himself had a fit the moment anyone so much as mentioned it. Some girl's remark, that his long hair made him easy to dress as a woman even without a wig, was still trauma.
"You ever been confessed to by a guy in Hongdae? If you haven't, don't talk. Fuck. 'Your ass is charming'? Crazy buffalo bastards, out of their minds for women..."
"Are you drunk...?"
"I'd rather I were."
Toseong smiled bitterly and lightly touched the tail of hair that fell all the way past his ribs.
"Funny, isn't it. When I was a kid they wouldn't let me grow it out, so I fought like hell to grow it..."
Now it got in the way and was nothing but a pain to maintain, so he went around with I want to cut it forever on his tongue.
"It's all because of that bastard Shin Seongil."
A band ought to have at least one long-haired member, Seongil had readily proposed—and of all people, Toseong had bitten. Just before that, the student affairs teacher had forcibly cut his hair over sideburns that ran a little long, and the grudge had stuck.
"Still. Back then, band life was genuinely fun."
When the student affairs teacher caught them, they'd hop the wall and ditch everything, class included, the way you skip school, and once they'd even snuck into a theater and hijacked the stage.
"They say a band is the music of resistance. Literally. For us, the band was the music of resistance."
At the school festival they'd shown up without warning and seized the stage. Everyone had cheered their name. If you asked Toseong when the peak of his life had been, his prime, he would have answered that it was high school. His school days had been that eventful.
But once they became adults, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, the spell came completely undone. Freedom was given to them. In exchange, the freedom they held came with responsibility.
"Everyone woke up from the dream."
Every member except No Mingi came from a family that wasn't well off. Whether they liked it or not, they had to look reality in the face—reality, and the future, and that reality called money, which no person can ever escape.
"You be careful too."
Toseong's voice dropped into advice.
"In front of money, friendship and love and all the rest of it mean nothing. Debt is genuinely terrifying."
"I'll remember."
"Good. Unlike us, I hope you kids make it."
Emptying his cup, Toseong offered Taeil a quiet consolation, and a cheer along with it. Taeil's lips parted. This was the chance. There was something he wanted to say to Toseong.
But—
I can't...
He had no choice but to send the thought that had climbed all the way to his throat back down into his gut. He was used to this. The light gone from Toseong's eyes was so identical it raised the hair on his arms, like looking into a mirror. It was something he had always been looking at.
The same as me, in my past life.
Toseong's circumstances might have been a little better than his own. But the depth of despair coming off him looked nearly equal to the despair Taeil himself had known.
"Ah. I shouldn't say this. I'm really jealous..."
"You're jealous of me?"
"Yeah. This place isn't a graveyard for bands, the way Korea is."
If there'd at least been money, he might have kept making music, Toseong grumbled. In Korea, even that had been impossible.
"No. Think it through, and it probably was possible. There just would've been a pretty big price."
For them to keep the band going, there had been far too much each of them would have had to give up. Seongil couldn't persuade the members. And then it blew up. The fight between Shin Seongil and No Mingi, whose relationship had already been sour, and the failure of the first album they'd released indie—those had been decisive.
"Haa. What was I even trying to say..."
"Drunk already?"
"Dunno."
He hadn't had that many cups. There was no way he was drunk. He just wanted to be.
"..."
In silence, Taeil filled Toseong's empty cup. A sake cup is small. The moment it was full, Toseong dumped every drop down his throat in one go.
"Tss. You hold your liquor?"
"Oh, come on. What's he doing, asking a minor."
"I hold it well. Really well."
"Yeah?"
Making a mockery of Baekya's attempt to wave him off, Taeil answered with deliberate emphasis that he could drink. Toseong grinned. He filled the empty cup again and held it out.
"You've got something you want to say to me, don't you? You've been staring like you need to take a shit. How about it—want a drink?"
"What does one have to do with the other?"
Taeil gazed steadily at the cup.
"I'm saying we bet. Honestly, it's obvious what you want to say to me."
Toseong was sharp. He'd watched Taeil's mouth itching to speak dozens of times.
"All right."
Taeil took the cup and nodded.
"What's the bet?"
"Whoever gets wasted and keels over first loses."
"Simple."
"For the record, the loser has to grant the winner one request. No questions. How's that?"
Baekya, who had been quietly slaughtering every last piece of tuna and licking her lips in preparation to massacre the salmon, butted in.
"Toseong! Even so, a drinking bet with a kid is a bit...!"
"Fine by me."
Thud!
Taeil tipped his head back, emptied the cup in one swallow, and slammed it down on the table. He would take the bet, and gladly. Seeing the hard set of his face, without an inch of retreat, Toseong's smile deepened.
"Aaah...! I don't know anything! I'm just gonna eat salmon!"
"You're the judge."
"That's a stretch!"
Without a word, Toseong moved every piece of salmon sashimi from his own plate onto Baekya's.
"Leave the fair judging to me...!"
For nothing more than a few slices of salmon, Baekya accepted the judge's seat as easily as turning over her hand.
"Haha. Good. Now, if I win, what should I ask for..."
Toseong thought it over. Even so, he had no intention of making an unreasonable request of his old friend's younger cousin. The most he could come up with was an album by some indie band that was hard to find in Korea.
But Taeil—
"If I win, hyung, please take up the band again."
"..."
"The original members. Just as they were."
Call it pure sincerity, or call it a total refusal to back down. It was the thing itself.