The Eve Festival
The Great Auditorium was packed to the rafters.
The chairs set out inside weren't nearly enough, and people stood wedged into every leftover scrap of space, determined to watch the stage.
In truth, the Eve Festival was closer to an appetizer. The real show was surely the drama club's play from that morning, and the graduates' stage tomorrow.
And yet a quiet anticipation, impossible to trace to any single source, seemed to drift through the hall. It was a curious thing.
Think about it. How impressive could a stage thrown together by mere students really be? Even so, everyone was expecting something. The anticipation the name Yuuma planted in people went beyond anything you could imagine. Unlogic Band hadn't trembled with fear for nothing.
But where there are people brimming with expectation, there are always others who expect nothing at all.
Rustle.
They had managed, for once, to claim good seats near the front, and still Shin Young-hoon couldn't sit still. He kept hitching his hips as if the chair itself offended him, until Yoo Ha-na smacked him on the shoulder.
"Please just sit still. You're not a child. What is wrong with you?"
"It's just..."
Young-hoon started to answer, caught the sharpening of Ha-na's eyes, and shut his mouth.
"Honestly."
Ha-na sighed. She raked her husband with a look of pure exasperation, then, to change the mood, leaned toward Yuuna and whispered.
"Dear, what do you think? Will the recording of the kids' stage come out all right?"
"Yes. The camera must be a good one. It shows clearly even in the dark. It was awfully expensive, wasn't it?"
"Thank goodness...!"
Delighted, Ha-na turned to the light-green-haired girl seated beside Yuuna.
"I didn't think my phone would capture anything clearly. Thank you, Mori."
"Ah, it's nothing..."
At Ha-na's thanks, Yuuya hunched her neck and shrank in on herself.
Tae-il's mother... and Ayane's.
A strange tension climbed the nape of her neck.
The meeting had been chance. At the afterparty at Katsura Asobi following the busking, she would have walked right past if Yuuna hadn't remembered seeing her. Too embarrassed to explain that they were in the same band, Yuuya had introduced herself as Tae-il's senior from the animal husbandry club.
"Oh my. Then you're the one who..."
"Yes?"
"Ohoho! It's nothing, dear."
She found herself pinned beneath a peculiarly heavy gaze from Yoo Ha-na.
Yuuya had no way of knowing. Thanks to the animal husbandry club, Tae-il had grown gradually used to insects, and one day he had shown up at home in a single pair of plastic gloves and calmly caught and killed a cockroach that had appeared in the house. To Yoo Ha-na, Yuuya was no different from a benefactor.
Ignorant of this, and uncomfortable under the intensity of Ha-na's interest, Yuuya suddenly found herself missing Asakura. But Asakura was the Light Music Club's advisor, and by now she would be backstage with the members of Tales Tale.
I hope the stage starts soon...
As if Yuuya's wish had reached the heavens, the lights filling the Great Auditorium snapped off with a clunk.
A spotlight struck the stage. A man stood there in a fashion choice grotesque beyond belief: a school uniform with a cape thrown over it.
"Good evening!"
He seized the microphone and bellowed.
"I am Ueno, student council president of this school, and your host for the Eve Festival of the forty-second Yuuma High School Cultural Festival..."
A self-introduction as dull as the principal's moral lecture—reputedly the most boring thing in the world—went on and on.
He's stalling.
The sweat pouring down Ueno's forehead told Yuuya roughly what was going on, and she understood. Watching him kill time with perfect composure, folding in every outdated, exaggerated gesture he could muster, she almost felt sorry for him. At the same time, seeing that Vice President Yamamoto still hadn't appeared to smack him over the head, another thought occurred to her.
He volunteered for this...
Say what you would, Ueno Shin was an attention hound among attention hounds.
Ueno emceed in a heated voice.
"Did everyone receive a ballot and a pamphlet on the way in?"
At his question, most of the audience ducked their heads to check the ballots in their hands.
"Yes! That very ballot! The day after tomorrow, with your own hands, you get to choose who takes the stage at the Finale that closes the Cultural Festival!"
Ueno pressed on.
"Four acts will perform at the Finale! But only two of those slots will be decided by today's vote!"
A pipe clenched in his teeth, blowing bubbles like a detective, Ueno cocked an ear toward the crowd.
"What's that? The other two, you ask?"
Tsk, tsk.
He pressed a finger between his brows and wagged it.
"Regrettably, the remaining two spots were reserved in advance by the graduates taking the stage tomorrow."
No one was actually disappointed, yet Ueno alone put on a tragic face and pretended to sniffle. A one-man band, he drummed and gonged with everything he had.
"How. Ev. Er...!"
Mid-explanation, he flung both hands up to shoulder height and shouted.
"Who knows! If your support burns hot enough, graduates and priority be damned—more of our proud current students might be chosen to grace the Finale!"
Clunk.
Clunk.
With each sound, another spotlight died.
"Everyone, vote from the heart, 'kay~!"
Poised to retreat, Ueno threw a finger heart and a wink.
"And now, at last, our first act! The pride of Yuuma, the Wind Ensembleeeee!"
The lights and the microphone cut out together.
Step.
Step.
Footfalls rang across the stage in perfect rank and file, as if measured to the inch. Even in the dark, the faint silhouettes of students holding instruments were visible.
The Wind Ensemble. Anyone looking would have known it was an orchestra. Matching the mood of the stage, the audience straightened shoulders and spines that had been slumped.
Ting.
The dead spotlights blazed on all at once and flooded the darkened stage with light.
"Wow."
Yoo Ha-na breathed it out in admiration.
Students dressed in flawless black and white from head to toe, their bearing razor-sharp—enough to make even an adult's eyes go wide. In the school days she had spent in Korea, there had been no such thing as a full-scale orchestra, or a wind ensemble. At most, a few choral numbers for a music-class assignment. Instruments at school? A recorder, a danso, a xylophone if you were lucky, and the cultured kids played a little piano. Violins and flutes were things you only saw at the private schools across town, the ones only rich children attended.
This is a private school too, but...
Yuuma was cut from a different cloth than the private schools that had once made her feel the wall between herself and them. Ha-na felt, all over again, how much the world had changed.
"Wind Ensemble advisor, Ishikawa Akira."
The faculty advisor, conducting, bowed to the audience.
A brief patter of applause. He turned, swept a proud gaze over the ensemble, and raised his hand.
The baton came down.
Dvořák, Symphony No. 9, From the New World, fourth movement. A piece both popular and familiar to anyone at all was reproduced with precision under the hands of Yuuma's Wind Ensemble. A powerful, tragic sound rolled over the audience like a tsunami.
The mood turned solemn.
After Dvořák came Tchaikovsky, and then Brahms. Each movement stood on its own, yet within a mere fifteen minutes—a short span for an orchestra—the Wind Ensemble had staged a perfect dramatic arc through atmosphere alone.
"Wow."
Hugging her bass to herself, Ayane let out a sigh of admiration as the ensemble came down off the stage. They had been crisp going up, and they were just as crisp coming down.
"Mm-hm. No wonder they walk around with their noses in the air."
Sakuya, who had gone to watch orchestras more than once in search of inspiration, nodded with her arms folded. Skill that wouldn't lose badly even set beside professionals. At least, that was how it sounded to her ear.
Still.
"It's definitely cool, but... kind of off, right?"
"Yeah."
Rena agreed.
The Wind Ensemble's stage had been grand, exactly as an orchestra ought to be. But it was plainly not a stage fit for a festival that was supposed to be exciting. A mood pressed flat beneath the weight of it. And the people meant to lift that mood back up came bouncing onto the stage.
"Next uuuuuup...!"
"The Dance Club."
Ueno, about to burst out without missing a beat, was seized at once by Lily and dragged back down before he could even finish climbing onto the stage.
The lights, so well-behaved for the Wind Ensemble, tore off their demure mask and ran wild. Red, blue, and green. Colors like a club stitched themselves dizzily across the stage.
Light and dark. Through the gaps, boys and girls in every kind of hat flung their nimble bodies. From massive speakers, sound loud enough to numb the ears tore loose and hammered the Great Auditorium with a boom. The tempo was crude, rough, and fast—music made for street dance and nothing else.
Boom. Boom.
Dudududum.
The sagging atmosphere snapped back to life in an instant. In time with the beat, the dancers lined up and stepped through the basics. Everything in dance begins in the legs and the fingertips, and street dance, say what you will, is among the styles where arms and legs move most dazzlingly. People were snared by colors swapping in real time and by the flash of footwork.
Skinny jeans tight to the body, jackets cut full and loose, and oversized shoes made a stark contrast, throwing the lines of their dancing into sharp relief. Then, as naturally as breathing, they formed a circle, and the main dancers finished in the center with light footwork and a freeze.
Even the fundamental moves drew a huge cheer from the seats. As if answering it, the Dance Club threw their bodies to the floor as one and unleashed a flurry of power moves.
"That's b-boying."
Watching the stage, Tae-il nodded along to the dizzy rhythm. It wasn't simple, indiscriminate dancing. Timing locked to the rhythm, and each dancer's own sense, lay hidden cleverly inside the melody. The spring unique to b-boying left room for nothing but admiration.
Ten seconds?
The dancers who had been throwing the violent power moves that were b-boying's very symbol froze just as before, legs kicked high, bodies bent into a perfect P. The song stopped. Those who had been power-moving in the center held the frozen pose and bounced backward like rubber balls, using nothing but the strength of their arms.
The music flowed again. At once, the dancers who had been circling off to the sides backflipped in side by side and cut into the center. The phase shifted. Among them, a woman in a helmet showed off fluid movement, then slipped into an air track as smoothly as water.
"Inuyama's the best!"
The Great Auditorium rang with the audience's ecstatic screams. Then, as if showing off her long legs, she spun a headspin and threaded a windmill through it. The speed was slow. She covered it with flexible breaking that snared every eye.
When Tae-il stared at the dancing as if spellbound, Sakuya grumbled.
"Should I learn to dance too?"
"Know your limits, idiot Sakuya."
While Rena tapped Sakuya on the shin, the dance ended and the dancers leapt down off the stage. Just as Tae-il had predicted, it was a back tumble.
Whoaaa!
The audience startled. The crowd had packed in thicker than expected, leaving only a narrow space to dance, but the dancers, plainly used to it, calmly showed off whatever breaking each of them trusted most. With so little room they used fewer power moves and more motions that twisted the body like a worm, over and over. The audience didn't hold back applause or gasps at the bizarre, wondrous steps. The performers waiting on the next stage were no different.
Riding everyone's cheers, the Dance Club's stage came to an end.
Aigoo...
Watching Yoo Ha-na fuss and gush like a fool from the very front of the stage, Tae-il gave a bitter smile.
We'll have to put on a good one too.
He made up his mind. A stage cool enough not to fall behind the Dance Club and the overwhelming performance they had just delivered.
"Oh yeah! Great! Good! A little disappointing there weren't more girl dancers, but it was still amaz—hack!"
"The next act is the Cheerleading Club."
Collared by Lily, Ueno vanished on the spot.
The stage that had been dark, and dazzling enough to make you forget the dark, gave way to lighting that was fresh and bright. Cheerleaders with pom-poms in their hands climbed up, bright smiles on their faces, hands waving gently. The boys in the crowd went pink.
"Shin?"
"Hey, I didn't even make a face...?"
Ayane grabbed Tae-il's face and stared him down, as if to say he was to look only at her.
"Rena, now that I think about it, why is demand for cheerleader outfits lower than tennis outfits in Japan?"
"Why are you asking me..."
"It has to be because of the image that W University created..."
"Hey!"
Rena smacked Sakuya on the head.
Once the Wind Ensemble, the Dance Club, the Cheerleading Club, the Chorus Club, and the rest had finished, the Light Music Club's stages began in earnest.
First up was Hawaiian Pizza Heaven, the act with the most stage experience in the club. They played one original and two covers. Seasoned as they were, they understood exactly what a festival was for, and stuck to songs that got people moving. The music was fun. True to the ridiculous band name, the pizza-related lyrics were distinctive. Even Tae-il couldn't help nodding along to their earnest plea against discrimination toward Hawaiian pizza.
"Should I ask those seniors for their contact info later?"
"Shin!? I don't care how good they are—not when you have us. Boys are off-limits...!"
"Stop turning me into some kind of weirdo!"
"Tae-il's BL...? Hmm..."
"Sakuya, don't tell me you read BL too...?"
"Yeah. My older cousin writes it. Rena, if you don't want to hand him off to someone else, how about a version where we get TS'd and Tae-il's the partner?"
"I-I'll think about it..."
"Rena!?"
The moment Rena showed the faintest hint of actually considering it, Tae-il was aghast.
"Everyone, quiet!"
Iris hushed them.
"Next stage."
They looked. Unlike the band before them, Unlogic Band was visibly tense. Tae-il dug through his memory of rehearsal.
"That's the one, right? The band with Iris's classmate..."
"Yeah. That's them."
Iris had her arms crossed, pretending to be calm, but her index finger kept tapping anxiously at her own forearm.
"Worried about her?"
"A little... no. A lot."
It was only a small festival held at school. Aside from gear and a sound check, there was no time to hope for a proper rehearsal. In that frantic window they had been busier locking in as a band than checking sound. They were anxious. More than whether their music would reach the audience, their own mistakes were what stuck in their eyes.
Iris was anxious. In Hashimoto, she caught a glimpse of her own past.
"Don't worry too much."
"Shin Tae-il...?"
Tae-il undid her folded arms and lightly took her hand. Unlike hers, gone cold with nerves, his was warm.
"Trust them."
Just as Iris was recalling her first stage, Tae-il recalled his.
"Their situation and yours are completely different."
"Different...?"
"You'll see."
He grinned, shameless, and jerked his chin toward the stage.
Was it thanks to him? Iris watched with anxiety in one half of her and expectation in the other.
Kudo Satoshi, Unlogic Band's leader and a second-year senior, took the microphone.
"W-we're Unlogic Band. A brand-new band from Yuuma High, fresh out of the oven."
When the leader stammered with nerves, a soft ripple of laughter rose from the seats. His gaze darted uneasily, this way and that. Perilous at a glance.
"That one looks a little unsteady..."
"You see it too?"
"Yeah. Maybe it's their first time on a live stage?"
"It could be."
Unlike everyone who had taken the stage so far, their bearing was painfully awkward. Every shrinking movement was cautious, as if they had no idea how they looked to the audience and were worried about it. The ease that had come off Hawaiian Pizza Heaven, up just before them, was nowhere on these kids.
"Well, we don't really have any original songs..."
His voice badly short on confidence, Kudo forced a smile anyway, awkward as it was.
"So we'll just play something everybody probably knows!"
A shout somewhere between a rallying cry and a scream, and the audience met them with light applause. Everyone knew. Their stage might not be anywhere near as good as what had come before. Most of the hall had probably sensed it already.
But no one was going to look unkindly on a challenge made in the middle of youth.
"One, two..."
A light click of drumsticks, and the guitar raked out a flashy line. An intro that any Korean, and plenty of Japanese besides, would have heard before.
"Oh."
Sakuya grinned, poked Tae-il in the side, and whispered at his ear.
"Tae-il, evolve me."
"Nnrgh..."
He glared, but the song went on. A piece you could make difficult if you wanted it difficult, and easy if you wanted it easy. If anything, the singing might be harder than the playing.
But a mistake landed.
Ah.
Hashimoto, the band's guitarist, flubbed the sliding passage and let out a sour note. It was the sort of slip that could freeze a person solid, but her hands didn't stop. Even after the flub, she kept playing. Simple backing, the chorus figures—she forced her way through all of it somehow. Her head never came up. Her shoulders drew in by degrees, every nerve gone into the eyes tracking the fretboard and into her fingers.
The deeper a player sinks into a world of their own, the less of anything around them makes it into view. The drums that were supposed to hold the band up had already slipped off the beat, speeding, then slowing, then speeding again. The bass, having lost the pocket, was yanked around by those off-beats and spent its time glancing nervously this way and that.
The rhythm tangled. Once the rhythm tangled, the melody went astray. And once the whole performance started to come apart, confusion reached the inexperienced vocalist too.
Am I even singing this right?
He flailed, unable to tell which groove he was meant to follow. It was a hard song to sing, one that had to be delivered exactly as practiced, but he was trying so hard that his breath snarled on its own. Breath snarled, and the high notes that had climbed so cleanly at the start began to crack, pitiful and raw.
It was a disaster from every angle.
Ah. This could have been us...
Iris swallowed. Unlike her, who had ignored a band falling apart and fought through to the end of a song alone, this vocalist was being dragged by the rhythm and looked hard-pressed even to finish. Even so, he sang. Whenever a gap opened he glanced back at the others, sending them a look, and forced his way through his part. They had no spare moment to look at the audience. Unlogic Band was fighting a desperate battle in a world that held no one but them.
Even a heart this dear feels as if it might be cast aside...
Bearing the weight of being leader across his shoulders, he took back his original pace, step by careful step. The sound steadied. Hashimoto, who had been drifting off on her own, returned to the beat once the drums and bass locked together.
But the song was already running toward its end. Too late to salvage. Even so, thinking that the ending, at least, ought to be beautiful, the vocalist belted it out.
If the song they sang was telling the truth, then even awkward wings, stained with an image that only seemed about to stay, would surely be able to fly.
Two songs. Only two, and still the wreck of a stage was over. Coming down, Hashimoto wore a look both relieved and full of lingering regret, complicated and hard to name.
"G-good work... Hashimoto."
"Haha. Yeah..."
Iris asked carefully.
"You okay?"
"Haha. Honestly, I don't really know either..."
The strength went out of Hashimoto's legs, and she started to sink; her bandmates caught her.
"Ah, thank you, senpai..."
"Forget it. You're gonna talk to your friend, right? How long am I supposed to hold you up?"
"I-I can stand on my own now!"
"That so?"
The senior gave a bitter smile and let her go.
"Take your time. We'll go on ahead and rest."
"Okay..."
Arms around one another's shoulders, leaning on each other because they had to, they left the stage. Hashimoto soothed a heart that was still pounding and faced Iris head-on. She didn't avoid her eyes the way she used to.
"That question from before, Arisugawa..."
"Yeah."
"Honestly, I'm not okay at all."
It bears repeating. Band people—no, musicians of every kind—are almost too good at seeing themselves clearly.
Regret. Once you have stepped off a stage, that feeling only grows sharper. If I had practiced more. If I had tried harder. If I had taken it more seriously. A guilt that calls itself regret bites its own tail and worries at you without pause. And then you understand. A stage without regret is an arrogant goal, sitting on a height you can barely see.
Hashimoto's eyes brimmed.
"Hhk... it all tangled because of me, didn't it... and that—sniff. I'm so frustrated, and so angry..."
Her fist trembled. The anger was aimed at herself.
"I..."
Hashimoto sniffled and wiped her tears.
"I'm going to play at the next Cultural Festival too..."
"Hashimoto?"
"And that time I'll play better than I did today, so even after the seniors graduate, they can look back on a festival stage and be glad they were there..."
Her eyes were still wet after she wiped them. But there was a stubborn will in them.
"You wait until then."
"What? Wait—!"
Before Iris could catch her, Hashimoto bolted as if she were running away. She ran in the direction her seniors had already gone.
"See? I told you. She'd be fine."
"Shin Tae-il..."
Tae-il, who had been standing there quiet as a folding screen, shrugged as if to say look at that.
"Congratulations. You've already got yourself a rival."
"Hey..."
"You're not more burdened and nervous because of her, are you?"
"..."
Iris bowed her head and looked at her own hands. The hands that turned to ice whenever she got nervous were slowly getting their warmth back.
"Haha."
She laughed, hollow, and lifted her head. Tae-il was there. Shameless, he was looking at her with a smile on his face.
All at once, a small desire rose in Iris. She wanted to thoroughly ruin that unbearably smug, leisurely face. And dye it her own color.
"Hey."
She seized his face in both hands.
"Huh?"
Some familiar sensation, and his face flooded with foreboding all on its own. His eyes rolled fast, catching the urgency. Vision that narrowed whenever he got nervous widened now, in this one moment, like a chameleon's.
Over her shoulder. The members, staring this way in shock.
"H-hey, hold on a second? Miss Iris? That's not what you're about to—mpf!?"
An unfamiliar heat crashed into his frantic breath. The heat came with a sour-sweet scent of cherry. It was, without question, the scent of a dessert that had been packed into the tiered box Iris prepared—one Tae-il didn't particularly like, and had never once brought to his mouth.