Eve Festival (3)

A live house is a cradle of birth, and a graveyard.

It is where countless indie bands—clumsy, and burning—rise, fade, and are forgotten. As with a person's fate, the season in which a band succeeds is different for every one of them. But whatever the ending, those who fail have always seemed far more numerous than those who succeed.

Izumi had been watching bands since she was small. It never stopped being strange. The world of bands was a truly uncanny thing. In an industry this bleak, recognition ought to have been nothing but skill. And yet, contrary to what she had believed, a band did not necessarily survive just because it was good.

We lived through it ourselves.

For a school band, BARD had been excellent, and aside from Yahiro—clumsy then, because he was a beginner—there had been nothing in them worth faulting. Even so, they had failed once. Outstanding vocals and outstanding playing had pulled a brief roar of response out of a room, and they had been unable to hold that response, let alone grow it.

They knew the cause now.

Greed. Ideals set too high, and no eyes for reality: the catastrophe brought on by an amateur's artist-mind, the hunger to be acknowledged for a color that belonged to no one else. Back then, compromise had not existed for them. Izumi had been overconfident in skill. She had forgotten that the world was littered with people who possessed brilliance and still withered without ever blooming.

It was hard.

The recoil, for having believed they were certain to succeed, was more enormous than she could have imagined. Pride that had stood so high shattered to pieces. The cohesion of a band made by inexperienced, unripe youths dropped off a cliff. Failure, repeated, evaporated the trust between members.

What is the cause of this, exactly?

I'm doing fine.

Maybe it's their fault?

The one hurt most deeply in that process was Yahiro, whose skill lagged furthest behind. But he endured. Blisters rose, burst, and blood pooled in his hands, and with that effort—and with the results of it—he proved himself. Even so, his effort had nearly been sealed away in shadow forever, before it ever saw the light.

They pulled themselves together. One last challenge, attempted under the name of greed. A nuance similar to before, and yet different. The people willing to listen to songs so soaked in lingering regret were fewer even than they had been. And yet they were not none.

One young boy acknowledged them, and cheered for them. If it had ended there, that would have been one thing. The boy had readily left in their hands a sum that was, plain as day, a fortune to him, calling it payment for good music, and then he had gone.

It ached. The price of being recognized for the very first time was pain. It was sorrow. But it was hope, too. Because the boy had told them that their band—that their music—had been worth that much.

We compromised for the first time.

Compromise became the foothold of BARD's success, and the timing was uncanny. They were a band that had taken a retro style—a reminiscence of glorious old days—and brought it back to life, fitted to the present. Rough-hewn, and yet full of feeling. Honest, and yet direct. Joy, anger, sorrow, delight: the feelings that are so hard to show in ordinary life, all of it spit out through the means of a song.

What kind of song are you going to sing...?

She closed her eyes. A melody came to her, bouncy and brilliant. It was not perfect. But the beat was so tightly woven, so packed with ambition, that it seemed doubtful beginners ought to be playing it at all. Performed clumsily, it would have ended in nothing but a string of mistakes.

Tales Tale did not play it clumsily.

Perfect kal-bak.

In the Great Auditorium, packed shoulder to shoulder, the pulse of a drum in flawless time tickled the soles of Izumi's feet.

Honjo Rena. The particular gift of a girl whose frame was far too slight to look like a drummer's was obsession. As if she were declaring completeness, declaring flawlessness, Rena was quietly mad for the act of expressing her own desire. Kal-bak was the proof of it: an utterly stable world, made by the pathological fixation of the girl called Honjo Rena. A world in which iron law executed the beat.

Different from Akitora.

The gap in power was as stark as the gap in build. And yet it was the same miracle—an unimaginable sound being born out of that small body. Not a single slip reached the ear. Not a single snag. There was no waver. She understood, perfectly, that the drums are a band's root and its pillar. She had forced it into being: a utopia in which every member of Tales Tale could run wild without fear. That slight girl had done it alone.

Subtle...

Izumi could see Tae-il's intention in the song.

He built this with obsessive care for the balance.

So the weight would not fall on the girl named Rena, Tae-il had portioned out the drum part with cold calculation. Her scarlet gaze shifted, and found him.

The others were doing whatever they could to face the house—to play, to sing, while looking out. He alone had sunk completely into a world of his own. He concentrated on the performance as if someone like him had not the slightest need to care about stage manners, or about anything else.

Of all the bands that had taken the stage so far, only one had touched a keyboard, and whether that one had simply been a kid who played a little piano, all they had done was run a sweet, bouncing melody line. Tae-il was different. He did not stand out, not really, and yet he was secretly hauling the mood of the entire song, covering rhythm guitar as well, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tuning the piece as a whole. His shoulders looked so reliable it was hard to believe this was the same boy who had been staggering across the stage only a little while ago.

But even he could not be perfect.

Ah.

Each time the beat slipped, by inches, Izumi ached with it. One clear mistake... no. Two. And a few more besides those. Playing two parts at once, his mistakes came the most often. Even so, he never broke the larger flow.

How...?

Izumi was astonished. The audience might not have caught it, but the people sharing that stage would have known ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Tae-il's mistakes at once. An indie band with so little live experience ought to have shaken.

They aren't shaking at all.

The girl called Sakuya ran her eyes over her own playing and over the band, and still she never lost her ease. When her part rose to the front, she came all the way to the lip of the stage in a crisp, disciplined posture, and she did not forget to play to the crowd. Ayane looked a little pressed. In her solo especially—where she had to carry melody with tapping laced through harmonics, rather than simply ferrying root notes—the time slipped, just slightly. Her hands still felt not quite loose. But her nerve was solid. Even when she missed by a hair she did not panic, and according to the rules the girl Rena had set, she found her own pace again almost at once.

Solid. The bond running from member to member was something else entirely.

Last of all, Izumi looked at Iris.

Red eyes, full of a hot and fervent feeling, staring straight ahead—and Izumi met them head-on. Heat broke over her in a rush. The distance between stage and seats was no small one, and still a considerable blaze crashed down on her.

"Ha."

A hollow laugh slipped out of her. Rapture. All that came off the girl was rapture.

Yahiro whispered.

"Those kids are something, aren't they?"

"Yeah."

Izumi nodded. Astonishingly, she herself was nowhere in Iris's eyes. A true fan, she had called herself—and yet she was so like Tae-il that it was hard to believe this was the same girl who had burned with rivalry toward him, fan number zero.

"That kid is completely lost in a world of her own."

"Oh. Is she?"

"...Idiot, Yahiro."

"Hey, I don't really get vocals..."

Izumi shot him a glare, then turned back to the stage. She was drinking her fill of it: the feelings of a girl lost in the song and in love, and of a boy who had come to know that he loved. From a true voice packed solid, enormous energy blasted outward. A violence of sound that even gear cheaper than what BARD took onstage could not conceal struck the ear clean and bright. Izumi clutched at her own chest. Breathing was heavy. That young girl had taken the stage of the Great Auditorium and subdued it completely.

The high note—a pitch, and a scream, that the structure of a woman's throat is simply built to throw more easily than a man's.

The girl let out a scream bright with joy. A high note that pierced the sky began, little by little, to bring down the world that had caged her true heart and her voice. The cramped world marked off by iron bars collapsed, and a new sky opened: a new world, where flowers and wind and the moon remained. A bird slipped free of the world that had bound her, spread her wings wide, and flew the dim sky on an easy beat of those wings. Far off, the sun. Beyond the horizon. A red sun, calling in a blue dawn.

Day broke. It brightened the way the future waiting for the girl would brighten. The owner of the cage, woken from sleep, was surely looking for her by now, but the girl did not go back. From the very beginning—because there had never been a place to return to. Free of the psychological prison, she flew stubbornly on, straight for the place she had set as her goal.

The bird sang. Like a giddy mood, the corners of her mouth refused to come down.

A happy memory, bright and glad, blanketed a horrific nightmare packed with trauma until not a scrap of it showed.

A heart too full to hide even behind a generous chest, she blazoned to the whole wide world.

Inside a gasping breath, she felt his warmth.

As the song ended, Iris was certain. At the back of her head she felt a gaze hotter and fiercer than all the eyes of the hundreds of people out there. And the reason she felt it that way was obvious.

Black raindrops fell from the ceiling. One. And then a second. Every time Tae-il's hands pressed the keys, the black bean sprouts of the notation dropped away beneath him. A tone that was quiet, spare, and clear. The slow melody spilling from the keyboard raised ripples across a still surface.

Emotion. Of all instruments, the one that carries a player's feeling most easily is still the piano. Only a few bars. No introduction at all—Tae-il had gone straight into the next song—and from those few bars alone, the room understood at once that what Iris was about to sing would not be something bright and rushing, like the Autumn Love Song she had just finished.

Once that sorrowful air had formed, a voice thick with appeal completed it. The low register. Iris, who had been throwing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high notes as easily as breathing, let her eyes fall half-open and dropped her voice. Heavy, and yet plain, she sang. As if giving shape to a boy's inner self that had crumbled like a dream, she held her own feeling in check.

And then, beneath the vocal, the melody that had been nothing but calm and monotonous slowly began to change.

The words ended. To announce that the intro was over and the song itself was beginning, Sakuya raked the strings hard and surged forward. Like a rock band. A rough guitar riff that had not lost its passion foreshadowed where the song was going, and set expectation alight.

No one had cut the power, and still Iris's voice sank smaller and smaller, as if a breath were going out. It was coming.

Now...!

Rena, who had been counting the beat in her head as perfectly as a metronome, struck the drums with everything she had. Iris's voice, sunk deep as if drowned in the sea, began little by little to come loose.

Dreams are like that. The grander they are, the sooner you resign yourself to never reaching them—and still you cannot bring your hand to let go.

To those in despair, rain is cold and damp.

A downpour feels foul. A sunshower is not strong enough to wash a feeling like this away. People in despair have a way of shifting the blame off themselves and onto someone else, or onto everything around them. The voice of the song, turning failure over and over, runs from reality. Something has already collapsed. They know it has collapsed, and still they dig in and refuse to accept it.

I was the same.

A hand slick with sweat pressed the keys softly. Strength ran into it until it trembled, and still he governed every shade of loud and soft, carrying the sound into whatever came next. Tae-il had been a human figure no different from them.

Maybe I still am.

But a miracle that did not exist for other people had happened to him.

Don't wake. Don't wake. If this was a dream, he did not care if he died; he wanted to stay shut inside this world forever.

Anyway...

Ten years had passed. Even with his hands on the keys, Tae-il remembered it clearly: amber eyes that had looked straight at him, lucid, even while his mind was gone with a miracle common sense could not accept. A gaze that shook with fear and still reached for him, because it did not want to be abandoned. He had not been able to look away. The scale, which not even a girlfriend had been able to tip, had tilted for the first time. Because she had brought a meaning to life into a machine that, broken once, had done nothing but dream.

Iris reached a hand forward.

Her hand closed on empty air. No.

She had grasped a shadow that cannot be grasped. Of course. A long shadow cannot be held, so it slipped her touch and was etched, vivid, across the back of her hand. From that point, the song turned fierce. A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠melody that had been plain suddenly grew passionate, and the rhythm quickened. The pitch of Iris's singing climbed several steps higher than before.

Even when the scale tips, the work a person does stays the same. Inception. Inside a dream, he went on dreaming another dream.

Whatever it is, the first time is the hard one. After the first surrender, the second had come quickly. Even when regret surged too late, he made room for the excuse that it was already too late, and he turned thoroughly away from his own fault, consoling himself that a life like this was not so bad. But in a corridor where the sunset was going down—in the moment he came face to face with the delusion—he understood that he could no longer run.

Because it was you.

The scale, which had seemed as if it would never swing back, began to tip the other way again.