The Finale
Ting!
"Ah."
Taeil flinched at the sound. He had barely plucked the string again before he felt it—he was reaching his limit.
"Gonna have to change these strings soon."
He worked the tuning pegs for all he was worth, but a tone that had already gone sour refused to come back the way he wanted. Left with no other choice, he clamped on a capo and patched over the damage as best he could, pick gripped in his right hand.
"Mm-hm-hm."
He hummed the melody that rose to him on its own, then settled in and began to play in earnest.
The season I met you...
The lyric was tender, because the speaker had been changed into a girl. A nurse with band experience had helped him a great deal with it.
A new song. The Season Snow Fell.
After Autumn Love Song and Sunshower, the reaction when they sang this one from the stage had been nothing short of overwhelming. Iris sang of love without raising her voice, reciting the mournful words with an aching tenderness. It stood in clear contrast to Sunshower, the song just before it. If Sunshower was murky, The Season Snow Fell was brighter, greener, more youthful. Much of Taeil's own color had been stripped out of it. None of a loser's particular gaze was in there—no despair, no bitterness, none of those dark feelings at all.
And yet.
Maybe it was the melody. The song stayed strangely sorrowful, hinting at tragedy, keeping a listener's heart drawn tight from the first note to the last. Where Sunshower drowned you in feeling, emotion pouring over like a flood, this one held every feeling strictly in check. That didn't mean there was no joy in it. Winter was in it, and the overwhelming fullness of a beloved girl who had only just begun a shy, youthful love.
He let the pick fall without thinking, and his fingers took the strings. The humming stopped. Inside his head, only the words Iris had sung kept playing back.
Iris sang it so much better than the guide track.
Better than he had hoped. Overwhelming enough that he would feel guilty keeping the promise he'd made to the nurse—to let her hear it once the song was finished.
Still. It's all right.
Even he, who used to stake his life on a melody out of sheer inferiority, hadn't forced this one. All of it had been for the sake of lifting the vocal. Sit quietly and listen, and the plan had succeeded beautifully.
Because Iris is the lead.
To lay the vocal's purity bare, Taeil had cut every melody that felt like too much, then cut it again, and cut it once more. Along the way, without ever meaning to, he had stripped the other members of their parts entirely. It was a song that lived on acoustic guitar and piano, so there had been no helping it. He still felt a little sorry.
I always wanted us to do it together, but...
Taeil killed his own greed. This song was not some private feeling, not an act of self-realization. It was a tribute written entirely for Iris, and the lyrics were the same.
Autumn Love Song had sung a boy's extraordinary days. For a boy just beginning to love, every moment of meeting the girl had been special. Even if the two of them were to break apart someday, he would never forget the moment he was bound to her—not until he died. The sweetest memory of his life, and the one that would strike the deepest.
The girl was different. The days she spent with the boy were never as special as what the boy felt, because time with him was, for her, simply an ordinary piece of daily life. That was why the song stayed calm. And yet hidden inside it was a joy so vast, so full, that even the boy's feelings could not cover it.
"..."
He leaned his head against the wall. Staring blankly up at the water-stained pattern of the ceiling, he thought of Iris.
"Incredible."
There had been a guide recording, and even the nurse had failed to catch what Taeil wanted, not perfectly. Iris had. She had seized exactly what he had hoped she would reveal in singing the song, and she had given voice to all of it. The hand on the guitar slowed, then stopped. Iris's shy face rose in front of him, and Rena's advice rang through his head like a voice that wasn't there. The corner of his mouth lifted.
That was when Ayane came into the room, her hair still half-wet.
"Shin-chan, you're still practicing? I could hear the guitar from outside."
"Just finished."
Taeil set the guitar aside and sat on the edge of the bed, patting the space in front of him.
"Come here. I'll dry your hair."
"Hehe."
Ayane broke into a grin and hopped over, settling softly in front of him. Lately Rena had been stealing her away more often than not, but Taeil's arms, and his lap, had originally been her seat alone. Ayane's hair was stiff with water; when he pressed his hand into it, his fingers came away damp.
"Winter's almost here, you know. Keep skipping the dryer and you'll catch a cold."
"Heh. You're gonna dry it for me anyway, Shin-chan."
"Oh, I'm sure I am."
He took his time, working a towel through her damp hair. By the time the towel had drunk up the moisture and the chill lingering against her scalp was gone, he had the hair dryer plugged in. It whirred to life, and lukewarm air sent her hair fluttering.
"Not too hot?"
"Mm."
"How was the Cultural Festival today?"
"Total victory for Ayane-chan!"
"Hey! You almost shoved your head into the dryer just now!"
"Ehehe!"
Ayane folded the arm she had flung up and laughed, loose and silly. Well. It had been a grand victory. In the show where you could actually get in and spar, Ayane had posted a win rate pushing eighty percent. Even against Sakuya, it hadn't been close.
Once Sakuya finished her stamp rally, Tales Tale had gone on enjoying the Cultural Festival to their hearts' content straight through the afternoon. After four, when the ordinary visitors cleared out, the place belonged to the students. They spent the shorter lines on the gaps between things, and since the day had turned out this way anyway, the rest of the members entered the raffle for Sakuya while they were at it. Sakuya, having seen Yuuya's luck at the gambling hall, had begged with particular desperation.
"Senpai, if you just win, I'll be your doormat, so please, I beg you...!"
"Ah, you really don't have to..."
"Ooh! How can anyone be so merciful... I love you, Yuuya-senpai! I love you!"
"Hmph. So Sakuya's love is something an expensive limited-edition pair of sneakers can settle?"
"Ayane! It gets weird when you say it like that!"
"Does it not?"
"It doesn't! Taeil! You believe me, right?"
"Excuse me? Why is the arrow suddenly pointing at me again...?"
It had been chaotic enough to produce a commotion like that. Even so, it was fun. They split time they didn't have and pushed practice back, and still they stacked the day full of happy memories. There was a little regret in it, but that was fine. Tales Tale still had two whole Cultural Festivals left.
"We've got the know-how for having fun now. Next year, let's enjoy it even more. On the stage, and under it."
"...Yeah!"
Ayane smiled, bright as the sun.
The third day of the Cultural Festival at Yuuma High School. Daytime, when the crowd pressed in so thick that no one had attention to spare for anyone else's face. Unexpected guests slipped onto the Yuuma grounds.
"Sarina, is this really the place?"
"It is."
"My god. Live long enough and you end up debuting at a school right in the middle of its Cultural Festival."
In order, from the top: Goto Hina, Mizukawa Sarina, and Todo Aki. The tail end of autumn, and the members of BIG O PUMPKIN—a seasonal band that took the stage only for a limited run around Halloween. Sarina, her striking looks hidden under a newsboy cap and sunglasses, opened a pamphlet.
"If we've got time, should we look around too?"
"Us? Wouldn't it be a little undignified, crashing a bunch of kids' Cultural Festival?"
"Hina, we're still in our twenties."
Sarina pushed back against Hina's pessimism. All three of them were in their mid-twenties now. Too old for idols, maybe, but for a band it was the very heart of their prime. Aki grinned and worked a lollipop around her mouth.
"Let it go, Hina. We ought to be understanding."
"The one person here with the least empathy is suddenly overflowing with it...?"
"Well, of course. Our Sarina is Sanatang, the idol who transcends age."
"Aki!"
Sarina flushed and seized Aki by the shoulders, shaking her back and forth. Telling the members had already been mortifying. Having it turned into ammunition was going to be the death of her.
"Ahaha! Don't like it? You know what to do!"
"Fine! I'll buy you a drink! Something expensive! Happy!?"
"Heheh. I've been craving the pricey stuff lately. That Dom Pérignon? That whatever-it-is."
"Know your limit, Aki! I'm broke too!"
Idols. No—the music business had always been like this. The money never held still, and Sarina, playing only as a seasonal band, was no exception. Maybe because the band wasn't her real job. They were migratory birds of a band: pull in a solid haul all at once in autumn, then live off it as traveling money for the year that followed. The others had at least found work and earned in earnest. Sarina, once her savings were set aside, had burned the rest on idol work. So this debut was a serious gamble for her.
Major.
Can we actually pull this off...?
The songs were good. If they had kept to autumn the way they always had, she wouldn't have been anxious at all. The anxiety refused to leave.
This isn't the end...
They had already settled the rest of their schedule with the agency, album concept and all. Not only autumn. From here on, BIG O PUMPKIN would work all four seasons, the full three hundred and sixty-five days, with set stretches of rest between.
"Ah, I'm shaking!"
Hina pressed her trembling hands together and laughed too freely, like something in her had come loose.
"Suddenly I want a cigarette. And it had to be a school... tch."
In place of the smoke that was part of her routine, Aki tucked a candy into her mouth. The nerves showed on all of them.
"Haa..."
Sarina let out a sigh. BIG O PUMPKIN. A truly niche concept, and still, through all the work, they had built a fandom piece by piece. She was grateful to them. To catch one of those brief, glittering lives, fans fought through brutal competition, stood in line, and met them at the stage. And that lovable fandom was forever under fire from other fandoms and from antis.
"Our band can play!"
"That's right! We could go major. We just don't!"
"Hear, hear! I heard they even signed!"
Whenever the Pumpkins rose to defend the band, there was always a crowd licking its chops. They must have made a very convenient punching bag.
Today...
A chance to show a senior's dignity to the junior coming up behind her, and a chance to pay the fans back.
No mistakes.
She set her heart and they made for the student council room. Sights kept catching their eyes along the way: a feast of booths that might have been a festival, and banners in every color blanketing the outer walls of the main building. It was the third day, though, and the morning crowd was thinner than expected. Aki was the one to say so.
"Not many people. Yuuma's Cultural Festival is huge online. I thought it'd be packed."
"Day three fills up in the afternoon, I heard."
"The afternoon?"
"Yeah. Today they're keeping every show open to outside guests until late."
It was a Friday, as it happened. Take a half-day and there would still be people willing to come, and there were quite a lot of that sort.
"Everybody's having fun..."
Aki looked back on old days as if she missed them. Cultural festivals. Bands, too. Anyone who had been in a band since their school years carried the same kind of memory, and nothing more so than a live show in a room clumsily hung with black plastic until it almost felt like a live house. Watching the crowds, the three of them headed for the main building.
The first floor. The nurse's office, the student council room, and the faculty office were all clustered there, so this side at least was quieter. The student council room was where BIG O PUMPKIN was bound.
"Hey, Sarina."
Hina, who played guitar, linked arms between Aki and Sarina.
"This isn't the live house where you first debuted. Why did you choose to debut here?"
"Just..."
Sarina let the answer trail away. A boy's face came up in front of her. The edited busking video on iTube, unlike the one on TokTik, had been cut with a proper balance, and she had stared straight through Taeil in it. He had been trying so hard. In the wider frame he somehow failed to stand out, and yet the moment you caught him, strangely, there was no one else to see. Hands that never stopped, a head that never thought to lift—he looked like someone who had fallen into a world of his own. But he was catching the others' mistakes as they happened and covering them. He hadn't fallen into a world of his own. Or maybe...
Maybe the band is already Taeil's whole world.
It made her proud. She could feel the boy's desperate resolve all the way through her. Stories have power—the kind that stirs a person. Sarina knew the boy's story, the one people didn't know yet, and knowing it stirred her whether she wished it or not.
And so.
"I'm jealous, you know. Of being the thing that sparks someone."
Like an adult. Like a teacher. For the sake of a cheeky student and junior—and more than that, for her own sake—Sarina steadied the tremor in her chest.
"I..."
The words left her, and a bitter smile rose before she knew it.
"I wanted to be someone's spark. Just once."
It would feel good. Nothing but pride, nothing but joy. The same way it felt when fans took even a flawed stage in stride and called for an encore with everything they had.