Chapter One
Fall 1990

Beer sloshed over the rim of the can that You crashed against Satoru’s as they toasted, and the guitarist quickly brought it to his mouth, up the foam that fizzed out. He then the side of the beer can and his hand to catch the droplets which had been in danger of dropping to the floor. 

Ren, already drunk, was sleeping on the worn-down futon in Satoru’s tiny apartment. Yoshikazu had disappeared after the four men had been kicked out of a nearby izakaya for being too rowdy. That had done little to kill Satoru’s mood. It had been a few months since he had joined You’s group and found out, oddly enough, that they got on decently. The band’s bassist had never returned, Yoshikazu having mentioned something about the guy needing money from a real job, and so Ren had taken the spot permanently. 

Tonight had been the first time Satoru had gotten paid from a venue for playing music. It was barely enough to cover the cost of the beer they had bought afterwards, but it was something. It was a start. And Satoru had seemed excited enough by it.

“I have a question for you,” You said to his new friend, his words starting to show the slightest evidence of a slur. 

“What is it?” Satoru asked, tapping the side of his can of beer in an attempt to coax out the last few drops. The empty can then joined the growing pile of aluminum in the corner. 

“Did you sleep with Saki?”

Satoru laughed. “Uhhh…. Kinda?”

“What’s that mean?”

“I mean, I tried but…”

“What, she rejected you?” You questioned, eyebrows raised in surprise. 

“No, she… she wouldn’t stop talking.”

You blinked slowly, and then burst out laughing. “Oh my god, with you too?”

“Is this a regular occurrence?” Satoru asked in curiosity, taking the new full can of beer that was handed to him by You.

“Oh yeah. She wants to chat the whole way through, every time.”

Satoru chuckled, cracking open the beer and down a mouthful. It was not as cold as when they had bought the six-pack at the convenience store next to his apartment, but it was still cool enough to run smoothly down his throat. 

“What was her topic of the evening?” You questioned, leaning forward.

Satoru was quiet for a moment, taking another sip of alcohol and figuring out the best way to respond. “You.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. She was pissed off at you, which was probably why she went with me.”

“I don’t know.” You shook his head in amusement. “You turned out to be a pretty charming guy. Shockingly. For a punk.” He had to dodge an empty aluminum can that was chucked at his head in retaliation. “So, what happened?”

“I lost it,” Satoru muttered. You’s confused look prompted Satoru to sigh and then repeat his words with a little more inflection. “I lost it.”

It only took a moment, but when recognition of the meaning spread across You’s face, the guitarist began laughing. “You lost it?!”

“Kinda a mood-killer, don’t you think?” Satoru snapped as You fell to the floor, clutching as his sides in an attempt to contain the pain in his ribs. “It’s not that funny! I didn’t exactly want to be picturing you as I was trying to revenge screw your girlfriend.”

You continued to laugh, “You didn’t want to include me in on the action?”

“If I was going to be fantasizing about men, you would not be the first one to come to mind!” 

“You fantasize about men?” You teased, finally able to pick himself up off the floor as his giggles subsided. 

“Go choke on your beer.”

He almost did. “See? Charming for a punk.”

Satoru smiled around the can that he was still drinking his way through. “When did you learn to play guitar?”

“Beginning of high school.”

“Why?”

“To impress girls.”

“Typical.”

“What about you then, with the drums?”

“Beginning of high school.”

“Why?”

“To impress girls.”

“Hypocrite.”

The combined sound of their laughs filled the tiny apartment.

“Why drums?”

Satoru ran a hand through his dark hair, tilting his head back, his eyes sliding shut. “My parents were music teachers. They forced me to play piano. For years and years. Most of my childhood I only listened to classical music. And enka… Then in school, I got exposed to rock… And I wanted to get as far away from classical as I could.”

You did not say anything, his eyes fixed on Satoru’s form. His young companion was leaning back, his hands flat on the floor behind him, arms holding his back up in a slight arch. His legs were crossed at the ankles, and his heels pulled almost all the way in to his groin. You doubted he could accomplish a pose like that in a million years. 

“So, in junior high, I followed one of the older guys to the music room. And there was a drum kit there. All the instruments I had seen before were so… mellow. And here was this guy playing drums. They had such a force, such… violence. I had no idea you could make music like that. I thought it was amazing. And I wanted to be just as good as this guy was. Or better. And I guess I wanted to do something that was totally against my parent’s intentions. That impression stayed with me, so when I got access to a drum kit in high school, I learned. ”

“Wait, you taught yourself?”

“Pretty much?”

You exhaled deeply, not sure if the stir in his chest was jealousy or just him being drunk and impressed. Hard to believe someone who played as well as Satoru had just taught themselves. “You’re not lying to me?”

“What would be the point of that?”

“Do you still play piano?”

“On occasion.”

“Piano and drums, huh.” You then chuckled with a realization. “No wonder you like X.”

“And guitar.”

This time, You actually choked on his beer. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“Liar.”

“Give me your ing guitar.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Excuse me, but I don’t think playing air guitar would be an adequate display in this situation.”

“Right, right. Next you’re gonna tell me you trumpet too, or something.” The silence and smirk from Satoru made You groan. “You’re a freak.”

“Music teacher parents.”

“Yeah, well… My dad’s a stock broker and you don’t see me rolling around in piles of cash.”

“I could tell from your apartment.”

“It’s a lot better than yours!”

“That’s because I don’t need a whole extra room for photos.”

“I know you like them.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen you look at them.”

“And I’ve seen you look at me. What’s that mean then?”

“Shuuuuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuup.” A low whine interrupted their bickering, and they looked over to see Ren burying his head under a pillow.

The guitarist and drummer fell silent, watching their friend until they heard snores a couple minutes later. Then, their brown eyes met and You was delighted to see the wicked smirk on Satoru’s handsome face.

“What are you thinking?” You whispered, a bit too loudly.

“He’s got a date tomorrow morning.”

“And?”

“Let’s draw a on his face.”

“….I have permanent markers.”

“Perfect.”

Summer 1991

You winced as light streaming in between the cracks of the window curtains assaulted his face. He could feel a heavy throbbing in his head and he swore that there was not a single drop of moisture in his mouth. And it was hot. The light faded, but the pain behind his eyes barely subsided. How much did I drink? 

He weakly ordered his brain to lift his eyelids, wanting to see where he was, but his body refused to listen. It was hard to listen to anything other than the pounding in his ears. He was surprisingly comfortable though, he realized foggily. Whatever was beneath him was soft. So he wasn’t lying on the street somewhere. Yet, he could make out an odd, faint noise coming from somewhere beside him. 

Come on, open. This time, the command worked. Through the small slits his eyelids had granted, he could make out a bedroom. His bedroom. He vaguely remembered spending the evening there with Satoru, playing some drinking game the drummer had invented.

They had been spending a lot of time together lately. Really ever since You had found out that Satoru was not as good on guitar as he had originally made it seem. He had taken a bit of pity on the drummer, watching him fumble a couple of too-complicated chords, and had offered to help Satoru practice. Somehow they had enjoyed each other’s company enough that they never really stopped hanging out after that. Satoru… Satoru had drunk even more than him last night… Where was Satoru? 

Another sound drew You’s blurry gaze down. Satoru was on the floor, curled up on a thin and haphazardly laid out futon. You let his eyes fall shut again. The quiet sleep-sighing coming from the drummer meant he was not dead, which was good. 

His eyes were only shut for what felt like a second when You found himself being assaulted by something soft. However, the longer he kept his eyes closed in protest against this soft assault, the harder and more solid the assault became. Suddenly, he felt a sharp strike to his hipbone. “Ow, what the ?!”

Satoru was standing over him, his long dyed brown hair looking like a rat’s nest and his eyes wide in horror. The man was holding a sofa cushion, which You guessed was the object he had been assaulted with. 

“What?!”

“It’s three.”

You could still feel the pounding in his head, but it was not as bad as before. Instead, he heard a pounding somewhere else. Heavy rain and wind was pelting the window. Hadn’t sunlight been streaming in just before? “And I’m hungover.” 

“We have a show tonight. Our rehearsal starts at three.”

“!”

They raced to the bedroom door and into the kitchen. “Where’s Ren?” Satoru asked, splashing some water from the sink on his face as You tried to shove his guitar into its case.

“I think… I think he went home with Haruka after we left Kenji’s yesterday.”

“Good, he’ll have our then.”

You was scrambling around, trying to collect his keys and his wallet, tossing Satoru’s to the drummer. Satoru, normally an expert at hand-eye coordination, barely managed to catch them. 

Satoru was in the apartment building hallway, and You’s foot was out the door when the phone inside his apartment rang. The two men looked at each other. “Do you wanna—” Satoru started, only to be cut off.

“No time.” The guitarist shut the door and locked it, at the same moment that the click of the answering machine sounded off inside. “Go, go.”

Cheaper rent meant being further away from the train station. By the time they reached it, the late August typhoon had soaked their clothing all the way through. Maybe that was good. You couldn’t imagine that they smelled nice after an entire night of drinking and then sleeping in their clothes in the relentless Japanese summer. 

“When’s the next train?” You’s breath was ragged from running, and he tried to make out the display times as they entered the local station. The roof of the open-air station did hardly anything to stop the rain, which was blowing almost sideways with the force of the wind. 

“Two minutes.”

The guitarist sighed a breath of relief. “Okay. We’ll only be… an hour late?” he estimated, letting his guitar case slip from his back and rest against the station wall next to him. Rain water had started to seep through the thick material, making it heavy. 

“That’s not too bad,” Satoru agreed, looking down the near-empty platform and tracks. There were only a couple other people insane enough to be out in the current weather. “Think anyone is going to actually come?”

“Maybe some people trying to get cover from the rain?”

“That’d be nice. Fresh ears.”

Satoru’s foot was tapping out a rhythm on the concrete of the platform, eyes continuously shifting in the direction the train should arrive from. However, two minutes later, the train had not come. Nor did it arrive after another five. Nor ten.

“Where is it?!” Satoru asked impatiently, staring into the distance as though he could will the train to appear. 

“Hey, look.”

Satoru tore his eyes away from the tracks, seeing a station attendant talking to another person a little further down the platform. His hopes sank as the person nodded and then turned to walk toward the station exit. “Ah, no….” The drummer wanted to say a prayer as the station attendant made his way over to them, only to confirm their fears. 

The tracks had flooded further down the line, they were informed. The trains were stalled. Indefinitely. 

“We can try for a taxi,” You suggested. 

“That’ll cost as much as we make tonight,” Satoru countered in frustration. 

“How about the bus?”

“Maybe.” 

Satoru called out to the attendant, stopping the man who had been making his way back to his regularly stationed position at the entrance booth. In ten minutes. If it was not delayed by the storm. 

However, the bit of hope that had risen back up inside Satoru was crushed only moments later as he turned back to address You with the good news. “You….”

“Yep?”

“….Where is your guitar?”

The tall man jerked around to face the spot where he had set his instrument. The spot was there. The instrument was not. “I put it right here….”

The stream of curses that followed from Satoru’s mouth was a work of art. If he was not preoccupied with the fact that his guitar was inexplicably missing, You may have applauded the creativity. 

“They can’t have gone far.” Without warning, Satoru was off. Meanwhile, You glanced over the side of the tracks and around the area they had been standing. Maybe the wind had blown it somewhere? It was a bit heavy for that, especially with the currently water-logged case. How had they not noticed?

You walked slowly around the station, but he knew that he was kidding himself. Guitars did not walk off by themselves. Not any guitar he could afford, at least. Yet, he still looked deliberately in every crook and corner, wishing for some supernatural game of hide-and-seek that his instrument had decided to play. Maybe someone picked it up by accident? 

He made his way over to the station office, asking if, maybe, by magic, his guitar had already wandered its way into the lost and found. No luck. And the station was too small, too local to have security cameras on the platforms. 

Dejected, You stepped outside the station. Satoru was gone. His guitar was gone. Their chance for a paycheck that night was gone. He walked over to the side of the station gates and slumped back against the wall, letting the rain pour down onto him. He was already wetter than he would be if he had jumped into a lake. The wind made the pellet-sized raindrops sting at his face and his arms. Across the street, he watched the bus come and then go, wheels pushing aside the rivers of water flowing down the dark roadway. 

The guitarist closed his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, staying up all night drinking with Satoru had been a bad idea. His friend seemed to have a knack at attracting trouble. You was certain that he was now banned from every izakaya in a five kilometer radius of his apartment, all thanks to Satoru. Which is why they had been drinking at You’s apartment, and which is why they had gotten so drunk. So drunk. You was not certain, but he thought he remembered them drinking an entire bottle of tequila. Just thinking about it made his head hurt.

“What are you doing?”

Satoru’s deep voice pierced through the sound of the rain and the wind surrounding him. You opened his eyes, to see the drummer standing in front of him… holding his guitar case. You nearly hugged him. 

“Let’s go.”

You slung the straps of his case over his shoulders, making silent promises to the instrument to never let it out of his sight again.

“How’d you—”

“Let’s go,” Satoru repeated firmly. 

You nodded and followed his rescuer to the corner of the main street, both searching for a cab to flag down. When one finally stopped just a few meters from where they waited, You felt a pressure on his bicep. “What?” he asked, as Satoru released his arm. 

“Do you have enough cash?”

The lightness of the wallet in his back pocket provided an answer without You even needing to look. “No. Do you?”

Satoru shook his head. They waited long enough on the corner, without saying anything, for the cabbie to give up and drive off. 

“We’ll walk.”

You would have laughed if it were not for the determination he saw in Satoru’s eyes, underneath the long black eyelashes which kept fluttering to bat away the raindrops accumulating in them. “We’ll never make it.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Satoru had already started walking in the direction of the little bar that they were supposed to be playing at in less than half an hour. You knew, that on a good day, that walk would take an hour at minimum.

They ran the last three kilometers, or did as best as they could against the unrelenting typhoon. 

You could feel his heart in his throat as he collapsed against the side of the building when they finally, finally arrived. They were already late. What harm would another minute make? He was on the verge of sticking out his tongue to drink the rain, his throat sore and his lungs screaming. Water had splashed out from the inside of his shoes with each step he had taken. He had never played barefoot before, but there had to be a first time for everything. “Hurry up, Satoru, open the door.” You gasped, trying his hardest to keep himself upright. Maybe they would let him play sitting down. Or laying down. They would understand. It could be the start of a new trend. “Come on, open the door… Satoru… Satoru please open the door.”

The guitarist did not need to hear the drummer to explain why he was not opening the door. 

“…It’s closed…”

“I ing hate you.” You let his legs give out from underneath him. Satoru made no move to help him up, nor made any comment in response.

You sat on the street for a good five minutes before regaining the strength to stand again. Sure enough, on the front door of the bar was a wind and rain-battered note that read, Closed. Due to typhoon. 

“Want to get some ramen?”

Ramen sounded good. “I thought you have no money.”

“Not enough for a taxi. Enough for some noodles.”

“Then you’re buying.”

“There’s a place around the corner. Hopefully it’s….” Satoru stopped himself from saying the word open. 

You trailed half-heartedly behind, but straightened when he noticed the uneven distribution in Satoru’s walk. “Are you limping?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Satoru replied defiantly. 

“You weren’t limping when we left the apartment.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t see you trip running here.”

“I twisted it getting your guitar.”

“What’d you do?!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

You’s persistent questioning stopped once they entered the miraculously open ramen shop, because a familiar voice surprised him.

“Holy , what happened to you guys?!”

In the corner of the restaurant sat a very dry, very comfortable looking, very shocked Ren. Alongside him was a particular amused and attractive bartender. Satoru did not seem too surprised to see the bassist, even though You considered this to be a bit of a coincidence. The drummer sat down across from Ren, and flashed a smile at him and Haruka. “We walked.”

You sat his guitar against the wall next to a stool and sat right beside it, positioning his foot so that it could be touching the case the whole time they were there. “We ran,” he corrected. “My lungs and legs will never recover.”

“Why?” Ren asked.

You quietly thanked the shop owner who came around and handed them towels to dry themselves off with before taking their order.

“What do you mean why?” Satoru said, rubbing the towel over his hair and then down his neck. 

“You didn’t get his message?” Haruka asked, her pink-tinted lips curling at the corners in obvious amusement.

“No.”

“He called both of you,” she said, her tone growing more pleased by the second. “A few times.”

“Yeah, I left a message on You’s machine, a couple hours ago.”

You and Satoru groaned in unison, and You sunk down on top of the table, spreading his arms out in front of him. Ignoring the phone had not been Satoru’s decision, but You felt he could still blame him for it. “I really ing hate you.”




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AN: Comments are appreciated.