Title: The Girl on the Street

Characters: Lay and Leeyoung (Afterschool)

Graphic by Korpride

Terminology/Vocabular Index (A brief list of words used in the story that may need explanations before you start reading):

Baba – 爸爸; Romanized Mandarin for Dad. Informal.

Tzai Tzian (zài Jiàn) – 再见; Romanized Mandrain for Goodbye.

Beansprout Baozi – Steamed bun filled with a type of pickle, spices, and other vegetables or meat.

Deep-Fried Mantou – A Chinese dessert, served with sweetened condensed milk.

Around 10 to 15 people had shown up and were taking up their own individual spaces all around Lay’s basement, tuning their guitars, strumming out a few chords, or just blaring out whatever it was they had prepared to play. Jiae was going around, writing down everyone’s names and information. She had a noticeable scowl on her face, spitting directions at the guys uninterestedly.

Lay grasped his head with his hands, letting out a disheartened sigh. The idea of auditioning people for a new band member did not please him at all. But Joongyu had made it pretty clear that he no longer wanted Myungsoo in the band.

The scene from last week replayed in his mind like a video clip in his brain. It was the biggest fight Lay had ever seen between his friends. He couldn’t remember any of his friends ever being so angry with each other…

They had been practicing for a new gig they had coming up: an American Rock festival in town. A bunch of different local bands were performing covers of different American Rock songs they were assigned to.

Lay and his four friends – Joongyu, Myungsoo, Jinyoung, and Jihoon – made up a band called Planet X. They had formed it around the beginning of middle school, and after about four years, they had gained some popularity in town, especially with the high school crowd. They often performed at local town gigs or school events, and were known for their covers of already famous songs.

“Yah, what the hell? Get it right!” Joongyu had yelled suddenly. They had been trying to rehearse one of their assigned songs, “Our Time Now” by the American band The Plain White Tees, but had stopped in the middle of the first verse for the fourth time in a row, because Myungsoo wasn’t playing his notes right.

“What’s with the cussing? Does it look to you like I’m messing up on purpose?” retorted Myungsoo, shooting Joongyu a frown. Lay had recognized right then that the mood became unusually hostile.

“You’re messing us up! I’m not about to sit here and play the same three notes over and over again just because you didn’t practice your part!” said Joongyu.

“Why don’t you try playing this then? It’s easy for you, isn’t it?? All the bass ever has to do is a maximum of five notes,” Myungsoo spat, his frown turning into irritation. Lay could see it in his eyes.

Joongyu was now glaring at Myungsoo with what Lay could only describe as pure malice. Lay couldn’t understand why Joongyu was so worked up. Myungsoo’s guitar part was ridiculously hard; they had all agreed so when they’d first received their two songs for the festival.

“You haven’t had any time to practice, have you?” Joongyu retorted coldly, “Too busy sneaking around with Jiae to pay any attention to your guitar, right?”

Everyone in the room froze. Out of the corner of his eye, Lay saw Jihoon’s jaw drop to the floor. Myungsoo, letting his guitar hang loose around him, stammered, “How did you…??”

Jiae was Joongyu’s younger sister by just one year. In fact, she was like a younger sister to all the band members, or so Lay had thought. Jiae was always around, even though the band practiced in Lay’s basement, and she often acted like the band’s manager, giving them opinions about their music, helping them book gigs, and getting her friends to become fans of Planet X. The six of them had actually been a tight group of friends for so long, that Lay almost forgot from time to time that Jiae wasn’t actually even in the band. 

“I saw you bringing her home last night. I live there, remember?” said Joongyu, his glaring eyes never leaving Myungsoo’s face, “How long has this been going on?”

Myungsoo’s eyes went out of focus as he avoided looking at the band members. “Two months. We weren’t… ready to tell you yet. All of you.”

“Oh, Okay. So when were you gonna tell me then?! You don’t just hook up with Jiae, Myungsoo! She’s my sister!!”

From what Lay, Jihoon, and Jinyoung could gather, instead of coming along for the guys’ night out that night before with the rest of the band members, Myungsoo had lied to all of them, and had gone out with Jiae. When Joongyu had called Myungsoo to hang out, Lay remembered clearly that Myungsoo had declined, with the reason that his relatives were visiting. It turned out, Myungsoo had been with Jiae behind everyone’s back, and while Myungsoo was bringing Jiae back home, Joongyu had caught them red handed.

“You’re not dating my sister, Myungsoo,” Joongyu stated firmly.

“Why not?” replied Myungsoo, “I get it, it was wrong for us to hide it for so long, but I like Jiae, and she likes me. It’s not up to you, Joongyu.”

“Bull ! You’re nothing but a selfish piece of crap! You think this was going to work out with us and the band?? I’m not doing this. Either you’re out, or I’m out!” Joongyu was now shouting.

With eyes gleaming in anger, Myungsoo slung his guitar off of him and roughly unplugged his amp chord. In a flurry of movements, he had packed his guitar in his case, grabbed his backpack, and was standing in the doorway of the band’s practice room.

“I guess I’m done then,” Myungsoo had said in a low voice, “But I’m not giving up on Jiae, Joongyu. I want you to remember that.” With that, he had stormed out of Lay’s basement. Joongyu had immediately suggested the next day that they audition for a new guitarist, one who could fill Myungsoo part without a single gap. He was still fuming, even more so because even though Jiae wasn’t exactly defending her and Myungsoo’s side, she still refused to stop seeing him.

Lay strolled back into the practice room. The lavishly equipped practice room of Planet X was unbelievably impressive for a high school band, all thanks to the fact that Lay’s father was a known musician and composer in the music industry. They were beginning the auditions now, Jiae sending in each candidate one by one, Lay, Jihoon, Jinyoung, and Joongyu sitting in the practice room and listening to whatever the candidates had prepared to play.

Whether it was people Lay recognized from his and his friends’ own high school, or strangers from other high schools in town, no one was good enough. It was pretty clear to the Planet X members, that it was going to be very difficult to try to find a guitarist that could fill Myungsoo’s place. As soon as the 9th kid and his flame-decked guitar left the room, Jihoon puffed out, “Dude, I can play better than him. And I’m the drummer.”

“Who knew it would be this hard to find a guy who can actually strum some chords on a guitar?” Jinyoung added. 

“Uhh... guys,” Jiae interrupted, tilting her head to one side from the doorway, “I have number 10 here, but… uhh… she’s… a girl.”

For a moment, the Planet X members stared at Jiae without a word.

“A girl? If she read our fliers, she’d know that we were looking for a guy guitarist,” Lay finally replied.

“Well… she says she should at least get a chance…” started Jiae, but she was cut off when a girl with dark brown leather boots,  light brown curls falling loosely around her head, darkly drawn eyeliner, and a glittering, pink guitar at her side, stalked into the room.

“I’m number 10,” the girl said, confidence flowing from her words, “and I disagree with the fact that you guys are discriminating against female musicians by only admitting guys in your band. I should have a chance to audition. I’m just as good, probably better, actually, than all those guys sitting out there.” She waved a hand in the general direction of the door, from which screechy and awkward sounds of unskilled guitarists were seeping through.

Jinyoung scratched his head, as he said, “Um… it’s not that we’re discriminating against female musicians… we’d just like to be an all-male band, that’s all. We started out like that…”

“Well it doesn’t look to me like you’re having very much luck finding a guy,” the girl snapped.

The guys looked around the room. Jiae had just left them with a shrug. “Well, I guess it’s not gonna do any harm if we just listen to you,” Joongyu admitted.

“Great thinking,” said the girl. She strolled over and took a seat in the audition chair they had prepared, and placed her bright pink guitar on her lap. The thing was actually studded with pink and blue diamonds on its already pink head.

Even with the first few strums of her warm up chords, Lay could tell that this girl had been playing for a long time. He jumped a little in surprise, though, when after warming up, she started playing a quickened, solo version of Relient K’s “The Lining is Silver” - a Planet X favorite.

“Dammnnn,” Jihoon mumbled, when the girl had finished playing. She set her hands comfortably on top of her guitar and looked around at the band members with a smug grin on her lips. “She’s good,” Jinyoung added.

“So? Am I in the band?” said the girl.

Lay tilted his head quizzically. Was this girl bold, or just impatient? “Whoa, well, we’re still not sure about the idea of having a co-ed band,” he explained, “and plus, we don’t even know your name or what school you go to.”

The girl let out a small chuckle. “My name’s Noh Leeyoung. I guess you guys don’t know me, but I go to your school. I’m a senior, like you and you, right?” She pointed a finger at Jinyoung, then Lay.

“You go to our school? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Jinyoung muttered, a little apologetically. Leeyoung just shrugged and said, “Maybe you don’t pay enough attention to your classmates.”

“Alright, well, thanks for coming, we’ll let you know. We still have more people to audition,” Joongyu cut in.

Leeyoung stood from her chair, her pink guitar sliding down to her side. “Honestly, I really don’t think you guys will have any luck with the rest of those guys in there. I heard the guitarist you used to have was killer good. I don’t know what made him quit, but I can play. I can play his parts.” With that, she shot a wink to her left, and walked out confidently, as if she’d already gotten the band position. 

“Dude, is it me, or is that girl’s head bigger than mine? I mean, she’s good, I’ll give her that, but she knows it a little too well,” Jihoon said, when the band members were left to themselves.

“If we don’t find a better guy in the next hour, I say we recruit her,” said Joongyu.

“I don’t know you guys… a girl in the band? I don’t know if that suits our image…” Lay added.

“And it might…” Jinyoung stole a quick sideways glance at Joongyu before finishing. “Cause problems… within the band members.”

Joongyu glared at Jinyoung. Right then, Jiae came through the doorway. “I say no to a girl in the band too,” she said, her blank expression boring into her brother’s face, “And I’m sending in number 11.”

As she left and a tall, bony guy with long, black hair falling to his shoulders walked in, Joongyu shouted toward the door, “No one asked you!”

The girl with the pink guitar, Leeyoung, had been right. Planet X could not find a better male guitarist than Leeyoung to recruit. After the day of the auditions, the band had gathered again in Lay’s basement to try to practice their two songs for the festival without a lead guitarist. Instead, Lay was trying to play the lead guitar part and sing, omitting his usual second guitar parts.

They stumbled through the Plain White Tees song in a jumble of missing notes. But halfway through their second song, a crazily fast-paced punk rock song by Good Charlotte called “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, they had to call it quits. The guitar parts for both songs were the most difficult of any songs the band had ever played.

“We only have two weeks before the festival. Maybe we should drop out,” Jinyoung suggested, resting his elbows on his keyboards without turning them off and making a jumble of piano key noises.

“This is the first paid gig we’ve had in a long time though…” Jihoon mumbled, scratching his ear with one of his drumsticks.

“It’s not about just this festival. We need a new guitarist if this band is gonna continue. And don’t any of you even bring up Myungsoo. He’s not coming back,” Joongyu stated firmly. He was madder than ever. Jiae had left to stay at a friend’s house for a time, with their parents’ permission, due to her and Joongyu’s constant fighting. “You know, maybe we should try playing with that girl.”

Lay began to zone out as he recalled the number 10 girl and her flashy pink guitar. She had been so… confident. Not that confidence was something unwelcome in Planet X. Something just wasn’t satisfying Lay. He couldn’t figure out if it was because Leeyoung was a girl, or because she had such gaudy guitar, or because he just didn’t want to replace Myungsoo. The band was important to him: music was something that was more important than anything in the world to Lay. His dad had made sure to raise him that way, loving music and needing music every second of life. He didn’t know what he needed to do to patch Planet X back together.

“Yo, Lay! Back to Earth!” Jihoon shouted. Lay jumped in surprise.

“So, what do you say?” Joongyu asked. All the band members were staring at him expectantly. All Lay could do was shrug his shoulders.

[A/N;]

I hope you guys were pleasantly(?) surprised with the miniature Cameo bomb at the beginning?

Please give this couple as a chance as well. The crackshipping shall continue!

Thank you as always for reading~