Chapter Three

               “Adri-chan! Adri-chan! Wake up!!”

               I groggily opened my eyes to see Yumi sitting on her knees by my futon, wildly shaking my shoulder. I rubbed my eyes and glared at her. “What do you want, at 10 am on a Sunday?” I groaned. Flipping over onto my other side and putting my pillow over my head.

               “Mejibray’s in-store signing is today! We get to meet all of them and since I bought all 3 types of the single, we’ll be able to get pictures with them too!” she basically screamed into my ear.

               “What time is it at?”

               “We have 1 hour and it takes 15 minutes to get there!” she shouted frantically.

               “Gahhh, why didn’t you wake me up sooner!” I yelled as I ran to the bathroom to take a shower.

               “Because you wouldn’t wake up, you would just fall back asleep!” she yelled through the door.

               I sighed and after my shower I threw on polka dotted black and white leggings, and a long Black Moral shirt. I brushed out my hair and straightened it quickly and put on eyeliner, I flew out of the bathroom and into the closet where I slipped on my black creepers. Yumi grabbed my wrist and dragged me out the door. We raced down the stairs and started our walk to the subway. The subway was quite crowded and I was getting jostled into people. I clung onto the railing, trying my best not to fall. Yumi had her arms wrapped around mine, since she couldn’t reach a railing. Once off the train, we walked the rest of the way to Tower Records. We passed a few other girls who were dressed similar to us and seemed to be chattering about the Mejibray signing like Yumi was. When we got to the third floor where the signing would be happening, the line was extended down the hallway, we were early, so in the long run, that wasn’t too many people. All the girls, and a few guys were talking excitedly. Everyone was hyped up to meet Mejibray, Yumi included. Jumping excitedly from foot to foot and chattering on happily about how amazing it was going to be to talk to Tsuzuku and get a picture with him. Everyone in the line jumped into each other’s conversations, ‘Mejibray this, Mejibray that’. ‘Oh I liked that song better,’ ‘Nah, Tzk’s voice was better in this one.’ I felt a bit out of place since I didn’t keep up to date on bands like Yumi did; although, I did have the decency to listen to the single before coming to the signing, so I would be able to ask questions. My mind wandered to college related things, when the line suddenly shuffled forward slightly, but it was enough for me to be shoved over. I slammed into the person’s back that was in front of me. “Gomen nasai!” I apologized while bowing when the person turned around after I had gotten my footing back.

               “Adrianna!” a familiar voice exclaimed.

               I lifted my head and saw Hachirou grinning at me. “Funny meeting you here.”

               I smiled, “Yumi’s a huge Mejibray fan, so she dragged me along with her to meet them.”

               “I can see that,” he laughed, while pointing a finger over at Yumi who was a few people away, talking excitedly to other fans.

               “God… I don’t know how she can be that social,” I exclaimed.

               “Don’t be such a Debby Downer,” he laughed at me while placing a hand on my shoulder.

               I frowned at him, “I’m not a Debby Downer! I’m just a bit anti-social.”

               “Whatever you say Adrianna, whatever you say,” he grinned at me, all while not removing his hand from my shoulder.

               I then realized we were standing really close to each other, about a foot away. Trying to subtly take a step back, the crowd surged forward again, and I got pushed into Hachirou’s chest. I tried to take a step back and apologize again, when Hachirou had his arms locked around my shoulders. I glanced up at him and he gazed at me. His face neared mine. “Adri-chan, Hachirou!” Yumi called out.

               Hachirou quickly let go of my shoulders and we both took a step back. Yumi raised an eye at me, “They’re going to open the doors soon!”

               At 12pm, everyone went silent as music started playing in the background. The doors opened and the security led everyone to the sitting area, for the first portion of the event. We sat down on the little plastic chairs and Yumi frantically looked around, waiting for Mejibray to come out. Hachirou sat to my other side, sitting close enough that his leg touched mine. Once everyone was seated, they started walking out. First was Meto, followed by Koichi, then Mia and finally Tsuzuku. Meto was wearing colourful tights and a long shirt, similar to the ensemble I was wearing. His blue hair was pulled back and he wore a hat. Koichi wore an elaborate hair piece that emphasized his vibrant pink hair. Mia wore regular jeans and a v-neck, looking pretty casual. Tsuzuku was donned in acid-wash jeans, a white v-neck, a black leather jacket, and white creepers. They took their seats in that order, so Meto would be the first person that would sign everything. Yumi was squirming in her seat as she tried to get a better view of them. For the next 30 minutes, they talked about their newest single and what it meant to each of them. They also took a portion of the time to answer fan questions. Yumi was able to get in a question about how long it took them to record it.

               After the question period was done, the security guards prompted us to line up depending on where we were sitting. Yumi and I were in the first few rows, so we went to go line up, or it was more, me getting up regular speed and Yumi dragging me over there as fast as she could by my wrist while Hachirou followed closely behind me. Yumi handed me one of her CDs for me to get signed and after waiting for 10 minutes, we finally got to the front. First I met Meto, since he doesn’t talk, I greeted him and he smiled at me, I told him that I really liked his drumming in a certain song and he smiled wide. He pointed at my black and purple hair and gave me a thumbs up. I thanked him and moved on after he signed the CD. Next was Koichi. I said hi as Meto passed the CD onto him. We talked about a cool bass line he had and about his new look and how I thought it suited him, he asked me where I was from and I told him Canada. He smiled and told me that he would like to visit there someday. He handed the CD onto Mia and I moved on. I greeted Mia as well and complimented his hair, since it looked really nice that day. He grinned and thanked me, I asked him about his guitar solo and if he felt nervous about performing it live. He shrugged and said it took a bit to get it perfect live, but he’s happy with how it turned out.

               At this time, Yumi was at Tsuzuku, and she appeared as if she was going to faint. She was chattering on excitedly about the live last week and that she loved how Tsuzuku looked in the PV and how amazing his voice was on the single. Tsuzuku sat there in the chair, nodding and smiling at everything she said, but looking absolutely and completely bored. The security nudged her to move on and she sadly said her goodbye and stood off to the side to wait for me. I walked up and stood in front of Tsuzuku.

               “Hi Tsu-san,” I said quietly as he was signing the CD.

               He paused when he heard my voice and looked up. “Adrianna?”

               “The one and only,” I smiled.

               “I saw you at the live the other day,” he said while handing me the CD. His split tongue slipped out of his mouth and wet his lips.

               “It was strange that I didn’t recognize you that day I found your wallet. The funny part is Yumi has a poster of you in our room and I see it every day, yet when I saw you then, it didn’t click,” I replied pointing a thumb over at Yumi who was gazing intently at Tsuzuku, when she saw Tsuzuku look over, she quickly fixed her hair and smiled at him.

               He looked back at me with an eyebrow raised. “She’s your roommate?”

               “Yeah, we go to the same University, plus she’s my best friend.”

               He nodded, “So I have a question for you,” he stated, while glancing around as if to check for someone.

               I raised an eyebrow, prompting him to continue. “Why did you never text or call me?” he asked; his face dropping into a frown.

               “Well… I…”

               “Time to move it along, lady, other fans are waiting,” the security guard nudged me.

               I nodded and waved, while running off the stage to where Yumi was waiting, without giving Tsuzuku a chance to say anything else. He was watching me as I left. But as I turned around to glance at him, he was frantically scribbling on a paper. He handed it to a roadie that ran down the stage. I shrugged and Yumi and I continued to the back of the room where we were going to wait for Hachirou. Before we were told to line up, they said the photo session would be at 3:00 pm, so we decided to go grab at late lunch and come back just in time for it. Hachirou appeared behind us and we started towards the stairs. I felt eyes burning into the back of my head and when we neared the stairs, I heard a loud, “Adrianna!”

               I stopped and looked around, confused. The roadie that I had seen running off the stage earlier was jogging towards me. He stopped to catch his breath and handed me a piece of paper. There was a bright flash, and I looked around to see a fan holding a camera, looking at the band. I turned back to the paper and looked to the Roadie. “What’s this?”

               “Tsuzuku-san asked me to give this to you,” he said while still panting.

               I opened it up to see a date, time and place scrawled in messy kanji. Through the whole encounter, Yumi was being deadly silent for herself. I looked to see what her expression was, but she still had an expression of pure bliss covering her face. I thanked him for giving it to me and we walked down the stairs to the ramen place that was just down the road. We ordered our food and sat at the table. That’s when Yumi decided to start firing questions at me.

               “How do you know Tsuzuku?” she asked with a glare crossing her face, Hachirou turned his focus away from the food to look at me with a surprised expression.

               I cringed a bit, “why do you think I know him? Maybe he just likes picking up random chicks?”

               She glared at me some more.

               “Okay, okay, fine. I found his wallet, and when I went to give it back that night, we talked a bit and he gave me his number and I totally forgot about it. But when I met him I didn’t recognize him at all, or I would have gotten you an autograph or something,” I explained.

               She nodded and sipped at her green tea. “So that explains the concert, and why he talked to you so long at the signing, he’s interested in you,” she stated.

               I couldn’t read her for the one time in our almost 4 year friendship, and that scared me. She was extremely calm and collected and I couldn’t tell if she was mad or not. A spot on the table became tremendously interesting to me, as I tried to avoid her gaze. The thing about Yumi was, she never got mad. Sure there was some frustration and the occasionally freaking out in the bad way, but not mad. She was a very joyful person and tried to surround herself with positive influences. Another thing about Yumi was, she never was calm and collected, this was unknown territory to me, and it made me want to run away like an animal’s prey. Hachirou seemed to squirm in his seat, as if he was uncomfortable with Yumi being this quiet.

               Hachirou was Yumi’s best friend all through middle school and high school. They started to drift apart in University, but they were still very good friends. That’s how I was introduced to him. Hachirou knew Yumi better than me, so if he was uncomfortable, that meant that was going to happen. She swirled the ramen around her chopsticks, deep in thought, and let out a loud sigh. “Adrianna, I’m not mad at you. I just was a little upset that you didn’t tell me anything sooner,” she claimed, “I just thought that since we are best friends, we tell each other everything, but you denied it at the live, but I could hear you talking and he was talking to you like he knew you.”

               “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you… I was going to tell you though,” I apologized

She smiled, “All’s forgiven! Let’s just forget about Tzk!”

I laughed at her, and after a second she started giggling, we both knew she wouldn’t be able to forget Tzk.