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When someone asks you for help with their homework, you expect to give them that help with minimal fuss, and go home. Lie down. Sip some tea and nurse your social interaction energy metre back to health.
Arisa did not think that was an unreasonable expectation. After all, she had agreed to spend almost two hours hunched over a plate of doughnuts and a pile of sugar-sprinkled worksheets as Hagumi’s bright orange hair shone ever brighter under the sun’s trajectory across the sky and grew increasingly more tousled from the number of times she ran her fingers through it with a groan.
“Aa-chan, I started seeing double five minutes ago,” she sighed, pencil clattering onto the table in defeat.
“No look, you’re supposed to double it. That’s the step you left out.” Arisa rubbed at her now likely permanently crinkled forehead, and wrote the correct equation in. “Now if you do everything after that again, it’ll be right.”
Hagumi blinked, then grabbed the sheet and held it close to her face, staring so hard she went cross-eyed for a second. “Oh. Ohhh. I get it, I get it! That means . . .” Snatching up her pencil, she scrawled the rest of the working out. “Ta-da!”
“Yes. There we go!” Arisa slumped back in her chair. “Done . . . finally.”
“Thanks, Aa-chan! You’re a lifesaver.”
Arisa wondered idly about her ability to save her own life given how utterly fried her brain was, but the parting of CiRCLE’s glass doors to reveal two familiar faces cut her thoughts short.
“Aww, fully booked out . . .”
“C’mon, you sure you need to practise again? Hasn’t Roselia been rehearsing non-stop lately?”
“Mm . . . dunno. M’bored. My—My dark wings twinge with the power that lies uh, dormant within them . . .”
Hagumi had perked up at the sound of voices, spinning around with a surprised “Ah!” and waving the two newcomers over. There was a lot of shuffling and making room and pulling up extra chairs, and a whole lot more noise. All Arisa managed was an awkward “Hi” before the others exploded into excited chatter. Her hand twitched with the irrepressible urge to reach for her phone, the surefire safety net she had to resist with every fibre of her being.
She was beginning to think she could hold out until Hina gasped in light of a dramatic recollection. “Hey! Remember the time we all got those whopping plates of curry?”
“Oh! At the ski resort, right?” Ako said.
“Ahh we almost died . . .” Hagumi’s smile was guilty and delighted all at once.
“I can’t believe Maya-chan and Misaki-chan missed out.”
“We should totally go again and put their stomachs to the ultimate test of endurance!”
Invisible, Arisa swallowed, fingers inching towards her phone in earnest. Now to wait for an opportune moment to make an excuse and get the hell out of there.
She was just a hair’s breadth from salvation when the whole table vibrated with the force of an incoming call. She almost yelled out, blinked in confusion at her black screen, then saw Hagumi snatch up her own phone across from her.
“Ah, what’s up, Kokoron?”
A faint voice drizzled through from the other end. Hina rose out of her seat and leaned in with interest, elbows planted on the table, blocking a good chunk of Arisa’s view. “Hm, what’s that? What’s she saying?”
Hagumi hit the speaker button.
“. . . and Kanon’s not picking up either. Mmm, I wanna sing and do band things!”
“Ooh me too, Kokoro!” said Ako. “I’ve got a maddening itch to drum until my arms fall off, I’d love love love to be Kanon for a day if you’ll have me.”
“Hm, is that Ako? Of course you can! I couldn’t be happier.”
“O-Oi . . .” Arisa muttered under her breath, shrinking back. A supremely terrifying thought had just hit her, and any moment now, someone else would arrive at it even if they weren’t all exactly the brightest tools in the shed.
“Who else is with you, Hagumi?”
Oh God. Oh no. She wasn’t mentally equipped for this, not now, give her a few—
“Oh, just Hina-chan and Aa-chan—”
The collective gasp that followed may well have been the sound of Hell’s gates yawning open. Worse than her name being said like an afterthought.
“This is wonderful!” Kokoro said. “Five people who all play different instruments. Fortune must be smiling down on us.”
“Funny, I was just thinking that a minute ago,” chuckled Hina. “Bit of an unusual gathering we have here.”
Somehow Arisa couldn’t shake the feeling that Hina was referring specifically to her.
“So how does coming to our mansion sound? No need to fetch your instruments, the lovely people in suits will see to that. Oh, and they can arrange to pick you up too.”
Arisa scrambled to her feet, driven to the brink of desperation, struggling to think through all the blown fuses and misfiring signals in her head. “W-Wait, hold up.”
A hush fell over them, faster than she’d expected. Three pairs of bright eyes blinked up at her.
“I uh. I sorta just came because Kitazawa-san needed help. So . . .”
The silence was deafening after all that noise.
“Eh?” said Hagumi. “Aa-chan, you’re not coming?”
“Aww, Arisa please?”
“We’ve never had a keyboardist in our band! It’ll be so much fun.”
“Arisa-chan?”
“Arisa?”
“Arisa!”
Her chest lightened, but her stomach clenched. Part of her wished they would say her name like an afterthought again. Part of her wished she didn’t mind it when they did. She opened her mouth to tell them to find another keyboardist, Eve or Rinko or Tsugumi—someone was bound to be available.
The words died in her throat. “Well . . . a-alright. I guess for a little while . . .”
Through their chorus of cheers and high fives, she stood in a daze, wondering what in the name of Babanbo-sama she had signed up for.
The Tsurumakis’ private studio was impressive, though not as impressive as the rest of the property. Arisa had felt just as daunted by the staggering weight of the riches all around them as they were escorted inside, as she had the first time she’d been here. Even touching the sleek black leather seats in the vehicle they’d ridden in had felt like leaving dirty fingerprints on a diamond. Kokoro, however, welcomed them as warmly and cheerfully as she always did.
There was a lot Arisa could have said, but with the humiliating memory of a certain sakura party fresh in her mind despite more recent and pleasant recollections, she held her tongue through the trek up to the studio, through the whole process of procuring their shiny instruments and setting up.
Finally, since no one else deemed it important enough to bring up, she asked, “So . . . what exactly are we playing?”
“Good question!” Hagumi turned to Kokoro. “What’s the plan, Kokoron? HaroHapi songs?”
Kokoro scrunched up her face, deep in thought, or as deep in thought as Kokoro could get. “Hmm . . . I think . . .” She tapped her cheek, tilting her head to the side. “I feel a new song coming on. That’s it! We’re a brand new band today. It’s got to be a new song.”
Arisa balked. “A new song? We’re writing an entire song for this—whatever this even is?”
Spinning around on one foot, blonde hair fanning out around her, Kokoro laughed. “No, nothing as complicated as that! Just follow your heart, Arisa. That’s much more exciting. As Kaoru would say if she were here—”
“Ahh . . . fleeting,” Hina chimed in without missing a beat; her voice deepened alarmingly before shooting back to its normal pitch with a giggle she couldn’t contain.
“Follow your heart . . .” Arisa repeated weakly. “You mean . . . improvise?”
“Of course!” Kokoro’s smile was radiant.
“Ah, you’re okay with that, aren’t you, Aa-chan?”
Arisa looked down at the keyboard in front of her. “I know my way around some chords, but . . .”
“Good! Then we’re all set.” Kokoro wasn’t one for second thoughts or waiting around. Neither were the rest of them. Arisa had never felt so out of place.
“A flat minor, seven-eight time, hit it Ako-chan!” said Hina.
“E-Ehhh?”
Depravity. Pure, unadulterated evil. Forgetting her unease completely for one shining moment, Arisa opened her mouth without thinking. “With all due respect, Hina-san, what the actual—”
“Kidding, kidding! G major, boring common time then. One six four five, sound good?” Hina brought her pick down on a ringing G chord, braids flying as she tossed her head back to look at Arisa. “You really do make an interesting face when you get all, y’know, zappity zap.”
Arisa didn’t even know what that meant, but had a faint sense that she somehow did all the same—at least, enough of an idea for a light flush to creep across her cheeks. All in all, fingers scrambling into position as Ako cued them in, she was left with a timely reminder that Hina Hikawa had quite the brain in her head, no matter how unfathomable.
Arisa had also harboured more than a few doubts about this haphazard group before they started jamming. For starters, she was fairly certain Kokoro couldn’t read music, let alone understand the principles of harmony.
Yet somehow, as the pieces fell into place, it could not be more apparent that Kokoro knew exactly what she was doing. Or maybe she didn’t, but the stars aligned and her voice snapped into perfect harmony with the instruments even with the nonsense phrases she had spun into song. No. It happened too many times to be a coincidence; even Arisa had to admit she wasn’t giving the girl enough credit.
In the mere seconds it took her to shake her head at this mystery, Kokoro was cartwheeling across the studio. Watching her was dizzying.
Once she was back on her feet, Kokoro called out, “Hina!” with an exuberant flourish of her hand.
“Doesn’t get more boppin’ than this!”
Hina dived straight into a blazing guitar solo. She was good. Arisa had seen her play before, but playing with her was like handling a kite in a gale—she sailed high and tumbled through the air and sometimes she seemed to disappear into a fog of screeching, distorted atonality, but just when you thought you’d lost her she would turn up hanging onto a precarious branch and slither back to safety.
“Hagumi!”
“Gotcha!”
Hagumi was reliable, grounded, happy where she stood by Kokoro’s side. The spotlight wasn’t meant for her, but without her they’d be floundering. When it was her turn to shine, she was relentless. She’d never go down without a fair race after all.
She was like Rimi, just a little bit.
“Ako!”
“Ha! Behold, my reign descends!”
For someone so petite, Ako was a force to be reckoned with. She threw herself at the drums as if pounding the life out of a magical foe, but did it with ease, grin never faltering. At the rate she was charging on, she might as well have made a deal with the devil and grown several pairs of extra arms.
“Arisa!”
“O-Okay!”
She wouldn’t remember much of what she played, afterwards. Only that the others quieted so she could be heard, Hina strumming softly and Ako tapping carefully at a cymbal while Hagumi’s steady bass plodded along, and Kokoro hopped and turned and flashed her the sunniest smile she had ever seen.
Splitting another watermelon with this bunch didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. The thought absorbed her so thoroughly that she almost didn’t hear Hina’s next suggestion.
“Rap battle! Let’s go!”
“Wh-What?”
“Oh?” Kokoro cocked her head. “Sounds fun!”
Hagumi held up her hands. “W-Wait, let’s not badmouth each other, that’s . . .”
“Don’t worry, I’ve already pinned down my victim—you! Loathsome creature of the—the murky depths!”
Arisa squinted at where Ako’s drumstick was pointing, but all she could see was the closed door. The ceiling lights dazzled her eyes. The floor shook beneath her feet. Her ears rang with noise. She could feel the last of her sanity slipping away from her, and it was almost intoxicating.
“Arisa-chan, you must be super duper good at this stuff!”
“Huh? Why would you s—”
It was the strangest rap battle Arisa had ever witnessed, but Hina was right. Kokoro playfully vented her frustrations at people who didn’t smile and resolved to conquer the world with happiness. Hagumi directed her fury at a burnt croquette and almost wound up in tears. Ako defeated a dragon in the fiery depths of the underworld with recitations of black magic. Hina looked to be the victor as she ripped PasuPare affectionately to shreds—
“Arisa, you’re up!”
She had lost sight of reason long ago. “Heh, if you insist. I’ll show you how it’s done.”
—but even Hina couldn’t top Arisa’s magnum opus of savagery towards PoPiPa.
Unless, of course, you took into account how utterly impossible it was for her to keep the smile off her face as she hurled insult after insult into the pit of flames.
She had barely thrown herself into a chair when Kokoro leapt up again.
“Now who’s up for a game of hide-and-seek?”
Arisa raised her weary head. “You have got to be kidding me . . .”
She could no longer tell who was kidding who as she chased a squealing Ako into the wings of the theatre a minute later, yelling, “Oi, get back here! I don’t remember hide-and-seek being like this!”
Nor could she bring herself to care when ‘hide-and-seek’ turned into full-blown tag which turned into frisbee in the ballroom, even if the last seemed like a grave infraction of some sort.
Dusk found them slumped on a beanbag large enough for five in some sort of playroom piled high with stuffed animals. Well, Kokoro wasn’t exactly slumping, but she sat quiet and serene, shoulder against Arisa’s, pale eyes translucent and staring straight ahead.
Ako crawled between them, skirt snagging under her knee, clumsy with exhaustion. “Arisa’s galaxy brain . . . m’blown away . . . y’should yell at Yukina-san one day . . .” Her eyes were barely open, fluttering slits of crimson. She put her head in Arisa’s lap, hands reaching to pull Arisa’s arm over her.
“A-Ako-chan!” As if the whole day had been a dream, Arisa went from floating to freezing up, old instincts kicking in. “Hey! If you fall asleep now you’ll be wide awake tonight.”
Hina giggled from Kokoro’s other side. “Too late. Out . . . like a light,” she observed, snapping her fingers and gaining far too much pleasure from the action. “Well, chances are she was gonna stay up to clobber some baddies anyway.”
Arisa shook her head. “God, she’s like an actual baby.”
Somewhat unnervingly, Kokoro seemed to decide she’d had enough of being a statue, and turned her intent gaze to Arisa, unblinking. “And you sound like a mother, don’t you think?”
“H-Huh? Hell no. That’d be troublesome.”
“Really? I think it’s charming.”
“Me too! Aa-chan would make a great mum.” The way Hagumi grinned, flashing her teeth in the most marshmallow-meltingly adorable manner possible, was unfair.
For all of Arisa’s prickly disdain for society, it was easy, far easier than it should have been, to win her over. No one knew that better, or was more afraid to acknowledge it, than Arisa herself. Maybe it was because after all was said and done, she had always wanted the world to smile too.
Still, she only gave a clumsy laugh and shot back, “What are you saying? I wouldn’t even know how since—” Since I barely knew mine, she didn’t say. “Come to think of it, your parents aren’t around much, are they, Tsurumaki-san?”
Kokoro hummed, unperturbed by the question. “They go off to do all sorts of wonderful things. They’re the reason I have so many wonderful things of my own. So it’s fine!”
Arisa watched Ako gnaw on her bottom lip in her sleep. “Is that so?”
Kokoro stretched her arms above her head with a long “Hrmmm” of satisfaction. “You know what, Arisa? If you smile at the world, the world will smile back. You’ve got such a pretty smile too!”
“Guh—what are you—I don’t—” Arisa couldn’t look at a face that glowed so brightly for longer than a second. It was easier to keep her head bent and her eyes on someone who wasn’t awake to see the colour filling her cheeks.
She jumped as Hagumi shuffled closer, bumping her shoulder. “Aa-chan smiled a lot today! And not just today.”
“Mm, sometimes your eye twitches and you look like you ate a bad egg though,” said Hina. “It’s kinda impressive how you can do that and smile at the same time. Maybe I should try it out, huh?”
“Argh, for the love of—that’s enough, all of you!”
Ako slept right through that, and the burst of laughter that followed. Hagumi dropped off soon after, head lolling against Arisa’s shoulder.
“G’night, Aa-chan-kaa-san . . .”
“Huh? Wait no, that’s too long—”
Sombrely, Hina snapped her fingers again, shaking her head. Arisa had the vague feeling she’d lost a battle she never signed up for.
But her chance for revenge fell right into her lap barely a minute later. She glanced over in the silence and lo and behold, Hina was fast asleep too, mouth wide open, arms secured around Kokoro.
Arisa raised a hand with slight difficulty under Hagumi’s weight, and snapped her fingers, chuckling softly.
“You should sleep too,” Kokoro piped up.
“Nah, I’d rather not be awake tonight.”
“Hmm . . . you’d be able to see so many stars then! Wouldn’t that be nice?” Kokoro curled up against Hina and shut her eyes, pale lashes dusting shadows on her skin.
Stars. Maybe that would be nice.
Maybe helping Hagumi with her homework again once in a while would be nice too.