Archive of Our Own

These are things that even I can understand.

Yui touches me because her expression of affection is primarily physical and she will take actions to achieve that expression.

Mio gets scared because she is particularly sensitive to negative stimuli like cheap horror movies or durian.

Ritsu teases Mio because Ritsu enjoys it, and since Mio becomes more scared as a result it becomes a cycle which produces even more of Ritsu's enjoyment in the end.

Mugi gives the hospitality she does because she wants to be around loud and boisterous people and of course giving them free sweets would assist in that goal, and moreover her family has an oversupply of sweets so it gives her an outlet to expend them on.

On the other hand nobody can seem to understand why I don't like to be touched by Yui.

It's not that I dislike Yui, because she's my senior and also plays guitar so we get to talk about a lot of the specific details about frets and finger positions and amplifiers and chord changes and whatnot and that is valuable to me, so she is a valuable person.

On the other hand I don't like being touched, so one day I shoved her into a wall.

It was that one day before everyone had shown up in the Light Music Club room and I thought I was the only one there when Yui suddenly approached me from behind and wrapped her arms around my torso, putting considerable weight into a hug after yelping that nickname at me in her usual cheerfulness like a wild hyena discovering a carcass. And at that point after weeks and weeks of feeling as if it was nothing but being touched like that every day after school I was fed up with it all, so I slipped my arms out of hers, turned around, and shoved her into a wall as hard as I could.

The specific wall was the one with the chalkboard on it. Chalkboards typically have those wooden or metal trays affixed below the board itself, to hold the chalk and erasers. My guess was when I shoved her against the wall she ended up hitting her spine against it, which might have been why she emitted a such a high-pitched and loud scream after I heard the dull impact of her body against the chalkboard and the chalk and eraser tray, jolting me back to my senses and forcing my eyes to open as wide as they could and my pupils to dilate. It was unbelievably loud and unnatural, like a sudden shriek of feedback from an amplifier, and instinctively I flinched and covered my ears for a moment. Then some chalk dust that was on the chalkboard flew everywhere like the smoke from a demolition. Then her body crumpled to the floor like a doll and her face was towards the floor and no longer visible to me.

Then I realized suddenly that I might have injured her back permanently in those two seconds of unconscious action of mine and she would become paralyzed for the rest of her life and unable to play her guitar whom she named Giita anymore because of those two seconds out of the several billion remaining in the rest of her existence, and I broke out in a cold sweat and felt like I was going to throw up.

This was what people who knew better than me called "acting out," and I knew it was so because the circumstances appeared similar to ones I had participated in before.

I looked down towards the results of my actions. At the moment there was still nobody in the Light Music Club room except for myself and Yui, who was now lacking her usual cheerful demeanor and curled up on the floor like a trampled caterpillar, sobbing hysterically; sobs like she was desperately trying to emit some voice at the top of her lungs but something in her throat or her broken back was blocking it and she couldn't get it out. Those strained, excruciating kinds of sobs.

And those pained sounds she emitted filled the club room which was otherwise completely devoid of any noise and entered my ear canals and reverberated inside my head over and over, and I felt as if I was about to go to Hell.

I knew I was in for it now.

Moreover, I felt like I had destroyed someone beautiful.

I thought:

I would never, ever forgive myself for this.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

I hate this question.

I hate this question because it isn't even a question. It's a rhetorical, which means you're not supposed to answer it because the answer is already supposed to be clear to the person asking it. I've learned this useful tidbit of information through a large amount of trial and error.

I hate this question because I had apologized already for what I did to Yui several times and I completely regretted doing that to her and will regret having done it for the rest of my life, and I didn't understand what else I still had to do to make this person stop asking this question to me, so I had to keep hearing it being asked.

I hate this specific question even more because certain people ask me it very frequently, on the order from at least once a week to multiple times a day, and I know I'm not supposed to answer, but because they ask me the exact same "question" over and over again eventually I'm inclined to think there is actually an answer I should respond with, and I don't know what it is.

The answer being what is wrong with me.

And this particular version of the question with the extra expletive is even worse, because I don't understand in what universe high schoolers already know words like that by the time they're fifteen years old, and certainly nobody in show business is going to make someone portraying a high schooler say that. So when someone who is actually fifteen years old and someone whom I've known for a long period of over half a year is telling me this rhetorical, with this additional expletive, it is surreal. It feels like you're in some twisted mind's version of those dramas aimed at young people that was pulled from production and will never air because the censors said it was too risky to broadcast, and I'm one of the lead actors, and Ritsu is also one of the lead actors, and she is laying it on me with astounding realism never before seen on television.

And it is overwhelming.

"Why, Azusa? Why did you go and do that? Don't you even know what you've done to Yui? Do you?!"

Ritsu paused her hysterical tirade of screaming as if waiting for an answer. The ensuing silence in the club room was comparatively deafening. I didn't answer her since I knew better than that, so after a while she started to lash out at me again.

"She's got a bruise! She's in the nurse's office with a massive bruise, on her back, because of what you did!" She thrust her index finger at me. "What if-" She stammered, then lowered her voice into a spiteful crescendo. "What if she has to go to the hospital? What if she can't practice with us anymore? Or won't, because she doesn't want anything to do with you ever again - heh, I wouldn't blame her!" She covered her face and looked away and rubbed her exposed forehead with the fingers of her right hand and chuckled in the way that is "self-deprecating," as if she had seen this coming the whole time and yet had done nothing to stop it and her end hypothesis involving myself which had at first seemed ridiculous had actually become reality.

The skin surrounding Ritsu's eyes was red and wet as the sunlight of mid-day streaming onto them revealed, and her tear ducts were working overtime.

"Ritsu-" Mio pleaded softly, as she stood behind Ritsu and looked towards her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"That's it!" Ritsu shouted when she stopped rubbing her forehead and swatted Mio's hand away and lunged her upper torso out at me, and she looked at me fiercely. Mio was startled at Ritsu swatting her hand away and stumbled backwards. I was also startled, and shut my eyes hard since that look of hers directly into my own eyes with the redness and the wetness shook me to my core and the blood was throbbing and ringing in my ears and I thought the blood vessels in my heart were about to burst and I couldn't handle it anymore.

"This club is done! Finished! Over with! Did you want that for us?!" Her voice cracked since she was shouting so loudly and her arms were flying in various directions. "What were you thinking?!"

I think that Ritsu could be a good mother, because her words are probably what my mother would say almost verbatim if my mother was the one who happened to stumble across this situation. And her outburst of emotion and her tears indicate that she cares a lot about Yui, as opposed to being indifferent. Also like my mother, she says a lot of rhetoricals, and she also has a very forceful tone of voice when there's a point she really needs to get across.

Thankfully we had avoided the worst possible outcome for myself because of my insistence that no teachers or higher-ups got word of what I did to Yui and Mugi told the head nurse that Yui tripped and fell down the stairs, so that my parents would not have to get involved in any future conversations about what I did to her on this horrendous day.

At times like this I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

That's another rhetorical I hear a lot.

"Calm down!" Mio emphasized as she suddenly reached out and grabbed back Ritsu by the shoulders before Ritsu could get any closer to me. If she hadn't done that then Ritsu probably would have gotten close enough to me to be able to hit me and then the Light Music Club and my life and her life would all be over.

"Azusa's apologized already - many, many times. Yui forgives her. Everything's been cleared up, Ritsu. Listen to me," she said as she pulled Ritsu closer to her so Ritsu could hear better and she could make Ritsu listen to her. "Everything's forgiven." She shook her head and pressed the lower half of her face into Ritsu's shoulder without a look of anger or sadness or redness or wetness and closed her eyes like a saint as Ritsu stopped struggling against her grip and Mio made her voice quieter to calm her down and better meld into the tyrannical silence of the club room. "Everything's forgiven..."

As she said this, the air of the Light Music Club room became quiet and sacred.

Then I said, "...I agree," after a few more seconds of silence, since I agreed. I appreciated the way that Yui had forgiven me after I did that to her because she had decided that time to call me "Azusa," my first name, and it made me feel whole again.

Then, to ensure that my intentions were clear, I added, "I am sorry. I regret doing this to Yui, and I will never do it again."

Nothing was said for the longest time. Ritsu relaxed the tension in her face and wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her blazer and sniffled and took up a detailed study of the wood flooring. Mio continued to look like a saint.

Then without looking up, Ritsu said solemnly, "...Alright." And then Mio released Ritsu, and we were now three mostly reasonable humans and beings standing in a room, unsoiled by emotion.

(Mugi was waiting outside until the tensions had subsided since she probably felt that she was not a necessary participant in this completely unnecessary dilemma - Ritsu was going to get on my case first thing when she opened the door expecting to eat some sweets and drink some tea and relax and instead found that I had gone off and almost completely destroyed Yui, and Mio needed to be there to keep Ritsu in check by acting piously so Ritsu didn't make the situation worse, and I needed to be present to atone for my sins. So Mugi didn't say a word and looked sad but tried not to cry and helped Yui up from the floor and gently held her wrist to avoid touching the massive bruise on her back and whispered to her and comforted her and escorted her to the nurse's office and provided the excuse to the head nurse Ritsu had given her at my insistence.)

I had been covering my ears most of the time so I didn't hear the brunt of Ritsu's well-intentioned and completely justified barrage of furor. It helped slightly, but not enough. But with Mio defusing the situation I felt like this was a better environment for me to properly exist within, so I proceeded to remove my aural blockages.

My index fingers hurt from pressing them into the sides of my head so hard during most of the conversation. If only I had carried my earplugs with me that day, it would have saved me some trouble. I decided from then on I'd just leave them in my skirt pocket and never take them out of there again unless I needed them, so there was no longer any chance I'd forget them.

That's what I would call being humble: knowing your weaknesses and taking steps in advance to make up for them.

In the midst of all this I distracted myself and wondered why Mio had managed to remain so calm this whole time despite Ritsu exploding in anger - understandably - over my behavior. After all Mio was the one person who had been consistently frightened by over seventy-three percent of what Ritsu did to her on a daily basis. None of Mio's actions that day made any sense at first despite all the observations of her behavior I had made over the past half year or so since I had first known her. She was no longer fitting into the image of her I had built up over time as the shy bassist who had always pulled back the moment things got tough and it always being Ritsu or Yui or Mugi who helped her get past her fear, and now it was confusing because she was the one helping Ritsu get past her anger at me. I almost thought that maybe that whole thing of Mio's was an act up until now, the kind of thing people tell to idols or actors to do in order to give them some kind of unusual behavioral appeal that nobody can find in real life. Or maybe it was because Ritsu didn't believe that it could go on like this but Mio did, and it was going to be up to Mio to keep us together if Ritsu was not going to agree, and her usual fear of Ritsu or cheap horror movies or durian was a triviality in comparison to the importance of ensuring our friendship in the Light Music Club was not going to end, no matter what.

I have learned that for all of her shyness and dread, in the end Mio is an optimistic person, and she is steadfast. And all I can say is I'm grateful for that.

Apparently one day in June of 1987, Roger Waters told somebody: "We do whatever we do. You either blow your brains out or get on with something."

And Mio got on with something.

Up to this point in time Mio had learned all of the obvious things that would end up setting me off unconsciously, and so had Mugi, who also occasionally interacts with people physically. Even Ritsu, whose primary source of enjoyment in life is watching the results of her psychological experimentation on Mio, had learned that with certain people there is such a thing as "going too far."

But not Yui. She would walk up behind me and put those plastic 500 yen cat ears she probably got from Don Quijote onto my head without me noticing, and I would start with a jolt and stumble forward in confusion over what was happening behind me, where I'm not looking and what's happening there is unknown to me. But when I turned around and looked at her all I saw was her face in an expression they call "delight," calling me that nickname she gave me arbitrarily. That nickname. Then she would hug me.

Or maybe she would just skip the formalities and hug me from behind out of nowhere so I had no time to actually be prepared to receive it.

And she never learned when to stop.

To me there were numerous things wrong with this picture. The cat ears, which are symbolic of the anthropomorphism of domesticated animals that humans have continually bred over centuries for the primary purpose of companionship, which I interpreted at the time as being pushed down to deserving the same level of respect as an animal with no ability to reason. The corruption of my first name to the same effect. The fact that Yui sees me primarily as an object of her affection, a bundle of limbs whose primary purpose in the Light Music Club is to be hugged and startled at any time and for her to feel good about herself over whenever she wants the physical contact, despite me not giving her any of my consent to be seen or used in that way whatsoever. The fact that her motions themselves are unpredictable if I'm completely occupied with thinking of something else and I'm not able to move enough of my attention to my surroundings in time to realize she's about to touch me. And the sensation of being touched itself, which most people who are capable of putting up with it on a daily basis cannot possibly comprehend the reasons as to why it gives me so much trouble, and the ones that at least understand it's a Bad Thing for me don't ask about the reasons.

I suppose that's not a Bad Thing - not asking about the reasons. Because it means Yui and Mugi and Mio and Ritsu are just trying to act towards me like they do anyone else they know reasonably well by touching me and laughing around me and smiling at me and so forth, and not acting differently towards me to make me feel like an "other" and exaggerate how I'm already technically an "other" by being their junior and also the last person to join the Light Music Club a full school year after it was formed. And that absence of questioning is probably better for my sanity.

So I'll write the reasons here.

To describe it succinctly, when someone touches me like Yui does, it feels like I'm going to suffocate.

The numerous details I need to pay attention to in order to function properly for our club's activities, such as the exact angles at which I have to move my fingers so the music can continue to be performed correctly or the specific values of each knob on each amplifier or pedal I need to turn them to for each song, and the trifling pieces of information I just happen to absorb passively without thinking, such as the innumerable scratches on the finish of the red 2006 Fender Mustang MG-69 I use that have accumulated over time (which I worry about occasionally) or the way the neck strap and the size tag on my T-shirt I never bothered to cut off irritate my neck and consequently irritate me - all that attention to detail is now entirely focused on this young woman constricting me with her arms in a manner I did not expect, in a manner that is sudden, and it feels like it will suffocate me. Like your lungs being squeezed with a vice and becoming bruised and failing.

That's all.

If that still doesn't make sense, then I guess people not asking for the reasons checks out. And if they do not ask for the reasons, and I keep the growing unease it causes me over the days and weeks and months to myself in a conceited effort to not be rude (since being rude is a Bad Thing), one day Hirasawa Yui is going to walk right up to a powder keg and start playing with fire.

Did I tell anybody this?

No, I did not.

The first time it happened shortly after I joined the Light Music Club and everyone else looked at me and egged me on to do my best impression of a human-cat chimera, I did what I learned over the years was best for me and put up with it. Because these people were happy and otherwise nice to me and I didn't want to ruin the moment and be rude to them and refuse their hospitality of letting me join their club and play side guitar for them and eat their sweets and drink their tea, which they had decided on their own accord to allow me to do with no obligations whatsoever (unlike my parents to whom I am obliged to please and be pleased by just because they gave birth to me), and being rude is a Bad Thing.

So I did my best impression of a human-cat chimera, for everyone's sake.

And let Yui treat me as her bundle of limbs for what felt like an eternity.

And after a while it stopped working.

And that was on me, keeping it all inside, and I regret it when it comes to now after what's done was done, as certain people have said to me.

But what's done is done.

Mio keeps saying her preference for the bass guitar is because she prefers to be a band member who does not stand out and is consistently in the background.

I do not understand this reasoning, because if Mio played the bass as she describes as "out of the way" of people's attention, then the driving rhythm of the music would be lost. The reason it is called the bass is because it is the "base" that the rest of the musicians play towards. In fact in choosing the bass she has put herself in a crucial position that cannot be deemphasized for the sake of keeping the composition of the music together. Taken to an extreme, if all the music we played had no bass in it whatsoever it would not be very interesting music. In fact if it came to the part which actually "stood out" the least then I would have to say it would be my own part of the side guitar. I just end up playing the chords on off beats or something and don't try to pick individual notes in sequence. Yui does the interesting parts, the picking and melodic playing that drives things forwards, like Joe Satriani or Ritchie Blackmore. Mio should just learn side guitar and I'd play bass and we could switch parts if that's truly her concern. But then again this is a band and having a conversation about hiding oneself or not becomes silly when you actively chose to accept holding a concert in a public venue as opposed to turning it down entirely for a reason that has nothing to do with playing music.

If we were talking purely from a standpoint of where each of the band members exist on or around the stage, then there is nothing preventing Ritsu from putting her drums on the front edge and Yui from standing on top of the curtain railing and Mugi from sitting in the audience so long as everything is connected to an amp or microphone. Mio could just hide behind the curtain if she insists it's too demanding to stand on stage. In fact I feel the same way she does about performing in crowds sometimes. It seems like I just have better ways of managing the anxiety. Or maybe I just don't care enough about what other people think of how I play.

When I explained this to Mio she simply nodded, gave a vocalization of acknowledgement and looked downwards. She seemed to look sad because of what I told her. Then I thought I had ended up making her feel uncomfortable, and that I needed to rectify this immediately because Mio had tried her hardest not to make me feel uncomfortable up to that point in time and I needed to reciprocate somehow. As a result I apologized and said I would never try to explain the reasons why Mio's concerns about stage performance did not make sense to me ever again, in the interest of not being rude, which is a Bad Thing.

Mio shook her head and looked back up and said that it was okay. She was smiling so I guess it actually was okay.

Then Ritsu told me that Mio being off stage was missing the point, and besides she would not be able to see the others to keep time.

I had thought that "the point" was to play music and not whether we were standing or sitting or lying down or in the other room while doing it.

I mean, think about how Jimi Hendrix and Jimi Hendrix's son position their bodies while strumming their instruments.

It's part of the theatrics.

Something is apparently happening between Yui and Mugi. Because back in less difficult times before I did that to Yui, and when both Yui and Mugi happened to not be around in the club room during school or after practice and we were sitting at the table having tea, it was usually the first thing that Ritsu talked about. "Ohh man, it's Yui n' Mugi," she'd proclaim, or "Gosh, they're such a pair," she'd croon. Mio just gave Ritsu a look of disapproval and said nothing during these times, so if I was ever going to understand what Ritsu meant I'd have to ask her myself. So I asked Ritsu what was going on between the two of them.

"Well, one day Yui pushed Mugi's keys and ever since then she's been unable to stop pushing things of hers."

I wondered what kinds of things Yui would push that would cause Ritsu to become so amused. Surely she wouldn't physically push Mugi herself, because my understanding is pushing people like that unnecessarily is not an acceptable thing to do - as we've seen - and even if Yui touches me that is only something I personally dislike and I know she is not going out of her way to try to be unacceptable like if she deliberately pushed Mugi. She could continue to push things on Mugi's keyboard (since "keys" probably referred to her synthesizer's keyboard, a KORG TRITON Extreme, and Mugi performs using the keyboard), but "things of hers" seemed to indicate some kind of broader category of pushable items than that. And it had to be something that Ritsu found amusing enough to hold her attention, and about the only things that hold Ritsu's attention are eating sweets, playing the drums and terrorizing Mio. At that point I didn't really know what things of Mugi's that Yui would push.

Mio on the other hand, who was at that moment taking a sip of barley tea out of her designated teacup, immediately spit it out like a dolphin's blowhole all over the table and her face became flushed like strawberry rhubarb. "...Ritsu," she said in a manner like my mother does when she reprimands me for doing something wrong. Ritsu just scratched the back of her neck and closed her eyes with a grin as if that was just how it was between Yui and Mugi, and Mio was going to have to put up with it somehow.

From observing Mio's response I felt like this was not something I should interject into so I kept quiet. In the end I didn't really understand what things of Mugi's that Yui was unable to keep pushing. But for some reason the thought of Yui pushing something of Mugi's over and over like someone playing that one American computer game called Counter-Strike was really amusing. I imagined Yui hunched over a desk furiously clicking a mouse that was owned by Mugi in Mugi's house while Mugi just stood there and watched with that stereotypical ladylike expression where she closes her eyes and smiles softly.

It was teatime, because It's Always Teatime In Sakuragaoka, so we sat at the table drinking tea.

Then Ritsu said, "I learned in world history that there's a place named Azusa City in America." She grinned and slapped her knee. "A city of Azusas! What a hoot!"

Mio responded, "Ritsu, they don't teach you that in world history." Then she turned to me and said sincerely, "I'm sorry, Azusa. Please forgive me for this blockhead's careless and insensitive comments."

"Hey!" Ritsu interjected in her usual teasing manner with a grin and she raised her arms in a shrugging motion of some kind, like she was still enjoying the joke but wanted Mio to laugh along with it too and didn't understand why she wasn't doing so.

Mugi refrained from laughing or making any remarks on the matter and sipped her expensive Belgian tea instead.

I agreed with Mio's assessment of Ritsu's statement.

I did not like this interpretation of my name because it implied that if there actually was a city filled with thousands of copies of Nakano Azusa it would amuse Ritsu to no end. This is a Bad Thing for two reasons: first, because Ritsu would see me primarily as a subject for her amusement, which I do not like. Second, and more importantly, because Mio would end up being left out from Ritsu's teasing because Ritsu would spend all of her time teasing the thousands of Azusas, so the relationship between the two would become fraught with turmoil and jealousy and it would end up deteriorating to the point where they would no longer be friends, and then one of the reasons I find both of them interesting as people would be lost forever, and I would feel like it was my fault.

Of course, I kept this to myself, in order to not be rude.

Then Mio leaned in toward Ritsu and gave her a look and said, "Are you slacking off in your studies again? We certainly don't want a repeat of Yui's debacle."

In this case "Yui's debacle" referred to the incident on Friday, May 29, 2009 (before I was a member of the Light Music Club) when Yui almost flunked out of high school entirely and the Light Music Club nearly had to become a three piece without a lead guitarist which was unregistered with the school and unable to have a club room, since if Yui no longer existed they could no longer be a club and the school would refuse to recognize they existed no matter how proficient they were at music.

I know this because Yui told me.

Ritsu just changed the subject and turned to me and said, "Well, whaddya know, Azusa. Someone thought to name a city in western America after you. How's it feel?"

To be honest I didn't feel anything. If someone were to name a city in western America with my first name that would be their decision, and given they'd be in a position to be naming things in America that are culturally and economically significant like large centers of liberty and commerce I doubt a fourteen-year-old girl from Japan with twintails would be able to change their mind. And besides Azusa the western American city has no real relation to Azusa the side guitarist for Houkago Tea-Time, and people arbitrarily deciding that the two named entities are somehow connected by fate is in my opinion a bit ridiculous. If I could impart something personal of mine on the city like a signed guitar or live performance at least it would have some kind of a relation at all. Otherwise it is meaningless, and in the void.

Besides that this conversation had nothing to do with practicing music, so I said, "Ritsu, we should start practicing music."

Mio agreed with me and said, "Good idea, Azusa," since Mio is generally supportive of anything I suggest to the other club members. I appreciate her because of that.

Mugi, who was now eating macarons and had been listening to us the whole time, closed her eyes and smiled softly and nodded with vocalizations of approval like a polite young lady.

Ritsu looked at me with a face indicating her disappointment in me holding her attention long enough for her to become amused and me actively ignoring her amusement, so she said "yeah, yeah," in a disinterested manner and got up and went off to get her drumsticks.

"What is your opinion of Tomoyasu Hotei?"

One time before we went home after practice I asked Yui this question and all she responded with was, "...Huh?"

That wasn't the response I wanted.

"Too commercial. When it's about music it's either providing a service like showing up and playing at someone's wedding or holding guerrilla concerts on the side of the road in your beat-up van. Hotei is an employee. He has the skills and the success and that's it, and I don't think I'm going to find anything profound about life by listening to him. It doesn't need to be profound or about life, even. Just interesting enough for me to care about at all. Like Momoko Yoshino."

Yui looked at me like I was a blind dog repeatedly running into a wall. "...Momoko who?"

"God, Momoko Yoshino. You know, I'm always reminded of her when you're singing as a frontman. Whenever I imagine what it would be like having 'musician' as a way of life, I think of The Automatics. Or Tirolean Tape. Red Guitar.¹ Young people retracing the footsteps of past idols. We should play more rock-and-roll standards. British Invasion pieces. I feel like it honestly fits the atmosphere we bring, the same rolling kind of feeling. Rolling around in ecstasy on high blood sugar. Mio would agree, she's entranced by John and Jeff and Jimmy and Jimi and various other musical J's. And we would record our debut on a C60 because even though Mugi could afford a four track and a proper studio all the kids who started off in their indie lifestyles and their bedroom studios recorded on 3,000 yen boomboxes and released it on cassette first. It's the experience of dubbing each individual copy by hand and waiting for it to finish and you finally giving it to some person and saying, 'I think you're worth 60 minutes of my time.' The audio equivalent of someone's loose leaf doodles they made for hours when they were bored in class and then repurposed as an impromptu token of gratitude."

When I ended up pausing in my stream of thought for about half a second, that was enough time for Yui to interject, "Azusa, I don't know what you're talking about, but it feels like you're not yourself today. Is everything okay?"

I looked at Yui. She had this look on her face that I interpreted as pained, like I was an old friend of hers with dementia who had forgotten whom she was. I wanted and still want to be able to express to her that she is valuable and make her understand that I have appreciation for every single time she's tried to look after me since we've known each other. All 67 of them.

But this 68th time I'm going on and on and there are more important things I need to express in the moment than caring about Yui so I decided to go on about them instead.

Yui eventually loosened the muscles in her face and just listened to me the rest of the time and occasionally nodded to indicate she was still listening. She didn't look at me anymore because I guess she understood by then that looking directly at me might make me feel uncomfortable and she was trying to avoid doing that.

Given how I'd behaved around her up to that point, that was probably all she could have done for me.

And sometimes that's all you can ask for.

Art is weird.

Since a bunch of weird people like us play music I guess that makes sense.

But it's weird in the sense that I won't understand what to say about it in words unless someone tells me or I try pretty hard.

So when I listen to something I don't look at the liner notes or reviews in magazines. Because if I do, I end up believing I can process this art logically if I can fit in enough quotations pulled from various sources to construct a narrative that makes enough sense in my mind.

But you can't, because it's art, and someone wiser than me said you can't approach art like that, so you can't.

Think about paintings. Give me a reason why a Rembrandt or a Dali are worth so much more in currency over pictures drawn by students in the art extracurriculars featuring art styles plagiarized from all the popular shoujo and shounen series and other more basic and straightforward motifs that I would much rather prefer to look at (not enough put in my room, though).

And nowhere in this process of stealing other people's opinions does the "me" come out. So I ignore all that, take out the record from the first sleeve and the second sleeve, put it on the turntable, drop the needle, turn it on, and close my eyes.

I once told Mio that if it came down to it I'd write editorials about anyone's music if they paid me money and played it for me. On cassette. I'd make barely enough money to get by, and I'd still be on the streets, but it would hold my interest long enough for me to keep working on it.

Mio said that was a good idea and I could help her out with writing her lyrics sometime.

So I did.

"Being"

A pen on the side of the road
A dog chewing a bone
After school, needing a home
After lunch, all alone

Being in the moment
Being, for the moment
(x2)

Told to try again
Told to make amends
Going for another do-over
But there is nothing to prove, sober

Being in the moment
Being, for the moment
(x2)

Another day on Earth
Another day since birth
Another day I have to admit
Another day I continue to exist

Being in the moment
Being, for the moment
(x8)

I gave the lyrics I wrote down to Mio. She spent six minutes and fourteen seconds in silence reading it over multiple times while I stood there waiting for her to respond. Then she looked up at me from the page and said she really liked it, with an enthusiastic tone of voice and a smile. She then went into considerable detail about the specific reasons why she liked it, including

1. The fact that "being" was a conjugation of a verb meaning "to exist" but also a noun meaning "a thing that is alive," and that I was trying to draw a comparison between me existing, which I cannot help but continue to do, and an association with a label representing the most broad and general class of things that are considered "alive" because some bitter people feel that the more specific "human" is an inappropriate label for me
2. The repetitive nature of the chorus, song structure, and the lines starting with "Another day...," which all give the impression of an outcome of life that is inevitable despite the supposed consequences of its fulfillment and at the same time never-ending and also repetitive
3. The visual imagery in the first verse describing concrete objects in the first two lines and more abstract imagery and feelings in the following two, linking them as sensations that can only be described as "just the way it is," as obvious to the lyricist as observing the green leaves of the trees in the summer, and yet completely disconnected from what some people consider their own experience of being.

The fact that she looked at me directly was enough indication that she was being honest, and I appreciated her honesty, even though her looking at me so directly made me uncomfortable, like she could look straight past my Sakuragaoka school uniform and skin and flesh and could gaze directly at my soul. And she was specific, so I could better understand the detailed and personal interpretations of my soul that she gave.

Then she raised her right arm towards me, as if to pat me on the shoulder (spare me) or the head (oh God), but mercifully she remembered after a split second and her warm smile flinched and after a brief pause she pulled her arm back.

That's why I trust her, and all the others. They learn about me, and put up with me, and despite their mistakes, they try.

I can't say that about many people I know.

However there is not yet a song named "Being" in the repertoire of Houkago Tea-Time at present writing, and I guess that indicates what she truly thought of the specific content of the lyrics I provided to her.

Maybe they weren't cute enough.

Oh, well.

People say I tan easily.

I don't. I just don't bother to put on sunscreen.

Because if I'm outside I'm thinking about what kind of dirt or sand Yui is going to drag me into this time and the water and the breeze and the scent of passing cars or children or domesticated animals and the other members of the Light Music Club laughing and enjoying themselves and being loud and boisterous and I get tired of at all and don't really care about any of it so I don't really care about putting on sunscreen either.

Sometimes when I need to buy food I'll just go to the supermarket in a T-shirt in the middle of fall even though it's freezing. People will ask me if I'm cold. I am.

Maybe I'll end up dying of skin cancer, if Yui doesn't suffocate me first.

Ton-chan is a pig-nosed turtle.

Ton-chan was adopted by the Sakuragaoka High School Light Music Club on Sunday, April 25, 2010 by Hirasawa Yui because she felt that once she and the other second-years had finished high school and graduated that I was going to be lonely as a third-year with nobody else in the club to talk to and it would be nice to have someone I could call a junior so I wouldn't be lonely. I completely disagree with this assessment. In fact having only myself in the club room would allow me more time after school to practice music instead of sitting around sipping tea in Mugi's expensive Belgian teacups and cracking jokes I don't understand or feel like forcing myself to laugh at anyway and generally getting tired of all those other loud and boisterous Light Music Club members being loud and boisterous. But then again you can't be officially recognized by the school as an official club unless you have four members, so having a junior would be nice since you'd be holding an asset towards fulfilling that requirement. But then again Ton-chan isn't a human, so he can't be an officially recognized Light Music Club member anyway, so I guess that line of reasoning doesn't work.

Ton-chan was selected by Yui as the Light Music Club's captive organism specifically because I was staring at his tank in the home improvement store a short walk from the school while the other Light Music Club members were goofing around somewhere buying some screws, and I found his pig-nose weird and wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his time in this tank in the home improvement store and die alone after a long time of nothing but swimming around aimlessly, never knowing the pleasures of the world that humankind had managed to uncover over the course of history like playing guitar or eating sweets. Then Yui found me looking at the pig-nosed turtle and mistakenly thought he was actually a soft-shelled turtle instead and also thought I liked the soft-shelled turtle, so she asked Ms. Yamada to buy him when I wasn't noticing in order to keep him in captivity in the club room.

Ton-chan is about as smart as an alligator and bites you if you try to feed him directly, so the duty of feeding him is offloaded to Kotobuki Tsumugi, who just so happens to have extensive knowledge of the various species of turtlekind because she keeps various turtles and tortoises and whatnot as pets in her expensive mansion.

Ton-chan does not label you. He does not say you are not deserving of this or that because you were born a certain way and you're just out of your luck because that's how it is so you should just live with it.

Ton-chan does not yell at you when you do something wrong. He just keeps looking at you or swims around in his tank until you calm down and are able to think through things more clearly and rationally, and then he comes back and you can talk to him about the reasoning for your actions and come up with a better strategy for tomorrow. And Ton-chan just listens to you in silence, and for some reason I believe Ton-chan understands. I apologized to Ton-chan for insinuating that animals like cats or pig-nosed turtles did not deserve respect because they were not as smart as me for not being able to play the guitar or eat sweets, because Ton-chan always gives me his respect and that was enough for me to undo my incorrect presumptions.

Ton-chan is probably male, but since I do not actually know how to determine the gender of a pig-nosed turtle I decided to believe he is male because calling Ton-chan "it" is rude and I do not want to be called "it" by someone else either, so believing he is male lets me call him "he." When Yui called him a "super-beautiful" turtle I was about to correct her when I realized that Yui was probably just doing the same thing as I was and happened to believe Ton-chan was a female turtle instead of male one and that she didn't want to disrespect Ton-chan by calling him "it" either, and I also supposed there was no reason that male turtles couldn't also be "super-beautiful," so I kept quiet.

Ton-chan is apparently shy and gets stressed very easily, but if I can hardly tell what Mio or Ritsu or Mugi or Yui are thinking at a given time by just looking at their faces then I'm guessing I will also not be able to tell what Ton-chan is thinking by looking into his eyes or his pig-nose. But if Ton-chan actually is stressed frequently and too shy to be around other turtles without getting into fights then I sympathize with him.

Ton-chan is anthropomorphized by the rest of the members of Houkago Tea-Time because they find his pig-nose "cute" by some warped definition of society's standards for "cute." Except Mio, who is terrified of slimy creatures like him because there are too many unpredictable variables going on in his mind that affect his behavior. Like me. But I like Mio, and I believe that she will put forth the effort to work through it, so I don't hold it against her.

Ton-chan is a member of an endangered species, Carettochelys insculpta, whose population has declined by about fifty percent in the last three decades. They are primarily captured or hunted by smugglers in Indonesia in order to produce an Asian delicacy called turtle soup. Whenever I consider the implications of this an image of Ton-chan swimming around in his tank gets into my mind and I think I am going to vomit and lurch over and start sweating profusely and cover my mouth but I try to do what Mio told me to do when I get like this and close my eyes and take really deep breaths in ten-second intervals for a few minutes, and eventually the sensation passes.

Ton-chan will probably live to be about 30, because that is the average lifespan of a pig-nosed turtle. I wondered what I would be doing 30 years from now when I am 44 years old and if Ton-chan will still be alive and recognize me after all that time. Or if the other Light Music Club members decide between themselves that Mugi or Yui or someone else should adopt Ton-chan instead of me when the Light Music Club inevitably disbands after all its members graduate high school or college and get jobs in corporations and he becomes only one person's captive organism in their apartment for a few decades. Or maybe after a while Ton-chan will get sick and die of natural causes before he is 30 years old. But I don't feel anxious or sad about this because at least he wouldn't have died too young, and everything that is alive has to pass away someday, and that is the reason we can call them "alive".

Ton-chan is as important to me as all my other friends in the Light Music Club, and I hope that when he dies I will be able to get over it and move on with my life.

One time, Yui offered me a piece of cake.

"Here, Azusa," she said. I must have smiled a little, because she responded to those slight movements in my face I must have made with a smile of her own, and I must have smiled a little because I knew in that moment she had put forth the effort to understand me a little bit better.

It was one of those vanilla and whipped cream types of cake with sliced strawberries arranged in an appetizing manner in the filling, and additional strawberries on top of the cake at spaced intervals for decoration.

She was holding the piece of cake out on top one of the expensive Belgian plates for teacups that Mugi provided to the Light Music Club. I recognized the contrast of this expensive plate used by royalty with the item of food lying on top that she had surely acquired from some middle-class convenience store and could not help but feel amused.

She had left the strawberry that was used for decoration on top of the slice of cake. I'm not insensitive enough to ignore the fact that I'm not the only one with inexplicable habits. Yui has this habit of never taking off and eating the piece of fruit on top of any factory-assembled supermarket pastry she consumes, because someone doing that makes her sad (thankfully I wasn't the one who first triggered this sadness in her; it just so happened to be that the young lady who provided all the sweets and tea got too carried away one time). I have no reason to press her for her reasons for this, because nobody has any interest in pressing me for my arbitrary reasons for the stupid things I do, and besides those reasons are just arbitrary and divisive and I didn't want any of that anymore for any of us.

But I didn't want to eat the cake at the time, so I said, "No thank you, Yui. I'd rather we start practicing music for today."

"Oh, don't be such a prude, Azusa," Ritsu interjected, which made me jump a little since she was just out of my field of view. "Kick back and relax for once. We're all in it for the sweets."

I thought Ritsu's usage of the word "prude" was mistaken, since I wasn't trying to be courteous or polite or Victorian by refusing Yui's offering. I just didn't want to eat the cake.

But anyway, I said, "I thought we were all in it for the music, since this is the Light Music Club."

"...That too," she conceded after a moment's thought and an exaggerated motion involving putting her hand under her chin and looking upwards, then continued, "but come on. You know you want it." Then she commenced the negotiations. "After you eat this slice with us we'll start practicing. How does that sound?"

I said no, I really didn't want any, because I had exceeded my allotted quota of sugar that week and continuing to consume any more sugar per week that consistently meant I would probably die of an aneurysm by age 32.

Yui just responded to all this by ignoring my morbid outlook on the future and contorting her face into an expression that some may call "puppy eyes" as an appeal to emotion, since puppies are stereotypically "cute" in human culture, and stated: "Please, Azusa? Just this once? For us?"

Then I decided to acquiesce. I did not give in because of Yui's expression of "puppy eyes" or her continued insistence on me eating the piece of cake that bordered on pathological or the fact that she chose by her own will to call me by my first name.

I gave in because I was getting tired of it all and I wanted to practice music.

"Alright, fine. If I'm going to keep saying 'no' to both of you people who continually insist on forcing my arteries to decay then our friendship would also continue to decay until I become excluded from this club's more important activities that I have an actual interest in, such as practicing music. So yes, I will gladly accept this slice of cake that you have offered, Yui, and eat it, while making sure the strawberry remains on top the entire time, because if I don't, you'll just end up being sad, and it will be so much more sad because you were the one who asked me to eat the slice of cake yourself, and I don't want that to happen to you."

Whatever expressions Ritsu and Yui were wearing on their faces slowly disintegrated over time as they heard more and more of my response and they eventually both ended up with blank-faced stares. Then they slowly turned their heads and looked at each other, silently, in evident confusion.

They had succeeded in convincing me to go along with their indoctrination, but apparently not in the way that they had intended.

Still, they had succeeded, so that's nice.

I took the cake from Yui's now-retracted arms carefully so as not to damage Mugi's expensive dishware and went over to the cupboard and opened it and got out one of Mugi's expensive Belgian forks that the Belgian royalty used for eating waffles and stuck the fork into the edge of the cake and separated a small bite of it and put the bite of cake in my mouth and chewed it for a few seconds and swallowed.

It tasted good.

It was one day after school in the club room when me and the rest of Houkago Tea-Time with the exception of Yui had just finished practicing, but Yui was there anyway and was sitting on the couch facing the instrumental setup so she could watch us practice music.

And after we finished practicing music Mio talked about the usual things with me and the others about keeping rhythm and musical flourishes and the more important phrases for each of the musical parts and I tried my best to absorb whatever was relevant to my role as a lead-guitarist-in-residence.

And then I took out my earplugs, which were musician's earplugs for more clearly hearing the instruments and details of the sounds than with normal earplugs, and put them in my skirt pocket and went over and started to pack up my red 2006 Fender Mustang MG-69 with the innumerable scratches on the finish in its case and my mind was poring over the details of the various configurations of I and IV and III and V and F and C and A# and G that were at play in Mugi's latest composition that we had just finished rehearsing and how to fit my hand and finger movements over all that by picturing my hands sweeping over the frets and pressing the strings and strumming and repeating all that over and over again, and then I put my guitar case over my shoulder and got up and turned around and I saw that Mio and Ritsu were standing together looking at me in a certain way in front of the doors leading outside the club room, and as soon as I saw them they looked at each other for a split second and then they looked back and started walking towards me.

In that moment I understood that they wanted to get my attention but did not want to stand behind me and speak since that might startle me and they understood me and were trying to be polite.

And I also understood that when someone starts walking towards you solemnly like that with the specific look that they were giving there is nothing good that will ever come out of what happens next.

"...Azusa," Mio said to me, softly, as she looked at my neck. Then I realized the club room had once again returned to that deafening, unnatural silence. And I looked to my right and noticed that Mugi was looking at me in the exact same manner as Mio and Ritsu were, silhouetted against the orange and amber colors of the sunset outside the window, from behind her KORG TRITON Extreme that she hadn't even attempted to pack up yet. And then I looked at Yui even further to my right who was still sitting on the couch and I couldn't help but think that she was also looking at me in the exact same way as the three others, with the golden sunset striking the right half of her face and the shadows covering the other, and it appeared overtly symbolic.

I felt that, once again, the circumstances were starting to align.

"Could we talk for a moment?"

Mio was being quiet and polite and nice to me so I did not want to refuse. And I could not refuse anyway. If I tried to escape and push both of them aside and run out the doors leading outside the club room I would have felt like I was missing "the point" that Ritsu talks to me about sometimes and I also would have pushed Mio and Ritsu away, which was rude and I stated I was never going to do again, and doing all that was just going to make things even worse than they already were.

So I just nodded silently and walked over to the table where we usually ate sweets and drank tea and cracked jokes I did not understand and retrieved one of the laquered wooden chairs from it.

When I got back to where the couch was and put the chair down in front of it the other four members of the Light Music Club were sitting down on the couch with the worn blue upholstery and their expressions were unchanged. Yui had some pillows set up behind her, but now she was sitting upright on the edge of the couch so nothing was pressing on her back anymore. Mugi was to her right. Mio and Ritsu were to her left.

I sat down on the lacquered wood chair and immediately looked down at the floor.

I knew exactly what was going to happen.

I was about to be interrogated.

Put on the spot.

They were going to tell me what they really thought of me the whole time up until now, and about what I did to Yui when I acted so horribly to her to make sure I properly understood, and make me apologize some more, and I was going to "shut down" like people say I do when the going gets tough, and I'd hate myself for my actions, and the fact that Mio and Ritsu and Mugi and especially Yui wanted nothing to do with me anymore for the rest of my life, and my existence in general.

Or maybe something worse would happen.

Maybe they would tell my parents about everything.

Everything and anything.

"Azusa," Mio continued in her familiar voice, in the same soft manner that was barely audible in the sacred silence of the Light Music Club room. "I just wanted to say-"

"NO!"

I ended up startling even myself with the strength of my voice. It felt like it was no longer my voice, as if I was possessed by the vengeful spirit that Ritsu had talked about in one of her ghost stories she made up to scare Mio. I snapped my neck upwards as I said this to look in the direction of the four remaining members of the Light Music Club and saw that all of them had started and gasped and flinched at the exact same time in much the same way as I usually did when someone spoke to me in a relatively normal voice all of a sudden. And in that moment I felt substantial pangs of guilt for reversing the roles and being in their place for once and startling them, and if I was thinking more clearly at the time I might have learned something important about how best to treat people and the Golden Rule and the Second Commandment and other behavioral constructs like those.

But I did not want to think about any of that right then.

"Azusa. Please, just listen to me for a moment." Mio's voice was soft and unwavering despite the sadness I had inflicted on her. "This is not what it might seem like to you."

Several moments later, after I looked back down at the floor to avoid their rapidly deteriorating expressions of sadness and worry that were starting to assail me, I said that I had made mistakes.

And I proceeded to list off my mistakes.

Every single one.

And I listed off some mistakes that didn't happen even though I knew that they didn't happen.

And I said that all of it was my fault.

And that I hoped that we could continue to be friends, and eat sweets, and drink tea, and practice music in the Light Music Club as members of Houkago Tea-Time.

And that I did not want it to end like this.

Because the four young women sitting in front of me and Ton-chan swimming around in his tank patiently were valuable people to me.

Indescribably valuable.

Irreplaceable.

All of them.

And because I knew that Yui had forgiven me.

I knew this, and I had the evidence to prove it in a way that everyone could understand perfectly.

Because I remembered the time Yui had invited me to her house one night after practicing music.

And I asked Mio and Ritsu and Mugi if I could go and they all said it was okay in their usual sociable manner, so that meant I could go.

And the fact that Yui wanted to invite me over meant that she didn't mind me being around her away from the others, and I thought we would be able to make amends and move forward like this from now on.

And the road home from school at night in the middle of fall was freezing.

And Yui was wearing her coat and the special mittens her younger sister gave her.

And I wasn't wearing a coat or special mittens.

And we reached the Hirasawa household and Yui rung the doorbell and she took off her special mittens.

And Yui's younger sister Ui answered the door and the first thing she did after greeting me and Yui was to press the palms of her hands together with her older sister's so their fingers aligned they and giggled, as opposed to hugging each other, and then Ui stepped back from her sister and looked at my neck and smiled and waved.

And I waved back.

And then Ui went over to the kitchen to make dinner for us and Yui took off her shoes and put them in the shoebox and then she took off her coat and hung it on the coat hanger and asked me if I wanted to come up to her room with her, which meant that she trusted me a lot so I thought this excursion was going pretty well already, so I took off my shoes and put them in the shoebox and followed her up the stairs to her room.

And when she entered her room she waved to her guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Standard Traditional coated in sunburst whom she had named Giita who was sitting on his stand near the bookshelf on the far side of her room, and as she waved to him she said cheerfully, "I'm home, Giita! Did'ya miss me?"

Then she turned around and closed the door when I was inside her room.

Then she turned to me and said excitedly, "Do you wanna see something cool, Azusa?"

And I said, "Yes, that's fine. Please show me, Yui."

Then she walked up to her bed and got onto her bed facing away from me and took off the top of her school uniform and put it aside and started to lift up her undershirt.

And I thought something terrible was about to happen because in modern society nothing good happens when people start taking off their clothes in front of you, so I quickly looked away in embarrassment and stammered, "W-What are you doing, Yui?"

And Yui said to me with her usual cheerful demeanor, out of view, "Don't worry. Everyone else has had a look already, so you can have a look, too."

And I turned my head and looked back at Yui who was sitting seiza on top of her bed holding her undershirt up and looking back at me.

And I saw that across her back in a diagonal was some kind of large white medical padding over the exact spot where I had made her injure her back, which was otherwise uninjured and free of any scars.

And it was large enough for the other Light Music Club members and various other people to have written their names and some markings in their distinct styles of handwriting in thin, black permanent marker on it.

And I slowly and deliberately walked towards Yui as if I was approaching the golden idol in Peru with all the booby traps.

And after a good while I finally got close enough and bent down slightly to see what was written on Yui's medical padding.

And I saw Ritsu's markings, where she drew a small portrait of herself giving a thumbs up and and a wink and a smile and a glitter on her teeth and a statement of "get better soon!"

And I saw Mugi's markings, where she said it wasn't Houkago Tea-Time anymore without Yui and that she worried about her all the time and hoped she got better as soon as possible.

And I saw Mio's markings, where she said she couldn't wait for Yui to get better and start rehearsing with us again and wanted to share the new song lyrics she wrote for her.

And I saw Manabe Nodoka's markings, where she said that she had appreciated Yui's smile and her warmth and their friendship ever since they had been in kindergarten together, and that she and the student council wished her a swift recovery.

And I saw Suzuki Jun's markings, where she said that as a fellow musician she had always wanted to talk to Yui, her senior, about her musicianship and strumming techniques and various other things and hoped she got the chance to do so sometime soon.

And I saw Ms. Yamada's markings, where she praised Yui for being a good student and how she could accomplish anything she put her mind to.

And I saw Mr. Hirasawa's markings, which were caring and deliberate.

And I saw Mrs. Hirasawa's markings, which were kind and cordial.

And I saw Ui's markings, where she said she couldn't have asked for a better sister in the whole wide world and wished she could hug her again just one more time.

And then I straightened my posture.

And my vision blurred.

And then something in my head broke, like someone sweeping Ton-chan's tank off its shelf and the water and artificial sand and aquatic plants and Ton-chan and shattered glass spreading all over the floor.

And then I looked at Yui waiting patiently for me finish looking at her medical padding.

And she asked me, "What do you think? Cool, huh?"

And then she asked me, "Do you want to write something?"

And then I looked into Yui's hazel eyes, devoid of any redness or wetness or anger or sadness or pain.

And then I looked at Yui's smile.

And then I tilted my neck down.

And I slowly crouched down to the floor.

And I pressed my palms to my face.

And I buried my head in my knees.

And then I let out a scream and all of my sorrow and my confusion and my regret and my suffering were being forced out of my broken head and out of my lungs and poured into a single primitive wail like a captive beast that had lost all control and reason.

And I couldn't help but think about Yui seeing it all and seeing everything inside of me that I had kept to myself up until then being extruded from my mind and body and laid out bare in front of her and wondering if she would still think of me as a friend after this was all over.

Or if she would even think anything at all of me ever again.

And that scared me.

And I could not stand it.

And the tears would not stop.

They never stopped.

"Azusa!"

Mio yelled my first name, but it wasn't an angry yell, and it wasn't actually that loud, and it felt like it wasn't directed at me. It was panicked. Like nothing was my fault and instead a pack of lions had invaded the school and I was cut off from Mio and she wanted to save me from them.

I wouldn't blame her.

Because the circumstances had aligned and it actually was my fault and I was in for it and that was it and that was it and that was it and it was done and it was finished and it was over with and I was through.

I thought I was humble. I had admitted everything I did wrong, before they had a chance to get onto me about any of it. I knew everything they were going to say, and I hated that they had felt that I didn't actually understand what I had done to Yui or how they felt because of what I had done to Yui so they had to explain every single thing I had done to Yui to me all over again.

I thought I was better than that.

And so the tears and the overflowing of that nebulous thing that the beings named humans call "emotion" and the hysterical sobbing never stopped.

"Get the nurse," Mio stated coldly and directly, like a head surgeon, to some undisclosed third party. I didn't know precisely what was happening with Mio or Ritsu or Mugi or Yui or Ton-chan anymore. And a part of me worried about what they were all seeing with me and how I clearly could not control my behavior in front of them any longer and I worried that things would never be the same between us again. Especially Yui, who would have to go through seeing me like this a second time because I just couldn't keep it inside or find a way to better manage it all for her sake. And that was supposed to be up to me, if I truly cared about Yui.

But I was sobbing myself to death with my palms buried in my face and my face buried in my knees and I was on my side, curled up like an earthworm that someone had stepped on and that they hadn't realized they had stepped on and did not so much as forget about because they had never even known that the earthworm existed in the first place, and everything was black and warm and wet, and the blood was throbbing and ringing in my ears and all the important blood vessels in my body were probably going to burst, and so identifying exactly what was happening in the real world was a critical thinking skill that was beyond my mental capacity at that point.

But in the midst of all that, somehow, by some strange force of habit I must have developed by then, there were just enough shreds of reasonable thought remaining in my head that I could grasp such that I could still reason a guess that Ton-chan and Mio and Ritsu and Mugi and even Yui were going to be there for me all throughout the night, so I decided to give myself a pass, a vague notion of some sort, that everything would somehow turn out okay that night.

So I decided to just go with that.

Did everything turn out okay that night?

To be honest, I still can't say for sure.

But as I write this, I'm alive, and Ton-chan is alive, and so are Mio and Ritsu and Mugi and also Yui and all the others.

And the Light Music Club is still together.

And we call ourselves Houkago Tea-Time.

And we eat sweets, and drink tea, and practice music, in that order.

And Mio stands up for me.

And Ritsu made it up to me.

And Mugi gives me her hospitality.

And Yui is getting better.

And everyone is learning about me, one step at a time.

And we are all still friends.

And everything is forgiven.

And I guess, for now, that's all I can ask for.

¹Tirolean Tape Chapter 4. Red Guitar, Pirozhki Recordings, 2000.