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“So,” Ryunosuke says slowly, trying to process the words that had just come from his best friend’s mouth, “you’re part of a band.”
“Yeah.”
“And your band wants to start doing original songs.”
“Mmhm.”
“And you want me to write lyrics for you because none of you have any idea how.”
“That pretty much sums it all up.”
“Kazuma, I’m not a songwriter at all!”
That insufferably charming smile Ryunosuke has unfortunately made acquaintance with in the past year and is even more unfortunately weak to pops onto Kazuma’s face. “Well, you’re an English major, aren’t you? I’m sure you’ll do just fine. At the very least, it’ll be better than anything the three of us could come up with.
Those are two completely different things! he wants to say—but he knows that smile means Kazuma has made up his mind and nothing short of Ryunosuke keeling over from a sudden strike of divine intervention will sway him. Still, Ryunosuke has his doubts about being good enough for the job. Sure, he’s taken plenty of writing classes for his major requirements and, yeah, he’s done plenty of karaoke as a student in Japan. Okay, and maybe he has a fondness for musical theater and performing arts too thanks to when he stayed with his cousin’s family in the States during the second half of his high school life—but that’s beside the point! It still doesn’t mean he’s qualified to write indie rock songs!
“What do you guys even sing about?” Ryunosuke asks. Rewinding to just a few minutes ago, Kazuma had explained that they were mostly a casual garage band out in the city suburbs (or at least, Ryunosuke calls them suburbs in his head because Londoners get snippy about that thing, strangely enough) who sing cover songs as a way to pass the time rather than make it big. But even a cover band would have some sort of theme, or at least a preference for genre and subject matter.
Instead, Kazuma shrugs. “The usual stuff. Injustices, losses, criticisms of society, the passage of time and inevitability of death.”
…
How is any of that normal?!
In the end, Kazuma simply laughs at him, telling him not to think too hard and write whatever he fancies. Some variety might be good for the band, after all, so he shouldn’t limit himself. Oh and, by the way, he’d like to have a draft by Friday night since he’ll be meeting up with the others Saturday afternoon.
Ryunosuke holds his face in his hands long after Kazuma has left his apartment.
Why can’t he ever say no to him?
(He knows why.)
During the next few days, Ryunosuke goes through his flash drives for writing classes of semesters gone by for any decent nuggets he can just clean up from any past assignments, including the ones from high school that his cousin told him to hang onto. Better than reinventing the wheel, considering the amount of coursework he still has to do on top of this crazy request. He picks a choice few that he thinks sound good—although Ryunosuke distinctly remembers half of it is basically purple prose to pad the word count—and takes a free afternoon on Thursday to format the words without any music to guide him.
In the forsaken hours of Friday night, after crunching and barely making a tight deadline for a term paper about the emasculative underpinnings of eighteenth-century satire, he messages Kazuma the word document of lyrics. Most of the drafts are untitled and he tells Kazuma to tear it all apart and take the bits he thinks could work.
Feeling his eyelids drooping to keep his soul from leaking out, Ryunosuke promptly closes his laptop and effectively goes the fuck to sleep.
Only to wake up mid-morning the next day to several unread texts, one of which reads: Get dressed. I’m taking you with me to practice.
What.
“Why?!” he asks over the phone, having called Kazuma in a record-breaking thirty seconds after his brain processed the order. “I’m sure I gave you more than enough to work with—even enough that you can write your own! You don’t need me there!”
“Yeah, but your stuff was good, Ryunosuke!” Kazuma’s voice twinkles from the other side of the line. Ryunosuke could almost imagine Kazuma’s face crinkling into the very expression that makes him weak, unable to say no. “I couldn’t even believe it when I was reading them over last night. I knew you were incredible during our public speaking course, but how’d you manage to hide this kind of talent from me?”
“They couldn’t have been that good.”
“But they are that good. So good that I want you to be there when I show my bandmates the fruits of your labor and see how they like it.”
It’s one thing for his best friend to see his embarrassing word vomit, but strangers?! “You can’t be serious. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Oh, I’m dead serious. I’ll be there in twenty more minutes, so make sure you’re ready. It’s a casual thing, so don’t feel like you need to get fancied up.”
As the line clicks before he could even get a word in, Ryunosuke contemplates packing his things and planning a hasty escape back to his cousin’s place. One quick slap in the face from the potential logistics later, he simply groans and resigns himself to dragging his feet towards the shower.
Ryunosuke already had a sinking feeling in his stomach when he and Kazuma had switched over to the Green Line going west—one that had sunk further once they got off at the third to last station in one of the several wealthy pockets of the city. Nothing, however, could compare to the rock-bottom discomfort of sitting in the sleek basement of a massive two-story house with a net worth that far outclasses that of his entire family tree, being sized up by people Ryunosuke can only describe as a Gothic horror protagonist one breath away from splitting him in half with his bare hands and a streetwise delinquent ready to sell the remains as they scrutinize the print outs of his week’s work Kazuma had brought with him.
“Kaz, mate,” the delinquent—a young lady not much younger than he and Kazuma, with blonde hair and blue eyes and a lean frame that’s probably stronger than his own—says, her features softening in childish confusion as she glosses over the paper, “I know I’m daft, but I ain’t got a clue what any of this means.”
“It’s rubbish,” the Gothic horror protagonist declares, dropping the papers into the floor like a death sentence following a personal affront.
Kazuma crosses his arms and lets a familiar edge creep into the tone of his voice. “Just because you have a preference for simple and direct doesn’t mean it’s rubbish, Barok.”
“It’s not a matter of preference, but sincerity.” Barok, in all his towering glory that’s equal mix of terrifying and impressive (with just a pinch of Wow, hot that Ryunosuke will neatly push aside for the moment), throws a steel-eyed glare his way like a precursor to a pub fight. Did he already mention that this guy looks like he’s about to split him in half with his bare hands? “Empty words with a gilded gown. Even I can toss out drivel like this.”
“Ryunosuke worked hard this past week to—”
“Only a week, Kazuma. And it shows. I’m not going to let you sing something this fake—”
“Then go ahead, Barok, you try to write something better in the same quantity that he did. I know that you can’t and that’s why I asked him in the first place—!”
Ryunosuke wants to put himself between them to stop things from getting too heated. He really does. Except that this is quickly devolving into a dog fight and he’s still got another term paper to finish so he’d rather not get mauled.
The delinquent uses this opportunity to pull him aside. “They’ll be at it for a while. Might as well get a snack, right?”
“Uh. Sure?”
“Good. I’m starving.”
Ryunosuke looks back briefly as the other two continue their bickering. The volume level from them alone probably rivals the amplifiers pushed up against the walls. He doesn’t think those two have even noticed that he’s following their bandmate upstairs. “Does this happen often?”
“God, do they. Baz and Kaz’ve been like that since I first met ‘em.” She glances back at Ryunosuke over her shoulder and offers a cheeky grin. “Name’s Gina, by the way. Gina Lestrade. Don’t think I got yours when you and Kaz came in.”
Yeah, Kazuma just got right to the meat of things (as he usually does) as soon as they had stepped through the threshold of the basement. “My name’s Ryunosuke Naruhodo.”
Gina quietly clicks her tongue. “Damn it. It already took me forever to try and say Kaz’s name right, so I ain’t gonna bother for now. Let’s just call you ‘Oddo and call it square.”
…
Well, it’s better than ‘Narrowfodder.’
He’ll take it.
When he and Kazuma had first arrived to the house, Kazuma had led him around to the backyard and entered the basement from a door in the back patio, since the house itself sat on a small hill. All this to say: now that Ryunosuke follows Gina into the ground floor hallway and gets a proper look at the interior of the house, his unease comes back full swing at the subtle displays of wealth hidden within the aesthetically modern veneer. He feels like he should be paying some sort of fine just for breathing the surrounding air.
Gina, despite her rough appearance, doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment—in fact, she acts perfectly at home here as she leads him into the house’s beautiful open-concept kitchen. The way she’s facing, she’s probably ready to make a beeline for the two stainless steel fridges, when the strong and distinct smell of baked goods stop her in her tracks.
From over her shoulder, Ryunosuke sees a little girl hovering in front of the oven, with a tray of golden-brown shortbread in her mitted hands. She turns around, having heard their footsteps, and lights up with a kilowatt smile.
“Hello, Ginny!” the little girl greets. She casts her gaze in a vaguely familiar manner (which he’ll only recognize later on) at Ryunosuke, but he finds it much less threatening. “And who’s this? A new friend? I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“Uh, hi. I’m Ryunosuke Naruhodo.”
“He’s a friend of Kaz’s actually, ‘Oddo is,” Gina clarifies, patting his shoulder for emphasis. “Came with him for practice.”
“How lovely! My name is Iris. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Iris looks down at the tray in her hands with a pleased glint in her eyes. “You and Ginny are just in time—the biscuits are all cooled and ready to eat.”
“Nice. Baz and Kaz are gonna take a while.”
“Goodness, are Uncle Barry and Kacey fighting again?” She shakes her head with a sigh, setting the tray down onto the countertop of the kitchen island. Gina doesn’t waste any time meeting her and popping a biscuit into her mouth. “Honestly, they’re both working for their LLBs and they still act like this.”
“They just love each other like that, I reckon,” Gina says around a mouthful of biscuit.
“Daddy thinks so, too. He says they’ve been like that since they were kids.”
“Damn. Been that long for them?”
“Mmhm! They were around my age when Kacey and his family moved to London, apparently. At least that’s what Daddy told me. Oh, he said that Uncle Barry was the cutest back then!”
Ryunosuke feels so out of place, both in the house and in these people’s lives. The person he’s really closest with in this city was Kazuma—to the point where he easily calls Kazuma his best friend. But even then, he’s only known Kazuma for around a year and a half when they’d first met during a public speaking course over the summer. There’s so much that’s still hidden away behind the smile he sees in school, in the ramen place just a jaunt away from campus, in the four walls of Ryunosuke’s flat with just the two of them laughing the afternoon away.
It’s almost the same as when he first moved into his cousin’s place: a small building, tucked away in Los Angeles, that’s half an agency and half a home to a group of people that shared triumphs and struggles and life together.
Iris notices his silence and grabs his wrist, tugging him closer to the biscuit tray. With a surprising amount of strength for someone her age, she all but places him down on one of the seats by the kitchen island. “Don’t be shy! Have some! They’re very good, if I do say so myself. Would you like some tea?”
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Ryunosuke says, waving his hand reassuringly—but Iris is already moving a step stool to the stovetop so she can get the kettle. “Uh, thank you. For the snacks.”
“Eat up, ‘Oddo,” Gina says, shoving another biscuit into her mouth. “Food’s always the way to go after Baz tears into you.”
“Was Uncle Barry being curt with you too, Runo?”
Is ‘Runo’ supposed to be another nickname?
…Eh, that one’s fine too.
It’s embarrassing for a guy his age to explain his embarrassing first impression to the niece of the guy he embarrassed himself to, but for someone who’s probably only ten years old, Iris is as surprisingly precocious as she is strong. Well-spoken, even. After one kettle full of breakfast tea and a brief explanation of the events that had transpired not even half an hour ago, Iris hums a contemplative note to herself. She seems to come to some sort of conclusion, fetching a pad of paper and pen from a container by the mounted house phone.
“You shouldn’t mind him when he gets like that. Uncle Barry just has a hard time expressing himself,” Iris says while Gina pours them all a mug. She hands the pad of paper and pen to Ryunosuke. “If Kacey sees Runo’s potential, then there must be something there. Why not prove Uncle Barry wrong and give it another go? This time, with pure gut feeling and no hard thinking!”
“Yeah! Show Baz what’s what!” Gina agrees, slapping him on the back. She’s still holding the handle of the kettle and Ryunosuke is close enough to hear the ominous sloshing of scalding hot tea from inside the metal container. “Alright, ‘Oddo, get cracking! No thoughts, head empty!”
To be honest, Ryunosuke doesn’t even want to try again. He wants to go back to his flat, back under the covers, back to before any of this even happened. He wants to watch his strangely addictive British panel shows and baking competitions, wants to focus on his coursework to distract himself from his monotonous routine, wants to consume and observe and improve his English enough to be taken seriously by his peers that are native speakers. He just wants to survive in this city he’s barely acquainted with—because after being shunted out from the home he’d grown up with in Japan and after already carving out a small nook for himself in Los Angeles, Ryunosuke doesn’t think he has enough energy for another attempt at making something feel like his home.
Yet, in that moment, Ryunosuke remembers Kazuma’s smile, the one he’s weak to and the one that got him into this mess—and then he remembers Barok’s stare, challenging him for something concrete, something real.
Ryunosuke takes a deep breath and, in typical Japanese fashion that startles the two girls with him, hypes himself up by slapping both cheeks.
No thoughts, head empty.
With pen in hand, Ryunosuke starts to write whatever comes to mind in whatever way the words spill out: whether blunt or winding, whether English or Japanese. His hand tears through the first side of the paper sheet, then the backside, then a second page, then that page’s backside. What Ryunosuke gave Kazuma after one week is nothing compared to the years’ worth of feelings he apparently carried and held back.
It’s messy.
But: it’s truth.
When Ryunosuke finally snaps himself out of the writing trance he’d been hypnotized by thanks to his hand cramping up and realizes that almost an hour has passed by, he lifts his head up to four sets of faces looking at him from around the kitchen—including Kazuma and Barok’s. He didn’t even notice that they came up from the basement.
Barok crosses the room, nearly pinning Ryunosuke in his seat with his shadow alone, and plucks the pad of paper from his hands. Steel eyes slice through each line, each word, on the current page before he unceremoniously drops the pad back onto the tabletop.
“Passable.”
A breath he didn’t even know he was holding escape his lips. Alright. Ryunosuke will take that victory for what it is.
“The next ones should be like that.”
…Huh?
“Kazuma brought you here to write songs for us, didn’t he?” Barok asks in a tone that holds no room for protest. From behind him, Ryunosuke can already see Kazuma break out into another smile—relieved, reassuring, and radiant in the ways that Ryunosuke remembers from when they had first formally introduced themselves to each other the summer before. “Now write more.”
Iris claps her hands cheerfully. “Isn’t that great, Runo? Uncle Barry’s let you into the band!”
If Ryunosuke looks close enough, he would see the bit of smugness that pinches the corners of Kazuma’s smile.
…
Damn it, Kazuma!
Why can’t he ever say no to him?!
(He knows why. It’s the same reason that he won’t be able to say no to Barok in the near future, either.)