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The world is beautiful, and yet it isn’t. People say it is, and people say it isn’t. We’re supposed to love others, and yet we hate others just as easily. We are supposed to take adults seriously, but not every adult should be taken seriously. Large international multimillionaire companies are the enemy, and yet they provide us with the tools necessary to live. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer? But yet we strive towards individuality and personal independence. Fighting our hardest to loosen the grip society has on us, knowing fully we could never disentangle from it all. Unless we all became shut-ins, reminiscing about our glittering youths where we dared to try something, to venture into the unknown, to jump into the abyss, all because we felt like something exciting was going to start if we did. Endlessly lamenting as we pine for those days and curse the listless indecisiveness that comes together with ‘growing up’. Saying you don’t want to grow up is not allowed either, only kids say that. You would want to be taken seriously, no? Or maybe, the entire point of such a statement is exactly that. To not be taken seriously at all. Never growing up means never aging, never growing older, watching the world decay before your eyes as all the ones you love disappear into thin air like ash drifting in the wind. Leaving you alone on the world carrying the entirety of humanity on your shoulders, for you are the end; every action you do becomes the last time humanity will ever do so on this blue planet we call Earth. Who would want a fate like that? How fortunate kids say it so often it’s almost a characteristic. So becoming older is a good thing. And yet we try our hardest to stay young. Selling products to make it look like we’re ages younger than we actually are. It’s contradictory. A disgusting juxtaposition intrinsically tied to our success in this world, for beauty is individual social capital too. The more beautiful you are, the easier things will be. And while there might be more efforts these days to dismantle that standard, the fact remains that society will be more lenient if you simply look good. Even crimes, hate, disruption, it can all be waved away. The world is beautiful, contradictory, and horrifically unfair. Isn’t it for the better that our time is limited? If life truly is just endless suffering, for those who don’t wish to ‘be’, they know it’s only temporary. As for any villains, we know that they’ll run out of pages too to write their history eventually. And yet... Despite all of that... We hope to live. Perhaps that’s just survival instincts for we are just organisms, but if you really think about it, everyone is doing a rather horrid job at living. Oxygen slowly kills us and yet we require it, so our bodies don’t shut down. And that’s not even mentioning unhealthy food, substances, alcohol, consumer cars, pollution, et cetera. It’s like humanity is intentionally making things harder for themselves. Or maybe more accurately, we merely pursued things out of convenience and pleasure not quite knowing what the lasting repercussions would be that would eventually plague societies generations removed from now. Like how something like the use of e-cigarettes is considered a hip and cool thing and seen as better than smoking but that is simply because just like back in the day we just have no idea what it will do to us and our bodies. And yet it and other bad things continue to be sold. Despite everything. The only silver lining that exists is that we’re simply aware of the dangers more than before. And awareness is the first step to change, even if drastic change is undesired by most. If you were to focus on these bad things only, then the world must seem so utterly foul, it’d be hard to believe it was reality. But it’s not reality. Only focusing on the bad will just crush your spirit faster than the speed of a bullet train. It’s the complete opposite of being realistic. The world is vile, the world is contradictory, but the world is just as beautiful too. Natural vistas, human built world wonders, arts, music, it would be preemptive to ignore all of these and conclude that the world is plagued with nothing but darkness. And while we have been plagued by all those bad things for so long, the beautiful things have not left us either. Thanks to the internet, songs will exist forever even if all physical copies were to disappear. Great works of art are still maintained and restored for their splendor to reach later generations. And even if the unthinkable happens and a great catastrophe occurs that would tear such works of art asunder, photography can at least remind us of what had been, preventing total deletion from this world. The internet and photography might have their drawbacks too, of course, and those must be acknowledged just as much as their benefits. Just like how the uncontrolled sublime of nature is just as beautiful as it is dangerous. As long as we see things for what they are in their entirety, then we’ll be okay. That’s the way forward within this contradictory world. The path where we’ll be able to keep looking up at the night sky, appreciate its beauty in the stars, constellations, moon, and other planets, while respecting the danger of the unknown, for we do not know what lurks in the darkness. And taking the plunge to try out new things, accepting lunch boxes from friends, going to arcades, karaoke bars and what-have-you, just like other teenagers, is kind of like that too, right?
- Hitori Gotoh
Silence flowed as if dancing on the air circulating within Ikuyo’s room, the most profound and still emptiness in the world. They say that silence speaks volumes, and that it is golden. So does that mean true value, the value of gold, lies in the absolute lack of value of silence’s nothingness? Did that mean true self-expression is only able to be found by not expressing anything at all? It was paradoxical. Would the paradox mean reluctance is the only way to show true willingness? Existence only being able to exist because of non-existence? It was like a coin and its other side. Or like the shadow that light casts everything in this world is defined by its opposite.
Tsunderes are kind of like that too, saying ‘it’s not like I like you or anything’ and other clichéd stock phrases to express affection. Maybe their closeness to the truth of the world is what makes them so popular.
So perhaps it might be best to leave nothingness remaining empty, to lay down the pen, and leave the canvas blank.
Faced with infinite possibilities, a potential to say everything — it would not be too far-fetched for an author or artist to shrink away from that overwhelming opportunity to say anything then, no?
No...that would just be an excuse to not do anything. Then at what point does something profound turn into simple laziness?
That is why uber-popular high-school girl Ikuyo Kita couldn’t look away from the notebook opened on her desk. She had a mission to complete, after all. It was ordered by her leader, Supreme Commander Nijika Ijichi, during their last band meeting…
“Now then,” Nijika clapped her hands to punctuate her words, catching everyone’s attention, “we can’t let Bocchi-chan write all of our songs or our image as a band will be permanently tainted by her...worldview…”
“I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” Hitori blurted out, moving beyond just apologizing profusely. If she was able to speak this fast, why had no one proposed an endeavor in the realm of hip hop for a song?
“Bocchi-chan, you don’t have to crawl under the table…” Nijika tried pulling at the pink guitarist before she fully descended to the underworld. “Err, well, in any case with that being said… Kita-chan!”
“Huh? Yes!?” the sudden mention of her name startled the other guitarist.
“You’re now in charge of writing lyrics for a new song! You’d probably write the most different lyrics from Bocchi-chan.”
“Eh!? But I’ve...never done that before...and only me?”
“Don’t worry! I will try my hand at it too!” Nijika said proudly with her fist on her chest.
“What about Ryo-senpai?”
“Well she’s the one composing, so for now I will let her off the hook.”
Ryo flashed a thumbs-up while she was chewing on an indiscernible green stalk. Hitori was struggling to find an opportunity to say anything while peeking over the tabletop, looking just about ready to give up and eternally keep her silence.
“I don’t know if I’ll write anything good,” Ikuyo said with a sullen tone.
“Hmm…” Nijika thought for just a second, before making a split-second decision. “Bocchi-chan?”
“YES!?” Hitori rose up as if called upon by a teacher.
“No need to get so tense~ You’re now Kita-chan’s supervisor.”
“…s-s-super…? Impossible. No way I can be…super... Or a visor. I couldn’t block out the sun…”
“Don’t make comments that don’t work in Japanese, Bocchi,” Ryo said dryly with no regard to the fou —
“And you stop breaking the fourth wall!” Nijika quipped. With a clearing of her throat, the drummer continued. “In any case, Kita-chan, just give it a shot!”
Hitori looked as if she was about ready to keel over then and there.
Fast forward to now, in a room with a silence only disturbed by the tapping of a pencil on a desk's surface. A blank paper stared menacingly at Ikuyo, who returned the glare. White is considered the color of purity, if you can get past the fact that it is not technically a color at all. It felt almost untouchable. Many artists facing the vast whiteness of an empty sheet of paper get filled with anxiety, or so Ikuyo heard. Could you bring yourself to permanently taint the purity of a blank piece of paper?
Were your words,
your drawings,
‘you’,
good enough for something like that?
Were you able to disturb the snowscape-like serenity of a blank piece of paper with a stroke of your pen?
It was daunting.
Ikuyo had been looking at an empty sheet of paper for over half an hour now.
Her homework was finished, she finished all of her set guitar drills and daily maintenance, and she had no other tasks to complete around the house. It was just her, her room, her chair, her desk, her pencil, and the notebook she was using for lyric-writing, remaining untainted.
She hadn’t even written anything on the notebook’s cover yet.
The guitarist laid her pencil down and reached for her phone similarly on her desk.
It is said that for perfect work efficiency, it is best to completely eliminate any source of distraction from your work environment. Lock your phone away in a safe, or work in a place where the amount of distractors is limited like in the school library for example.
“Maybe I’m not cut out for this kind of thing,” the high-school girl mumbled to herself. Ikuyo scrolled through her socials; consuming information at record speeds. She made sure not to access any infinite content reels. If she looked at them, she knew she wouldn’t get any lyric writing done.
What a dangerous, dangerous feature.
The impression Ikuyo got from lyric writers was that they were special. It was an amazing thing, to be able to outline the depths of your heart. To give them form on blank white, unfazed by the world as they wrote their piece. Wasn’t it embarrassing? Compromising? Ikuyo really didn’t understand. Lyrics...often had a point. A purpose. What was it that you wanted to express?
Ikuyo didn’t know.
What did she want to say?
She was given the stage, the podium, but unlike the times on-stage in Starry, no words came to mind. It was frustrating. Was everything she did in her life so superficial that she never once harbored complexities to write about now? No complaints about her life? No heavy feelings to vent out? What was her heart? Where were Ikuyo Kita’s words? What was an everyday cheerful high-school girl supposed to write down for song-lyrics?
Who was Ikuyo Kita?
“Ugh…”
The frustration hit its peak.
Ikuyo counted in her head.
Thirty seconds.
She would only allow herself to be sad and frustrated for thirty seconds.
1...
2...
3...
4...
5...
6...
7...
8...
9...
10...
11...
12...
13...
14...
15...
16...
17...
18...
19...
20...
21...
22...
23...
24...
25...
26...
27...
28...
29...
30.
Ikuyo turned off her phone and tossed it on her bed. She picked up her pencil, shifting her gaze and focusing on the blank in front of her.
She still couldn’t bring herself to write anything. The vocalist looked at her alarm clock on her nightstand, its display read 17:48. Her escape from gazing at the paper continued, as she stared out her window. She saw the world, immersed by the night’s dark curtain. There is nothing for me out there , she thought, as she looked away again.
She tapped her pencil twice on the desk, her legs swaying.
Ikuyo had looked up guides on the internet on how to write song-lyrics, but figured all of them would be useless. She didn’t read any. How could they possibly help her in something so intimate as laying bare your thoughts? It felt like something grand was required at this point. A grand guide she could rely on as she faced the blankness of paper.
When would she ever speak for herself? Find her words?
Her mind drifted.
All this time…Kessoku Band’s lyrics were all Hitori-san’s words.
That girl...she was amazing. Shining.
Cute, cool, reliable, and able to speak out against the world somehow. It was ironic. Someone with a disposition like Hitori Gotoh was able to write lyrics and make a point, but not Ikuyo Kita...
Ikuyo’s mind wandered as she recalled Hitori’s words of advice from earlier this week during their guitar-practice-turned-song-lyric-writing-practice.
“L-lyrics, u-uhm…” Hitori was struggling to speak, her stuttering evidence of the fact. “B-basically...s-sometimes you have to just...begin.”
That was easier said than done.
“S-some people...e-employ certain techniques...l-like looking into their room...and see what associations they can make.”
“Associations? What do you mean?”
“L-like…” Hitori looked at her guitar case and her eyes sharpened, as if she realized something. Or more appropriately, as if she decided that a demonstration would be best. Hitori raised her finger and pointed. “Guitar. Instruments. Band. Kessoku Band. Music. L-like that!”
“I see…” Ikuyo tried her hardest to sound convinced. Despite her words, it didn’t really help her one bit. Was she really going to write a song about notebooks? Phones? Beds? Clothes? Chairs? Furniture?
Her memory continued.
“U-uh.” Hitori’s gestures were growing more exaggerated as she overcompensated for her self-perceived lack of coherency... Or maybe she was making up for her low intensity existence? Although Ikuyo thought that couldn’t be the case.
Hitori on stage was the most intense thing.
Regardless, it was cute, whatever it was.
“I-if you ever get stuck...just, m-move your pen!”
“What do you mean, Hitori-san?”
“T-these aren’t my words, b-b-but I once read somewhere once t-that it’s best to...move your pen. O-otherwise it’ll just be a blot of ink... Did that make sense? That didn’t make sense at all, did it. I’m sorry. I-I shouldn’t have spoken.”
“No...I think I understand.”
“Thank you, Hitori-san,” Ikuyo quietly mumbled once more with a smile in the emptiness of her room. How could you not smile after recalling the softness that was Hitori’s face after she realized her message was received despite her total lack of communication skills?
Ikuyo Kita still had no idea what to write,
but for now,
/
she drew a line on the paper.
And she continued drawing.
☆
“There,” she said, satisfied with her beginning.
A star now adorned the page’s whiteness.
The paper was now, literally, starry.
The guitarist shook her head. That one was horrible.
Ikuyo wondered whether this counted as making a beginning to song-writing. It wasn’t really a word, but it was something on paper at least. The pure white was no longer pure. The girl hoped that now the phrases would dawn on her, and she would create the best lyrics ever conceived by a high-schooler.
As if.
Her vocabulary continued to fail her, as she simply kept drawing stars around the edges of the paper.
Maybe all she needed was a reference. Some sort of image of what lyrics were supposed to be like. It would be easy to find, Ikuyo had plenty of songs she adored. A wealth of lyrics was only a few finger swipes away on her phone. So close, she felt as if she could touch it.
But she didn’t reach out.
If she did take a look at all those songs, then wouldn’t she just end up copying all of them? The same ideas, the same phrases, the same concepts, the same images...
It wouldn’t be Ikuyo Kita at that point.
So it wouldn’t help at all.
“This really is hard.”
Where could she look? What text could she look at without the risk of being inspired to the point of plagiarism? It would have to be a song with ideas so far out there that she couldn’t possibly take them over. The adverse of ‘Ikuyo Kita’.
The flipside of ‘youth’.
...
Ikuyo stood up from her chair, picked up her phone from the bed, and pulled up the lyrics to one of Kessoku Band’s songs. The lyrics by Kessoku Band, or Hitori Gotoh, were...not the easiest to relate to. Ikuyo sang those words because she was supposed to, but had she ever stopped and thought about the meaning of it all? The purpose embedded in the lyrics? Did she understand the things Hitori Gotoh wanted to say?
Guitar, Loneliness, and Blue Planet.
That was their first song, and Hitori’s first foray into writing lyrics for actual use...
It was the perfect example to look at.
The lyrics of Guitar, Loneliness, and Blue Planet... It was like a heartful cry. Edgy, yet weirdly inspiring. A desperate attempt by the speaker of the song for someone to acknowledge them. But the speaker doesn’t know who they are. But what did it seem? A speaker that feels insignificant, idiotic, frustrated, transparent, but wishes fervently for someone to see them. After all, can we really say we’re alive if no one recognizes us as such? Humanity is defined by others.
Who ‘you’ are, is defined by everyone but you.
In the past, Ikuyo was impressed that these words came from the not-quite-inconspicuous pink-jersey wearing guitarist, but the red-haired girl never attempted to pretend to understand the words.
But in this moment.
On this night, nearing 6PM,
Ikuyo grasped it; the meaning of Hitori’s words.
The frustration, the desire to say something but not having the ability to nor knowing what to say, the powerlessness in the face of the world; the blankness of white…
All of it made her think of her now, sitting at her desk, unable to come up with any fun lyrics for Kessoku Band to use.
She understood.
Or maybe she didn’t understand at all. Maybe what she was thinking now wasn’t the point of Hitori’s words. And realistically could she ever hope to fully understand someone like Hitori, or any other person in general? Who can say that they fully understand themselves, let alone others? So maybe her comprehension of the words in front of her was a farce. A misunderstanding—nothing but a sham. An epiphany obtained at a convenient time so she could move forwards finally, bending the words to fit herself in this moment.
But song-lyrics...they’re up to interpretation aren’t they?
Wasn’t this feeling of ‘getting-it’ good enough?
And perhaps truly understanding the enigma that is Hitori Gotoh was actually far from desirable.
You’d probably change.
And not for the better.
So—Ikuyo couldn’t take these words and make them hers.
”You really are amazing, Hitori-san...” Ikuyo said, before pausing.
But despite her opinion;
despite the fact that Hitori Gotoh was quickly rising in the rankings of one of the greatest people Ikuyo Kita has ever met;
those lyrics of the song jumped out at her.
It was bad practice to equate the author with the speaker in something like song-lyrics or poetry...
But what did Hitori mean with ugly shadow? Not shining bright?
Something stirred — changed within Ikuyo.
If Hitori-san wants someone to look at her, to notice her—then I...
What changed was a sensation she would come to understand in due time, but for now it had no name.
It didn’t need a name.
For all that mattered was that this untitled feeling moved her hands with a fervor Ikuyo had never known before.
Ikuyo looked at her clock, and stole a brief look at the night sky from her window.
And so, finally, Ikuyo Kita wrote some lyrics.
‘Just a bit before 6 o’ clock...’
Starcharters, epilogue.
One day in summer, Ikuyo invited me out somewhere.
She didn’t tell me where we would be going, but since it’s her I didn’t say no. Though, that didn’t stop it from being...strange. Her dad drove us out somewhere, she exited the car, I had an awkward conversation with her father that was just plain uncomfortable, and then she came back to fetch me.
The moment she opened the car door again and poked her head in the car, it felt like I got saved.
But that feeling was overwritten as she instructed me to look down as soon as I exited the car, as she grabbed my hand and let me somewhere.
Honestly, I get it. People like me ought not raise their heads. I was good at it, anyway! No complaints here whatsoever.
I felt the sensation of grass and dirt underneath my feet and the sound of wildlife like crickets.
A forest.
We came to a stop, after a little bit of walking, and she instructed me to lay down, eyes closed. I was expecting to feel the forest floor, and all sorts of bugs like me...
But what I felt at the back of my head was something like a tarp.
She told me to open my eyes.
We both were laying down as I was greeted with the star-covered night sky.
It was beautiful.
“What do you think?”
“U-uhm...I don’t know what to say.”
“Maybe not saying anything is saying the most.”
And Ikuyo didn’t miss a beat with her explanations of the starry sky.
“That’s Altair, Vega, and Deneb. I think you can guess what I’m about to say here next,” she said in a joyful tone.
“The summer triangle,” I responded.
“Correct! I guess it’s hard not to know that considering the existence of Tanabata and that legend.”
“Tanabata will be soon, won’t it?”
“Yes, soon. Do you think Orihime and Hikoboshi can wait any longer?”
In the past, I wouldn’t understand such notions at all. But nowadays...
“I-I guess t-they’re at the edge of their seats...”
The conversation moved along as Ikuyo pointed out more celestial bodies. I didn’t really understand most of it, nor did I know there were this many named stars in the sky. But I accepted all of it as her words started growing more distant.
It’s hard not to with her eyes glittering like that.
These stars…couldn’t compare to her...
...
“Hitori? Did you fall asleep?”
Oops.
“For a bit.”
“Did you dream up anything fun?”
“I-I don’t remember.”
Ikuyo nodded, then.
“Well, that’s just as fine too.”
She always had a penchant for looking at things from the bright side. And I guess that talent of hers led us here.
Us, here and now.
“Ikuyo?”
I turned to face her.
“Yes?”
“Do you remember why you fell in love with me?”
“Ah that’s...”
She sat up and turned to look at me, before smiling.
It was a warm smile.
“Hmm~ let me tell you a story, Hitori. A story that you don’t know.”
She interrupted herself, as something of a sly-looking smile appeared on her beautiful face.
“But before then…”
Pause.
“Hey Hitori…”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to kiss?”
...
There was no way I could say no.
And so, she leaned over…
...and the world fell away.