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Taki's been Taki all these years, ever living in that same modest but fancy apartment one station away from Tomori's house. It came as no surprise that Umiri had moved in at some unknown point to start sharing a daily life with her, their mutual agreement easily reached over a few rounds of curtly exchanged banter, not much different from the way she used to balance a juice box on top of the drummer's head back in their high school days. Cozy as the house is, a bed is always reserved for the cat. That said, a cat is a cat, she chooses to doze off at night wherever she pleases - be it the livehouse, the parking lot, or the very interesting woman's place, just to name a few. So technically, Raana is still known as the stray cat who belongs to nowhere. Or at least seemingly. She might have deemed one in her head for herself, as her home, a lifelong promise of the MyGO fashion. Only she knows.
Anon, on the other hand, has developed an extraordinary enthusiasm for traveling the world. Who knows if it's about a long embedded knot of her unfulfilled experience back in the UK that is only blooming as she ages. "Hopelessly childish," as Soyo puts it. For this reason, it's not uncommon for Soyo to make an expensive long-distance call just to summon the pink guitarist in time for a live performance of the band. But this happens less often now. It's more like she'd randomly show up in the hallway of RiNG with two weathered suitcases, one black stacked on one pink, to give her bandmates an unwelcome surprise. Or sometimes she would choose to stop by her beloved Soyorin's luxurious 45-story penthouse first for a quick shower or nap and strew all her belongings over there. "That dummy," Soyo always grumbles at the sight of the mess. It is also very Anon of her to drag her victims (Rikki and Soyorin, mostly) around for hours, bragging about the St. Anon's great adventures overseas, hands holding a cup of lukewarm Earl Grey tea that Soyo, expectedly, brewed beforehand. This sort of thing never bores her. After all, she is a vain creature by her own definition.
And then Tomori was ill. Badly. Looking back, no one could say for sure when the dementia had snuck into Tomori's head. She was not much of a talker, so it was only natural to glean something, if anything, from the most trivial clues. There indeed is something however. Like a shift of facial expression into blankness. Like a slack open of mouth producing no words. Like a haze settled in pupils. Like an gaze cast to no aim. "Should've seen it coming," as everyone would say in hindsight, but even Taki didn't think of the worst case. One late afternoon, as they gathered at Tomori's place to celebrate another day together, feasting on the overstuffed hotpot Soyo and Taki had prepared through the day, Ranna targeting a matcha parfait, everything took a turn when Tomori, while about to pick up something with her chopsticks, suddenly froze to a statue at the dinner table. The chopsticks slipped from her fingers, and her right arm remained suspended mid-air. Certain pieces of that moment would continue to haunt Taki for years to come: the inexplicable quality seeping through the walls; the distortion of a silence breathing amidst the five; the low fidelity of a laughter played in the background, artificially from the television that's droning behind her head; the sizzling hotpot vapor; the suffocating seizure in her heart. Then, out of nowhere just like how it all started, the lead vocalist snapped back, only to pose a question. "Will you keep the band going for our whole lives?"
It went fast. Her memory shrank a bit each time waking up, mushy, and would eventually dissipate into a tranparent nothing over time. Inevitably, and irrevocably. "Like candyfloss into water," as Soyo would relay to the cat what the doctor had described. Sometimes, Tomori had no idea what they were about to do seeing all the people gathering around at the livehouse, her eyes dazed longing for an anwser. Nevertheless, somewhere deep in her mind, she still kept one thought untouched that they had to be together for some unknown reason, to do something whatever it was. It should be them, and it must be them. She just knew. So she wasn't scared. It wasn't until Raana played off a guitar intro to one of their songs that she would finally came to connect the dots, Oh, of course we are the same band. The band of a whole life, the promise that lasts forever, isn't it? Whatever she had lost, all that mattered now was to get on the stage, to cry out with all her might. And so she did.
Anon would call it "lucky" that only one of them was caught at their age, given the media bombardment on the factual prevalence of Alzheimer's. "But it didn't have to be Tomori," she added after a brief pause. Taki just stood silent, thinking about how she had never succeeded in solving the lovely annoying puzzle named Tomori, how she failed her (or rather herself) from that time, to this time, and would finally at the end. "Don't blame yourself. At least she is happy," airily consoling the depressed drummer, Soyo combed through Raana's hair carefully as she talked. Tomori, while picking up on particulars of their conversation, just smiled tenderly. There was always an odd calm with her.
The days went on, regardless. Soyo has reached the point where, for the second time in years, she feels her house is simply too big for her. Not because of the ballooning emptiness that tickles the vast of her being on every sleepless night - she's gotten very used to it, and in fact the other MyGO members come to Soyo's house quite often these days, filling it with their own marks and memories. It's for a more practical reason, one she didn't give quite enough thought to when she was still young. "Yes," she now admits it, that she can no longer keep up with the housework and maintenance. "Things pile up quickly in such a big house," she says, "And housekeeper? No, I don't feel safe with them." She entrusted RiNG to take over the house properly, as an unspoken thanks for giving the near-dying band one last place to perform. Then she did some research and found a small suite for herself, a rather delicate one that she could move in immediately, only walking distance from Tomori's house. That way, she could easily drop by to check on Tomori, she thought. The day she wrapped up to move, Anon showed up like a nosy puppy, yelling about her ever unwavering love for Soyo and taking up a room in the new house for granted, just being the Anon way.
Soyo didn't mind. "About your garbage," yet, she put on a grumpy face in pretense, veering the conversation while toying with her fingers inconspicuously, "Forget it if you're counting on me to move them to our new home. They are too heavy and the space won't accommodate them." It's undeniably true, except that Anon would call the garbage her precious collections. Huh, that face, Soyo thought, swallowing down the slightest prickling of excitement that was not unfamiliar to her. A crestfallen look began to unfold on Anon's face as she took the time digesting the information. "You did say you liked them, at least once, don't you forget?" Anon carefully reminded her of the little fact in a sheepish voice. How adorable.
The collections refer to the tons of mementos Anon has brought back from her travels over the years. Truth be told, Anon's taste is a disaster, but Soyo doesn't dislike it. She just feels like to play the bad sometimes when Anon shows it possible, something she used to do long before. So she waits. "M-Maybe," that up-from-bottom look of Anon's face, gosh, "we could at least keep some of them, like... the ones you find valuable? As for those you don't like, we send them to our band fans as some sort of thank-for-support gifts. They would take care of them, r-right... Soyorin?" Pfttt, Soyo can't help but snort a little. "Hey! You laughed!" Anon yelled, cheeks puffed up in an instant blush, "Don't tease me no more!". Well well, that's about enough. "It's a shame to trouble fans for this trivial matter, Ano-chan. Let alone I'm so doubtful how many fans we sitll have now." Soyo put an end to this drama with her picking only a few important items left by her mother and leaving all the rest of her house filled with those Anon's bad-taste collections - or garbage, as she would still insist on calling them.
By default, Taki was in charge of the band affairs, occasionally running some errands and, as she would put it, "doing the dirty work to get things done". She took on this role because she was the only one in this band who knew how to drive - not counting Anon, who also had a driver's license but no one's got the guts to let her drive. "I take that personally as a blatant insult!" Anon was always triggered by this and would grumble with a pout as to start laying out all her well-defined arguments. That said, over time, Taki began to feel the trouble not only with the drum pedals, but with the clutch as well. Anon take it as the very opportunity to step forward and suggest a shifting on the driver's role. Yet Taki refused. "Aren't you the same age as me? I don't see your suggestion any merit so shut it." Anon yielded begrudingly and turned to an alternative "maybe we could ask some juniors at the RiNG to take care of us" and got refuted immediately. "Huh? Are you looking down on me?" That scary face brought her back to their first time meeting - or more precisely, their clashing - and, to no one's surprise, led to MyGo's Nth time of disbanding. It was not until a month later when Raana, as the somewhat junior out of the five, secretly got a driver's license did they make up a peace treaty and re-found the band for the the N+1th time, once again. Who knows what N was and would be.
Then Anon began to worry, all of a sudden. About the future. About the end. About what kind of final life she would have. "Don't you see I'm still young at heart and in perfect health now - well, not bad as it sounds though, it also means you may all die before me, no?" Anon lectured, in somewhat a look of misery, "Then who's gonna arrange the funeral for me? It's not fair!" Her eyes overcast, a truly it's unfair complaining. "Then I'll snuff you first before I feel my end coming." Soyo sneered with that are you satisfied now look, "And we four are the same age if you really think about it, so it's more like Raana will be the last one to go." It made perfect sense, but didn't bring any comfort. A stick swam through the air and landed on Soyo's head with a light tap - a walking stick, not the drumstick - as Taki eyed a shut it and drew the conclusion. Bullshit, she said. "It has to be Tomori, the last one to go." Period. End. Only that a slightly puzzled look hung on Tomori's face all this time; she might be thinking what these guys were arguing about in front of her. "Forget it," the former drummer sighed, "I'd try to outlive you idiots for two more years anyway."
It turned out that Soyo was right, cait sidhe did outlive humans by a great margin. It was years later that the four in MyGO would drift off in a week, one by one, as if agreed in advance, and then, all of a sudden, Raana was left all by herself again, in the end. Gazing at the well-worn guitar pick, she reminisced about the day when she stumbled across the four at RiNG's cafe. She knew those days were gone and she was homeless now, just as she had been at the very start. So she left, and no one knew her whereabouts.
Thus ended the band of the lost. No cheering. No applause. Just putting down the instruments and taking a bow. Then curtain down, lights off. There would be no encore anymore. One late-spring morning years later, when the new generation of the Astronomy Club went to tribute the legendary first president of a century ago, one of them, a band girl, would happen to hear an intermittent guitar solo drifting vaguely through the brisk dawn fog over the stillness of the graveyard. She would try to analyze the tune in her head and would be surprised to figure out it was playing a score scrawled in the yellowish notebook she'd found while cleaning the clubroom shelf. Is it called Haruhikage? She couldn't quite remember. Tracing the source of the sound would lead her to a worn-out guitar of an ancient type, six strings all broken, lying on the ground with a row of unmaintained gravestones nearby. MyGO? She read the words on the headstone, sorting through the names in memory to try find a match, but to no avail. "Seems like they are all members of some group," one of her fellow clubmates approached. Yes, she nodded, and they died together. She picked up the guitar to inspect it carefully, stroking along every crevice and feeling the weight. There was someone's warmth left on it, faint but palpable. "Look!" As she held the guitar in thoughts, the other girl exclaimed in surprise, "This one headstone doesn't have any writing on it!"
A blank headstone. She put down the guitar, about to turn on her heel to where her fellow points - it was on that fleeting moment, her corner eyes caught sight of it in the fog. A flicker of movement; a shadowy figure that vanished in the blink of an eye. "Akiko, what are you waiting for?" A cat, she thought. "Ok I'm here!" A white cat with different-colored eyes. "Did you see something just now?" But what if it's all just an illusion? "I don't know, it could just be the fog-"
An illusion about the immortality of what she treasures, she fears. Like a promise that lasts forever. Like a band of a whole life.
"Then just wait. The fog will lift soon, no? " The other girl reached out to hold Akiko's hands with her own, "Take your time to think it through. No need to hurry. We making a lifelong band after all."
Akiko nodded.
As if on cue, a breeze picked up, the fog dragged thin. Sunlight streamed through the trees, leaving archipelagos of shadows wavering on the ground.
How beautiful, the last of spring sunlight, she thought.