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The doorbell. One of an introvert’s least favorite buttons. Hitori stood before it like a woman condemned.
It’s a button whose sole purpose is to call people’s attention to you! Terrible!
How long had she been standing on Ryo’s front porch now? Five minutes? Five days? Every second that passed made it worse. Once again, her fear of making things awkward by saying no to someone had taken her straight into an even more awkward situation.
It had seemed like an innocuous enough idea at the time. Ryo had suggested someone come jam with her over the weekend to help her feel out a new song she was writing, Nijika had volunteered Hitori’s name, and she had eagerly assented - both because it would be awkward to say no, as mentioned earlier, and because if she didn’t her younger sister was definitely going to belittle her for spending the whole weekend in her closet.
But now. Now she was in front of Ryo’s house, guitar case slung over her back, with none of her bandmates to hide behind! It was an imposing house - not one of the ridiculous Baroque mansions that rich girls lived in in manga, but comfortably larger than average, clearly the home of a family above the middle class. A girl like Hitori was still wildly unworthy of a place like this.
She gathered her courage, extended her index finger towards the doorbell, and closed her eyes. Now or never! She pushed forward-
Instantly, reflexively, some warped version of Hitori’s self-preservation instinct took control of her body, as though she were trying to leap into a pool of cold water or touch a hot stove. Before she or her finger could reach the button, she lurched to her right and toppled over into a flowerbed.
“Owie…” she hissed quietly. At least she had absorbed the force of the blow and not her guitar. But she hadn’t rung the doorbell, so…
Before Hitori could finish that thought, the door opened anyway! A woman Hitori recognized as Ryo’s mother stepped out onto the porch, looked left, looked right, looked down-
“Oh! You must be the friend Ryo said she was having over! That’s wonderful! Come in, come in!”
…This woman showed more expression in half a minute than Ryo had in half a year. Quivering, Hitori mutely followed her inside, brushing off some dirt, twigs, and a snail before the threshold.
“You’re Hitori-chan, right? Ryo talks about you so often! I’m so glad she’s having someone new over - we were a little worried about her not making any friends besides Nijika!” Ryo’s mother continued her effusive verbal assault. “You play guitar, don’t you? Ryo has quite the collection now. Her room is upstairs to the left. Would you like me to bring you two some tea? If you’d like to stay the night we’ve got a spare futon - Ryo hasn’t had a sleepover in so long…”
This was all far beyond what Hitori could verbalize a response to. She desperately shook her head back and forth, internally praying to any available deity that Ryo’s helicopter mother would get the message.
Her head-shaking had just reached into the kilohertz range when she heard a clearly crestfallen voice.
“…Well, I’ll be down here. Just let me know if either of you need anything at all!”
…which deity was responsible for that one? She would have to write down their name for later.
The interior of Ryo’s house was much like the outside - clean, tasteful, and most frightening of all, obviously expensive. Hitori tip-toed up the stairs with the caution of one of those animals that get eaten all the time in wildlife documentaries about the African savannah - at any moment, it might become necessary to bolt. What if she got something dirty, or broke something, or did something wrong just in general? Surely the consequences would be swift and severe.
Her mind occupied with thoughts like those, Hitori almost didn’t even notice that she had already reached Ryo’s door. She shuddered at the idea of knocking on it - it would be the same experience as she had at the doorbell. But she had no choice if she was going to - wait, the door was already open.
Even so, Hitori paused underneath the doorframe. Was it really okay to just… walk in and say hi? Before her mind could go into its usual spiral about that question, though, she saw Ryo herself.
Ryo was draped over a too-small swivel chair in front of her laptop, wearing a patterned button-down shirt untucked with headphones covering her ears. Around her were several electric guitars and basses, her usual choice for Kessoku Band concerts plugged in to her left. In front of her was a laptop computer - Hitori couldn’t quite make out what was on the screen. But Ryo’s eyes were closed. She nodded her head along to the time of a beat Hitori couldn’t hear - one two three four, one two three four. The motion slowly grew in its intensity, yet Ryo seemed totally calm - soon her fingers began to drum a related, but distinct, rhythm of their own. She didn’t seem to notice that Hitori had arrived; for her part Hitori couldn’t bring herself to do anything but watch.
Two or three minutes later, the song Ryo was listening to must have ended, for she had stopped rocking back and forth to its beat. But she didn’t go still; opening her eyes, she took a notebook and pen from her desk. What she was writing Hitori couldn’t quite tell, but it had her fully engaged, even when her pen wasn’t moving. Sometimes, her eyes would flick back to the computer screen, or she would tap out a short rhythm with her foot.
The notion of speaking up would have been terrifying to Hitori anyway, but now, she would be doing something even worse; she would be interrupting. So she continued to watch, increasingly spellbound, as Ryo grabbed the bass guitar to her left, settled it comfortably across her lap, and played a few bars. Then she stopped, furrowed her brow, crossed something out in her notebook, and started again. This process repeated itself more than once - but each time, the snippet Ryo played got a little bit longer. Finally she found her groove, a winding river of a thing that flowed back and forth between two time signatures - 5/4 and 9/8, maybe?
Only when she was finished did Ryo look up, and acknowledge Bocchi’s presence at her bedroom door.
“Ah, you’re just who I was looking to see, guitarhero,” she said. Her smile had a sly, teasing edge to it, the words slipping out slow enough from her mouth that they had to have been carefully picked; like the rest of the band, Ryo knew that Hitori’s relationship with her Oh!Tube persona was… somewhat complex. “Come in.”
Permission granted at last, Hitori slowly shuffled in, and sat down on Ryo’s bed at her indication. She set down her bass and slid an amp across her carpeted floor for Hitori to plug her guitar into, and they faced one another.
“So… was that our new song?” Hitori asked.
“Don’t know yet. Still working on it.” Ryo picked up her instrument again, easing her hands back into place. “I’m going to run through it again - play something for me?”
“Like what?”
“Anything. What does this bass line make you want to play?”
“But I-” Whatever else Hitori was planning to say was cut off as Ryo began to strum. No sheet music, no rehearsal, no ideas. No way! No way!
Ryo must have seen Hitori’s expression, though. “Just jump in whenever you’re ready, it’s fine,” she said, and it gave Hitori time to take a deep breath. What did this bass line make her want to play? Her head felt empty, but the beat pushed her along. She plugged in her guitar and switched on the amp and felt the muscles in her core go tight - this was a bit like trying to pick something out at one of those conveyor-belt sushi places, except the belt was moving at 45 RPM. Each of Ryo’s notes that passed by unanswered ratcheted up the tension, until…
Forget it! Hitori curled her fingers into an F chord around her guitar and played. Played what, she had no idea. It was terrible! It was the worst music she had ever made! It had to be! Except…
Hitori looked up and made eye contact with Ryo, and she was… fine. Continuing on, matching Hitori’s time, to all appearances as content as she was when Hitori walked into the room. So Hitori kept playing. Four measures later, her brain had stopped screaming at her that she couldn’t find C. Eight measures later, she could feel herself smiling. A solo began to take form. She kept playing, and the longer she did, the less effort it took, until Ryo finally raised her finger in a gesture like a conductor’s baton to signal a pause.
“Not bad. I liked that.” Ryo stretched out, letting her bass rest softly on the bedroom carpet.
“Ehehe…” Hitori caught herself. “I mean… it was mostly just a High and Mighty Color riff, I was working on a cover of theirs for my channel…”
“No, it’s yours now,” Ryo replied. She picked up her pencil and for a moment looked ready to write something, but instead twiddled it between her fingers and stared into the middle distance. “Actually…”
She got up from her chair and went over to the impressive collection of instruments mounted on her wall. “Could you try playing this for a sec? Like you were doing before.”
Most of Ryo’s collection was new and up to the minute - expensively so - but the guitar Ryo took down and handed to Hitori was different. She ran her finger along the edge of off-color, scratched lacquer; none of the six pegs matched, like they had all been replaced at different times.
“…A Univox?” she asked.
“It was considered a cheap knock-off of better guitars when it was new,” Ryo explained as she produced a similarly dilapidated amp, “but over time they’ve developed a cult following.”
Hitori looked down. “Is it- can I tune it?”
Ryo shrugged as though it didn’t matter.
“Eh?”
Still, Ryo had asked, and now she watched, stone-faced but expectant. Hitori grasped her pick and hovered it over the strings. Like she was doing before, so…
It wasn’t like she was doing before - not at all. The chords were the same, or close enough, but the Univox spat out a haze of fuzz and feedback and overtones in weird places, and somehow what had sounded to Hitori like the most amateur dreck any musician had ever made five minutes prior, was now something raw and kinetic. Ryo nodded, and started a bassline chugging along to join her.
When they paused this time, Ryo was a flurry of activity like Hitori had never really seen from her before - scribbling in her notebook, and clicking rhythmically at some type of audio file she was making on her laptop. Had she recorded all that? Hitori hadn’t been paying much attention.
“That was a lot better, right?” Ryo didn’t turn to look at Hitori as she spoke, but there was an approving tone in her voice all the same.
“Ehehehe…” Oh, how Hitori wished she could stop herself making that creepy giggle whenever somebody praised her.
If Ryo minded, though, she didn’t say so. “You started out playing so loose and tentative, and then found your feet. I thought the kinda fuzzy sound this guitar made would really bring that transition out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Hitori had to think about that for a moment. Plenty of Oh!Tube commenters on her guitarhero videos had ideas and suggestions about playing styles for her to try, new gear to use, or just comments about her sound in general, but none of them ever sat down in front of her and sketched out a new chorus on notebook paper, or typed her recordings a new filename into a computer folder labeled “Maybe.” Hitori and Ryo were building something together. It felt different.
After some time, Ryo turned around in her chair, long legs unfurling across the carpet of her bedroom floor, and offered Hitori a hand-written sheet of music, labeled “Guitar - backing” in Ryo’s handwriting.
“You think Kita could handle this?”
Hitori looked it over - a bit more technical than Kita’s parts in the last few Kessoku Band songs, maybe? Hard to tell - better to feel for herself what it was like. She took her guitar back up and played through the whole page, trying to pay attention to how her fingers moved.
“Yeah…” she said softly once she was done.
“Hmm?” Ryo turned to look up from her notebook.
“This’ll work.”
“Great.” She handed Hitori another page, replete with eraser marks and hasty revisions scribbled in pencil. “Want to try your part now? I think I’ve got it.”
“Okay.”
Adjusting the position of her guitar’s strap across her shoulders, Hitori braced herself for the fearful clenching deep in her chest that always accompanied starting a performance in front of anyone - but it didn’t come. Instead she slipped smoothly into a lazy drawl of an intro, vaguely reminiscent of some foreign alt-rock band Hitori couldn’t recall. As it went the song picked up speed and energy, borrowing some of the phrases Hitori had improvised earlier in the afternoon before building into a solo with another weird time signature that Hitori couldn’t get right on her first try - though it was fun to play loud nonetheless.
“Sorry… I’ve been listening to a bunch of math rock lately and thought it might be cool…” Ryo offered when Hitori was finished.
“No, no, let me try again.”
So she did, and then she tried a third time, and then Ryo joined in with a bass line. And then Ryo joined in with a different bass line, then the same bass line a second time but played on a different bass guitar (which Ryo insisted sounded totally different.) They stripped back Hitori’s solo for the eighth take, then added back onto it again for the tenth, then she tried the bottle slide thing she did from the culture festival concert except Ryo’s plastic Caimanade bottle was the wrong shape to really make it work.
Neither of them were keeping count anymore when Ryo wired in a new effects pedal. When Hitori played the chorus it was just the same but it wavered a bit, wavered like she did when she was standing at the doorstep but didn’t now, and this time it was Hitori that stopped the the two of them.
“That.”
“Hmm?”
“That’s what I want to write the lyrics to,” Hitori decided.
Ryo smiled, and this time there was nothing teasing about it. She stretched out her arms above and behind her head, and found a light switch with one hand - Hitori belatedly realized the sun was setting.
“Hello, girls! I made shrimp tempura downstairs!” There at the still-open bedroom door was Ryo’s mother. “You two have been working so hard! That ba-da-da-da-daaan bit was so great! Can you play it again so I can take a video?”
Hitori eeped and felt herself curl into a ball in the room’s nearest available dark corner, while Ryo made a facial expression rather like that of a cat forced to eat asparagus.
“Oh! Or you could give us a little concert when your father gets home!” She kept right on going, gesturing towards Hitori. “Not yours, oh, you know what I mean…”
Ryo’s mother paused, and seemed to give both of them a second look.
“Is… is that a no?”