Work Text:
Looking back, everything fell apart when Saki got sick.
Before then, the memories were a blur of laughter and jokes, cans of iced tea chugged at vending machines, the twirl of Honami’s sidetail, Ichika’s earnest smile, Saki’s indomitable optimism. These were the girls she hung out with, and she would even call what they had friendship. She wasn’t aware enough to think very hard about it, but her natural instincts were to go to them and to accept them when they went to her. And of course, the music! She’d hardly admit it to herself, let alone anyone else, but it was when they first played together that she felt the resolve within her to become a professional musician harden.
She’d been messing around on bass before then, but to play with the three of them – not perfectly, no – they were amateurs, mere beginners to their instruments – that was the first time she felt the spark of harmony, not of the music, but of their shared feeling and their unified joy. The vibrations from her strings reverberated in her bones, and she felt the energy down in her feet and rushing into her head. Honami’s constant kick beat, Ichika’s crackly chords, Saki’s crisp keys. That was a rush like she hadn’t felt before.
But she had taken it for granted. Let’s just say, Shiho was not someone who habitually texted first. Saki got sick. No one would even tell the girls what it was. The three of them visited her once, the mood awkward. In between Saki’s hospitalization and the time they were able to make the long journey to the hospital, Honami had shot up two inches and Ichika had started absentmindedly picking at her face. Shiho noticed these things along with Saki’s pallor and fatigue. Things were changing.
Then, they all got placed into different classes, and without Saki, it was like the sticky sweet syrup binding them together dissolved. Shiho argued with her classmates, who were all prepubescent idiots (she didn’t once stop to consider if she herself was one as well), and when they ignored her and stared behind her back, she thought it suited her. Honami looked terrified every day. Shiho would find her at lunch, and she’d smile in relief, but then tense up as she looked around at who might be watching them. “Are you alright?” Shiho would ask, but she’d always lie and say she was fine. As if she could fool her.
Ichika always looked worried, but even she couldn’t get Honami to admit things weren’t fine. (Even she? This was really Saki’s domain, after all. But Shiho guessed Ichika would be more likely to coax it out of her anyway.) She, too, was getting gangly and long-limbed.
The first time Honami turned away, Shiho was both shocked and angry. She stood in the middle of the courtyard in disbelief. They’d made eye contact. Honami had shaken her head imperceptibly, and turned away. She was now pretending to talk to some classmates she’d been sitting with. She opened her bento box and delicately picked up a dried plum.
Shiho could have confronted her, could have walked up to her and said, “Honami? What’s going on?” But she suddenly knew Honami would just say she was busy today and couldn’t have lunch. And just as certainly, she knew that it was because of her. Even now, people were looking at her, standing alone with her lunch in hand, looking angry, having offended many people in the past months, finally having offended her friend to the point she would ignore her, and now seemingly with nowhere to go. She turned on her heel and went back inside to take the stairs to the roof.
It was only in the echoing stairwell that she remembered Ichika, whose fault this was not. But Shiho was still angry. It wasn’t her fault either that people in her class were jerks, nor that Honami was a spineless sycophant, chasing the esteem of half-baked pre-teens. But she knew people thought that she was the problem. It was her presence that made Honami scared. This depressed her.
The roof was empty, and the slight breeze was a welcome caress on Shiho’s cheeks, warm with anger. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. And the thought came bubbling up from her gut – It’s better that I’m alone.
Then the rest followed. She left Honami alone. She told Ichika to stay away, telling herself it was to protect her from her bad reputation. A small part of her knew it wasn’t fair to Ichika, but it was drowned out by the part of her, loud but unidentifiable, that said that this was the only situation that she, Shiho, deserved. Occasionally, she felt a pang of guilt as she remembered Saki in a hospital somewhere, but told herself that Saki needed plenty of rest, needed to recover, didn’t need her clearly negative energy.
And so – solitary lunches on the roof. She played the bass and fantasized – hard – about being a famous bass player. Then, being aloof and above it all would be cool. In these fantasies, she tried very hard not to think about who her bandmates might be. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t make it on her own, but she pushed away the thoughts questioning who would want to work with her.
But on some days, they welled up to the surface like dead fish in a polluted pond. Like when the band she’d tried to join kicked her out (she usually tried to remember this as her kicking them out). When Miu, a new girl with a lonely face, showed up to share the roof lunch spot for losers. She was a nice girl, but it wasn’t the same. Wasn’t like what it was, wasn’t like what she imagined things to be. And then she transferred schools anyway, and Shiho was alone again, and she felt this time not that this suited her, but that it was her just lot in life to be alone.
Shiho couldn’t bear to imagine what it would be like to be wanted and to be accepted as herself. (She knew once, but had forgotten.) The doubt crowded out all outward feelings of caring, but she did her best to push away all of those emotions and focus on her playing. One day I’ll go pro. I’ve got to practice enough to get there. That was the achievable goal. It was actionable, and she could practice on her own and tell herself she was on her way to her dream.
But still, the dream needed someone else – several someone elses. To stand next to her. To cradle her in a constant rhythm, to crackle against her bass, to cut through the melody crisply –
And so, when they all got into Miya Girls (she knew she would end up there since Shizuku had been going for a year already), she briefly allowed herself to wonder. And when she saw Saki on her first day, taller and skinnier, but healthily pink in the face, even though she brushed her off out of habit, she felt a rush of relief that Saki was okay, and of solid enough constitution to be back in school. And as she turned away, guilt and relief and defensiveness swirling in her heart, she felt the warm and tentative twinge of a glimmer of hope.