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"Ah, Hitori-chan, look!!"
It was a little date, wandering somewhere between the platonic realm and the romantic one. Kita was excitedly pointing at a pricey t-shirt with a dumb-looking smiley face printed on it. After being startled to death, Bocchi managed to drag her soul back into the body and turned around.
"A-ah?"
"A Nirvana shirt, look!" Kita continued, even though Bocchi was already staring at it.
"Ah, a Nirvana shirt!.."
"Yeah, look!"
"Y-yes!"
And she proceeded to stare the everliving hell out of the shirt. The Nirvana one, to clarify.
"Doesn't it look cool?"
"Y-yes!" Hitori nodded her head aggressively. "Do you want to buy it?"
"Ah," Kita gesticulated, "No, I just, uh... Saw you wear the Nirvana badge on your bag, so I thought you'd like it. The shirt, I mean."
The Nirvana one, to clarify.
"Ah, you noticed?" It struck Hitori as deeply shocking that her numerous pieces of merch were finally recognized as something... well, something. She just assumed at this point that people were literally unable to see all of her music-related garbage as a result of some physical phenomenon. "A-ah, wait, do you listen to Nirvana too?"
Kita froze with a thoughtless smile on her face for a second. She did not.
"Yeah, sometimes! Love this band."
An absolute menace to society.
Hitori's brightness suddenly jumped up to 200%, and her pale skin now was undistinguishable from her white eyes. She began to glow like a LED bulb.
"Ah, that's!.." but she never actually talked to a fellow music lover — for obvious reasons, — so Bocchi wasn’t sure how to start a conversation. "A-ah... what's your favorite song?!"
"Ah! It's, uhh..."
Aaaahh, shit!! In a desperate need to impress the music snob standing in front of her, Ikuyo frantically started trying to dig out at least one name of a Nirvana song in the depths of her mind. This name was dancing mockingly on the tip of her tongue. "Young... Young arrogance... Ah, teen arrogance?.. Not arrogance, definitely not arrogance..."
"Teen..." she began hesitantly.
"Oh, Teen Spirit?" Bocchi said quite enthusiastically, but Kita still noticed disappointment in her ever so slightly withered smile. "Y-yeah, I guessed as much!.. I knew it's a kind of song you would... like..."
Hitori froze with a thoughtless smile on her face for a second. She just called Kita a normie. To her face. Hitori, what the hell?
"A-ah, I m-mean!.."
"Yeah, I like that kind of music!" an absolute menace to society continued lying.
"Ah, is that so..."
"Yeah."
"..."
"..."
"Grunge, you mean?"
"Who?"
Ikuyo felt a sharp pain in her left chest. She should've thought for a second before shooting a response back and pretended she knew this Grunge guy like he was her childhood friend.
"A-ah, Grunge, yeah," Kita retreated from her failure. "Grunge."
"Yeah, grunge, ha-ha..." Bocchi genuinely didn't know why she was laughing. "S-so, what grunge bands do you listen to?"
Aaaahh, shit!!! The mission to impress Hitori has quickly turned into "not embarrass yourself as an idiot you are" challenge. The hell is grunge??? Isn't that a name?! The whole situation was remarkably stupid. Ikuyo felt stupid, Hitori felt stupid, the whole grunge genre rolled over in its grave.
"Well, uh... a lot... of them."
"Alice in chains, or not as metalesque?..."
"N-not metal, more uh..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Nine Inch Nails…?"
Kita dropped a bomb on her (girl)friend’s head. Hitori had her heart jump half a meter forward. Ikuyo's heart was casting a heart attack upon itself. Unsuccessfully.
It was the last resort. Kita heard the name from Ryo, who called one of their more popular albums a "dance emo garbage for pretentious people."
“W… Wow, didn’t expect you to be a Nine Inch Nails fan…”
“Yeah, me t… Y-yeah.”
“…”
“…”
“So, Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, that kinda stuff, or their later albums?..”
Does she know every album in existence????
“Um…” Ikuyo could barely maintain eye contact, though luckily for her, Hitori had even more problems with doing that. “Yeah, that kinda stuff.”
“D-do you have a favoutire?..”
“…N-nah. I like all of them. M-most of them. Yeah.”
“I see…”
“Yeah…”
“Can I help you with something?”
A woman appeared!! Kita and Hitori — bound by a single brain cell, as all girlfriends should — both jumped. The woman looked at them with a smile.
“A-ah…” Kita managed to form back into her coherent self when the person from the outside world joined. Extrovert powers! Bocchi, on the other hand, melted into a clay mess. Introvert powers! “Yeah, we are actually looking for the Nine Inch Nails t-shirts, do you have any?”
“Sure, follow me,” the woman said and smiled even harder. The shop didn’t have many customers this week. This month. Actually, they were probably going bankrupt by the end of the year. Every single happy customer could save this sinking ship. So shame on this woman, this was no smiling matter.
The girls and the accompanying woman made exactly two steps to the left.
“There they are,” the woman pointed to the row of hanging shirts. The Nine Inch Nails ones, to clarify. The shirts had “Nine Inch Nails” or an abbreviated “NIИ” printed on them. All of them.
“This is Nine Inch Nails shirts, right?” Kita asked with utmost sincerity.
The woman smiled EVEN HARDER. She NEEDED these customers.
It was the first time Kita had ever seen anything related to Nine Inch Nails. There weren’t nails. There were… What the hell even is that? Some ugly-ass neon… teeth? And another one with teeth. A-and another one with teeth. And another one with a… ah, “The Downward Spiral”, so that’s probably it. And some simple ones with just a logo as a print. There was a running theme with all these shirts — that is, they sucked ass. Kita frowned.
“A-ahh…” Hitori tried to say something but overestimated her speaking skills and instead ended up moaning — so uncharacteristically seductively that she scared herself. Kita unfrowned immediately.
“What is it, Hitori-chan!?” Kita’s voice dropped an octive down from the excitement of hearing Bocchi go “A-ahh…”
“D-don’t you think… that’s a nice shirt?” Hitori smiled awkwardly and pointed to the ugly neon one.
No. Please, Hitori-chan, spare me. This is the ugliest visual I have seen since you puked all over my toilet after a 10 minute conversation with my mom. And I took a photo of that. I can print it on a t-shirt and it will still go harder than whatever this is. Please, Hitori-chan, please, think again!..
“That’s a…” Kita tried to keep a forced smile on her face.
“That’s a great choice!” the woman suddenly shouted. “It will look so good on you, I’m already seeing it.”
“Really?!?!” Bocchi looked at the shop assistant with eyes full of hope and excitement, just like a puppy. Had she a tail, it would be spinning in all directions right now. Kita silently glared at the woman.
“Yeah, it would look fantastic! Such a beautiful shirt for such a beautiful girl! You were made for each other!!” She NEEDED these customers.
The woman smiled hysterically, not knowing she had made a fatal mistake. In Kita’s mind, the only thing that was made for Hitori and vice versa was HER, not an ugly-ass piece of cloath. So she had to object.
“I’ve seen better merch on their official site, come on, Hitori-chan, that’s off-brand,” Kita said and smiled mildly.
“Oh,” Hitori said.
The smile on the woman’s face dropped that very second and she started staring Kita down.
“This is the official merch. What website were you looking on?”
“The official one,” Kita said indifferently, side-eyeing her opponent.
“Is that so…” The tension grew. “Quite frankly, I wouldn’t even say that you’re a fan of this band looking at you.”
“Don’t look at me then, I see no problem.”
Hitori was a bit confused but figured it was just a way extroverted people talk or something.
“Then…” The assistant dramatically pointed her index finger at the ugly-ass neon shit. “Name three songs!” Kita didn’t even hesitate at the question.
“The Shape of You, Dynamite—”
“From this album!!”
“That’s a shirt.”
“You!” the woman pointed at Bocchi. She screamed.
“Y-y-y-y-y-yes?!?!?!?!?”
“What is the album on this shirt!?”
“Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails, released on October 20th, 1989 by TVT Records!..”
The fuck???
The woman turned back to Kita.
“Name three songs from the album ”Pretty Hate Machine“ by Nine Inch Nails, released on October 20th, 1989 by TVT Records!!!”
“Eh…”
Kita looked at Hitori desperately. Hitori looked back at her cluelessly (as always), her face giving the impression of “Yeah, just name three songs, why are you looking at me?” A little left to her the woman stood, with her face twisted from all the malice, pure toxicity flowing through the veins on her arms.
And in front of these two characters, there she stands, — a liar, a dumbass and a huge K-pop stan, — in the rock shop where only loser no-life music snobs go, caught red-handed. Checkmate. Kita sighed with defeat. She was nothing more than a normie. She pitifully glanced at Hitori with her sad normie eyes.
A moment of silence — and something happened in Bocchi’s head. A neural impulse. “The bluetooth device is ready to pair.” Her single brain cell, after a short period of disconnection, suddenly connected to the single brain cell of Kita.
“Ah…” Bocchi said.
“What?” The woman’s grimace disappeared at once and she looked at Hitori, confused.
“Can you name three songs?..”
“…”
The woman suddenly started crying and left the building in a hurry.
“…”
“…”
What the fuck was that?
Bocchi wasn’t fazed a single bit at the somewhat exaggerated reaction of the assistant. She looked at Kita (her shoes, more specifically) and asked, barely using her vocal chords:
“Kita-chan, so… you’re not really… you know… you’re not… uhh, you know…”
“Wait, are we not going to acknowledge the… wh-what happened just now?”
“Her music snob pride was wounded... She couldn’t name three songs from the album.”
“The hell?”
“I-it’s complicated… Well, I guess it’s not something…” Hitori’s eyes were running around the shop’s floor in fear. She wanted to address this with as much understanding as she could but messed up the phrasing so it already sounded like an attack. “It’s not something you would know, i-is it?..”
“It’s…” Kita sighed. What a fool she made of herself. She wondered if Bocchi hated her now. An examplary dumbass. “Sorry, Hitori-chan, I lied to you. I never listened to Nine Inch Nails — or Nirvana, for that matter. I don’t think I even listen to rock that much… I really just wanted to impress you…” By the end of her sentence, Ikuyo’s voice was trembling and has almost died out. She added in a wisper, more to herself than anything: “Welp, look how that turned out.”
“I-impress me?!”
“Well!..” Kita gesticulated awkwardly, “You just seem to know everything about music, and I… uh, not so much. I just thought that if I pretended that I also knew all this stuff, you would, uh…”
Like me.
Kita couldn’t finish the sentence and bowed, not as much to apologize as to hide her rapidly reddening face behind the hair.
“S… Sorry!”
“What?” Hitori looked at her, absolutely dumbfounded (as always). “Th-that’s not the case! I haven’t even listened to that many albums from start to finish… To be honest… To be completely honest, Kita-chan, since you told me you liked NIN, I was worried that you’d expose me as a liar I am. I’m sorry!!” And she bowed as well.
They just stood in the middle of the shop for a while, bowing to each other, faces red and eyes closed. Examplary dumbasses.
“Well, that’s just cute.” A voice rang out in front of both of the girls. A single connected braincell gave a command to jump, and the girlfriends jumped. The shop assistant stood in front of them smiling. But this time her smile actually felt genuine. “You two really do deserve each other…”
“Oh, really?” Kita asked. Her face was still red, yet she felt pleased and totally satisfied with their adventure in the rock shop. “Do you really think so?”
“No. Get the fuck out if you ain’t buying anything.”
“Sorry about ruining everything… I shouldn’t have picked a bone with that assistant, I didn’t even know what I was talking about. I’ll order you something in the…”
“A-ah, it’s nothing!” Hitori shook her hands. “I only went there because you wanted to go, I already have all my drawers filled with merch.”
“Oh, that means you didn’t want to go there in the first place…”
“N-no!” Hitori shook her hand again, a Parkinson's disease victim. “I don’t really care where we go, I’m just happy you’re spending time with me!..”
Hitori had a tendency to become overwhelmed when confronted with any kind of social interaction with literally anyone but say embarrassing stuff like that to her soon-to-be-girlfriend and not bat an eye. In these moments, it seemed like Bocchi was transferring her social anxiety to Ikuyo.
“W-what are you saying!! Ha-ha…” Kita couldn’t help but smile. “Hitori-chan, I’m also happy. So happy.”
“That’s good. I’m happy that you’re happy.”
Hitori looked at the clear Saturday sky. The wind caught her hair and threw it into the air. Maybe she acted awkward all the time, maybe she couldn’t even speak properly sometimes, maybe her face looked stupid from time to time, but what Kita saw in front of her wasn’t any of that. It was pink hair scattered like cherry petals on a string in the air and a bright, sincere smile. It was something special. And even if it was any of that, let it be a stupid face or disheveled hair, it would still be something special. Someone special.
“Hey, Hitori-chan…”
“Yeah?” Hitori turned her head and looked right into Kita’s eyes, then gave a gentle smile. Was it even the same person? Was it just in her head now that Ikuyo was so deep in the rabbit hole of having a crush? Either way, the unexpected confidence and cool made her head spin.
“A-ah… I meant to say, I— Eh, do you know K-pop?”
And the fist of cringe smashed into her stomach. That’s what Hitori must feel every day, huh?
“You like K-pop, Kita-chan?” Bocchi asked enthusiastically.
“Well, uh, it’s not that I, eh… Y-yeah…”
“Oh!” Bocchi’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve heard a lot about it,” (she didn’t specify that most of it was bad), ”but I never really checked it out,“ (she avoided it at all costs), ”so… so, who knows, maybe I’ll like it too!..“
She knew she probably wouldn’t like it as her ear caught a song or two from the genre, and… to put it lightly, that wasn’t a pleasant experience. But… Kita likes it, so why shouldn’t she too?
“Huh, I thought you… would have a low opinion of this kind of music, honestly.”
Well, yeah. “No, of-of course not!!” Bocchi lied. “I never listened to it, so I’m yet to form an opinion, ha-ha… ha…” she gulped as a punctuation mark. “Yeah. Tell me about it, please.”
“Ah, well then…”
As the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, they chatted freely, not bound by anxiety or embarrassment. So different in personality, music taste, and practically everything else, they shared and absorbed each other’s experiences like sponges. And they talked, and talked, and talked. And they held hands. And they laughed.
A week later the rock shop they visited went bankrupt. That’s how ends yet another story about gay people breaking the capitalistic system by their sheer existence.