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Ichika has never realised that meeting the love of her life would start from a singular comment, at the very least. She’d been quick to ignore it-it’d turned up on her page, and she brushed it off as yet another one of her fans’ wishes for her to collaborate with someone. This time, it was another musician that went by their real name-Hinomori Shiho. Ichika remembered seeing her name somewhere, and she appeared to be of similar age to her. She briefly recalled seeing Hinomori’s name at a Best New Artist award perhaps two or so years back. To think she’d come this far in two years…
Perhaps it was her determination to be able to accomplish that much in two years that sparked Ichika’s interest in her, but maybe it was the fact that Ichika remembered that Hinomori was a stunning singer, the same that could be said for her voice. That day, on that stage, holding the New artist award with those callused fingertips visible even from her distance, with that bass strapped around her shoulder-god knows why she chose to play the bass as a solo artist-with a soft smile and eyebrows that creased just slightly downwards. Ichika wouldn’t have realised she was smiling had she not seen the soft dimples of her mouth, the warmth of it all flowing down to reach Ichika even in her seat a good fifty metres away. Ah, I’m happy for her. Maybe more, she probably thought. Hinomori’s music must’ve been a god-send to those who wanted that kind of warmth for themselves. The contrast of the low bass notes and the slight rough tone to her voice that night, as she thanked her sister and parents and everyone who had helped her, the one thing Ichika had chosen to focus on was her voice. Not the names that poured out of Hinomori’s mouth, ones that she could’ve reached out to build connections to, but her voice. It sounded just like the low scratchy sound of the bass. Was that why she chose the instrument? To compliment her voice?
But it didn’t sound like that. It was like they molded each other, the bruised and blistered fingertips and the slightly dented top edge of the bass, along with the slightly rusted fingerboard. They must’ve grew up together, and they grew to suit the other. She thought she was similar to Hinomori in one aspect, but on the otherhand, she guesses not.
She didn’t grow up molded by her own instrument. It was one that was handed to her, that she was advised to play since it would help her image, help her stand out amongst the hundreds of other young female singers debuting that year. She was only fifthteen, she reminisces. Fifthteen and told to compete with girls; no women, the likes of twenty to thirty years old. The brutal singing industry, that was. A singing competition that she had somehow managed to break through and debut at her mere age with the status of a new high-schooler. Her classmates hadn’t thought much of her before, ignoring her because she didn’t have an outstanding presence, but that might as well have turned 360 the moment she returned to school, fully fledged as a singer.
The guitar…well she had hated it at first, the very thing that molded her thinking that she was too plain by herself to stand out. But then she progressed, six to seven to eight strings. A few years back she hated the very idea of ever damaging her fingertips, but perhaps it was all worth it if it meant having the same matching fingertips of someone like Hinomori. She might not have loved and chosen her instrument herself like Hinomori, but she did grow to adore it. Hinomori’s bass might as well be a part of her itself, but Ichika thinks her guitar is more of a friend to her. Someone who’s stuck by her side for as long as she can remember. The perfect kind of friend, the kind that’s quiet and only talks, makes a sound when needed to be. Does that make her seem like a master to it rather than a friend? Well, she’d never been that good at relationships in the first place. But at least the guitar can’t leave her. It can’t.
So she finds herself searching up about Hinomori Shiho, watching videos of her during concerts, and listening to her interviews, and the image Ichika’s formed of her in her head from that award ceremony has never once wavered-if anything, all the media she’s watching have served to build up her story, her character, making her feel like she knows just about everything about her despite knowing nothing at all. Suddenly she knows more about a random stranger on the internet than she knows about her closest friends, because this Hinomori Shiho seems so open about everything. Maybe that’s why her fanbase has grown exponentially. Because she stays true to the very first character. She, like many other musical artists, have rebranded their image overtime-and she herself has only officially debuted three years ago. But Shiho, debuting two years ago at sixteen, has not once altered her image at all. Ichika’s theater performance is one filled with stories of multiple characters, with none a true protagonist at sight, while Hinomori’s is a one woman play. She stays the same, unchanging, still the same girl, just now eighteen, on the stage instead of in her room in a youtube video on a browser. She’s now on stage holding tours like every other artist.
Ichika finds that she likes that. Someone unchanging. To know that even years later, when they’re twenty and beyond, Shiho’s image of being a sarcastic singer that is talented at bass will never change. It’s comforting in ways that she can’t explain and in ways that seemed to flow out of her by themselves. To know that her low voice, scratchy against the bass chords and the drum beats, will always flow from her headphones to her eardrums at the same frequency, at exactly three bump below maximum volume, and at exactly three minutes twenty-eight seconds in, Shiho has a bass solo, purely instrumental that challenges Ichika’s own pride as a guitarist. There’s just something addicting about hearing the same voice, the same tone, despite the song’s genre.
Ah, she thinks after she’s built a whole playlist completely with Hinomori’s songs, I’ve found a new favourite artist.
Her previous one had lasted ever since she had first listened to them, a vocaloid-Hatsune Miku. Once again, because she always had the same tone in every song. But the one problem she always had was that Miku never showed any human emotion, making it hard to relate to the songs deeply, but now…wasn’t that problem completely gone? She could drown in the notes and voice as long as she liked.
She pauses her playlist, removing her headphones as she steps into the studio again. Her hand swips over her phone to lock it, not before it lit up again with a new notification about a new Hinomori single release. She sits herself on the chair, and puts on her headphones again, pressing play on the new single. She might look stupid, but her image has always been that of a clumsy, sweet girl. At least that’s the one thing true to her stage presence. Her thumb drifts over the words, stopping on the artists’ name.
Come to think of it, didn’t many of her fans address her by her first name or nicknames? She’s heard variations of it, with some calling her Ichi-ban and Ichi, and others comparing her to snow bunnies. Sure, she’s called Hatsune Miku, well, Miku. It was simple. So why does it feel so strange now? It’s like she’s entering a whole new dimension altogether.
Hinomori…
Is it because she feels like she’s formed a genuine connection with a human girl that she’s never met?
The name freezes on her tongue, and she stumbles on her words before finally saying it.
…Shiho.
Ah, ‘Sunny’. Maybe her parents predicted her future career and music too. That’s probably the right way to put Hinomori Shiho’s music. Sunny. Not the sweltering kind, but the one where you take people on picnics. The kind where there’s still a slight summer breeze, except it’s still late spring and the flowers are all blooming. A special time of the year. But then again, Shiho’s special too.
Shiho.
And just like that, the new single comes to an end, and Ichika rushes to replay it realising she hadn’t listened to a single thing in earnest.
-
Hoshino Ichika. Maybe it’s because they have similar music styles, maybe it’s because their fanbases are one if not the same people. It was about time that Shiho would know about her. She’s overheard her name from her own producers at that, since they were observing her sales to know when it would be ideal for Shiho to release her own music. Hoshino Ichika, someone who stood out in a crowd of other singers. Her popularity skyrocketed, this girl from nowhere, and it wasn’t long before no one could escape a song release from her-and Shiho doesn’t understand her popularity at all. If anything, the most she could think of was that people were thrilled at the idea of a female solo guitar singer. And the fact she was quite pretty. Ok, really pretty. It would have been one thing if she had a nice smile, or maybe eyes blue like the soft sky.
Instead, she had a nice smile, and eyes that could have been lit up by the constellations themselves. She swears she can pick out the big dipper alone from the lights in her eyes. She can see the whole sky in barely a centimeter of blue; Hoshino seems to have a habit of squinting her eyes sometimes-which shouldn’t, really shouldn’t, but it makes Shiho giggle like a highschool girl. She squints her eyes and leans forward with an adorable pout. Why hasn’t she gotten glasses yet; is what Shiho thinks, but she wishes Hoshino wouldn’t. To take something that…precious away from the fanbase and herself would be treason. Perhaps that’s why Hoshino’s fanbase sometimes refers to her as their little bunny. Someone innocent, to be protected at all costs, with the fanbase calling themselves the knights. Knights for a mere creature seems excessive, but when Shiho sneaks a glance at the picture flashing in her memory again, perhaps it’s not such an exaggeration after all.
When she hears the news that Hoshino’s managers wish to insinuate a collaboration with herself, she’s not that surprised, to say the least. Their fanbase is essentially one and the same, with them both having similar enough styles of music. But something in her, that slight tingling feeling unnerves her, tells her that this Hoshino is special. Hoshino. Star, right?
Oh, her parents must have chosen the perfect name for her.
-
When they first meet each other on the stage, Ichika can’t say that her first impressions of Hinomori were wrong. She has short chopped gray hair with a neon green streak with it, a colour ugly as they come, but it goes well with her, as everything around her seems to. The chaos stabilises with her. The throbbing stage lights seem to come under control when they follow her, as she and her converse shoes make their way to the center of the stage. Oh. The lights shine white and green and then shimmering silver, as if to contrast her dark blue, black and gold. They are polar opposites in every way and yet she can’t look away. She feels like she’s been backed into a corner in her own room by her sheer presence. When Shiho gazes at her, she feels the world give out from under her. Ichika crawls her way to the stage as a sack of bones. Shiho directs her gaze towards the crowd but Ichika’s is trained solely on her. Shiho gives everything away to their audience, and there’s nothing left for the singer illuminated by the stars at her side. In the night, where the stage lights shone above them both, Shiho swallows her shadow for a heartbeat, blanketting her from the pressure of the crowd.
And then Shiho turns around and takes her hand, pulling her to face the crowd with a warm smile, and Ichika blushes like a stupid fangirl, because she is. She’s still eighteen, and susceptible to all kinds of frivolous charms and flirts that she flushes like a sheltered princess. But Shiho’s eighteen too. She feels miles younger, smaller than her.
Ichika knows this collaboration is nothing but a popularity stunt for both of them-for both to benefit equally, but she feels like she’s getting much, much more out of it. They are one of the thousand pairs of singers together, the soles of their shoes touching the same harsh texture of the wooden stage floors. They are one part of the everlasting merry-go-round. But the stars, the heavens must have favoured her today, since she gets to stand in front of Shiho herself. She’s not getting ahead of herself, is she?
Ichika now holds the microphone, and it feels like a flickering candle in her hand, the light reflecting off the silver rim of it on this dark, dark stage. Ichika holds the candle, lets Shiho blow it out again, and again, and the wax drips onto her fingers and burns them, destroys the calloused fingertips that she’s devoted three years of labour for. But it doesn’t matter-they come back anyways. Shiho’s smile melts even the harshest of them, and the wax drips more and more until the stream reaches her very wrists. She feels the burns, and she smiles. She never understood why Icarus did what he did until now, when she met her sun, in the middle of the flashing lights and the screams, the shouts of the crowd. She willingly burns and falls from the heavens to earth with a smile on her face.
Ichika doesn’t tell Shiho anything besides the practiced lines the management has told her to say. She doesn’t give Shiho something more than that. Instead she gives Shiho center stage, and whenever she slightly stumbles over the rapping verse lyrics, covers for her. She makes the crowd scream whenever Shiho takes center lead again, and she gives Shiho the remaining chocolate she has in her bag when they’re finally backstage. For her, that’s her way of admitting Hinomori Shiho is more to her than just a musical rival, or that she’s just a fan.
And when Shiho wolfs down the chocolate and gives a puppy-like pout when Ichika smiles at the sight, she scowls for a moment, before brushing her side bangs behind her ears-and says thank you. Two words, both things that Ichika’s said in her daily life frequently, casually.
In this light, covered from the audience by nothing but a thin curtain and a short flight of stairs, they lock eyes. For a moment, just a moment, she sees herself in Shiho’s eyes.
It doesn’t matter who is the lock, and who is the key in that moment, as they breathe in the same breath. Just as Shiho swallowed her shadow on stage, she now swallows her lips.
Ichika wishes the light was there now, above them to reflect off the glimmer of the string that’s connected to both their lips when they part. To show that it’s there, that there’s a silver of something still connecting them while the two flush and break away.
She wishes.