Past And Pending
The Dream Is Real?
The lights are blinding. The air is thick with smoke. Beads of sweat stinging her eyes, a crowd of fifty or so people staring up at her, applauding her performance. Hirasawa Yui turns to unplug herself from the amp and proceeds to walk off stage. Leaving the other girls to their own little post gig rituals, she heads outside via the musicians door leading to an alley behind the adjacent love hotel. Yui sits herself down on a crate of beer waiting to be brought inside and rummages through the pockets on her jeans to retrieve her pack of cigarettes and lighter. The summer air is stale, the smell of sex and sounds of passion are easy to make out over the taste of this cheap brand. "Lets go Yui, we are all heading to the bar for drinks." Ritsu stands at the far end of the ally, her petite silhouette easy to make out, even at the age of 22 she still hasn't physically matured that well. Yui dots out her cigarette, pulling geeta close and proceeding towards the group of girls thinking, "is this all there is?"
The bar on a weekday night is not busy, but still has a few punters dotted here and there in their own private worlds. Yui's back being penetrated by the gaze of a group of salary men all trying to judge the size of her breasts through her thick green coat. Mio sits opposite, swilling down a beer as the others talk about the gig, a jape being said about Mugi messing up the second verse on my love is a stapler. Yui doesn't care about any of that, the thrill that playing in front of a crowd used to bring her now seems a lifetime away. She speaks up after taking a quick sip of some awful house ale, "Hey, how about we start thinking about going pro?" The girls look up towards her, Ritsu replies in her usual sharp tone which Yui has become accustomed to these days "And how do you expect us to do that? I thought you said you were fine with playing small gigs, and besides we all have our jobs to think about now." Yui looks down towards the stains left on the old wooden table, trying to think of a reply, but she knows Ritsu is right. After Yui graduated she went into teacher training, and the others are now working as office ladies in different companies trying desperately to get enough money together to follow their own dreams. "I thought so" Ritsu finally averted her death stare and went back to drinking. The atmosphere created between the group could be cut with a butter knife, it was then that a woman sporting knee high socks and a short black dress walked into the bar from the far door and started her way towards the group. She took a seat beside Mio and proceeded to kiss her, it was at that point that Ritsu managed to slip out before anyone could say a word. "We all knew Mio would be popular with the girls, but it does make me jealous. It's not like I haven't been looking for someone special, it's just, ever since that time.."
"Well I will see you next week at practice, I will send you an email later letting you know I got home okay." Mio walks off to find a taxi with her girlfriend. Yui holds back Mugi's hair as she unloads her dinner into a near by drain, rubbing her back as the young woman cries in hysterics over the site of her own stomach acid. "Look Yui, I have some hours freeing up in the next few months as the company is being switched over to a new database provider" Ritsu looks out over the rows of closed shop fronts, sounding softer than she did a few hours prior. Before Yui could even think to reply, Ritsu continued "If we can just get something recorded that sounds good. Something that can express what I am feeling right now would suit me, then we can think about maybe sending it off to a few producers and live houses." Yui looks up with a faint smile, not quite sure what to think at this very moment in time, maybe it is the alcohol but something suddenly seems good about this night. "Mugi can stop at your apartment right? You only live around the corner after all, try not to molest her, I don't want to be called up by the police at work over sexual assault charges okay?" Yui is left walking Mugi to her apartment as she continues to dry heave on every corner they pass.