Hi guys! So, this is my first attempt at writing a novel-length multi-chapter since I was 13 years old. It's going to be a process, but I'm really excited about it, and I hope you are too =)
Because this is the first chapter, and this isn't really a story that can start in media res, I kind of think this chapter is a little slow-going, because what it really is more than anything else is an introduction. It's also kind of on the short side. Not that I can make any guarantees about the length of future chapters...whatever, I'm rambling now. The moral of the story is that this is the beginning of an experiment and I hope you're all willing to see it through with me.
There are some weird things about this that you will need to keep in mind for the future, and here is the first one:
1. Many, many songs will be mentioned (of course they will, it's me) throughout the length of this story. Sometimes they will be openly acknowledged as songs that the band Melodious Nocturne is covering, sometimes they will be credited as "original songs" by the band. I can't write my own music to save my life (I've tried), so all of the songs will be songs that exist in the real world. You'll see what I mean.
Things I Own: a Hollywood Undead album, autographed concert adverts/posters, a t-shirt that says SOME KIDS R GAY, THAT'S OK (same campaign, close enough)
Things I Don't Own: any of the characters or locations (save Arpeggio's) mentioned in this story. They belong to the lucky bitches at Square Enix and Disney.
Music Mentioned in This Chapter: "Is Anybody Out There?" by The Downtown Fiction, "Levitate" by Hollywood Undead, "Under the Sea" from Disney's The Little Mermaid, "Poster Boys" by Transmit Now
Living Proof
I. September
Chapter 1: Is Anybody Out There?
"Sup fag."
Roxas' shoulder hit the locker with a dull clang, flesh and cloth and bone colliding with thin, hollow metal. The blue-haired teen in front of him, one hand still raised from the recent shove, threw a cold sneer back over his shoulder. His friend laughed openly, tossing back black dreads as he turned to check the look on Roxas' face.
The blond closed his eyes and schooled his expression, diligently forcing the wince off his face. He wasn't going to give Saïx or Xaldin the satisfaction. Inhale. Exhale. Eyes open.
Olette was staring at him, eyebrows knitted together in a frown as she watched Roxas push himself off the wall of lockers. He stared right back, seeing the surprise, then sheepish embarrassment register across her face as she realized that he saw her. She looked away quickly, ducking her head and hurrying away to catch up with Pence.
'That's right,' Roxas thought bitterly, 'walk away.' He took it back almost immediately, feeling guilty for thinking ill of his old friend. It was his own fault, and no one else's, that she hadn't gotten involved. It had been Roxas himself who had insisted they all stay out of it, pushing his friends farther and farther away until they got the hint.
"Roxas!"
Well. Most of them.
"Are you okay?" Naminé had caught up with him as he attempted to round the corner, cautiously checking for a sign of Saïx or Xaldin first.
"What? Oh, yeah," Roxas feigned innocence. Naminé raised a pale eyebrow delicately; skepticism looked out of place on her soft features. "Yeah, I just tripped. No big deal."
"You tripped," the smaller blonde repeated. "You do realize that you sound like an abused housewife defending her husband, right?"
"What can I say," Roxas simpered. "Saïx loves me, I know he does. He only says those things when I do something wrong, when I deserve it. He just gets a little irritable on days that end in 'y.' You know how he hates the letter y. But I know, deep down, he loves me!"
Naminé, Roxas knew, was struggling valiantly to keep from giggling, even as one corner of her lip quirked up in a smile. "Stop," she chastised, "abuse is not funny, and neither is this. You need to tell someone."
"It's fine, Nam," Roxas insisted. He'd lost track of how many times they'd had this conversation, how many times his best friend had tried, sometimes gentle, sometimes as forcefully as such a sweet girl could manage, to convince Roxas to tell someone about Saïx and Xaldin. It had to be at least once a day since they'd really started being friends, which was the beginning of sophomore year. Lets see, 365 days in a year, times 2 for sophomore year and junior year, a little less in the summer when he didn't see the two bullies as frequently, and not quite as often in the beginning, back when Naminé was still too shy and Kairi and Sora were the ones doing it instead, so...
"Are you even listening to me?" Naminé's soft voice cut through his mental math, causing Roxas to jump slightly.
He smiled sheepishly, running one hand through his blond hair. "Sorry," he said, "I just...yeah, no."
Naminé shook her head fondly. "Of course not. Anyway, I have to get to class. Want to come over after school? It's been forever since we've hung out just the two of us, and Marly's got something with his cousin so there won't be any surprise visits or anything, promise."
"Sure," Roxas shrugged, "yeah, meet you at your locker after the bell."
Naminé waved as she veered off down the next fork in the hallway, disappearing into the sea of students desperately trying to make the most of the five minutes between classes. Roxas could see a kid digging desperately through his locker, another scribbling frantically as he propped a notebook up against the nearest wall. Most of the people were texting, phones held surreptitiously down by their hips in hopes of hiding them from teachers combing the hallways. One couple shamelessly turned a goodbye peck into a steamy kiss, ignoring the glares from the students struggling to get around the groping pair. Roxas shook his head, giving them a wide berth as he rounded the doorway on the opposite side of the hall.
There were still two minutes left until the bell but, frankly, he didn't feel like pushing his luck with Vexen. Professor Vexen, as he insisted on being called, despite being nothing more than a high school AP Chemistry teacher, was a stickler for punctuality and Roxas didn't need a whole 120 seconds of "freedom" that badly.
Sora, on the other hand, apparently did. He flew into the room just as the bell finished ringing, dropping hastily into his seat next to Roxas, nearly overbalancing in his hurry. One shoulder plowed into Roxas as he adjusted himself on the chair, blue eyes narrowing dangerously at the involuntary hiss that escaped Roxas' lips.
"Roxas," Sora said warningly, keeping his voice low under the sound of Vexen taking attendance.
"I tripped," the blond insisted. He lifted the edge of his sleeve, gingerly prodding the knot of red skin on his bicep. He'd hit the lock of one of the top lockers when Saïx shoved him, and it had apparently been hard enough to bruise.
"Over what?" Sora challenged his twin. "Here," he added, louder, as Vexen called "Strife, and Strife."
"My...shoelaces," Roxas tried lamely.
"You're wearing slip-ons."
Roxas glanced down, cursing under his breath at the side of his black and white checkered Vans. Rats.
"Rox –"
"Drop it," Roxas snapped, looking up and glaring Sora into submission. His brother, unlike Naminé, knew well enough to take a hint.
It was an endlessly circling argument, one that Roxas was growing increasingly tired of having. It had been Hayner, first, with a side of Pence and Olette, and then Sora and Kairi took up the cause, dragging Naminé in just when Roxas was finally sure he'd taken care of his old friends. They meant well, and he knew that, but it was a lot harder to get rid of his twin brother than it was to get rid of his best friend, and as for Naminé, well, she was the most persistently stubborn girl he'd ever met. Soft-spoken and inconceivably friendly, but more stubborn than all three Strife brothers put together, and that was saying something.
The conversation was always the same. 'Don't let them push you around, Roxas.' 'Don't let them treat you like that.' 'Fight back,' if it was Hayner talking. 'Tell someone,' when it was Naminé or Kairi. 'Do whatever, just do something,' from Sora. They never understood Roxas' logic, Roxas' reasons behind his apparent submission.
It had been different when he was younger. 14 and fresh out of the closet, filled with teenage bravado and naïve pride. He'd been patently lucky in his initial attempts at coming out; his parents had accepted it without complaint, his brothers without surprise (or at least, Sora was without surprise. Cloud may have been surprised, but that would have required facial expression, so Roxas was never really sure), and his friends without fuss. It had been easy. Too easy. Easy enough that he'd walked right into high school proudly wearing the rainbow studded belt Sora had picked out for him at Hot Topic. Easy enough that when Xemnas Akio, a junior with cold eyes sneered at him and said "what are you, gay?" Roxas had stood up a little straighter and said "yeah, so what if I am?"
Even then, he'd been brash enough to put a fight at first. Xemnas had his little disciples, Saïx Claymore and Xaldin Lindworm, freshmen just like Roxas, but Roxas had Sora and Hayner Dincht, and even Cloud sometimes. Hayner was hot-headed and impulsive and had years of being bullied and beaten up by Seifer Almasy under his belt, and Sora was just too damn nice for anyone to insult. Even Pence tried, and the girls too, Olette _ and Kairi Brightcrest, even though she was new and really just friends with Sora, and Kairi's friend Naminé Majo, who wasn't new at all but had only recently started speaking in anything louder than a whisper. Roxas was young, Roxas had friends, and Roxas was invincible.
And then he wasn't. Then there was the day that he and Hayner had run into Saïx and Xaldin just outside the Sandlot, off school grounds after school hours. Xemnas had favored piercing glares and biting words, but Saïx and Xaldin favored their fists, and even though they were the same age, they were twice the size of the petite blond and his lanky, wiry friend. It was brutal. Unprecedented. Undoubtedly the worst injury Roxas had ever suffered in his life, despite several childhood broken bones. And as he sat in a cold, plastic chair in the Emergency Room, one eye swollen shut, blood still dripping from a broken nose and split lower lip, Roxas turned and looked at Hayner. Hayner, who was Roxas best friend in the entire world. Hayner, who was straight, and therefore should never have to deal with this. Hayner, who had been getting into fights with Seifer since fifth grade and had never, ever been injured that badly. Roxas looked him over with his good eye, taking in the bruised jaw and the broken wrist being set in a bright orange cast, and decided that that was quite enough.
He stopped fighting, and he began to insist that his friends do the same. This was not to say that he backed down entirely. Roxas was unapologetic about who he was and what he stood for. Even four years later he had gotten dressed that morning in a shirt that insisted SOME DUDES MARRY DUDES. GET OVER IT. It was just...no fighting, no arguing, no talking back. And two weeks later, when Saïx and Xaldin were beaten so badly they both spent the night in the hospital, Roxas began a different approach entirely, even though Hayner swore on his broken wrist that he had nothing to do with it. Hayner only ever go involved when Roxas was around; he was Seifer's punching bag, and since rumor seemed to suggest the older blond had been the one to jump Saïx and Xaldin, furious at them for "damaging his property," no one dared touch Hayner anymore. If he wasn't going to stay out of Roxas' fights, Rox was just going to have to keep him away from them. Problem solved.
In hindsight, it was sad how easy it was for Roxas to pull away from his childhood friends. He tried avoidance at first; stopped hanging out at their usual spot, made excuse to stay after school so they couldn't walk home together. After a while it almost seemed to happen on its own. Hayner went out for the Struggle team. Pence, it seemed, had finally mustered up some courage when Roxas wasn't looking, and Pence and Olette had turned into Pence-and-Olette. Sora had found a new friendship in Kairi, the new-old girl who had moved back from Destiny Islands, and then he joined the Blitzball team. Suddenly they were all off, doing their own thing, and finally letting Roxas do his.
Roxas twitched slightly as Sora bumped their knees together under the lab table, glancing quickly down at the margin of Sora's notebook. The brunet had shoved the book towards the middle of the table, pencil dancing lightly over a hastily drawn number.
"Four?" he tried, praying that was the right answer to the question he hadn't heard Professor Vexen ask. The chem teacher said nothing, thin lips pressed together as he turned back to the dry erase board and added a four to the equation he was apparently balancing. Roxas let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and nudged Sora's arm gratefully.
His twin had always understood more than anyone else. He never fully understood, how could he, being a. popular, b. straight, and c. one of those people that were physically impossible to dislike, but he knew his twin well enough to piece it together as much as he could. That didn't mean he liked it; no, Sora was constantly trying to drag Roxas to parties or introduce him to friends, but he mostly respected Roxas' wish to keep the interference to a minimum. Roxas at least had one friend who wasn't related to him, and between Sora and Naminé, and occasionally Kairi, they made sure Roxas wasn't completely pathetic. Like, for example, now.
"What are you doing tonight?" Sora asked, jumping up the second the bell rang and unceremoniously shoving his books into his backpack.
"It's a Tuesday," Roxas reminded him. Since when did Tuesday nights become socially acceptable?
"We're seniors," Sora let out a long-suffering sigh, as though he couldn't believe he even had to elaborate that much. "Besides, it's not like there's a rager or anything. Just have a Blitz game this afternoon, first of the season, you know? Figured we'd have a little kickoff party at Tidus's, invite only, that kind of thing."
"I'm good," Roxas insisted. Going out on a Tuesday. "I'm going to Nam's after school." He pushed himself to his feet, shoving his pen into the same back pocket that held his copy of The Sun Also Risesfor AP Lit.
"Oh, good," Sora said. Roxas paused, glancing sideways at his twin as they joined the crowd of people jostling through the hallways. Sora was always, always sincere when he invited Roxas out, so the blond was taken aback at the note of relief in his brother's voice. Why would Sora even invite him if he didn't want Roxas to go?
"I'll be home late, then," Sora was saying when Roxas tuned back in. "I'll call you if I need you to cover for me, yeah?"
"Yup," Roxas nodded. He was exceptionally good at covering Sora's ass when their parents got nosey.
They parted ways after leaving their adjacent lockers (assigned alphabetically, sucks to be you if your last name ends in Z and you're stuck in the basement for four years). Naminé was waiting for Roxas, leaning back against her locker with her bag by her feet.
"Hi," she said cheerfully, picking up her backpack. Too cheerfully. Red flags. "So, we just got our next assignment in studio, and I really need these watercolor pencils for it, and Riebe's is having a sale today and please, please can we just stop by there real quick on the way back to my house? I'll be so fast, I promise," she pleaded. As if Roxas could say no to her.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh anyway, arranging his features into a severely put-out expression. "Fine," he sighed. "I guess." Naminé swatted at his arm, wrinkling her nose as he broke into a grin. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Geez. Yeah, it's cool," he said, holding his hands up placatingly. "It's not like we have urgent plans to get to your house or something."
She shook her head exasperatedly but slipped her hand into his all the same, threading their fingers together as he pushed the door open and led them outside. It really had been ages since they'd hung out just the two of them. Naminé was Kairi's best friend, from back before Kairi moved away from Twilight Town, and when Kairi moved back and become friends with Sora, she started bringing Naminé around too. She and Roxas were, more often than not, thrown together by default as Sora and Kairi paired off, until eventually they started actually spending time together by choice. Naminé had always been the quiet, soft-spoken girl with her head always buried in her sketchbook before Kairi came back; even though he'd known her forever, Roxas didn't think he'd ever spoken to her before the end of freshman year. She had dozens and dozens of acquaintances, people always stopping to say hi to her in the hallway or commenting on her newest piece in the showcase outside the Main Office, but Kairi and Roxas were really the only people she called her good friends. At least, until she started dating Marluxia.
Marluxia was a year older than them and had been completing his senior project when Naminé met him last spring. They were both working together on a community service project down at the Sandlot, Naminé designing the mural, Marluxia landscaping the garden, and had apparently fought nearly every single day over minute aesthetic details that Roxas never bothered to remember. He'd barely even paid attention to him the first few times Naminé had mentioned the older boy, who'd gone to Twilight East for high school instead of Twilight North like they did, until Naminé casually dropped the term boyfriend.
They'd been dating for almost six months now. Roxas was happy for his best friend, really, he was. But it had meant a lot less time for this, just him and Naminé, weaving through the streets of Twilight Town in easy, companionable silence.
"Oh my god, see, this is why we're best friends."
Roxas very nearly jumped out of his skin, blinking at the redhead that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the street in front of them. Kairi plowed on without even pausing for breath, words tripping all over themselves in their attempts to fly out of her mouth as fast as humanly possible.
"I was literally just about to call you, Nam, and beg you to come meet me here. I need your opinion on this dress and it has to be right now because it's the last one and I have to be back at school in 45 minutes cause we're cheering at the Blitzball game tonight and oh, please Roxas, can't I just borrow her for, like, a few minutes, I promise I'll be so, so quick."
Roxas' head spun. He really would have sworn it wasn't physically possible to talk that fast before he met Kairi, and even after three years he still wasn't used to it. Naminé frowned helplessly at him, and really, what choice did he have?
"Sure," he shrugged. "I wanted to go run into..." he scanned the nearby storefronts quickly, settling on a faded blue sign he'd never noticed before "...Arpeggio's anyway. Text me later, Nam." He hurried away before Kairi could start talking again, all but running across the street and ducking into the rundown store.
He stopped short as the door swung shut behind him, staring around the tiny shop. It was...he had never seen anything like it. Outrageous, maybe. Incredible. Unlike any other store in the world, if he had to guess. Every inch of space was used up, walls lined with assorted shelves, aisles created by milk crates full of what looked like records. Even, Roxas glanced up, the ceiling was covered. It seemed to have been wallpapered with posters advertising bands and concerts. None of them were generic, store-bought posters either. No, these were souvenirs decorating the walls and ceiling, vintage adverts boasting live shows, some still sporting hastily done packing tape, others faded Sharpie signatures.
"Yeah, that's the look everyone gets first time they come in here."
Roxas started slightly, glancing around the shop for the source of the amused-sounding voice. The store's sole other occupant stood behind a counter against the front wall, chin resting on his hand as he studied Roxas. He was the perfect employee for such an eclectic shop, blending right in with what looked like a vintage Doors t-shirt under a black suit vest and extra-large deejay-style headphones hanging around his neck. Blond hair, paler than Roxas' own golden color, both spiked up and hung down in the strangest union of a mullet and a mohawk Rox had ever seen, but somehow, just likely the pierced bottom lip and at least one silver-studded ear, the cashier made it work.
"What?" Roxas asked stupidly, belatedly realizing that the other blond was still looking at him.
"That look. The one that says you're not sure if you just walked through a doorway and into another world. It's a pretty normal reaction to this place. Ax always says we should take pictures, sell them as souvenirs. 'The Arpeggio Experience.'"
"Use them as blackmail, more like," Roxas muttered.
Blond-cashier-dude laughed. "Actually, yeah, that's what he really says. Sell them to customers' friends to use as blackmail. Anyway," he clapped his hands together, straightening up. "Welcome to Arpeggio's. Part of the experience is exploring the place, so I'll just give you the basic tour and leave you to it. CDs on the left wall, cassettes on the right, records in the middle. The back wall is pre-loaded mp3 players. The mp3 players, cassettes, and records are price as marked, all CDs are $5. Everything in here is pre-owned but gently used. Take your time, check the place out. You're welcome to stay as long as you like. If you need me, yell, or maybe throw something. Seriously, I'm working on a new song, which may as well be synonymous with 'I'm taking up residence in a black hole of external stimuli.' So just holler."
Roxas nodded. This guy could give Kairi a run for her money for sure, but at least he, unlike the red-haired girl, apparently knew when to shut up.
He lost track of how time passed. Roxas didn't have a record player, and he never much cared for the quality of cassette tapes, but CDs...the blond had never seen such an awe-inspiring collection of albums before. They didn't seem to be organized in any particular way, at least not that Roxas could discern, but were instead piled haphazardly along rows and rows of shelves, forcing a careful perusal of the stacks. Roxas poured over each with systematic attention to detail, surveying the collection of everything from soundtracks to instrumental scores to old school 80s dance hits to Lil Wayne's newest release. His favorite discovery, excluding the first edition copy of Sum 41's debut album that he himself had misplaced years ago, had been the Walkmans interspersed at random throughout the display, each labeled with little white signs and thin, spiky handwriting.
NOT SURE IF YOU'LL LIKE A CD? TEST IT OUT! JUST PLEASE BE GENTLE WITH THE MERCH...EVEN IF YOU FIND A CD TO BE A REBECCA-BLACK LEVEL OF GARBAGE DOESN'T MEAN SOME OTHER POOR SUCKER WANTS HIS FUTURE FAVORITE ALBUM SCRATCHED. THANK YOU, MGMT.
And under that, an afterthought added in completely different handwriting: (THE MANAGEMENT, NOT THE BAND.)
Roxas was pretty sure he was in love. He wasn't positive, he'd never been in love, but he imagined this must be what it felt like. He'd willingly spend the rest of his life in this small, wonderfully cramped slice of heaven, and if voluntary, indefinite confinement wasn't love, he didn't know what was.
"Find everything okay?" the blond cashier asked as Roxas finally approached the register. It was rhetorical: the enraptured look on Roxas' face was more than enough answer. He began rifling through Roxas' selections, one eyebrow raised as he surveyed the titles. "old school Sum 41, Hollywood Undead, Forever the Sickest Kids, and Classic Disney Volume I. Huh."
"I like variety," Roxas said defensively.
Blondie laughed. "No, I didn't mean anything by it. It's just funny, my band covered two songs off these CDs on our EP. I can't believe that out of everything you could have picked, you picked up two of the three albums we borrowed from."
"You're in a band? Cool." Roxas was only half paying attention. He'd just noticed once last reason to love the store: a box of thumb drives sitting onto the counter next to the register. "What are these?"
"The coolest things we have here," the cashier said, glancing over as he began ringing up Rox' choices. "They're playlists. People make them, write the title on, and drop them in the box. From there, it's luck of the draw. Some of them will change your life, some of them might not be your thing. The only guarantee is a minimum of 20 songs that somewhat or somehow relate to the title for $10."
Roxas fished one out at random, reading the title out loud. "A Taxonomy of Unconventional Love Songs."
"Oh, I think you'll like that one," the cashier said. "If you really do have eclectic taste. My friend made it, and he's the freaking king of random. I'd say go for it."
"Sure, why not," Roxas shrugged, handing over the little red USB. "I listen to a little bit of everything."
"Oh yeah?" the blond added the thumb drive to the little blue shopping bag with a giant smiley on the side. "You should come see my band. We play a little bit of everything, so it sounds like a perfect match. We're not half bad either, if I do say so myself."
"Got any shows coming up?" Roxas hardly recognized the words coming out of his mouth. It wasn't that he was antisocial...he just couldn't remember the last time he'd initiated plans with someone other than Naminé or Sora.
"Friday night," Blondie nodded, "actually. Down at the Organization, on thirteenth street? We're Melodious Nocturne, we go on at 9:30. Your total's $26 even, by the way."
Roxas frowned, narrowing his eyes at the numbers on the register. The cashier himself had said: CDs for $5, thumb drives $10, but all he did was smirk slightly, winking at Roxas as he handed over the bag.
"Have a good night, then. See you Friday. And oh, yeah. I'm Demyx."
"Roxas."
He didn't notice the extra CD until the next night. Roxas was sprawled across his bed, laptop propped against his thighs, half-heartedly watching Sora suck royally at Keyblade Master on their PS3 when he remembered about the shopping bag hanging from the back of his desk chair. The blond had dumped the contents out onto his bed, four jewel cases and one thumb drive. But no, there were five albums laying on his bed. Roxas nudged the other four aside, picking up the mystery one he had definitely never seen before in his life.
It was black, nothing more than an intricately intertwined MN framed on top and bottom with the words MELODIOUS NOCTURNE and THE ALBUM THAT NEVER WAS. Roxas flipped it over in his hand, reading the seven tracks listed on the back. The album boasted four originals and three covers, and just like Demyx has promised, two of them were on albums Roxas had picked up: "Levitate" by Hollywood Undead and, here Roxas smirked a little, "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid.
"Oooh, new music?" Sora asked. He had apparently died for the umpteenth time tonight. "Anything good?"
"Hollywood Undead, Sum 41, Forever the Sickest Kids, a Disney compilation, and Melodious Nocturne," Roxas rattled off, surveying the titles spread across his bed.
Sora frowned, eyes back on the TV screen. "Who?"
"No idea," Rox admitted. "The cashier at this little hole in the wall music store said it was his band, he must have stuck the EP in the bag when I wasn't looking."
"They any good?"
"No idea. Hold on, mute that. Let's find out." He pushed the album into his CD-rom drive, watching the track titles pop up on iTunes. "Pick a song, we got four originals and three covers."
"Original. No mercy," Sora declared, shamelessly button-mashing his way through a fairly pathetic battle. "Doesn't matter how good your voices sound if your original songs are lousy."
Roxas nodded, double clicking on track four, 'Poster Boys.'
"Huh," Sora said. He paused his game, turning back to look at Roxas. "They're actually not bad. There's something about the lead singer's voice..." the brunet trailed off.
"He's good," Roxas suggested. "He's got a good voice." He reached for his mouse again, clicking through Safari windows and into the Google search bar. "They're playing a show Friday night, at that bar down by McDuck's. This guy told me about it."
"You gonna go?"
"Dunno, you free Friday night?" Roxas opened the band's MySpace page (seriously, who still used MySpace?), scrolling through the surprising number of comments and general info as the next song started playing. It was the first of the covers, "Is Anybody Out There?" some song Roxas had never heard by some band he'd never heard of.
"I could be," Sora contemplated. "You know what, yeah, I am. I'm actually so fascinated by the idea of you actually wanting to go out that I couldn't possibly say no. Besides, they do sound pretty decent."
"Sweet," Roxas nodded. He selected the band's photo gallery, opening first their profile picture. It was an action shot, four guys on stage in the middle of a show. The drummer was almost completely obscured by darkness, the bassist hidden under what appeared to be a sheet of silver hair covering his face, some guy that could have been Demyx playing guitar. Frankly, Roxas barely looked at them. No, the focus of the picture, and the part Roxas couldn't take his eyes off of, was the lead singer. He stood dead center in the frame, illuminated by red and yellow stage lights, but even if he'd been shoved into the back corner of the image, blurry and out of focus, he still would have dominated the photo. It was something about his eyes, Roxas mused, wide open and starting right at the camera, so impossibly green that there must have been some Photoshopping involved.
"Well," he told Sora, "even if they suck royally live, there's at least one positive."
"What's that?"
"The lead singer is apparently hot as fuck."
I promise better and more exciting things in the next chapter. If you were wondering, I did, in fact, make a Taxonomy of Unconventional Love Songs playlist. Also, today is my 22nd birthday.
