"Eh, they're probably nothing but crap. If they'd been any good, Grasper would've recorded them themselves, wouldn't they?"
Hiro was probably right, but Shuichi was determined to find gold in this case. There were close to thirty music sheets in the attaché. Some were just riffs, some were full-fledged songs, and some were songs minus a bridge or a chorus. Surely one of them was a number one hit just waiting to happen.
"Yes and no," Suguru noted, examining the sheet music with a critical eye. "It's easy to see why some of these were rejected. While Sakuma-san is an awesome singer, his range is only a couple of octaves. Some of these would be impossible for him to sing."
"Really?" Shuichi hadn't thought there was any song Ryuichi couldn't sing. Okay, maybe it wasn't possible to surpass the Beatles, but perhaps they were close to finally surpassing Nittle Grasper now. "I'm going to take voice lessons. You think we could do some of these?" he asked hopefully.
"You're kidding. You are going to take voice lessons?" Suguru stared at Shuichi a moment before laughing, much like his cousin had earlier.
"What? I really mean it." Why hadn't he noticed the similiarities between Tohma and Suguru? Neither one of them took him seriously.
"You don't have the discipline to take voice lessons. It'll be hard work, and I thought you just broke up with Yuki-san. Have you made up again? You know you can't focus on anything important when Yuki's mad at you."
"No! I'm not going back to Yuki. And how do you know about that, anyway?"
"Heh. Just a wild guess from the way you behaved when you came in this morning. Come to think of it, you're different now. Starry-eyed and hyperactive, like when you've made up again. You always get silly dreams and impossible goals after you've made up. Like selling a million albums and climbing the charts."
"Those aren't silly goals. We achieved them, didn't we? And now I have a new goal. I want to beat the Beatles. That's why Tohma gave me these songs."
The room went dead quiet for a minute until Suguru broke the silence with an uncontrollable explosion of laughter. "Bwahahahaha! You're joking, right? Beat the Beatles? Seguchi-san thinks we can surpass the Beatles with these songs?"
"No. He told me we'd never beat the Beatles because they had too many composers, instrumentalists and vocalists. Then I said we could have another genius composer and instrumentalist if Tohma would help us, and he gave me this briefcase as a way of proving he wasn't a genius composer. He said I could have the songs if I thought they were brilliant, but he personally didn't think they were. I say he's wrong. There must be brilliance in here somewhere. Now who's with me? Are we going to beat the Beatles?"
Shuichi looked around the room, but everyone stared at him as if he were a visitor from another planet. Why didn't anyone take him seriously? Surely there was nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, the most famous band in history. But everyone continued staring with varying levels of skepticism. Finally, Hiro stopped gaping and walked slowly toward his friend.
"Seriously, Shu. Did Yuki hit you on your head? Because you don't need to protect him. We'll have him arrested for abuse and get you the finest brain surgeon in the world."
What?!
"Waaaaah! But I'm serious! Yuki never hit me, and he never threw me out of the apartment. I left on my own; I spent the night in a hotel and now I'm living with Tohma. And I want him to compose songs for us. And I want to surpass the Beatles. What's wrong with that?"
There was silence again as everyone looked at one another, then back at Shu. The only noise was the sound of Sakano fainting before K strode up to Suguru and pointed a gun at his head.
"Actually, Shuichi is right."
"H-h-huh?"
K put the gun away and broke into a smile. "Yes, he's right. I doubt you'll ever surpass the Beatles, but it's good to have goals. Once upon a time, you had an insurmountable goal of getting a recording contract, and that eventually came to pass. Even if you fall short of eclipsing the Beatles, you might become the biggest thing in Japanese history. Anyway, it's good to work toward an impossible dream. As long as it motivates you, it doesn't matter if you never achieve it. You'll achieve other things along the way."
Suguru hung his head and sighed. "This just means a whole lot more work for me."
"No, it doesn't!" Shuichi assured him. "I promise to pull my weight this time. Really. Tohma suggested I take voice lessons so I can sing longer and stronger and not damage my voice box. So I'm going to take singing lessons. And we might have to take on a drummer and a bassist. It'll ease the burden on you a bit, eh? Not everything should be done with a synthesizer. And I want to experiment with different instruments, like the koto and the shamisen and the taiko drum. The Beatles wrote a song just for the penny whistle and it became a huge hit. We could write acoustic music, and experiment with different sounds, and—"
Chikushou, this was no good. Everyone was still staring blankly. "Well, it was just an idea."
Hiro shook his head and squeezed Shuichi's shoulder a second. "It's just that it kind of took us by surprise. I've never heard you listen to the Beatles. I didn't even know you were a fan."
"I'm not. Not really. I like some of their songs, but that wasn't what I meant. I meant, they're big in Japan, and in the rest of the world they're even bigger. After all this time, after they broke up, they're still the most recognized band in the world. The most played, the most covered. The most everything. They're on everyone's list of the top something. They've even made video games about them. I want to be like that. You know?"
"Sure. I just don't see it happening. But like K said, it's good to have motivation. Okay, let's beat the Beatles. What do you say, Suguru?"
"Aargh." Suguru rolled his eyes, but grabbed the sheet music. "Fine. Just let me go through these and see if there's anything useful."
Hiro tuned his guitar to kill time as Fujisaki fingered through the sheets.
"Hmmm..."
Shuichi looked over at the keyboardist. "Something?"
"Hm? Oh, I was just thinking to myself." Suguru turned to another sheet.
"Thinking? Did you find something?"
"Well, actually...I was just thinking that a lot of these are very good. I'm not sure why Seguchi-san is willing to give them away, but we may as well use them. We have nothing else for this CD. If you want to do something acoustic, I think this one is very pretty. It's written for the keyboard, but we could rework it for acoustic guitar and maybe a flute. Here, I'll play it for you." Suguru pressed buttons on his Moog until it replicated the sound of an acoustic guitar. He was right; the song was beautiful. "I'm playing it much slower than it was written, but it sounds better to me in 12/8. What do you think?"
Hiro and Shu looked at each other, then Shuichi pumped his fist in the air while Hiro set down his electric guitar and picked up the acoustic one. After checking the tuning, he began accompanying Suguru. "You're right; this sounds better with an acoustic."
As they rehearsed, Sakano slowly regained consciousness, and K offered a hand to help him to his feet. "Wh-what's going on?"
"You didn't miss much. Bad Luck is going to be bigger than the Beatles, and I think I've found a new carrot."