A/N
It wasn't supposed to take this long, really.
The return to regularly scheduled lectures and structured learning seems to be inhibiting my ability to say something rather important very casually. And it just so happens that this is supposed to be one of the more subtle chapters, for it is from here that a certain tremulous thread, which connects the individual drabbles inside their chapter and across to the other ones, will emerge. And if I do everything right, you should (I hope) be able to see it by chapter four.
Now a few points of clarification: if Azusa doesn't speak and isn't mentioned, assume she has not yet joined the club or is absent from the current K-On insanity purely by chance. And don't worry too much about strict linear continuity, because I'm not. The literal "when" is never as important as the abstract "when" of the timeline of their relationship, which in turn is inferior to the "what" and "why." If you find it helps, think of it like a bunch of snapshots that fell out of a scrapbook or words from a perfectly coherent sentence that have been rearranged by some mischievous prankster.
Onto the second chapter.
rhapsody
xxxx
Their first actual meeting is not in the first grade. However, since that meeting remains the memory that stays with both of them into adulthood (albeit a bit dubiously on Ritsu's part), it is the important one.
But to be perfectly clear and historically accurate, in actuality they meet for the very first time two years prior, in a sandbox.
It happens on an average day in an ordinary playground during that indeterminate time between seasons. It goes something like this: the girl with black hair moves away from the bench with timid, fledging steps on cement heated through by the summer sun. She crosses the wooden threshold—the girl with scraped elbows vaults off the seat of her swing and leaves it swaying in her absence—and takes that last step, placing one foot into the sand. The other nearly trips as she grabs something from the ground mid-dash and passes by the monkey bars—gleaming steel beams arching into the ribs of a great extinct creature—without a glance.
In the sandpit the dark-haired girl can still see her mother from the corner of her eye, so all is well. Her braided pigtails flaring in the motion, she squats amidst the grains of sand. She does not sit because her dress is new and clean. She observes the ruins left by previous creators: rounded dunes, dipping canyons, a truncated cone raising itself half-heartedly over illegible scribbles in the packed sand.
Sand in a child's palms, and here lies the world: infinite possibilities and a never-ending cycle of creation and destruction.
It is her turn now. She smoothes out a small patch next to the slanted pyramid and ponders what she should make by herself. But suddenly, the little girl is not alone in the rectangular pit; there is someone here. She looks up—
It is a person with a bucket for a head.
A small chubby toddler hand lifts the yellow plastic to reveal sparkling amber eyes. Brown hair spikes up with static as the bucket is taken off completely. Now—as they behold each other for the first time—a moment when all is still save the autumn wind that blows between them.
Ah, the very first act, the neglected preface—
Mio goes back to looking at the perfectly smooth sand and contemplates the process of creation with the detached air of an artist. The yellow bucket dips into her line of vision and scoops up the entire pyramid. Ritsu is ecstatic that there is another person in the sandbox. She has been waiting—for someone to play with.
She is content to stare at the one scoopful she has in her cupped hands while Ritsu, snatching fistfuls from the ground, is forcefully depositing sand into her pail eagerly. Mio lowers the captured grains back down, presses it into a small hill, and cocks her head to examine it critically. And at this moment, with the gravity of a priest performing baptism, Ritsu takes the full bucket and upends it over her head.
Ritsu never remembers the day again. Mio remembers for a long time, and in two years it will be one of the foremost reasons as to why she is so reticent towards the other girl's friendship. But eventually, it dims throughout adolescence, lost in a sea of other memories concerning that girl, and then one day, it slips away entirely.
So, although of no particular importance—forgotten and insignificant—the first time they meet, Tainaka Ritsu makes Akiyama Mio cry.
xxxx
"Mio, it's hot."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"Fan me."
The fact that the clubroom does not have a fan is not the issue. "No."
"C'mon! Mio. Fan me. Fan! Faaan…" Ritsu groans from where she is sloppily strewn over a chair.
The pencil's scratching does not hesitate as Mio continues working out math problems. "Ritsu, I am not your personal slave."
"Tch. How rude. I'm the club president, and this is an order!"
"I'll dump this water bottle over your head, you tyrant."
The way Mio's mouth has ticked down at the corner is noticeable even though her head is lowered over her book, so Ritsu grumblingly desists in her persuasions and settles for loudly dragging her chair in front of the open window, hoping to catch a breeze.
"Now the next chord is a B major seventh," Azusa says to Yui, demonstrating as such on her own guitar.
The drummer turns a lazy eye across the room towards them. Even in the blistering heat, Azusa, determined to help Yui finish memorizing a particular phrase, is painstakingly walking her through each note and chord in the correct order and rhythm—an arduous task that had once been borne by Mio alone. To further her goals, Azusa has donned a pair of cat ears in hopes of retaining the guitarist's attention. It seems to be working, but not quite in the manner desired.
"No, senpai, it's too hot for hugs! Concentrate or you'll forget everything you just learned!"
"I wonder how Azusa puts up with Yui," Ritsu remarks offhandedly, pulling at the collar of her blouse as a meager breeze wafts half-heartedly through the window.
Her friend spares her a glance, but does not otherwise answer.
"It's hard to see why they're friends. I mean, the fact that Yui is a complete airhead is even worse for her since she's got to teach her guitar and everything. And then, come on, the cat ears and constant hugs?"
"Hm," comes the noncommittal noise.
"Must be a pain sometimes. Can you imagine it?"
"Hmm."
"Stop with the weird noises, Mio."
Ritsu lolls her head forward to look at the bassist. Mio glances up from her workbook and holds eye contact steadily.
"Don't you think," Ritsu says, glad that she has her undivided attention, "that Yui is getting the better end of the deal?"
Mio rolls her eyes impressively before purposefully looking at Yui, then fixes her gaze back on an uncomprehending Ritsu.
"…?"
Mio repeats the movement again. She looks at Yui, then at Ritsu, and arches her left eyebrow for added emphasis.
Ritsu stares. Then blinks.
"No."
"Mm?"
"No. You," Ritsu levels her pointer finger at Mio's coolly unruffled face, "are not comparing us," she jerks her hand back to gesture to herself with her thumb, "to them." She flings her arm out, hand open and palm up, the arc of the movement encompassing both guitarists.
Mio raises her other eyebrow.
"We're nothing like that!" Ritsu insists, "I mean, other than the fact that you and Azusa have long dark hair and Yui and I have short brown hair. And maybe I'm a little—but I mean, you're not like—"
Ritsu's indignant rambling ceases as she considers the possible similarities. There is the fact that Azusa and Mio are composed, serious people, driven to become accomplished musicians. There is the fact that she and Yui are fun-loving and given to sloughing off responsibilities with their aversion towards practice and work. Mio might possibly pull her through schoolwork the way Azusa devotedly coaches Yui in music. Perhaps, for every time Yui has embraced Azusa there has been an equivalent of her grabbing, hugging, or slinging her arm around Mio. And if Azusa would not perform without Yui, then conceivably, if Ritsu were not present, Mio would also—
And maybe, maybe, just barely, the comparison works. But—
"Agh! Mio! You can't compare me to Yui!"
Mio's eyebrows are practically disappearing into her hairline as Ritsu agitates her chair against the ground, the wooden legs clacking hollowly in a lopsided cadence.
"I didn't say anything," she claims. "You came up with that comparison all by yourself."
She sounds very smug.
"I don't make you wear cat ears!"
"You don't exactly help when Sawako-sensei is on one of her rampages, you know."
A strong gust of wind whips through, but Ritsu, in her distress, has forgotten all about her earlier complaints, too focused on the current dilemma.
"Azusa and Yui? You and me? Really?" she thinks back on her earlier comments and tries to imagine an outsider's view of their relationship. Ritsu can't manage it because Mio is right whenever she says that she is incapable of that sort of self-removal and impartiality. She looks at Yui and Azusa instead, feeling vaguely disturbed.
But still, "I'm not quite that hopeless," she objects.
"Well, with your use of qualifiers, it seems you're admitting some degree of haplessness."
Mio has abandoned her homework in lieu of quietly observing a distraught and perplexed Ritsu, and to anyone else she would look as always. But Ritsu can see that barely perceptible gleam in her grey eyes and the subtle turn of her lips, and she has the gall to still look beautiful while smirking.
She doesn't have her photos with her today, so the shorthaired girl settles for the next best thing.
"Hey, Mio," Ritsu's voice is all sunshine and smiles and the other is immediately wary.
"So yesterday, I wasn't being very careful," the drummer looks up from examining her nails, "And I closed a drawer on my finger—"
The raven-haired girl doesn't hear anymore because she gets up and briskly walks away with her hands over her ears, intent on not allowing herself to disgrace her small triumph by cowering in fear.
"I'm not listening, I'm not listening…" she sweeps past Mugi in the doorway, chanting to herself.
Mugi looks at Ritsu, her inimitable eyebrows quirked into an expression of confusion, but the other is too busy watching Mio leave. The other occupants in the room seem oblivious to what has transpired. Indeed, Azusa is vainly attempting to prod a prone Yui upright, her cat ears askew.
"Er… I brought some éclairs?"
xxxx
Looking like you're busy even when you're not, Mio learns early on, is crucial. That way, people are less likely to talk to you because "it's rude to interrupt," as her mother says. For instance, the past two days during recess she has been hiding behind a book she had already read a year ago—her mother being too busy lately to take her to the library—and no one had bothered her at all.
The charm stops working on the third day, namely because Tainaka Ritsu has never and probably will never learn manners.
Strange, Mio thinks, when Tainaka Ritsu does not leap out of her chair in a mad dash towards the playground the moment the teacher declares class adjourned. But things have been strange since this morning when she came in to find her desk looking like the class pet had crawled around in it. So Mio pays it little heed. She takes out her book and props it open to a random page in the middle, content to spend recess alone and inside. It is now, though, when the girl in front of her twists around in her seat to sit cross-legged and facing backwards, that all the accumulated strangeness ceases to remain benign.
Bad, Mio thinks, when Tainaka Ritsu looks at her and opens her mouth.
"Hey! What're you reading?" she shouts. The teacher, finished wiping the chalkboard clean, pauses on her way out to remind Ritsu that she is not speaking at an indoor volume. But the world is cruel, and the teacher, leaving in a swish of her skirt, does not save the cringing Mio from anything other than her loud voice.
Mio's dismayed eyes follow the adult out the door until she is disrupted by the realization that Tainaka Ritsu is jabbing a piece of paper at her.
She doesn't take it.
After all, she does not accept things from strangers.
The girl does not seem put down by this at all, instead dropping it on the blank desk. Mio recognizes it as her missing math worksheet even through the wrinkles and the funny stain on the corner, so she takes it and files it away in the proper folder, resolving to pretend as if this has never happened. Ritsu does not make any such resolution.
"What are you reading?" Ritsu repeats, positively beaming at her.
Naturally, she cannot answer such a question, especially not when Ritsu's eyes are rummaging in her face the way her hands did to her desk. It is all mildly terrifying. But she has to say something, and the only thing that comes to mind are the lines she has practiced at home so many times she can say them smoothly in nearly any condition, so: "Hello. I'm Akiyama Mio. It's nice to meet you."
She is lying, of course, but that is not very important.
Ritsu is so excited that she does not realize that she has not introduced herself. In fact, she will never introduce herself to Akiyama Mio. It may be extraordinary luck or simply fate that Mio already knows her name and it happens to be unnecessary.
She also does not realize that Mio has not answered her question and immediately transitions to the next point: "Hey, you have really pretty hair!"
Mio absolutely flinches, though it's hard to tell whether from the compliment or Ritsu's outstretched hand.
They are interrupted. "Oy, Tainaka!" comes the annoyed call—for this is how all rivals address each other when endeavoring to be especially intimidating. "Why aren'tcha outside? We're supposed to have a rematch today!"
Ritus is displeased. She thinks she is making great progress with her new friend—she is not a particularly perceptive child—so this is not the time for silly games and perceived schoolyard superiority. But she is mistaken. They are not friends. Not yet.
After all, though there is unrequited love, there is no such thing as a one-sided friendship. The latter is critically dependent upon reciprocation.
She does not know this, so Ritsu scowls at the boy in the doorway and refuses to leave for the challenge until: "If you don't, then you're a scaredy cat!" He follows this up by making squawking chicken noises, though it is not the animal he had invoked.
It so happens that there is only one person in the classroom who is currently terrified, and it sure isn't Tainaka Ritsu.
"Ready to get beat again?" she smirks at him as they exit, ignorant to Mio's great relief.
"Nah uh." He is ready to redeem his schoolboy pride, "I'm gonna win this time."
"What do I get when I win?"
"When I win, I want your steelie," he declares, squinting at the sun as they come out into the playground.
Ritsu laughs outright. "Okay. Then I'll have your cats-eye. The yellow one."
It's not a fair bet because the steelie is her shooter and it ranks one higher than cats-eyes anyway, but she likes the swirling yellow band in the middle of the alabaster sphere, and it's the one marble he never uses when they gather around, kneeled in the dirt, and play for keeps. Otherwise, it would have been hers long ago.
With the stakes set and two impartial judges appointed, they face each other in the middle of the grassy arena, and the dare begins. It is an epic battle that captures the entire class, and soon there is a massive ring encircling them, cheering on the two opponents as they crawl around on their knees, pulling up fistfuls of grass and chomping down in relish.
(Years later, Mio will bring up this event at Yui's house the night before the amateur guitarist needs to pass her algebra retake, and at that time no firm conclusion will be drawn as to exactly whose idea it was to bet on who could eat more grass.)
It all comes to an abrupt end when the teacher rushes out to see what kind of horror show is happening. She is not surprised that Ritsu is one of the major guilty parties. But by the time she disperses the crowd and berates the two children on their ridiculous behavior, Ritsu is so euphoric (and stuffed full) that she can't even bring herself to care what her teacher is saying.
"Pay up," she says around a burp and after the lecture, elbowing the loser as they trail back into a giddy, gossiping classroom.
The winner had been decided unanimously by the judges and popular opinion, so he hands over the marble, albeit grudgingly, and goes to his chair at the other side of the room to sulk while Ritsu traipses off to her seat, immediately brandishing his marble under Akiyama Mio's nose.
To the victor go all spoils, and this (is the drawback about glory) begets bitter feelings and enemies.
After fuming for around an hour in shamed anger and coming back from a trip to the bathroom that does little to assuage the developing stomachache, the disgraced boy casually passes by the glass tank on the way to his chair, noticing Ritsu laying face down on her desk.
He waits until the teacher has her back to him, passing out handouts, before taking his revenge. Seated again, he leans forward, squints one eye closed and takes aim carefully, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. Then he throws the class pet straight at Tainaka Ritsu's desk.
But there is a reason why he lost the bet that is vaguely related to the reason that he misses his mark by a few feet. There is only one person in the first grade who can hit a target 0.45 meters by 0.60 meters (the size of an elementary school desk) from 9 m away (the length of the classroom). Tainaka Ritsu is the champion of all outdoor activities, eating grass, running, and throwing included.
In short, the turtle does not land on Tainaka's desk.
It hits the back of Akiyama Mio's head.
That afternoon, three children of class 2 of the first grade are sent home early. Saito Shigeru on account of mild stomach pains and bad behavior. Tainaka Ritsu on account of severe stomach pains. And Akiyama Mio on account of fainting, tears, and general hysteria.
xxxx
"Miko, Miko!"
The shout causes one girl to turn. "Hi Suki-chan," she responds cheerfully.
"Want to have lunch together?"
"Sure. Kaori's getting a drink from the vending machine."
There is the sound of furniture moving in the freshman class as the two girls arrange themselves for a well-deserved lunch break.
"Hey, Miko? I've been wondering for awhile, but who are those two over there?"
Miko turns around to look. "Oh. By the window? That's Akiyama-san and Tainaka-san."
"She's pretty, isn't she?" she adds, following Suki's prolonged gaze.
"Eh? Well, yeah, I guess," her friend admits.
"She gets pretty high grades too," Miko recalls, remembering the name nearly topping the list of posted scores.
"What about Tainaka-san?"
She grimaces because Tainaka Ritsu's name had been in the spot one higher than her own, and her mother will not buy her that new bracelet unless she manages a consistent A average for the term. "Her scores are alright."
The last seat is suddenly filled as Kaori sits down, "Vending machine selection? Awesome. High school? Waaaay better than middle school." She thumps the highly caffeinated and sugar-loaded drink onto the desk decisively. "What're you guys up to?"
"Gossiping about our fellow classmates, of course." Suki inclines her head inconspicuously towards the two that are the current topic of discussion, "Have you ever spoken to either of them?"
"The one with brown hair talked to me once. Asked me if I knew where 'Mio' was. But I had no idea who she was talking about." Kaori takes a swig of her drink, "I'm guessing that's the girl she's with?"
The other two nod. "You know, I don't think I've ever heard her talk," Kaori observes.
"Well, she's talking now," Miko points out.
And indeed, part of the pair's conversation drifts over towards them. "Ritsu, I shared half of my bento with you yesterday."
"So why not today?"
"Because I'm not going to encourage your behavior."
"Oh, come on!"
Suki scrunches her nose at the vegetables in her own lunch and shifts them to one side. "I almost talked to her once in the library. She was sitting by herself at a table. I was going to ask her about a homework problem."
"Why didn't you?" Kaori inquires as Miko peers over at Suki's lunch, looking for anything to take for herself.
"Well, I…I didn't want her to think I was stupid."
"I went to middle school with her. She's not that mean," Miko says, deciding that her friend won't miss her quarantined broccoli.
"Still, she's not the kind of person you just walk up and start talking to. And before I could pluck up the courage to ask, her friend came."
"Tainaka-san?"
"Yeah. I've actually never seen her with anyone else."
"You still could have asked," Kaori maintains.
"I guess," Suki confesses, "But then Tainaka-san got kicked out of the library for being too loud and Akiyama-san left with her."
"How about three-fourths today, then?" they hear Ritsu ask.
"Ritsu…"
As the three of them watch, the shorthaired girl makes a sneaky snatch towards the food, but Mio slides the box away from her with one hand and finishes raising her chopsticks to her mouth to take a bite of rice without so much as blinking.
"Don't you like me?" Ritsu asks, voice crafty.
"…Yes," the agreement comes a bit reluctantly.
"So," she says and nothing more, as if the statement is sufficiently convincing in and of itself.
"Our friendship is not…" she pauses here, "well, should not be contingent on such trivial and materialistic things," the black-haired girl counters the undeveloped argument.
"It will be. I'll be dead!"
Mio grasps the implication that Ritsu is going to starve to death, and therefore cease being her friend, without one day's worth of lunch: "Feed yourself. I'm your friend, not your mother."
"You always tell me it's important to be consistent," Ritsu forgoes a rebuttal and circles back to her original refutation without warning.
Mio is not perplexed by the illogical jump and understands that she is picking up from So why not today?
"Yesterday was an exception since you skipped breakfast too."
The conversation continues on in this ludicrous fashion and soon becomes ridiculously hard to follow because of Ritsu's sporadic thought processes, and explanations are nonexistent since Mio seems to lack any need for clarification. Towards the end, in a rather impressive feat of dialogue, they manage to segue into mathematics.
"It's like a… fifty…five percent tax?"
"Wrong. Sixty-two point five percent."
"Wha—? How do you know that?"
"Five-eighths of two bentos, and you know a quarter is twenty-five percent, so one-eighth is half of that: twelve point five. Adding that to fifty percent equals sixty-two point five."
Ritsu ditches all logical appeal—recognizing she is by far outclassed—and tries for unadulterated pathos. "C'mon, Mio! Please?"
The well-practiced plea doesn't seem awfully convincing, but it somehow manages to work. "Fine, fine. Now let go of my hand already," Mio sighs, wiping her chopsticks clean on a napkin and pushing the lunch back towards the center of the shared desk.
"Itadakimasu!" Ritsu cheers happily.
"They're a little…strange, aren't they?" Miko says, and her two companions pass judgment similarly with nods of assent.
The trio of eavesdroppers turns back to their lunches and Ritsu digs heartily into the remaining portion of Mio's with such zeal that it is not difficult for the curl at the corner of her lips—surfacing as she watches her friend eat—to pass unnoticed.
"…Slow down before you choke."
xxxx
They actually get quite far towards practicing that day.
"Mugi, can you give me an E?"
Their pianist happily complies, pressing the white key down as Mio plucks her string, listening carefully and matching the pitches. She then tests the intervals between all four strings, twisting the pegs to make minor adjustments as necessary. Yui strums Gitah carelessly, humming to herself as she tunes her instrument with a kind of mindless precision that any legitimate musician would deem simply unfair, in Azusa's opinion.
And between Yui's perfect pitch and Mio's relative pitch, she feels just a bit out of the loop with her tuner.
They are all tuned and ready to go when Mugi is called (dragged) away to make tea for their beloved advisor and Yui is suddenly hungry again and Azusa realizes that this is as far as they're going to get for the day. She puts her guitar away morosely and settles for watching the scuffle that ensues when Ritsu tries to braid Mio's hair.
"How's the Light Music Club?" Jun asks as they both head towards the stairs the next day for their after school activities.
"It's…good. Yeah, good," Azusa says quite lamely. Jun seems to expect more than this, so the guitarist distracts her with a question: "Have you learned a lot from the upperclassmen in the jazz club?"
"Definitely! There's this one girl—a saxophone—who's so cool. She's great at circular breathing—it's incredible! And she helped me with my embouchure too. Apparently I've been too much towards the tip of the reed this whole time, and it's been inhibiting my tone quality."
They reach the second floor landing and Jun turns down the hallway. "I'm going this way. You'll have to tell me more about the Light Music Club some other time. Well, see you later, Azusa!"
She leaves her there and disappears into a classroom. Azusa stands still as everything Jun has said seems to absorb slowly into her brain. Music terminology has never felt so foreign, and the Light Music Club must be influencing her in all the wrong ways.
When Mio enters the clubroom shortly after, she finds Azusa working her way through the most difficult exercises in the advanced guitar technique book. She lets her be, but the unrivaled concentration and impressive display soon becomes hard to ignore, so Mio looks over the freshman's shoulder at the book open on the stand. The current passage actually sounds quite ugly when played correctly, the only redeeming quality about it being the difficult fretting and precise picking required to play it.
It only takes Azusa three tries to play through the entire thing perfectly at the indicated tempo marking. She is apparently not especially satisfied with this, and turns to Mio, "Senpai? What do you think I should work on to improve?"
"Azusa," Mio says with a gentle smile, "you're a very good guitarist. You don't need me to critique you."
"Anything, senpai. Anything at all!"
There is a hint of desperation in Azusa's voice that does not escape her attention. Mio blinks once and focuses her eyes. She can see pieces of herself, who she is and who she had been—it's hard to tell the difference at this distance—in the younger girl. Fragments so small and shattered—Ritsu, you don't understand at all! You're not even taking this seriously—that the edges are sharpenough to cut—Okaa-san, do you think…if Tou-san were here…he'd be proud of me?
She is not as she was a week ago when she came into the clubroom, cried, and bared her soul to them: there is no confusion and no sadness in Azusa's wine-colored eyes. Instead, perhaps a longing for something like reassurance, an intense drive for acknowledgement and—she looks away from the shards to remind herself that Azusa is not her. That it doesn't matter if she understands these things because she doesn't understand anything at all, really. But Mio can't help wondering if this is how Ritsu—who knows her better than anyone—knew what to do; if her best friend can feel an echoing, familiar resonance from Azusa even if she can't see anything the way Mio can.
And there must be some great irony here at work when Ritsu, who knows nothing of tact and blind to other people's feelings, is better than her at this. That Yui, who understands close to nothing, doesn't need to when she can give comfort with a single hug. Logically, it should be Mugi here, dealing with this. Mugi, who always has the unperturbed calm of a mother, a tasty snack, and soothing words ready.
The bassist once felt the same, and maybe still does—I thought I'd get it after staying for awhile—and knows how it feels to need affirmation of purpose—why I was so moved—because she too has lost faith once before. But in the end, I still don't understand!
She is sharp and observant, and definitely capable of empathy, but Mio will never think herself particularly good at comforting others. But they are something like kindred spirits, though not quite the same because Mio has Ritsu, and what kind of person would she be, if she didn't even try?
Mio closes the book on the stand with a single finger. "Let's not practice."
Azusa looks crushed.
"We're not going to perform either," Mio continues, pulling the strap of her bass over her shoulder, "We're just going to play."
The shorter girl doesn't even have time to get her question out before she starts off immediately, plucking a simple bass line that is noticeably incomplete. Haltingly, Azusa comes up with a two bar answering phrase; it sounds lame to her ears, but Mio passes no judgment and harmonizes with it immediately. The older girl continues the chord progression, and the guitar chimes in with a hesitant melody as Azusa tries to ascertain what key the bass guitar is playing in.
"It's not so much about composition theory or perfect harmonic bridges. Don't think too much," Mio advises as they continue into uncharted territory. The words that come out next are in her own voice, but it is Ritsu that she hears in her mind.
Just feel.
Five minutes later—because they may be late, but are never far behind—two girls outside the door are peering inside through the window.
Yui contemplates Azusa's beaming face through the small green square at the corner of the window with one eye because Ritsu is hogging the center and won't scoot over. Their newest member looks thrilled with the prospect of having a successful jam session with her senpai.
The strains of music permeating through the wooden doors are nothing they have played before. It sounds unusual with its imperfect harmonies and improvised rhythmic base, but is surprisingly fluent. The two parallel rods across the center of the glass bisect Mio's back in Ritsu's vision except where the black strips of metal blend and become indistinguishable with her hair.
"Hey, Ricchan. Do you think maybe… we're holding them back?"
Yui does not seem to expect an answer, and it is perhaps for the best because she doesn't receive one.
xxxx
"Hi Ricchan."
She is not surprised when she finds Ritsu at her doorstep on Sunday afternoon because for the past two years Ritsu has been making an appearance at least once on the weekends. If she doesn't come on Saturday, then without a doubt she is there the next day. There are few things that are predictable about Ritsu's erratic behavior, but this is one of them.
"Mio-chan!" She looks, as always, happy to be at her house. "What's for lunch?"
This is also unsurprising, since Ritsu makes it a point to show up around feeding time, and even her mother has taken to stocking the house with enough edibles for two children, because her daughter's little friend is capable of consuming that much food.
"I can make tomato onigiri," Mio offers. "Okaa-san showed me how."
"Cool! Where is she? Did she go to work?" Ritsu sits down on the wood floor to pull off her shoes as Mio nods and leaves her in the foyer to find the tomatoes in the fridge.
Mio sets out the rice and other ingredients, deciding to cut the tomatoes first. She can hear Ritsu poking through the house from the next room over. Two tomatoes, she decides, and places them on top of the crisscrossing scars scored in the plastic cutting board. Ritsu sticks her head in just as she finishes cutting the first one into nice even squares.
"You're gonna wrap them in seaweed, right?" Ritsu asks, "They taste better that way."
She grins when her friend points at the nori already sitting on the countertop and retreats back to her exploring. Mio tucks her hair back behind her ear and picks up the remaining vegetable. She presses the serrated blade against the rounded flesh.
And the impossible happens. The tomato rolls, the knife slips with one fell stroke, and there's red on her palm.
She has cut across her lifeline, her loveline, and one lonely sanguine bead slips along the length of her hand to drip onto the floor.
"Ouch," Ritsu observes from the kitchen entrance, called back by the small crash of the cutting board. "I'll get you a bandage. Be right back."
Mio doesn't pay her any attention at all, or else she would find it strange that Ritsu remembers the location of the medical supplies. She is, in fact, incapable of doing anything but stare at the innocently small slit parting her skin.
Her hand twitches and her lifeblood pools crimson, scarlet, vermilion—red. Red like the silk threads in her mother's kimono, red like the dog gutted by a car fender, red like the sunsets she loves to watch by herself, red like the tomatoes she is supposed to be chopping. All the color is going to bleed out of her and she won't be anything but a dry, bleached husk, and she'll be dead—but the tomatoes are on the floor and the kitchen is a mess, and more importantly, she promised her mother she'd water the plants—
"Mio-chan? Hey! Where are you going?" Ritsu is pulling at her, and they are both inexplicably crouching on the ground.
"You need to open your hand. Mio, come on, open your hand."
Ritsu is stupid. But she's probably even more stupid, Mio thinks, because even though she is clenching the tightest fist she can manage, the red is still there—she can see it—dripping out of the crevices.
The hum in the air is the sound of the words she cannot hear. She can only think of how the pain is no longer only in her hand because her throat is clogging up and her eyes are beginning to burn. Ritsu's words turn into a persistent buzz as worry begins to creep into her tone. Mio can't even tell if she's quivering or if Ritsu is shaking her by the wrist.
"Don't…don't cry, Mio-chan. It's not deep. You won't bleed to death."
And that's it. She stops, and lets Ritsu unfurl her hand, and she lets her do whatever she wants, because she's going to die and it won't matter anymore.
They do have lunch that day, but they don't have anything with tomatoes. They don't have anything red at all. Instead, Ritsu bangs around the kitchen for close to an hour and makes miso soup while Mio sits miserably at the table and stares at the crooked white bandage on her right hand.
Ritsu emerges with the soup and places one bowl in front of an unresponsive Mio. She has to go back to the kitchen to get spoons before she sits down in the facing seat to examine her handiwork. Though yellow is her favorite color, Ritsu is relatively certain that the odd tint shouldn't be in the soup. She gulps down a few mouthfuls of the pasty mixture because it's her own concoction and because she's awfully hungry, but the way Mio compliantly finishes her entire bowl is almost as troubling as the expression in her puffy eyes. So Ritsu reaches over even when she knows she shouldn't, because Mio is vulnerable and doesn't particularly like being touched even on the best of days, but when she reaches for the right, and takes the hand, Mio lets her.
They sit like this for a long time without looking at each other, and they don't know why.
But despite her aversion towards physical contact, Mio can almost forget that she has a bandage on her hand when Ritsu's holding it, and even though it's not particularly comfortable stretching across the table, Ritsu doesn't let go because she can ignore the fact that she's still hungry when Mio gently squeezes her fingers back.
xxxx
"I know your father doesn't starve you," Mio says, looking at her demolished lunch, "so why are you always hungry?"
"I'm a growing girl!" Ritsu answers.
"…Growing," Mio repeats.
Ritsu narrows her eyes, perceiving an insult in the incredulous tone. "Hey. No gloating. You're only like, two centimeters taller."
Mio turns to look at her as they exit the classroom into the noisy hallway. Her gaze starts at her eyes and then rake upwards to the top of Ritsu's head.
"At least five."
"Yeah, right! It doesn't matter, though. I'll be towering over you again in no time!"
"…What are you talking about? I've always been taller than you."
Ritsu makes a frustrated noise. "That's not the point."
"I've noticed that there usually isn't one in any conversations with you."
In a display of juvenile behavior, the brunette only sticks out her tongue in retaliation before skipping away to check out the various club booths.
She moves to follow but a girl with short braided pigtails appears suddenly at her side. "Hi! You're Akiyama-san, aren't you?"
"Um, yes?"
"I'm in your class. I read your essay the last time we did peer editing. It was really good!"
"Oh," Mio replies, immediately reminded of her inability to carry on conversations with unfamiliar people when she fails to come up with anything interesting to say. She's not sure if she's thankful that Ritsu isn't here to make fun of her poor social skills or if she would actually prefer her there to fill in the swiftly expanding silence. Feeling it rude to walk away on that note, she takes a flier from the stack in the girl's hands and pretends to read it to lessen the growing awkwardness. This seems to encourage the other girl into talking again.
"We're the literature club," she explains. "We compile a reading list every semester and try our best to get through it all. We read and discuss the books and authors."
Mio nods dumbly.
"Your essay was really good." They seem to have somehow returned to this. "You did an excellent job analyzing metaphors and exploring their symbolism of the poem. You definitely have what it takes to be in the club."
"Ah. Well…" her eyes dart to the left, casting about for Ritsu.
"So, wanna join?" She looks overly eager, already waving an application form at her, and Mio doesn't know what to say.
Fortunately, there seems to be a developing commotion further down the hall.
"Hey, you're only supposed to take one."
"But it says they're free."
"Oh," Mio says suddenly, glad for the escape. "Er, I'm sorry, I have to go."
After school, Ritsu pulls out a huge stack of papers from her book bag and slams it down on the table in the center of Mio's room. The dark-haired girl turns to look from where she is hanging up her uniform.
"Did you collect those before or after you tried to steal all the free pens from the business club?"
Ritsu rolls her eyes at her friend—though Mio will always be better at performing this motion, perfecting it into an art over the years—and points said pen (and the only one in her possession, since a painful elbow to the ribs forced her to relinquish the rest) at Mio's face, and declares, "Unimportant details."
She doesn't let the subject drop so easily, though. "What were you even planning on doing with seven pens?"
Ritsu ignores this and clicks the writing instrument in a short-short-long rhythm repeatedly. Mio tolerates it for around ten seconds before she leans forward to snatch the offending item out of her grip, but she dances away, holding the pen higher in the air. "Morse code!" she explains. "I'm talking to you in Morse code. Neat, huh?"
Mio almost buries her face in her hands. "You don't even know—" she doesn't bother to finish and begins a new thought instead, "Why are you always doing such inane things, Ritsu?"
She pretends not to hear the question since there are more pressing matters at hand. "High school. We're in high school now. We have to find a club to join."
Ritsu stops to look at the writing instrument in her hand. The top nub is loose and refuses to click as she presses down on it. "I think I broke it. Aw, man!"
She throws it to the ground as Mio executes a proper eye roll. Ritsu misses the enlightening demonstration when she flops face first onto the bed. Her voice is muffled as she speaks. "This is why you should have let me take more than one, Mio."
The taller girl deposits the now broken ballpoint pen into the trashcan. "Anyway, clubs. Which one are you going to join?"
"Dunno yet," is the answer. "But we should decide soon."
"We?"
Ritsu sits up suddenly and Mio holds back a sigh as she watches her muss up the nicely folded blankets. "Of course, we. Unless… you're thinking of abandoning me, Mio? How could you? Cruel. Cruel! You've shattered my heart!" she wails up at the ceiling as she falls back down.
"Maybe you should try out for the theater club," Mio says, looking at her prostrate form. "You have a certain flair for melodrama and you have no qualms about embarrassing yourself."
Her reply is prompt and sure. "Only if you'll join with me."
"Me? N-No way."
"Whiii-iiiy?"
"You know why, Ritsu!"
"Okay, then the tea club. They just drink tea all the time, right?"
"I'm looking for a club that will help me get into a good university, and you're…well, actually, I'm not really sure what you're doing," Mio begins reading the fliers on the table.
"So? We can still join a club together."
"Yes, but our interests are actually quite divergent."
Ritsu is forced to admit that this is true. She takes joy in the simple pleasures of life: eating, sleeping, wreaking havoc, and teasing Mio, who happens to be more complex and cultured in her own tastes and pastimes. Just as she realizes this, it strikes her that though Mio is on her list, she suddenly isn't quite sure if "putting up with Ritsu" is one of her friend's preferred hobbies.
Thus, Ritsu spends the next two weeks on a self-assigned quest to find a club fitting for both of them. She reports her findings to Mio religiously.
"You don't get a free laptop if you join the computer club, and I don't want to hang out with geeks after school, so no."
"Be nice, Ritsu."
"The photography club seems pretty cool, actually, but they use film and develop all their pictures by themselves, and you happen to a big scaredy cat, so you wouldn't like the darkroom."
Ritsu ignores the splutter of indignation, "And I don't think we should do any sports teams because that requires getting here early and staying late, along with running and sweating, which would suck even worse in the winter."
Mio lets the attack on her bravery slide, "Well, I'm thinking about the literature or cultural club."
"Reading? Meh… what's the cultural club?"
"You learn about cultures and customs of different places, and they go on a trip every summer break. Traveling sounds really exciting, but everyone in the club has to give a presentation on a specific country…"
"Seems kind of lame to me," Ritsu notes.
On Wednesday, she is about ready to give up. "Hey, Mio…" she groans, "How are we ever going to form a band when we can't even join a club together?"
And saying those words, Ritsu comes upon a very important discovery. She doesn't walk home with Mio that day because she is too busy with reconnaissance. It turns out that the jazz club doesn't need a drummer, there are no guitars in band, neither of them plays a wind instrument, and the third floor music room is empty.
Thursday, when both girls have made their decisions, is an ordinary day, but then again, perhaps not.
It's the day Ritsu tears up Mio's application form for the literature club. It's the day Mio calls Yamanaka Sawako pretty, not knowing yet what "skin-deep" really means, and the day Ritsu is decidedly unimpressed by (tempo-lacking, hopeless, clumsy) Hirasawa Yui. It's the day she makes up a false promise so convincing and heartfelt—she really should be in drama—it ensnares Kotobuki Tsumugi completely. It's seven days before the true birth of the Light Music Club—a week from the first strummed chord on a certain Les Paul electric guitar.
It is the day when Ritsu believes she has found the sole interest they have in common, and she clings to it so hard it's a wonder, really, that it doesn't break.
xxxx