"We're the Band"
Chapter 24: Living Life to A Soundtrack
Evening - Takeda Parkside Cafe
Kensuke had spent most of the afternoon sitting in a back corner of the café crouched over his laptop. Cables snaked from his computer to the video camera, the café's sound system, and the café's video display which was currently displaying just random commercial images of coffee drinks. The soft glow from his screen reflected off his glasses, hiding his eyes as he continued to focus on editing the images, video and music in front of him. He was in the zone. His computer was struggling to keep up, and he loved every second of it.
Kensuke leaned back in his chair rolling his head trying to loosen up his neck. As his eyes focused away from the screen, he was greeted with the image of Yuki arriving with glasses of orange juice for both of them on her serving tray. Kensuke was struck by the fact that with her hair pulled back into a pony tail and with her apron, Yuki was very cute when she smiled at him. It caused him to smile goofily at her.
Yuki had set aside her tray and sat at the back table to look at the first piece of video content Kensuke was putting together for the band's website. It was not the concert video footage that most fans would have expected. It was more of the candid video and stills from their various activities and some key segments of the concert footage edited together over the top of a pounding soundtrack that she didn't recognize. Yuki reached under the table to grab her book bag, and amidst the film composition books, she found her sketch pad. Flipping it to the marked pages she quickly compared the story board sketches she and Kensuke had worked out to the flow of the video. To Kensuke's surprise, Yuki could quickly and efficiently visualize and sketch his rambling scene compositions and bring a more accessible flow to his usually chaotic and random video shorts. He'd never really acknowledged the value of having a plan when editing his footage together, but with Yuki's help, Kensuke had to admit that the normally tedious process of editing video was much quicker.
"It looks like you're pretty close to the story boards. You've got scenes six and seven reversed, but it seems to work out fine," commented Yuki in her critique. Reaching out to re-run a couple of segments, Yuki continued "You're a little out of sync with the soundtrack impact points, but that should be easy to cleanup. I like it a lot." Yuki beamed at Kensuke, and they slapped a quick high five.
"Yuki, order up," called her dad. Yuki grabbed her tray and hurried to pick up the next drink order noticing that the group of friends had started to assemble in response to the text message she had sent earlier.
Earlier – Around the Town
Shinji and Asuka had been enjoying the rarest of all days – cool, crisp weather; no orchestra practice; no NERV responsibilities; no school responsibilities; no band practice – just time to themselves. They had slept in and then had lunch at a little out-of-the-way café Conductor Machida had suggested. It was a leisurely meal spent enjoying being with each other. It was a private time in a public place, and they had avoided the occasional fan.
The afternoon had been spent at the amusement park. They had gotten lots of stares in line and around the park. Shinji and Asuka were now moderately famous among the teen population of the city thanks in large part to the popularity of the band. Coupled with the fact that they stood out in crowds – Asuka because of her looks and Shinji being relatively tall amongst his peers – they were subject to some autograph hunting as well.
As they sat on the Ferris wheel over-looking the city, the sun caught Asuka's hair just right. Her hair just erupted into an auburn glow around her face as she turned to bestow a radiant smile on him while squeezing his hand. Shinji smiled back realizing just how comfortable together they had gotten. He thought back to the attention they had received on the other rides, and the stares of fans and just boys in general didn't trigger the jealous feelings anymore. He seemed used to the fact that his girlfriend was beautiful and would always attract attention and appreciation from boys. But, he knew that they were meant to be together and while she may enjoy the attention, Asuka was and always would be in love with him. In response to his smile, Asuka just leaned back into his shoulder and continued to gaze out across the city; his hand warm in hers.
They watched the sunset by the lake at their usual spot. The remains of a snack beside them as Asuka leaned back into Shinji's chest and soaked in the warmth. Both Asuka and Shinji had relished the time to themselves. Their relationship had blossomed in private and, typically, was renewed in private times away from their friends and family. Those private times had become extraordinarily precious as their public responsibilities seemed to always be on the rise.
Shinji and Asuka had chatted off and on about the future all afternoon. Everything from where they were going to go on vacation this year, to which colleges they wanted to attend, to what they wanted to do after college.
"Shinji, would you rather do classical music or modern?"
"I think classical. Maybe composition. Rock is fun, but it's more of a hobby than a love. What about you? I noticed you're not as enthusiastic about going into NERV."
"Well, it's getting boring," sighed Asuka triggering memories within Shinji of exactly how Asuka responds to boredom. "I don't think I'm really cut out for the military. I'm finding that regularly military life isn't like when we were EVA pilots. I don't like being bossed around, and the monotony is going to drive me crazy."
Shinji was secretly relieved at this revelation but was smart enough not to say or do anything. He just gently squeezed her shoulders as she pulled his arms closer to her.
"I'm still not sure what I want to do. I've actually been thinking about starting my own business instead of working for someone else. Right now, I just need to decide what my business focus will be. Maybe I'll go to business school and try and figure it out."
Before Shinji could respond, a faint buzz from Shinji's phone caught their attention. Shinji popped it open so they both could read the incoming message from Yuki. It basically wanted everyone to drop by the shop after dinner. She and Kensuke had something to show them.
"What do you think, Shinji? Should we grace them with our presence?"
"Since it's Yuki asking, we probably should stop by. If it had been Kensuke, I would have said no. We'd have been subjected to some sort of random, otaku thing."
Gathering – Takeda Park Café
Kensuke, having never been good at public speaking, merely sat behind the comforting wall of electronics as Yuki addressed the group of friends gathered at the café at one of the tables near the main television screen normally used for karaoke. The screen was currently dark, but had just had a series of test images and audio checks run through it to verify connectivity to Kensuke's electronics.
Yuki, obviously excited as evidenced by the fact that she was talking much faster than normal, " . . . so we've pulled together the first in a series of promotional videos that we're going to upload to the web site for the band. We decided against using lots of concert soundtracks and footage because we're putting those up as discrete videos they can download. We're going to have to address the copyright issue at some point because of all of the covers that we do, but I'm not sure we've even contacted the right intellectual property people because some of the owners and companies don't event exist as legal entities anymore."
Yuki's pause to take a breath couldn't have come at a better time. She got to see the impatient twitch over one of Asuka's eyes and the look from Rei that plainly said, "Focus and tell us why we're here."
Taking a deep breath, Yuki got back on task, "Anyways, here's the first edit of the video."
All eyes turned to the screen and as the staccato sounds of Tomoyasu Hotei's "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" began to pulse from the café's sound system, the tall red, blue, and purple letter's of the band's name began to pulse and fade onto the screen in time with the music first individually and then in groups. The big cymbal crescendo brought the full name and logo onto the screen.
The text faded with the crescendo and then dissolved into shot from the interior of the school yard aimed right at the main gate. The image wasn't on the screen more than half a second when the fortissimo entrance of the brass was well-timed with the appearance of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei turning the corner and coming through the gate three abreast. It was at this point that the Hikari's brain snapped to the day the video was shot and paused all of the activity around her.
It was the first time that they had seen their three friends in something approaching a normal demeanor. Shinji's uniform collar was unhooked and open. Asuka had spiked up his hair and Shinji was wearing the sunglasses that Rei had given him. They were black as night and completely hid his eyes giving him a cool factor that no other kid at the high school had been able to pull off. As shown in the quick frames of the video, Hikari had recalled that Shinji had his hands loosely in his pockets while coming into the school yard in a relaxed stroll, almost a strut. Hand loosely on Shinji's crooked elbow, Asuka strutted like a runway model. Tall. Elegant. Completely untouchable. On the other side of Shinji, wearing her NERV uniform beret in addition to her school uniform came Rei. Fluid. Graceful. Demanding equal attention from the other two. As Hikari's mind clicked out of "pause", she saw that Kensuke had actually slowed the footage so that the trio actually walked in time with the music.
The next blast of horns shifted the image away from the trio to Toji warming up on the drums in time to the music and Kensuke setting up his electronics. As the guitar melody unleashed its banshee-like wail, the footage jumped to Shinji from the first ever concert – foot on the monitor, hunched over his guitar, and driving chords in time with the soundtrack.
The rest of the video played out in a similar fashion – candid shots and video of the teens around the town. It was stylish and modern. Each of them was portrayed in some way including Yuki and Hikari. It was clear that the artistic talent and vision had really come from Yuki because of the subtle ways in which each of them was given polished, mature image – words that hadn't quite entered Kensuke's vocabulary despite Yuki's best efforts. The final scene was of Shinji and Asuka from the very first concert in the kiss that had scandalized their middle school, but it had been blurred and faded. Superimposed over the top of that image, was a headshot of Rei in her beret and sunglasses. The last action of the shot was Rei looking up at the camera, sliding her sunglasses down her nose to give a knowing, mysterious look up at the camera.
As the final notes died away and the video faded to black, the group almost as one turned to look at Yuki and Kensuke. There was a moment of quiet that was then broken by Asuka.
"Well, st . . . , Aida," Asuka amended after a pleading look from Yuki. "That wasn't half bad. I think Yuki has been a good influence on you. 'Bout time you came around."
"Not bad?" asserted Toji. "It was great! I loved it! The soundtrack was awesome. It was so appropriate." Turning to Shinji, Toji barreled on. "Shinji, you looked to cool. I remember lots of those times from school, and it's true. You guys look like music should be playing in the background."
Asuka was ready to annihilate Toji and disperse what little matter was left after the assault to the four winds, but was pre-empted by a throat clearing from Yuki and an elbow from Hikari.
"It's interesting that you say that," filled in Yuki. "When I story boarded the video, it was because I had noticed the same thing about all of you, but especially Shinji, Rei, and Asuka. It's like there's always a soundtrack or a background music to you whenever I see you."
Shinji, Asuka, and Rei sat in quiet contemplation. It was an interesting concept – to be living life to some sort of internal soundtrack.
Author's Parting Shots: Big experiment with this chapter. For those of you who don't know, the instrumental tune has shown up in a couple of places besides the original movie. It was the music in Kill Bill Vol. 1 when Uma Thurman fought the 99's and it's also the theme music for Colin Cowherd's show on ESPN Radio.