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I. In Pandemonium, In Distortion

There’s a snare drum in my view.

It felt natural to start playing a beat on it, so I tried.

But when I hit it, it only manages to release a sad, flat sound. There was a key somewhere on the floor, so I spend my time carefully tuning each peg. I hit it again. It still doesn’t sound as ringy or as fat as I want it to be. But it sounded better than last time, so I stretch my arms, and pick up the drumsticks on the floor once again. I play a few rudiments, out of habit. Then I play a marching drum beat, and close my eyes while trying to feel the groove of it—the drumstick bounces on the snare head. I imagine the rest of the kit—hi-hat, hi-hat, kick, snare, hi-hat. High tom, low tom, crash, a fill.

Then I open my eyes. Pitch black. The crashing loudness of the drumkit in my mind went silent.

I don’t know why, but I felt kinda anxious. Something about the pitch black darkness made me feel like I was going to get dragged in and enveloped by a sinking feeling, and the image of tons of hands stretching out to grab me comes to mind, and that made me feel even more at unease. Is the darkness even static? Nah, because when I looked at it closer, something was moving. I don’t know if it was squirming or not, but the shape kept warping, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I walked towards it—should I walk towards it? No, that’s weird, but why do my feet feel inclined to slowly pace over? Something about it was inviting me to come over, so I naturally ended up walking towards the shape. I was still holding those drumsticks from earlier, but they felt wrong in my hand, for some reason.

Something emerges from it. It ghosts to me and it warps again.

Wait, it’s not something.

Someone?

Her face emerged from the ghosts of shapes and I saw yellow eyes staring at me. A pair of yellow, almost golden eyes, the one almost covered entirely by hair, but not quite. The distinctive mole under one. They had dark circles under them, but that never quite detracted from their captivating quality.

“Ryou,” I say, but I guess it sounded more like a whisper.

But she didn’t say anything.

Her hands were behind her back, and she was wearing that black button-up she always wore, tied in the center with a red clamp. She walked circles around me, and I watched her every movement. It felt so weird watching her. It wasn’t like she was moving like a person, more like a ghost, really? Sometimes she’d appear by the corner of my eye, and she’d be holding her bass, but other times she’d be wearing a different outfit, and sometimes she’d be wearing a scowl, sometimes she’d be smiling, the way I remembered her smile. The figures of her ghosts kept increasing as she kept carefully circling around, leaving more afterimages of many states, until I was completely surrounded. All of their expressions stared at me, and I couldn’t look at them all at the same time, but at that moment, looking at those images, I remembered every single time they happened. A genuine smile of honesty, from when she holed up in her house for a week, a deep scowl, from when we disagreed over something really serious, a solemn expression, from when she was having a different kind of day doing nothing but waxing philosophicals at me, and that resting frown of hers, the one I always see. I tried to turn around as many times as I could, to look at them all, but when I turned around to face Ryou’s smile, suddenly, her body collapsed into a skeleton, and at the end, a pile of bones. I don’t know, because I couldn’t see myself at that moment, but I think I made a really dark grimace, while I hurriedly scuttled towards that pile of discarded bones on the floor. I tried to grab at it but they disintegrated like ash, so I turn around again to face Ryou—and Ryou’s deep scowl suddenly melts off her face, almost kinda like a wax statute, and I can see the red underneath, until her entire mass became nothing but a pile of… something. It took all my willpower to swallow the bile that rose into my throat—I, I hear loud wood clanging. I dropped my drumsticks, I dropped my drumsticks. They’re gone. I forgot I was even holding them. I stared at the ground. They got swallowed up by the black? I grab around at the floor, but I don’t think there even is a floor. There’s the sound of something bursting into flames—what, what? I turn around, and with every pivot I make, I see Ryou collapsing into bones, melting into wax, disintegrating into ash, and getting enveloped by flames. Hey, Ryou? Ryou? It’s getting harder to swallow the bile. I run to grab at Ryou’s resting frown, and I managed to cling onto her. I felt the wax slowly melting on my shoulders. I screamed as loud as I could into the melting flesh, but I couldn’t hear anything.

I’m lying in a field of flowers.

Low thumping. Was that the sound of my heart? No, actually, it was a bass phrase, I realized, once I focused on the differing pitches. It’s catchy. Though it didn’t sound distinctive at all, and it felt strangely blurry to listen to.

The headstock of a bass hovered over my view, and I see that smudge of blue again, and those long, slender fingers, carefully traveling the fretboard. Ryou? I jumped up to see if it was really her, but she fell into the flowerbed, and her form was lying down amongst the forget-me-nots. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and it almost looked like she was asleep. It’s not fair how she looks really beautiful even like this. It’s not fair. Ryou, wake up, wake up, I miss you. I don’t want you to sleep in the flowers and I don’t want you to turn into piles of bones. Ryou, can you hear me? Play your bass again. Ask me for annoying things again. You were going to mooch off of me forever, right? Ryou? I’m going to hug you until you wake up, Ryou. The tears won’t stop falling. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying, maybe you’re just sleeping. Maybe you’ll get up soon and show me that idiot smile of yours, or ask me to make you curry again. Ryou,

---

Ryou.

Yamada Ryou.

My classmate, shitty lowlife bassist, swore by me until forever. The first person I asked to be in Kessoku Band with me.

The one sitting across me right now.

She’s listening to something, and her ears are plugged in again, and she’s staring at me in anticipation, with her face rested on her palm. What’s she waiting for—what’s she thinking of? Maybe it’s some bass phrase again, I don’t know. This Ryou looked weirdly fake to me, like a porcelain doll, or a w—a wax statue. Like, she was astoundingly beautiful, but it was almost scary how beautiful she looked, when that’s not really something I find scary most of the time, and that’s not something I really think of when I see her, either. Huh? For some reason, I felt really nauseous, and my head wouldn’t stop pounding—it pounded so bad that I imagined it as a kick. That’s double pedal kick speed right there. The more I stared at Ryou the louder it got—

“Nijika, something’s wrong with you, you’re like, broken today,” she says, taking out a lollipop she had in her mouth. It was cola flavor—what? She never liked cola that much.

I blinked. My mouth hung open. I don’t know, I feel like I wanted to say something. Broken? Broken, what?

“I…” Ryou put her hand to her chest, “am horrifically hungry. Please feed your sad, sad bassist.”

“Ah,” was what came out of my throat, but it sounded so gravelly, “r-r… right.”

I open the zipper of my backpack. I don’t really remember what I was looking for, for whatever reason, and I sifted through a bunch of notebooks, papers. I heard loud wood clanging again—agh, I hit my knee on the desk. Yeah, my drumsticks, my drumsticks. They’re there. In my bag. I don’t know why that surprised me. Then I discovered a bento box next to the sticks, and I dragged it out of my bag. I catch a whiff of curry. I stare down at my desk, and, wait, that’s my bento. I realized I dropped an octopus hotdog on the floor, and I think that’s been there for a while. I accidentally crushed it under my foot. It looked so… meaty.

“Helloooo, Nijika, Earth called. We want you back,” Ryou suddenly leaned in, “though I just want my curry bento. Thanks, thanks, thank you thank you.” She snatched it out of my hands, like a cat.

I felt her fingertips brush against my hand a bit when she did that, and I let out a nervous breath. How long have I been biting on my tongue? I looked Ryou up and down like she was a foreign object. Ah, yeah, I’m talking to Ryou. Yamada, Yamada, the bassist, lowlife bassist bassist bassist. At some point before this, I made her a curry bento, which she asks for every other week, annoyingly so, yet I made it anyway, and I’d just given it to her.

“Ryou?” I call out. “Yessir, Yamada. Finally you talk. It’s so bad when I’m the one who has to talk, you know.”

… Ryou, you’re…

“...? N-Nijika?”

I heard the sound of tables and chairs being pushed, and before I knew it I was squishing Ryou’s face. It’s so stupid and soft. She’s stupid. She stared at me kinda annoyed, with those yellow-golden eyes of hers, distinctive mole under one. The more I looked at her face the more I pictured—flowers, forget-me-nots. Her face melting off—

“Ow, ywfre guabbing mh fwace ruflly hwarfd…” “Ah, s-sorry, sorry!” Oh, god, my nails were even digging into her cheeks.

It felt like someone was drilling a hole into my head at this point, and the kick drum beating in my head just grew louder and louder, and faster, faster. Ryou was making kind of a funny face at me, and I saw the little crescents formed by my nails digging into her face. She was making that pouty face again. It still looked so, so fake. I couldn’t bear to laugh at it this time. I don’t know why.

“Yeouch, did I make you mad? Oh, woe is me.”

The Ryou in front of me is—

---

“Nice work, Bocchi,” Ryou affirms, “these lyrics are interesting, for lack of a better term.” Bocchi-chan nervously laughs.

“I scream and I scream but my voice doesn’t come out is a good phrase,” Ryou nods approvingly, “and so is we’re all going to die one day, but I will love your corpse too. Wait, what’s the inspiration for this.” “I-I’m not sure. I think I was listening to that shoegaze band you told me about, Ryou-san…” “Oh, My Dead Girlfriend? Cool.” Overhearing them, I let out a long breath. I’ve been restlessly bouncing my leg since that first line in their exchange, ‘cause it made me weirdly nervous.

Kita-chan’s hollering about her Isosta on one side, and Bocchi-chan’s nervously playing with the strings of her guitar on the other. I hear a bassline playing in four-four time, and I don’t really have an ear for guessing notes and pitches, but it pretty much resembled the one from Blue Planet. I end up clicking my sticks against the snare rim in time, out of habit, and then I look at the corner with Ryou in it, who was absentmindedly staring at the ground, playing her bass. I think she heard me playing rim clicks, because our stares ended up locking together, and it stayed like that for a solid minute. It almost looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t, and instead switched to a different bassline, the one for That Band. I introduce a hi-hat to the groove, and now we’re playing together, though I’m rushing by a hair, then I think Ryou realizes that, so she tries to rush too, trying to catch up to me, but then I realize this, so I drag a little too, but then it became a terrible tug-of-war between our drags and our rushes. Alright, enough—I stretch my arms and I slam the sticks on the snare, and Ryou, making a weird face, broke eye contact with me, but she looked towards me again. She slowly got up and placed her bass on the stand. Ryou approached the drumkit, and made an annoying pose on top of the tom rack, both hands on her cheeks.

“That was a supreme fluke,” she blinks at me, but every blink was combined with her vocally saying blinkblinkblink. Seriously…

“It sure was.” I said, and my voice still sounded weirdly gravelly.

“You’re been way off tempo today, Nijika,” Ryou snorted. “Hah. Not my tempo.”

“When will you stop laughing at your bad Whiplash references?” I still manage to joke. “What, bad? I never make bad references.” She pouts.

“Seriously, though,” Ryou was then making a serious looking face, “I know you’re kind of a ditz and a bit airheaded, but you’re not noisy today, ‘s weird.”

She’s been saying that though. That I’m broken today, and off-kilter, and I don’t know why, but I couldn’t tell if that was particularly true or not. Shouldn’t I feel like that wasn’t true? I’m fine, right? Have I been acting weird? I tried to remember the things that happened today, and a lot of weird images appeared in my head—though I think that’s just because I’m tired. Okay. I’m tired. I feel like I haven’t slept a wink even though I’ve slept completely, for a good 8 hours. Then I remember giving a bento box to Ryou, and—even now, looking at Ryou, something puts me at unease. Trying to remember any more than that made me feel even more tired than I already was, so I tried to remember yesterday. I was studying for entrance exams, and I was sorting out paperwork at our label to get an EP published. I remember taking the mock exam prior to that, and it went swimmingly, but I remember also that I completely crashed defeated at home after the fact, ‘cause I remember calling for a practice right after they ended. I don’t think that practice went badly—well, I… I don’t remember some of the practices from last week. Or maybe I’m just forgetting them because they were flukes? Actually, wasn’t today a practice? So what am I doing, souped up in my head, playing brainlessly to Ryou’s bass instead of calling for everyone’s attention—like a leader? Is today going to be a fluke too? Hey, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing—I gotta keep everything back in line—

“Think you should take a break from things,” Ryou tilted her head. “Oh, yeah, your bento.” She casually places it on my snare.

Ryou’s face looked weirdly porcelain again.

“I…” I put the empty bento down on the floor. “Maybe you’re right?” I tap my fingers on the snare. I count 1, 2, 3, 4, every tap. It gradually gets faster.

“Right now though,” I clear my throat, “we should really get to practice. Sorry. I don’t know how long I’ve been quiet for…”

“You were pretty quiet for a bit. Didn’t really know what to make of it, so we just kinda let you be for a bit.” Ryou finally gets off my tom rack.

She stares at me, and I go through 5 rapid counts of 4 before she finally says something again.

“It’s kind of…” Ryou trails off.

“Nah, never mind. Let’s go.”

The snare rings loudly. Ryou turns around suddenly. I look down and I realize I hit the snare with my palm all of a sudden. I shoot Ryou the best smile I could muster, and I threw her a thumbs up. It’s fine, it’s really fine, I think. She makes that weird expression again, as she turns back to pick up her bass. Did I… say something? Do something? Agh, I don’t know. Ryou’s figure looms and bends over, and I hear feedback caused by the instrument jack, and she audibly goes ah, whoops, and the way she moves is so, so languid. It kind of looks like… slosh, like she’s moving around in mud. Everything’s working so, so slow. Bocchi-chan stands up from her chair and it creaks—not loudly, but still shrill, and Kita-chan drops her phone on the floor, resounding in a loud thud. It was all so off-beat from the kick in my throbbing head. 1, 2, 3, 4, 150 beats per minute. I kept tapping on the snare. I feel like it’s kinda off-tune, so I fish a drum key out of my pocket, but I drop it on the snare. It rings so, so loudly. Really shrill. My ears ring a bit. Kita-chan suddenly strums a chord, at max volume, the distortion turned up a little, then audibly apologizes, then Bocchi-chan picks each guitar string, then Ryou thumps each bass string, then I stare blankly at the drum key, resting on the snare head. My ears ring even louder. You know what, I think it’s fine, I’ll just tune it later. Well, I feel like I’ve been tuning it for every practice session ever since around the time of that mock exam, so it is fine, or maybe I think I’ve tuned it too much. Maybe I need to get the head replaced? Bocchi-chan says something, I can’t quite make it out. Kita-chan walks towards me, and asks me for a start cue. Ahaha, I forgot, right, right. I click my sticks together once, and I hear the that wooden sound again. It’s so shrill. I nearly cringed in response, though that wasn’t even the loudest sound I’ve heard today. A quick flash of an image appears in my head but I try to ignore it. Sorry, again, I click my sticks thrice. I yell out a song name, any song name. Though the one I ended up yelling was That Band.

The song starts like I remember, but then once Kita-chan starts singing, it’s not like how I remember it, or it’s more like, I think someone’s out of tune. Ryou’s dragging behind me again, but by a noticeable amount this time. I don’t know why we can’t sync up like usual, or maybe it’s my fault, maybe I’m rushing…? Am I rushing? I try to slow down a bit, but then I see Bocchi-chan making a disgruntled face, and she looks expectedly at me. I think she’s expecting me to call for a redo. But I keep hitting the snare anyway, and my hi-hat barks become really sloppy. My fills fall off time a bit, but I just kept going, hitting more crashes than usual. Kita-chan excuses herself and fiddles with her tuner pedal, and tries to shout at me to stop over the loud drums, but I look at Ryou, who’s almost drilling holes into me with how hard she’s staring, and she keeps playing her bass anyway too, finally locking into my kick drum. Bocchi-chan looks confounded, and she borrows Kita-chan’s Les Paul Junior, trying to tune it past all the noise, and once it’s successfully tuned Bocchi-chan is able to jump back into the song somehow. Kita-chan gets lost a bit, then realizes what verse she’s on, so she sings a stilted c-cover my ears, a steady pulsing beat, but she struggles to find footing with the rhythm guitar. I don’t know, I don’t know. I don't want to hear anything else, besides the sound that sets me free, she sang. Ryou is eyeing me, not with that weird solemn expression, or that expression of worry, but there’s a huge, grand smirk on her face right now. She’s having fun? Fun…? It’s practically me and Ryou and no one else in this room, but the more I stare at her, the more this uncomfortable feeling in the pits of my stomach grows. Huh, is she having fun because of how unorthodox this all is? Ryou’s been always weird like that. Actually, wait, isn’t this not how it’s supposed to be? I feel like Ryou’s starting to look weird, the more I’ve been seeing her this day, like she’s not supposed to be there. Crash, crash, back to hi-hat. My groove is unbelievably sloppy, and I can see Kita-chan eyeing me occasionally. She looked really worried. Bocchi-chan looked like she was about to melt out of sheer panic, but she kept her cool, and I heard the smooth guitar line of That Band ring out clearly. Ryou inches closer. Ryou? I hear the crashes smashing, and I remember clearly now. The images project in my head in time with each crash, Ryou’s melted wax self, and those piles of bones she’d turned into, and then I hit the ride cymbal, and I remembered how I wanted to cry and grab at her and tell her not to go anywhere, while she laid quietly in the flowers. I don’t think my nausea’s gotten any better since earlier. Ryou’s really close, she’s right next to my drumkit, and the look in her eyes is—I can’t tell, I can’t tell, Ryou, is that even you? Who is that? I lift my sticks in the air. Kita-chan yells something, I can’t hear it. I can’t hear anything, all of a sudden. I see the two crashes wobbling in the air, and I see sweatdrops pooling on the snare head. God, god, god, hey, what even is this? How is this band going to stay alive like this? I’m not doing my job, I’m not being leader, I have to study for my exams every and every and every day, I have to sort label papers, I have to go to driving school, I have to fix everything, and yet I’m here smashing these cymbals like they committed some sin against me, and Ryou looks at me again with that goddamned expression, I can’t tell if she’s smirking, or being solemn, or what, and I don’t even know if that’s the Ryou I’ve stayed with for half of my life.

“It’s all wrong,” I mutter, hitting on the crashes once again, until I pathetically stop, and the sound of the crash sustains, like a faint ringing in my ears. Ryou’s standing in front of the kit. She’s not making any kind of face now. It’s not even that neutral pout she has. It’s just, blank stares.

“Yeah, it’s wrong. You’re so disgruntled that you’ve been barely taking the time to think about yourself these days. You want to go through everything with genuine positivity, but some days, that’s just not enough. Aren’t you going to lose everything? Isn’t the band going to disintegrate into pieces, because you weren’t positive enough? Didn’t work hard enough? Hey, I might go somewhere. I’m weird and I’m beholden to my whims, so I’m probably just gonna up and go somewhere one day, maybe because I’m sick of the band. Because you couldn’t manage it, or you didn’t keep it interesting enough. Can you handle grief one more time, nah, a couple times more even, Nijika? Can you keep your dreams afloat and can you keep being the backbone until your heart gives out? Can you feel it? Can you feel your systems burning to a crisp and can you feel your heartbeat rising? Can you feel your tears bursting at the seams? Hey, Nijika. N—”

I threw the whole kit at her.

As it fell on her she dissolved into skeleton bones again, femurs, ribs, everything. The crashes flew in the air and the hi-hats tumbled, and her bones flew about.

I tried to pick her bones up, but every time I did, they turned into sad wilting petals of forget-me-nots.

---

“Hellooo, Nijika, Earth called, we miss you. We’re worried. I’m hungry, though. Feed me curry.”

“… Also, your drum quiet-loud dynamics were, uh. Just loud, actually. Though actually, that style of drumming was kind of exhilarating. Felt like I was seeing a different side of you. Though I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Maybe wake up in the next 2 minutes so I can get you to give me snack money. Suddenly yelling quick, um break! and then tripping over yourself and then toppling over the whole kit while waddling out was insane, by the way. Then I see you taking a nap in a different studio room. Actually, did you pass out? Can’t tell. I think you’re reaching new heights of ditz, whoa.”

“… All I can do is hope you’re fine, I guess. I don’t…”

“ … I don’t particularly know why you were crying that much while you penguin-waddled out of the room, but…”

“…”

“Wonder when your exams’ll be over.”

“……”

“………”

“ … Stop being so self-reliant, Nijika.”

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