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“Hey, Giyuu!” Kyojurou calls out.
Giyuu looks up from where he’s tying his shoes to the towering mass that is his bandmate. His head is covering the light, making it look like he’s one big, beefy angel surrounded by an artificial halo. This could be a song, Giyuu thinks, absentmindedly.
“Hi.” He replies, and gets a glimpse of a radiant smile littered with metallic braces, but Kyojurou quickly covers his mouth on reflex.
“So, uh… are you… what are you doing now?”
Giyuu slowly looks down at his freshly tied shoes, then back up to his companion.
“Tying my shoes.”
Kyojurou lets out a long, loud laugh, startling Shinobu, who’s packing the mic in the corner of the studio.
“I SEE! OF COURSE!” He looks around nervously. “I MEANT AFTER NOW. AS IN. NOW, AFTER YOU TIE YOUR SHOES. WHICH YOU HAVE TIED.”
Giyuu raises an eyebrow. It’s pretty rare to see the guy who single handedly made their little band popular amongst the general student body shake in his boots.
Giyuu, Kyojurou and Shinobu have a metal band. Kyojurou insists they’re the Flamingheads, to which Shinobu just chuckles in that faux polite way and pointedly changes the subject. She’s been introducing them as Broken Wings and, now that he’s thinking about it, Giyuu’s not sure he agrees with that. Maybe he should talk to her. He’ll do it tomorrow.
They just did it for fun. Playing a bit at each other places to the delight of no one but their siblings (though, that’s debatable, since Senjurou always seemed to cringe after the second song and find an excuse to leave). But then word got out that Rengoku Kyojurou, athletic star from the school soccer team who had just scored a winning goal in inter-high and had every eye on him, was in a band .
Playing bass .
And that’s all the ingredients for the tasty cake of high school popularity.
Shinobu is delighted enough. Despite being lead vocals and electric guitar, she never planned for them to keep this band past university, when they have to focus on full time jobs. But… if enough people are interested in paying for their Itunes albums or watching them play live… well… “Shouldn’t we enjoy our youth to the fullest?” she’d say, counting the money after their first live performance at a bar.
Giyuu doesn’t care. As long as he can play, he’s fine. He likes to feel the noise encompass the tiny room they play in, reverberate through the walls and drown out every single one of his thoughts. When he’s drumming, it’s like the world dissolves into that singular moment, and there’s no responsibilities he needs to go back to. No older sister struggling at home to keep him in school, no lingering pressure to decide on university or a full time job, no one demanding of him what he can’t provide, no future, no past, just… noise. If he can live in that noise for just a little bit longer, he’ll gladly play for an audience.
Giyuu has the distinct impression Kyojurou is mostly the same. He gets far too into it despite coming from a renowned, upper middle class family with a strict reputation. He’s a cheery guy, living for the entertainment of others, and generally a fun person to hang out with. Outside of practice, he’s always talking to people, making them laugh… Giyuu thinks that, maybe, this is a break for him too, and he sympathizes with him despite leading such polar opposite lives.
He does wish Kyojurou’s presence didn’t come with a few girls always spying on their practice, resulting in them often having to wrap up early so they can get a chance to talk to Kyojurou before he has to go back home (on curfew, in fact. Giyuu isn’t one to make assumptions, but Kyojurou’s home life being one of the reasons he treasures playing so much would be a safe one, should he choose to make it).
“ What a shame, what a shame…” Shinobu said a few days ago, after this exact situation played out.
Giyuu cocked an eyebrow.
“ The chickens all flock to the rooster, but he has his eyes set on the fox.”
Giyuu scrunched his forehead, even more confused than before, and only got a condescending laugh in return.
Right now, staring into Kyojurou’s intense, fiery eyes, a rogue thought invades his head.
“ I hope the fox doesn’t eat him, whoever it is.”
“Oh, I’m just going home with Sabito.”
“Sabito? As in, our striker? That Sabito?”
Giyuu nods.
“He walks me home everyday.”
“Huh.” A tinge of annoyance paints the smooth line of Kyojurou’s forehead, but it’s so brief Giyuu thinks he might’ve imagined it. “I thought he lived by the mountain. Don’t you live downtown?”
Giyuu nods again.
“I think it’s a habit from when we were kids. I used to live on the way to the mountains, so we’ve grown up walking home together.” Giyuu muses. “I told him he doesn’t have to, but Sabito never took no for an answer.”
“Can’t blame him!” Kyojurou exclaims out of nowhere. “If I were in his shoes, I’d love to walk you home everyday!”
Giyuu blushes and averts his eyes. He really hates being the center of attention like this.
“Ah, you’re too kind.”
He catches a glimpse of Shinobu further back, slipping on her backpack. Her heavy, analytical gaze remains on him as she slowly raises her hand palm up, then connects her middle fingers with her thumb, making a fox face with her hand.
“Any moment spent with you is a delight!” Kyojurou booms again, pink dusting his cheeks, no doubt from the exertion of his ever growing enthusiasm.
“ Oh, I never thought I’d agree with the soccer team’s number one babe, but here we are! ” A very familiar, very mocking voice rings loudly behind them, carrying itself around the room with the same intensity as Shinobu’s yells.
Sabito and Giyuu go back. Way back. Way back when Tsutako’s boss announced he’d close his carpenter shop for a week to care for his new adopted son. She was ringing his doorbell the following week with Giyuu in tow, hoping for her kid brother to make a new friend and maybe free up some of her evenings for some well earned alone time. As fate would have it, it only took one look into a very obviously fragile and vulnerable child for Sabito to immediately warm up to him. The two have been inseparable ever since, with Giyuu continuously holding Sabito’s hand as he shielded him from anything unsightly, ranging from weird bugs to middle school bullies.
Giyuu loves Sabito, he really does. Having someone to grow up with when his childhood had been ripped from him so early was like a light at the end of the tunnel for his resolve, and making Sabito and Tsutako smile has become Giyuu’s main motivation throughout all of his formative years. He owes so much of what he’s become to his own little found family…
Though, sometimes, he admits he feels a shift happening. Sabito has changed so much. He has grown, gone through phases, felt strongly about opinions only to have them change the following year, and yet, he has never changed with Giyuu. No matter how many changes Sabito has gone through, holding Giyuu’s hand, telling him he’ll be okay and seeing him safe from house spiders to overly strict teachers was never one of them.
Giyuu often times feels like dead weight on the back of someone who’s clearly set on becoming an athletic star and maybe Sabito has noticed. He tries to make Giyuu happy, buy him things, squeeze his hand before bidding goodbye, asking him how he feels three times a day and remind him to eat, showing that he cares and treasures Giyuu like a family heirloom.
“Maybe he feels obligated to be nice to me…” Giyuu wondered one night during an impromptu sleepover (Sabito’s idea), watching Sabito’s peaceful sleeping face.
“Though, I guess the main difference between our point of view is that I’d never be able to understand how it is to yearn for Giyuu’s company.” Sabito strolls in, chest puffed and smiling smugly. “After all, Giyuu and I are inseparable. ”
Kyojurou crosses his arms over his chest, accentuating every muscle from his upper half, bulging through his fishnet shirt.
“Congratulations!” Kyojurou exclaims, louder than necessary. What is he even congratulating Sabito on? Having a friend? “Must be nice, indeed! I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun being Giyuu’s best friend all your life!”
A vein bulges in Sabito’s neck.
“Better than being a fling, am I right?” His voice drops lower than before, a tone Giyuu recognizes to be him trying to pick a fight. Though, for what reason, Giyuu is none the wiser. “We wouldn’t want that.”
“We certainly wouldn’t!” Kyojurou takes a step closer to Giyuu, followed immediately by Sabito. “I, for one, would try everything in my arsenal to assure Giyuu and I burn eternal!”
“Huh, whaddya know? Sounds like we agree on something else.”
Both boys get even closer, basically sticking to Giyuu’s sides while maintaining eye contact. The tension is palpable and Giyuu has the distinct feeling something very dangerous is happening right in front of his eyes and it’s somehow his fault. Why it’s his fault or what is even happening is beyond Giyuu’s simple brain, though. He’s really just here to hit some drums with sticks.
Giyuu gives Shinobu a desperate glance. Despite their friendship being built on the shaky grounds of irony, she always got him out of sticky situations whenever Sabito wasn’t around. Maybe she's just sadistic with anyone, not just Giyuu.
Shinobu sighs loudly, snapping Kyojurou and Sabito from their little game. She makes her way past them and to the entrance.
“I’m locking up.” She says, facing away from the room. “This is a studio room, not a cockfight ring.” When she turns her head around to look at them with the corner of her eye, it somehow awakens something inside Giyuu’s friends, and they separate immediately, turning away from each other like magnets being repelled.
Giyuu looks between them, confused and concerned.
“Don’t mind them, Giyuu.” Shinobu says as she watches everyone leave. “They’re fine. Just waiting on the fox to leave the hut.”
Giyuu sighs in frustration.
“What’s with the fox analogies already?”
Shinobu chuckles darkly, but offers no response.