I‘M EXHAUSTED’, is what I kept telling myself every time the thought of my guitar rose up in my mind.
While I was laying down in my bed, still devastated, I got a mail from Morita, “Let’s hang out.”
I glanced at the time, it was already ten in the evening and we had school the next day. I wasn’t really in the mood to hang out anyway. I ignored his mail, but then quickly got another, “Let’s hang out.”
He kept spamming the same message until I finally gave in and replied, “No.”
“Aw man, don’t be like that,” he replied back.
I thought it was finally over when he didn’t send anything for a while, until I got another mail from him, “Kashimoto said OK, let’s hang out.”
“What would we even do, it’s ten.”
“Dunno. We’ll figure something out when we’re out and about.”
Two against one. I was tired, craving sleep and I had spent way too much time in the bookstore already. But I couldn’t pass up with any excuse, they’d keep bothering me and I wouldn’t get a minute of sleep that way either.
So for once, and only for once, I would go along with their baseless plan and hang out after ten.
Luckily for my tired body, I didn’t have to walk long before reaching the meet-up spot; being the park near my house.
“Good evening,” I said to the two, seated on a park bench.
“Yo, good evening, glad you’ve arrived,” Morita said, not rhyming for once.
“Evening.”
I sat down as well since there was enough space for the three of us—and my body wouldn’t forgive me if I stood up any longer.
“So… what now?” I asked.
“I just needed to go out for a minute, I’m sorry for calling you two out.”
He looked clearly troubled.
“Is something wrong?”
He loudly sighed, “I’m not a relationship type of guy,” he sighed. “I’ll never find real love at this rate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “You have a girlfriend, right?”
He placed both of his hands on the back of the bench and faced the night sky, “We’re not together anymore. The captain of my club said he’d steal my girl from me… and he did just that.”
“Huh? Taking a girl from a junior? That’s not stealing!” Kashimoto protested, “That’s… That’s a hand-me-down!”
I let out a roaring laugh, and so did Morita. When, after a little while, our laughter died down, Morita said, “Thanks for cheering me up, bro. I’m still super pissed though.” He had his arms crossed and repeatedly tapped his finger on his arm, “She’ll regret treating me this way. That’s why we’ve gathered here today. It’s time for talks about our song together.”
“What do you mean?”
He smugly smiled and said, “The three of us, one song. Sounds good, right? Or am I wrong?”
Kashimoto said, “Have you heard of our school district’s talent show? It’s an annual event where schools gather and have their students display all sorts of talents. What about making a song together for that?” After asking he added, “Our school has never won it, so it’d be a really terrific achievement.”
“Kashimoto!” Morita yelled out. “That’s brilliant!”
They were discussing how to combine our talents together and make that into a song.
“Hey you two,” I said. “I haven’t played the guitar for over a year. I can’t possibly make a song with you two right now.”
In the end, no matter how badly I tried to protest it, I would take part in their repetition for the talent show next month. However, I did tell them if it doesn’t work out, which I was sure of it wouldn’t, that I’d be dropping out.
* * *
For the following days at school, we were planning a song, but we didn’t get anywhere at all.
During lunch break we sat down in the cafeteria and gave a brainstorming session another shot.
Kashimoto said, “Why don’t we make this song about you, Koji? It’ll be your return song or something.”
I shook my head, “We’re not even sure if I’ll be there to play in the actual event. So, no.”
Suddenly, Nomura took the empty seat next to me.
“Hey, Koji! Wanna eat lunch together?”
“…Our definitions of eating lunch together aren’t the same,” I said, flooding my mind with distant memories of her stealing everything inside my lunch box back in elementary school.
“Wait, Koji, don’t send her away,” Morita said. “I have a question to ask, if I may?” He was looking at Nomura.
She looked slightly surprised, “Me?” She asked as she pointed at herself.
“Please listen to our idea. We’ll be making a song, us three,” he moved his fingers, pointing back and forth between himself, Kashimoto and me. “We want to make it about Koji, but he has doubts, since he’s thinking about his own exclusion. So I thought maybe you could be our problem’s solution.”
“Huh? Really? You’re going to make music again?” Nomura shouted while leaning in closer.
I pulled away from her and said, “Nothing is set in stone yet. Don’t get your hopes up over nothing.”
“‘Problem’s solution’, huh. Whatd’ya want me to do?”
Kashimoto took a note pad and pen, seemingly out of thin air and smoothly slid them diagonally over the table. Equally smooth, he said, “Please write down every single thing you know about Koji.”
Nomura grabbed the pen, “Alrighty, I’m on it,” and started writing.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I kept repeating. “How would that help us?”
“Kuruno Koji, Koji, Koji… you just don’t get it at all,” Morita said while shaking his head. “So without further ado, let me explain how we’ll make this song about you. Nomura will write down everything that she knows. We’ll filter that information and see how it goes. We could use some cool, sad and embarrassing things that she chose. Mixing it all together, me, the most pro-prose of prose pros… That might be a bit much of the pro’s proposal of prose—”
“—I suppose. But the moment our song is done, we’ll bulldoze through all talent shows. No one will stand a chance against the most formidable of trios.”
He took a moment to catch his breath.
“We’ll walk on the stage, the audience’s arousal arose. Koji’s return—from the shadows he rose. He’s back now, thanks to three heroes. And when, finally, our performance comes to a close, we’ll leave the crowd baffled, speechless, stunned and many more of those from their heads to their toes and back to their nose.”
He held his chin up high and his face carried the most graceful look of superiority anyone on this planet had ever carried, only to be wiped away by a single comment from Kashimoto, “Wouldn’t that be ‘noses’ instead of ‘nose’?”
“Why are you all so relaxed? I rhymed so many times I nearly collapsed! Nose or noses, that doesn’t matter! I’m the head chef, the words; my batter. I bake that goo up, serve it on a silver platter. For you ungrateful lot to shatter… A single mistake from the prose spatter doesn’t make him a prose blabber.”
“Morita… All of that was at least tenfold the quality of the ‘one-hour rap, no beat’ you made,” I said.
To which he bashfully thanked me.
In the end, we decided to go along with his plan. Nomura wrote some things down about me, handed that to Morita who would be coming up with the song’s lyrics. Which would leave the music to Kashimoto and, hopefully, me.
* * *
At the dinner table that day, I was contemplating on whether I should tell my parents about the song we’re trying to make. I didn’t want to get their hopes up, but I thought that asking father might help me out, “I might be making a song with friends at school, for a talent show.”
Mother nearly choked on her food and started coughing, “…R-really?”
I nodded my head, “I’m not sure yet if I’ll actually do it, but I wanted to ask you for advice,” I looked at dad, “since I’m not sure if I’ll be able to play.”
He slightly smiled and said, “Good. I’ll help you out. Go get your guitar when we’re done eating.”
When I finished my dinner, I stood up from the table, “Thanks for the food,” and walked off to the stairs.
Whilst walking upstairs I heard the sound of a high-five.
I grabbed my guitar, the bigger one, from my room and returned downstairs.
“Alright, Koji. What kind of song are you planning to make?”
I sat down on the sofa next to him and explained Morita’s situation, which led to the potential participation in our school district’s talent show and that our song would be about me.
“Interesting,” he said, deeply concentrated. “So, will it be a happy song about you, or a sad one?”
“I don’t know yet, but if I had to take a guess, it’d be a sad song.”
He stood up and said, “I’ll be right back.”
Not much later he returned with a CD that he placed into the radio. “Listen up, Koji.” He pressed the play button and a familiar song started playing on the radio.
“Is that the song from your band?”
With a slight smile, he replied, “Glad you remember. Now, focus on the music and forget the vocals.”
To concentrate better, I closed my eyes and let my conscious get absorbed by the music. The rhythm of the instruments together have an active calmness to it. It’s gentle, yet you want to rock your head back and forth to it.
I started picking the instruments apart from the unison. The sound of the drums is the most notable one, since that’s the beat I was nodding my head to. The way the guitar was played reminded me of the upbeat melodies I had been playing at the end of my time with the guitar.
Hearing myself in the music was like staring into a mirror with an incomplete reflection. I found myself in a white zone of tranquillity, there’s nothing but me, the mirror and me in the mirror. The music was slowly fading away.
I stared at myself, but the Koji on the other side, though our eyes are locked together, isn’t looking at me at all. He’s staring right through me, to something far beyond his reach; further beyond mine.
I turned my head around, watching the blinding light in the distance twinkle down like snow, getting harsher by the second. Snowfall turned a blizzard. I watched it coming down over my head, leaving a trace of emptiness all around.
The last bits of light faded. The white zone became a void. A niveous shiver ran down my spine.
I turned my gaze towards the mirror again. But this time, there was no reflection at all. Koji was no more.
I came back to my senses with streams of tears rolling down my face.
Is it too late?
“…Are you alright?”
Can I still turn things around?
“Koji?”
Can I still grasp it, or is it already far beyond my reach?
I looked dad in the eyes and said, “I want to do it again. I want to play music!”
He looked at me with that slight smile he wears whenever he’s trying to hide his joy.
“Let’s go practice together. Sounds good?”
I nodded, “Yeah. Sounds good.”
* * *
When the talent show rolled around, it was time to show everyone just how hard the three of us worked to get our song to this level.
We practiced combining Kashimoto’s talents on the violin with my upbeat guitar melody that I had been working on with dad. Morita wrote most of the song, using a bit of information that Nomura offered us… instead of simply asking me. After he had finished his part, I was responsible for the chorus.
At the talent show, a handful of schools in our district have gathered to display their student’s talents in an attempt to be declared the winner.
There weren’t too many people who turned up if you take into account the amount of schools that gathered there. Although it did make sense, it was on a Saturday after all.
The first few performances were anything but atypical for a talent show; there was a magician, a comedy-skit duo, a group of dancers and a karate demonstration.
Next up, it was our turn.
The three of us walked out of the crowd and onto the stage. While standing there, only one thought was swirling in my mind, ‘I’m back’.
Morita nonchalantly stretched his arms high above his head, then took one of the two microphones out of its stand. “Morita on the mic with Kuruno Koji and Kashimoto on my side. Better sit tight, open your eyes wide because you’re in for a ride. This is Ku-Mo-Ka,” he made that up on the spot, “with our original song, ‘Mr. Throwaway Child’.”
Kashimoto lifted his violin atop of his shoulder and placed his chin down. With slow strokes of his bow, he gently started the song. I rhythmically tapped on my guitar before joining in with my strings.
Morita started his part.
“Uh, Mister Throwaway-child
Mister Throwaway, Throwaway
Mister Throwaway-child
Mister, Mister throw---away
Life is hard, ain't nothing new
Life is hard for superstar Koji, too
Life is hard, though we push through
Life is hard, but facing hardships is all we can do
Now it was my turn to sing the chorus.
“I’m drowning in my own despair
Even when I find myself stranded ashore, grasping for air
I’m still drifting off, seemingly to nowhere
But when I look in the water, my reflection’s not there
Drowning in my own despair
Morita’s rap continued.
“Look at him now
Who would've thought... that this king
Was a little baby boy, born in blooming spring
Without a proper chance at life
He wasn't given a thing
Parents handed him to the midwife
It was half past midnight
What's happening, what's going on, this can't be right
Before the baby developed his sight
His parents took flight
Now he cries in the dark and hides his tears in the light
. . .
Love from parents... isn't that the birth-right?”
The chorus, with tenfold the emotion.
“I’m drowning in my own despair
Even when I find myself stranded ashore, grasping for air
I’m still drifting off, seemingly to nowhere
But when I look in the water, my reflection’s not there
Drowning in my own despair”
“Now he's labelled Mister Throwaway-Child
Mother doesn't miss her throwaway child
Father is mister throws away child
Family disbanded, Koji abandoned, a child exiled
Left unloved, unwanted; undesired
Even when he shuts his eyes, he’s nevertheless everlastingly tired
Still
Through hard work, musical genius; acquired
Thousands of fans; inspired
Biological parents…; no longer required
You better never forget, this baby boy was desperate for love
But you let him lone in the cold, now he thinks he ain't enough
Yeah, life is hard for mom and dad too
Might be true . . .
Though that may be
How could you live your life, turn old man and lady
Knowing that you didn't even name your own baby”
“I’m drowning in my own despair
Even when I find myself stranded ashore, grasping for air
I’m still drifting off, seemingly to nowhere
But when I look in the water, my reflection’s not there
Drowning in my own despair
More people came along, astonished I stare
Stranded out here in the wild
I closed my eyes and gently smiled
I’m no longer a throwaway-child
No longer Mr. Throwaway-Child”
A deafening applause followed the end of our song. Like Morita had said a few months before; we bulldozed the talent show and won our school’s first.
