by Mamare Touno
“A rock ’n’ roller?”
“Um, erm… In other words…”
“In other words?”
Roe2 sounded perplexed. “It means she’s cool, kind of,” Serara told her.
Minori had been biting back giggles for a little while, and at that, she burst out laughing. Serara protested desperately. Even she’d thought her explanation might have been a bit odd, so she couldn’t stop her cheeks from turning red.
Almost nobody said rock ’n’ roller anymore; it was Isuzu’s fault for using a word that was hard to explain. Puffing her cheeks out crossly, Serara stared at Isuzu, loading her look with certainty. However, it didn’t seem to get through to the other girl: She rolled her shoulders, strummed downward, and struck a pose with a “Rock ’n’ roll. ”
The only one to sympathize with Serara was Wolfie, who gamboled around her ankles.
“Musical activities, hm? Intriguing.”
“Yes, it sounds rather wonderful.”
Hearing Roe2’s and Dariella’s opinions seemed to please Isuzu.
“Okay, then, how about this? We’ll be playing in Saphir tomorrow night, so come and watch.”
“Playing?”
“Right, Minori? That’s okay, isn’t it?” Isuzu asked energetically.
They’d always planned to spend two nights in Saphir. This was because after they’d built up their energy in the town, they would finally head into the Redstone Mountains. When they’d crossed the Boxroot Pass, the terrain had been mountainous, but they’d still been able to get through on a highway meant for commercial traffic. In the Redstone Mountains, since they’d have to hunt, in the worst case, they’d have to trek through trackless wilderness.
“I, um, I sing with Isuzu, too.”
When Serara added that comment, Minori nodded, as if telling her not to worry:
“Yes, it’s fine. Let’s relax a little and take it easy in Saphir.”
As if those words had spurred them on, during the short interval before sunset, Serara and the others traveled just a little farther.
5
On the predicted night, the gig was fantastic.
Everything seemed to shine somehow. It was hot, and her heart beat fast, and it all seemed much too precious—even the stains on the wall and the homely innkeeper.
Isuzu’s voice was far more relaxed than usual, and An Die Freude was loyal to her.
Eighth notes paraded across a musical staff as uniformly as if they were wearing matching hats, joining the rhythm Touya drummed. Serara’s foot-pedaled porta-organ provided an astonishingly expansive accompaniment. This might have been because the white wolf cub was pushing on the pump as if its life depended on it. Even the number where she let Minori handle the lute was fun.
They made mistakes, but all of the errors melted away into a joy that was like a fizzing, carbonated sea. It was simply wonderful.
Roe2’s eyes were round, and she applauded until her hands ached. Dariella complimented them, looking thoughtful. Most of all, the People of the Earth who’d gathered at the inn applauded and cheered. As a Bard, she felt almost unbearably lucky.
Sighing with delight for the umpteenth time, Isuzu basked in a happiness so intense she thought she might burst and vanish.
“Oh, geez. Oh, geez!”
“Mademoiselle Isuzu, don’t struggle.”
“I’m not struggling.”
“Yes, yes, all right. I know.”
Rundelhaus had lent her his shoulder and helped her to the café terrace behind the inn. He sounded mildly exasperated, but even as he spoke, he lowered Isuzu’s skinny body into an oversized chair. For some reason, he looked even more effervescent than usual, but that was undoubtedly because that night’s gig had been incredible, and certainly not because she’d accidentally drunk something alcoholic.
It was already near midnight.
The moon had climbed high into the sky, and a cool wind was blowing.
This place—the Noble Mountain Snowdrop—was a big tavern, even for Saphir. Its facilities were complete, and it had a big terrace facing the road out front as well. Today’s show had been such a huge success that all the shutters had been thrown open, and crowds of guests had looked into the tavern from outside. That feverish atmosphere and commotion still lingered in the tavern like a glowing ember, and it reached Isuzu’s ears faintly.
That said, at this hour, the enthusiasm was ebbing. The sun had set more than five hours before, and Minori and Serara had run up white flags long ago and retired to their borrowed rooms.
Isuzu, reluctant to let it end, had plucked at her lute even after returning to the audience seating area, had drunk liquor the townsfolk had pressed on her, telling her it was their treat, and had been escorted out into the cool back garden.
“Here, Mademoiselle Isuzu.”
“Uh-huh.”
Isuzu, who was feeling a little repentant, took a swallow of the water Rundelhaus had drawn from the well. This village was located to the south of Sacred Mount Fuji, and at night in early March, its well water was so incredibly cold that it made her temples ache.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heeeh.”
Feeling entertained, Isuzu slumped over onto the wooden table that had been set on the terrace. Her cheek was pressed against the wood, and it was chilly, but her body was flushed, and it felt nice. Rundelhaus had pulled over another chair and sat down, and having him nearby felt good, too.
Still sprawled over the table, she looked at the back garden.
Even if this was a town, unlike in Akiba, the houses weren’t crowded close together. Some structures made use of ruined buildings, but there weren’t many of them in Saphir; the Noble Mountain Snowdrop was about the only one.
Nearly all of the rest were wooden, single-story buildings, and ample space had been left between the houses. They had things that corresponded to yards and hedges, but in terms of scale, it seemed better to call most of them vegetable gardens and stands of mixed trees.
This back garden, no exception to the rule, held a kitchen garden and an untended space where wildflowers bloomed, a large well, a shed for livestock, and a grove of trees. The orange light that bled from the tavern’s open back door and the moonlight that streamed down from above gently illuminated the nocturnal landscape, which would otherwise have been pitch-black.
She wasn’t sleepy, but when she closed her eyes—just for a moment—the world seemed to spin, and she felt exhilarated. She didn’t feel the cold as much as she’d expected; wondering if it was because the wind wasn’t very strong, she opened her eyes a crack and saw Rundelhaus, raking his bangs up with his fingers as if they were a nuisance. He’d wrapped himself in his mantle, and he was sitting upwind from Isuzu.
Their eyes met, and Isuzu suddenly felt embarrassed.
Ordinarily, it was nothing at all, but every now and then, she’d start to feel this way. Still, it was probably just his puppy-dog magic. Pretending not to notice it, she lightly kicked Rundelhaus’s chair with her toes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Really?”
“Yep, mm-hm.”
“That was a good show today.”
After the gig—
An outdated phrase rose to her lips.
The party was over, it was after the gig, and all the heat that had been packed into Isuzu’s body was unraveling into the night. It was a melancholy, lonely feeling, but it wasn’t unpleasant. She’d been in high spirits for today’s show, but it had ended. All gigs ended. That was certainly sad, but this interval existed so that they could begin the next one.
She could hear the sound of Rundelhaus’s gentle breathing.
Isuzu’s belly was full. Both her stomach and her heart were full.
“‘Today too,’ you mean.”
“Yes, today too.”
There was a wry smile in Rundelhaus’s voice, and Isuzu closed her eyes again. She spread her arms out, hugging the table. Its size was almost the same as a wo
od bass. The thought naturally brought a smile to her face, and her fingertips moved involuntarily.
Because today had ended, tomorrow would come.
Because this gig was over, she’d be able to play the next one.
“You really do like instruments, don’t you, Mademoiselle Isuzu?”
“I love ’em.”
“And yet you won’t become a professional musician? You were very insistent about this tour, you know.”
“Yes, that’s because…”
Isuzu sat up, gave a satisfied sigh, and looked at Rundelhaus.
The glow from the tavern filtered through the window, edging his golden hair with light.
Facing her companion, who looked puzzled, Isuzu began to speak, slowly.
“It’s my dad. I might have told you already, but he’s a pro musician. It’s something called a studio musician; I’m not sure how to explain it… Um, when it comes to playing instruments, he’s a professional among professionals. That sounds about right. He performs at a place where they record sound, and he helps all sorts of people do things with music.”
“Hm. Then your excellent skills must be due to your father’s blood and training.”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Noooo, it’s nothing like that. My dad is, umm, a free spirit. A rock ’n’ roller. He’s really cool. He’s got long hair, and he wears a leather jacket. His legs are thin, too! He lives in a town that’s sort of out in the country now, but even so, he’s pretty famous. He has groupies, too—er, fans from a long time ago.”
Isuzu took another swallow of water.
This wasn’t something she normally talked about. My father is a musician. It sounded like something out of a girls’ manga, but she didn’t think it was really such a good thing. After all, it meant that her father was practically unemployed. She’d even gotten teased about it when she was little. Just being different from the people around you created friction. That had been common sense, at least in the world where Isuzu was born and raised.
However, in this world, it was the night of a gig, a night with all sorts of secrets inside it, and her listener was the other-dimensional puppy dog she was so proud of. She’d always had these thoughts, and there wasn’t a single reason for her to hold them back now.
“When I was a kid, my dad bragged to me all the time. I’m not sure what you’d call them—heroic exploits from when he was younger, maybe? Stories about when he worked part-time and bought a junker van, loaded his instruments into it and went on tour. See, my dad toured, too. He said he did it all the time after high school. He was in a band as a kid, and when he got out of school, he worked part-time and went long distances to live music venues, and when he ran out of money, he’d pick up another part-time job. He said he based himself in Tokyo and traveled around to all sorts of places.”
“The way we’re doing now?”
“Yep, exactly! The way we’re doing now!”
It had been something Isuzu had longed for when she was a child. He’d seemed to be a genuine hero.
“Back before he was famous, even when he played gigs, they didn’t pay very much, so he said he had to work a lot of part-time jobs.”
“What are those?”
“Um, things like working at a restaurant or being a security guard.”
“Hm.”
“Still, if he was going to tour, he’d need to take a lot of time off from those jobs, so in the end, he had to quit them. He’d quit his job and go traveling.”
“A desperate endeavor, then.”
“Huh?”
Was that what it had been? Somehow, when Rundelhaus put it that way, it sounded like a really aggressive act, something cool. Isuzu wanted to say that it hadn’t been like that. Her father wasn’t anything that cool… However, it was hard to deny that it had been a desperate endeavor.
Isuzu shrugged her shoulders and went on.
“I swear, all the stories my dad told were dumb. When I was in grade school, he’d tell me about how popular he was when he was young, and that he’d had tons of girlfriends. He said every time he went to a show venue, he’d make a cool, long-legged girlfriend. He said he drank and got really rowdy, and that he sped down roads at night to go eat ramen. He even bragged about how poor he was. He told me how he borrowed money and bought a Fender, then broke it two weeks later and went berserk. And how he went to the beach with his friends, and they took their car down onto the sand and drove around, trying to look cool, and then it stalled and they had big problems. And how they bought instant oden at the convenience store and ate it under a bridge while they were sheltering from the rain—”
Isuzu was sure she’d never forget the look on her father’s face as he told her those stories.
He’d worn a proud, mischievous smirk, and she’d said, “You’re creepy, go away,” and shoved him. In truth, though, she’d been incredibly jealous.
Her father had looked happy. If you put it into words, you probably would have ended up with the trite expression “an exceptional adolescence.” He’d spent his youth his way, and even now, he was running at its leading edge. To Isuzu, a very average high school girl, “heroic exploits” really was the only thing to call these old stories.
They were fairy tales that were out of her reach.
“Those sound like entertaining tales,” Rundelhaus said.
“No. Absolutely not! I’m telling you how dumb my dad was!”
She was embarrassed, so she denied it, but even she knew.
Isuzu was bragging.
Her father was frivolous, long-haired, thoughtless, and mean, and she didn’t want to admit it, but she was proud of him.
“He didn’t have much money, so he’d play at live music venues—um, in other words, at taverns like this one. He said they’d play at taverns and get pocket money, and sometimes they’d let them sleep on the dressing room floor. Unlike us, the group he traveled with was all guys, so they’d fight at the drop of a hat. I mean… I hear they’d compare the types of girls they liked, then fight over that. Idiots, right? Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh! Still, they couldn’t play the next gig like that, so they’d make up, get in the van…in the cart, I mean, then head for the next town.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Rundelhaus gave a small nod, just to show that he was listening. Reassured, Isuzu began to talk about her father again.
“My dad went around like that, being a rock ’n’ roller, and then he made a major label debut.”
“What’s a major label debut?”
“It’s when a record company distributes your music… Uh. Um…in other words, uh…”
Isuzu groped for the words to explain, but she couldn’t find them, so she just skipped over that part.
“In other words, he became a famous musician. So famous that they played songs by my dad’s band all over town.”
I’m not lying, am I? Isuzu inspected her explanation.
In a world where goblins screeched and brandished axes, it was really hard to explain record companies and online stores and music downloads. Isuzu wasn’t Minori.
Still, she thought the nuance had probably gotten across.
Isuzu’s father was a musician.
No matter what was said, or who said it, Isuzu knew that.
“He’s amazing, then.”
“He really is. Pretty amazing. Even if he doesn’t look like it. The thing is, though…”
The pale moonlight and the perfectly clear night enfolded Isuzu and Rundelhaus.
“Major label debuts are awesome, but in the world where we lived, there are a lot of amazing people. I think there are more than a hundred major debuts every year. Even if you manage to get famous, it’s not enough. Lots of people just stop selling. That’s what happened to my dad.”
She almost sighed, but managed not to.
“That’s why he became a studio musician. It wasn’t the major label route, but he probably wanted to play forever. I never asked him, but I think that’s what it was.”
Even her wild father, bursting with
talent, hadn’t been able to stay in the spotlight. She hadn’t seen any bitterness in his profile, but the situation had seemed unbearably bitter to Isuzu. If her father hadn’t been able to do something, there was no way Isuzu could manage it.
“I still think your father’s blood runs in your veins, Mademoiselle Isuzu, and you should make your major debut.”
“No, I’m telling you, that’s not it. Major debuts are for pros.”
“But when I listened to you sing at today’s gig, I was happy. Your songs seemed even more gentle and resonant than usual. Aren’t you happy when you sing?”
“Well, but that’s…”
The words wouldn’t come.
“Listen, that just isn’t me. I mean, yes, of course I like my lute. I love it. I love singing, too. I just don’t think you can compare me with my dad. He’s the kind of pervert who can say he’d sleep with his guitar… Besides, I’m not talented.”
“……”
“Dad told me I wasn’t.”
The air that hung around Rundelhaus seemed to reproach her. She knew what he wanted to say: It probably looked as if she was running away. Still, Isuzu had a point, too: You couldn’t make it in music if you were ordinary. It took more than yearning to become a professional.
I think even people with talent have to work hard just to make it to the starting line. Even Dad couldn’t become a star.
Music was a fantastic thing, but the way was long and treacherous. Isuzu had heard her father suffer and complain. It wasn’t the sort of thing she could promise easily.
“But look, I do love music.”
Isuzu intentionally made her voice cheerful, trying to change the mood by force.
“Indeed.”
“Today was fun, yeah? Everyone really seemed to like it, too. Those old guys actually treated me to things, even though I’m just, you know, me. I got so many compliments I swear my head’s going to swell up.”
“I love your songs, too, Mademoiselle Isuzu.”
“You were the first one who ever said that. That’s what made me start wanting to perform in front of everybody, and what let me suggest this tour. I’m really nothing special, but being able to play like this is—”
