Somehow, Aki and I had become closer. I had never experienced being close to a person in the way that I was to Aki, and I wasn't afraid that I was becoming dependant on him. He wanted me to live the way I wanted to, gave me the freedom to explore and learn, and he somehow always knew when I needed help but was too stubborn to ask for it. At the same time, the desire that I felt for him was because he amplified me. Anything I wanted to do, tried to do, was made better by his presence in my life, even if all he did was cheer me on from the sidelines. I felt grounded in the fact that I had his love, his support, and I could fall into his arms to hold me up the second I felt weakness. It became that way. That way that I could be anywhere in the world, and as long as it was with Aki, I was home.
Aki had taken on the task of helping me with my makeup homework. As he recovered and was able to go through his days normally again, he was less and less exhausted by the end of them. Kota had taken a large burden of the work for me, and I felt prepared enough to pass the term without the need for summer school. I had put everything I had into studying, and soaking up everything I could while I was with the band. I was determined to have summer break so I could go on tour with them.
"Listen." Aki said one evening, as I closed my books when we were finished. "I want to sing the song you wrote for me during the spring outdoor acoustic. I haven't recorded it or sang it yet. And you wrote a whole accompaniment." I could tell he had somewhere else to go in the conversation, and I listened expectantly. "And I want you to accompany me in my a cappella song. I was hoping you would sing it with me during the summer tour as well."
"What, really? Even after all this, you still want me to be seen with you in a public setting?" I was genuinely surprised that he would ask me to sing with him again.
I could tell from his smile that he initially thought I was joking, but his expression turned serious again as I watched his face waiting for him to answer. "Of course, Natsu!" He slid off the couch to kneel on the floor beside me. He looked at me and I matched his stare, and for a moment we sat staring before laughing and looking away. "Natsu, by now you should know without any doubt how I feel about you. But if I need to do a better job of expressing it, then I'm sorry, and I'll do better."
I shook my head, looking down at the textbooks on the table in front of us. We had spent hours that evening working together so I could learn enough to pass my classes without falling behind. "No, Aki, I know exactly how you feel about me." I started. "I'm afraid I don't do enough to let you know how I feel about you."
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and placed a gentle kiss to the side of my face, lingering for a beat to breathe me in. "I think I have a good idea." He said through a shy smile. "So, sing with me." He said definitively. "When you get to the studio tomorrow after class we can practice together. I'll teach you the song." I nodded to his order, secretly excited to be able to sing with him again. "We are meeting the girl who is supposed to come on the summer tour with us as second guitar tomorrow. The four of us have been talking and I think we've decided that we're going to tell management we don't want her."
"Give her a chance, if it's only because Kota is being a child about it." I laughed. "I want to meet her too."
I arrived at the studio after school drained of energy entirely. Summer was quickly approaching and although the end of May was cooler than usual, the humidity rolling in made the air thick. I wondered what Kamakura was like, remembering how the water often created fluctuations in the weather quickly. One day the humidity would be so thick, I could see the water droplets in the air. The next day, the breeze coming in would be a welcome cool. Though not far away from Kamakura, Tokyo was completely different. It was a steel, glass, and concrete city, in contract to the beach town, and the air moving through it was like a controlled breath instead of a wild storm. Everything in Tokyo was rigid, I was realizing, and although the neon lights at night put up a front of the city being youth's playground, it was organized and ran like a machine.
I had chosen my outfit carefully that morning, preparing to make a good impression on the new guitarist I would meet that day. I tried to keep my mind free from forming an opinion about her before I had even met her, deciding that I would give her a fair chance to win me over, maybe even become my friend, which was something that Guardian had denied her. I found them in one of the lounge rooms chatting together, the tone and atmosphere light and friendly. I tried to remain silent as I entered the room so I didn't interrupt any conversation, but Aki had been waiting for me.
He left the circle to greet me at the door, wrapping his arms around me tightly. "I think you're going to get along great with her, and I hate that." He said into my ear, his voice low with a hint of playfulness. I could tell he had been having fun talking in the group.
I reached one hand to cradle the side of his face as I initiated a greeting kiss. "I'll be the judge of that."
"Shuta-san, this is my girl, Sugimori Natsuko." Aki introduced me as we rejoined the group.
I held my hand out and initiated a small bow to the girl. She was what I had expected to see, dark hair with a typical layered cut, simple makeup, ripped jeans, baggy t-shirt, and a lot of jewelry. She had a warm smile on her face as she took my outstretched hand and bowed back to me. "Pleasure to meet you, Sugimori-san." She said conclusively, but her smile remained on me for a moment after. "I'm Shuta Rinna."
"Pleasure to meet you as well, Shuta-san." I said, but the lingering feeling that I was being judged by her eyes remained. The moment felt awkward and forced, and I looked to Aki for guidance to see that she was doing the same. Aki was conveniently ignoring us both.
"I'm not sure if Aki told you already, but I used to be good friends with him and Kota back in high school." She continued. I began assembling the reasons why the interaction with her had felt so forced.
It caught Aki's attention. "It was a surprise to see you here after all these years. No one warned us that the person we were meeting today was someone we already knew." I could tell by his tone that he meant it as a warning to her, so she wouldn't say too much before he had the chance to explain it to me himself.
She simply shook her head in dismissal. "That was a long time ago, Aki." She said. "Although I have to admit, I'm shocked you're not with Oda-san still."
I could feel Aki's whole body tense beside me. "I'll let Kota tell you that story when you two have the chance to catch up." He threw his arm around my shoulders and leaned into me to signal that I should start walking somewhere. "Natsu and I have some recording to do. I've been helping her finish her school work so she can tour with us this summer."
I dropped my school bag heavily into a chair in the recording studio as Aki closed the door carefully behind us with a loud sigh. "I'm sorry." He said. "I should have warned you before you got to the studio." He was not hiding his disappointment at the situation.
"Aki it's fine. You guys didn't know you were going to be meeting someone you knew, right?" I was failing to understand why he was so distraught. "Isn't it less stressful this way?"
He shook his head, dropping himself into the second chair. "I lied to you." He said flatly. I wasn't sure what to make of the comment, so I stayed silent to wait for the explanation to follow. "Remember when we went to Kyoto to meet your parents? And on the shinkansen I when I told you about the second guitarist being a girl you asked what would happen if she tried to sleep with me on tour."
"Go on."
He leaned forward in the chair, propping his elbows on his knees and covering his face with both hands. "I told you that would never happen. But I slept with her already. It was so long ago, before Masami and I got together, and we were so drunk, I hardly remember it."
I began to laugh, even though he was so clearly distraught over the situation. I found it endearing that he would be so upset over something that happened more than ten years prior. "Aki, that doesn't count as lying to me."
He looked up at me, and I could see some of the tension leave his expression when he saw me laughing. "When I saw her again, I suddenly remembered that it happened. And I also lied to you about how many people I've slept with." Realization came to his face, and he melted back into despair.
"That doesn't count as lying to me either."
"I'm sorry, Natsu, I feel really bad about this."
He leaned back in the chair, planting his feet firmly on the floor apart from each other and allowing his body to slide down the seat slightly. I placed myself between his knees, leaning down to kiss him, as we kept our eyes on each other. I met his confused expression with a smile. "Don't be sorry about anything. Are you listening to me now?" I waited for him to nod, to be sure I had drawn him out of his thoughts for a moment. "You didn't lie to me, because you didn't tell me something untrue on purpose. So calm down, it's fine. Besides, I'm coming with you on tour, so I'll be marking my territory."
"Let's get the rest of this recording work done then, so you can pass." He stood to embrace me, walking me backward against his body to the control panel. "I still feel really bad about this though, so I'll try hard to earn your forgiveness."
He was serious about feeling bad about the situation, and I could feel tension in his body as if he was holding something back. The only thing I could do was try to lighten his mood. "I'll try hard to forgive you." I said, but my smile gave away my intentions.
With Aki's instructions, I stepped into the recording booth for the first time alone. I had learned the song he had written to sing a cappella, and decided it was the song that I would have to work the hardest at and give me the most experience quickly. It would be my voice alone, and it had to be perfect, even though I was only recording it to submit for a grade at school. I watched Aki through the window as he worked the buttons and knobs on the mixing panel and waited for his cue. Inside the recording booth, everything was silent. I was wearing Aki's headphones, staring into the mesh screen over the microphone, the sheet music in front of me on a stand. I had to concentrate hard still to read the music, but I remembered the song's structure, lyrics, rhythm, tempo, all by heart. I had listened to Aki sing it in person, and I sang along softly to his recording when I walked to the studio after school.
"Can you hear me?" Aki's voice crept into the headphones, so clear it was as if he was speaking directly into my ear. I looked over at him through the window, watching me expectantly, and nodded. "Ready when you are."
I nodded again to let him know I would start, and returned my gaze to the microphone. I closed my eyes, taking in the silence for a moment, then took a deep breath and began the song. As I sung, I was so aware that I was alone, but I could feel Aki's presence anyway. Whether it was through his song, or because I knew he was listening from just outside of my closed eyes, I wasn't sure, but I was overjoyed at the sensation of experiencing my lover's presence in such a way. I sang for him, and my voice carried because it was to him. Though my eyes remained closed through the whole song, I could see him in my mind's eye swaying in his seat the way he did to the sound of my voice. He was expressive in everything he did, but I knew music made him that way, because as I sang, I felt I had never expressed such emotion anywhere else in my life.
As I let the last note die on my breath, I paused before I opened my eyes, hearing Aki's voice again through the headphones. "That was perfect, Natsu." He said. I looked through the window at him smiling back to me, his face soft with admiration. "Don't cry."
I laughed at his comment, though I had already begun to feel my eyes burning with tears that were threatening to fall. After understanding the feeling of singing beside Aki on stage, beside Aki in the recording booth, singing alone and separate from him became more powerful.