Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The quiet nights that Kento spent with Orihara had become a strange source of comfort that he had never experienced before. Sometimes, Orihara would tutor him. Other times, Kento found himself wanting to talk about his family and his childhood.
     One night while they were listening to records, the topic turned to their families.
     “My mom and dad both went to N. University. I think I was able to get into this school because of their connections.”
     Kento’s mother and father were college sweethearts who had first met at N. University and gone on to get married. Ikuto, his father, had been in the Film Arts department aiming to become a photographer; his mother, Hisae, had been in Fine Arts. Right after getting married, the two had gone on a globetrotting trip. Kento was born soon afterwards, but the two took him along and continued their travels.
     “That was quite daring of them, wasn’t it?” Orihara said with an air of amazement.
     “Really? I can’t tell. Mine is the only family I’ve known,” Kento said indifferently.
     “I’m sure it must have been difficult flying with you when you were still a baby,” Orihara mused out loud.
     “Actually,” Kento said, and began a story that he had heard from his mother. “Apparently, one way to make me fall asleep right away was to make me listen to rock, especially heavy metal. I must have liked it since I was born if it was enough to be my lullaby.”
     Orihara only widened his eyes in bewilderment.
     Sometimes, Kento talked about the many countries he visited with his parents. He once talked about his trip to Peru. His mother had fallen in love with the beautifully-dyed fabrics there, which led to her beginning her studies in textiles.
     “Lake Titicaca was so unbelievably blue. They said it’s because the sky is blue and the air is thin. Apparently if you go high enough, it’s indigo like in space.”
     “That’s right,” Orihara nodded quietly as he perused a medical book on the sofa. “There’s less dispersion of light when the air is thinner, and you see more shades of blue, which have shorter wavelengths.”
     Many reeds grew in Lake Titicaca. The indigenous peoples would use them to weave baskets as well as ships, houses, and all manners of things.
     “That’s where my mom learned to dye fabric.” Kento and his family had been so smitten by the place that they had ended up living there for half a year. “That’s why I was a year late going into primary school.”
     Orihara looked convinced. “Ah, now I see why.”
     “I learned how to play a flute called a quena,” Kento said casually.
     Orihara watched him with interest.
     “You’re pretty mysterious, you know.”
     “Huh? How?” Kento looked up from where he was sitting on the floor.
     “No, never mind. Tell me more about your trips.”
     “Are my stories interesting?” Kento looked at him curiously. They had been everyday experiences for his family.
     “Yes. Very interesting. Normal people wouldn’t be able to experience all of that,” Orihara replied with a smile. “I feel like I’ve become the king in The Arabian Nights. I get to sit here and hear all these stories from a different world.”
     Kento burst out laughing. “I’ll tell you as many stories as you like. Are they really that unusual? It’s all normal stuff to me.”
     Kento’s father moved to New York City shortly after Kento began primary school, and began doing most of his work there. Ikuto then went on to become an exclusive photographer for National Geographic. His mother, Yasue, decided after much debate to live apart from him.
     “She said she wanted me to go to primary school in Japan,” Kento added. But on extended breaks, such as during the summer, he and his mother would go to New York to visit his father. That was where Kento first encountered hip hop dance and fell in love with it.
     When Yasue invited him to come along with her to London, Kento was torn at first. In the end, he chose to stay with Sion Promotion and continue dancing.
     “I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.” Kento made a dubious face and looked up at Orihara. I certainly wasn’t asking for my leg to get hurt, but I still was able to meet him. His parents had always been ones to take problems in stride, and often said that bad luck often brought good luck. He figured this was probably what they meant.
     “What’s wrong? Now you’re all quiet. Did you start missing your mother and father?” Orihara said with a smile. Kento blushed.
     “It’s not like that,” he protested. “Stop treating me like a kid.”

     The numerous vinyl records were simply stuffed in a disorderly fashion into the rack. Kento didn’t need another excuse to offer to sort them out. As he went through them, he found that most of them were classical music records, apart from a few Beatles LPs.
     “Oh, those are mine,” Orihara said to a very surprised Kento.
     “Yeah, I figured as much.”
     Orihara chose one out and put it on the turntable. “Songs back then used to be really short, including the Beatles’. They were all about two minutes or so, so they’re finished before you know it.”
     “Are you a Beatles fan?” Kento asked as he gazed at the now-legendary album cover.
     “Well… a friend of mine in high school loved the Beatles, and I guess he kind of rubbed off on me. His father, on the other hand, was a Beatles fanatic, in the real sense,” Orihara said to him. “Anyway, I even bought a guitar so I could practice.”
     “What? You can play the guitar? I thought you’d be the serious type who only cared about studying.”
     Orihara looked mildly offended. “I told you, didn’t I? I was an athlete until tenth grade. I’m a varsity boy at heart.” He then chuckled a little at his own words. “I guess that makes me weird for playing guitar, then, doesn’t it?”
     After some begging on Kento’s part, Orihara dug out his guitar from storage. It wasn’t the electric guitar that Kento had expected, but a common acoustic guitar.
     “It’s not electric?” Kento said in slight disappointment. Orihara smiled wryly.
     “This one’s called a flat top. I hear kids these days start right off-the-bat with electric, but this type of guitar is your most basic one.”
     No one at Sion Promotion was part of a serious band, since the agency was geared to promoting pop idols. Kento had never even held a guitar before. He gazed inquisitively at the guitar that Orihara was holding.
     “Can you play for me?”
     “I’d have to change the strings first.” Orihara’s eyes narrowed nostalgically as he dusted the guitar off with a cloth. “But I don’t really play anymore.”
     Kento was struck with an idea, and he proposed it loudly. “I’ll play it, then! Teach me!”
     Orihara beamed again. “Sure. I don’t have any use for this anymore. You can have it, Kento.”
     “Yay!” Kento grabbed Orihara’s hand in delight and shook it vigorously. His hand was softer and smoother than he’d expected, and it was a long time before Kento untwined his fingers from Orihara’s.
     When Kento visited Orihara again the following week, a brand-new guitar was sitting on top of the stereo system in the living room.
     “Is this??” Kento approached with wide eyes and cautiously reached out to touch it.
     “I felt bad making you play my old guitar,” Orihara said to him with a smile as he came back from the consultation room. “And it’ll be easier for me to teach you if I play along.”
     “You’re going to teach me?” Kento exclaimed, pouncing on Orihara. Orihara teetered as he lost his balance, and they both toppled on top of each other onto the sofa. Orihara was more slender and soft than he’d imagined, and Kento blushed in agitation.
     “S-Sorry.”
     “You really seem to grow taller by the day,” Orihara laughed as he crawled out from underneath Kento. “We were about the same height when we first met, but now you’re a whole head taller.”
     “And you’re skinny like a girl, doctor,” Kento said in a teasing tone, trying to disguise the fact that he was flustered. This time, Orihara blushed.
     “Keep talking like that, and I won’t teach you.”
     “Wait, I’m sorry! I really am! Can you still teach me?”
     Kento’s desperate tone appeared to restore Orihara’s mood. He smiled as he passed a book to Kento.
     “You don’t mind using my old learner’s guide, do you?” Kento was given a book called Guitar for Beginners. He flipped through it. A simple set of notes ran along the staff. Kento looked at it and pouted.
     “They’re not Beatles songs?”
     Orihara looked at him with exasperation. “You won’t be able to play those right off the bat.”
     Underneath the staff was another staff, but this one had six lines. Instead of the black note heads, the stems were numbered with digits from 0 to 4.
     Kento knew notation well enough to sing from them, but he’d never seen notation like this before. He anxiously looked up at Orihara.
     “What’s this?”
     “It’s called tablature. It shows you how to press the string down.” Orihara told him that the numbers on 0 to 4 indicated the fingers used to press the strings down.
     “Oh, okay. So finger 1 would be my index finger, and finger 2 would be my middle finger.” Kento touched the strings with each.
     “What’s 0?”
     “It means ‘open string’, which means you don’t hold it down.”
     “Uh-huh…” Kento looked dubious. Orihara smiled gently at him.
     “Don’t worry. Once you learn the patterns for holding down the strings, you’ll be able to play in no time.”
     Orihara walked around the sofa, where Kento was sitting, to stand behind him. He started by teaching him how to hold the guitar.
     “Good. Align the groove in the guitar with your right knee, like that.” Once he taught Kento how to hold it, he also slung the shoulder strap over his shoulder. “Wearing the strap while you sit will help keep the guitar still,” he said. Next, he went on to teach him how to hold the strings down with his left hand.
     “You’ll have to start by memorizing the basic chords. The groups of chords are called chord progressions. You can play any song if you know the chord progression.”
     Kento blanched when he saw the notations, labelled with letters like C and G.
     “But there are so many!”
     “Don’t sweat it. Just use your fingers and let your body do the memorizing. If you can remember complicated dance moves, you should have no problem with this. These are just your fingers.”
     Orihara’s gentle encouragement helped Kento recover somewhat from being on the verge of giving up.
     “As long as you’re going to teach me.” When he turned around to look over his shoulder, there was Orihara’s face at close range, his gentle eyes looking back at him.
     “Don’t worry. I’m here with you.”
     The same gentle voice echoed in his ears, the one that had whispered to him that night when he was in bed groaning from the pain in his knee.
     “Yeah. I’ll try my best.”

     Thankfully for Kento, he had a good ear to begin with, and he quickly improved at guitar.
     “Your fingers are so long. Makes me envious,” Orihara said with an impressed air, seeing Kento get better and better at each practice session.
     “Your fingers are long, too,” Kento said. It was true, but Orihara’s palm was smaller. Kento had been quick to master the difficult barre chord ? using the left index finger to hold down all six strings at once.
     “It took me quite a while to get the hang of this, you know,” Orihara had said with a rueful sigh when he saw Kento pull it off.
     On Saturdays and Sundays, Kento practiced for five or six hours at a time. Orihara seemed a little exasperated, but he assisted Kento for as long as time allowed him.
     “But you have to keep up with your studies,” he did add as a warning.
     “Then, can you tutor me, too?” Thus, Kento now also had his very own tutor. “Sorry. I know you need to study, too,” he apologized. Even he realized how intrusive he was being.
     “Don’t worry about it,” Orihara said, his eyes softening into a smile. “It’s been a while since I played guitar, and I’m enjoying it. And besides, if your grades go down because I pulled you into playing the guitar, it’s partly my responsibility.”
     “Do people ever tell you that you worry too much about other people?” Kento asked. He was happy that Orihara was being so kind, but he felt like he would end up taking advantage of his support. But then again, how long would he be able to enjoy Orihara’s company? The though occurred to him one night while Orihara was looking over his homework. He felt a throbbing pain in his heart.
     “Hey, how long are you going to work at this clinic for?” he asked, looking at Orihara’s handsome face before him. The man was reading a book while brushing up the hair falling across his forehead.
     “How long? I’ll always be here.” Orihara looked up and smiled at him.
     “But what about when your uncle gets out of the hospital?”
     “I’d just be going back to where I used to work at N. University Hospital.”
     N. University Hospital wasn’t too far from here. Kento was a little relieved.
     “Aren’t you going back to Kanazawa, though?” he asked again, anyway.
     Orihara narrowed his eyes a little. “I won’t go back. I’ll always stay in Tokyo,” he said firmly.
     Thank goodness. Kento, filled with relief and joy, pounced on Orihara.
     “What’s gotten into you, all of a sudden?” Orihara said, looking slightly caught off-guard.
     “Nothing,” Kento said quickly. Thank goodness. If he’s going to stay in Tokyo, I’d be able to see him anytime.

     Thanks to the knee support and poultice, Kento barely felt any pain in his leg lately.
     When he went to the infirmary for the first time in a while to get more poultice, Nurse Fujimoto greeted him with a smile.
     “It’s been a while, Kento,” she said. “I remember you used to come almost every day to get poultice. I’m glad you’re refraining from exercise. It was the right thing to do.”
     Kento scratched his head sheepishly. “I guess.”
     Just as he was about to leave with a bag of poultice, Kento remembered something.
     “Oh, since I’m here, would I be able to get some extra Band-Aids?” His diligent practice with the guitar had left him with cracked fingertips.
     “Oh dear. What’s happened to you this time?” Fujimoto sounded worried. Kento hastily opened his palms and showed them to her.
     “I’m learning guitar from Dr. Orihara. I think I practiced a bit too much.”
     “Goodness me,” Fujimoto said blinked in surprise. She took a box of Band-Aids from the medicine shelf, and cocked her head slightly as she looked at Kento. “Dr. Orihara playing guitar… what a surprise.”
     “Why?” Kento asked out of casual curiosity.
     “I thought he’d completely quit guitar and running ever since that incident.”
     “That incident? You mean when he got hurt?”
     Fujimoto looked troubled as she lapsed into silence.
     “Yes,” she said eventually. “But Dr. Orihara must be quite fond of you, teaching you guitar. Maybe he feels like he’s gotten himself a little brother.”
     Kento was a little hurt at Fujimoto calling him a little brother. He had always thought of himself and Orihara as equal friends.
     “Am I like a little brother to him?”
     “Well, of course,” Fujimoto said with a laugh. Her next words made Kento freeze. “He only has an older brother, so maybe he’s always wanted to have his own little brother.”
     “Older brother?” He had never known Orihara had an older brother. It had never come up in their conversations. He had assumed all along that Orihara was an only child, like him.
     “Dr. Orihara has an older brother? I’ve never heard that before.”
     Fujimoto’s troubled look came back at his question.
     “Well, yes. Yes, I suppose he’s an older brother.” Her sentence ended in a vague way. Fujimoto busied herself with the task of folding cut gauze into quarters. “But they’re very far apart in age, which was probably why they didn’t have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why they didn’t talk much.”
     Kento was perplexed by Fujimoto’s explanation, which sounded more like an excuse, but he made a point of not pushing further. He was more surprised that he hadn’t known all this time that Orihara had an older brother. Kento realized for the first time that he really didn’t know much about Orihara.
     Kento went back to his dorm room with his poultice and Band-Aids in hand, and lay down on his bed.
     He said his hometown was in Kanazawa. Yes; he also vaguely remembered Orihara saying that his family owned a hospital. But Orihara had never talked about his parents, much less his older brother.
     Maybe it’s because he thinks there’s no point in telling me. It was true, to an extent. But Kento had told Orihara about his family, his school, his management office ? everything. Orihara had always smiled kindly and listened.
     Maybe I was too busy talking about myself to listen. Perhaps that was it. He was such a kid for going on and on about himself without even trying to listen to the other person.
     I want to know more about him! Yes; he wanted to know more. The impulse suddenly surged in his heart. He wanted to know everything about Orihara ? wasn’t that what being close meant? I think of him as a close friend, but maybe he doesn’t feel that way about me. That was a sad thought. Kento sprang up in bed. He realized he wanted to get better at guitar because that would put him on equal footing with Orihara.
     Kento was also curious about Orihara’s friend from high school. He didn’t know the friend’s name or face, but he knew Orihara had played Beatles songs on the guitar with him as a high-school boy.
     Kento felt a little prick in his heart.

     Once December rolled around, Kento began to spend all of his time at Orihara’s place. Tomoya was busy both preparing for his own debut and touring with DZ. He barely returned to their dorm room anymore.
     When Tomoya was around, Kento often fled to Miyashita Clinic to avoid the awkwardness, but now that he wasn’t around, it was somewhat lonely. Being alone in the room made him feel like he had been left behind, and that made it unbearable to stay.
     One night, Kento was preparing to go out with a mind to go to Orihara’s place, but was called down and told that someone was on the phone for him. Kento went to the dorm head’s room to take the call. It was his mother, calling from London.
     “They always tell me you’re out, and you never call. You must be really busy. Are you really that tied up with lessons and work?” she said in a somewhat exasperated way.
     “Kind of,” Kento lied.
     “Will you visit me during the winter break?”
     “No,” Kento said flatly. He wanted to practice guitar with Orihara, and in that instant, he had an epiphany. He realized Orihara was the person he wanted most to be with.
     “I know I don’t have to worry about getting into university since I’ll just get bumped up internally, but you know, I haven’t been studying much since I’ve been away at the agency most of the time. I don’t want to be kicked out just for failing school. That’s embarrassing. I want to take time to do some serious studying.”
     Kento was almost appalled at himself for how easily the lies slipped off his tongue and how guilty he did not feel about them. I guess it’s true when they say being in love makes you start lying. Not that he was saying that Orihara was his lover, or anything.
     His excuse about studying seemed to convince his mother instantly.
     “You should come during your spring break, then.”
     “I will. Bye.”
     He would just have to think of a new reason to say no once spring break rolled around, Kento thought to himself, mentally sticking his tongue out as he hung up the phone.

     The name for the new group that Tomoya was a part of was going to be called Chronos. They were planning the group’s first performance during the winter break concert tour. News of Chronos had already been broadcast on variety shows and music shows on TV. Although they had yet to even release a CD, their popularity was already quite strong.
     Understandably, it pained Kento to hear about all of the glamour. Once winter break started, he threw himself into practicing his guitar at Orihara’s place. He pointedly made an effort not to watch any TV shows.
     But one Sunday, Orihara turned the TV on during their meal. On the screen were the three members of Chronos, along with DZ.
     “It’s too bad. You had a good chance to be a member,” Orihara said hesitantly, watching Kento’s face carefully.
     “Yeah, well….” Kento said vaguely as he ate the scallop carpaccio and penne casserole that he had cooked with extra effort tonight. “I don’t really mind it anymore. It’s more fun for me to be with you like this.”
     And he meant it. Kento almost surprised himself. He had loved dance so much, and it had been his life’s calling. He realized for the first time that the pain of not being able to debut didn’t sting his heart as much as it had used to.
     “I’m sure the chance will come around for me to debut again. I wouldn’t want it to take away the time I have with you, anyway.”
     “What are you saying?” Orihara said in exasperation.
     “Well, it’s true.”
     Kento was a little agitated at the strong emotions coiling inside him. The time they spent together, their everyday conversational exchanges, had become more important to him than anything.
     Trust? Respect? It wasn’t just that; Kento felt overwhelmed by the fact that there was indeed some other feeling there that he could not express in one word. He hastily changed the topic.
     “Well, when I debut I’d rather do it alone. The Beatles went solo in the end, too.”
     Orihara seemed hard-pressed to make an argument.
     “You’re right, they did.” He put his fork down with a saddened face. “I wish they’d get back together, but that’s never going to happen.”
     Kento was relieved when the conversation changed to The Beatles, Orihara’s favourite topic.
     “I’ll be famous one day, too, like The Beatles.”
     Orihara’s eyes softened. “I’ll be looking forward to it,” he said.