A Place To Call My Own

May 10, 2024

“Today’s the day,” said a girl wearing a black sailor-style uniform with a white tie to another girl with the same uniform but with a striped white-and-blue tie as they walked to school together. “I’m glad this EP will finally be over. It felt so tiring to record it.”

“You’ve been doing this for longer than me, Takahara-senpai,” pointed out the other girl. “Will I eventually tire out, too?”

“Who knows, Sadako-chan? Also, like I said, you don’t have to call me by such a formal title. My first name is fine.”

“I was always taught to give respect to my elders,” Sadako said with a smug expression to the other girl, who was named Momo Takahara.

“Hey,” Momo replied with a blush. “Watch it! I’m not that old yet! Look, let’s just get through today and head to the studio. This will be the last recording session we do for a while, and I want to make it count so none of us have to get called back in to fix stuff.”

As they entered into the main building of the school they attended together, Momo recognized one particular student from among the crowd and waved hello to him. “Hey there, Sakamoto-kun.”

“Hi, Takahara-san,” replied Ryosuke Sakamoto, who wore a black and white suit as a uniform. “Are you ready for that test today in math?”

“I sure hope so,” she replied. “I studied my ass off while I was in the studio the last few days. I’m glad today’s not only the test, but also the last day of recording we have for most of the year. Now all we gotta worry about are some concerts and TV appearances.”

Sadako chuckled, remarking, “I’m still shocked you tell him so much about what we do. I keep that stuff locked up tight.”

“It’s not like he’s gonna blabber to the press about it,” Momo shrugged. “We’ve been in the same class since we started here at Maruyama’s Performing Arts Program. Knowing him, if anything, he’ll forget it by the end of the day.”

“Hey, I’m not that forgetful,” Ryosuke replied, somewhat offended by Momo’s remark.

“Last time I told you about A TO Z SIX releasing a single, you excitedly asked me why you didn’t tell me about it just three weeks later when it came out.”

As Sadako stifled a laugh, Ryosuke admitted in defeat, “Okay, fine, I screwed up that one time.”

Momo said to Sadako, “See what I mean, Sadako-chan?”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” she replied with a laugh. “By the way, Sakamoto-senpai, I heard your first play of the year is tonight. I’d love to go, but alas, we have that pesky recording session.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. “We got another showing tomorrow evening, too.”

“We should be around for that,” Momo realized. “We got some dance lessons tomorrow during the day, but we should be done by like two in the afternoon.”

“Excellent,” Ryosuke replied. “Just text me and I can even take you guys backstage if you want before the show. Doors don’t officially open until about five, but I could squeeze you guys in a bit earlier if you want.”

“Hell yeah,” Momo replied as she gave Ryosuke a fist bump. “We’ll be there by four-thirty then.”

“We can’t stay out super late, though,” Sadako pointed out. “We got a concert on Sunday.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Momo assured her. “We don’t have to be in for rehearsals until noon, so we got plenty of time.” She then turned to go to her class with Ryosuke, “Well, we gotta go. See you later, Sadako-chan.”

“Bye-bye!”

As the two third-years at Maruyama High School walked down the hall to their classroom, Momo sighed and told Ryosuke, “I’m glad to see she’s in a better mood. She was pretty upset most of this past week.”

Curious, Ryosuke asked her, “Huh? Why?”

“I know I tell you stuff that you don’t repeat, but you gotta promise me not to say this to anyone else, okay? It’s supposed to be super under wraps since it’s about our group’s management.”

“My lips are sealed, Takahara-san,” Ryosuke assured her with a confident thumbs-up. “Didn’t you just say I’m so forgetful I’ll probably not remember it by the end of the day or something?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, this stays between us.”

“Got it.”

Getting quieter so no one else around them could hear them as they walked down the hall, Momo told Ryosuke, “Sadako-chan wanted to put some of her guitar-playing into the songs on this upcoming EP, even saying she was willing to do only songs not being released as singles, but our manager said no.”

Bummed out for Sadako, Ryosuke replied, “Aw man, that sucks. Why? I thought you said she’s good at guitar.”

“They said they had session musicians that were good enough for the job already, and they wanted her to focus on vocals and dancing only. She’s brought her guitar to some concert rehearsals to play when there’s down time, and it annoys some of our management.”

“Don’t you bring a flute?”

“Yeah, but that’s… I don’t know.” Momo shrugged. “Maybe nobody just says anything to me about the flute since I can’t really think of any songs we make that could use it.”

…

In the middle of the school day, in another wing of the building where the General Education Program students were instructed, a girl was listening to some music with a pair of headphones as she ate her lunch. She silently and very slightly bobbed her head along, but instead of bobbing to a normal meter such as 4/4, she was instead bobbing to a meter that alternated between 6/4 and 7/4, an unusual time signature for a song. Then, she heard another girl in her class call her name over the music, prompting her to take her headphones off. “Inuyama-san! Inuyama-san!”

“Huh?”

“Inuyama-san,” then repeated the girl. “We’re going outside to play basketball. Are you in?”

“No thanks,” replied Ai Inuyama, a third-year in the General Education Program. “Good luck, and go kick the Performing Arts kids asses.”

“You bet your ass we will,” confidently replied the girl. “What song are you listening to?”

She then showed the girl her phone to show what song was playing. “Oh, this? It’s a British song from the 1980s called Golden Brown. It’s from a band called The Stranglers. It’s all in English, so you really wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

“You know, Inuyama-san,” replied the girl with a chuckle. “You really do find the most obscure songs sometimes.”

“Maybe…”

“Well, we’re off. Have fun.”

“You too.” Ai was now in a classroom with very few other students in it, everyone else having gone outside for their lunch break. She put her headphones back on and looped the song back around to the beginning to hear it again before pulling out a notebook that was half music sheets and half regular lined paper. She then began to write down the notes of a song, but not the song she was listening to. Once she wrote a few lines, she began to imagine herself drumming along to the song she was listening to, closing her eyes and being mentally taken away to a concert hall of sorts.

In this concert hall, she sat on a stool as she drummed to the song, only really paying attention to her craft and not to the visages of the band who made the song, minus their drummer of course, who played the other parts. A crowd of at least a thousand people all watched intently as she faithfully recreated the song’s drum track. At this moment, Ai felt totally at ease.

Then, the illusion ended when another student walked into the class. This student was a third-year also in the General Education Program, but was not from Ai’s class. He turned and noticed her, asking, “Do you know where Yamada-sensei is? I thought she was in this classroom around this time.”

“She stepped out,” Ai replied to him. “Who… Are you?”

“I’m Ushiyama Masato,” the young man replied. “I have to turn in some stuff to her, but I wasn’t able to do it yesterday since she was out.”

Then, the teacher in question happened to walk in, asking Masato, “Ushiyama-san, are you looking for me?”

“Indeed I am,” he replied as he handed him a few papers. “Here’s that project I did.”

“Why thank you,” the teacher replied. “I would have taken it yesterday, but my son got pretty sick, so I had to call out. My apologies.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

Ai then turned back to her notebook as Masato and the teacher continued to talk, having stopped listening to the music she had on her headphones, and continued to write in it, even jotting down lyrics she occasionally went back and corrected or modified.

…

Later that day, Momo and Sadako had arrived at a recording studio, still wearing their school uniforms. As they set down their book bags in a mixing room, a man in a suit turned to them and said, “You guys are just in time.”

“I’m sorry,” Momo apologized to her. “We would have been here a few minutes earlier, but we got held up at school.”

“It’s fine,” he assured them. “The others are just beginning to record harmonies right now. You two will record your solo parts right after they’re done.” The man, named Hideki Tomoe, was the manager of A TO Z SIX, the aforementioned idol group Momo and Sadako belonged to along with four other girls of roughly the same age as them. Two had just graduated high school, one was in the same grade as Momo, and the last was in the same grade as Sadako. For the last four years, the group had racked up quite a few hits on the charts in Japan, and were beginning to make a splash overseas. As the other four girls were in the booth singing the backing harmonies of the group’s newest song, Hideki told a sound engineer, “Up it just very slightly.”

“Got it,” the engineer replied as he turned up the recording volume a slight amount.

Hideki then handed Momo and Sadako lyrics sheets, telling them, “Here’s the lyrics. We’ll play the demo version first, and then you’ll sing based off of those. The red lines are Takahara-san’s lyrics, and the blue lines are Takagawa-san’s lyrics. The harmonies aren’t printed here, so you don’t have to worry about them.”

Momo then looked over the sheet and remarked to Sadako, “Seems like a pretty basic song. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t select this one for a single.”

“All of the songs on this EP could be singles really,” Sadako replied.

“That take sounds perfect,” said a producer standing alongside Hideki as she nodded in approval. “Let’s use that one for the song.”

Surprised, Hideki and the engineer turned to her, with the latter asking, “That’s only the second take, though.”

Hideki asked, "Don't you want to do more? We have plenty of time.”

“No, it’s fine,” she insisted. “We’ll use that one and then we’ll get Takahara and Takagawa in the booth to do their parts.”

Momo, surprised, said to Hideki, “Well, that was faster than I expected.”

“Me too,” he replied. “I guess we’ll record your parts early. Looks like we’ll all be going home before sunset.”

…

Momo was now in the booth, with Sadako in another one next door. After having listened to the demo version of the song, which was in a lower key since it had been written and recorded by a male songwriter employed by A TO Z SIX’s management and recording company Time Clock Records, she adjusted her headphones and asked the engineer, “How much higher are we going to record my take in?”

“One full step up,” he replied through a speaker in the booth. “Nothing too wild.”

“Sounds good to me,” she replied. “Let’s roll.” The music then began playing in her headphones. The song was a rather standard J-Pop number, with nothing too fancy in terms of instrumentation or lyrics. After a brief keyboard introduction, the drums kicked in on a standard 4/4 meter in a moderate tempo, good for dancing to, both in terms of people dancing in the crowd and A TO Z SIX dancing on stage as they sang. It did not take long for the lyrics to kick in, the songwriters and producers at the company the group operated under not wanting a super-long introduction so as to not bore a listener.

Oh, oh, oh

Oh, oh, oh

Oh, oh, oh

Oh, oh, oh

You know you can’t resist me

So just stop trying

I know I can’t resist you

So I’ll stop lying

You really know how to

Make a girl come back for more

Momo then paused, which was done so Sadako could sing her lines in a neighboring booth.

I want to get out of here

Turn down the sound

My heart is racing too fast

Can you slow it down?

Just you and me

No space between

Holding hands

Coming back for more

For the chorus, both Momo and Sadako would sing together, with the other four members joining in on several lines and adding in background vocals as evidenced by the harmonies that had already been mixed into the song at this point.

I can’t resist you no more

I’ve seen you before

But never this close

I can’t resist you no more

Could this be love?

Or a fleeting moment

I can’t resist you no more

My heart won’t let me

Run away from this moment

I can’t resist you no more

Is your heart the same?

Does it say you should stay?

Please tell me the way to find out

…

Momo and Sadako had indeed managed to end the recording session earlier than anticipated. After having done just three takes on their parts of the song, they were able to finish early and head out, which gave them enough time to go back to school to see the play that Ryosuke was participating in. “I can’t believe we managed to get that shit done so fast,” Momo remarked as they ran down the street to catch a subway train to take them back to their school. “If we hurry, we could even go backstage like Sakamoto-kun promised!”

“Sounds good to me,” Sadako replied as they reached a subway station and ran down the stairs to get to the platform. Once they got down there, they quickly paid for entry and managed to catch a train that just pulled in. Quickly running aboard onto a mostly empty car, both girls snagged a bench together and took their seats right before the doors closed and the train began to roll down the tracks.

Momo sighed once she got comfortable in her seat and remarked, “We made it just in time.”

“You’re not kidding. Holy shit…” She then looked out the window as the train went along the underground tracks, thinking about the session they had. “In all honesty, what do you think about the song, Momo-senpai?”

“I told you, you can call me Momo-chan. At least you’re calling me by my first name, so that’s progress.”

“Whatever. What do you think of the song?”

“It’s just another standard pop song,” Momo shrugged. “I don’t really think too much of it. It’s catchy, but it doesn’t stand out too much in comparison to the rest of our songs. It’s not a bad song at all, but it’s not one I’m gonna remember specifically making years later. Believe me, we’ve had some songs I thought were a lot weaker than others.”

“Oh, I know,” Sadako remarked with a look of disgust as she remembered a few of A TO Z SIX’s songs that she did not particularly care for. “I’m glad we don’t have too many, but still… Sometimes, I still hear Jumping Heartbeat on the radio or TV and I cringe.”

“Jumping Heartbeat sucked,” Momo agreed. “I’m just glad this car’s almost empty. If it were more crowded, I’d probably come up with some lie about how the song isn’t that bad, or just not talk about it at all.”

“Yeah. The last thing Tomoe-sama needs to hear is some tabloid claiming that we trashed our own music. We’d never hear the end of it, and I wouldn’t blame him.”

Momo then pulled out her phone to text Ryosuke about their change of plans, looking forward to seeing the play. “Anyway, I’m glad we got out early instead of spending all evening in the booth.”

“Me too. I like making music, but after what happened earlier this week, I’m not really in the mood.”

“I know, I know. I was trying to fight for you, but they wouldn’t listen to me, either. I think your guitar playing’s good. Screw what the company says.”

…

Back at Maruyama High School, Masato and Ai had volunteered to help out with the play being held. As they moved a box of clothes into a small dressing room, Ryosuke, who was dressed in a gray three-piece suit for his character, happened to pass by and asked Masato, whom he knew, “Ushiyama-san, have you seen an extra copy of the script lying around?”

“I got one right here,” Masato replied before handing Ryosuke said extra copy, which was hidden in the box. “What’s up?”

“A copy got damaged, and it needed to get replaced. Also, I have a friend of mine and her friend coming over soon, and they’re both allowed back here.”

Ai, curious, asked him, “Who are they?”

“Takahara-san and Takagawa-san,” Ryosuke explained. “They’re both in the Performing Arts Program like me, but their main focus is music.”

“Wait a minute,” Ai said as she recognized their names. “Those are the two girls in A TO Z SIX, right?”

“Yeah. Takahara-san is in my class, and we’ve been friends for about a year.”

“Hmmm… Interesting…”

Ryosuke, assuming that she was about to judge him or Momo for this, assured her, “Now, now, there’s nothing between us, okay? As an idol, she can’t even really be dating or any sort of thing like that. Hell, I’m running a risky business just being friends with her. If the wrong person finds out, we both could be fucked.”

Ai assured him, “I don’t care, Ushiyama-san. I was just surprised given that whole idol thing that you mentioned. Anyway, we gotta go find a box of props. See you later.”

“Bye.” As Ai and Masato left to go get a second box, Ryosuke pulled out his phone to text Momo again, anticipating her and Sadako’s arrival.

…

Momo and Sadako walked over to the entrance of the auditorium of the school, which was hosting the play. They had arrived early enough that there was barely a line and the doors had not opened yet. As they walked over, two students who were acting as greeters noticed them. One of the students, a boy around their age, bowed and told the girls, “Welcome to the Maruyama High School Theatre Program’s Spring Production. Would you like a program of tonight’s even-?” He then recognized both Momo and Sadako and realized he did not have to introduce himself as if he was talking to an outsider. “Wait a minute, Takahara-san? Takagawa-san?”

“Good evening,” Momo replied with a smile to the greeter. “Looks like we were able to make it after all.”

Then, Ryosuke walked over, having received a text earlier that Momo and Sadako had arrived. “Hey guys! Glad you could make it.” He then told the two greeters, “They’re with me.”

Momo and Sadako then began to follow Ryosuke to the area backstage. The former asked him, “How many are you guys expecting tonight?”

“Probably a full house on both nights,” he replied. “I’ll tell you, I’m really looking forward to my last ever Spring Production. I honestly can’t believe this is my last year in high school. It feels like just yesterday I was here for my first day.”

“I’m gonna miss you guys when you graduate,” Sadako remarked.

“I won’t be too far,” Momo reminded her. “We still have A TO Z SIX.”

Then, almost on cue, Momo suddenly ran into Ai, neither of them having paid attention as they walked down the hallway in opposite directions. Ai immediately fell to the ground, prompting her to remark, “Ow!”

“Oh shit,” Momo remarked as she extended a hand to Ai. “Are you alright? I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I’m fine,” Ai replied as she was helped back to her feet. She recognized the girl she had bumped into, asking her, “Takahara-san?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Who are you?”

“I’m Inuyama Ai,” she replied with a bow. “I’ve heard of you through your group. There’s a lot of talent in there. I didn’t expect you to be here tonight.”

“Eh, we just sing and dance,” Momo shrugged. “It’s nothing too wild. I normally wouldn’t be able to come here, but a recording session ended a little early, so I had some time.”

“Ah, I see. I’m just really interested in music, that’s all.” Ai was a bit nervous talking to an actual professional singer. “So, um… Yeah…”

“You okay? You seem a little nervous.”

“No, it’s just…” Ai then sighed, admitting, “I’m a drummer outside of school. No one really knows about it since a lot of the music I like isn’t super popular and I’m a General Education Program student.”

Sadako was interested upon hearing Ai played the drums. “The drums, huh… I play the guitar, although I don’t use it for idol music.”

Ai, curious to hear about Sadako’s hobby, asked her, “Oh really? How long have you been playing?”

“Two years. I’m not amazing at it, but I’m getting better I guess.”

Ryosuke, having checked the time, told the girls, “Sorry guys, but I gotta go. The play’s starting soon.”

“Have fun,” Momo told him. “Wanna meet up after the play?”

“Sounds good to me!” Ryosuke then ran down the hallway to get into position for the start of the play. “See you guys later!”

“I gotta go, too,” Ai added as she turned away from them. “I volunteered to help backstage. Do you guys mind if I tag along after the play?”

Momo smiled and told her, “Why not? More people wouldn’t hurt. Besides, we don’t have school tomorrow, so we can stay up as late as we want.”

“Got it. I’ll see you guys later.”