Time Table

May 14, 2024

“So you two need help with making music,” Ai said to Ryosuke and Momo as the two of them talked to her at school. “And you think I’d be the best fit since you want to make the same kind of music I listen to?”

“That’s the idea,” Momo replied. “Besides the drums, are there any other instruments you play?”

“Not really, I’m afraid,” Ai shrugged. “I can sing, but it sounds like you guys have that covered already. My question is, do you guys even have songs you want to do?”

“Not really,” Ryosuke admitted. “But we have ideas.”

“Well…” Ai then pulled out a notebook from her bookbag and opened it up. “I actually do some songwriting of my own. This notebook allows me to not only write lyrics, but even write down musical notation.”

Amazed by her abilities, Momo replied, “You can read and write sheet music? That’s so cool!”

“You can’t?”

“Nope. I just sing and play by ear.”

“I can read it to an extent,” Ryosuke added. “But that’s largely due to piano lessons I took when I was younger.”

“Not everyone can,” Ai assured them. “Hell, not even every musician can. One of my favorite drummers in the world never mastered the art of reading and writing sheet music.”

“Which one is that?”

“Phil Collins. He and Neil Peart are my favorite foreign drummers. In fact, neither of them perfected it, although Neil-sensei knew a little more than Phil-sensei did.”

“Neil-sensei and Phil-sensei,” Ryosuke commented. “You must really respect them if you call them that. Where is Neil Peart from?”

“The band Rush,” she explained. “Sadly, he passed away four years ago. Rush is a band from Canada that also made progressive rock, but they broke up after he died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Momo replied, feeling bad for Ai since she could tell from her tone of voice that Neil Peart’s death had hit her pretty hard in the past. “How old were you when he passed?”

“I wasn’t even thirteen yet, and it felt like a gut punch.”

“Damn, that sucks.”

Ai nodded in agreement. Moving on to focus back on forming a band, she asked Momo, “So moving on, you need me to drum for you?”

“Yeah, are you in?”

“Well… I mean… I want to practice with you guys before anything else…”

Ryosuke, pulling out his phone, then said to the girls, “I can show you guys my skills on the piano if you’re not fully convinced.” He opened up the photos app on his phone and scrolled to a video of him playing the piano that had been shot after a rehearsal for a play. “One of my friends recorded me playing the piano at school a few weeks ago after a rehearsal.”

As he hit play and the video began, Momo asked him, “What song are you playing?”

“It’s a Mr. Violet Tangerine song. Do you recognize it now?”

“Oh, now I hear it…”

“Yep,” agreed Ai. “That’s pretty good, actually. You said you play on the keyboard, too?”

“Yeah,” Ryosuke replied. “I’m fairly good at playing a synthesizer. I just don’t get many opportunities to play a really good one since regular pianos and basic keyboards are more common in the school.”

“Well, looks like we got a keyboardist. Now all we need is someone to play guitar and someone to play bass.”

“I know a guitarist,” Momo replied. “I could convince Sadako-chan to do it. She’s been itching to stick it to our company for rejecting her guitar-playing for A TO Z SIX songs. I just don’t know a bassist.”

“I’ll go looking,” Ai volunteered. “It would be a bit of a long shot to find one in the General Education Program instead of the Performing Arts Program, though.”

“I’ll look in our program,” Ryosuke also offered.

“Excellent,” Momo cheerfully replied. “I guess all we need now is a name… Um… Any ideas?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Ai replied. “Let’s focus on actually making a complete band first. There’s not a whole lot we can do if it’s just a vocalist, a keyboardist, and a drummer, especially if we’re gonna do progressive rock.”

…

Ai was in her classroom in the General Education Program wing of the school, writing down notes her history teacher had put up on the chalkboard behind him. As she finished writing them down, the bell rang, announcing the end of the class. The teacher told the class, “Remember that we have a test this coming Friday. Study and prepare if you want to succeed.”

With the teacher leaving, the students in the classroom all began to chit-chat among themselves as they waited for the next teacher to arrive. Ai closed her school notebook and sighed. “How the Hell am I gonna find a bassist here? Sakamoto-kun is bound to have a lot better luck than me. It’s not like one is just gonna walk right through the door.”

Right after that exact moment, Masato walked in, visiting Ai’s class once again. He turned to Ai, who he looked at first, and asked her, “Let me guess, did I miss Yamada-sensei again?”

“Yep,” she replied with a chuckle. “You really do have shitty luck with trying to find her.”

“Damn it. Well, at least it’s not anything important this time. Anyway, what’s new with you, Inuyama-san?”

“I got roped into forming a band, but we need a guitarist and a bassist. I mean, maybe saying I got roped into it isn’t the right word, since I’m genuinely interested, but you know what I mean. Anyway, right now, we only have me, a vocalist, and a keyboardist. Do you know anyone who could do either of the roles we need?”

That question immediately lit something inside Masato up, because his eyes immediately widened. “A bassist, you say?!”

“Yeah. Do you know one?”

“Well of course I know one. You’re looking at one.”

Ai was surprised. “No way, really?”

“Yeah. I could do it. What kind of music are you guys looking into doing?”

“Well, it’s progressive rock. You know, like Genesis, Yes, Flower Travelin’ Band, Rush, Hirasawa Susumu, stuff like that.”

That answer seemed to intimidate Masato. “That, huh? Well, um… I don’t know… I mean, that stuff is kinda complicated. I’m more used to just regular rock music, you know.”

Ai nodded, understanding his concern. “I know it sounds complex, but trust me, it’s not too bad. Give it some thought and come back to me if you want.”

…

May 16, 2024

In a music practice room within the Performing Arts Program section of the school, Momo, Ai, and Ryosuke were getting ready to practice on their respective instruments. Additionally, they were also waiting for Masato, who Ai had invited. Momo asked him, “So what time is Ushiyama-kun supposed to be here?”

“He should be here by now,” Ai replied as she got herself seated behind a rather basic drum kit. She turned to Ryosuke and asked him, “So what do you think of that song I wrote?”

“The lyrics are certainly interesting,” he replied as he read a sheet of lyrics that Ai had penned. “The Tragic Tale Of The Green Man, huh?”

“Yep. The story is exactly as the title says. It’s about a man with green skin who gets treated like shit by everyone else.” Momo looked at Ai with a confused expression on her face, somewhat weirded out by what she had written. Ai replied by saying to her, “…What?”

“That’s just… Such a weird song idea,” Momo replied.

“And the story of The Musical Box or Home By The Sea or the entirety of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway isn’t?”

Ai’s use of Genesis songs, and one of their entire albums, that had unusual themes was enough to make Momo admit, “Okay, that’s fair.”

Ai then asked Ryosuke, “By the way, you said you had a few song ideas already, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied as he walked over to his bookbag and pulled out a small notebook. “I thought some of my ideas were a bit weird, but seeing that Green Man song of your’s gives me a lot more confidence that they’re not so weird after all. Wanna read them?”

“Sure,” Ai replied as she took the notebook from him.

As Ai read the notebook, Momo pulled out her flute from her bag and told Ryosuke, “I haven’t had time to play this properly for a few months since I’ve been busy, so I may be a bit rusty. I’ll just play something simple.” She then took a deep breath and began playing an improvised tune on the flute. What she thought of as a simple tune was actually a bit more complicated than what Ryosuke was expecting. As she continued to play, he continued to watch intently, entranced by her skills. Finally, when she stopped, she asked him, “So, how was that?”

“That was something simple? No fucking way.”

“To me, it’s pretty simple. Wanna give it a try?”

Ryosuke looked at the flute that Momo offered to him and then half-heartedly took it, remarking, “Cover your ears if you don’t wanna go deaf.”

“Come on, I’m sure you won’t be that ba-“ Ryosuke then began to play, or rather he blew into the embouchure hole, because what he did could only barely be described as playing the flute. After about fifteen seconds of some truly awful flute-playing, Momo grabbed the flute and told him, “Yeah, that’s enough. Stick with the keyboards, Ryosuke-kun.”

“I warned you.”

Ai then looked up from the notebook in amazement and asked Ryosuke, “Dude, how long did it take you to write this?”

“Over the course of a weekend and then a few days after that,” he replied. “I wrote it during downtime while I was in the play or shooting that candy commercial. What’s up?”

“You have, like, an entire EP written out already, at least lyrically. All these songs have a theme, too.”

Momo asked her, “What’s the theme?”

“It’s all about theater and stage acting. With some minor tweaks, this could all tell an interconnected story, in fact.”

“That was the idea,” Ryosuke explained. “Well, kinda. It didn’t start that way, but it wound up being like that.”

Then, all three of them heard a knock at the door. On the other side was in fact Masato, who said to them, “It’s me, Ushiyama. Are you guys in here?”

“Yeah, come in,” Ai replied to him.

As Masato walked in, the others noticed he had a guitar case with him. He told them, "Sorry I’m late. I had to run back to my house to get my bass.”

“It’s alright,” Momo assured him. “You haven’t missed too much. Ryosuke-kun apparently wrote the lyrics to a bunch of songs, and Ai-chan gave us a song of her own she fully wrote out.”

“Interesting.” Masato then pulled out his bass, a red and white instrument, and looked around for a place to plug it in. “Is there a speaker here anywhere?”

“I found a small one here,” Ryosuke replied as he walked over and grabbed one, walking it over to Masato. “It’s not much, but it should be enough for you.”

“I can make this work.”

As Masato got his bass ready, Ai began to play a slow beat on the drums. What got the attention of Ryosuke, Masato, and Momo was that this was not in a regular 4/4 time signature at all. Instead, Ai was initially playing in 7/4, but after about four measures, she switched to 4/4 effortlessly. Momo counted the beats with her fingers, and when she counted seven and had to start over, she said to the others, “That’s in 7/4.”

“Hang on,” then said Ryosuke as Ai switched time signatures. “Did she just switch to 4/4?”

“She did,” Masato nodded.

Then, Ai stopped and looked up at the rest of the nascent band. “I played a little bit of Subdivisions by Rush on the drums. It switches from 7/4 to 4/4 quite a bit throughout the song.”

Masato replied to her, “Subdivisions by Rush… How does it go on bass?”

“Hang on,” Ai then said as she pulled out her phone and pulled up the song. “Can you pick it up if you listen in?”

“Yeah, I should be able to.” When Ai began playing the song, Masato remarked, “This seems really simple on the bass. When you said you guys wanted to do progressive rock, I thought it would be more complicated than this.”

“It can be, but not every song in this genre requires you to be a god on the bass.”

Masato then jumped in, beginning to play the bass based on what he heard in the song, guessing right most of the time but occasionally hitting bum notes since he had pretty much never heard of the song or anything from Rush before. “If I fuck up, I’m sorry. I haven’t heard this song before.”

“Honestly,” Momo replied to him as he kept playing. “You’re doing fine.”

“Screw it,” Ai then said. “I gotta join in on this.” She then sat back down and began to play the drums to the song, clearly having fun with it given she smiled as she went about her work, albeit being way more accurate to the song than Masato was since she had played it on the drums several times before.

Momo and Ryosuke just looked on in awe. Despite Masato having never heard the song before and Ai having played it many times, the two had managed to play together rather cohesively. “Wow,” the latter said to the former. “I feel outclassed, honestly.”

“And to think,” Momo pointed out. “These two are General Education students. They’re not even Performing Arts ones like us.” Ai even began to sing along to the song as she drummed, singing quietly under her breath as the song entered its second chorus, prompting Momo to gasp, “And she’s singing along?!”

After the guitar solo and the third and final chorus, the song came to an energetic end. Ai sang the last line rather loudly, ensuring that everyone could hear her. With one last breakdown on the drums, Subdivisions came to an end, and Ai looked around at the shocked faces of the other three, asking them, “…What?”

Masato asked her in shock, “How long have you been playing drums, Inuyama-san?!”

“Let’s see… I think I was like five years old…?”

The other three all said in unison, “FIVE YEARS OLD?!”

“I think so,” Ai shrugged. “I’ve been playing for so long that I don’t recall exactly when I picked up drum sticks for the first time and began hitting things.”

Momo then asked, her floor to the jaw at this point, “And you can sing, too?!”

“I don’t know if I’m really a good singer, to be honest. Besides, I can’t sing too well if I drum at the same time.”

“Dude,” Ryosuke assured her. “You sound just fine, Inuyama-san. Can you speak English, too? I mean, you just sang in it.”

“I know enough to write songs. I’ve always gotten really high grades in English class. Listening to a lot of Western musicians helps, especially when the songs I like to listen to are so wordy and complex.”

“Honestly,” Momo chuckled. “You could be the lead singer if you wanted to.”

“Nah, nah, nah,” Ai shook her head. “I’m not much of a singer. I’m a drummer before anything else. Besides, I think your voice is much more beautiful than mine, Takahara-san.”

Momo blushed upon hearing this compliment. “Oh, uh… Thank you, Ai-chan. Also, um… Just use my first name like I said before, okay?”

“Ah, right, my bad, Momo.”

“So I guess that settles it for now,” Ryosuke then concluded. “This band is officially gonna be a thing. We got ourselves a bassist. Now all we need is a name and a guitarist.”

While the nascent band all continued to talk among themselves, a student happened to walk by the room as he had his phone out to talk to his girlfriend. He then took a selfie, but he did so while he had his back turned to the door to the room, allowing the photo to capture Momo standing next to Ryosuke through the glass. Not thinking about what he had captured, he then sent the photo to his girlfriend.

…

Sadako was strumming her guitar in her dorm room, using a pair of headphones so she could hear herself play without disturbing her roommate or anyone else around her and the room. As she played a few chords in a rhythm, her roommate, Asuka, was reviewing a contract for a photoshoot she had planned to do during the upcoming weekend. “Alright, let’s see… Sign here, sign here…”

Then, Sadako stopped playing and put her headphones down. She turned to Asuka and asked her, “Hey, Fukami-san.”

“Yeah?”

“If one of your bosses told you you sucked at photography, how would you react?”

Confused by the question, Asuka replied, “If I sucked at photography… I mean, I have a camera, but I don’t do too much of my own photography, Sadako-chan. If my manager told me I was bad at it, I’d be pissed, but it’s not a big part of my career.”

“Well… I got told that about my guitar playing. I wanted to play some guitar of my own on A TO Z SIX’s songs, but I got told no. Time Clock Records said they wanted their own session musicians working on their idols’s songs only, and not the idols themselves. What they said still hurts.” She then took her guitar off and laid it down on her bed, turning around to tell Asuka, “I just wanted to make myself more useful. I do a lot already with singing and dancing for the group, but I wanted to do more. I need to do more. I can’t be an idol forever, after all, and music is something I want to do for the rest of my life.”

“Who told you you sucked?”

“Oma Masaru. He’s the A&R Executive of Time Clock Records.”

Confused, Asuka asked her, “What’s an A&R Executive?”

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting I don’t always talk to people who are in the know about the music industry. A&R stands for Artists and Repertoire. Oma-san’s job is to find new talent to bring into the company and develop them as he sees fit to sell records and make the company money. Admittedly, even though he’s a dick, he’s pretty good at his job when it comes to sales. I mean, just look at how well A TO Z SIX is doing. I feel like we could get a number one song on the charts with this next EP. We almost did last year.”

“I remember you being so pissed that one song you guys did got held off the number one spot,” Asuka laughed. “You ranted about it for days.”

“I’m still fucking salty we got screwed out of that number one spot. Don’t even start. Still, it went on to be our third number two, so that’s still a sign we’re making bank for the company.” Clearing her throat, she got back to the main point with, “Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, Oma-san shot down my guitar playing and barely gave it a chance. At least our group’s actual manager, Tomoe-san, actually sat down and listened to me play a few of our songs on guitar. I’ll give him all the credit in the world for that.”

“Sounds like you got screwed.”

“I know I got screwed, Fukami-san.” She then took a deep breath to clear her mind. “One day, I swear, I’m gonna be able to show the world I don’t just sing and dance, and I’ll prove that prick wrong. I’m not saying that singing and dancing on stage is easy. I’ve been doing it for four years with A TO Z SIX. I know how hard that shit can be. All I’m saying is that I want to be able to do more than that.”

…

Later that day, Momo and Ryosuke were walking around the neighborhood that surrounded the school, talking among themselves about how they would proceed from here. Momo disguised herself as best as she could with a pair of sunglasses and a hat, knowing that paparazzi photographing her with a boy would not be a good look. “I was actually thinking of names,” Momo said to him.

“A name, huh? What did you have in mind?”

“This is gonna sound kinda weird, but does the name Sweet Juliet sound good?”

Confused, Ryosuke asked her, “Sweet Juliet? Why?”

“Well, the Juliet part comes from you kinda,” she shrugged. “You’re a stage actor, and Romeo and Juliet is a well-known play.”

“And one I’ve done before,” Ryosuke pointed out. “That was our second play of the year in my first year at Maruyama.”

“Exactly. I think it’s a nice reference to you.”

“That’s cool and all, but what about the other half of that name?”

Momo paused to think about it. After waiting a few seconds, she chuckled and remarked, “To be honest, it just sounds cool, and I’m sure there’s a band or idol group already called Juliet out there, so adding another word could help us avoid copyright issues.”

Ryosuke sighed, “Well, it’s not the weirdest band name out there, especially from Japan.”

Unbeknownst to them, as the two of them shared a laugh, the same girlfriend of the boy who was sent a selfie of him from before had seen them together, and took a photo of them with her camera phone from a distance. “How interesting,” this stalker girl said to herself as she studied the photo she took. “Some people aren’t gonna like this.”