The Last test

“Ichichi, I need your help.”

Ichiro dropped his sandwich, sitting bolt upright, giving Hikari all of his attention. “What is it?”

She looked back and forth before leaning in, continuing in a low whisper. “I need you to help me cheat on the music test.”

“This afternoon? …Done,” he agreed. “Alternatively, you could just sing the song.”

“I’ve been trying,” she grumbled. “You know I just can’t sing it well enough. And passing our first year of high school depends on demonstrating that.”

Ichiro nodded; it wasn’t surprising, given that Hikari had always been incapable of mastering the magic of song, despite her otherwise pleasant voice. “Plan A?”

She shook her head. “Plan B,” she told him.

“That’s a bit harder, Hikarin,” he teased. “Think it will work?”

“As long as you can see it through your phone, the effect should be the same. Otonashi-sensei uses the same test every year; I think it’s standard or something,” she mused.

“I won’t have an instrument.”

“What!?” she exclaimed before quieting down as eyes drifted toward them. “Well, can you just play a recording? Or sing it without an instrument?”

Ichiro shook his head. “You know that pretty much never works and I’m not that good. I’ll have to go with plan A, otherwise it’s a tricky song to sing a cappella.”

“‘Tricky song’?” Kobayashi Hiroto repeated, coming up from behind them. “Talking about the test this afternoon? You’re not planning anything, are you?”

Ichiro turned around, looking up at his classmate. It forced him to crane his neck, the similar aged boy already approaching two metres, dwarfing a decent number of the teachers. “Something like that,” he answered, not giving any specifics. “Just talking about how to pass it, not that you’d ever have a problem.”

“Because I study and practise,” Kobayashi lectured.

“Please, Kobayasu,” Hikari turned to him, “you know I haven’t really been able to sing. They barely let me out of middle school after flubbing it twice, but I can’t fail this test!”

“Hmm… you two are going to try and cheat, aren’t you?” he accused. “I really can’t permit that…”

“Actually, we kinda need your help,” Hikari further pleaded.

“…So you want me to not only be complicit in your cheating, but also to assist?” he asked, gobsmacked at the audacity. “Ok, fine, but just this once, and only because the school refuses to accommodate… whatever you have going on.” He waved his hand in Hikari’s general direction and she just grinned back. There was resignation in his begrudging agreement, as if he had already decided before which way he would fall if pulled.

“Great.” Ichiro patted his arm, welcoming him aboard. “I just need to go find an instrument so I can perform the joining part of the song of synchronization.”

Kobayashi raised an eyebrow. “Why not just sing without an instrument? Chant it? You can just do that.”

“You can do that,” Ichiro mumbled. “I cannot.”

“Ok… do you need another instrument later?”

“Well, I might be able to sing the second half on my own,” Ichiro tacked on, “but I’ll need you to cue me perfectly.”

“Now that feels impossible,” Kobayashi objected.

“Please, Kobayasu,” Hikari begged.

“Yeah, please, Kobayasu,” Ichiro echoed.

Kobayashi shot him a glare that could evaporate water. “Watch it. But fine. Just don’t screw this up, and I was never involved.”

— — —

“Alright, settle down,” the music teacher called as the class finished taking their seats in the room.

“Now, everyone, remember your Ki-Koe-Kyoku — spirit, voice, and melody,” Otonashi-sensei instructed the class. “Do we have any volunteers to go first?”

Ichiro counted on this and immediately raised his hand, the only one. A nervous eye from Hikari glanced over at Ichiro, and he flashed the prepared white baseball in his jacket pocket, ready for the swap.

“Ah, Yamada-san,” the teacher acknowledged him, “please, come over here.” She waited as her eager pupil came up, positioning himself at the piano they were all to play. It was simple chords, mostly, with a few notes on the right to give a melody his voice would follow. “As specified, each student will sing the song of levitation to the god of displacement.”

It was yellow.

Every time she had done this test, for the past ten years at least, she had used a white baseball. It was almost a joke to get ready for the test the second she brought out that same white ball.

Ichiro opened his mouth to ask but thought better of it and just swallowed, waiting. He could try to switch it before but Otonashi-sensei’s hawk-like gaze didn’t leave him. “Ahem,” he cleared his throat before beginning.

“Freya forlow dae,
Atsunashi mae,”

His fingers moved across the keys with mediocre practise. In front of him, the ball shook, a force unnatural pulling it into a steady accent.

“Ira da no lashinastu,
Ke ro samedae,”

The ball rose higher, bringing itself to eye level. He glared at it, pursing his lips in the second he got to breathe. The ball shook and he quickly resumed.

“Galathru hagith dula,
Japh la fa mina,”

The ball rose higher, spinning slightly, its axis of rotation slowly shifting as if the deity could not decide how to let it orbit. Ichiro’s mouth was drying, his memory strained, and his attention split between what he was doing and what he had to get done. A finger slipped, the major chord minor, dissonant with the melody. The ball wabbled in its place, shaking from side to side. The song was almost at its end. He could repeat the final lines to prolong it but it was expected to forgo that and simply finish with the last stanza.

“Eentu ra now impota,
Eh hagro-ko—”

CRASH!

His right hand echoed his left in butchering the melody, discord poisoning the tune. He strained his vocal cords, croaking out the last sound in pubescent falsetto. And the ball, once floating in its peaceful rotation, hurled itself out of the window.

Otanashi-sensei jumped back, a hand over her mouth. A whistling came from the ball as it fell two stories before thudding on the grass. The teacher turned back to the test taker. “Si— Fifty-five,” she told him, condemning him with the grade. “And now I’m out of a ball.”

Ichiro vowed to make Hikari get lunch for the rest of the school year. “Um, sensei?” He waited a second, hoping not to make it look too obvious before slowly pulling out the ball. “This was left over from the baseball practice…”

The teacher narrowed her eyes at him. “Sixty. Set it on the piano,” she ordered him before turning back to the rest of the class. “Who’s next?”

“Um, sensei?” He half raised his hand as if she couldn’t see him there when she turned.

“What?”

“Can I use the washroom?”

She just nodded her head to the door before looking back at the couple of hands volunteering, likely confident they could do better than their poorly performing peers.

Ichiro wasted no time, speed walking down the hall to the closest washroom. The door flew open under his hand and he quickly tapped each stall door, checking the washroom was empty before locking himself in the last one, safe and alone. He quickly opened LINE, finding his past texts with Kobayashi. [Ready, Kobayasu?] he sent.

A second passed. [Die] then [Ready. She’s next. 30 seconds.]

[On it 👍👍] He pulled the ping pong ball from his other pocket. “15… 14… 13…” he counted down. “2… 1…

“Freela falore,
Imasu demore,”

The song began soft and slow, and it was a small grace that the god of synchronicity seemed to enjoy a cappella song.

“Me adorne forlai,
Ipa fro luma…”

He continued singing the song of synchronicity in the bathroom stall. The ping pong ball rose in his hand, pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and he felt a resistance to the motion, like pulling the ping pong ball through molasses. Singing the first three lines of the song while holding two objects would bind them. And now, while singing the rest, moving one linked object would move the other in the same way.

[Good, keep going] he saw pop up on his phone in his other hand. He reached the end of the song and repeated the last pair of lines, moving the smaller ball up and down slightly, imitating a decent wavering in the air.

[Stop!]

He immediately cut the song and felt the sluggishness that turned the air around the ball into honey evaporate into the aether. The baseball would surely fall back onto the piano, either staying in place or rolling a bit. Now he just had to walk back to the class and pretend like nothing happened.

[Wait! Hold on!]

“What!?” he thought, confused as the message halted him from standing up off of the toilet. “What do you mean!?”

[What do you mean!?]

Ichiro waited a moment, then [Again! Now!]. He spared a precious second to send a quick [🙃] before again continuing the song.

“Freela falore—”

THUD!

The washroom door gave a distinct noise as it hit the wall. I locked that! Ichiro thought before second guessing if he had remembered to actually do that. The ping pong ball in his hand moved more easily as his distracted hand fell, the effect of the song falling off.

“No, uh, Imasu demore…” he continued, dropping his voice but still forced to sing.

“...Is someone singing?”

Ichiro knew that voice: another student from his class. He sent a quick [??!?] with his free hand while still holding the ball up. He couldn’t stop before he got the signal, cringing as footsteps stopped right outside of his stall. “Hello?”

“Me adorne forlai,
Ipa fro luma…”

He kept going, holding the ball up as it felt more like he was moving it through water rather than molasses. Kobayashi, whatever’s going on, cut it out already! he prayed.

His phone answered. [Stop!], [All good now] popped up in immediate succession.

Ichiro almost dropped the ping pong ball as it could move solely under gravity’s influence. He quickly flushed the toilet and stood, giving a couple seconds to pretend that he was pulling up his pants while he merely reconcealed his phone and the ball back in his pockets.

A familiar face still greeted him as soon as he opened the door. “Yamada-kun… were you singing in there?” his classmate asked.

“Oh, Iincho, uh, yeah…” he answered, his voice shaking, hoping the song hadn’t been recognized. “I was just frustrated at having done poorly like that on the test.”

The class president narrowed his eyes at him as he quickly washed his hands. Silence, broken only by the running water, hung in the air until the class president replied. “Well, keep practising; I’m sure you’ll do better next time.”

“Yep, will do, thanks,” Ichiro quickly said before wiping his hands on his pants and rushing out the door.