Turn It On Again

June 8, 2024

Around eight-thirty in the morning, Ai was drumming a steady 4/4 triplet beat in one of the live rooms at Time Clock Records as she finished up the drum parts of one of the songs on The Theatre Tapes. With a few clashes of the cymbals, she finished the song and asked Ryosuke and the engineer working with them, “I think that one was good enough. How about you guys?”

“I don’t know about that ending,” Ryosuke replied to her from the other side of the glass. “It seems a little too high-key for Backstage. Try toning it down a bit.”

“Toning it down?” Ai was confused. “I don’t think it needs to be toned down. I think that ending was fine for the song given its placement in the story.”

“All I’m saying is that I think the ending needs to be more subdued on the drums, Ai-san.”

Feeling a bit frustrated, Ai demonstrated what she believed to be a more subdued ending to the song. When she was finished, she asked Ryosuke, “Fine then, how about that?”

“That’s better.”

Ai retorted in a slightly raised voice, “I think it sounds like shit.”

“Do it like that anyway.”

“Hey, hey,” said the engineer working with them. “Calm down, you two. If you want this EP to be released on time and have time to rehearse for next week’s shows, you can’t fight amongst yourselves. Work it out now.”

Ryosuke and Ai looked at each other through the glass and sighed together, the latter admitting defeat. “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll do a run-through like that. Can I do the rest of the track like I did it before besides that part?”

“Yeah,” the former replied to her before he yawned. “Man, we were out super late last night.”

“I didn’t fall asleep until almost two in the morning, and then I woke up at seven to come here and start working on songs. I’m gonna be sleeping good tonight when we’re finished, that’s for damn sure.”

“You were here before any of us, after all. I didn’t wake up until around seven-thirty.”

“Eh, whatever. I just wanted to get this shit over with so we had more time to rehearse. Anyway, count me in.”

The engineer then pressed a button to begin a countdown in the booth. As with before, Ai did not play with a click track, keeping her own drumming in rhythm by herself. As she continued to play, she focused solely on the song, everything else around her melting away. Although the song was almost exactly five minutes long, it felt so much shorter for her once she zeroed in on her work.

As she played, a man walked into the control room by the name of Jin Tsumiki. Jin had recently been assigned to be the band’s producer by Time Clock Records after the engineers had done the initial production work themselves on a temporary basis. Jin had worked with many groups and solo artists before, and had been chosen because he had primarily worked with the few actual bands signed to Time Clock Records rather than their idol groups most of the time. He asked the engineer, “How are things going in here?”

“She’s all set,” he replied to him. “With this take, the drums for this song will be finished.”

“Good, good,” he replied as he sat down next to Ryosuke. “You kids do some good work, I’d say.”

“Thank you,” Ryosuke replied to Jin. “You know, when they said Time Clock was going to be putting out prog rock, I couldn’t believe it. Getting to produce a band like this is a dream come true.” As a fan of much of the same kind of music Ai liked, he found working with the young band very exciting. “I’m shocked they didn’t ask me to produce for you guys sooner.”

“We held the fort down,” the engineer replied to him. “This was kinda sudden, after all.”

“That’s true,” Jin admitted. When Ai finished up the drums for the song, she looked up at the people watching her from the control room, to which Jin smiled and gave her a thumbs-up, telling her, “You sound great!”

Ai assured him with a hand wave, “Nah, nah, it’s fine. It’s nothing special, really.”

Ryosuke sighed and chuckled, “There she goes again, selling herself short…”

“Humility isn’t a bad thing,” Jin pointed out. “Not at all.”

…

Around noon, everyone was taking a lunch break after having spent the last several hours working nonstop to finish up all the songs on The Theater Tapes. Additionally, they also were doing their homework from school at the same time. As Momo finished a math problem on her sheet, she sipped from a can of soda before looking over at Ai’s sheet and telling her, “Hang on, that doesn’t look right.”

“Huh?”

“I think you messed up by carrying the three instead of the four there.”

Ai then looked at the math problem Momo was referencing and realized her mistake. “God damn it, I sure did. Now I gotta redo it all.” She then furiously erased all of her work for the problem and began to redo it from scratch. “And I was so close to finishing it, too…”

“So,” Ryosuke then asked the group as he finished writing a short answer to a question on his history homework. “What’s our progress so far?”

“Metal Machine is done,” Momo replied as she pulled out a small notepad with a list of songs they were working on, with various notes scribbled all around the pages she had written on to indicate the progress they had made as a band. “Same with You Always Smile, The Premiere, and Exit Stage Left. Backstage and that still unnamed opening track should be finished by the end of either today or Sunday. So far, The Tragic Tale of the Green Man just needs work on its guitar track and some flute parts I’m gonna do after lunch, we finally have a name for a song me and Sadako-chan wrote that we’re calling Thank You, My Love, and we’re still figuring out lyrics for an instrumental Ai-chan wrote. Oh, and Masato-kun has a bass line he came up with that me and Ai-chan want to incorporate into a new song.”

“I have a name for the unnamed intro track now,” Ryosuke then told her. “Since it’s about meeting someone, I was thinking we could just call it I See You At The Play.”

“That works,” Momo replied before turning to the rest of the band. “Anyone got any objections to that title?”

“Nope,” replied Masato.

“Nuh-uh,” replied Ai.

“None from me,” finally replied Sadako.

“Good, I See You At The Play it is.” Momo adjusted her notes to accommodate the song title choice. “Right now, I’d say we should focus on the stuff from The Theatre Tapes. We can save the songs for our first actual album for later, especially since I don’t see us releasing it until December of this year at the absolute earliest. Besides, I’ve been talking with management, and they seem dead set on us opening for A TO Z SIX for the upcoming Summer 2024 Tour we’re doing.”

Sadako was surprised. “They’re gonna mix Sweet Juliet in with A TO Z SIX that much?”

“I was just as surprised as you. I thought for sure that our paths wouldn’t cross too much on stage given we have three members who aren’t idols, two of whom are boys, but apparently, they really want us to appear together with our idol group. I mean, I get it, since we share two members, but I’m still worried about how certain people will react.”

Ryosuke heard this comment and darted his eyes away from her, feeling bad about potentially putting Momo at risk. “I, um…”

“No,” Momo then told him. “Don’t even say it.”

“…What?”

“Don’t even tell me that you feel guilty,” she then clarified before turning to Masato. “That goes for you, too. It’s not your fault some people are so delusional they think you’re stealing me and Sadako-chan from them. Please, don’t let them impact the bond we have. I know we haven’t been together as a band for long, but I really enjoy working with you guys. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t reinvigorate my interest in music, and I don’t want it taken away by some whackjobs.”

Ai nodded. “She’s right. You know… Stuff like this is why I never put any thought into being an idol, even with my musical talents. I was always confident just using them on the side and getting a normal job, but now… Frankly, there’s no way I could turn back now.”

“You know,” Masato then asked her. “I was always curious. Why didn’t you go for the Performing Arts Program at Maruyama High School? You certainly have the talent for it, Ai-san.”

“I was wondering the same,” Sadako then said. “You seem like a perfect fit for it.”

“Because, like I said,” Ai explained. “I thought I was content with keeping my talents mostly to myself. Why do you think I kept my songwriting hidden until now? I thought drumming would be a nice fun thing to do on the weekends or when I needed to blow off some steam while I worked a normal office job somewhere before taking my expected leave of absence or outright retirement upon being a mother. You know, the traditional female experience in this country.”

“You’re way too fucking talented to do that,” Momo told her. “That’s the first thing.”

“Agreed,” Ryosuke nodded. “You’re a beast on the drums, Ai-san, and your voice is pretty good, too.”

“Hell,” Momo then joked. “God forbid if I ever leave the band or die, I’ll gladly leave my singing parts to you. It’ll be like Genesis’s history repeating itself with us.”

Ai laughed, finding Momo’s joke about Phil Collins taking over for Peter Gabriel in Genesis funny. “Nah, nah, I’m not that good.”

“You sound great on Metal Machine,” Sadako said to her. “Don’t sell yourself short. You know, if you ever did want to become an idol, you’d easily make it. You definitely got the voice and the stamina to dance.”

“Maybe, but I find the idol life a bit too restrictive.” Ai then sighed and explained further, “Look, I’m not saying that it’s all bad. I can tell you and Momo have a lot of fun with it, but frankly, I’d rather not deal with management policing my every move. If I want to drink, smoke, or fuck somebody while I’m out on the road, I’d like to do that without being bitched at as long as I’m not hurting anyone. If I do hurt someone, feel free to bitch at me all you want, but if I’m not, I’d rather not get in trouble because some delusional guy who probably barely leaves his shitty apartment thinks we’re secretly a couple and I’m dropping him subtle hints.”

Momo nodded. “Admittedly, there are times where management reins us in. For example, I told Ryosuke-kun this, but I had a creep try to grab me after a concert recently, and I called him out for it and told him to get the Hell out. Although he was placed on our banlist, I also got a talking to for reacting the way I did.”

“See? Now that’s the kind of shit I wouldn’t tolerate. I don’t know how you two do it.”

“Well, we manage,” Sadako shrugged before finishing her food and downing the last of her soda. “Okay, I’m all set to go. I finished my homework, so I can go back into the booth and keep laying down guitar parts.”

“See you in there,” Masato said to her as she left.

“When I’m done with this history homework,” Ryosuke said to the group. “I’ll head back in, too.”

…

In a live room, the whole band was playing a full instrumental run-through of The Premiere and Exit Stage Left. They had just gotten to the keyboard solo of The Premiere, which featured Ryosuke playing synthesizer while Momo backed him up on the piano. The solo would last for about a minute and play in a time signature of 13/8, while the rest of the song around it was at a slower tempo and a more normal time signature of 4/4. Following the end of the solo, it transitioned to a shorter half-minute guitar solo by Sadako before the song began to slow down, at which point it switched to Exit Stage Left, which played in 4/4 for its entirety and represented the end of the play featured in the story of The Theatre Tapes.

During a brief interlude on the flute before what would be a verse of vocals sung by Momo, Sadako put down her electric guitar and picked up an acoustic guitar. As she strummed along, she thought about what had happened last night between Ryosuke and Momo at karaoke, and she shook her head to try to get negative thoughts out of it, all while still playing along like nothing was happening.

There was no denying it anymore. She had feelings for Momo, but she knew that Momo was not only straight, but also into Ryosuke and very much not her. Just as she had thought to herself last night, she wanted to feel happy in the event the two actually did become a couple, but a part of her would feel heartbroken. When Exit Stage Left finally came to an end, it had only been about three and a half minutes, but for her, it felt like forever as a wave of emotions hit her. Still, she let nothing show on the outside, and no one else suspected anything was wrong.

Once the song had concluded, Jin asked the band, “Are you guys satisfied with that take?”

Momo asked him, “Did you notice any mistakes?”

“None from my end,” he replied with a shrug. “Really, it’s up to you.”

“We can do one more,” Ai then spoke up. “A third run-through of the song wouldn’t hurt, and we got the time.”

“Alright,” Momo said as she picked up her flute to begin the song. “Let’s go again.”

“One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,” Ai counted in before the band began to play The Premiere and then Exit Stage Left once more. Sadako once again did her best to hide her emotions as she continued to play the two songs, but she knew that she would need to take a break after this run-through just to collect herself and finally let out some of what she was feeling.

…

After the sessions had ended for the day, Momo and Ryosuke were walking together and had stopped in front of the school so Momo could go back to her dorm. “I thought I’d be dead tired after another whole day of sessions, but I gotta say, I feel fine. Usually, a weekend of sessions in the studio will wipe me out for Sunday evening when I’m with A TO Z SIX. Then again, maybe it’s because I spent less time singing and more time with instruments, or maybe it’s because the music is different… Who knows?”

Ryosuke then suggested, “Or maybe you just like working with us more?”

“Well, it is a new experience for me. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s new that explains it.” Momo then shrugged. “Who knows? All I know is I’m having fun making music for the first time in a while.”

“I just hope our concerts this coming weekend go well. I’ve been practicing my ass off, but I’m still fearful I’m gonna fuck it up in front of hundreds of people.”

“Honestly,” Momo assured him. “Who cares if you flub once or twice? Hitting the wrong key on a piano once in a while is expected. As long as you don’t make it a habit and utterly trash a song, you’ll be fine.” She patted him on the shoulder, telling him, “I got confidence in you.”

Her hand touching him caused him to blush and stutter out, “You, uh, have, um…”

“What’s u-?”

Suddenly, Momo’s foot hit a rock on the sidewalk, causing her to trip, which also took Ryosuke down with him. The two fell onto each other, with Ryosuke hitting the ground and Momo falling on top of him. In pain from hitting the ground, Ryosuke remarked, “Agh, shit! That hurt!” He tried to get up, but when he opened his eyes, he saw Momo lying on top of him and stopped moving.

Momo, for her part, also grew silent despite losing her fake glasses and hat in the fall. Despite the two of them being out in the open, there was no one else around, and it quickly grew almost totally silent, the only sound around them being distant traffic and their breaths. Both of their faces reddened up as tension built up between the young man and young woman. Their eyes were locked in on each other for what was only about half a minute, but felt like hours.

Then, right as it seemed like they were about to get closer to each other, a voice from up ahead called out, “Hey, are you guys alright?! Did you trip and fall?!”

Momo and Ryosuke quickly stood up and brushed themselves off, with the former picking up her glasses and hat as the latter told the woman up ahead, “We’re fine. My friend just tripped and fell, but she managed to land on me.”

“I saw you two lying on the ground and thought someone got hurt,” replied the woman. “I’m glad you two are okay.”

“We’re fine,” Momo assured her. “Thanks for coming over to help us, though.” When the woman walked away, she turned back to Ryosuke and asked him, “So, um… Are you alright?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah…” Momo then took out her student ID and swiped it onto the entrance gate to go into the school. “Uh… I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

“You too…”

The two of them awkwardly walked away from each other, both of them trying to process what had just happened. For a brief moment, it seemed like the two were not only on top of each other, but were about to kiss. The thought of doing so was enough to make Momo bury her face in her hands in embarrassment before she took a deep breath and then continued her walk to the dorms at Maruyama.

…

Shortly after the aforementioned tripping incident with Momo and Ryosuke, Sadako had gotten back to her dorm room, unaware of what had happened. She was by herself, with Asuka going out with some of her friends for the night. She was finally alone and able to let out all the feelings she had pent up throughout the day, if not the entire week. She curled up in her bed and began to cry, the feeling of loss finally hitting her, and it hit hard. “Why… Why do I love you, Momo-senpai? Why do I love someone who can't love me back?!” Memories of the two of them meeting and performing together for the past three and a half years flooded her mind.

Whether it was Momo helping her with her singing when she was new and less confident or Momo comforting her after her attempt to play guitar for A TO Z SIX was brutally shot down by record label executives, Momo had been there for Sadako through thick and thin. For a girl who liked other girls in a romantic way, and of course a sexual way, too, it seemed only natural that she would have fallen in love with her. Even so, she had always felt that Momo could never love her back, and with her recent interactions with Ryosuke, that assumption was all but proven true. Even if Momo was, say, bisexual, she clearly had a thing for him and not for Sadako.

Sadako wiped away her tears as she tried to collect herself emotionally and stop sobbing. She then looked at her phone, which was sitting on the bed near her, and saw that she got a text from someone. She picked it up and saw it was from Momo. ‘hey r u ok u were quiet when u left the studio’

Sadako fought back the tears as she texted her back, ‘its nothing to do w the band’

‘Sadako-chan is something wrong?’

‘I have to ask’

‘what’

‘Do u like Sakamoto-senpai?’

Sadako knew that she was potentially setting up a conflict between her and Momo by asking her such a personal question, but she needed to know the truth for her own peace of mind. Momo, after a while, texted her back, ‘yes’

Seeing that answer, Sadako texted back, ‘how so?’

‘Sadako-chan i think I’m in love with him, u CANNOT tell anyone about this’

‘i wont ur secret is safe with me’

‘hearing him call me beautiful made my heart skip a beat, i love spending time with him, he was the first person i asked to help form Sweet Juliet, I can’t deny it anymore’

‘i understand’

‘I didn’t mean to bombard u w texts Sadako-chan I just need to get this off my chest’

‘I don’t mind at all, u can tell me anything’ Sadako was hurt by the fact that Momo had confirmed what she had thought, but a part of her was comforted by the fact she had received a definite answer. She wiped away more tears from her eyes as she continued to cry, a confusing mixture of emotions now washing over her. Once she got a hold of herself, she texted her, ‘can I tell u a secret too’

What Momo texted her back was something she was not prepared for. ‘r u telling me ur gay?’

Chills ran up and down Sadako’s body as she read those words. Momo had somehow figured out she was gay, or at least had guessed it correctly. She had tried to hide it, but perhaps she had not tried hard enough. Realizing she could not lie to her, at least not about this, she texted back ‘yes I am’

Momo quickly told her, ‘ive had a feeling for a while u were gay, is anyone giving u shit for it?’

‘no I just can’t hide it anymore, that’s why I was so quiet when I left the studio’

‘r u ok with being gay?’

‘how?’

‘well r u’

Sadako, a bit confused, explained through text, ‘whether i accept it or not, im gay, and i can’t change that’

‘have u told anyone else?’

‘no not even my parents know let alone the record label’

‘I won’t say a word, Sadako-chan’

‘thank u’ Sadako sighed as she looked up at the ceiling. She had just admitted to her best friend that she was gay, and said best friend had told her that she was in love with a mutual friend and bandmate of theirs. Whatever happened next, the relationship between Sadako and Momo would never be the same from this point on. The former wiped away her tears and dried her face, telling herself, “One day at a time… At least I know now…”