Walkie-talkie

The knocking of Masaki’s fist on his dad’s office door resounded through the house’s hallway.

“There is something I need to discuss with you, Father”

“Please come in”

Masaki slowly opened the door and entered the room. His dad pointed at the empty chair next to him.

“Sit down, son”

His dad finished whatever he was writing on his PC and then turned his gaze towards Masaki.

“I have a confession to make dad.”

He briefly stopped to think of the best way to explain himself.

“That first band I went to visit, Maid in Melodies - I got back in touch with them.”

“I went to another concert of them and offered them a business card - and they want to work with us”

His dad looked confused.

“I thought you said you wanted to wait before producing a band.”

“Aside from that, you didn’t find them good enough the first time. What made you change your mind?”

Seems like I have a lot more explaining to do…

“To be honest with you Dad - I thought they were amazing from the first time I saw them.”

“I was too nervous to go up to them and over them the business card, so I lied about it”

Masaki stood up and bowed before his dad.

“I am sorry for lying to you Dad - you put in so much effort to find bands for me to go to and I wasted every opportunity. I don’t deserve all the things you did for me.”

His dad gestured for him to sit down again.

“Please Masaki, there is no need for all of this.”

“It’s only natural for you to be nervous on your first scouting gig.”

“Just promise me not to lie to me again - you can always come to me when you struggle with something.”

“I promise”

Masaki responded to his dad.

His dad's eyes tingle - as if he just realized something important.

He adjusted his glasses.

“Does this mean we won out on Taro Shoda?”

Masaki grinned.

“Yes, Dad. I was able to convince them to go with us instead.”

His dad used unusually excited.

“I am so proud of you son!”

I guess beating his old rival is what really matters to him…

Masaki explained to his dad the details he and Ishihara-san discussed during the meeting.

“She organized all these performances by herself? That’s exceptional.”

She really is… great

“I will message the lawyer and have them draw up a final contract.”

“Once she has finished the song’s lyrics and they had some time to practice, I will book you a studio slot in order to record their track.”

“When you got time after school, you can come to the studio and I’ll run you through some of the recording equipment there.”

Masaki nodded.

“Thank you once more, Dad for everything you did for me and all the doors you opened for me. I promise I will share my thoughts with you when I struggle with something.”

X

The red asphalt of the school’s running track radiated back the hot day’s heat. The PE teacher had assigned the boys to run five whole laps around the track. The nerdy Kazuki and Masaki were jogging far behind the rest since neither of them wanted to put in the effort.

Suddenly, Kazuki straightened his back and started catching up with the rest of the boys.

“Hey calm on!”

Masaki yelled to his friend.

“I can’t keep up with that pace.”

His friend turned his head.

“Look at the hill. I can’t look like a lazy fool - like you.”

Next to the athletics track, there was a grassy hill separating the schoolyard from the tracks. A couple of girls lay stretched out upon it - they were sunbathing - enjoying the day's beautiful weather. One of those girls must be Kitamura-san, Masaki figured. He honestly struggled to keep all of them apart.

When Masaki’s gazed at the hill again, he saw the top of a red-haired girl appear on the horizon.

Wait is that?

Akane Ishihara walked up to the other girls and sat down next to them, pushing her knees up against each other.

Masaki quickly looked the other way - he didn’t feel like catching her attention. He sped up his pace in order to catch up and mix himself in the mids of the group of boys.

He put his right foot before his left one - and then stumbled over it.

Masaki tripped and fell down on the red asphalt.

Did she see that?

Was the first thing he thought after falling.

He quickly got up and started running again.

Luckily a scrape on his knee seemed to be the only damage he incurred.

The only physical damage at least, since the first thing he saw when getting up was Akane Ishihara grinning at him.

I made a total fool out of myself.

X

Later that day Masaki was browsing the internet - looking for some inspiration he could borrow for another new demo he was working on. He tried out a production prompt he found online called ‘Genre transformation’. This is where you as a producer take a popular song and transform it into another genre. Masaki tried to work a recent radio hit into something Maid in Melodies could play - but couldn’t get it together.

His search on the internet also proved fruitless. Masaki sighed and opened a chat program in order to find some distraction. One of the members had just shared a demo of a new track they had been working on.

Sunkit: Hey dudes, a little snippet of a new track I’ve been working on.

[Download .mp3 - 3.1mb]

Treefizzle: Wow, the intro sounds amazing! Nice choice of synths, Sunkit.

Pireme2: Agreed! The mixing is on spot!

Masaki downloaded the track and gave it a listen. Halfway through the track, he heard something strange that made him chuckle.

Masking: Wait a minute... Is that a cat in the background?

Sunkit: Oh no! I didn’t notice that! My cat sneaked into the room while I was recording and decided to lend its voice to the track.

Treefizzle: Haha, that’s hilarious! I mean, who needs vocal samples when you have a talented feline artist, right?

Pireme2: Well, it definitely adds a unique touch to your track, Treefizzle. Maybe you should consider starting a new trend: "Meow-step"!

Sunkit: You guys are cracking me up! I should credit my cat as a featured artist now.

While Masaki was thinking of a funny thing to react, he certainly heard his phone buzzing. When he saw the caller's name, his relaxed mood was instantly gone.

“Ishihara, Akane”

His phone screen read.

Maybe she has finished writing the lyrics?

It had been a couple of days since they met at the cafe, so there must have been plenty of time for her to work on it. Even though the two of them met a couple of times now, Masaki couldn’t shake off the strange feeling he got every time he thought about her completely. After all, it was him, a total nerd, talking to one of the school’s popular girls. Masaki failed to describe how he was feeling with words… But it was the right mix of being happy and anxious. Masaki grabbed the phone and accepted the call.

“Tsuchiya Productions, Masaki speaking.”

“Hi Masaki great to hear your voice!”

She started rambling to him immediately, leaving no gap for Masaki to respond.

“So today I was messing about with my computer, I was looking at a video of a girl, and in the background was her computer that had this cool animated background. So I decided to go search the web for it and I saw a video that told me how to install a program called BackgzGX so I typed in the website but it was in Russian so I had to use a translator and after I hit the yellow button it took a long time to download but I finally got it and set the right background.”

“But that wasn’t the problem, after downloading a cool kitten background I accidentally did something weird and now the menubar is at the side of the screen.”

“So what do I do???”

What was the point of telling me that whole story in the first place?

“Can’t you just - drag it to the bottom?”

Masaki responded, with an annoyed tone.

“Wow! Awesome, you are really a computer wizard Masaki!”

Couldn’t she just have googled that, at least that means she fixed it?

“No problem - but you know this is a business-only number, right?”

Akane didn’t respond to anything.

“Have you been working on the song's lyrics?”

“Lyrics??? Yes, I’ve worked on them very hard”

That didn’t sound convincing at all…

“You have started working on them right?”

“Ha.. ha..”

Masaki could hear an uncomfortable laugh coming from the phone.

“I made some doodles in my notebook!”

“Maybe I can make them into a song?”

So she hasn’t done anything yet….

“Please start working on your lyrics and don’t call this number for random things like these.”

“Alright, Masaki-kun!”

“I have to hang up now - I am working on an important task…”

He still had to react to the cat track in the chat. By now - the chat must have been flooded with hundreds of extra messages.

But Ishihara-san interrupted him.

“One more thing!”

“How is your knee? It looked really bad when you fell.”

So she did totally notice him making a fool of himself…

X

After about a week and a half, Masaki’s doorbell rang. Since he was home alone, he decided to go downstairs from his room to answer it. He grabbed the door handle and twisted it. Before him stood a girl with shoulder-length, blueish hair. A hair clip prevented the hair from falling on her face. She was about his age and wore a uniform from a high school he didn’t recognize.

“Hello, what can I do for you?”

Masaki said to the girl standing before the door.

“Hi, are you mister prodew-wer?”

Producer?

Masaki really had to think. The only band he was producing was Akane’s. Wait…

He didn’t recognize her at first, but this must be one of the other girls in Maid in Melodies. The drummer if he remembered correctly. She was looking quite different from how she looked at the concert the other day - not wearing the outfit from before.

“Yes, I am the guy that is producing Maid in Melodies.”

“And you were?”

“The drummer, Chifumi Nagamatsu”

“Nice to meet you, Nagamatsu-san.”

She slowly reached her hand toward him and they exchanged an extended handshake. In contrast to the usual energetic nature of a drummer, she seemed like the type that really took the time to do just about everything.

“What can I do for you?”

The girl looked in his direction and spoke to him.

“We could use your help - I am worried about Ishibawa-san our swinger.”