"Oh, where are my manners?" He turns to face Yui. "My name is Kazuha Miyazaki. And you are?"
"Hello! My name is-"
"Wait! Don't tell me. You're Yui Hirasawa, right? Member of the Sakura High Light Music Club?"
"How did you know?!" Yui looks at him in awe.
"A magician never reveals their secrets." He smirks.
"How did you know?" I ask him.
"You don't listen to me at all, do you? My sister's daughter goes to Sakura High. The last time I visited, I asked her about school. She said to me, and I quote, 'One of the girls in our class got her uniform wet and wore a maid costume instead.' Short hair? Check. Brown eyes? Two yellow hairpins? Check. You fit the bill exactly." I stare at Yui.
"I was protecting Giita!" Yui defends herself.
"Well, I shouldn't be keeping you two much longer." Miyazaki turns around. "Have fun, you two!"
"Goodbye, sir."
"Oh, Y/N," Miyazaki calls out. "Will you be okay? It's not just Taichi's mom I remember from last year's culture festival. Good thing Yuuta was there to help you. The price to pay for selling good teriyaki." He chuckles.
"I'll be fine, sir. Thanks."
"Well, if you're sure."
"What was he talking about?" Yui asks.
"Oh, nothing. I just had a bit of an accident last year."
"What happened?"
"Well, to be honest, I've-"
"Yui! Y/N!" Azusa calls to us from a distance. "The final tent is almost set up! Come on back!"
"Okay!" I wave back. "I'll tell you all later. I'm going to put this stuff in my tent. You go on without me."
"Okay..."
~
Before I knew it, I was in the back of a crowd of forty-thousand people. All forty-thousand people were screaming and cheering the band on stage. Even Mio, who's usually timid and quiet, was having the time of her life. All forty-thousand people. Everyone but me. That was stupid of me. I should have told them earlier... But that would ruin their fun. They can't worry about me!
"Breathe..." I whisper to myself.
"Let's call each other and meet up later," Ritsu tells us. She's going to the Thunder Stage with Sawako and Mio. I think. I wasn't paying attention. Maybe I should go too? There are fewer people there.
"Y/N! isn't this band great?!" Yui shouts over the noise.
"I-I'm going to go to the restroom for a bit," I tell her. Without waiting for a response, I leave the crowd as hastily as possible.
I find a secluded patch of grass and sit down. "Thank goodness..." I sigh and lay my head on the ground. "We were at the back and I still almost panicked." I silently curse myself and close my eyes.
"I need to keep it together. I can't ruin it for them."
"What do you mean?" My eyes dart open and I see Yui's face looming over me.
"Gah!" I gasp. "Yui, what are you doing here? Are you not listening to the band?"
"I was worried about you, so I followed you."
"The one thing I didn't want to do was make anyone worry, yet I failed..." I say under my breath and curse myself again. "I'm fine, go back and enjoy the band. I'll be with you in a bit."
"You're not fine. You looked extremely pale back there."
"It's nothing. Just need something to eat."
"Well then let's get some food together."
"You're not giving up are you?" I mutter. She smiles. "Fine."
~
"Claustrophobia?" Yui repeats as she takes a bite from her hamburger. "What's that?"
"Fear of tight spaces," I explain. "Like crowds, for example." I point to the stages behind us.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Cause if I did then you'd all worry about me and not enjoy Summer Fest. As you can see, I failed immediately. I thought that maybe I could tough it out and enjoy myself too."
"Maybe it's a good thing you failed," Yui said.
"What?"
"If you end up fainting in the middle of a large crowd of jumping up and down, who knows what would happen? Don't you think we'd worry a lot more in that case?" I don't have a reply to that.
"What about that music festival you, I, and Azusa did?"
"What about it?"
"Did you not get scared there?"
"I wasn't in the crowd then, so I was fine. Besides it wasn't too big of a crowd, to begin with."
"Hmm." Yui thinks to herself. "Maybe you should stay out of the crowds, at least for now. I'll tell the others as well."
"No, don't!" I beg. "They'll worry too."
"Good." I groan. "Hello, Mugi? Y/N's going to step out for a bit. He's got clastro- clost- clu- A fear of tight spaces. Tell the others."
"I feel betrayed."
"He's fine, don't worry."
"That's what I'm telling you!"
"I'll be staying out with him as well."
"What? No, don't!" I try to stop her.
~
"That was refreshing." Sawako drys off her hair with the towel around her neck.
"So, we can even take a bath here," Yui says.
"It's great," Mugi adds.
"Y/N!" Ritsu calls me over.
"What is it?"
"What do you like more? Peach, melon, or grape?"
"Probably grape? Why?"
"Here." Ritsu passes me a small, heart-shaped candy with a powder on it.
"What is this?"
"Just eat it."
"Alright..." I slip the small ring into my mouth. "Ah, I see now. Honestly, I think the first candy you gave me was a lot sourer."
"Really?" Ritsu takes a ring from the bag and eats it. Immediately, her face screws up and she throws a coughing fit. "You... You lied!"
"I did?"
"Water!" Ritsu begs.
"Here." Mio passes Ritsu a water bottle she had spare. Ritsu snatches the bottle from Mio and drinks half of the bottle in record time.
"Thanks." Ritsu passes the bottle back to Mio
"No problem." Mio takes a sip from the bottle as well. After she does so, however, I see her look back at the bottle, a slight blush growing on her. Hmm.
"It hurts so much." I hear Azusa whimper behind me.
"Who are you?" I ask. The Azusa I had seen for the past three months had disappeared. Now there stood a severely sun burnt Azusa.
"I knew you would say that!"
"You got sunburnt again." Mio sympathizes.
"I put on sunscreen, but it didn't work." Azusa wails.
"It's cute, so it's okay!" Yui hugs the suffering Azusa.
"I don't think that's a good idea," I tell Yui.
"Anyway, I'm gonna go hit the sack," Sawako informs us.
"What? Already?" Ritsu questions.
"I was headbanging too much, and my neck... You just thought, 'She's old,' didn't you?"
"Absolutely not!" Ritsu defends herself.
~
"Y/N, have you seen Ritsu?" Yui makes her way over to me from her tent.
"No, I haven't," I look up from the book I was reading. "Why?"
"I found her headband on the floor. I think she might have lost it."
"Have you asked the others?"
"Sawa-chan's asleep, and both Mugi nor Azusa don't know where she is. I can't find Mio either. And before you ask, I've called her as well. Azusa suggested that."
"They might have gone back to the Summer Fest." I think out loud and Yui shakes her head.
"They both said they weren't going to go back for the night."
"Alright," I place the bookmark I had in my book and set it back in my tent. "I'll help you look. If they're not in the Summer Fest, then, knowing Mio, they're listening to the music from a distance. We'll start by checking over there." I point to one of the hills.
"Are you still watching your detective shows?"
"No comment. Now come on."
We both head in the direction I suggested, and it doesn't take long for us to find Mio and Ritsu together.
"Y/N!" Yui calls to me. "I found them! They're over there." She points past the line of trees and towards the Summer Fest. They were sitting close together in silence. Very close to each other. Their hands almost touching...
"I'm going to give Ritsu her headband now." She tells me.
"Hey, Ri-"
"Shh!" I grab her arm and pull her behind one of the trees.
"What was that?" Ritsu mutters.
"W-w-what..?" I can hear Mio's shaky voice.
"What are we doing?" Yui whispered. I can't tell Yui what's happening. With how airheaded she is, she might make it worse for the two girls.
"They look like they want to be left alone." I'll tell Yui another time.
"But what about Ritsu's hairband? We can give it to her and then leave, can't we?"
"Uh..." I look to Ritsu. "She's already wearing a headband." Thank you, Ritsu! "The one you have might be a spare."
"Oh, I didn't notice."
"Come on. Let's head somewhere else." I quietly creep away from the two girls with Yui by my side. We walk along the treeline until we reach a similar bank to the one Ritsu and Mio were sitting at.
"You know," I start as I sit down on the grass. The music from the Summer Fest could still be heard from this hill, despite the distance we were from it. "This is the first time I've seen this many stars."
"Really?" Yui sits down on the right side of me.
"I'm always in the city, so the light pollution makes them hard to see."
"Didn't you say you've gone camping before?"
"I have, but I've always been unlucky with the nighttime. It was always either heavy rain or dense fog."
"At least you're seeing them now!" Yui smiles.
"Haha, yeah."
"I'm sorry, again." I apologize. "You weren't able to enjoy the show as much as you could of. Maybe I should have stayed out of this one. Just let you and the other club members go without me. You wouldn't have worried about me then."
"Shush!" Yui's stern voice took me by surprise. I didn't think she could shout like that. "You've said that so many times already. I don't care that I didn't go in the crowds. We still heard the music, didn't we? I'm glad that you came. And besides, if you didn't pull us out of the crowds, we wouldn't have gotten Mugi her yakisoba. There were only 13 portions left by the time we got there."
I chuckle. "Yeah, I guess that's true."
I lie on my back, my head nestled in the soft grass below me. Yui does the same. She looks over at me.
"Does it ever hurt?" She asks.
"What?"
"The scar on your cheek."
"The one I got from the guitar string not being loosened? No, it doesn't hurt at all. Why do you ask?" Yui shrugs her shoulders.
"It sounds like it hurt when you got it, though."
"They're not battle scars. It mostly just grazed me."
"But it left a scar."
"I was a stupid kid who got too close to a tight guitar string. That doesn't sound like the type of story a General in Command would have."
"'You wanna know how I got these scars? My uncle played guitar. And one time, he went to change the guitar strings. I went to watch what he was doing. The guitar doesn't like that. Not one bit. So, me watching, he goes to cut the string-'"
"I get it. Enough with the Joker monologue."
"Why so serious?" Yui mimics, speaking in a deep tone.
"Oh, hah hah." Despite my sarcastic tone, I let out a small laugh.
"I kind of want something to eat," Yui tells me.
"Do you want to head back to the tents?" I suggest. Yui hesitates for a bit.
"No, I think I'll stay here."
"But I thought you were hungry?"
"I never said that."
"But you do want to eat something." Yui doesn't respond. "Then, how about we both go and buy some food then come back here to eat?"
"You're a genius!" Yui springs off the grass and onto her feet.
"I feel like that was a straightforward remedy to the problem."
~
After finishing our food, I decided to lie down on the grass and close my eyes.
"Tired?" Yui asks.
"Not really," I reply, opening my eyes to talk to Yui. "I just feel like closing my eyes."
"Oh." Yui faces away from me and looks toward the stages, still lit with bands still playing. The expression on her face looked odd. But before I could ask her about it, a voice calls from behind us.
"Hey, you two." It was Azusa, the sunburn made me look more than once, but it was her.
"Hey, Azunyan." Yui smiles.
"What were you both doing here?"
"We were listening to the music from a distance and eating food."
"So it's really going on all night."
"You can sit down, Azusa," I tell her.
"Don't the bugs eat you alive if you just sit here?"
"I'm fine since I have bug-repellent wristbands on both arms," Yui says.
"What about you, Y/N?"
"She has a lot of them, so she gave me one," I answer her and close my eyes once again.
"I'll give you one, too, Azunyan." Yui takes one of the wristbands off and hands it to Azusa.
"Hey, you three." Ritsu greets as she emerges from the trees alongside Mio and Mugi. "Are you having a secret talk?"
"You should come sit here, too." Yui proposed. "Let's listen to the music from here."
"Is Y/N asleep?" Ritsu whispers. "Does anyone have a pen?"
"Write something on my face and you won't hear the end of it." I make Ritsu jump with my sudden sentence.
"Oh, before I forget," I sit up and face Ritsu who was sitting to the left of me. "Yui found one of your hairbands."
"Oh!" Yui jolts up as well and retrieves the hairband. "Here you go!"
"You found it!" Ritsu snatches it off Yui. "I lost it while I was coming back to the tents. Thanks, Yui!" Yui, flattered, rubs the back of her neck with a smile.
After a while, we all lay on our backs on the grass and looked up at the sky. There was a long, comfortable silence between us. Mio was the first to break it.
"This feels like a dream."
"Yeah, it's a mysterious feeling," Azusa adds.
"It's a super big place, and music is constantly being performed." This time it's Yui's turn.
"All the bands we saw were so cool." Then Ritsu's.
"Yup." Then Mugi's. "The power, or rather, the force of the sound was amazing."
"The songs made me simultaneously motivated and exhausted at the same time." And finally, my turn.
"But our performance is even better." We all turn to Yui, confused at her statement.
"How can you compare us to the pros?!" Ritsu interrogates. "Learn to play the guitar without any mistakes before you talk like that."
"Point taken." A nervous laugh comes from Yui.
"But we're still better." Yui sits up. "Our closeness or... what is it... That's it! Our aura!" Ritsu smiles and sits up with her.
"Do you know what 'aura' means?"
"Dunno," Ritsu smirks at her response.
"Yeah." Mio sits up with the other two. "Ho-kago Tea Time is an awesome band too!"
"Mio?" Ritsu looks bewildered. I can't blame her. Mio is the last person I'd expect to see making these claims.
"Right, Yui?"
"Yes, Mio-chan!"
"They're right!" It's Azusa's turn once again. "We're as good as the pros!"
"You too?!" Ritsu is, once again, surprised by the actions of her bandmates.
"We'll attend the next Summer Fest not as audience members, but as performers!"
"You're going that far?!" I smile at the girls' eagerness.
"Yes, we will!" Mugi jumps up too.
"Yeah!" The girls cheer.
"Yeah." Ritsu finally gets dragged into the others' excitement. "It would be so cool if we could play here!"
"Yeah!" Yui agrees.
"And I'll support you till the end." I grin.
"Support?" Ritsu looks at me. "Don't think you'll get off that easy."
"What do you mean?" The girls all face each other.
"We've been talking to each other," Mio starts.
"And we think we'd like you to be our manager!" Yui smiles.
"Yui-chan! That was my part!" Mugi frowned. I ignore Mugi's complaints to Yui.
"Manager?" I repeat.
"You've said to us on several occasions that you didn't want to play in the band," Mio said. "But, you come to our club so often you may as well be a member."
"So, we thought," Ritsu continues. "If you didn't want to play, maybe you would want to be our manager."
"What about Sawako?" I ask.
"Sawa-chan is a faculty advisor," Ritsu explains. "She's there to make sure we don't get into any trouble."
"As our manager," Azusa takes over this time. "You'd have to give the green light on songs and lyrics, solve conflicts in the band, and overall just watch over us. You're already doing that with Yui, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem."
"And I haven't seen any major conflicts between you all, ignoring the minor one behind me." I point to Mugi slightly teary-eyed behind me with Yui frantically apologizing. "So that's sorted."
"The only thing left is for you to say you want to be our manager," Ritsu says. "So... do you?" After weighing the pros and cons, I face the girls with a smile.
"I'd be honored." The girls all cheer for my response.
"Who's idea was it to make me manager, may I ask?"
"It was Ristu's idea," Azusa says. "She said something along the lines of, 'I don't want to leave high school without being closer friends, so I think we should make him band manager.'"
"Aw," I smirk at Ritsu's red face. "You do care!"
"Sh-shut up! Everyone agreed with me, so leave me alone!"
This is my longest chapter yet, reaching 6300 words. I was debating splitting this into two chapters but eventually decided against it as there wouldn't be much of a point.
For those waiting on the final chapter of my SAO story, don't worry, I haven't forgotten. I'm still currently playing through God of War Ragnarok at a snail's pace. I've had a lot of interruptions throughout the week, but hopefully, I can finish the game soon and gain some new ideas for the final chapter.
You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net