Chapter 14

The numerous vinyl records were simply stuffed in a disorderly fashion into the rack. Kento didn’t need another excuse to offer to sort them out. As he went through them, he found that most of them were classical music records, apart from a few Beatles LPs.
“Oh, those are mine,” Orihara said to a very surprised Kento.
“Yeah, I figured as much.”
Orihara chose one out and put it on the turntable. “Songs back then used to be really short, including the Beatles’. They were all about two minutes or so, so they’re finished before you know it.”
“Are you a Beatles fan?” Kento asked as he gazed at the now-legendary album cover.
“Well… a friend of mine in high school loved the Beatles, and I guess he kind of rubbed off on me. His father, on the other hand, was a Beatles fanatic, in the real sense,” Orihara said to him. “Anyway, I even bought a guitar so I could practice.”
“What? You can play the guitar? I thought you’d be the serious type who only cared about studying.”
Orihara looked mildly offended. “I told you, didn’t I? I was an athlete until tenth grade. I’m a varsity boy at heart.” He then chuckled a little at his own words. “I guess that makes me weird for playing guitar, then, doesn’t it?”
After some begging on Kento’s part, Orihara dug out his guitar from storage. It wasn’t the electric guitar that Kento had expected, but a common acoustic guitar.
“It’s not electric?” Kento said in slight disappointment. Orihara smiled wryly.
“This one’s called a flat top. I hear kids these days start right off-the-bat with electric, but this type of guitar is your most basic one.”
No one at Sion Promotion was part of a serious band, since the agency was geared to promoting pop idols. Kento had never even held a guitar before. He gazed inquisitively at the guitar that Orihara was holding.
“Can you play for me?”
“I’d have to change the strings first.” Orihara’s eyes narrowed nostalgically as he dusted the guitar off with a cloth. “But I don’t really play anymore.”
Kento was struck with an idea, and he proposed it loudly. “I’ll play it, then! Teach me!”
Orihara beamed again. “Sure. I don’t have any use for this anymore. You can have it, Kento.”
“Yay!” Kento grabbed Orihara’s hand in delight and shook it vigorously. His hand was softer and smoother than he’d expected, and it was a long time before Kento untwined his fingers from Orihara’s.
When Kento visited Orihara again the following week, a brand-new guitar was sitting on top of the stereo system in the living room.
“Is this??” Kento approached with wide eyes and cautiously reached out to touch it.
“I felt bad making you play my old guitar,” Orihara said to him with a smile as he came back from the consultation room. “And it’ll be easier for me to teach you if I play along.”
“You’re going to teach me?” Kento exclaimed, pouncing on Orihara. Orihara teetered as he lost his balance, and they both toppled on top of each other onto the sofa. Orihara was more slender and soft than he’d imagined, and Kento blushed in agitation.
“S-Sorry.”
“You really seem to grow taller by the day,” Orihara laughed as he crawled out from underneath Kento. “We were about the same height when we first met, but now you’re a whole head taller.”
“And you’re skinny like a girl, doctor,” Kento said in a teasing tone, trying to disguise the fact that he was flustered. This time, Orihara blushed.
“Keep talking like that, and I won’t teach you.”
“Wait, I’m sorry! I really am! Can you still teach me?”
Kento’s desperate tone appeared to restore Orihara’s mood. He smiled as he passed a book to Kento.
“You don’t mind using my old learner’s guide, do you?” Kento was given a book called Guitar for Beginners. He flipped through it. A simple set of notes ran along the staff. Kento looked at it and pouted.
“They’re not Beatles songs?”
Orihara looked at him with exasperation. “You won’t be able to play those right off the bat.”
Underneath the staff was another staff, but this one had six lines. Instead of the black note heads, the stems were numbered with digits from 0 to 4.
Kento knew notation well enough to sing from them, but he’d never seen notation like this before. He anxiously looked up at Orihara.
“What’s this?”
“It’s called tablature. It shows you how to press the string down.” Orihara told him that the numbers on 0 to 4 indicated the fingers used to press the strings down.
“Oh, okay. So finger 1 would be my index finger, and finger 2 would be my middle finger.” Kento touched the strings with each.
“What’s 0?”
“It means ‘open string’, which means you don’t hold it down.”
“Uh-huh…” Kento looked dubious. Orihara smiled gently at him.
“Don’t worry. Once you learn the patterns for holding down the strings, you’ll be able to play in no time.”
Orihara walked around the sofa, where Kento was sitting, to stand behind him. He started by teaching him how to hold the guitar.
“Good. Align the groove in the guitar with your right knee, like that.” Once he taught Kento how to hold it, he also slung the shoulder strap over his shoulder. “Wearing the strap while you sit will help keep the guitar still,” he said. Next, he went on to teach him how to hold the strings down with his left hand.
“You’ll have to start by memorizing the basic chords. The groups of chords are called chord progressions. You can play any song if you know the chord progression.”
Kento blanched when he saw the notations, labelled with letters like C and G.
“But there are so many!”
“Don’t sweat it. Just use your fingers and let your body do the memorizing. If you can remember complicated dance moves, you should have no problem with this. These are just your fingers.”
Orihara’s gentle encouragement helped Kento recover somewhat from being on the verge of giving up.
“As long as you’re going to teach me.” When he turned around to look over his shoulder, there was Orihara’s face at close range, his gentle eyes looking back at him.
“Don’t worry. I’m here with you.”
The same gentle voice echoed in his ears, the one that had whispered to him that night when he was in bed groaning from the pain in his knee.
“Yeah. I’ll try my best.”