Chapter 13: The Band's Teasing
The eggs Yamato made were edible, if charred at the edges. They ate them straight from the pan, standing in the kitchen, their elbows brushing. A new silence settled between them, not the fraught tension of before, but something softer, still learning its own shape.
Taichi’s body sang a chorus of minor aches with every movement, a persistent, private reminder. He caught Yamato’s eyes dropping to the fresh bite mark on his shoulder, visible above the collar of the borrowed shirt, and saw the flicker of guilt.
“Stop that,” Taichi said around a mouthful of egg. “I like it. It’s a souvenir.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Yamato muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
Later, as the afternoon bled into evening, they drove towards the city in Yamato’s beat-up truck. The forest receded in the rearview, a dark-green smudge. The familiar, worn-out interior of the cab, the rattle of the engine, the old punk tape Yamato always played—it was all so normal it felt surreal. Taichi kept sneaking glances at Yamato’s profile, the concentrated set of his jaw as he drove, the elegant hands resting on the wheel. Those hands. He shivered, heat pooling low in his belly.
“You cold?” Yamato asked, his eyes still on the road.
“No,” Taichi said, too quickly. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous pastime.”
The Rusty Howl lived up to its name. It was nestled between a shuttered laundromat and a pawn shop, its flickering neon sign depicting a wolf’s muzzle mid-howl, one tube in the ‘O’ permanently dark. The scent hit them as Yamato pushed the heavy door open—a fungal wave of spilled lager, ancient cigarette smoke ingrained in the walls, and the faint, sharp tang of bleach from a mop bucket in the corner.
The stage was a sorry platform at the back, strewn with cables like entrails. A drum kit sat under a stained sheet. But in the dim, amber glow of the overhead lights, two figures were lounging at a corner table, the source of the low, grumbling laughter that filled the empty room.
“He lives!” bellowed a large man with a shaved head and a beard that looked like a bird’s nest. This was Jiro, the drummer. He was built like a refrigerator and had the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Leaning against the table, polishing the neck of a Fender Stratocaster with a reverent cloth, was Kaito, the guitarist. He was lanky, all sharp angles and dark, observant eyes that missed nothing. He didn’t look up from his guitar. “Took you long enough. We were about to send a search party to your cabin. Or a hazmat team.”
Yamato flipped them off, but there was no heat in it. He started towards the stage, but Taichi lingered near the door, suddenly feeling like he’d walked into a sealed chamber where the air was different. He’d met them before, dozens of times, but never like this. Never after.
Jiro’s eyes, crinkled with laughter, slid past Yamato and landed on Taichi. They widened, then narrowed with a predatory glee. “Well, well. Look what the wolf dragged in. Literally.”
Kaito finally glanced up. His gaze swept over Taichi, then to Yamato, then back to Taichi. A slow, knowing smirk spread across his face. “Ah. So that’s where you’ve been.”
Yamato stiffened, his back to them as he unpacked his bass from its case. “Shut up and tune your guitar, Kaito.”
“Oh, I’m tuned,” Kaito said, his voice light and deadly. “I’m just observing. The energy in here is… different. Isn’t it, Jiro?”
Jiro lumbered to his feet, approaching Taichi with an exaggerated sniffing motion. “Smells different, too. Less like wet dog and cheap angst, more like… satisfaction.” He clapped a meaty hand on Taichi’s shoulder, making him stagger. “What’d you do, kid? Feed him a steak? Give him a good scratch behind the ears?”
Taichi felt a flush creep up his neck. “Something like that.”
Yamato spun around, his ice-blue eyes flashing. “Jiro.”
It was a warning growl, low and quiet. The air in the bar seemed to still. Jiro held up his massive hands in mock surrender, but his grin didn’t fade. “Touchy, touchy. I’m just happy for you, man! We all are. Right, Kaito?”
Kaito set his guitar down and stood, stretching his long limbs. “Ecstatic. We’ve had to listen to him mope about you for what, eight years? Nine?”
“I did not mope,” Yamato ground out, his fingers tightening on the neck of his bass.
“You wrote a song called ‘Sun-Burnt Static’ about his soccer jersey,” Jiro said cheerfully. “It was three chords and twelve minutes long. It was the musical equivalent of clinical depression.”
Taichi’s embarrassment began to melt, replaced by a dawning, warm astonishment. He looked at Yamato, who was glaring at a knot in the wooden floor as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Nine years?” Taichi asked, his voice softer than he intended.
Kaito lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating his sharp features. “Since high school. Right after you got scouted for that prefectural tournament and he thought you were moving to Osaka. He moped for a month. Would only play in minor keys. It was insufferable.”
“Shut. Up.” Yamato’s voice was strained, a plea wrapped in a threat.
But Jiro was on a roll. “Remember when Taichi started dating that girl from the college? What was her name? The one with the laugh?”
“Mika,” Kaito supplied, blowing out a stream of smoke.
“Right, Mika! Yamato here came to practice, didn’t say a word, just played his bass so hard he snapped a string and put a hole in the drywall. Then he wrote ‘Crescent Wound’. Actually,” Jiro mused, scratching his beard, “that one was kinda good. Angry. Lots of howling feedback.”
The pieces clicked into place in Taichi’s mind with an almost physical force. All of Yamato’s sudden, moody withdrawals. The intense, sometimes frightening possessiveness that Taichi had always chalked up to their close friendship. The lyrics he never fully understood—talk of hidden teeth, of holding back the tide, of loving something you might break.
It hadn’t been artistic temperament. It had been this. A years-long, desperate containment.
The flush on Taichi’s skin wasn’t from embarrassment anymore. It was from a fierce, glowing pride. He was the secret. He was the obsession. He walked over to the stage, ignoring the others, and stopped in front of Yamato, who still refused to look up.
“Hey,” Taichi said.
Yamato’s eyes, stormy and conflicted, flickered to his.
“Nine years is a long time to be a dumbass,” Taichi said, a slow grin spreading across his face.
A breath escaped Yamato, something between a scoff and a laugh. The tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction. “Tell me about it.”
Jiro wandered over, his expression uncharacteristically sincere. He clapped Yamato on the back, a solid thump that would have felled a smaller man. “Seriously, man. We’re just giving you shit. It’s good to see you like this. Less… coiled spring.” He turned to Taichi, his gaze appraising but kind. “And you. You’re good for him. The best thing that’s ever happened to our resident broody poet. Don’t let him scare you off with the whole…” He waved a hand vaguely at Yamato. “...lone wolf act. It’s mostly for show.”
Kaito stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s really not,” he said dryly. “But the point stands. He’s less of a pain in the ass when you’re around. So you’re obligated to stick around now. Band policy.”
Yamato finally looked at his friends, the defensiveness in his eyes softening into a wary gratitude. “Are you done? Can we play some music now? Or did you just want to air my entire pathetic history?”
“We’re done,” Jiro said, heaving himself behind the drum kit and pulling off the sheet with a dramatic flourish. “For now.”
As Kaito plugged in his amp, filling the bar with a shriek of feedback he quickly tamed, Yamato leaned close to Taichi. His lips brushed Taichi’s ear, his voice a private murmur beneath the noise. “They’re not wrong, you know. About any of it.”
Then he straightened up, slung his bass over his shoulder, and stepped onto the stage. The overhead spotlights, grimy and yellow, clicked on. In that light, with his hair tied back and his fingers finding their places on the strings, he was transformed. Not into the wolf, but into something just as compelling: a man in his element, no longer hiding.
Taichi retreated to a rickety stool at the bar, his body still humming with the revelations. He watched as Yamato locked eyes with Kaito, gave a sharp nod, and as Jiro counted in with a click of his sticks, the three of them erupted into sound.
It was loud, raw, and beautiful. And as Yamato played, his eyes kept finding Taichi’s in the shadows. Every glance was a confession, every riff a release of something held for far too long. Taichi sat there, surrounded by the deafening, joyous noise, and felt the last walls inside him crumble to dust. He wasn't just in the audience. He was in the music. He was the reason for it.