Prelude

My 'ten minutes more' had turned into twenty.

Oh yeah.

I was in deep trouble.

Pa was already tapping his fingers in an annoying way on the other side of my cleverly locked door. I can't stand being woken up, especially by him. "Airi? Airi, you're going to be late! It's 6:40 already - " "I know," I groaned and practically dragged myself off the bed. "Yune's probably already waiting for you, you know!" yelled Mum from somewhere deep in the house.

Yune.

Pa grunted and shuffled away from my door. Yune is my boyfriend. Cringe. I hate using that word. It's such a loose term and it sort of denotes...I don't know, a sort of temporary existence before the guy's thrown on the pile of reject-exes. I guess that's what it made Pa think of as well. He'd only recently begun to accept Yune as part of the family and that was all because of my older brother Senri's valiant efforts at inviting him round for family game nights. Yune even let Pa win at chess just to get on his good side. I laughed to myself as I remembered Yu's carefully constructed face of hopelessness, just before he moved his king in for...well...doom. But the rest of my crazy family loves him. Senri's in college and is two years older than me and a year older than Yune. Then there's Yuri who's 9 and Fritz, our Pekingnese-Lhasa Apso dog. Mum however, seems to like Yune even more than I do. Now that's scary. But Yune says that's just the way my Mum is. ( How does he know that?! )

By the time I'd gotten dressed and grabbed myself a piece of toast, it was 7:00 am and Yune was, naturally, already waiting by the gate. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him leaning nonchalantly on our fence. He saw me and grinned - the grin only I could get out of him.

"Let me guess. You hit the snooze button every ten minutes?" I stuck my tongue out at him and closed the gate behind me. I had this feeling like I'd forgotten something, but I couldn't figure out what it was...

"Well maybe you should try getting some more sleep like me sometimes. I'm the happiest person in homeroom!" He chuckled. "I'll give you that!" Pulling me close he whispered, "You forgot your bass, silly."

Oh.

Shoot. So that's what I'd forgotten. And we had that practice first break for the gig! Looking at Yune I suddenly felt a pang of loneliness. Or rather...frustration. If that was even the same thing. I'd met Yu last year when we'd both transferred to Lafayette High and enrolled in the Jazz Band as bassist and alto saxophonist. I am not kidding when I say Yu was beyond amazing. He'd flawed the supervisor the first practice just from warming up on his sax. And of course, he'd peaked my interest since I only wanted to accompany good soloists on my bass. But it turned out that saxophone wasn't the only thing he was good at. And here was where it always got to me. Yune simultaneously tried out for the hardest basketball team in school, and got in. First string! I was happy for him at first but when the practices began to be scheduled on the same days as Jazz Band, I wondered whether Yune would quit basketball. But Yu didn't want to quit basketball or jazz. So he has this setup now where he spends two semesters out of four playing basketball, and the remaining two with the jazz band. Basically he gets to play jazz when they don't have any important games. I missed the sound of his sax when he was away. I didn't enjoy playing my bass quite so much when he wasn't around.

But of course I wouldn't tell him that.

"Are you after school?" "Hm? Yeah, I have basketball practice. Want me to carry your bass?" He shifted his bag so he could hold my bass with his free hand. I had a bad habit of carrying more than I could handle. It was a beautiful morning. The sky was just beginning to lighten into a brilliant azure blue and I craned my neck to get a better view of the clouds above me. I could hear the inner tinkle of an undiscovered melody just waiting for me to compose it. I'd do it, after I'd caught my favourite J-drama. So for the timebeing I swung my hands like a kid and hummed my new melody.

Beside me, Yu harmonized.