Azalea no Shinzou Chapter 3

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In the very back seat of the bus that I rode home from school on, was a boy. He was from the class next to mine, with pale skin and short hair. I didn’t see him much at school, but on the bus, I always saw him with his elbow resting on the windowsill, and wearing a large pair of headphones. I could never tell what his thin, almond eyes were looking at. But something about him held my interest.

            Coincidentally, that day, the seat next to him was empty. Even though I would usually think of doing otherwise, I casually sat down in the empty seat. Slender arms, like a girl’s… As I reached to take out my phone from my bag, I stole a glance at him.

            At that moment, the bus suddenly brakes. All the passengers and straps* in the bus swayed.

With a clatter, something fell down near my feet.

——A CD? I picked it up. On the cover were several people wearing masks that you might see on the killers from a horror movie.

“Oh, sorry. That’s mine,” the boy took off his headphones and said. I see, so this is the CD he’s always listening to. Unable to think of what to say when put on the spot like that, even I was surprised by the words that left my lips.

“This is the only album of their’s that I don’t have.”
 

            A deep and heavy sound, with a quick tempo, came out of the speakers that my dad had bought for me when I’d just started middle school. I’d unexpectedly ended up borrowing his CD, and now I was just putting on repeat some foreign music that I couldn’t make any sense of.

            So this is the kind of music he listens to… Somehow, I wouldn’t have expected it just by looking at him.

            My lips loosened slightly.

I opened up the lyric booklet (probably completely in English) that I hadn’t looked through yet. The shouting voices flowing from the speakers turned into the text written in the booklet. I flipped through the pages, only able to recognize a handful of words, and when I reached the last couple pages, I found several loose sheets of paper stuck in between. I knew it was a little rude of me considering he’d lent it to me, but the words written on the pages in pen were more than a bit messy.

            They were translations of the lyrics that he’d written. As I read them, I found that, contrary to the slender handwriting, striking words about God and the Devil were written there.

            I flipped it over, and noticed that on the back of the paper, many numbers and names were written. I realized that they were the names and birthdays of his friends.

            On the back of a lyric card about God and the Devil…. I understood that it was so he wouldn’t forgot them, but here, of all places? I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
 

I wonder what I should say to him tomorrow.

t/n: trains and buses have straps that come down from the ceiling for standing passengers to keep their balance when the vehicle is moving.

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Sunset Bus Stop

The gap between days that come and go, and days where nothing changes at all.

Everything reflected in your eyes seems beautiful. Everything seems dismal.

This is a song about the days where even the difference between what’s right and what’re wrong hasn’t been decided.

Chapter end