Verónica stared up at Yoichi. What she wanted wasn’t of urgency. Opposite that, it would bother him and his parents at their home. However, Dr. Herrera said she could buy whatever she wanted with what was left. She just needed to be smart about it.
“There’s something.”
Yoichi’s eyebrows raised. “I’m all ears.”
“Two strings of my guitar broke while traveling; I’ll replace all of them because they’re old. I can buy them online or at an instrument store.”
He smiled. “So that’s why you haven’t used your guitar. Will you play for us once you replace them?”
Her breathing slightly hastened.
“If that’s what you want.”
“Let’s find an instrument store, then.”
Without warning, he began walking, yet she didn’t struggle to stay beside him while holding his wrist.
The crowds grew bigger the more they walked. Yoichi kept looking in every direction, while Verónica’s uncovered skin on her feet burnt more each step with the rubbing of the shoes.
After turning around a corner, the street one block ahead of them widened. The screens attached to the front and the sides of the twenty-story buildings grew bigger as they approached. They displayed advertisements of too many things to keep track of.
They stopped behind a group of at least fifty people. Verónica’s height only allowed her to glimpse between them. Dozens of cars drove from one side of the crossing to the other or turned toward the streets on the left and right.
“I see an instrument store.”
She could barely hear Yoichi among the roaring engines and the jumbled chattering around them. She looked in the direction he did but could only see the backs of dozens of people.
The crowd began moving forward. Yoichi did the same and pulled her arm. She reacted quickly and stepped on the road.
They and hundreds of people crossed the street diagonally over white stripes on the asphalt. She kept getting bumped, though so did everyone else. She tightened her grip on Yoichi’s wrist.
They reached the sidewalk surprisingly fast. The people wouldn’t stop walking, so they had to go with the flow until finding a free spot on the pavement.
“That was scary but thrilling,” said Yoichi. “The store’s there.”
She looked in the same direction and saw the narrow storefront a few buildings ahead. A drum kit with five cymbals, three toms, and a snare drum sat between acoustic and electric guitars. A cello and a keyboard stood on each side. Behind them, countless instruments hung on the wall.
Yoichi stared at her when she looked back at him.
“What?” she asked.
“I know nothing about instruments, so you should take the lead.”
Although she didn’t expect the request, it made sense.
She pulled Yoichi toward it, carefully avoiding the people walking past.
Within a minute, they reached the store and stepped inside.
They had barely walked, yet she could see more than a dozen kinds of instruments. Basses, guitars, and violins of different sizes, shapes, and colors hung on the walls above amplifiers. Flutes, trumpets, horns, and keyboards sat atop shelves among hundreds of accessories. The depth of the building well compensated for its narrowness.
“That piano is beautiful.”
Yoichi referred to the white piano in the center of the store.
“You like pianos?”
He nodded. “I’d say it’s the instrument I’m most interested in.”
She stared up at him. “You look more like a drummer.”
“You can’t guess that just by looking at me.”
“I know what instrument band members play by looking at them.”
He blinked at her several times. He then reached for his right pocket and moved his hand inside it.
“Can you let go a bit?”
She complied.
He put his hand inside the pocket and pulled out his phone. He grabbed it with the other hand and tapped the screen for a while.
Eventually, he turned the phone around in front of her and asked.
“Do you know them?”
The screen displayed an image of four people posing for the typical cool band shot though without instruments. Three stood beside each other, one resting her elbow on another guy’s shoulder. At the front, a woman bent her knees almost to the floor.
Verónica shook her head.
“Can you guess who the drummer is?”
“The woman at the front.”
Without blinking, he turned the phone and tapped the screen several times before showing it to her again. “Who’s the bassist?”
Even though it was another band she hadn’t seen before, she answered within a second.
“The guy on the left.”
“How?!”
“They have similar physical features more often than not. I don’t always guess right.”
He chuckled while putting his phone in his pocket.
“That’s an interesting skill, though a bit questionable.”
“Why?”
“Have you heard the saying don’t judge a book by its cover?”
She nodded.
“It means you might miss something because you judged it too quickly. It’s not nice to assume things about people based only on appearance. Even if you guess right most times, it’ll be more harmful than useful, so be careful.”
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She stared up at him.
He smiled. “I’ll stop distracting you. Keep doing your thing.”
“The guitar strings are over there.”
“Don’t you want to see the instruments up close?”
“I don’t have the money to buy any of them.”
“And?”
About to say it would be a waste of time, she stopped.
She grabbed his wrist and walked toward the nearest shelf with violins hanging on it. They were made of wood and had different shapes and shades of brown. Some of them even were black or white, all of them elegant.
She looked at the price tags and converted them in her head with the exchange rate she saw the previous night. They were around the same price she had seen in Mexico.
They headed to the brass instruments section. The tubular ceiling lamps reflected on the instruments’ bodies as she inspected them. She recognized all of them but couldn’t remember every name. She also questioned whether they weighed more or less than they looked.
“A… Are you looking for something specific?”
She turned to see where the deep voice came from.
A guy stood next to them. Unlike Yoichi’s short curly hair, his hair was tied back into a bun. Despite that, two long bangs hung down his face to his eyes’ height.
The pink jacket and the white shirt underneath contrasted with his stern look. Regardless, he seemed younger than Yoichi.
“Verónica?”
She jolted. “What?”
“He asked if you have questions about the instruments.”
She looked at the guy again. The pressure she began feeling when she arrived in the country returned when their eyes met, though multiplied by ten and accompanied by warmth. She couldn’t help but look away.
“No. I was just wondering how heavy they were.”
Yoichi relayed her words in Japanese.
The guy replied, “W… Would you like to lift it?”
“Is that okay?”
Instead of answering, the guy approached the horn in front of Verónica. He lifted it from the hanger and offered it to her. She stared down at it before grabbing it. Her arms gave up instantly, yet she stiffened them enough not to drop it. The guy let go of it after that.
“I… I should’ve warned you it was heavy.”
She couldn’t look at him for long, so she inspected the instrument instead in an attempt to remember its name and history. It was at the tip of her tongue.
“T… This is a French horn. Its current shape began taking form in the early eighteen hundreds after valves were added to it. Musicians opposed them at first because of how different they were and their unreliability, but the positives eventually outweighed the negatives.”
How did he know she wanted to know about that?
She looked away when she realized she had stared at him for too long and handed the horn back to him.
He hung it back on the shelf.
“I… I should’ve asked if you wanted to know about it. Approach me or any employee if you have questions.”
He bowed before walking toward the counter. Verónica stared at him as he did so.
“I told you you’re doing great for your second day,” the cashier said as he approached.
“So that’s why he’s nervous,” Yoichi said, “but he seems cool, doesn’t he?”
“You just told me I shouldn’t judge people by their appearance.”
He laughed nervously. “It’s not that you shouldn’t at all, but… it’s hard to explain.”
Verónica grabbed his wrist and headed to the guitar section. She admired them for a minute. Then, she grabbed the cheapest pack of strings and walked to the counter with Yoichi.
She placed the pack on the counter and reached for the money in her sweater’s pocket. However, Yoichi interrupted her before she took it out.
“I’ll pay,” he said as he lifted his phone.
“But—”
“I wanna try the Wallet app. I installed it when uni started but never had the chance to use it.”
She raised a bill in front of him. “Here’s the money, then.”
“It’s fine. Consider it my early birthday gift.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “You know my birthday?”
“Would you like to tell me?”
“My guardians adopted me on March twenty-two.”
He glanced at her and then looked back at his phone.
“That’s pretty close. We might get lucky and be able to celebrate with the cherry blossoms.”
He lifted his phone above the black box on the counter until its light turned green and bleeped.
The cashier bowed. “Thank you for choosing us. Have a great day.”
Yoichi bowed back and Verónica imitated him.
“You too.”
He signaled her with his head to grab the pack. She complied and tucked it in her pocket as they exited the store.
“We can take a taxi back home,” he said, “or we can take the train.”
“I’m curious about taking the train, but we might get lost.”
“That doesn’t matter, we don’t have anything to do—”
His mouth remained open.
“Yoichi?”
“I just realized I should stream all afternoon today to recover the hours I’ve missed these past few days.”
“Is that why you talk, scream, and yell in your room at night?”
He laughed nervously. “Sorry for bothering you, I should’ve at least warned you. I saw the stairs to the subway over there.”
She held his wrist and didn’t struggle to walk beside him as they avoided the crowds.
They walked down two flights of stairs and through a tunnel underground until reaching a wider hall. People placed a card on top of a metal box. The light turned green in a second and then they pushed the bar in front of them to step through. Even though there were a dozen checkers, they all had a short queue.
Yoichi stared at them for a while. He didn’t say anything, yet Verónica didn’t take long to connect the dots as to why he did.
More people lined up in front of panels with screens. They tapped their way through the menus until a ticket or a card came out.
Before she could tell him about it, he began walking toward them. They joined the queue at the back and took advantage of the wait to observe what other people did from up close.
Two minutes later, they reached the screen. The first choice was to select the language, which Yoichi quickly tapped.
Verónica didn’t understand a single character after that. She could merely watch how he took double the time than the previous people. Regardless, two tickets came out of the slot beneath the screen. He grabbed them and they walked away.
He swept the sweat off his forehead with his arm.
“That was nerve-wracking.”
He handed one of the tickets to her. They then headed to the checkers just to realize something as they queued.
“We’ll have to separate,” she said.
“You’re right, but the bar isn’t big. We just have to wait for the other. You can go first.”
When her turn arrived, she inserted the ticket into the tiny slot as other people did. The light turned green and she hurried to push the bar to step through. She stopped moving as soon as it stopped rotating and grabbed the ticket from the slot on the other side. They were away from each other, but it was a safe distance.
He repeated the process without issue. She stepped back to let him through and they walked away after he grabbed his ticket.
He gave her a thumbs up. “Nice.”
She nodded.
They looked at the map on the wall as they waited for the train on the platform. She had never seen such a convoluted graphic. It had lines over lines of several colors and numbers everywhere, not to mention the Japanese characters. Yoichi’s frown didn’t give her high hopes.
The train arrived. They waited for dozens of people to get out. Despite that, there were no free seats when they stepped on, though the standing crowd wasn’t cramped either.
She held onto a vertical metal tube, still holding Yoichi’s wrist, while he held onto the horizontal tube higher up. Her sweaty hand wouldn’t stop slipping down.
The doors slid to close and the train moved. She bumped into Yoichi even though she anticipated the acceleration.
“It surprised me too,” he said. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
Although the speed slowly increased, it was far slower than she expected.
The light bulbs and signals out the windows moved past the train faster than the last. Even though she had noticed it when Dr. Herrera drove her to the clinic and back to her guardians’ house, the effect wasn’t that smooth because of the busy narrow streets.
The cart remained surprisingly silent the entire time.
Then, a woman stood beside Yoichi, and she wouldn’t stop moving closer to him.