Verónica walked to the storage room, which served as her temporary bedroom.
A groan escaped her mouth as she carefully sat down on the futon. She took the guitar strings from her pocket and left them on the floor before grabbing her tablet from the mattress.
She opened the Internet browser and typed the streaming website’s name in the search bar along with Yoichi’s username.
Unlike with mobile data, the search results appeared instantly. She tapped on the first link and the page loaded in a snap.
The video player took up a third of the screen at the bottom. It displayed a drawn animation of a cartoon character who resembled Yoichi. He sat in his unnecessarily big and colorful chair and rested his arms and head on his desk. Bubbles floated up to spell out the word ‘Offline.’
Above it, usernames of different colors accompanied by messages popped in one beneath the last one. The glasses weren’t advanced enough to translate text, so Verónica enabled the automatic translation feature of the browser.
People chatted about a recent controversy regarding a TV show. Why did they care about what actors and actresses did with their lives?
As she looked for Yoichi’s username in the chat, he knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she said.
He opened the door and headed toward the boxes piled up in the corner.
“There should be a toolbox around here.”
He moved some boxes aside to approach the ones at the back. He opened a few until he lifted a toolbox from one of them and placed it on another at hip level. He unlocked it and took a wire cutter out.
He approached her to hand it to her.
She grabbed it and he returned to lock the toolbox.
“By the way, you should eat something even if you’re not hungry.” He walked to the door. “Grab anything from the kitchen.”
About to close the door and disappear from her sight, she said.
“Thanks.”
He stood still.
He turned around and said, “No problem. Oh, and you should play the guitar in the living room. The walls are like paper, so my microphone might pick it up if you do it here.”
She nodded and he closed the door.
With nothing else to do, she pulled her guitar from the wall and took it out of its case.
Although it was the first time she would change the six strings in one sitting, the process had to be the same.
She rotated the tuning peg at the bottom of the head to loosen the tension of the thickest string. She clipped it with the wire cutter, pulled the bottom half out of the bridge, and unwound the top half from the capstan.
She took the replacement string out of its packaging and unwound it. She inserted it into the bridge hole and pulled it up until the bottom got stuck. Measuring the length a little over the capstan of that string, she cut it with the wire cutters.
She inserted the tip of the string into the capstan hole and then turned the tuning peg to wind it and put tension in it.
It wasn’t necessary to tune it yet, and tuning the six of them together would be easier, so she went on to the next one.
By the time she got to the fourth one, a big precaution icon substituted the ‘Offline’ animation on the video player. The text warned that the video game being streamed contained gore and strong themes.
She tapped the ‘Watch anyway’ button. The warning disappeared, revealing a ‘Starting Soon’ screen and playing a calm, upbeat song through the tablet’s speakers.
More messages flooded the chat as the seconds passed. She was in the middle of reading one when a new one pushed it up. She had to look for it again, but the constant flow of paragraphs didn’t give her time to find it.
Amid the organized chaos, a colorful username with a camera icon beside it appeared. It was Yoichi’s.
She read his replies and welcome messages with his voice as she continued to switch the strings.
Only tuning the guitar remained when Yoichi’s voice reached Verónica’s ears through the wall beside her. She didn’t understand a word until his voice sounded through the speakers. The upper half of his torso appeared on the screen and covered half of it.
The glasses displayed subtitles while she heard him talk in his room.
“Good day, everyone! How are you all doing? Yes, we’re playing Starworld Reversion today. A good friend of mine wanted to watch me play it. It’s my third favorite game, so it’ll be a blast to beat it again.”
Her head ached as her brain tried to filter the two voices while reading the subtitles.
She grabbed the tablet, stood up, and lifted the guitar by the neck to exit the room.
She placed the tablet on the coffee table in the living room and used its case to angle it toward her. She sat on the sofa with the guitar on her lap and began tuning it by ear as she read the subtitles in front of her eyes.
A few minutes later, Yoichi’s camera shrunk to one-third of its size and faded from the center to the bottom corner of the screen. The game became visible behind him, covering the entire screen.
Verónica tapped the button on the same bottom corner to put the video player in fullscreen mode, though that also made it rotate into landscape mode. She rotated the tablet ninety degrees on its case to match it.
With the guitar in tune, she began strumming it while watching Yoichi play.
She did so for a couple of hours until the stream displayed a ‘Be Right Back’ screen.
Yoichi stepped out of his room and headed into the kitchen.
“Have you eaten?” he asked as he opened a cabinet.
“No.”
“I’ll heat instant ramen for you too.” He grabbed two red packages. “Are you okay with spicy?”
“A little.”
“Mexico is known for its spicy food, you’ll probably be fine with ours.”
He filled a small pot with water and put it on the stove. He turned it on before opening the two packages and pouring the noodles inside. He sprinkled two condiments Verónica didn’t recognize and then put the lid on.
He stared down at his phone for a few minutes, drinking some water as he did so.
He turned the stove off yet waited another minute before lifting the lid. Steam smoked out as he used chopsticks to serve the noodles into two ceramic bowls on the counter. Once filled, he carefully tilted the pot to pour the brown broth into the bowls.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Finally, he grabbed another pair of chopsticks and laid them on top of one of the bowls.
“Wanna come try it?”
Verónica left the guitar on the sofa and stood up to walk to the kitchen. She grabbed the chopsticks on top of the bowl. Once her muscle memory remembered how to hold them, she stuck them between a bunch of noodles and lifted them to her mouth. She blew at them a few times before eating them.
She moved them around with her tongue so as not to burn herself as she chewed. It didn’t take long for the burning to turn into one of spicy. She felt it down her throat, leaving a trail of painful itch. It was impossible not to cough.
Yoichi grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with water, and handed it to her.
“Is it that spicy?”
She exhaled after a few gulps.
“I’ve had worse.”
He laughed nervously.
“You don’t have to eat it if it’s too much.”
He slid a plastic plate under his bowl and walked with both back to his room.
As strange as that looked, she understood why he did it as soon as her fingers touched the blazing bowl.
She copied his idea to take it to the coffee table in the living room, using her thumbs to prevent the bowl from sliding off the plate.
By the time she grabbed the cup of water from the kitchen and returned, Yoichi was back in his stream.
She slowly ate the ramen and played the guitar while watching him for the rest of the afternoon.
…
“Good evening,” a woman said behind Verónica.
She muted the undulating strings with the palm of her hand and snapped her head back. Mrs. Ishige stood behind the sofa at a safe distance, while Mr. Ishige smiled at her before walking down the hallway. She didn’t hear them arrive.
Since they didn’t own glasses, Verónica used the words she heard to reinforce the knowledge she had gathered in the previous few days and replied in Japanese.
“Good evening.”
Mrs. Ishige glanced at the tablet.
“Looks like Yoichi’s still hard at work. We’ll be preparing dinner in the meantime. Don’t mind us, you can keep playing.”
Not knowing how or what to say, she merely nodded.
Mrs. Ishige walked down the hallway into her and Mr. Ishige’s room.
The door clicked again a few minutes later. Verónica slapped the strings to mute them.
Mr. Ishige wore a more casual outfit of sweatpants and a T-shirt instead of a suit. He headed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
Mrs. Ishige told her not to mind them and keep playing, but was that true? As kind as they were, anyone would be annoyed by a stranger disturbing the peace at their home.
She would never know if she didn’t try.
She continued to play, holding the guitar pick loosely to be as quiet as possible.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Ishige ignored her as they worked around the kitchen, whether on purpose or because they were too focused to care.
That lasted until Yoichi bid farewell to his viewers and went offline.
He exited his room a minute later.
“We’re serving dinner,” Mrs. Ishige said.
Yoichi grinned. “Great.”
He entered the bathroom.
A few minutes later, he returned and waited for Verónica to sit at the table. He and his parents asked each other about their days, including Verónica from time to time, though she didn’t have much to say.
Yoichi talked about taking the train for the first time yet avoided mentioning the incident with the woman.
Although Verónica only saw her sleeping on his shoulder, his reaction was too strong for the situation to be friendly. He also never answered whether she was a friend or not, and he didn’t want to be questioned about it.
Something definitely happened, but Verónica had been too distracted looking out the window before that.
Regardless, the chat remained pleasant for the rest of the dinner.
Everyone sat in silence in front of their empty plates, allowing the food to settle in their stomachs.
“Are you going to play for us now?” Yoichi asked Verónica.
His father said, “Yoichi, don’t be pushy.”
“I really want to listen to her.”
“Maybe she’s uncomfortable with it,” his mother replied.
The three of them stared at Verónica.
She wanted to say yes, but her mouth wouldn’t open.
Her heartbeat rose for such a trivial matter. She might have never done it for anyone but herself—and against her guardians’s will—yet that was no reason to refuse.
Not to delay her answer any longer, she nodded.
Mr. Ishige stood up and grabbed his plate.
“You should get ready, then. We’ll wash the dishes in the meantime.”
There wasn’t anything to prepare. The guitar was tuned for the song she planned to play, which she knew like the palm of her hand. But if she were going to be that nervous, she’d better take a moment to get used to it.
She and Yoichi stood up at the same time. He walked back to his room while she headed back to the living room. She sat on the sofa, placed the guitar on her lap, and began strumming the song.
For the first time since learning it, it took her twelve tries to get past the first verse without making mistakes. She had only stopped playing it for a week.
The guitar pick slid out of her fingers two times due to her sweaty hands despite the cool temperature of the room.
A question wandered into her mind while warming up. Did they expect her to sing? Even though the solution to stop the doubt from devouring her brain was simple, she couldn’t communicate with Yoichi’s parents because they didn’t have glasses.
She chose to do it and spent the following minutes humming to warm up her voice.
The three family members headed to the living room in the blink of an eye. Mr. and Mrs. Ishige sat on the loveseat, while Yoichi sat beside Verónica.
It would’ve been ideal to own a strap for her guitar and stand in the middle of the room. She didn’t, so she angled herself toward them.
Her left hand’s fingers hovered over the frets and strings that shaped the introductory chord to the song. She would always let the muscle memory take over as her mind wandered off, but she couldn’t afford it. She had to focus on what she was doing.
Guiding a deep breath into her diaphragm instead of her lungs, she strummed the first chord and chanted the wordless intro.
A song about an unrequited relationship. Even though Verónica didn’t relate to the lyrics whatsoever, she loved the slow, somber verses contrasted by an intense, epic chorus. More importantly, it was relatively easy to learn.
Volume was critical both for the guitar and her voice. She had to sing softly yet loudly enough at the beginning while not letting the guitar drown her voice.
The volume raised a little for the verse, but she had to be careful not to overdo it so that the chorus was as impactful as it was supposed to be.
Despite the tightness of her throat, she nailed her favorite parts. She made a few mistakes in the slower sections, yet they were minor and easily recoverable.
Ending on a high note, the three of them waited for Verónica to look at them to clap.
“That was incredible,” Mr. Ishige grinned.
“Didn’t expect any less,” added Yoichi.
Mrs. Ishige said, “It was a wonderful surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“Well, you know, as parents, we get….” She stopped talking. “I’ll stop digging my own grave. You have a lot of talent, Verónica. It’ll be great seeing you improve. If that’s what you want, of course.”
The corners of Verónica’s lips stretched ever so slightly.
But that didn’t last long.
They were always kind to her. Even when it was a scolding or a serious matter, their words were filled with care. They had done as much for her in a week as her guardians in thirteen years despite barely knowing her.
And how did she repay them? By delaying the research as much as she could and hiding her real intentions; the plan of not going back to her guardians.
What would happen if she asked to stay with them for as long as possible?
She knew it was illegal to stay in Japan for a long period in one trip, but the plan could be adapted for that. Although she would do anything to make it happen, how far would their kindness go? Why were they so kind to her in the first place?
“Verónica?” called Yoichi.
She replied, “Why did you agree to the surgery so fast? Aren’t you scared of something going wrong?”
His eyes widened. He lowered them in silence.
“I am, but I trust Aunt Enko with my life. I know that, whatever happens, it’ll be a huge step toward helping millions. I’d give my life if that meant finding the cure.”
Verónica’s blood boiled in her chest at his smile. Unlike many of his previous, it seemed genuine.
She stood up and ran to her temporary room, not caring about the guitar bumping against the walls and furniture.
“Verónica? What—?”
She ignored Yoichi’s voice and shut the door, doing her best not to slam it.
Her boiling blood threatened to tear out her eyes, yet she held them in with quivering and painful breaths.
What was she supposed to do?