Yashiro-kun's Guide to Going Solo - V1 Ch1 Part2
“Welcome! How many will there be today?” the karaoke employee asked with a smile.
“Two students for two hours,” Hanamizawa-san said without hesitation.
She was definitely an extrovert, speaking to the employee like it was nothing. I bet she came here often with the other cool kids after parties or something, but maybe that was just a stereotype.
“You sure you need me? You could’ve done that on your own.”
“Oh, right. If I were doing this for real, I’d have to do that by myself.”
She’s suddenly started acting weird.
“Hm? What’s wrong?”
“Well… I was just wondering if I could’ve talked to her as easily if I’d come alone.”
“You did fine.”
“I know, but maybe it’s because you’re with me. And I feel more confident because I’m not alone. So…” she mumbled.
The employee handed us some menus. “A two-hour student ticket means you can order one drink.”
“Oh, right! I’ll have a ginger ale. How about you, Yashirokun?”
she asked in a cheerful voice, regaining her composure.
“An iced coffee, please,” I answered after a pause.
“One ginger ale and one iced coffee, coming right up.”
We filled out a form and went to our karaoke room. The instant we walked inside, Hanamizawa-san grabbed the touch panel remote.
“Let’s see here…”
Meanwhile, I adjusted the AC and put my textbooks, notebooks, and pencil case on the table.
“Wait, you’re gonna study now?!”
Hanamizawa-san screamed at me through the microphone. The skreeeeeeeeeeeech of the feedback hurt my ears.
“I usually read or do homework when I go to karaoke places alone.”
“I’ve never heard of that before! What kind of weirdo does that?!”
“If you’re gonna make fun of me, could you at least put the mic down first?” I said, covering my ears. She put the mic down with a gasp.
“But this is a karaoke place! It’s literally a place for singing, and you’re not gonna sing?!”
“So by that logic, we can only study at school and nowhere else?”
“That’s totally different!”
“Just think about it.”
She was about to make another retort, but I held up my hand.
“Besides at home or school, where else can you read or study by yourself, or do
whatever you want without being a nuisance to others?”
“Um…the library?”
That was a good choice, but…
“On weekdays, private study rooms at the library are packed with students studying for exams, and old people.”
“O-Okay, but what about a diner or a café?”
“Diners are always full of loud groups of old ladies hogging the unlimited drink bars, and the employees will give you dirty looks if you get too many drinks when you’re alone. Plus, most cafés have signs posted that say, ‘no studying’ or ‘no playing video games’ so people don’t stay there for hours without buying anything.”
“Ugh.”
“At karaoke places, you’re paying to have the room to yourself. What you do with that time is up to you. The employees don’t care.”
“I-I guess that does make it sound pretty convenient.”
“You get why they used to put up those signs at karaoke places that said ‘Karaoke boxes are for singing, not romance,’ right?”
“Because there were a lot of couples who used them to make out or something.”
Like I said, you could use the room for whatever you wanted, as long as it didn’t create a nuisance for others. No matter what.
“Yeah. But studying or reading in a karaoke box is totally fine. Most times when I came with someone else, we didn’t even sing and we just studied anyway.”
“Then why did you even come here in the first place? And what do you mean by ‘most times’?”
“One time we were studying and they suddenly remembered we were at a karaoke place, so they sang a song.”
“So they totally forgot the main purpose of this place?!”
Her eyes were wide and she looked half-stunned, halfexasperated.
“Now I wanna know what song your friend sang.”
“‘I’m in Love with You Again.’”
“Whoa, by Fuyumi Sakamoto?”
“Nah, the Billy BanBan version.”
“Who’s that?” she asked after a moment of confusion.
That’s rude. They were the original artists! Though I guess Fuyumi Sakamoto’s version of the song is more wellknown.
“They really like Billy BanBan, I guess. They also sang ‘I’ve Always Loved You’ by them.”
“Um, choosing those songs…”
“Hm? What?”
“N-nothing,” Hanamizawa-san said, shaking her head.
Weirdo.
“Anyway, since you’re paying I might as well make the most of it. That’s why I’m studying, but you can use your time however you want. Why don’t you go ahead and sing?”
“However I want? Honestly, I’m not really sure what I should sing at a time like this.”
I let out a wry chuckle. Apparently she was still feeling unsure.
“Isn’t the best part of karaoke being able to sing absolutely anything you want? Just sing songs you like that you might not sing in front of your friends. I’m not gonna be paying attention anyway.”
“Hmm, songs I wouldn’t sing in front of them…”
She hesitated for a while, but then suddenly started punching in something on the touch panel.
I figured she didn’t want any attention, so it would’ve been insensitive of me to keep watching.
I looked back down at my textbook and was about to resume my studies, when suddenly a jarring intro caused me to jerk my head up again.
Jaan, jara jaaan! ♪
“Huh?!”
I looked over at the monitor and saw the words
“MaoMao☆Dancin’♥ALL NIGHT”
in a big, bubbly font. A DIVA song?! DIVA was a virtual idol that had come about from a text-to-speech software, and Kanon had apparently chosen one of their songs to sing.
The concept had become more well-known to the average person compared to when they first came out, so it wasn’t just an otaku thing anymore.
But it still had that kind of underground feeling to it, at least to the point where I found it strange that Hanamizawa-san would choose that song.
Oh hey, they have footage from a DIVA concert playing in the background. Mao-chan (or whatever her name was) danced among a sea of glowsticks on the monitor.
All of a sudden Hanamizawa-san stood up and started singing, perfectly mimicking the character’s movements.
“Maomao, we’ll be dancin’ all night! ♪” Whoa, she’s in perfect sync.
Apparently Hanamizawa-san had completely memorized DIVA’s choreo too. Singing and dancing like that seemed like a bit much, even for solo karaoke. But if she was having fun, so what? After all, I did tell her to do whatever she wanted. I decided to leave her alone and looked back down at my textbook.
After a while, Hanamizawa-san finished singing and plopped back down on the couch, wiping sweat from her brow as she slurped her ginger ale through the straw.
“Phew! It’s pretty fun to dance like crazy without worrying about anyone watching you.”
“I bet. I’m surprised you like DIVA songs, though.”
“Yeah, well…” she said with a shy smile.
“I used to watch videos of their live performances every now and then. Even though she’s an anime character, she just looks so surprisingly real, you know? It’s like she actually exists or something. I got totally obsessed! Plus, her dancing is cute.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d never tell my friends I like her, though.” She let out a little sigh.
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s wrong of me to hide hobbies like this from my friends. Like, do I feel the need to hide things I’m interested in from them?”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Is it wrong to hide things from your friends? I mean, do they even really think of me as a friend? And do I really think of them as friends? Honestly, I ask myself that a lot. Ah ha ha… It’s not even funny though, is it…”
She gave a self-deprecating chuckle as she propped her cheek on her
hand.
“Maybe if I made some otaku friends, I wouldn’t have to hide hobbies like these. We could share all the things we like and really understand each other. Maybe then I could make real friendships,” she said.
“That’s stupid,” I replied bluntly.
“Huh?”
“Just because you’re both otaku doesn’t mean you’d magically understand each other. Plus, otaku are people who have a really solid sense of self.”
I set down my pen and looked right at her while I spoke.
“Let’s say you love collecting plastic models, so you only make friends with people who also love that. Some people only collect Bandai models, and some only collect Tamiya models. And in the Bandai group, some will only collect model cars, or radio controlled cars, or mini four-wheel drives. See how many
categories there are just with plastic models? There are countless more when it comes to anime and manga. It’s not as simple as just ‘sharing things you love’ with each other.”
“B-But kids at school always look like they’re having so much fun talking about that stuff,”
she said, but I had no idea what she was talking about.
“They’re probably having fun just talking about it since they know they’re not gonna find anyone who shares their exact interests. They like to listen to others talking about their interests, and they try to get them to understand their own. Sometimes it just turns into bragging about who knows the most, though.”
“Seriously? That doesn’t sound much different from what goes on in my group!”
Hanamizawa-san murmured, looking astonished.
I nodded. “Yep. Friend groups are all like that, whether you’re popular or not. No one’s ever gonna completely understand you. So sometimes you just gotta go along with what someone says, or have them go along with you, and build up a friendship that way. You’ll have to decide whether or not you’re satisfied with that relationship.”
“Satisfied? How can you be satisfied if they don’t even understand you?” She stared at her lap with downcast eyes.
It sounded like she was forcing her words out.
“It’s impossible for anyone to ever understand everything about you. But sometimes you can find that one thing that both of you understand,” I said.
She looked up with a gasp.
“For example, I once recommended this manga to a friend of mine. The main character is an unpopular girl and the story takes a while to get going at first. It’s also a long story, so my friend got frustrated with it really quickly.”
Hanamizawa-san didn’t say anything.
“So I gave my friend the volume where things start to get really interesting, and the volume where it gets resolved. It was like five volumes ahead of where she stopped, but I said, ‘Just read these two volumes!’”
“So what happened?”
“After my friend read them she asked, ‘How did things end up like this?’ She was so curious about the story, she went and bought the other volumes from where she left off. She wanted to see what happened so badly, she even bought the next few volumes. Now we’re following the series together, even though at first she said it was boring.”
I felt myself smiling as I remembered the look on her face when that happened.
“It made me really happy that she finally understood why I like that manga so much.”
“Oh…”
“Obviously that didn’t always happen with every manga I’ve recommended to someone. But at the very least, someone started liking something I liked too. That’s good enough, right?”
“And that’s why the otaku look like they’re having so much fun?” she asked, and I nodded.
“I think so.”
“Oh, I get it now.” She stared at me for a few moments.
“Do you like DIVA songs, Yashiro-kun?”
“Hm? Maybe not enough to get up and dance, but I think they’re fun to watch.”
“Oh, okay.” She said with a smile.
“That’s good enough for me.”
◊◊◊
“I had a lot of fun today, Yashiro-kun,”
Hanamizawa-san said with a cheerful look on her face. Our time at karaoke had come to an end.
“It’s really fun to just go all out and do whatever you want. I feel like I could get addicted to this.”
“That’s good.”
She clasped her hands behind her back and started fidgeting.
“H-Hey, Yashiro-kun?”
“What?”
“Um… Would you do this again? You know, come with me while I do karaoke alone?”
I flashed her a grin.
“Go by yourself next time.”
◊◊◊
A while later…
“Hey, Chi-chan! Look at this video!”
“What? Another DIVA concert, Kanon? I mean, she’s cute and all, but you don’t have to show me those videos every single day…”
I saw Hanamizawa-san trying to show DIVA videos to her friend in the front of the classroom. Her friend had a reluctant look on her face like she couldn’t care less as Kanon kept pushing her phone towards her.
“Let’s go to her concert sometime! I’m dying to see her perform live.”
“Huh? But I don’t care about DIVA.”
“I went with you to see the movie adaptation of that shojo manga I didn’t care about, remember?”
“Ugh… Fine. Just this once though, okay?”
Looks like things are going smoothly, I thought. Just then, Kanon noticed I was watching her and waved at me.
“Ah haha… Whoa!”
I waved back out of formality, but suddenly I felt this strange, ticklish pressure on my back like I was being poked in my funny bone or something.
