Yang took the scores to my house three days after the Halloween event at Yasaka's house during the evening.
"Why didn't you come to the roof for the past few days? You returned home right after school today too! Ruby's really worried about you, you know!"
As usual, the uniformed Yang climbed up the tree in the courtyard, and squeezed in through the window of my room. She said that as she shook a stack of handwritten scores in her hand.
I twirled the wires of my headphones and answered, "… I'm not in the mood for practice…"
Feeling more depressed, I climbed into my bed and pulled my blanket over my head. But Yang sat next to my pillow and pulled the blanket away from my face. She then said, "Did Weiss say something to you again?"
I did not reply to her, and instead covered my face with my pillow.
"Hey, are you going to say things like you want to quit?"
"… Maybe."
I had already prepared myself for Yang to punch or do a triangle choke hold on me, but instead she looked up at the ceiling, and said nothing for a long while.
"… I thought we could finally start a band or something."
I heard her mumbling something. For a moment, I thought I was thinking too much into it. Just as I lifted my head to look at Yang's face, she pressed a score sheet into my face.
"Ruby spent so much effort changing that Beethoven's piece into the score of a bass, all just for you!"
I stared at the dancing tadpoles on the five-line staff lazily.
"No, can't do. I can't possibly play this piece of music."
"That's because you didn't practice!"
I hid myself under the blanket, and laid on the bed. Suddenly, Yang pressed her whole body weight on the area near my waist, and began practicing drumming basics on my back. Crotchet, quaver, triplets, semiquaver… she actually used her drum sticks to hit against my back along to the rhythms accurately.
"Yang, that hurts!"
"I know."
"What's with the 'I know'!? What sort of answer is that!"
She continued drumming the rhythms on my back while maintaining them at a fixed tempo. Before long, my mind became lax.
"Everyone will feel hurt if they're hit directly in their heart."
I had no idea what she was talking about. Still, I began imagining the pain of my heart being drummed at. It's probably painful enough for the corpses to jump out of their graves in pain.
I don't know if Yang was getting more and more into it, but she began drumming some quavers slowly. Somehow, it felt like my head was a cymbal, while my right hand was a floor tom. Wait, stop Yang-sama, that really hurts! Before long, the piece suddenly went into the chorus. She began lightly rapping semiquavers on my left shoulder in replacement as a snare drum.
"Yang, wait, that hurts! I said it hurts, dammit!"
I kept moving about beneath the blanket, but my opponent's a retired black belt in martial arts, and she knew very well where to apply the force so as to make me immobile. In the end, I had to wait till she finished drumming the whole piece before I was freed from beneath her butt.
"Do you know what song that was?"
A naughty smile appeared on Yang's face, as she asked me that question after I had finally managed to get out of the blanket with much difficulty.
"Unicorn's Hige to Boin?"
"Oh, you're quite sharp."
Though such cases are rare, but just like the how Stand by Me is for the bass, there are some songs that one can recognize instantly just by listening to the drums. Actually, this miracle might have happened purely because Yang and I had grown up listening to similar music since our days in elementary, before Unicorn disbanded.
"But sadly, the answer is Asia no Junshin."
"So you're just toying with me!?" To think I had just thought of it as a miracle doesn't that make me an idiot?
"Not at all. We still have to do our best even if life is boring! I'll root for you, just a little."
With that, she took her shoes that she had placed on my desk, and jumped out of the window… why can't you just leave through the main door?
I'm alone yet again. I sat on my bed, and picked up the scores left by Yang. The theme's really simple, and the tempo is quite slow as well—I think I can probably play it right off the bat. Up till the point where the second, third and forth voices are gradually overlapping, there is still no change in the difficulty of the part which I am supposed to play. However, the variation before that is much more complicated. As for the fugue, I actually have to play a melody that is as difficult as Weiss's, right till the very end. That's just impossible no matter how you look at it! I tossed the scores aside, laid down, and stared at the ceiling for a while. My back was still a little sore from the drumming that Yang gave me.
Things like how the pieces are too difficult, or how I have no motivation at all—they are all excuses. I knew that perfectly well. Therefore, Yang might know it just as well. I was just ashamed of myself. I don't understand the situation about Weiss at all, and yet I was challenging her to a fight enthusiastically. To get back the classroom so that I can kill time after school—just for something as stupid as that? What an idiot I was. But that's even more reason why I can't give up at a point like this, or else I'll be an even bigger idiot than I already am.
I quickly took the scores, and went to the living room to take out my bass from its casing. Just as I was tuning the instrument, the string suddenly snapped into two. Feels like it's telling me that I can't possibly do it. I laid on the sofa and planned to just sleep it off, but my back where Yang had drummed on began to hurt again. And so, I stuffed the scores into the casing, then lifted it up onto my back and walked out of the main door.