PEACEFUL SONG
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
I eyed her. “Hey now, you told me you would come up with something to do if we had a sleepover.”
“Of course, of course!” she laughed. “But, I wanted to see if you had anything in mind!”
“No, I don’t,” I sighed. She was clearly testing. “Nothing interesting for us to do together.”
“Hmm, well…” Grabbing her feet, she swung back and forth on her pillow. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling as she leaned further and further back, eventually leaning far enough to reach for her bag. “We could… listen to music, draw pictures… I brought some comics as well.”
On second thought, she didn’t seem that prepared to me. And she could tell by the look I was giving her.
“Honestly, now that we’ve gotten here, I don’t really care what we do. I just wanted to have a pajama party with you!”
“How simple of you…” I teased. “There’s nothing else your mind is screaming to do?”
“I don’t know…” Chuckling, she threw her bag into her lap and wrapped her arms around it. “It’s hard to bring a park into a house. I don’t want to bother your mom.”
“Ah. Do you want to go outside, then?”
“Mmm, I dunno. I kind of already changed, didn’t I?”
I looked down at her clothes. She brought up a good point. “Ah, I didn’t give you a choice, did I?”
“Don’t worry!” she laughed. “I was just, so excited to put mine on as well.”
“Then, what else do you usually do with your friends?”
“During sleepovers?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t.”
“…? Right.”
“My friends either aren’t comfortable or their parents aren’t comfortable with it.”
“It took some work to convince my mother as well.”
“Ah… I didn’t know, sorry.”
“No, I mean it was mostly making sure your parents were okay with it.”
“Ah, they don’t care,” she scoffed dismissively, crossing her arms and leaning forward on the table.
“Well… I’m sure they do… I mean, care about you. Maybe their way is different. Letting you do what you want is how they show they care.”
“Sure, I guess…” She tucked her chin into her arms and rolled her eyes to the side. “I guess they at least asked if your parents were okay with it.”
Akiho kept her gaze locked off to the side, relaxing her shoulders. There was a brief moment of silence. She did this every so often, and it always felt odd for someone as energetic as her.
Eventually, she sprung up and opened her bag. “Hey, do you have any CDs you want to play?”
“Eh… Not really.”
Pulling out a small device, she looked at me with bright eyes. “Can I see, at least?”
“No, I mean… I don’t have any.”
She blinked. “You don’t have CDs?”
“Well, I think my father has some…”
“But you don’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Ah.” She set the device on the table. “Does your… parents not let you, or…”
“I never bothered to ask for one.” Seeing the Sony logo on this device, I recognized what it was. “I can just listen to the radio.”
“Yeah, but you might have to wait a long time for your favorite song to play!”
“I’m fine with that. It’s free. And I get to listen to a lot more songs than I could ever own.”
Akiho was digging in her bag again. “That’s true. You just… lose the option of choice.”
“If I really wanted to listen to a song, there is a music store along the way home from school. I could try and find it…”
As I spoke, she took out a zippered case and set it down close to me, smiling proudly. It looked like a black book, perhaps five centimeters thick, as tall as a fist. My eyes widened.
“Is that… all discs?”
“No, no! I’m not even close to filling up the binder!”
Pulling on the zipper, she opened it to the first page. There were two colorful discs I could only presume as her favorites. She flipped through the pages, each one having two discs on the front, two on the back.
“I probably have… eleven discs, now? Eleven.”
“That’s still a lot more than I’ll ever have.”
She laughed at this notion. “Hey! You don’t think you’ll eventually get a few when you grow up?!”
“Well, I mean, how am I supposed to know?”
“I’m sure you’ll eventually break eleven in your lifetime!”
I lightly jabbed her shoulder. “You’re being too literal and you know it.”
“Ha ha ha ha!”
Akiho returned to her bag and pulled out a black cord.
“Everything just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Who knows, discs may one day fit in the palm of your hands! Or the tip of your finger!”
“What? No, I don’t think it will get to that point! I feel like that would be too easy to lose.”
“But think about it!” she insisted, smacking an open palm over the binder. I tensed a little, watching her smack the discs, even if they were in their sleeves. “You could carry dozens of songs in something half the size as this binder!”
“I would be afraid of breaking it. Something that small will be fragile.”
“They’re not glass. They won’t break if you drop them.”
“No, but you could snap them, can’t you?”
“It would be pretty difficult to.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You tried?”
“Heh? No! I mean, look.”
She grabbed a disc with three fingers and took it out of its sleeve, then held it in front of me, the shiny side of the disc gleaming into my eyes.
“No problem.”
“But, if they were smaller.”
“Keep them the same thickness, then.”
“But if you accidentally sit on them?”
“Why would you do that?” she laughed.
“People lose coins all the time! You think they won’t lose these super small discs?”
“Oh, that’s true.” She turned the face of the disc towards her, giving it a look, then back to me, using her other hand to circle it with a finger. “Then, how about half the size?”
“Maybe, I guess…”
Taking the disc, Akiho popped open the cover of the discman and placed it inside. Placing her hand on the cover, she seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“Oh, actually, I should be asking what you want to listen to.”
“Me?”
Turning the binder around, she slid it closer to me. She also turned around the discman so that I could see the disc inside. “Here, take a look.”
“Well…” Glancing at a few of the discs, which conveniently listed the tracks they had, they were mostly songs I recognized. “I don’t mind listening to whatever you have. They’re all on the radio, right?”
“Most of them. There are a few old ones I don’t hear anymore.”
I found the page of older discs right as she said that. There were a few titles I did not recognize, with a few familiar ones scattered in between.
“We can start with the one you’ve got in there right now, then switch to another once it runs out.”
“Sure! Sounds good!”
Closing the cover, she took a cord and plugged it into the side of the device. Sliding her fingers along the cable, they stopped at the end, where it split into two separate wires with pods at the end. She offered one of the pods to me. When I took it, she let go, leaving the other pod to dangle in the air.
“These are quite compact.” I mused, turning it around in my fingers.
“You’ve never seen earbuds before?!”
“No, I have! I don’t think I’ve touched one, though.” I put in one end, then the other.
“Beats having headphones. And they block out noise better as well, since they plug your ears.”
“Uh huh…” She wasn’t kidding. Once I had them in, her voice became somewhat muffled, and I could hear my voice loudly buzzing, which I didn’t like. I didn’t need to hear my annoying voice any louder.
Uncrossing her legs, Akiho crawled over to my side of the table. She dragged her pillow along with her and sat next to me. I scooched to the side a little, making some room for her, but stared at her in confusion. She simply stared back, leaning uncomfortably close with a little bit of a sly smile. I blushed a bit.
“Hey, are you going to share or not?”
It took me some time to realize what she meant. “Heh…? Oh, this?” I took one of the pods out of my ears. My friend responded with a hearty laugh. “Sorry, I thought you had another one.”
“No, the discman can only plug in one set at a time!”
“Ah, right.”
Shutting the cover, she turned on the device, waited a moment, then pushed the play button with extra flair.
“Start!”
We carried on through the evening like this, sometimes humming or singing along. A few times, Akiho talked about the artists and how they were doing. I didn’t know much about the people I listened to, so I couldn’t follow along. We eventually moved away from the table and onto the floor, lying down with our chins on the pillows and our hands crossed in front of us. Mother came in at some point and bid us good night. She giggled at us lying on the floor like this, listening to music, saying it reminded her of her college years with my father.
Realizing how late it was, we stopped what we were doing and prepared for bed. Mother always slept early, but Akiho wanted to prepare for bed anyway, saying we didn’t need to go to sleep immediately.
“Part of the experience!”
“Heh…? Something as mundane as going to sleep?”
“It’s different during sleepovers, trust me!”
“Sure…” I couldn’t think of any reason why it would be any different.
Stopping the discman, Akiho popped open the cover and put the disc away. She continued to hum as she cleaned up. I sat up, looking around. In a sudden rush, the drowsiness caught up with me, my head becoming numb and my eyelids growing heavy. Through the window, I could see the complete darkness of the night. It was certainly past my bedtime.
“What do you have planned?” I asked as I rubbed an eye. “Because I’m getting pretty tired already.”
“Oh. It’s nothing too much. We can just chat as we fall asleep.”
“Heh?” I lowered my hand. “That’s it?”
“Did you have something else in mind?”
“No…” With a bit of a laugh, I stifled a yawn. “It’s just, I don’t see what’s interesting about that.”
“Have you ever chatted with someone while falling asleep?”
“No.”
“Well, neither have I!” she winked. “So let’s give it a try!”
“I’m sure it’s nothing too special.”