Musical Exploration

Sometime in year 1


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Nekiro lets out a sigh, “ I don’t understand, it sounds okay I guess. I thought there would be more to it”

His finger swiped across the phone, a new song every swipe. The class had been talking about music at lunch, and some were extremely passionate about it. However Nekiro had little to contribute to the conversation. It was a common thing for him now, a childhood spent studying and training left little room for building hobbies. They were poor but not that poor, but that did not matter apparently. Anytime the question would come up it would just get redirected.

“No you can’t watch that movie, you have a test tomorrow, and you have been slacking again in your morning runs!” the voice of Mom echoed in his mind. There would always be some reason  not to do something that was not educational or athletic. School, sports, exercise, cooking, and cleaning were all the “hobbies” he was allowed to have. Though now that he was living at school, (at the principals request for some reason, not that he wasn’t complaining) he was able to try new things.

Today's new thing was music. Of course he had heard music before, but he never got to look into what he really liked. He recalled what everyone had mentioned as their favorite things to listen to.

Ito was into the same stuff as all the popular girls in middle school. It just sounded perfectly crafted for everyone and no one at the same time. Like background music to modern life, it was so common that even Nekiro knew the artists.

“Damn he has as much taste as I do for this”, he swiped a few more times ,” I just don’t get it.

Next up was Li Yinzhen, which went about the same.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Loud chinese hip hop blared from the headphones, enough that he had to turn it down. The words were nonsense to him, except for some of the english words that were thrown in sometimes. It all just sounded very…American.

 “Better not tell Li that, she will start up again.” The chinese transfer student had gotten into more than one argument about how this was the best music there was and that they just did not understand it.

Moving onto Jocko, his favorite thing to listen to didn’t even sound like music. Every artist he listed was just a normal sounding name of someone. Pulling up the first name Nekiro realizes why that is, they are all just comedians.

“Of fucking course it is. What more should I have expected… at least they are kind of funny.”

The last suggestion was from Nobiko. The genre was called noise, and that is all it sounded like. Large gears grinding against each other and the sound of metal on metal in general. Her favorite was the quickest to skip through, it sounded like something only she would like.

Nekiro lights a cigarette, not a real one, but he would let his classmates believe it was. One of the support students made fake cigarettes as a pet project. They feel like the real thing but with no damage. The principal allowed Nekiro to live in a dorm so long as he gave up real smoking, and he wasn’t going back on his word. He looked over at the clock, it was half an hour before he needed to sleep.

“Guess I have a while longer, maybe I can find something on my own”

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