It was right after practice on a Wednesday evening. Taki had just called it good enough for the day, and since there were no administrative or logistical issues on the table that particular week, she immediately headed out of the studio to walk Tomori home. Soyo threw her gig bag around her shoulders and lagged behind them, waving everyone a perfunctory goodbye.

Raana always wants to leave the soonest, but her teardown takes by far the longest. After unplugging herself and wrapping the cable (over and under so they don’t kink, like she was taught) she has to slip her guitar into a bulky hard case, and since she refuses to use the amps provided by RiNG (they don’t let it sing right, she says - of course - there’s a certain warmth the vacuum tubes give it that you just can’t replicate with modern technology, that’s what Grandma told her when she complained) she has to disconnect her amp head and cab and her pedals from the wall, put them in a case and lift them onto her dolly, and tie everything down. She learned that last part the hard way; that’s where that little scuff on the headstock came from.

All in all, it takes a good five, six minutes until she’s ready to leave.
This fit perfectly into the schemes of one Chihaya Anon.

“Raana-chan~!”
As she wrapped the strap around her gear, this pink-haired girl skipped and hopped towards her, her arms curled around her back in a laughable portrayal of innocence. The words ‘ulterior motives’ were practically written on her face.
“Hm? What?”
Raana didn’t bother reading people’s faces, though. It was too much work.
“Will you teach me guitar?”

“Hm? You can play already though.” Raana tilted her head.
“…Um, yeah, but I mean like, I wanna get better! There’s so many things I still can’t do!!”
“Hmmmm.” She wondered.
“Listen, Raana-chan. I’ve been getting really into guitar circles on social media, y’know? Like, I got recommended this clip of someone playing a solo, and all their other videos were really cool so I followed them, and now my algorithm is NOTHING but guitar videos, it’s crazy! But like, I do like them, so I mean it’s fine.”
“Igloo rhythm?”
“Anyways, I started thinking I should join in since it’s like really trendy these days, right? And like, I started looking deeper into it and it seems like the hot thing right now is posting ‘vibesy jangly mathy tappy emo riffs’! But I had no idea what those words meant!!”
“Jangly…? Like keys?”
“I asked Tomorin if she knew what makes music ‘mathy’, but she said she didn’t, and then she got all depressed and started asking me if she needed to get better at algebra for the band’s sake, and she ran off to the school library, so I couldn’t ask her about the other ones… Anyways, I looked it up and like, it seems like it’s all about this one technique. Tapping! Two-handed tapping!”
“Never heard of it.”
“Hah?! There’s no way you haven’t. I’ve seen you do it!! Like, when you grab your guitar by the neck with both hands”–she grabs hers off its stand, slings it over her shoulder, and starts miming–“and then you go crazy with your fingers like, doodeedoodadoodeedoo, you know?”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that!! I watched some tutorials and tried to do it but it’s sooo hard, and guitar teachers are soooooo expensive, right? So I was thinking you could teach me how to do cool stuff like that, so I can post myself doing it online, and like, maybe I can even start playing solos during our concerts…!”
Stars gleamed in Anon’s eyes as she gazed past Raana and into her blindingly bright future. One could look closely and spot a hint of drool leaving the corner of her mouth.

“That sounds hard, so no. Bye-bye.”
Devastation. A lifetime of fame and adoration crumbled into pieces before her, then faded into nothingness, all while Raana turned around and headed for the door.
…No. Wait. This was fine. Expected, even. She had planned for this eventuality. Of course she had.
“I’m not trying to get you to do it for free, y’know! Just what kinda girl do you take me for~?”
The sweetness in her voice switched on like it was hooked up to a dial. Raana stopped in her tracks. Just like she’d drawn it up.
She turned her head, just enough to peek back with her blue eye, which shone with a catlike curiosity.
“See, I’ll buy you one parfait for every hour of your time. And, and, if you can teach me to do it well enough by then, I’ll take you to the MatchaFes pop-up they’re holding next month in Ginza! All expenses paid!”

Raana slid her dolly aside and turned to Anon, a smirk on her face.
“I’ll do it.”

The pair sat side by side at the café counter. Anon was drinking some pink refreshment of dubious origin, while Raana had her paycheck, already half spent.
“Okay, so to start, let me show you the videos I really like, so we can set some goals. Here, let me find one…” She tapped and swiped through her phone, then held its screen in front of Raana as she munched on a bite from her parfait.
The video showed a person, their head just out of frame, absolutely shredding on their axe. The sound of the guitar rang shrill from the tinny mobile speakers.
“See~? Isn’t that just SO cool? How do I do that?!”
Raana’s expression was set to its default option.
She was unfazed.
“It’s fake,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“…What?! Fake?! What do you mean fake?!?!”
“Guitars don’t sound like that. Something’s off. Jittery.”
“N-no way… But it looked so totally legit… Okay then how about this one? This one has to be the real deal, right?” She swiped down and showed her another.
“Fake. Fingers don’t match the sound.”
“…You’re… you’re kidding me…”
Anon started to desperately thumb through her phone, beads of sweat pooling on her forehead.
“Okay PLEASE tell me this one is real, Raana-chan. Come on, it’s goootta be…”
Raana watched the video she was shown intently, scanning it for clues. Her eyes widened slightly, and the faintest smile painted the corner of her mouth.
“Hmmm… this one’s real.”
“Yeah!! I knew it!! I knew it had to be–”
“Ah, no, this part’s fake.” Back to her default stare.
Anon fell from her seat and collapsed onto the floor, barely holding herself up by her arms.
“It’s so over… What’s even the point anymore… Sorry for wasting your time, Raana-chan… You can go…” She whined, through barely-contained sobs. The hope was gone from her voice.

“The videos are fake, but I can do it.”
The light returned to Anon’s eyes. She looked up at Raana like she was a dying woman finally meeting God.
“…Really? Really for real? And you can teach me?”
“Dunno. Probably.”
Anon lifted herself up and over the counter.
“Excuse me!! Another matcha parfait, please!!!”

Anon’s heart burned with righteous fury as she dragged Raana towards an abandoned storeroom in the live house, where they could start their first lesson.
“I’m fired up now! Yeah, I’m gonna show those posers!! I’m gonna learn to play that stuff for real and make them look like the amateurs they are!! And I’m gonna get like waa~aay more followers than them!!”
“Anon.” Raana said her name, but to her, it just blended into the cheers of the adoring fans in her head.
“Yeah, that’ll teach them! ANON TOKYO GUITAR, 100,000 followers! And I’m gonna prove I’m for real too, I’m gonna do that thing where you have the live waveform of the recording on a screen in the background and-”
“Anon.” Raana pulled back on the arm that was dragging her around.
“and I-huh? What’s up, Raana-chan?”

Raana stood in the dimly-lit hallway, wearing a look of unease on her face.
There was something on her mind.
“Why do people fake their guitar? I don’t get it.”
“…Oh! Well, because they want to get more followers and likes and go viral, right? But they don’t wanna put in the hard work to do it for real, so they do something easier and they edit it to make it look more impressive than it is. I mean, I don’t NOT get it…”
“Followers? Viral?” She leaned her head from side to side with every word.
“Yeah, yeah! That’s what it’s all about!”
“I like it when cats follow me. But getting sick isn’t fun.”
“No, that’s not–”
“What’s the point if it’s fake? That’s cruel. To the guitar.” She looked back at hers, sitting in its case on the dolly, and gently stroked it.
“Ah, well…” she started, scratching the back of her hair and averting her gaze. “For um, some people, the attention matters more than anything, y’know? Like it doesn’t matter HOW you get it, just that you do. It feels good to have people notice you! And say nice things about you and stuff! It makes your heart flutter~! I mean, if you’re one of those people!”
“I’m ideologically opposed.”
“Id–Hey, where’d you learn a big word like that?!”
“School.”
“Oh, that’s right. You do go to school, don’t you.

…ANYWAY,"–she grabs her by the wrist and resumes pulling her along–"I’m not taking the easy way out! I’m gonna get good for real!! And it’s all thanks to you, Raana-sensei!”
“Sensei…”
Raana stared off into space as they moved forward, letting that word swirl around in her head.
It did have a nice ring to it.

Student and teacher sat across from each other. Anon had borrowed a small amplifier, and Raana had set hers up. Much to Raana’s dismay, Anon said they had to set their volumes as low as possible, so they wouldn’t get kicked out of the live house for making a ruckus.
“Alright, Raana-sensei. Let’s see it. Show me your two-handed tapping technique!”
“‘Kay.”
Raana was happy to comply. She noodled her way into a minor key, climbed the frets up the neck, and started tapping away at a hauntingly “emo” riff. Her fingers danced past each other, as her right hand hammered on the low strings and her left hand on the high strings; it was mesmerizing to look at, let alone listen to. The smile on her face grew wider with every arpeggio. Anon watched her, enraptured.
Eventually, once she felt satisfied, she played her way into a resolution.
“That’s sooo awesome, Raana-chan~! You really are a pro, huh? So? How do I do that?” Her eyes begged for an answer.
“What?”
“…What?”
“You just do it. Like that. It’s easy.”
“…Um, well, okay… I’ll… give it a shot…”
Anon was skeptical. She already had tried ‘just doing it’, after all. But she trusted her teacher; maybe she was onto something. Maybe seeing it in the flesh instilled it in a way a video tutorial couldn’t.

“Here goes…!”

It was, of course, an unmitigated disaster.
It might have sounded okay at first, for about three seconds, but her playing soon devolved into a manifest cacophony. The hellish sounds of buzzing strings, fingers slipping and muting notes, and sympathetic vibrations producing a haunting harmonic backdrop, all to the rhythm of a broken stopwatch falling down a flight of stairs.

Anon peeked up from her fretboard—which only made things worse—and saw a genuine look of exasperation on Raana’s face for the first time in her life.
“Anon, stop. The guitar’s crying.”
“Ugh…”
“That’s not how you do it. Do it right.”

She had hit a nerve. You could hear it in how she clicked her tongue. Fire welled up from her chest.
“…Listen here, you little furball, I can’t ‘just do it right’. We can’t all be child prodigies like you, okay?! MOST people don’t have a guitar thrown into our cribs at two years old! I bet you don’t even know what it feels like to not have callouses on all ten fingers!”
“I do know.”
“Oh, yeah?!”
“Yeah.” Raana lifted up her left hand and gave her a thumbs up, then wiggled it around. “This one’s soft.”
“Oh. My god. I can’t with you! You’re such a bad teacher! I want a refund, I wanna reach in there and pull those matcha parfaits out of your guts!!!”
“I’ll die.”
“Do you really have no idea how hard what you’re doing is?! Didn’t like, your grandma teach you anything?! Seriously, I—”

“Grandma…”
At this word, Raana lost herself in her own thoughts, as the pink girl continued to verbally assault her. Memories flooded back; ones she hadn’t seen in years and years.

“Here, Raana. You can try playing my guitar.”
“This here’s an E chord. Can you play it?”
“Raana. I’m gonna show you something called the minor pentatonic scale…”
"…the CAGED system, it’ll let you…"
"…and if you memorize these triad shapes…"
"…mute the strings so you can…"

“…you smug little twerp!! You have any idea how hard it was for me to even play an F chord?! It took me weeks. Weeks!! Hey, are you even listening to me?!”
“I remembered.” She stared right into Anon’s soul.
“Hah?! Remembered what?”
“How to play guitar.”

Raana’s phone buzzed from an alarm, and its screen lit up the dark storeroom.
“Ah.” She grabbed it and tapped on something to stop the noise. “Time’s up. Gimme a parfait or I’m going home.”
Their hour had passed them by.
“…No, I’m good for today. My fingers are totally beat.” Anon shook her wrists to ease the soreness. “Thanks, Raana-chan.”
“Sensei.”
“…Thank you, Raana-sensei. And um… I’m sorry for um, saying all that stuff.”
“Hmm?”
“You know what, never mind.”
“Mm. Don’t forget to practice. You’re still clumsy.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“With a metronome.”
“I know!”
“Bye-bye, then.” Raana finished tying up her gear and walked out.
“Mhm! Bye-bye~”
Anon waited until the door closed to pump her fist. Her master plan had worked, for once.

And so the two would meet, after every practice session, and on some days off too. Raana would take her payment up front, then spend an hour relaying her boundless knowledge; knowledge which she had herself filed away in the dustbin of her memory.

And a month passed by.

“Hmmmm.”
Raana held Anon’s hand in hers, turning it over, meticulously inspecting each finger one by one, playing with each one like a toy. She got a good, long look at their pads and their tips, and ran her own thumb over them, feeling them out.
“…Hey, are you done yet? This is, um, kinda awkward…” Anon was blushing just the teensiest bit.
“Shhh. It’s an inspection.” She said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“O-okay…” Anon tried not to look. It made her a little queasy to, for reasons she couldn’t explain.
“Hmm. Hmmmmmm.” She inched her eyes closer, making Anon flinch. “Yeah, they’ve gotten tougher. Good fingers.”
She finally let go.
“…Really?” Anon turned to look at her, beaming with anticipation. “I got a good grade in fingers?!”
“A plus.” Raana said in a monotone, while making a circle with her thumb and index. “Your guitar’s singing, Anon. You’re ready.”
“You really think so?! Oh man, I’m so excited!” Anon balled up her fists, curled into herself, and made a weird, pink noise. “I’m gonna record a video tonight! I’m gonna get soooo famous!!!!!! Raana-sensei, you’re my savior!”
“Matchafes.”
“…Yeah, yeah, we’re going! It’s next Saturday, okay? I’ll send you the deets! And wear something cute! It’s Ginza, you know! Gi-n-za!”

A few days later, as the band gathered at the café before practice, Soyo called out to Anon.
“Whatever happened to those guitar videos you were talking about? Weren’t you really excited to post some?”
“Oh, that’s right.” Taki interjected. “It was all she could talk about the other day. Though honestly, I was happy to hear she was focusing on something useful for once, so I just kept quiet.”
“Y-yeah, I wanted to watch them and give you ’likes’, Ano-chan…” Tomori looked at her expectantly.

“Ah, that… Well, y’see…” Anon froze up at the phrase ‘guitar videos’, then dodged everyone’s gazes and started to fidget nervously.
“Oh, boy. Here we go.” Soyo sighed, then brought her cup of tea up to her mouth, like it was a bucket of popcorn at the movies.
“You don’t get it, Soyorin!!! It’s sooo much work! I had to buy a bunch of gear just to be able to record myself, and setting everything up is a huuuge pain, and then I didn’t even get that many views! It’s just not worth it! There’s no ROI here!”
“That’s really just like you.” Soyo set her cup down, glowering with condescension.
“Absolutely typical,” Taki scoffed.
“You guys are SO mean, you know! I still learned a lot I can use for our songs! Plus, plus, I bonded a lot with Raana-chan-sensei! We’re besties now, you know?”
“Now that is what truly scares me.” Taki leaned against the table, a tinge of dread painting her face.
“I can’t picture it.” Soyo took another sip of Darjeeling.

“Hang on. Now that you mention it,” Taki looked at the clock on her phone, “the stray’s not here yet. It’s almost time, you know? Ah, man, what’s she up to this time?”
Anon immediately started adjusting the collar of her school uniform.
“…Tell me what you know.” Taki walked up to her and loomed over her menacingly. “Now.”
“Listen, it’s not my fault, okay! I think she enjoyed teaching me more than she expected, and so, um… Well, she… set up shop somewhere around here, and she’s charging people on the street for guitar lessons…”
“Oh my god. That is ABSOLUTELY your fault!” Taki slammed her hand on the table, spilling a drop of Soyo’s tea. “You go and get her right now!”

A five minute’s walk away in Sunshine City, Raana sat on the sidewalk, noodling on her guitar. She had a cardboard sign propped up by her side. It read:

GUITAR LESSONS (Pro)
BEGINNER - 1 Matcha au lait/hr
INTERMEDIATE - 1 Matcha parfait/hr
ADVANCED - 3 Matcha parfait/hr