It was a Tuesday evening in the studio at RiNG. The first studio, the one on the hallway to the left from the reception desk. The one whose soundproof door always makes the same little noise when it shuts, a quiet ping that flies through the air before fading into the acoustic foam on the walls. The studio we practice in the most.
There’s other studios here, of course, and we’ve been in all of them at this point, but this one is my favorite. I never feel quite right in any of the others, never as calm and present as I do in this one. Every time I find out we have to practice elsewhere, a dull weight drops in my stomach, as if I’m saying goodbye to a friend before they leave on a long, winding journey.
But not today. Today, I didn’t have to say goodbye.

We’d just finished practicing, and though our music had long stopped ringing from the speakers in the room, it still reverbrated through me, inside me, its distant echoes still making me shiver. I kept my eyes closed and breathed in, then out, letting the air soothe the soreness in my throat that my screams had left behind.
“…Okay.” Taki-chan’s voice cut through the low rumble of my thoughts. I opened my eyes and watched as she started putting her things away; her drumsticks went into a zipper on the front of her bag, adorned by a glossy panda keychain; her tablet slid into its main compartment. She closed everything up, then looked back at us. “Good practice. I’ve got a shift to cover now, so I’ll be heading back to the café.”
Ano-chan joined in as she zipped her guitar into its bag, saying something about a lick she played during the chorus. Soyo-chan answered, and told her she was ‘showing off’, and the two of them walked out of the studio, exchanging words I couldn’t decipher.
Taki-chan finished cleaning up after herself, and as she followed the other two heading for the exit, she turned around, and her eyes met mine.
“Ah, Tomori.” I perked up. “You can take your time cleaning up. There’s no one else lined up for tonight.” She sounded softer, now.
“O-oh. Okay. Um… see you, Taki-chan.”
I remembered then that she wouldn’t be walking me home today, and a hint of melancholy ran down my spine. As it did, Taki-chan said, “yeah, see you,” then walked out of the studio. The door swung back after her, and its hinges whined and creaked in a lonely refrain that slowly faded away.

But once Taki-chan was gone, and the air stood still, I realized something.
A rush of excitement hit me like a splash of cold, fresh water to my face. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my hands began to shake as if I’d caught a terrible fever. I walked briskly over to the door and, without thinking twice, closed it. Relief and comfort washed over me as that little ping rang out.
I’d… always thought I wanted to be here all by myself.
The studio’s familiar smell, its gentle temperature on my skin; they felt like home. The weight of the silence trapped within its walls calmed my nerves. It was a silence unlike any other I knew.
There are many kinds of silence, of course, like the silence in the classroom after everyone else has left for the day, or the silence in that one hallway in the aquarium no person ever seems to walk through. I can even block out most sound with those headphones Ano-chan bought me, and that’s a silence of its own; one that exists only for me. They’re all different silences, all with their own textures. But through all of them, I can still feel the churning of the air around me, the dizzying waves of the ocean pulling me along its current. Not here. Everything was perfectly still, like I was floating through the darkest reaches of outer space. The intractable quiet was like music to my ears.
Normally, I only ever got to hear it for one fleeting moment at a time, for a scant minute before practice started, or right before we had to leave.
I’d always wanted to lose myself in it, to while away the hours here. The thrill and anticipation overtook and overwhelmed any other thoughts or worries I might have had. I took my school bag, sat down in my favorite corner of the room, and pulled out my notebook. My head swam with ideas, flowing undisturbed by the tumults of anxiety and the interference of my scattered, random thoughts. I filled three whole pages with doodles, words, and lyrics, and was about to start on a fourth, when suddenly, suddenly I… heard something.

“Yaa~awn.”
My perfect silence shattered all at once into a million little pieces. It was like a punch driven straight into my gut. Reeling from the shock, I turned my head left and right until I found the source of the noise.

“R-Raana-chan…?”
She was sitting behind the drum kit with her legs pulled towards her; her eyes peered towards me through a gap in the toms.
I’d assumed she’d gone home by now. On some days, she leaves before anyone even says goodbye. She’s so small, nimble and quiet that I can never keep track of her, and every time I realize she’s gone without a word, something stirs up inside me, a vague yet overpowering sense of regret, and it takes me a while to calm back down.
“Hi.” She poked out from behind the drums and gave me a little wave.
“Ah. H-hi.” I answered; hearing my own voice was still jarring, and it came out in stutters, cracking slightly. “Um, what… what were you… doing here?”
Raana crawled out of her hiding spot and towards me on all fours, clambering forwards. She closed the distance between us before I could blink, and I jumped and pulled backwards.
“Watching you,” she answered.
“W-Watching…me?”
“Yeah. You were acting funny, so I watched.”
“F-funny…?”
The faint memory of the past few minutes played back in my head. I tried as hard as I could to discern what might have been funny about how I acted. I didn’t tell any jokes, so it must have been something else.
I might have made a noise or two while I was taking in the room. I don’t really notice it, but Ano-chan tells me I do that sort of thing a lot. She calls them my “Tomorin squeaks.” Could that have been it? I pondered.
As I tried to think of an answer, Raana inched even closer to me, close enough to let me feel her breath on my skin. Her eyes met mine, and I froze up and shivered. Then, in a hoarse, whispery voice, she said, “I got sleepy, though.” She stretched out her arms, and placed her head on my lap. By the time I thought to say anything, she was already fast asleep.

I never know what to do when Raana has her eyes on me. Her gaze always seems to pierce straight through me, as if she’s peering at something inside of me that I can’t see myself. Sometimes she stares for so long that my head feels funny, and my heart starts beating like a drum. It’s hard not to look away. But… when she’s like this, she’s not nearly as scary.
My hand found its way through her hair, then onto the back of her head. She does this often enough that I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I’ve learned the spots on her scalp she likes touched, and the ones she doesn’t, and I’ve gotten familiar with the texture of her hair: rough, messy and tangled in spots, yet somehow unbelievably soft, swallowing up my hand like a fluffy, white cloud as it drapes down over my legs, tickling their skin.
I sat there and lost track of time, feeling Raana shift slightly around in her sleep, feeling her weight change in a steady rhythm as she breathed. Every so often, she would let out a quiet, meek little groan, or mumble out something indistinguishable. She had a smile on her face. I slowly grew comfortable with her presence; it was like we were sitting together the eye of a hurricane, having found our own little island of peace.

Eventually, I’d settled down enough to start writing again, keeping one hand on her head and another on my pencil. I managed to fill out another two pages before, eventually, with another yawn, Raana woke up. She looked up at me, feeling out the shape of my face with her eyes.
“Ah, Raana-chan. G-good morning.”
“Mm.” Her eyes lingered on me.
I managed to look back at her for only a second before anxiously turning away and toward my notes, and running my pencil over the paper in a spiral pattern to try and slow down the beating of my heart. After a few more seconds of silence, Raana finally spoke up.
“I’m bored. Tomori, do something.”
This only made me more nervous. Do… something? Something to make her less… bored. I didn’t want to disappoint her, of course, but I didn’t even know where to begin. I groped around in my mind desperately, until…
“Ah! Um… A-Actually…”
I turned around and rifled through my school bag until I found what I was looking for - a small, clear plastic case, with a set of oddly-shaped little metal rods lined up inside it. They were all the same color, a faint rose gold. One of them was tipped with a fluffy-looking brush head.
Raana eyed the case up and down, then up and down again. Finally, she tilted her head and pointed at it.
“This is… um, it’s an ear cleaning set,” I explained.
“Hm?” Her head tilted again, towards her other side.
“Ano-chan bought it for me… for my birthday. Ah, and she got me this odd-looking microphone too… She said that I should try recording some… ‘ASMR’? Because I’d be good at it…”
“ASMR?”
“I didn’t know what it was either, but… It’s, um, like a recording of someone… whispering into your ear… breathing into it, and touching it, or cleaning it…”
I started sifting through my memories.
About two weeks ago, right after Ano-chan got me that gift, I tried listening to some of it. For reference, to understand what she meant. I found a channel on GooTube that had a lot of views, called… “Yuutenji-san’s ASMR corner”. Thinking I’d just see what it’s like for one minute, I clicked on it.
I ended up staying up until three in the morning going through all of her videos.
It was enrapturing. The way this girl’s voice softly, quietly touched my ears, brushing along their skin like a blanket made of pure velvet. It made me forget where I even was, like I’d been spirited away into an endless sea of perfectly lukewarm water, and I was drifting away in it, losing track of where my body started and where it ended. It was just like sitting at the planetarium or the aquarium and getting lost in their scent and their air, but distilled into its barest essence, and I just couldn’t get enough of it.
I knew Yuutenji-san had no idea who I was, and that hundreds of other people listened to her just like I did. Even then, I couldn’t help but think… I had a special connection with her. With the sound of her voice.
When I ran out of videos on her channel, though, and noticed that the last one was uploaded nearly two years ago, I was overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness that weighed on me, like a blanket of stifling summer air, for the rest of the week.
That longing still still tugged at my stomach, even then. I’d started to think… that I should try my hand at it myself, like Ano-chan said.
That if I could share this… this feeling with others, it might ease the stinging at the pit my stomach.
When I tried to use that microphone to record myself, though, the words got stuck in my throat, lodged between my chest and larynx, struggling to get out. I knew right away that something was missing.
I couldn’t tell what, at the time. But now, sitting here, with Raana’s head nestled in my legs, I realized what I needed.
I needed… the warmth of the person listening.

Raana’s eyes narrowed as she stared up at me. “Hmmmm,” she hummed, snapping me out of my daze.
“Um, so… maybe you could… l-let me try it on you?”
As I spoke, her eyes closed even further, focusing their blue-and-yellow gaze into mine. I recoiled. My heart rattled with anxiety, and I backpedaled.
“Ah, I mean, um, o-only if you… want me to, of course…”
She stayed silent. I’ve been told I can’t read people’s expressions so well, but something about the way Raana looked at me made me think I’d done something wrong. A bead of sweat ran down my temple, and my heartbeat grew louder. In the dead silence of the studio, its thumping echoed loud enough to make the sides of my head hurt.
“Mm. Okay.” Raana finally mumbled out an answer, her mouth curling into a slight smile. Her eyes returned to their usual shape. They looked… inviting, like a pool of warm water.
Her answer blindsided me. I was convinced that I’d crossed a line, and that I’d have to apologize, and walk home with a pall of shame and regret hanging over me. I sat there with my mouth agape, and whimpered in confusion. “E…eh?”
Then she shifted her head around in my lap and turned it sideways. A few locks of her white hair moved in concert and fell over her face, and they parted like blades of grass and revealed the pale skin of her right cheek, and the shape of her ear.
I looked on, entranced. Her cheek looked so soft, tracing that gentle curve around her head, and her ear, which I’d never looked at this closely before, was small and cute and perfectly round. I was drawn inexorably towards it.
This was a part of her I’d never seen before, and that, for some reason, I felt I wasn’t supposed to. I raised my hand up to my eyes, and saw that it was trembling ever so slightly.

“Hmm?” Raana peeked up and towards me, stealing a glance without turning her head back around. “Something wrong?”
Her voice sounded low and tired.
“A-ah! No, it’s… it’s just…” I gathered my thoughts, closing my eyes to keep them from the inexplicable allure they’d been taken by. “Are… you sure you want me to, Raana-chan?”
“Mhm. I’m curious.”
“Even though I’ve… never done this before?”
“Yeah.” She let her gaze drop, turning it back towards the wall. “‘Cos it’s you, Tomori.”

She spoke those words in a quiet, sleepy whisper and sent them drifting away like a ship in a bottle. Still, they found their way to me. They broke through the haze that had built up between me and the world beyond my eyes. They rattled violently around in my head. A feeble gasp left my mouth.
It was as if a key had slid and turned inside me, unlocking something that had never before seen the light of day. I was certain, all of a sudden, that I had to do this. A strange numbness crept into my palms.
“O-okay. Then… here I go.”

I leaned in and towards her, my eyes transfixed by the sight of her ear; its outline grew larger and larger in my field of vision, and eventually it seemed to spin like some kind of kaleidoscopic pattern. Almost hypnotized, I realized how close I’d gotten once Raana’s scent filled my nostrils. It was a familiar scent, but I’d never taken in so much of it at once before. She smelled like… morning dew. Like freshly dried mud and cut grass in a little public park. Warm and disordered, like shed fur from countless stray cats, sickly-sweet like candy. It was absolutely lovely. I couldn’t resist; I stopped, closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Immediately, something on me moved and shifted. The soft shape of Raana’s body resting on mine grew stiff, and I could swear I heard a small, weak, high-pitched squeak.
For some reason, this reaction filled me with something like curiosity, but denser, hotter and brighter like a collapsing star. I called out to her, making sure to keep my voice down to a low whisper.
“…Raana-chan.”
The instant I did, Raana jolted upwards, and a shrill pain rang out in my left thigh, radiating outwards. I covered my mouth before I could whimper and shut my eyes to hold back the tears and felt out the shape imprinting on my skin. Sharp, jagged nails, digging into me like roots. It hurt. It hurt like an infinite fractal pattern of pure white-hot feeling spreading across my nerves; I breathed it all in, and she dug in deeper. Something inside me, some part of me tried to ask if I should stop. I didn’t let it.

I took the brush-tipped tool from the plastic case and began brushing Raana’s ear with it. The soft white bristles gave way as they touched its skin, then followed along its curvature. As the brush went along its path, I heard ragged, interrupted breaths, growing louder by the second. Her breaths. They sounded forced, raspy and indistinct, like sandpaper being dragged across a granite floor, but it was still, unmistakably, her voice. Its sound was intoxicating. It permeated my senses, seeping through me like black tar. I struggled against it, until I was drowning in it. My limbs began moving on their own. My mouth began speaking on its own. Her nails were still buried in my thigh, but the pain was now someone else’s pain, put neatly on display behind a glass pane for me to admire. Swept up in the current, I became a spectator to myself; to something frightening and unfamiliar, a creature of greed and want, unshackled from my usual fear and hesitation. I couldn’t stop it. Because I didn’t want to. Because I… liked it.
“…Here. Does that feel good?” I kept going, now reciting lines from Yuutenji-san’s videos, playing them back like a tape recorder. As my whispers reached her, Raana’s breaths gradually morphed into strange, high pitched mewling noises, ones I’d never heard her make before. They were… cute. Incredibly, unbelievably, astoundingly cute. Each one fed into me like fuel being poured into a fire.

…At some point, I fully lost control. My memories went blank, like I’d fallen unconscious. And then I came to my senses. Raana was still there, her head still on my lap.
I was overtaken by an acute, stinging sense of guilt.
“R-Raana-chan? Um, I-I’m sorry! I think I… I think I got a little… carried away…”
Raana turned her head, peeking at me with one eye. I jumped. “S-sorry, sorry, sorry… You can, um, you can get up now…”
She pushed herself off the floor with one arm, then slowly turned to face me.
Her breathing was still ragged; her mouth was half open. Beads of sweat were pooled on her forehead, glistening in the light of the studio. And she was… she was smiling. Grinning, from ear to ear. Her brow was furrowed.
“…R-Raana-cha—ah!”
Before I could finish saying her name, I was splayed out on the floor. The cold, hard wood pressed against my back, Raana’s hands pushed into my shoulders, and her teeth sank into my left ear. I could only muster up a small, pathetic whimper in response. It felt like my just deserts. Give, and take.
She pulled back and looked me over, wiping her mouth. She still had that smile on her face, that unreadable expression.
I turned away, unable to face her. “Raana-chan… I-I’m sorry…”
“Hm? For what?”
“…For, doing that to you… I-I acted really weird, right? I shouldn’t have…”
“No way. It was fun. It was… new.”
I glanced at her. As she straddled me, her eyes shone with an indescribable light.
“R-really?”
“Really.” Her grin softened into a smile, and she leaned forwards, burying her gaze into me like a dagger. “You’re amazing, Tomori.”
Something inside me writhed, tickled and squirmed. She leaned even further in.
“A-ah… I’m not… E-eh?!”
Her nose was practically touching mine, so close I could smell the sweetness on her breath, and something… had caught itself between my legs. Her knee, shoved into me. Her whole self, every bit of her, was pushing towards me, threatening to swallow me whole. Her body radiated with a pleasant, unfamiliar heat.
She closed her eyes, pushed even closer, and touched her lips to mine. Lost in her warmth, I let it all happen. Her hand crept up my chest until it touched my collar. She slipped one finger into the knot of my uniform’s necktie, pulling it undone. And then, then…

Raana jerked backwards, straightening her back at attention. Her eyes darted left, towards the door.
Pulled without warning out of the warm, torpid fog, I could suddenly hear my heart. It was pounding. It was so loud and so fast I thought my head was about to explode.
“C’mere.” She stood up and forcefully grabbed my hand. I scrambled onto my feet.
“R-Raana-cha–?! W-wait—”
My words bounced off of her. An uneasy feeling overcame me. It was like I’d been just about to sneeze, but couldn’t. Like I’d been splashed with ice-cold water while sleeping soundly in my futon. It gnawed at my stomach, twinge after twinge.
Raana dragged me towards the door and unlatched it. Before she could drag me out of the studio, I gathered my strength and pulled on her sleeve.
“Raana-chan.”
“Hm?” She turned to look at me.
“Why’d… you stop?,” I asked.
She smirked. “Just thought of something more fun.”

We left the studio, turned towards and through the hallway, went past the reception desk, and up the stairs to the café counter.
Taki-chan stood behind it, cleaning a parfait glass.
“Rikki.” Raana walked up to her, with one hand still holding onto my sleeve.
“…Ha? Stray? …Tomori?!” Taki looked us over. Her mouth was agape. “You two are still here?”
“Rikki.” Raana inched closer, tugging at Taki with her eyes.
“Ugh. What do you want?” She set the clean glass aside with a sigh. “I’m busy, you know. If you want a parfait, it’ll be a few minutes.”
Raana glanced back at me, then back at Taki.
“Come with. I wanna show you something.”