Beats. They were everywhere, every motion making a pace that a person could unconsciously follow. A bell ringing in seconds of intervals, a shop keeper yelling to his customers, the sounds of cars zooming by. They all had their own sound, their own purpose, their own tempo, and they all meshed together in the rock concert that was life.
This time, though, one instrument in that concert was listening to a different sort of beat. Shizuo slowly lurched down the streets of ‘Bukuro with a headphone dangling from his left ear, hands in his pockets. Inside a pocket, protected by curled fingers, sat an iPod, diligently doing its job of providing the walker with his own beat to step to.
But goddamn, some of these songs were weird.
All day, on and off, Shizuo had been listening to the music player. He’d only recently gotten it this morning as a gift from Tom. ‘We’ve been working together for two years now,’ Tom had said as he handed the blonde a small wrapped box, ‘I know you might not like it, but it’s the thought, right?’ And when Shizuo had opened the box there it rested, headphones wrapped around the device like a straight jacket. Tom had even pre-loaded it with music for him, hundreds of thousands of songs waiting to be listened to.
Who was he to be ungrateful for a gift? It wasn’t as if Shizuo hated music - he just didn’t have a whole lot of time for it, aside from when he was at home. Even then he was usually catching up on Kasuka’s shows or sleeping harder than a brick. This portable thing was pretty ok though. It had even helped him keep his cool with a few customers.
There were classics on it, of course; The Pillows, Golden Bomber, Ayumi Hanazaki, Sinatra and Queen. Lots of stuff that was popular and some stuff he hadn’t heard in ages had their place. The song that had just flicked on, though, sounded happy with its tone and depressing as shit with its lyrics.
“Black, black is love’s potion. We drink, we drink from its well. And in their name, let’s drink for true love,” sung the voice in his ear a little shrilly, “For true love can break the spell.” Ah, so it was fairy-tale bullshit next. Whatever. He’d deal with it and maybe it would make more sense than most of that shit did.
A few moments passed as he listened to the shrill-lady sing about a green girl - no, a frog? He could have sworn it was a frog, but he didn’t know how to rewind the damn song - and a scorpion-man-thing as they swam out into a lake and…had sex, he thought? It was hard to tell, the phrase “and his stinger went wild” was the only way he could think of that.
He could feel himself getting real damn annoyed when two things happened at once: He remembered a teacher a long time ago read him a story kinda like this and another line of the song caught his attention.
“Black, black is love’s potion. Take heed, take heed of the thorns. Don’t scream when it stings. Remember that you were warned.”
Yeah, he remembered this now. He had no damn clue why there was a song about it, but he knew the story. “A scorpion asks a frog for a ride on its back,” he recalled quietly to himself, “The frog doesn’t want to because it thinks it will get stung, and the scorpion says it won’t. Then it stings the frog in the middle of the fucking lake because it says it can’t help it.”
Shizuo had the sneaking suspicion that the song was talking about something a little different from the story, but if he remembered what his teacher had said, then it was about how people’s natures don’t change. If he compared it to the song, it sounded like dicks were always meant to be dicks and that people shouldn’t complain if they knew the one they talked to was like that.
“Huh.” That must make him a scorpion then. It wasn’t like he could change himself, was it? He couldn’t just wake up one day and not hurt the people who cared about him. Did that count? It had to, or that story wouldn’t make sense.
Shizuo stopped at a crosswalk sign, waiting for it to turn green. As he did, he lit a cigarette, almost dropping the iPod. Looking at it kinda pissed him off. He couldn’t tell why. But as he looked at it, he decided that was enough music for the day. Holding the lit stick in his mouth, he gently wound the headphones back around the player and stuck it in his pocket. Out of sight, out of hearing, out of thoughts, even as the words echoed in his head. Don’t scream when it stings, remember that you were warned.
Yup. He’d listened to enough music for the day.
