After an hour into my practice, something suddenly felt out of place. Initially, I didn't know what that feeling was. It was till I lifted my fingers off the strings and stopped the metronome, that I had finally realized I could no longer hear the sound of Weiss' guitar. I lifted my head and shot a glance at the clock on the wall of the walkway, it's almost five. Weiss will usually play till it's about time for school to end, so she should not be home yet. Perhaps she went to the toilet or something?
I increased the tempo of the metronome slightly, and started playing from the beginning again. This time, I hummed the lyrics as I played. However, the rhythm of the lyrics is different from the rhythm of the bass, thus making it difficult for me to play. My fingers stopped playing yet again, due to that out-of-place feeling I had felt earlier.
The door of the roof should be closed, and yet it was slightly ajar. I leaned my bass against the fence, and walked to the door. Upon opening the door, I saw a frightened Weiss standing on the other side of it. She took a step back but missed the steps, and nearly fell backwards down the stairs. As her hands were waving wildly in the air, I quickly grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her back up.
"What are you doing here?"
After much difficulty in steadying herself, Weiss brushed my arms off her shoulders. She turned her head away quickly and answered, "It feels really noisy up here."
I glanced at the bass behind her in slight shock. She heard that? But I didn't make much sound to begin with.
"Why are you practicing at a place like this?" Weiss glared at me. She seemed to be rather unhappy.
"Didn't I teach you the method to soundproof the room using the towel?"
"If I did that, I wouldn't be able to escape from the room fast enough if something appeared in the room."
"If something appeared in the room?"
"It's… when something… appears in the room… or things like that." Weiss lowered her head while speaking vaguely.
"You mean things like centipedes or cockroaches?"
"Wa! Wa!" Weiss cupped both of her ears and stomped on my foot a few times.
"It hurts! What the hell are you doing!"
She turned the situation into something rather stupid, so all I could do was head back to my bass. For some reason, Weiss was following me.
"Umm… what?"
"It's out of tune." Weiss puffed her cheeks and pointed at my bass rather unhappily.
"Eh?"
"The third string is too flat. I was really uncomfortable when I heard it just now. You mean you didn't notice?"
I checked my tuner, and it was indeed slightly out of tune. She could hear it three floors beneath me? She's that good?
"I'll borrow it."
Just as I was trying to tune it, Weiss suddenly snatched my bass away from me. She quickly gave the tuning pegs a few turns to tune the instrument, then passed the bass back to me.
"Thanks for helping me tune it! I'll pay you ten yen each time you do that, so please help me out in the future."
"Idiot."
I suddenly remembered something, and began playing Stand By Me.
"What's this song? I heard it somewhere before."
Impressive, it's exactly like what Ruby said. As a girl who has been carefully nurtured under the influence of classical music, this is probably the only song that Weiss can recognize just by the bass alone.
"It's a song called Stand By Me."
"What is the song about?"
"What's it about huh? Hmm… it's a story about how a person was walking along the railway, when he suddenly found a corpse next to it."
Weiss knitted her brows. "Are you talking nonsense again?"
"No, I'm not lying." Though that is the summary of the movie with the same name, and not the lyrics of the song.
Not long after, Weiss sat next to the door of the roof, and listened to my raw bass techniques. Then again, how long are you planning to stay around here? It's really tough for me to play when you're around, so please go back already? Perhaps it was because of Weiss staring at me, I had played the notes wrong quite a few times.
"Are you happy?" Weiss suddenly mumbled those words out. I stopped my hands from playing, and lifted my head. "Are you happy playing the bass?"
I had no idea how to answer that sudden question from her.
"Hmm, it's not too bad. It's rather nice to be able to gradually play the songs that I like."
"Really?" Weiss didn't seem the least interested. All she did was stare at the floor. I asked her the same question.
"You're not happy when you play the guitar?"
"Not the least bit."
"If you're not happy, why don't you stop playing then?"
"Why don't you just die?"
I gripped hard onto the neck of my bass, and took a deep breath. Alright, it's fine, don't get angry. I'm used to cruel words like that while dealing with my sister's tantrums. There will be no end to things if I am to take every single word of hers seriously. I have to be more mature than that.
"Since you're not happy, then why do you still coup yourself up in the practice room everyday to play the guitar? Just go home and play your piano already!"
"It's none of your business."
There's plenty to do with me! You've snatched my place of rest away from me, no?
"Then… can you not lock the door with a padlock? You go straight home right after school on Fridays, right? Can you let me use the classroom on that day?"
"How did you know that I go straight home on Fridays? Hentai!"
"That has nothing to do with me being a hentai or not. I can easily see that with my own eyes."
"Shut up! Don't ever come close to me!"
Our conversation ended like that. I continued practicing quietly, but Weiss had no intention of leaving. She was walking to-and-from the door, hesitating on whether she should head back downstairs. What's she doing?
"… Princess?"
Weiss jumped in shock, and turned around.
"Are you calling me that as well?"
"Then how do you want me to address you? Namikaze?" She shot a glance at me angrily. "Weiss?"
This time, she shifted her gaze diagonally downwards, and nodded her head while biting her lips slightly. So she can more or less accept it if I call her by her own name? But it's quite difficult for me to address her that way!
"Just tell me straight if there is something you want to say. I told you that yesterday, right?"
"Why are you acting all high and mighty?"
Do you have any right to be saying that to me? However, just as I was about to stare back at her, Weiss looked somewhere else. It's as though she was saying something awkward, she murmured softly, "There's something moving behind the cabinet with a buzzing sound."
Hmm? Ah… so that's the reason she came here?
"Don't you have the insecticide?"
"I sprayed it into the room, before running out of there in a hurry."
"Geez, that's not the way you use insecticide! These aren't those boron insecticides where you smoke them to death. It won't work if you don't spray it at the insect directly."
"You're asking me to do things like that?!" Weiss said that as she clenched her teeth with tears in the corners of her eyes, and her body was trembling slightly.
Is that the way to ask a favor from someone? Then again, if I leave her alone, then Weiss will never use that room again, which means that victory will be mine?
"If you don't like it either way, how about returning the room to me like a mature lady?"
"You scumbag!" Weiss said to me while holding back her tears, "Whatever, I get it. I'll do it myself." Weiss slammed the door, and from the footsteps it sounded like she was walking downwards. Go ahead and try your best!
I continued playing Stand by Me. Still, I was quite curious about how it ended, so I looked down through the fence. Weiss was standing outside of the practice room rigidly with her left hand clenched into a fist.
After staring at it for quite a while, she reached out for the handle of the door, but then she stopped almost immediately, as though all the strength in her body was drained out of her. She stood there motionlessly, and her back was trembling non-stop. As she looked really pitiful, I switched off the power of the amplifier, placed my bass down, and got myself up.
So that buzzing sound was not actually caused by an insect. After reaching the courtyard downstairs, I walked into the practice room. I tried shaking the cabinet, and something that was stuck to its back suddenly fell onto the floor with a pa. So it's actually the front cover of Iron Maiden's first album. The buzzing sounds were probably made by the rustling of the pages on the front cover, caused by the vibration of the cabinet due to the sounds of her guitar.
I originally thought I had lost the front cover of the album forever, and was thus really happy when I managed to get it back. I delightedly showed Weiss the cover which features the grotesque image of a zombie, and then—
"Kyaaaaaa!"
"Dammit! My eyeeeesssss!"
Needless to say, she sprayed the insecticide on my face while crying and yelling at the same time