Gotō Hitori woke up from that strange "dream" about a day or two ago.
Like most dreams that fade the moment you wake up, she couldn't remember many of the details clearly. The one thing that remained vivid, however, was an experience so intense it could only be described as a nightmare.
In the dream, a childhood friend who had seemingly fallen from the sky—a transfer-type childhood friend—suddenly shed his once gentle and cheerful demeanor and treated her with nothing but cruelty. And just when she had finally let go of the past and decided to stop wasting herself on such emotionally draining relationships, she received the devastating news of his accident.
Only then did she learn the truth: all the terrible things he'd done were simply meant to make Gotō hate him.
After that, Bocchi-chan carried her regret and pain with her, using misfortune as nourishment for her talent and growing into a generation-defining singer-songwriter guitarist…
The memories after that grew increasingly vague, as if the dream ended abruptly right there.
After waking from such a dream, Gotō Hitori sat blankly on her bed for a long while before making a firm decision—
She pulled the blanket over her head and went back to sleep.
No matter how you look at it, having a dream like that is way too awful! Why can't I even achieve my dreams happily in a dream—why does it have to come with this kind of suffering?!
Curling herself up beneath the covers, Bocchi-chan patted her cheeks and wondered if reading too many novels had somehow influenced her subconscious.
Come to think of it, the original story behind the song that made Guitar Hero famous on YouTube was about childhood friends separated by life and death, yet still watching over each other from opposite sides.
Could it be because I got way too absorbed in it that I ended up dreaming something like that…?!
Except the chaotic, irrational dream had turned Bocchi-chan herself into the heroine of that story.
Having convinced herself with that explanation, Gotō Hitori shut herself in at home for several days before finally regaining the motivation to go back to school.
Even though her subscriber count on YouTube was nearing one hundred thousand—more than triple her original thirty thousand or so—that recognition belonged to Guitar Hero.
In real life, Gotō Hitori was still an invisible nobody.
Even when she nervously carried her guitar case to school, or tried wearing rock-related accessories, no like-minded soul ever came up to talk to her.
For an introverted, socially anxious kid, the method of socializing was simple—
Wait for an extrovert to come along and adopt you.
Ah… will someone like that ever come for me too?
After school, Bocchi-chan sat on a swing in the park with her huge, unwieldy guitar case on her back. After a whole day of trying—and failing—to attract attention, she slumped in dejection.
Nearby, a middle-aged man battered by life smoked while replying to his boss on his phone, exhaling tired, hollow rings of smoke. For some reason, Bocchi-chan felt like she was looking at her own life twenty years into the future.
When I think about it like that, becoming an unfortunate but wildly talented star guitarist sounds way better…! Living an uneventful life and turning into a boring adult—no thank you…!
Since thinking that out loud would be incredibly rude, Bocchi-chan kept the complaint safely inside her head.
That childhood-friend guy from the dream… he's someone I've never seen in real life. If he wasn't just a character my brain made up…
Gotō Hitori stared at the park ground as dust lightly stirred in the wind, her legs pressed tightly together in discomfort.
If… I were to meet him again in real life.
What would she even say?
Even though everything in the dream had been absurd, it had still left a deep impression on her.
If they were to meet again under different circumstances—different personalities, a different relationship, different values—then surely the ending wouldn't turn into the same tragedy as in the dream.
If he were gentle and cheerful, considerate and straightforward like when they were kids playing together, then maybe Bocchi-chan—who was terrible at social interaction—would step out of her comfort zone and try talking to him first.
That would already be her absolute limit.
But if he were the kind of awkward guy who tests feelings by pushing people away… that sounds really hard to deal with. Getting closer to someone like that would take so much effort… wait, why am I even thinking about this pointless stuff?!
Bocchi-chan shook her head, completely unable to understand why she was imagining things that weren't realistic at all.
But… if I really could meet him again.
She drooped her head against the swing's rope, like a tired, pitiful little kitten.
Images kept flashing through her mind: a boy standing proudly on stage with a bass in hand.
His deliberately sharp-tongued, troublesome attitude toward her.
And the moments when he would accidentally show a gentle smile.
Realizing she would probably never get the chance to perform on the same stage as him again, a faint but unpleasant ache welled up in her chest.
"…Ah."
What abruptly snapped Bocchi out of her spiraling thoughts was a blonde girl with a side ponytail who had appeared beside her without her noticing.
"Um, sorry to bother you—are you a guitarist, by any chance?"
The blonde girl, both familiar and strangely unfamiliar, blinked. Her lively red eyes brimmed with an unmistakable brightness and warmth that made refusal difficult.
Gotō Hitori realized she knew this person.
No—she knew her from the dream.
"So, um… I know this is sudden and might be a bit awkward, but I actually put together a band. Would you be willing to help us out?"
Ijichi Nijika—the Shimokitazawa angel destined to come and adopt her, opening up Bocchi's social world.
W-w-w-what's going on?! Someone who appeared in my dream just showed up in real life…?!
"Our original guitarist suddenly couldn't make it, so we just need you to fill in as a temporary guitarist. Please, please…!"
E-even the setup is exactly the same…!
Then maybe that wasn't a dream at all—maybe it was a future destined to come true…!
I-I'm going to get swept along and end up forming a band with them, right? Then we'll perform on stage, meet more people like us…?
Miss Bocchi was completely frozen.
Her brain had fallen into unprecedented chaos—total system failure.
And just as she was about to be overwhelmed by all this information, like rain pouring through a leaking roof—two more completely unexpected people arrived at the scene.