“What is all of this?” He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall near the door.
Yasu grinned, I loved seeing him happy after he’d been so upset for so dang long. “I don’t know. Itsuki thought it would be fun to act as if we were on stage. It ended up being one of our best practices.”
Toshi sniffed, but didn’t drop his rigid posture. There were times I wondered if he had our best interests in mind, but that was when Yasu called in Reiko and we got our way. Toshi was a hardass, sometimes the label had some really stupid rules.
“We got complaints that it was too loud in here. It’s interfering with another band,” Toshi explained.
My eyebrows shot to my hairline because that was so weird. This was a studio. The walls were soundproofed, we never heard other bands practicing. This had to be another way for Toshi to keep us under his thumb.
I wasn’t the only one confused by the statement. Wasn’t it a good thing that we were meshing, bonding, doing better?
Yasu walked over to Toshi, grabbed his arm, walking him out of the room. The door slammed shut behind them, and as suspected, we couldn’t hear them. Even if they were yelling in the hall. There was no way we were disrupting another band.
Ryosuke took his bass off, propping it on the stand. He looked at the door before he shook his head and packed up for the day.Since we had been interrupted, we might as well all call it a day. We’d actually gone over our practice time, anyway.
All things that should have made Toshi happy. Something was off.
By the time everything had been packed up, Yasu still hadn’t come back into the room. I was starting to worry about him. That worry didn’t fade when we opened the door to the hall, finding it empty.
Riku and Tatsuki left while Ryosuke stayed behind with me. He rested his hand on my shoulder as we watched the other two leave. I wanted to turn into his hold, wrapping my arms around him, but even I knew it was too touchy-feely for public. The longer we stood there, it became more and more apparent that Yasu wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
“Why don’t we go get something to drink?” Ryosuke asked. While I felt sort of numb to the idea, I nodded because it would at least take my mind off things for a while.
Chapter 25
Yasu
“Shouldn’t they always be practicing as if it’s the real deal?”
I’d been livid when Toshi dragged me to his office when I’d removed him from the practice room. Then he’d had the nerve to tell me that the way we’d been behaving was inappropriate. By that point, I’d had more than enough and called in the reinforcements.
There was something about watching Reiko take charge of a room. She never put up with Toshi’s bullshit, and this time was no exception.
“While they are here, they are to use the space to work through songs. It’s so they don’t forget how to play their older music, especially now that they have a new member. They need to work on their chemistry,” Toshi explained.
“Exactly! And what better way to work on their chemistry than to practice their stage presence. Ryosuke is new. The rest of these guys have been playing together since day one. It’s too much to ask for Ryosuke to just blend in with everything theydo. He needs to see how they work, how their presence is in an actual performance.”
The two went back and forth—all I could do was sit and watch. It was verbal tennis, a sparring match, a few meows and claws; it could have been a catfight.
My sister was the real manager. The day the label decided to land us with Toshi, they’d made a huge mistake. I was more than glad I’d had the foresight to make it part of our contract that they had to consult her on all things. We’d have been fucked long ago had I not done that.
Toshi finally stood up from behind his desk and approached Reiko.
She’d been pacing the room, flailing her arms wildly as she spoke. She was nothing if not passionate when it came to matters of the band. The second he placed his hands on her shoulders, I was lifting out of my chair. No one touched my sister, especially not greasy record label people who didn’t have a fucking clue what they were actually doing.
“Reiko-san, I get where you’re coming from. I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future. My concern was that the band lacked a level of professionalism that they normally have while in the studio.”
Professionalism? How could he speak of such things, touching my sister that way.
Sure, when Toshi put it that way, it made sense, but he still didn’t need to fucking touch my sister. I’d break his hands off if he didn’t let her go soon. His long fingers looked sickly out of place against the soft pink fabric of the sweater that she wore.
And in true Reiko fashion, the girl knew how to take care of herself. She brushed out of Toshi’s hold and made her way over to me. When her manicured fingers wrapped around my wrist and pulled me to the door, she shot another scathing look over her shoulder.
“I had better not get another call like this. If they want to practice all the fan service, you let them. As long as they aren’t all out fucking each other in the middle of the practice room, I don’t give a damn what they do.”
My face heated, but the dumbstruck look on Toshi’s face had me laughing as Reiko pulled me down the hall.
Once we were finally out of the building, she released me, readjusting her clothes so she didn’t look like she’d just been on some sort of rampage inside the office.
