WAIFUS & MUSIC

Hori and Shelby: Wait...What?! (Kyouko Hori)

PREVIOUSLY ON WAIFUS & MUSIC:

NOW PLAYING: "Easy" by Commodores

It was an unusually beautiful morning during our shift over at Black Lion Vinyls---for the sun was bright and shiny, and birds were flocking all over Soho. Jesse, Phil and I were just discussing a compilation playlist I was working on, as a way to capture the memories I spent with rental girlfriend Chizuru Mizuhara, who had recently left England to flock back to her home in Japan.

As the three of us had went along with our typical work shenanigans, a young woman, nearly around the same age as Chizuru, walked into our store. To put it bluntly, she looked vastly different from her in many different ways---sure, she looked just as cute and young---but her appearance was a lot more laid-back; her brownish eyes were large, her hair (also just as brown) was long, but not as smooth, and was casually dressed up in a light grey sweater and black skirt. In addition, she was also wearing similarly-colored leggings and brown shoes.

She seemed to look very lost, as if she genuinely has no idea what to purchase---wandering through collection after collection like a lost soul.

"Uhm...can I help you, young lady?", I politely asked her, resting by my counter and facing her figure standing by the entrance.

The moment she took a gander at me, she instantly felt confronted---as if a cop had his gun ready, aiming at her hands held high. Almost every feature of her body came to a grinding halt---aside from her eyes, which were circling all over our surroundings.

"Uhhhh...yeah...", she stuttered, frozen and staring straight at me. "Do any of you guys have some J-pop records? It's for a friend of mine..."

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I don't think any of our customers have requested for J-pop records here before (most of the time, they're just middle-aged blokes looking for remastered vinyls of AC/DC or The Jackson 5, just to relive their youth.) Sure, we're merely just a local record store, packed with thousands of vinyls ranging from genre to genre, being sold to fellow listeners day-in and day-out, but never before have we ever dealt with a genre far beyond our range. Basically, what I'm trying to explain here, is that our store doesn't have any J-pop records...or do we?

Silently but surely, I jumped out of my counter to search for my co-workers. Jesse was busy checking the vinyls, while Phil was out smoking cigarettes. I don't even know if they seemed to care if we had any J-pop records left in stock for the young woman.

"Jesse...do we have any J-pop records?", I worriedly called his attention, as my face raced all over the store, in hopes of recommending at least an album or two for the young woman.

"I dunno, man...", his back turned away from me to examine our catalog by the walls. "I don't even know a single J-pop artist..."

Suddenly, my body was filled with nothing more than shock, snapping right in front of his back. "You've been listening to music for over 20 years in your life and you don't even know a single J-pop artist? Not a single band or album, too?"

"Come on, mate...", he groaned, distancing himself away to the right, to check out another shelf of records by the windows. "If you're asking me, Oli, then no. We don't have any J-pop records." (Just as I expected.)