(Nozomi Yoshida Is) Queen of the Swamp

Chapter 4: Slither

Nozomi

I was in the entryway later that day, surrounded by what seemed like countless rows of cubbies, most of them holding some type of shoes: either street shoes (which meant the cubby's owner in question was present today for school) or uwabaki slippers (which signified that the student was absent today).

It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and I was ready to leave school. To be honest, it's quite embarrassing to leave school around this hour. It's kind of like saying, "I'm giving up cause I'm too lazy to join a club". And that's got to be the worst crime around here, right? Not being in a club.

I tried joining several clubs in the past couple of years. In middle school I decided to join the calligraphy club, since it seemed pretty fun. Everyone in the club made these really pretty scripts and scrolls with these special pens that were made for exactly that. I soon fell in love and signed up, hoping to get good and make a few friends. I spent about a month in that club, spending about 3 hours every day trying to make my works look even close to as pretty as the others. I must've spent about eight or nine thousand yen buying all the things I needed: pens, pretty paper, things like that. I quickly realized that I was never going to be any good at it, and the other girls in the club agreed. Soon enough, I was quickly and effectively ousted from the club.
When the club fair rolled around when I was a first-year in high school, I joined the literature club, where I fared quite a bit better than the calligraphy club. Yamada-san was there too, so it wasn't too awkward for me to join up. I spent a couple months there, writing poetry, short stories, and writing down little passages that would become songs that I'd write. Soon enough, though, I began to feel this creeping feeling that wouldn't leave no matter how hard I tried. It was a feeling of, well, being the odd one out. Yamada was really my only friend there... The other members, of which there were five or six, weren't really the most welcoming of people. Upon hearing one of them ask Yamada "Why did you have to invite your weird friend around here, anyways?" behind closed doors, I hastily quit the club and burned all of the poems I wrote in that club.

A few months after that, nearing the end of my time as a first-year, I signed up to the light music club, auditioning as a guitarist. Their last guitarist, Kiyomi Shiroma, transferred to another school and they needed a replacement fast. I had always been rather confident about my abilities as a guitarist. Honestly, it's probably the only thing that makes me proud of myself.

I signed up and somehow got an audition. They only had about 3 options of who to pick for their next audition, since barely anybody here plays any instruments. I remember showing up with my electric guitar, this makeshift pedalboard I built out of a piece of wood, and this heavy bass amplifier I had since I was 13 years old. The bassist was dumbfounded when I showed up, asking me why in the hell I was playing a guitar through a bass amp. I just personally always liked the sound, it was thick and deep and I like that sound in a guitar.

They held a jam session for me for about 30 minutes, in which they had me do some guitar solos and showcase how I operated in a band.

I was really nervous, mainly because I had never played music with other people in my life. I grew up always wanting to be in a band, but never really got the chance until then.

The light music club, a band called Daisy Summer, was definitely a pop-punk style of a band. Shiroma-san, especially, was known for playing really aggressively in a punk-rock style and tearing out blistering solos on a single string.

My sound, on the other hand, was two things: slow and heavy. I never was a fan of fast or aggressive sounds. I wanted the music to be slower and groovier, something people could nod their heads to gently instead of furiously moshing. My guitar playing was definitely a lot more rhythmic, a lot more downtuned, and a whole lot slower. You could definitely hear my blues obsession shine through every time I played.