ʏᴀɴɴɪ | ᴏ.ꜱʜᴏᴛᴀʀᴏ

-Kindred Spirits-

10:29 AM

Your breakfast plate was now bare and pushed off to the side of the mixing table while the first instrumental you conjured up the last time you were in Shotaro's studio, played through every speaker in the room. You sat slumped in the rollie chair, swiveling the seat from side to side out of boredom.

Then, your hand dug into one of your sweatpants pockets, soon pulling out your pill bottle. The instrumental looped while you dumped three pills into your palm instead of your usual two...maybe you needed a stronger buzz to get through the rest of the morning.

You dry-swallowed the three capsules and continued to sit in wait, your eyes floating up and over to the digital clock above the recording booth, the time reading exactly ten-thirty, but soon enough, those numbers began to blur...and they blurred pretty damn hard.

You would blink and see the numbers on the clock somewhat clearly for a few seconds before they ultimately blurred again, giving you the illusion that you were blind. For some reason, that illusion was funny to you, ripping a drugged-up chuckle from your throat.

Everything on your body felt heated and heavy, but somehow you had enough strength to pause the instrumental, rubbing your eyes to have a better view of the buttons and sliders again. Your finger hovered over a button on one of the soundboards before pressing down, earning what sounded like a vinyl hissing in return.

Your finger stayed on that button for a couple of seconds while you pressed a few more buttons to extend the sound, turning your head to the keyboard on wheels, and slowly reaching over to pull the board closer to you.

Your hands worked delicately over the keys to compose a low, almost jazz-like piano melody, and you applied that sound to the board before switching from piano to a faint saxophone, returning your attention to the soundboard to work on the beat now in your head.

A soft percussion set was the way to go for this beat, you thought, and with a blunt snare, low bass, and a faint cymbal clash every eighth count, your instrumental soon came to life. Now you had a jazzy little Lofi beat to listen and daydream to.

It sounded similar to a beat you once surprised Daiya with for her birthday, only you wrote her a poem to go with the song. She always loved when you made beats for her; it always gave her something to sing to and they were like individual time capsules for your relationship.

You had to have over a hundred beats saved on your old laptop, spanning the nearly eight years you two spent together. As a matter of fact, that's probably where most of your laptop storage went – not like you really cared; the laptop itself was your time capsule, and now it stays tucked under all your lyrical journals.

At some point, you found yourself on the studio floor, your pill high making you feel like you were sinking into the carpet, but in a...blissful...sort of way, just allowing the Lofi to drown your ears and the drugs in your system to run their course.

1:27 PM

"You'll be back tonight though, right, Mama?" Shotaro stood at his front door with a middle-aged woman a few centimeters shorter than him, donning...basically Saint Laurent-everything and sporting a neck-length salt-and-pepper bob, conversing in their native language. "I found this Italian dish online that I wanted to try cooking for you..."