TWEWY Big Bang

also i have speedpaints of these if anyone's interested

The record skips. Jumps. Cartwheels a tune. The needle trembles trebles and beats out bass, spinning soul-music with frenetic excitement from the smooth, black, tide of the vinyl record’s skin. It plucks out notes, jars human voice from the inanimate. It trips out, scratches out rhythm, makes it seem like anything, anything can create music, art, life beneath a just-right touch and that–that’s not true. It’s simply not true.

Neku knows. He might know better than anyone.

There’s no rhythm in the wet towel he drags across the counter-top or the stingy plastic shuffle of money-on-money in the till. No one stomps their feet to the cha-cha-slide of a mop slapping sopping wet against the linoleum floor or grooves along its chemical snail-trail, there’s no audience in the world that would scream themselves breathless and sweat-slicked and lick their lips and push with gasping adoration from their clutching, heart-beaten throats: “Sakuraba! Sakuraba!”

“Sak–”

He unlocks the door.

“–ur–”

Flips around the sign.

“–ABA!”

And here we go.

CAT Records is open for business.

Neku signs as he stretches his arms over his head, enjoying the sensation of muscle-movement before spending all of his time cooped up in a hole-in-the-wall records shop bending and lifting and never using his knees like he’s supposed to inevitably–as the doctors say–wrecks his shit. Outside, the streets cut close. He can see them wavering in the sticky heat that comes after rainfall; it’s overcast, and all the city is clapped between cloud-cover and steaming puddles that make little harbors out of the curbside. Every car that comes by kicks up a tsunami of this grubby water and Neku can practically taste it, feel the grit slide between his teeth and–

“Ugh.”

The heat is getting to him. Or maybe it’s this place crawling into him–his mouth, his bones. He rubs his eyes and sees records spinning in the sparks behind his eyelids.

It’s not really his fault, though, is it? Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t feel so damn codependent with this place if he wasn’t the only one running it.

“Hiya~☆”

Speak of the devil.

The bell shackled to the top of the door jingles as the human-shaped mass of keychains and jewelry and cotton candy-coloured everything he calls his coworker breezes into the shop, one hand on her phone, the other clutched around a diabolically sugary-looking…he hesitates to even call it coffee. The thing tosses around whipped cream and caramel sauce with her every step. Just looking at it makes Neku’s own heart rate spike, and as if noticing this, and taking it to be a sign of some adolescent lovesickness, Coco Atarashi tips down her pink-shaded sunglasses to toss him a wink and a sharp-looking grin.

“OMG! It’s, like, sooooo good to see you, Nekky. It’s been for-EVS since we worked together!”

“That’s what happens when you call in sick every time you know I’ll cover for you,” Neku thinks, but doesn’t say. Managing Coco in the heat of a sugar-rush is hard enough, it’s even worse when the sweetness turns sour. Instead he mutters something non-committal and continues stretching as she turns and waltzes towards the backroom.

In some ways it’s easier when Coco decides to whittle her shift away “organizing storage.” Neku gets to do what he likes; play whatever he wants on the old-fashioned gramophone he’d found for a steal on eBay, flick through some records, take the sickest, sleekest covers for inspiration, and sketch. Hours can bleed out painlessly beneath the press of a pretty red pen. It’s meditative, he thinks. Zen. It’s “healing his inner child,” or some other health-hack buzzword bullshit. It feels good, he supposes is the best way to put it. Or, at least, it doesn’t feel as pointless as everything else does.

This is where his first customer of the day finds him: so absorbed in his sketch he doesn’t hear the bell ring. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. Most of their clientele is of the type to chin a simple greeting towards the till–a promise they aren’t here to steal or shit-stir–and dive solo into the musty fold of music’s forgotten history. And this one’s a regular, too: a man of indeterminate age with short-cropped hair above a fading buzz, somewhere between mouse-grey and an unflattering wet-cement in colour, always dressed in a professional-looking blazer that today he’s allowed to have a Casiopea shirt poke through like sweet tea filling up a stainless-steel cup…oh! Sakazuki–that’s what his name is.

Sakazuki knows what he likes–jazz fusion, old funk–and he knows where to find it. There’s no need to try and pilot him. The man likes his space, Neku respects that.

Which is a concept lost on some people.

“Hel–loooooooo! Welcome to CAT Records, your one-stop super-shop for rock, sock-hop, and hyper-pop!”

Grinning broadly (Neku can’t help, but notice she’s still got caramel stuck to the tips of her canines), Coco swoons into the room. She’s changed into her work shirt now, or what’s left of it; it’s been torn up and stitched back together with a quiltful of multicolour patches, eye-watering neons that clash viciously against the pastel pattern of her tights: baby-blue with sweet-cream-coloured spots, and the doll-like ruffled tips of her socks. With every step her jewelry rattles out a dozen different chimes. From her star-studded necklace to her earrings, felt-covered cats with bell-collars that ring as if they were mewing, she’s a crescendo, flashing her teeth and her wickedly sharp glitter-drenched nails at the man who can only stand swamped in the abject horror of realizing how very behind on the times he is (or whatever time Coco thinks it is).

“Can I help you?” he says.

Coco laughs–cackles, really. “Erm, no? But I can totes help you!”

She flounces cheerfully around him; Neku’s seen cats do the same thing to a cornered alley rat. In two seconds she has her hands in a vice-like grip around his arm and is dragging him towards the few contemporary records they keep in stock–rounds of bedroom pop and R&B tempting passers-by from the windowsill. In two minutes she has him at the counter. Neku’s familiar with what he’s buying; the prescription-bottle wrap of its cover tips him off. New Drug. A catchy, if unchallenging, line-up of hip hop and rap. He remembers falling asleep to Hyakusenman while studying for a math test in high school.

He’s going to hate it.

“Okie-dokie!” Coco claps her hands together, her nails clattering like claws. With the bony edge of her hip she shoves Neku out of the till and punches in her numbers with a steady click-click-clack. “Let’s get you rung up!”

As soon as Sakazuki leaves the shop–stumbling in a drunk-like stupor–Coco collapses with a sugar-crash groan across the counter-top.

“Yeesh! Wag a pair of tits in front of these freaks and you can sell them anything.”

Neku doesn’t say anything at first. He can tell this is one of those scenarios with no correct reply other than, “Fo sho, girl” and, frankly, he’d rather die. But then he feels Coco’s eyes slide from his face to his hands and sharpen with interest. She leans forward. He pulls his paper closer into himself.

“You didn’t have to get involved,” he says for the sake of saying anything.

Coco scoffs at that. But she leans back into her own space, at least. “Puh-lease. If I let you serve every shoe-gazing neckbeard who walks in here I’d, like, never get a shift again, and you’d miss my cute widdle face too much for that, wouldn’t you?”

That’s not exactly how scheduling works, but Neku knows it’s an argument that’s lost on Coco. Or, if he’s being completely honest with himself, it’s one he just can’t be bothered to have. He’s completely lost on her strange swings from ambitious to ambivalent; what she cares about–or pretends to care about–and what she doesn’t–or pretends she doesn’t–it’s all just paper wrappings on the great mystery that is Coco Atarashi, and he can’t say he’s particularly eager to pull open the string and try to peek inside. It’s not personal. It’s professional–anyone could have walked through those doors on the day they were hiring and feel Neku’s resentment crystallizing over them like the cool cough-out of their busted air conditioner.

He’s too sick of this place, and everyone in it. If he’s going to fight to keep his love of anything it’s going to be the music. People come and go. Music stays.