soundtrack/illustration - Ryo/Ueda

[defeminized]

Title: soundtrack/illustration
Wordcount: 3193
Pairings/Characters: Ryo/Ueda
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Notes: Written for ryoda_love's Valentine's Ficolate Challenge, originally posted here. Thanks to pinkeuphoria1 for betaing <33
Summary: That evening after he failed his first konbini job, Tatsuya started drawing again.

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Ryo’s life has been the textbook definition of irony, stretched out over more than two decades.

When he was a young boy, his mother told him that he should study twice harder to shut up those boys who repeatedly laughed at him for being smaller than the rest of them. Make them see your abilities against their wills, his mother said. When he was in middle school and puberty sort of failed him, his mother told him again that he had to keep studying, because the results from studying would be a very satisfying fruit of labour and the satisfaction would come from seeing the many demented faces as they watched him stand on top of the world.

When he reached his sixteenth birthday, his mother passed away and Ryo buried her words with her body.

His life changed drastically after that.

He dropped out of school, started growing, started learning music and ditching it a few months later, started smoking, and moved out of his home.

It was only after a distant aunt approached him the year after he came of age with the contract to the shop that she owned with Ryo’s late mother that he had a steady job as a florist. He didn’t know what made him accept the only inheritance his mother had left him with, but he knew it was something that had to be done.

Ryo’s now twenty-five and his life, in summation, can be any of these: an orphan searching for a mother’s love, a young man looking for a way to live, or a boy with a compass that points to all different directions.







Tatsuya doesn’t like to think about the period in his life when the people he knew were either bowing to him or people he bowed to, when everybody addressed everybody with a suffix, and when meals were riddled with formalities and apathy disguised as cordial conversations.

They told him to study and do well in school because it was something that he had to do; along with playing the piano and learning English and riding horses and other many things. He used to be able to envision a hypothetical red carpet sprawled out in front of him, waiting for him to strut elegantly on it towards the glittering ranks of the more accomplished folks in his family.

Tatsuya never liked studying; he preferred spacing out and formulating his own theories on the components of the air. He never liked riding horses either; he preferred playing with his giant dogs and communicating with them. He kind of liked learning how to speak English; but he also liked learning how to speak French, Spanish, Italian and everything else. He had only really loved playing the piano; but he also liked his guitar, his drums set, his musical sheets, and the lyrics he had scribbled under those notes.

He was, however, really good in drawing. He discovered that he could draw after doodling into the sand during a family trip to a beach in Okinawa when he was six and since then, had always drawn whenever he could. His mother was severely displeased, because little Tatsuya drew on every available surface except on the drawing board. He suspected that his mother enacted some sort of unofficial decree in the house to make everyone forbid Tatsuya from drawing. His teachers told him that he would have won some national level competitions, but his mother told him that drawing would get him nowhere.

That was why Tatsuya never kept his own drawings.

As he grew older, he stopped drawing altogether.

Tatsuya, as he was, couldn’t step on the red carpet. It always dissolved into the ground and turned into a pavement of thorns.

He’s now twenty-six and an exiled prince of the Ueda clan, locking himself away from the castles of wealth to indulge in the finer things in life, whatever those are.







Ryo lives in a small unit on the third floor of this run-down apartment building situated three blocks away from his flower shop. It costs him almost a quarter of his monthly earnings during better months (especially February), and sometimes if he’s unlucky, half his monthly earnings. His meagre earnings barely feed him; after his apartment rent, he has to pay the bills for both his shop (he’s lucky the shop’s lease has been paid in full by its previous owners) and his apartment, and the various suppliers and miscellaneous expenses.

He’s not starving, but it doesn’t take him a lot to envy those who don’t have to worry about money.

Particularly, as he has noticed, one of his neighbours who’s living just a few doors away.







Tatsuya loves the tiny place he has rented for himself after leaving the luxurious mansion he used to call his home. It’s smaller than the bathroom he had in his room and a lot shabbier. It’s not at all squeaky clean; in fact, he would have thought that it’s dirtier than the stable his family has for their horses. It took him two weeks to make the new apartment room suitable for human inhabitation. He had to air all the leftover furniture on top of the rooftop, dust all the mattresses (he couldn’t complain, it would be far more time-consuming to repurchase an entire set of furniture), fix all broken tables and cabinets, and position and reposition all of his belongings. It would have taken him less than three days, but he was clueless about home designing and had to engage his friends, Koki and Nakamaru, for help. Koki and Nakamaru were reluctant at first, insisting that Kamenashi (Tatsuya’s other friend) would be a better consulting option, but Kamenashi was away in London for a fashion shoot (Kamenashi is a model) and wouldn’t be available until a few months later. Both Koki and Nakamaru decided that it was better to help Tatsuya than to host him in their respective apartments, so they had an intense two-week spring-cleaning session in the apartment.

Koki declared himself part-owner of Tatsuya’s apartment as he collapsed on the floor after they successfully placed a vase with the flowers they bought from a young florist somewhere a few blocks away from Tatsuya’s apartment building.

It wasn’t until Nakamaru remarked about having seen the florist as he hanged the bed sheet dry that Tatsuya realised the young florist is actually his neighbour.







Ryo’s best friend, Tomohisa, sometimes comes to visit. Tomohisa’s a Technical Support Specialist despite having graduated with an honours degree in Communications because he trained under his employer’s recruitment programme and his employer, a European multinational hardware giant, apparently takes in anyone willing to work overtime with no overtime allowance and willing to undergo gruelling training programmes. Tomohisa once tried to convince Ryo to be his colleague, but Ryo refused to “sell himself to the soul-sucking corporations”.

Ryo has this guitar that he prizes a lot, because it was his only liable option to approach music (his first choice would have been the piano, but a piano was—is—way beyond his budget) when he started learning music. It’s a normal, standard classical guitar that he hardly plays anymore. However, there are times when he picks up a random musical sheet and starts to strum random notes and improvise his own composition, or whatever the clutters of musical notes are supposed to be.

Tomohisa loves listening to him play, but Ryo doesn’t like it when Tomohisa asks him to play too often.

It reminds him of how he has so many things that he wants to do, but has yet to find opportunities for.

It makes him feel like he has deliberately crippled himself.







Tatsuya’s favourite things in his apartment are the drawing board holder, his palette of oil paints, his guitar and his keyboard.

His father agreed to keep supplying him with a monthly allowance of ten thousand yens, provided that he doesn’t ask for more and that he promised to return when he has come to a “conclusion on what he wants to do in life”. He agreed right away, but ten thousand yens is a much scarcer amount than he thought it would be, so he had no choice but to find a way to earn himself some extra money. Nakamaru introduced him to this konbini temporary job, but Tatsuya only lasted three hours (he messed up an aisle of chocolate bars) before Nakamaru apologised on his behalf and promised to look for other less, “labour-oriented”—using Nakamaru’s own words—jobs for Tatsuya.

Tatsuya wasn’t entirely ignorant to his situation and the status of his employability. He kindly rejected Nakamaru’s offers to help him look for jobs.

That evening after he failed his first konbini job, he started drawing again.







Ryo likes to smoke while playing the guitar. The burning smell of nicotine seeping into his nose is a potent stimulant for his muses, as he discovered some time ago. It’s a little like having caffeine constantly injected into his system, only without the actual injection taking place. Tomohisa once asked him if he was actually smoking excessively so that he could drown the flowery scents inside his apartment (he’s a florist, the floral scents haunt him). Ryo denied that because he actually likes the smells of flowers when they are not messing with his nose.

Being a florist is hard when he’s no expert in ikebana, the art of flower arrangement, but when he strums a chord on the guitar, he becomes a musical genius.

His clients need to know that lilies are for funerals, carnations are for mothers and teachers, roses are for lovers and sometimes mothers, and tulips are for anniversaries, but nobody, not even Tomohisa, needs to know what his songs are for.

Even so, when he sometimes hears a keyboard playing somewhere in the apartment building, he wonders if the keyboard player is playing the songs with a purpose.







On the day Tatsuya started to draw again, he heard someone singing and playing the guitar in the background. It was like someone had just decided to be the soundtrack of his art.







Ryo was lying when he told Tomohisa that nobody needed to hear his songs.

He sometimes wonders if anything would change if someone, preferably a stranger, liked his songs.







Tatsuya catches a glimpse of the florist when Jin comes to visit. Jin’s another friend of his, an art dealer, who has come to review a few drawings that Tatsuya has made to see if they are good enough to be displayed in the gallery he works in. Jin’s the last person Tatsuya would imagine being an art dealer, but for some reasons Tatsuya can’t understand, Jin does know a lot of people in the artistic world and he knows that that he would be guaranteed a deal by asking him for help.

From Jin, Tatsuya learns that the florist’s name is Ryo, his name bearing the kanji for “clear”.

Despite that, Tatsuya feels like Ryo’s the most reserved person he has ever known.







At first, Ryo was rather surprised to know that his neighbour, the guy he thought was a rich man’s son, knows Jin. Ryo knew Jin as this pretty dumb friend of Tomohisa’s who hangs out with them once in a while. He can never be able to fathom how Jin’s an art dealer when he’s not equipped with the best business senses or potent persuasive skills. Ryo thinks that his pretty face must have helped quite a bit.

One day, he discovers some thrashed drawings—disposed drafts, he assumes—outside the door of the rich guy’s apartment. He seems to be either indecisive about his artistic identity or possessing a variety of creative personas, even signing them with different pseudonyms. There are abstract paintings, consisting only of colourful dots and splashes. There are portraits, of a pretty girl wearing a mini-dress in front of a mirror (Ryo guesses that it’s about the coming-of-age of a young girl), of a pregnant mother breastfeeding a child and a large dog beside her (Ryo likes this a lot and he doesn’t understand why this got thrown out) and of a performer bowing in front of an audience with the curtain closed behind him (there are a lot of similarities between this and the Eminem album cover). There are many others, like oil paintings on canvases, sketches, scribbling, and even some musical sheets.

The musical sheets remind Ryo of the anonymous keyboard player.

He’s in awe. This rich boy might be both an artist and a musician and Ryo feels like he can connect with him.

For the first time in years, he feels something fiery simmering inside him.







Tatsuya passes by Ryo’s shop almost daily. His favourite ramen stand is about fifteen metres away from the little flower shop Ryo seems to own.

He keeps wishing that he could drum up some courage to ask him if he knows how to play the guitar.

If he’s the one whose songs he hears whenever he draws.

The questions sound rather stupid in his head.







Ryo passes by the rich boy’s door whenever he has to throw bags of rubbish into the dumpster.

He wants to knock on his door, asking him what his name is. Is it Ryuu, The Dictator, Fairy or something else?

He always ends up taking the thrashed drawings, one after another, instead of introducing himself.







Tatsuya observes Ryo as he works in his flower shop while eating ramen.

He sees him smile at courteous customers, frown at complaining clients and argue with disagreeable suppliers. He sees him arrange the fresh flowers and set aside the withered stalks, wrap the fresh flowers prettily and tie them with a ribbon for his clients’ sweethearts. He sees Ryo collect the rejected roses, pluck the petals and pack them into a container for a perfume-manufacturing factory.

Ryo is every picture of perseverance, and Tatsuya wants to draw him.







Out of so many drawings he has taken from the rich boy’s rubbish pile, he likes the portrait of a boy, probably underage, sitting on a balcony, smoking a cigarette, the most.

He picks up his guitar and writes a song called Monologue.







Tatsuya passes by Ryo’s flower shop and takes some petals that have fallen on the pavement when Ryo closes the shop for ten minutes for his lunch break.

He attaches them to an oil painting depicting a boy walking into a garden of flowers on a thorny path and calls it Ai no Hana – Flowers of Love.







Ryo, along with Jin and Tomohisa, hang out in this bar they go to whenever they want to celebrate something. This time, Tomohisa gets a pay raise along with a slightly upgraded role in his department. Jin has just closed the largest deal in his entire career and Ryo, well. Ryo wrote a song.

They both clap their hand, patting him on his back. It’s been such a long time since Ryo did something he’s proud of (the last time he had celebrated anything, it was when he told Tomohisa that his flower shop had doubled its previous year’s gross revenue). He feels somewhat accomplished, even if it’s of a whimsical nature.

Jin starts talking about the deal he’s scored that afternoon. Apparently, some famous rock musician, Gackt, visited his gallery that day. Gackt fell in love at first sight with a painting that was drawn by one of Jin’s artists, and a new artist to boot. He offered the painting a whooping half a million yen, which set the record for the gallery as the highest-selling non-auction debut piece. He rambles on about how he must have it in him to be able to discover such an amazing talent, even though the new artist is actually a friend.

Ryo’s slightly taken aback by Jin’s description and after some questions, he learns that the painting belongs to this artist called Tatsuya, known by his many random pseudonyms, Ryuu (no doubt paying homage to the ”Tatsu” in his name), The Dictator, Fairy, The Prince, just to name a few.

His neighbour.

The artist he admires.







Tatsuya rejects Jin’s invitation to celebrate Ai no Hana’s sale to Gackt, his idol and most favourite musician ever.

He brushes the dust off his keyboard, carries it to the rooftop, plugs it into the nearest socket and plays the song that comes with Ai no Hana.

It’s time for him to make his own soundtrack.







Mr Anonymous Keyboard Player is playing a song on the rooftop, and Ryo knows that it’s Tatsuya.

The song that he’s playing makes Ryo remember the smell of sakura flowers, the gentle wind brushing against his face and the light that awaits him.

It makes Ryo think of hope.

It makes Ryo feel like the song that he has just heard is a follow-up to Monologue.







Tatsuya’s bank account looks healthier, but he hasn’t stopped watching Ryo from a distance. Nor has he started talking to him.

It’s hard to act like Ryo’s a stranger when he’s anything but.







Ryo makes Jin show him a picture of the masterpiece of a debut piece he sold to Gackt.

It looks like an ink manifestation of the song he heard playing on the rooftop.







That autumn, petals begin to fall on the pavement of Ryo’s flower shop. Tatsuya realises that Ryo always hesitates about sweeping them away, even when the town municipal threatens to fine him.

Tatsuya sees Ryo smile at the lady from the municipal and talk about the pretty flowers. Tatsuya watches him as he chooses a bouquet of yellow roses for her as a treat. A service to the public servant, he says.

Tatsuya picks up the flowers and paints something brighter than Ai no Hana. He names the painting Hana no Mau no Machi – The City Where The Flowers Dance.







Jin and Tomohisa suggest to Ryo that he should record a demo. Apparently, Jin has this gaijin friend who works for the entertainment industry and he might be able to help Ryo score a record deal. Though, first, they need to secure him performance gigs, and Jin has already gotten a few clubs to agree to let Ryo play. Ryo’s curious about how Jin managed to get so many things done in such a short time. Jin only winks and says things about his well-connected friend, someone called Junnosuke.

Ryo starts recording himself during his free time and makes copies of the CDs.







Tatsuya wakes up and finds a CD slipped under his door.







Ryo wakes up and finds a painting slipped under his door.







The message on the CD cover says “We don’t know each other, but you helped make this happen, Ryo”.







The painting’s signed by someone named “Tatsuya”, with a short message that says “I hope we get to know each other soon”.







Monologue is a song with a monochromatic tone, a simple tune with an astounding depth.

It’s exactly like how Tatsuya sees Ryo.







Hana no Mau no Machi is vibrant, colourful and bold.

It’s a side of Tatsuya that Ryo never knew of.







That night, Ryo knocks on Tatsuya’s door, his guitar slung over his back.


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