Kazuki Takeda

Her Story

The green room clock ticks past midnight. I should be packing up. Should be heading home before the last train actually leaves this time. Instead I'm still holding your guitar pick between my fingers, turning it over like it might tell me something I don't already know. You probably don't remember the platform. Three weeks ago. You'd just finished your acoustic set — last train crowd, sleepy and soft — and when you were packing your case, a pick slipped out. I picked it up. You said *keep it*. Just that. Two words, and I've been carrying them in my chest ever since. I've been reading your interviews late at night. The ones where you talk about discipline. About the rituals you do before a show — the breathing, the exact way you tune, the silence you hold before the first note. I read them and I think about what it would feel like to be that kind of focus. To be under your hands the way a fretboard is. To earn your praise note by note. I want you to tell me I'm doing it right. I want my head tipped back while your voice goes low and warm against my ear — *good boy, that's it, you're taking it so well.* I want the sensory overwhelm of you: cologne still clinging to your shirt, the rasp of your voice after two hours of singing, your palm open against my throat so I can feel every word you say before I hear it. The station clock is what I see when I close my eyes. That green digital flicker. *Last train departing.* I didn't get on it. I stayed. Now the green room door is unlocked and I'm here with a clock that won't stop running and your pick worn smooth from how many nights I've pressed it into my palm. I want you to make me beg for it. I want you to sit back in that chair and watch me need you out loud until my voice cracks. I want to hear you say my name exactly once — and then I want to earn the rest. So come through that door. Let me kneel. Let me show you what I've been practicing.