[Short Story] Chant

Back stand, row Q, seat 23.

In the entry line, I checked the numbers on my ticket over and over. For twenty years, my seat had no number. The front row behind the goal, right in front of the wire fence. All that needed to be written on the ticket was the six characters for 'Home Unreserved Seat'.

This might be the first time I've come to the stadium empty-handed. No drum. No drumsticks. No megaphone, no stack of chant sheets. The security check at the gate, where I usually spread my arms, ended in an instant.

As I climbed the stairs of the concourse, I saw the pitch. The green was further away than I had imagined.

I sat in my seat. Next to me, a small boy sat side-by-side with his father. The elderly couple beyond them were sharing a lap blanket. No one was standing. No one was singing yet.

Three days ago, a thin camera inserted through my nose went down to the back of my throat. 'Please say ah,' the doctor said. When I did as I was told, a raspy sound came out.

The doctor pointed to the monitor. In the black-and-white image, my vocal cords had stopped closing completely.

“This is not a newly formed, soft nodule.”

The doctor’s tone was not one of reproach.

“You have been putting strain on the same spot for twenty years. Speaking normally is fine. Yelling and singing are not. Three months, to start. I will check your vocal cords along the way to decide if you can return to using your voice.”

Twenty years. That was the number I wrote on the medical questionnaire. Hearing it confirmed by the doctor’s voice, matching the photo of my throat, felt like hearing someone else’s life.

While looking at the green of the pitch, my palms had nowhere to go on my knees.

Usually, this would be the time I’d be taking the drums out of the storage room. I’d tap the leather twice with my palm to check the tension. In November, the leather is dry and tight, and the sound is hard. It rings well. But on days when it rings well, we never win.

Across the pitch, I can see the area behind the goal. The banners were already hung. The drums were in the positions I had taught them.

Today is the final match of the season, and a win secures our spot in the league.

The pitch, viewed from the side, was vast.

The player entrance announcement read out the names one by one. The echo blurred them, making them sound doubled. Across the pitch, I saw the area behind the goal stand up. The crimson color became a wall.

Four drum beats rang out.

The four-beat signal to start. Twenty years, and it hasn't changed. The one playing is a young guy I don't know. His strike is shallow, and the core of the sound is a bit scattered. Even so, the leather is ringing well. Because today, it is dry.

The voice from the megaphone rose. It was Yuta. He was standing on the fence, holding the megaphone up with one hand. His stance was wider than mine.

Starting the chant is the call leader's job. You sing the first measure alone. You set the pitch and decide the tempo. From the second measure, the goal-behind section joins in.

For twenty years, that was my voice.

Yuta's voice is higher than mine and carries well. The pitch he sets is also a semitone higher than where I used to set it. Eight thousand people followed that pitch. Even the edges that didn't quite align, and the voices that joined in later, all merged into a single song.

The song arrives with a delay equal to the width of the pitch. In the twenty years I was on the side producing it, I didn't know. The song hits your chest bones with a delay.

The first song isn't mine. It's a song someone before me put the club's name to, set to an old chant from across the sea. In twenty years, I wrote seventeen songs. I composed the melody for three of them. For the rest, I put words to borrowed melodies.

My song hasn't rung out yet.

The kickoff whistle blew.

The singing started even without me.

Immediately after kickoff, the first song came.

It's the first song I ever wrote. Twenty years ago. The melody was borrowed; I was told it was an old harbor work song, but I don't know if that's true. I put words to it. Because we didn't have a song to sing when we were losing.

Now, it's become the custom to sing it right after kickoff. I don't remember when that started.

Back then, the goal-behind section was thirty people.

Three thousand people in the whole stadium. I did the drums and the vocals all by myself. There were no megaphones. With thirty people, my natural voice was enough. After one match of drumming, the skin on my hands where I gripped the sticks would tear somewhere. I'd wrap them in tape and grip over that.

The night I first sang that song, we were losing 0-3. Fewer than ten of the thirty people sang it. By the next match, it was twenty. By the end of the season, everyone sang it every time we lost. It's not a song for winning. It's a song to keep us from going home while still defeated.

There was no roof over the goal-behind section back then, and on rainy days the leather would get damp, and the sound would sink. Singing over that sunken sound wasn't half bad.

It took twenty years for thirty people to become eight thousand. Now, eight thousand people are singing that song. Only the song remains as it was back then.

On the pitch, every time our number 10 touches the ball, the volume of the singing goes up a notch. Yuta changes the song. At the transition, two drums come in. I wrote that transition, too. No one thinks the transition was something that was written.

In the 34th minute of the first half, number 10 broke through.

The stands rose to their feet. The shot went over the frame. Eight thousand sighs fell all at once.

In that gap, Yuta started a song. My song. One of the three I composed from the melody. The drums connect the underside of the sigh.

That melody came to me on the way home on the last train.

It was a night of overtime. As I exited the ticket gate and walked through the empty shopping street, an unfamiliar hum was turning over in my mouth. It wasn't a melody I'd heard anywhere. I repeated it over and over so I wouldn't forget it until I got home, and recorded it into my phone at the entrance. The following week, I played it for my friends at a family restaurant. The five of us sang it in low voices. Someone said, "This might work." That was all.

In the final verse where we call out the club's name, the sound dips once. It drops a half-step, then leaps. If you dig a valley before making it jump, the voices align. It's a method I learned back when there were thirty of us.

Next to me, a child is looking up at their father's mouth. The father is singing my song under his breath.

The first half is over. 0-0.

My name isn't written in any of the songs.

Halftime.

The singing stops, and music from the speakers fills the stadium. In the bottom right of the giant screen, the song title and the singer's name appear. The name disappears after four and a half minutes, replaced by the next one.

The voice asking "Would you like some coffee?" goes up the stairs in the aisle. Behind the goal, everyone is sitting down, drinking water. Yuta has his megaphone on his knees, talking to one of the younger drummers and laughing. Have I ever been able to laugh like that during the halftime of the final match of the season?

The child next to me received a paper cup of cocoa from their father, who had called over a vendor. Holding it with both hands, the child blew on it once before taking a sip. The towel muffler wrapped around their neck is a brand-new crimson, the fringe at the ends still stiff. It must be their first time at the stadium. During the first half, this child was watching the area behind the goal just as much as the pitch.

"Hey, what are they saying in that song?"

The child asks, and the father teaches them the lyrics by whispering them.

That is how words can be passed on.

The players return to the pitch. The child leaves the cocoa with their father and re-wraps their towel muffler.

Nine minutes into the second half, we conceded a goal.

It was from a corner kick. Someone touched it at the near post, and the ball went in slowly. The stadium loses its sound for a beat. The silence of eight thousand people is deeper than the silence of three thousand.

From the bottom of the silence, the drums rise up.

Yuta's voice sets the next song. It's the first song. The song for when we're losing. Eight thousand people begin to sing the song I wrote for thirty people twenty years ago.

There used to be one more song.

It was the number 9 song, sung only when we were behind. When number 9 had the ball, the temperature of the stadium would rise by a degree. I remember many matches we turned around. Five years ago in the summer, number 9 transferred to a J1 club. That week, the song couldn't be sung anymore. It wasn't that anyone banned it. There was just no one left to sing it for. It wasn't as if there wasn't a way to swap the name and keep using it. But no one suggested it.

Songs die. Sometimes, they die even before the people who created them.

The clock ticks on. We are well into the second half, and our team has been holding the ball more. The crowd behind the goal starts to sing. It is my song. That song that calls out the club's name.

Beside me, a child was singing.

Carrying only half of the words they had just learned. Even though the song of eight thousand people reaches me with a delay equal to the width of the pitch, this voice reaches me without any delay at all.

The melody was different.

The final phrase. Before the club's name, the sound didn't dip into a valley, but rose straight up. I thought it was a mistake in how they learned it. It was a child who had heard it for the first time today. Then, my ears started picking up the surroundings on their own.

The father was also rising straight up. The seats behind us, too. The wall of crimson across the pitch was also leaping without dipping into a valley.

It was I who had been remembering it wrong.

Since when?

I didn't know. I must have heard it during the first half today, too. My ears had been overwriting it with the melody from my memory. For the twenty years I was on the side producing it, perhaps I had only been listening to my own voice inside the megaphone. The original version is still inside a mobile phone from nineteen years ago. A recording deep in a drawer that no one listens to.

I have changed lyrics before. Three years ago, we discussed it at a family restaurant during an away game and swapped out just one word. That was a decided change. There are even minutes of the meeting.

No one decided on this melody.

Eight thousand people, over twenty years, changed it little by little. It wasn't anyone's fault, it wasn't anyone's achievement, and it wasn't even a mistake.

The back of my throat moved. I wanted to teach them back, at the top of my lungs, how to dip into the valley. I inhaled and even formed my mouth for it. The breath for one phrase of the song had nowhere to go and escaped through my nose. Remembering vocal cords that wouldn't close in a black-and-white image, I closed my mouth.

My palms, holding no drumsticks, tapped my knees twice.

The fourth official held up the electronic board.

4.

Four minutes of stoppage time. The score hasn't changed. While it remains unchanged, the crowd behind the goal changed the song.

It was a song I didn't know.

It was none of my seventeen songs. A melody I was hearing for the first time rose from the center of the crimson wall, and while not yet perfectly in sync, supported by clapping, it began to take shape little by little. Only the hundred people in the middle were able to sing it. A newborn song is always like that.

It was the same volume as that song from when there were thirty of us.

It’s Yuta’s song. The eighteenth one. Since his voice started acting up, he’d turned down our family restaurant meetups twice. This song was born during that time. It’s not my song. Someday, some of my seventeen songs will give way to this one and fade away. It was a handover of those very rights.

The whistle blew. Long, three times.

The singing didn’t stop.

The big screen was showing the results from other venues, but I didn’t look.

The players walked toward the goal end with their heads down. The song caught the players as they bowed their heads. When the new song ended, it returned to the first song. It’s a song to ensure we don’t go home defeated. The song I wrote for nights like this is still doing its job tonight, twenty years later.

The child next to me was humming a different song than the one in the stadium. That song that calls out the club’s name. With a flat, straight melody.

The song doesn’t remember me.

If it remembered me, I’d still be digging valleys and jumping.

My palms were resting quietly on my knees.

The flow of people began to move toward the exit. I stood up and looked at the goal end one last time. The wall remained unbroken, still singing.

As I walked down the stairs, I traced the new melody in my mouth. It’s an easy melody to remember. None of my habits are in it.

I didn’t say it out loud.

There are three months left. That’s enough time to learn it.