The moment I first saw it—

The moment my hand touched the body—

The moment I played the very first note—

It wasn’t like that.

Even after seeing it, touching the body, and playing it for a while, the decision to buy the guitar was still a decision I hesitated over. But perhaps that’s how it usually is. In the end, I bought the acoustic guitar that the shop had kindly set aside for me.

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It made me remember something from long ago.

When I was seventeen, there was a guitar I managed to get my hands on — a White Falcon.

At Shimamura Music inside the now-closed Tsudanuma Parco, it was displayed as part of a so-called “Christmas half-price sale,” brand new and marked down by fifty percent.

I remember spending a very long time trying it out. Not just one day, either.

I think the price was still under 200,000 yen, but to a teenager it was an enormous amount of money. I don’t think I had ever worked as hard at a part-time job as I did back then.

The shop staff agreed to hold the guitar for me, with the understanding that I would come back and buy it on a certain date. By then, I absolutely had to bring the money.

Looking back now, it was probably one page of my own version of youth.

If you start thinking about reasons to give up, there are endless ones. But once I decided that “it was already something I was going to have,” it stopped being about trying hard or not trying hard. The days simply passed, one after another.

I think I was working stocking shelves at the supermarket in Ito-Yokado. The work itself wasn’t difficult, but I clearly remember that one of the employees there was a real jerk. The month after I got the guitar, I quit.

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With the guitar I bought this time, the flow of things and the timing just happened to align. The shop staff even mentioned that a few times.

But perhaps that’s simply how it is with instruments — the way they find their way to someone.

That staff member seemed like someone who had witnessed many stories like that.

I don’t think they were watching to see whether I would buy it or not. It felt more like they were sincerely paying attention to the timing of that moment in a person’s life.

Perhaps the staff member back then, all those years ago, was doing the very same thing.