The First Few Frets [Flashback, Closed to Abel Mistral]

Keiko listened to the inharmonious sound of the engine roaring underneath him, and the quiet voices of his parents speaking about something he could care less about. He sighed and shifted the red headphones that usually rested about his neck to his ears to do his job. People had been sending in tapes for quite a while now, and it was one of his jobs to listen to them and pick out the wheat from the chaff and the cream of the crop from the rest of them.

Apparently, Father had some business in this region, and so took the family out in the limousine to have dinner with the family that he had business with. What a pain. The music about would either be canned drivel or some piano player that plays 'the standards' without any life or soul. How could he stand to be there if that was happening? It was as if they expected him not to socialize with the family.

He sighed and kept the tracks that he liked on the company's phone that he used mostly as an MP3 player, deleting the rest from the memory. Such trash like that shouldn't be worthy of his ears, nor anyone else's, though he knew that they would still try to get it out there. He only stopped and pulled off the headphones when the limo stopped and the engine died as a signal that they were there. Well, showtime, was it? He looked over the home as he straightened out his silk suit and his hair. What would these people be like? Only time would tell.