Conny Bauer & Rieko Okuda

Conny and Rieko Strike up a Friendship!

Conny sat alone in her room, bored to tears. She wanted to finally have some real fun and play with someone else again for a change, fed up as she was with killing time on tablets, her Switch or mummy's smartphone. Her parents weren't exactly keeping close tabs on her screen time anyway, and quite often she actually even played her dad's guitar on the sly, inventing English protest songs – she didn't feel like playing her trombone, which was staring at her daftly from the corner of her room. Down below in the courtyard, she observed Rieko, a little boy from Japan who had been living in the building in back for a while. He was a lot older though, and usually spent his time playing football with the big boys that always annoyed Conny when she was trying to practice trombone. "Can you play something with a melody?" "Is that supposed to be music?", they called, turning their blue-tooth speakers up so loud that Conny couldn't hear what she was playing anymore. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Conny still had tears in her eyes as she opened the door. Rieko, the boy with the football under his arm, stood before her and spoke: "I'm sorry that the other boys bother you so much. You play really well in fact!" "Do you really think so?" Conny asked. "Sure, it sounds fantastic! Should we play together a little?" Conny looked baffled: "You mean trombone and – football?" Rieko couldn't help laughing a little. "No, I play piano! Nothing earth-shattering but let's really do something together!" Conny grabbed her trombone and the two of them flew across the courtyard to Rieko's place, where he had a beautiful grand piano in his room. "I got this thing in Moers – it's a sort of training camp for more liberated philosophies and lifestyles… if you get what I mean?" "Sure do, I've been there a couple times too. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be able to fly of course!" Conny laughed. The old man who had climbed out of the window next door murmured: "Lots of people sit around numb for decades – in their own bubble… the evidence protruding from their open mouths – the deep-frozen scream" – but by then Conny and Rieko had already made their way to Moers.