Chapter Text
Overused floorboards creak under tiny feet too young to understand what “quiet” means, and a door handle flies open with the aid of soft hands that are just as small and a jump high enough to mimic that of a cat’s. There’s a soft pattering down the hallway but rounded fingers are already pulling out a case covered in black leather with a hard handle that swings wildly as he holds it with the curiosity of a baby bird. It clatters to the floor with a crash, bumping into a side table and nearly knocking over a painted bowl, only to be caught by his mother.
“Shouyou, you shouldn’t be going through things that aren’t yours,” comes the soft and stern voice behind him, and as he turns to look at his mother standing there, he catches sight of the case that he’d recklessly pulled - or tossed, rather - out of the closet. Ignoring the scolding, he trots over to where it lays closed on its side.
“What’s this?” he asks as the handle moves helplessly in his hand.
Shouyou’s mother sighs instead of giving a reply, instead walking over to where he’s sitting on the ground trying to make sense of the hard material that obviously must be holding something important. As soon as she makes it to him, Shouyou’s finger slips under the cold metal clasp keeping the case shut, and it flips open. Its contents are exposed before she can bend down and pull it to safety, and suddenly the boy is cooing over the black wooden instrument in front of him.
“That’s not yours,” she chides again, pulling the bell out of his hands before he gets his finger stuck in the key. In an instant the instrument is tucked neatly back into the velvet lining inside hard leather, the empty space in the closet has been filled once again, and the closet door gets closed. She pats him on the head as he sits on the floor and pouts quietly, then kneels beside him. “I’ll show you when you’re older, alright?”
Shouyou huffs and crosses his arms, ruffling up the skirt he’s wearing, which his mother promptly fixes. “How about we do something else, alright?” A mother always knows how to keep her little ones out of trouble. “Why don’t you come listen to me play piano downstairs?”
All at once the young destruction is forgotten in favor of a trip to the downstairs “music room,” the room with the upright piano and a bundle of pillows in the corner for when Shouyou begins to fall asleep to the soft sounds of Moonlight Sonata. The music stand to one side has been unused and haphazardly thrown there some time ago, seemingly out of place, but in a couple years time the lonely metal will once again be warmed with the sounds of flipping sheet music and the warm caress of oboe cadenzas.
Koushi’s fingers first feel the cold shock of piano keys as a toddler after having been outside as the spring weather chilled him to the bone, only to be warmed by piercing rays of sunshine. White socks slide quietly along hallway flooring lit by the same light, and he stops in one of the beams streaming in through a window to catch the heat on his skin. As he takes a detour into the spare room, he finds something familiar.
A hard black cover hides away the inner workings of long stretched metal strings that sound like cherry petals and the blue glow of midnight walkways. It’s a sound he’s played with many times before, the quiet sound of middle C as he presses a key and hopes not to disturb anyone else. He jumps up onto the bench, swings his legs over the side and giggles as he presses that same C again.
Played in two octaves this time, those C’s turn into G’s and A’s and E’s, and the first of Mozart’s 12 variations is parading through the room as his fingers march over cold piano keys. It’s such a simple piece, at least at the beginning. Everything seems to warm under his touch as the melody rings through the empty side room, and suddenly the swaying of the rosy trees outside seem to sync with the increasing pace of his song.
He grows up to this piece, constantly improving and perfecting, and in his sixth year he plays it for the first time in front of a group of parents and children who had all gathered to listen to relatives or just to pass the time. It’s in early spring when he first performs, and the sundress his mother makes him wear almost reflects the cherries he’d first seen when he learned the piece he’ll continue to keep with him as he gets older. Dotted with orange and yellow flowers, the dress flows and turns as he walks shakely to the piano, and the audience seems larger than it did when he was still spectating.
Hours seem to pass over seasons when he plays, and the once bright and early sky silhouetted with flying birds and falling petals shifts to a night sky lit with the brightest stars you’ll ever see, and after the recital, the little boy who compliments him tells Koushi that of all the stars, the most stunning one he saw was the one who had made all of the others come to life.
Shouyou is more eccentric than ever, and though he’s still young - only nine years old and still in primary school - many people know him and greet him as he rides down the street on his bike. From store owners to morning joggers to to people headed to work or to run errands, they always wave and Shouyou always waves back. Him and his curly ginger hair have become quite famous around town because with it always comes the personality of bubbles and baby feathers that everyone loves so much; he’s as unique and determined as any nine-year-old, and as he comes across a flyer for the Tokyo Quartet coming to perform a variety of pieces in a nearby city he promptly remembers all that he can to report it back to his mother when he gets home.
He spends the next couple weeks before the concert buzzing about how he’s going to see a famous group, both to his friends in school and at home. Though one of his two closest friends is an artist and the other a singer, they both get excited for Shouyou because that’s how Shouyou is, his energy bounces off of every nearby thing and radiates off of it. The week before, he accidentally answers “violin” when his teacher asks what a verb is.
It takes a little while to get to the performance hall where the concert is being held, and Shouyou nearly drives his parents off the walls on the way there. He bounces in his seat and makes a commotion, and when they finally make it inside to their seats, Shouyou can’t stay sitting for more than 20 seconds at a time. He’s awestruck by the size of the hall, by the amount of people who are filling in and taking up all of the space around him, and how the stage seems so frightening.
His mom finally gets him to sit down a couple minutes before the concert starts, and Shouyou’s eyes are glued to the stage the entire time. He watches as it transforms from being empty and desolate to bright and full of life just as the quartet steps onto the stage. They start the concert with a piece by a composer whose name he can’t pronounce (and who Shouyou simply calls “Shosty”), a piece in C minor that filled the hall with dark sounds that shrouds the performers in black, even though the lights in front of him are bright enough to highlight the captivated features of his face.
It shifts into intense and quick-paced rhythms not long after the beginning of the piece, and it throws the ball of bundled energy for a loop - how could a piece of music change so quickly and toss his emotions like a volleyball back and cross, and then suddenly cut out to a single violin, yet still keep the same frightening tone as it started with? He’s frozen in his seat until the very end, stunned and very much amazed with the music in front of him, and what the four string players are producing.
Even in unison octaves, Shouyou feels as though he’s floating, and sinking, and running, all at the same time. He’s being moved. Like a rocking pirate ship out on the sea while thunder crashes around, and like miners hitting a dead end in a death trap underground, he’s being moved.
The second piece they play is a piece by Tchaikovsky, a quartet in D major that sounds less like darkness and more like seaweed and coral and shifting sand into faults and onto sleeping crabs. It feels like shorelines and the push and pull of waves underwater when the water flows through untangled hair and makes wet limbs want to dance. It’s like volcanoes and aerial views and of never wanting to fall asleep because something important might happen, and it’s lulling but also aggressive in the way it doesn’t let go, draws you in until you’re surrounded by the music the same way you’d be surrounded by the sea.
They play shorter pieces, too, arrangements of pop songs that Shouyou’s only ever heard fragments of, but he knows enough to recognize the pieces, even if it’s only the chorus line. And then, just as he’s getting restless, they announce the final piece, a Barber piece in B minor that has dissonance that he’s never imagined, the way some of the chords sound so wrong that they sound right, and how standard chords appear to be out of place, incorrect. It’s quick like battlefields and predators, and doesn’t make him feel heavy or weightless like the other pieces did.
The second movement hits him like a cannonball from misfired cannons and sorrow like he’s never felt before. The battlefield transforms into a field of white curling grasses as winds blow ash across his mind and the feel of loss seems to overtake him, even though he has never lost something the way he’s made to feel he should have. The colors change from red to black and white and that dissonance from the first movement is nothing compared to the multitude of perfect chords and progressions and strong bowings he’s found himself engulfed in as he begins to tear up and forgets about the rest of the auditorium, like he’s sitting in the field himself and as the melody changes and drops, he feels like he’s falling, and the gentle mourning filling his ears and ringing like bells all around him pulls the tears out of him as if they were always meant to flow this way, in the presence of cellos that sound like loss and violins that sound like longing, and of the viola that played like galaxies moving overhead.
The short reprise of the first movement that follows isn’t enough to break Shouyou of his trance, and the final applause is lost to him as he stares at the musicians as they take their final bows and walk offstage. When his parents finally manage to pull him out of the hall to leave, he’s back to the way he was right before the concert started - awestruck and overwhelmed with excitement.
He starts asking for money for snacks on the way home from school, and as he passes everyone who knows him on his bike down the street, he continues to wave. After a few weeks of only eyeing the music shop on the side of the road, he stops there. When he gets home, the money that’s been building in his pocket is replaced with something new, and the closet in his house that has gone unopened since the incident with the side table years ago is once again opened.
After two years of playing, Koushi begins to dislike his piano instructor. He isn’t used to the strict kind of teaching style she implores once he gets a little older, and though he begins to show even steadier improvement as he learns new styles and pieces, it isn’t what he wants from his playing. If it weren’t for the recitals, he would consider dropping it, but Koushi finds that he enjoys sharing what he does with others. The boy from his first performance shows up again to the second, this time with a handful of handpicked flowers from what he assumes is the boy’s garden. Koushi doesn’t wear the blue dress from that recital ever again.
After four performances and even more flowers, Koushi finds out the boy’s name: Daichi. He also finds out they go to the same primary school, and so the two start talking more and more, and Daichi comes to more and more of his recitals, and always brings flowers, though they don’t come from his garden any more.
Every year Koushi’s mom buys him another dress for another recital, and every year he only wears them once before they’re stored and never to be worn again. Daichi begins to suggest piano sonatas he’s heard from other musicians, and when he takes up the clarinet in their last year before middle school, he starts coming over to practice. Though Daichi gets a teacher as well, Koushi still help him learn how to read the music easier. Koushi eventually finds a new piano instructor, one who is more patient and more enjoyable, and Koushi finds that he regrets ever considering stopping in the first place. The two of them don’t perform together in front of a group of people until later into middle school, but still Daichi attends every one of Koushi’s recitals, and Koushi’s mother begins to think of Daichi as part of the family. He does stop bringing flowers, though.
Shouyou discovers many things he hasn’t heard of before when he starts searching the internet. For example, it’s the first time he finds out that many oboe players make their own reeds. Since he’s already learned a plethora of oboe sonatas, solos, and melodic lines from the discs he’s picked up from the music store he now finds himself in quite often, he decides he should also start making his own reeds if that’s what “real” oboe players do.
The store clerk starts stocking oboe cane simply because Shouyou asks about it one day, and after a couple weeks Shouyou stops in and finds that it’s waiting for him on the counter when he walks in. He’s stopped asking for snack money since his mother has figured out that he plays in his free time, and so she gives him what he needs to buy the supplies for his new task: learning how to make the reeds himself.
With the help of a few YouTube videos and countless failed attempts at wrapping and accidentally shaving off a corner or taking too much off of the back, he finally manages to make a reed he can play on, and it sounds so much different than what he’s used to. He finds that his sound is richer and more like that which he hears on the recordings, and only amplifies his desire to play and to improve, so that he can one day play like the musicians he saw. He starts learning everything he hears, from movie soundtracks to pop melodies to concerto solos to solos for other instruments.
Shouyou’s little sister begins to catch on to his playing, too, and bugs him to play whenever she’s around. “Play that ‘bum-bum-bum-bah’ song again,” she would say, poking and pestering until he finally picks up his oboe and plays for her, and every time it makes him feel like he’s achieved something by playing for her. His audience of one is the only one he has to play for now, and he enjoys every second of it.
Through middle school, Koushi plays for competitions, and scores relatively well for the skill level he’s always told he plays at. He enters a Mozart competition as his first, and plays a song that’s so familiar to him that he can’t possibly mess it up with the pent of nerves of getting scored on his playing. The 12 Variations goes better than he expects it to, and scores about where he expects, at third. There are others there playing at a higher level, but that doesn’t bother him at all. It isn’t the skill and recognition that he plays for.
Daichi finds that he can’t make it to every competition, but Koushi always tells him he doesn’t mind. He’s supported his friend for so many years that the pianist can’t find a single reason to be upset that he misses a few of them, besides the fact that it’s lonelier without him there. The difficulty of his pieces gets higher, and so does his devotion to playing, but playing to nobody in particular still isn’t as motivating as it is to know that your notes are going to be heard by somebody who he knows will appreciate them. They both find that his scores are better when Daichi can make it to the performances.
Koushi finds that there is always somebody better when the scores are released, and though it didn’t use to bother him to see somebody elses name in first, after a time the repetition feels like plaster instead of routine. It isn’t long after that he tells Daichi that he won’t be doing competitions any more.
He learns and plays for competitions all through middle school and says at the end of their last year there that he’ll play one more, and when high school comes, they’ll all be behind him. to his surprise, when he walks out to play Mozart one last time and go out the same way he went in, the dim house lights reveal not only Daichi sitting where he always does, but also more of his friends and peers than he could ever hope to gather by himself. During intermission for judging he meets up with everybody who watched him perform, and above all, he cries surrounded by not only one, but a crowd of people who heard the heartfelt message of the revolving sun through piano keys.
In high school he continues to play for recitals and helps out in the chamber music group at Karasuno, where both he and Daichi decide to go because of rumors of the music program being stronger than it had been in years. They stick out the rehearsals and instruction and improve as musicians, but they also see the group begin to fall. What once held national-level musicians and concerts like those heard on recordings, becomes a club of hopeful first years and discouraged third years. It’s also the first year he performs in a suit.
Hinata continues through middle school always pushing for them to get an instrumental music program, and finding that no matter how much effort he puts into asking, nothing ever gets done. He’s told to join the choir group multiple times, and he declines. He stays in the choir practice room after school when it’s not being used and practices there with his portable CD player, and observes how the sound is different there than it is at home when he plays in his room.
He gets kicked out a couple times when the choir wants to rehearse, and he always asks to sit in and listen. The singers don’t mind having him there, and he learns more things about music while he’s there, things he can’t lean on his own, like how the singers interact with each other and how all of their voices need to mesh into one to become a solid sound that will sound good on stage.
He even asks for the recordings that they’re singing from and learns some of the parts, and when he comes in for their afternoon rehearsal one day he plays part of the accompaniment for them. Unfortunately for Hinata, the singers don’t appreciate his playing because they’re going to have a piano accompanist for the concert when it rolls around in a few months, so he leaves knowing that at least he has more practice under his belt.
At the same time that Hinata is getting kicked out of choir rehearsals, Suga is stuck leaning over the piano every day for club activities, sometimes by himself and sometimes by one or more people who’ve asked him to play with them. More often than not, he’s rehearsing with soloists and learning more sonata pieces than he ever thought possible. He’s lucky if he gets to practice his own parts.
It’s a big change for the pianist, who only ever used to prepare one or two pieces at a time and would be constantly performing. He prefers to stay back now and let others have the spotlight - he’ll take recognition where recognition is due, but he remains mostly in the background. It’s a big change for Daichi, as well, when he gets to the chamber music group and is asked to play in duets and quintets, and hits a wall when he’s made to play more flashy parts. Clarinet has always been the instrument that gets the melody lines, but he wouldn’t trade playing it for anybody else because it’s what he knows, and he learns how to get around his block.
Daichi begins to notice that Suga is using colorful plastic hair clips from when he was younger because his hair starts to grow out more, and so he gets him a pack of bobby pins to match, ones that won’t stand out so much. Through high school, Suga also begins to get more back pains from being bent over all the time, and with the strain of still growing he finds it’s best to stop every now and then to stretch, something which is new for him as well.
They also become better friends with the cellist that they met in their first year of high school, a timid boy who expresses everything he can’t say out loud through his music. He’s a gentle giant whose notes are louder than his voice, and he attracts a violinist who is exactly the opposite. Asahi and Nishinoya are drawn to each other on the first day- or more like Noya is drawn to Asahi. They’re also joined by Tanaka, the high strung flutist who aims to surpass every one of the upperclassmen. He’s the loudest flute player the others have ever heard, and though his ego can be large he’s developed it for a reason: his playing is strong and his words are stronger.
By the end of Suga’s second year, all five of them have become much closer. There were three other first years who had joined at the beginning of the year but dropped halfway through because despite everyone having a good time, the practices were still brutal. They go to the concert at the end of the year and promise to rejoin when the new school year starts, but after the trio performance, nobody is as sure as they thought they were about playing.
Though Hinata starts developing his own problems as he goes through middle school, he ignores most of them. He figures it’s standard for an oboist to get light headed as they play, and starts eating more before practicing so that he isn’t lacking energy. He starts keeping a water bottle on hand because his throat gets drier, and he dismisses his shoulder pain as being the price for perfect posture.
When Suga runs back with Kageyama into the practice room, he knows right away that it isn’t a problem with his posture or not eating enough that caused Hinata to faint. Suga would be lying if he were to say he hasn’t picked up on the fact that Hinata wears a binder to school and to rehearsals, he could see it in the way that Hinata carried himself and in the way he stretched just like Suga did himself. He rushed over to the oboist laying on the floor, still on his side, and breathing seemingly normal now.
Kageyama stands awkwardly to the side of the room, watching but not making any noise or trying to interrupt, because it seems to him that Suga knows what he’s doing. As Suga gently pulls Hinata to lay on his back and the smaller boy seems to be regaining consciousness, Kageyama thinks it best to go tell Daichi about what happened, and quietly excuses himself from the room.
Hinata slowly blinks awake, finding that both his head and the left side of his body are both sore, but nonetheless he brings an arm up to rub at his forehead. “Thank god you’re okay,” Suga says quietly as Hinata cringes at the pressure he’s putting on his own head, glances to the door to be sure that Kageyama closed it when he left, and sighs in relief.
“What happened?” Hinata says, rightfully confused after having woken up on the floor of the practice room. “Why is my oboe on the piano, I didn’t break it, did I? Did I pass out?” He slowly pushes himself off of the floor to sit up and look around, still dazed.
“Well, I don’t know about your oboe, but you did faint. It’s a good thing you fell to the side, too… I don’t know what could’ve happened if you’d hit your head on your music stand,” Suga says, pushing the stand farther away.
“Oh! Kageyama were playing the Danzi, right? Aw, I hope I didn’t break my reed.”
“Slow down,” Suga nearly laughed in exasperation, motioning for Hinata to stay sitting there when he sees the boy make a move to stand up. “I still need to talk to you about something.”
“What is it?”
“I need you to promise me you’ll be safer next time,” he begins, tapping his fingers on the ground in a way that makes him seem nervous. “I wear a binder to school, too, and I always make sure it’s not restricting me too much, and I take breaks because I know they’re important, and I always carry a sports bra with me just in case.”
“I see!” Hinata says, seemingly interested, or at least understanding what Suga is trying to say. “Yeah, I’ll be more careful, promise.”
Suga sighs again, standing up and reaching out a hand to help Hinata off of the floor, too. “I’ll make Daichi make sure there’s nothing wrong with your oboe. It looks like you’ll have to find another reed to use, though.”
“Aw, no fair,” he whines, walking over to take the split reed off of the oboe, cradling it in his hands like a tiny child. “It was so good.”
“I’m sorry. Also, go drink more water,” Suga stops him when he sees Hinata about to bound out of the door. When Hinata nods and then runs back to get his water bottle off of the floor, Suga realizes that he’s always going to worry about that little ball of musicality.
After Kageyama leaves the practice room, making sure to close the door securely behind him, he finds that half of the club is already standing in the main room with worried expressions littering their faces. He hadn’t realized how loud he’d been when he left to get Suga, and felt guilty now with Daichi, Ennoshita, Asahi, Noya, and Tanaka all watching him, probably looking for some sort of explanation.
“Suga-san is… taking care of it,” he says timidly, but at least the others seem a bit relieved by what he says.
“What happened?” Daichi asks when Kageyama walks over and sits in one of the main room seats.
“I’m not sure. He didn’t seem right as we played- he asked me to play something with him, and so we played this piece, and then he fainted. He’s probably going to come running in soon, honestly.”
The others all exchange looks, but none of them really know what to say in response; they trust Suga’s judgement, and can at least attest to how much energy Hinata seems to have, no matter the circumstance. Kageyama wishes he’d brought his cello out with him, at least then he could do something to take his mind off of what happened, especially knowing that nobody is going to leave until they’re sure Hinata is okay.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tanaka speaks up, sensing the unease and not finding it at all comfortable. “The kid’s all over the place. It’s not your fault.”
“I know that,” the cellist mumbles, shifting awkwardly in the chair. “I just feel like I should’ve done something. I just didn’t think he’d put playing before anything else.”
“Well, there’s no helping it,” Noya shrugs, leaning back against the grand piano where the other upperclassman are all standing.
As expected, it’s no more than a few seconds later that Hinata bounds in happily, erasing any doubt in everyone’s minds that he wouldn’t be fine. “Sorry to make you all worry,” he says as he bows to the upperclassman as Suga follows out behind him, the oboe in hand.
“Good to see you up and walking,” Noya jokes, and when Hinata straightens he beams, the overexcited mess.
Suga hands the oboe carefully to Daichi when he walks over, eyeing Hinata to make sure he isn’t already getting into more trouble. “Can you look this over for him? Make sure everything is alright?”
“I’m no oboe-expert, but I’ll do what I can,” he reassures them, then leaves for his things, where he’ll have the tools to make any minor adjustments he might need to. As everybody disperses back to their rooms, the threat of the day taken care of and a crisis thankfully avoided, the first years get back on each others’ cases and are already bickering, and Hinata with no instrument to play, stays back to watch Suga until Daichi returns.
“It should be fine,” he says as he hands the oboe back to its owner, who looks over it with starry eyes. “I just had to put a couple springs back that got jostled. Be careful, though, I’m no professional.”
“Thank you Daichi-san!” Hinata bows and is back in the practice room with Kageyama before the two third years can even blink. Once it’s back to the two of them, Daichi leans on the hood of the piano and let’s out a frustrated groan. “Do you really think he’ll be alright?”
Suga glances back at the practice room before laughing and continuing with his practicing, leaving Daichi to watch from over his music. “I’m sure he will be.”
Yamaguchi is blue. He is turquoise and the calm of small puddles on the side of the road, and the way the sky changes when there aren’t any clouds. Through everything, Yamaguchi has been the blue of harmony and wrinkled t-shirts and the covers of school books. When things go wrong, he is harsh waves and covered skies, hidden.
Tsukishima is yellow. He is the gold of superiority and streetlights when the lights go on and the only other illumination on the roads are the faded headlights of cars passing by, making dividing lines brighter and drivers unsure. Even the fluorescent hues of friendship seem to find space in him, and the teasing stops when he walks by.
Color palettes of reds and purples cannot compare to the mixing of green from pure shades of dimmed sunlight and undersea caverns. Their relationship ranges from dark seaweed flowing between passing fish and bottom feeders to the stronger tone of tree leaves and blades of grass that tickle the feet of neighbors walking through each others’ yards to ask for favors in their pajamas. Green is the color of nature and misfortune, of generosity and jealousy, of Yamaguchi and Tsukishima. Their hands hold tight like vines when they lay across the violinist’s bed, looking up at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars they’d put up there when they were young and the fade marks from where two had fallen off.
“Do you think dinosaurs would have appreciated wifi?” Yamaguchi asks, looking down at his socked feet stacked on top of each other at the foot of the bed, and Tsukishima’s whose are crossed.
“Probably. They have big enough brains to appreciate it.”
“I guess that’s true.”
Their conversations commonly go like this, just small questions and discussions about topics that would seem pointless to anybody else, but the silence is not heavy, nor is it empty. It’s warm like cactus blossoms blooming from prickly green cacti, and not unwelcome.
“I’m still sorry about your bow…”
“I’ve already told you it doesn’t matter.”
“But it was-”
“Yeah, I know, it was his, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t really care. It’s just a bow, and I got a new one that sounds exactly the same.”
“I’m still sorry, though.”
“...I know. It’s okay.”
And then they fall back into silence.
Ukai isn’t even in the general vicinity of being surprised when Takeda walks in on Friday night before he closes up. He wants to tell him to just shoo, that they’re closed, but the man looks so damn proud that he kind of wants to humor him for a little while. He crosses his arms and leans forward towards the counter as the teacher places what looks like a walkman in front of him. “The answer is going to be a no, but I’m curious. What’s that.”
“This,” Takeda starts with a confident grin, “is what’s going to convince you to come help the chamber music club.”
“This better not be a waste of my time,” he says with a sigh, taking off his apron and walking quietly to hang it up. “If you think listening to them is going to get me to come teach your kids, then have at it.”
When Ukai motions to the little CD player on the counter, Takeda presses the play button on the device and the little speakers attached to it start playing something like white noise for a moment, before the sound of a cello comes through. Ukai takes his seat back behind the counter to listen to the recording, not yet impressed. Sure, there’s a cello, but one cellist isn’t going to get him to try to teach a bunch of high schoolers about music.
“Is this going to get interesting?” He asks with a raised a raised eyebrow, checking his watch.
“Shh, just listen,” Takeda responds, getting more and more exciting as the recording goes on; he’s anticipating something, Ukai can tell, but what he has no idea.
And then Hinata’s oboe playing starts.
“What the-” The clerk starts, but cuts himself off to listen.
“Two of my students agreed to do this recording for you, it’s a piece they’ve captivated a lot of people with,” Takeda says proudly, puffing up his chest, but Ukai hushes him, having not been paying attention. He was more concerned with the music on the track.
When the player stops and the recording ends, Ukai runs a hand back through his hair, eyeing the thing like it’ll give him some explanation for what he just heard, that duet that seems to captivate everyone who hears it.
“It’s Piazzolla’s Histoire Du Tango. The two of them, they’re odd, but they play that in front of crowds and they fall silent. It’s amazing.”
“These two are part of your group?” Takeda nods. “Why didn’t you tell me they were so good?”
Takeda feels like some sort of otherworldly force has struck him through the head, but he shakes it off. His club’s fate is on the line. “Please, will you come teach these kids? I don’t have any musical authority to help them, but they have so much potential, and they leave for their competition in Nekoma in a week.”
“Oh right,” he says distractedly, tapping on the counter. “You mentioned they’ll be at Nekoma.”
It’s quiet for a minute, nothing but the sound of birds outside and that rapping of the branch on the window. Takeda looks at him with a hopeful expression, just about ready to beg again when Ukai speaks.
“Yeah. Alright, I’ll help them.”
Kageyama likes music stores. There used to be a woman who would come in on the weekends and play at the piano inside, and the storekeeper would do his work with a smile those days and Kageyama would sit and listen for a while. She was nice, always offered to teach him a little if he could stay for a little longer, and helped him reach the music that was higher up on the shelves when everyone else was busy. Now that he’s old enough and tall enough to reach the music he needs, he finds he misses the pianist who would play.
He ends up in that music store on a Wednesday afternoon after rehearsal. With Ukai being their new instructor and helping everyone, a few things have been going differently over the past couple days. He spends a lot of time with Hinata, having been a wind player himself and finding that the oboist needs the help a little more than the others, but Kageyama will admit that Ukai has been helping him already, too. He hands out sightreading a lot, what he’s found to be at about the level of each of the musicians, and Kageyama has found himself unable to play some of it right away, mainly the double stops and fast jumps.
The reason he’s at the music store is because of Ukai. He’d suggested that Kageyama work on more solo work while all of the other chamber pieces come together, just personal practice pieces to learn and expand the list of pieces he’s able to play in case he ever needs to add to his repertoire, and apparently he told Asahi the same thing, because when he walks in, he sees the other cellist skimming over music.
“Asahi-san?” He calls as he walks over, and Asahi turns to face the first year who had called him.
“Kageyama? Let me guess, Ukai.”
“Yeah. You too?” Kageyama looks at the music in the upperclassman’s hands and recognizes it almost immediately. “Debussy. That’s a really good piece, it suits you.”
Asahi eyes it slowly, touching over the notes and looking unsure about it. “...Really?”
“Yeah. I leaned it a couple years ago- not that it matters or anything, it’s still a good piece for cellists to know.” Kageyama never seems to know how to talk to his upperclassmen, and usually feels awkward doing it, but Asahi seems like he feels the same, and in a way that makes him feel better.
“I’ve been thinking about playing it for a while, but… with Noya and Tanaka and Suga always wanting to play other things with me, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time.” The music closes with a soft pat and he looks over the cover. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’ve learned it already. You’re an amazing player, I could learn so many things from listening to you - and I mean that as a musician and another cellist.”
“I could… I could learn quite a bit from you, too. Everybody trusts you, even after what I heard about from last year.”
“Well,” Asahi says slowly, not knowing how to respond. “Give it time. They’ll warm up soon enough. I need to get going, but thank you. For your opinion on the piece, I mean.”
Kageyama doesn’t often seen Asahi smile, because he’s usually overcome with nerves or trying to deal with the two second years, but it’s one of the warmest smiles he’s ever seen. He remembers it as he hears the exchange at the register and as the front bell rings when the door opens, and sees it in slurs and ties across the page of music he’s watching, and can’t help but smile, too.