Chapter Text
Wei WuXian was not easily fazed by staring.
As a result, he didn’t even blink when he opened the door and everyone’s eyes landed on him. Instead, he looked around with fascination. The room was packed; instrument cases littered the floor, the clarinet in the back surreptitiously put up his middle finger when they made eye contact, and was there was a percussionist standing by the timpani that looked like he was already nodding off.
At the front of the room, a middle-aged man stood, facing the members of the orchestra. His expression was as if he had swallowed a lemon three days ago, and still hadn’t gotten the taste of it out of his mouth. With an unraised baton in his hand, he turned to look at Wei WuXian.
Naturally, Wei WuXian knew who this was. Lan QiRen was one of the most renowned orchestra directors of the area. Everyone knew that the junior orchestra that he was in charge of was insanely talented, and every parent wanted their child to a become a member. As a matter a fact, that was why he was here in the first place. Inversely, every child knew that Lan QiRen was a force to reckoned with— unreasonably strict, unreasonably high expectations, and just plain old unreasonable.
Lan QiRen slowly set his baton down on his stand, and his gaze fell to the small case Wei WuXian was holding, and a flash of recognition flickered in his eyes. “Our newest member arrives,” he sneered. “Tardiness is not acceptable in my orchestra, even if it is your first day.”
“Sorry,” Wei WuXian answered cheerfully. “I got lost.” In reality, his sense of direction was pretty good, but what Lan QiRen didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Ignoring the man’s glare, Wei WuXian meandered through the rows of violins, taking his time to reach his empty chair where the wind section was seated. The clarinets were in the same row as the flutes, so he passed by the boy who had flipped him the bird when he first entered. He was now trembling in rage, and his hand gripped the clarinet so hard Wei WuXian genuinely thought it would snap in half.
“I am going to kick your ass ,” the boy hissed darkly through clenched teeth. “How could you be late? Our house is a station away!”
This was Jiang Cheng, Wei WuXian’s adopted brother. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to state that Wei WuXian was Jiang Cheng’s adopted brother. The Jiang family had raised him ever since his parents had died, and the two were, despite everything, inseparable.
Wei WuXian just winked at him and flounced to his seat. He casually set his flute case on his lap and began to set up at a leisurely pace, ignoring the whispers and glances around him. At the front, Lan QiRen sent one last glare in his direction and continued his opening lecture, going over the rules and expectations he had for the new members.
It took Wei WuXian less than a minute to assemble his flute, and by the time the silver instrument was on his lap and his case was stowed underneath the seat, he had reached a conclusion: Lan QiRen was, perhaps, just a bit of a stuffy ol’ fuddy duddy.
Quickly, however, Lan QiRen moved onto tuning[1]. He pointed at the boy holding an oboe to the right of Wei WuXian. “Wen Ning, give me a tuning note. Brass will tune first, followed by woodwinds, and then strings.”
The boy, Wen Ning, held up his oboe and a clear, piercing sound filled the room. Wei WuXian was in the personal opinion that an oboe could best be portrayed to one with no background in music as “the sound a duck probably makes when someone is trying to murder it”, but he had to admit, Wen Ning was actually fairly good.
When it was the woodwinds’ turn to tune, Wei WuXian obediently waited for the lower woodwinds to start and lifted the mouthpiece to his lips. Just a slight sound came out of his flute before he stopped, as if he had already realized the pitch was out of tune.
This was Wei WuXian’s first time ever being in an orchestra. He was a member of his school’s band, and he had assumed that the knowledge he knew of bands would transfer over to orchestras. But not once had he ever considered that orchestras would not tune on a B flat, the way a band would. The slight sound he played was not out of tune— it was the wrong note entirely!
Wei WuXian’s eye twitched. Are you kidding me? He cried out inwardly. This is ridiculous. Why would you not tune on B flat? The only difference between band and orchestra is that there are strings. Did the tuning pitch have to change just to accommodate for them?
Silently cursing the creation of violins, Wei WuXian hardened his heart and his face, making both stony and invulnerable to embarrassment. He took a deep breath… and played up the B flat major scale.
After all, whatever note it was, he would be able to reach it eventually if he just played through all the notes, wouldn’t he? However, the hope that it was a common pitch in the scale slowly drained away the further up he went. Wei WuXian was ready to cry real tears. If an orchestra’s tuning note really was an obscurity like G sharp, or D flat, then, he thought miserably, he might really have to retire early from his budding orchestral career. He wasn’t sure he could handle the ludicrousness of tuning on such a note. But then he reached the leading tone of the scale, and the tears quickly morphed into tears of joy.
A! It was A this whole time!
Wei WuXian quickly finished tuning, and his perfectly stonelike expression didn’t even shift as Lan QiRen’s head snapped in his direction after hearing the distinct sound of a flute play up a scale. Since it was only woodwinds tuning, the relative quiet and unison of pitch caused Wei WuXian’s messing around to become blatantly obvious.
“You!” He roared. “Out!”
Of course he meant it as a turn of phrase, but Wei WuXian shrugged, picked up his case and walked back out the door.
That was Wei WuXian’s first day at the junior orchestra: a late entrance in, and an early exit out.
(Sitting at the front of the orchestra, his back straight and rigid, a boy with an icy expression placed his hands in position on his harp. Unbeknownst to anyone, his gaze followed the careless figure of Wei WuXian out the door.
Then, shifting his pale eyes back to his music, his fingers began to mime the movements of playing.)