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It’s not often that Aoi walks from the other side of a performance feeling so rotten.
She played well, she knows that much- she practiced too hard for the result to be anything but perfect. Too many hours spent rehearsing music of her own creation, until the notes may well have been written on the inside of her eyelids, and programmed into her fingertips.
But she has been selfish- she realises it as soon as she lowers her clarinet, as soon as the applause begins, as soon as she spots Amane trying to soothe Nene’s nerves on the sidelines, while pretending his own hands aren’t shaking just as hard. As soon as she spots Akane, looking more than a little lost as he finishes playing a piece of music that was never meant for him in the first place.
Aoi is not the good, lovely girl people refer to her as. She is bitter and she is jealous, enough so that she would use others to get Nene to look her way. A childish cry of look at me! Look at what you’re missing!- ignorant of the way that Nene and Amane fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Meant to be.
Aoi is not good and Aoi is not kind- she has put aside Nene’s happiness and Akane’s hopes, all for her own selfish dreams.
She feels like something inside of her is steadily decaying, as she carefully places her clarinet back in its case, more delicate with it than she has ever been with the feelings of others. There’s something rotting between her ribs, because no matter how much Aoi may love Nene, no matter how hard she may will that heart of hers to beat in the same way- their rough edges shall never fit.
The sheet music she wrote sits in her hands still- her heart spilled out for Nene in the form of crotchets and quavers, then butchered last-minute and passed on to Akane like a hand-me-down. If she didn’t feel quite so bitter, if there weren’t tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, the sight would have made her laugh.
“You performed well.” Standing in the doorway is Sakura of all people, violin still held lightly between their elegant fingers. They make no comment on the tears that Aoi wipes quickly from her eyes, their expression ever-passive. They turn to lay their violin to rest in its velvet-lined case, and Aoi cannot help but watch the way their hands move, ever transfixed by the violinist’s elegant motions ever since watching them perform for the first time. A violin solo, dimmed lights and a long white dress, visage alike to a spectre- playing a haunting tune that held Aoi more than a little starstruck.
“Thank you.” Aoi recollects herself, remembering suddenly that it would only be polite to respond to Sakura’s praise.
“Take a walk with me?” Sakura asks, seemingly full of surprises in the moonlight streaming in through the practice room windows. “The old school building at night is good for clearing your head.”
And who is Aoi to deny them, wanting nothing more than to escape the music hall, where Akane sits, where Amane and Nene sit, where she ruined her own music by using it for such selfish intentions.
The corridors are dark and a little eerie at night, moonlight flooding in through the windows and catching on the sleeves of Sakura’s blouse, turning them near-translucent and giving them the air of a ghostly apparition, wandering the old school corridors.
“You didn’t intend to perform that piece with Akane.” Sakura speaks once more, quiet voice ringing out all too clearly in the empty corridor. Aoi flinches at the accuracy of their words. Because although they’re true, Aoi thought she had been convincing- that if she hadn’t fooled herself into thinking those notes were written for Akane’s oboe and not Nene’s flute, then she must have at least fooled her unaware audience.
“Was it really that obvious?” She asks, a sigh dragging at the edges of her words.
“To me it was,” Sakura speaks. “But that’s because, like you, I’m a musician. And what good would we be if we couldn’t read the piece of our souls that every one of us puts into our music?” They stop walking, sliced through by a beam of moonlight from the double-glazed window, a spectre who can read every one of Aoi’s thoughts. “Despite playing such a sweet tune, your sound was overflowing with bitterness.”
Sakura is too observant, Aoi thinks. Reading her like they read the scores of their sheet music, before picking up their bow and singing out notes heavy with melancholy. Silently picking up on everything, nothing remaining unnoticed.
“Do you think I’m an awful person?” Aoi asks, suddenly, seeking at least one piece of confirmation. Because she has been foolish, and she has been emotional, and she has been possessive. As much as Akane’s advances have tormented her, he is still her oldest friend, and she has used him for her own gain. As much as she wishes Nene was hers, she can’t even bring herself to watch her best friend perform. A fickle, jealous mess, pouring out her bitterness into her music to the point that it must have been unbearable to listen to.
“I don’t know you well enough to answer that,” Sakura responds, their voice measured, even, and holding no sort of judgement. “But I don’t blame you for what you did.”
The clouds outside shift, sending more moonlight spilling into the corridor. It stains Sakura’s hair in shades of silver, and Aoi looks up in surprise.
“As musicians, that’s just how we are,” They continue, awash with moonlight. “We bleed so much of souls into our music that, afterwards, there’s not quite enough left to go around. It’s in our nature to be bad with our feelings.”
Aoi- who feels so much and so heavily that she doesn’t know what to do with herself- looks across the corridor at Sakura- whose eyes remain empty until they pick up their bow and play their very heart out for all to see. Bad with feelings, Aoi thinks, because Sakura could not be more correct.
“Still- I don’t even know if I want to go back down to the hall to watch Nene and Amane perform. What sort of friend am I?” Aoi follows Sakura as they begin walking again, footsteps quiet.
“You still have twenty minutes to clear your head before they perform- they’re the last act, after all,” They reason, voice ever calm. “Just wait a while and see.”
They walk through the doorway to the library, eerie in the darkness, with high-reaching shelves of books, and dust waltzing through the shafts of moonlight that filter in. At night, it feels a little like breathing underwater, shifting shadows from the trees outside and everything stained silver, as Sakura settles themself down at one of the tables and waves for Aoi to do the same.
And it’s there, under the moonlight, that Aoi tells them everything- of the way Nene makes her heart beat two-time, of the hours she spent pouring over a duet meant only for the two of them until she was sure it was perfect, the way she had planned to confess, once they had performed and once it was all over. The way Amane had beaten her to the chase once again.
Sakura listens, patient, quiet, to every word Aoi has to say.
A book topples to the ground, somewhere between the shelves, and Aoi jumps, surprised, cutting her words short. From across the table, Sakura smiles a small, amused smile, and it strikes Aoi in that moment just how beautiful they are. It’s a different kind of beautiful to Nene’s earnest smiles and wide, pretty eyes, but Aoi feels her breath catch in her lungs all the same.
“You know, there’s a rumour that this library is haunted.” Sakura’s voice is quiet and almost conspiratory, as if telling a well-guarded secret, and Aoi grins, because there’s nothing aside from music which she loves more than stories of ghosts and rumours and things that go bump in the night.
Although she has heard the story many times before, knows all the rumours of the school inside and out, she still asks. Because she feels that Sakura, with their soothing voice and haunting way with words, would make even the most well known of ghosts come to life in new and surprising ways.
“I’ll tell you over tea,” Sakura offers. “Tomorrow, after orchestra rehearsal.”
Despite herself, despite the bitterness that still lingers in her chest, Aoi smiles. “It’s a date~”
And when they walk back down to the music hall with elbows brushing, when they settle themselves down in the front row as Amane sits himself behind the piano and Nene arranges her music, and they sing out a song filled with so much joy at the thought of playing alongside one another, it is Aoi who applauds the loudest.