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"You'll like it Machi," Shalnark practically begs, the headphones eagerly bouncing on his fingertips as he holds it out to her. "I know you will."
Her expression hasn't changed for the past hour, and it doesn't now when she finally turns his way. "Aren't you growing tired of this?"
"No," he answers, and she can see that there's no lie behind his words, "because I know I'll be there, grinning smugly when you finally do give in and admit that you like it."
Machi's bottom eyelid twitches, alerting Shalnark of the annoyance bunched up inside of her ever since he started his pestering, its effects only now breaking the surface. "Fine," she snaps, and accepts the headphones. The sooner she listens and gets this whole ordeal over with, the sooner she'll be able to get back to embroidery or reading. Anything would be preferable over being the target of Shalnark's tireless harassment. He's a Spider, and killing members of their own Troupe is frowned upon, not to mention he's too nimble to land a hit on if one wished to simply smack him away. Doing as he asked would be the only way out.
She hesitates when the headphones are in her hands. It's such a simple device that she's not quite sure how to put it on, and when she does, it doesn't feel comfortable. The sides cushion her ears and muffle everything around her, making her feel almost vulnerable. Her hearing has always been sharp. With this sense weakened, all sorts of improbable fantasies fill her head; of hordes of enemies storming their base and she unable to hear them approaching, or of the building crumbling and she unable to escape because she couldn't notice.
Shalnark says something and waves his phone in front of her face. I'm going to play it now is her best guess based on the movement of his lips.
Before she has time to prepare, the harsh screech of metal on metal fills her ears, merciless shredding on guitars warped beyond all reason.
Machi rips the headphones off her head and shoves her face into Shalnark's, breath hot. It clatters against the concrete and pulls out of his phone's socket from the impact as she conveys her pure fury towards him.
"Are you trying to kill me?! Make me deaf? Defenseless?"
"W-woah, I think we can-"
"This is your favorite song? At such a volume?" That level of loud couldn't have been healthy. "Was this a prank?"
Shalnark tries to make excuses with his hands meekly raised in the air, but she can see past it. It's meek, but far from apologetic, and Machi refuses to accept his half-hearted and tedious explanations.
She supposes that either she or Shalnark must have touched something in the chaos, because a chord vibrates and suddenly fills the air. Seeing her pause, Shalnark swipes the headphones from the ground and hurriedly plugs it into his phone with superhuman speed before shoving the contraption over her head.
Machi finds herself sitting down, and... listening.
The way each individual notes pulls into the next, the background percussion fitting in so smoothly that she swears it could be the pure sound of a single instrument all by itself. She's never heard something like this before. The singer's voice comes on, and Machi's eyes widen just a tad, periwinkle almost aglow in the lighting. The voice isn't hoarse as one would be when sick, but it's deep with a rough edge to it and yet doesn't clash against everything else, instead weaving together like threads in fabric.
(She remembers a word for it and isn't quite sure whether it fits, but it will have to do; husky.)
Little by little, the vocal range expands, and then there's a sudden crash of chords against each other, repeated and increasing in power and—before, the change in her expression was subtle. But this time, the widening of her eyes is quick and in visible awe. She can't see anything ahead of her, or if she does, she can't register it because she can only listen right now—it's breathtaking.
And then it repeats, the buildup comes again... then sudden simplicity hits her. The percussion leaves, then the guitar, leaving her with only silence and the song before it all comes back and a delighted heat runs through her veins.
It takes Machi far too long to pry the headphones from her ears after the notes fade away. By now the black cushioning is begging to be a part of her, leaving red marks where they've been pried from their comfortable positions. Her hands slow, wondering whether she's allowed to drop it into her lap. She does, eventually. Noticing her figure almost slumped over, she straightens, still in a bit of a daze.
Machi doesn't know what to say.
Shalnark clears his throat. "Huh," he says, far too loudly. "That sure wasn't the song I wanted to play! But since you've listened to it already, I might be inclined to ask for your opinion of it."
She knows it's a crafty strategy of his, a ploy that merely used a comparison of an ear-grating song to a more gentle one to make the latter favorable in her eyes. Still, she lets the trickery slide and answers honestly. "The one from before sucked. But this one... um."
("Um"? She never says that, never hesitates in her wording or uses filler.)
"It wasn't... too bad."
With that, she gets up and walks away, eyes avoiding whatever expression Shalnark is making. She already has a hunch of what it would look like anyways.
Machi has never really listened to music before. Meteor City had scavenging children tapping out haphazard rhythms with sticks against metal scraps, Chrollo was fond of requiems and orchestral pieces, and she knew Shalnark often hummed when he tinkered on his gadgets. But Machi wasn't impressed with instruments, or meaningless sound. The closest she'd come to spending time in an area with melodies floating in the air was when they'd first observed Bonolenov's Jupiter ability, and he explained its connection to music and how important it was to the Gyodondond tribe.
And yet, though she knows there's simply no meaning to all this, though she understands listening to such things won't help her in any way, as time passes she reasons with herself that there isn't any possible way it could harm her either. One time she works on her embroidery and is shocked when that same melody from days past rings in the room. She looks around, trying to determine its source before realizing it's coming from herself.
As soon as she does, her gaze whips back, just in time to see a head of platinum blond ducking behind a corner and retreating.
It stays like this for a while. The melody comes, and as soon as she clasps a hand over her mouth and turns, Shalnark is there, running away too quickly for her to see his expression. She refuses to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he's won, but he already has, hasn't he? And it's impossible for him to not realize it.
Weeks later, nearly half the Troupe is piled in a large van, Shalnark in the driver's seat and making sharp turns as they leave the mountainside mine. Jewels litter the inside of the trunk. "Well accomplished!" he shouts brightly, and some of the others nod to this. "Shall we play some celebratory music?"
Machi speaks up. "I didn't mind it, you know. What you played for me a while back. I didn't mind it, not really, no." When he doesn't answer, she knows that he's teasing her, relishing in a different feeling of accomplishment. "That," she says impatiently, tapping her foot. It's another habit she's picked up ever since listening to it, a strange bouncing in her knee she couldn't stop. "That... song."
"Yes ma'am!" Shalnark complies, plugging into the dashboards and playing it through the truck speakers.
Machi's tense shoulders loosen and she leans into the seat cushions as her knee starts to bounce up and down again. It's so subtle that she hopes the rattling of the moving vehicle will mask it completely. Phinks gives her a strange look and Chrollo a knowing one, but she's able to turn away from these. She looks out the window but doesn't see, only hears as those same chords she's been yearning for fills her up once more. A small tittering against plastic fills the car, softer than a whisper, but they can tell it's coming from Machi and her finger mindlessly tapping on the window's surface. She herself doesn't seem to notice anything other than what the airwaves deliver to her ears.
And Shalnark is there, a smug grin on his face at his victory.