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Kumiko is trying to make peace with the bass section as it is now.
She misses Natsuki. She even misses Gotou and Riko, more than she thought she would - she liked them fine, of course, they were sweethearts, but they weren’t close.
And now there are these kids. Because that’s what they are, really, all of fifteen years old and a little stupid, and she does not feel maternal towards them, she does not feel some fierce need to protect them. She’s glad that Hazuki has taken on that mantle; she can’t do it herself.
And now they are doing standup comedy. She bites her tongue and refuses to say anything mean – she will not be Asuka and this feels like a mantra more than anything.
“Hey, uh, maybe we could get back to practicing?”
And that is it.
***
Yayoi Kamiishi is fifteen years old, with a chip on her shoulder and a burgeoning stand-up career and a passing interest in the tuba, though there are about a hundred other things she could say about herself.
Yayoi is on the train to school, watching the stops tick down to her favorite, which is Kaho’s.
“Kaho-chan!” she chirps, and waves her over, even though the train is pretty empty. That’s what’s funny about Uji; it’s not a tiny town, but the trains always have seats to spare. She wonders if there’s something about that she could work into her act. She’d love to be part of a manzai duo at some point, but none of her friends have that quick knack for jokes that she does. No yes and-ing for them; no, they’d much rather ask lots and lots of questions.
“How are you?” Kaho sits down next to her, tucks her hands in her lap so they disappear into her chocolate-colored skirt.
“Me? Great as always, my friend!” Yayoi wraps an arm around Kaho, squeezes her, stays like that for a second. It’s nice. She likes doing that sort of thing. “I’m marvelous. Say, speaking of, you ever seen that show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?”
“I don’t think I’ve watched any TV in a while.” Kaho blushes, doesn’t quite look Yayoi in the eyes.
“Well, break your sabbatical, because this show is excellent. Dare I even say marvelous?”
“Because the show’s called Marvelous!”
“Exactly!”
“Oh, you’re funny!”
“It’s an American show, about this woman in the 1950s, and her husband leaves her, right?”
“Why does he leave her?”
“Oh, he was cheating on her, it’s a whole thing, but that’s just the setup.” Yayoi, for context, watched the single episode that existed over the weekend in lieu of more tuba practice, but priorities are priorities! “So he leaves her, and she goes onstage at this bar underground, and there’s this woman-” Yayoi tries to sort of compress herself, crouch a little in her seat, turn her bandana into a hat, to give off the impression of the woman at the bar, “-her name’s Susie, she’s my favorite so far, she watches Midge - that’s the main character - watches her set, and she’s like, you’re good.”
“Then what?”
“Well, she starts her career as a comedian, and it’s all about her and Susie trying to make it in this tough-as-nails world! But it’s so funny, too.”
“I’ll have to watch it.”
“It’s so good.”
“What if we watched it together?”
“Wait, yeah!” Yayoi grins. “They talk so fast that sometimes I can’t keep up with the subtitles, so I’ll probably catch something else if I watch it again. Are you around tonight?”
“Yes!”
***
(Kaho, in fact, had plans already – time penciled in for homework – but this matters more, being around Yayoi, something she can never get enough of)
***
“I’ll text my mom and dad! Maybe they’ll let us have a sleepover.”
“That would be so fun.”
“Wouldn’t it? We could even bring our instruments home, so we can practice and stuff.”
“Right, our instruments.” Kaho twists her skirt in her hands. Yayoi notices.
“Are you liking it? The band?”
“I…yeah, it’s just a little harder than I thought.”
“Yeah. Hazuki-senpai’s a beast.”
“But do you like it?”
“You know I care what you think, right?” Yayoi stills Kaho’s hands, a thing she’s known how to do for a while, and just kind of stays there when she stops fidgeting, because she likes how they fit together. “As the saying goes, you can’t have a manzai show without two players!”
***
Kaho has never heard this saying.
***
“I do like it,” Kaho finally says, as if she has thought about it long and hard and come to this conclusion only after running extensive scientific trials.
“Okay, good. ‘Cause I like it too, but it wouldn’t be any fun if my best friend wasn’t having a good time.”
“Oh,” Kaho says, softly. She says most things softly, and Yayoi - whose voice cracks and creaks, who spends all her time projecting AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! - really likes to listen to it. “That’s sweet.”
“Of course.” Yayoi knocks her shoulder against Kaho’s and she enjoys the ease of it.
***
Yayoi - the youngest tuba - is in the bathroom, and her best friend(?) is gushing about her, and Kumiko hates that she wants them to get back to work.
“She’s so pretty,” Kaho mumbles, “and funny.”
“She’s not that funny,” Hazuki says, as always unafraid of pointing right to the elephant in the room. “Have you ever seen Zenjiro? He’s a lot funnier.” And, as always, she is very good at pointing directly over the shoulder of the elephant and drawing the wrong conclusion entirely. Kumiko knows what is going on between Kaho and Yayoi, she knows that it is puppy love and she is trying very hard not to be horribly jealous.
Because what is there to be jealous of? They’re happy. They’re happier than she was at that age – she should be happy for them, she shouldn’t have this resentment building up between her ribs. That doesn’t even make any sense!
“We might be going home early,” Kaho adds, like an afterthought. “We’re going to watch an American show.”
“Kousaka-san won’t like that,” Hazuki warns.
“Oh, right, that mythical Kousaka-senpai.” That’s Yayoi, entering through the sliding door, still shaking off her wet hands. “You know, I haven’t spoken a word to her?”
“She and Kumiko-chan are like this,” Midori pipes up, crossing her fingers over each other.
“Hmm…so if I want to curry favor with the president, I oughta befriend this Kousaka-senpai too, then, hm?” Yayoi considers this like a schemer, like there are steps ahead of her.
“Reina is Reina,” a nonsensical sentence but Kumiko doesn’t know how to explain Reina to these underclassmen, these strangers, in a way that would make sense to anyone. “I mean, I don’t, y’know, make a lot of decisions really.”
“But you make some.”
“It’s more, ah, logistical stuff, like setting up meetings and making sure we have all the materials for-”
“You won’t get anywhere with petty bribery!” Midori cuts in. “So don’t even try it!”
Kumiko mouths a quick thank you to her, and tries to remember how to breathe properly.
***
Kaho thinks she has come into a dynasty she doesn’t understand. The euphonium is fine, unremarkable, smaller than a tuba and sort of hard to carry. The president plays it too, and the vice president before her, and the vice president before that one.
She tucks this away for later, so she can tell Yayoi, who will probably have a clever take on it.
***
Kumiko is not a stalker; she promises she’s not. She’s really not much of anything. It would be easier if she were a stalker, it would be easier if the things she did in her life were on purpose. Instead she’s a constant victim of wrong place and wrong time, and she’s coming back from another advising session with Taki (she cannot tell him that she’s floundering, she can’t have him second-guess his choice now) and Yayoi and Kaho have their arms looped in each other’s arms and they’re walking in lock-step.
“What are you even doing, Yayoi-chan?” Kaho asks.
“Marching. We’re in marching band, aren’t we?”
“I think it’s a concert band mostly. Other than SunFes.”
“Right, that.” Yayoi thinks about this for a moment, then keeps marching. “Oh, well! Marching’s a useful skill anyway, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” Kaho smiles at her, and Yayoi pauses again. Kumiko can’t see her face from here, she can’t tell what’s flashing across it, but she can make an educated guess. Lips parted in awe. Eyes wide. Cheeks hot, maybe turning a little pink if she has the complexion for it. The sort of expression that tells you that their heart has taken a break from beating.
Kumiko hurries away before they can see her.
***
Yayoi and Kaho talk about band practice on the way home, and Yayoi thinks everything is lining up for her.
***
“Did Natsuki and Yuuko-senpai feel like this?” Kumiko moans on her way back, bag burning a hole in her shoulder, Reina next to her.
“Like what?” Reina’s trumpet swings at her side, as it always does, an extension of her. Kumiko thought, briefly, her second year, of buying a euphonium, but it wasn’t worth it and she didn’t have the money anyway, and then they lost the Kansai competition, and it didn’t feel like something worth coming back to.
“Like they were suddenly old?”
“I never thought to ask. Why?”
“Because all of these kouhais are like, they’re babies, how was I ever that young?” And she knows, with the scantest sense of self-awareness, that she is still young, that she will look back at this as childishness too.
She does not think that Reina will, because however much her best friend lays claim to maturity, to a desire to grow up faster than her coltish body will allow, she is still a dreamer in a way that Kumiko isn’t, she takes herself seriously at all times and has no room for irony, for introspection. That would compromise her mission.
“And they don’t really know how easy they have it, is the other thing.” This is how they work, they lean on each other until they topple, and Kumiko does not think she could tell another soul any of this. “Coming into- y’know, a skilled band, there are so many of them even though the bass section is still pretty tiny, they didn’t have to go from nothing into something that could compete at Nationals!”
“It sounds like you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous! It would’ve just…I don’t know.” Kumiko can’t even begin to articulate any of this; she doesn’t think that she wants to. She pictures a hill (or a mountain, take your pick) and she imagines starting down it, breaking into a run until she can’t stop and her legs are pinwheeling down outside of her control.
“Have you started looking at universities?” Leave it to Reina to change tacks, to pick up the unspoken thread of the future from being upset about the past and nervous about the present.
“A little.”
“You know we’re running out of time, right? Eventually Niiyama-sensei’s going to get on you about it if you don’t submit your forms on time.”
“I know.” Kumiko tightens her grip on her bag strap - it’s windy, and she doesn’t want anything to blow away. “You’ve probably filled all of them out and applied to all of your universities already, haven’t you, Reina?” As always, she loves the feeling of Reina’s name in her mouth, something she doesn’t think she’ll tire of.
“Maybe.” Reina hums.
“You definitely did.”
“I know what I want.” Reina’s scarf is fraying, a little, too. The natural effects of wear and tear, Kumiko figures, though it still looks out of place on her, and a single red thread waves this way and that as she walks. “I don’t see the point in waiting.”
“Right. That’s so like you.”
“Most things are.”
“You’re definitely consistent.”
“You’ve changed a lot.” Reina says it in the same tone she’s been using the whole conversation, that sonorous alto, such that the contents of the sentence take a second to land.
“What? No. I-I mean, look,” Kumiko fishes her first-year student ID out of her pocket, trying to prove a point that she herself barely understands, “I’m exactly the same!”
“You’re the president.” Reina doesn’t even bother to look at the card, the tiny photo of Kumiko with braces-fixed teeth and an untamable cloud of fluff around her head. “That’s different.”
“I mean, yeah, but that’s just like- we’re both seventeen, that’s different. It’s not anything else.”
“Admit it. You’re bolder than you were.”
“I don’t think so.” She thinks about Shuichi. She thinks about the fact that she has not yet reached across and taken Reina’s hand, no matter how much she wants to.
“I feel like I’ve known you longer than two years.”
“You too, Reina.” Technically, they’ve known each other for five - they went to middle school together, after all, even though they weren’t anything more than acquaintances there, and Kumiko sometimes wishes that, too, was different.
“There are myths. In most cultures, really.” Reina does not look at Kumiko while she speaks, but she’s not avoiding her gaze. She’s just looking straight ahead, fixed on the path in front of her. “About people who knew each other in past lives. People who are meant to find each other.”
“What’re you trying to get at, Reina?” Kumiko tacks a nervous laugh on the end, because maybe if she can turn it into a joke it will be easier, and the ground won’t hit her face as hard when she finally falls.
“Just what you said, more or less. That we’ve known each other much longer.”
“That sounds nice.” What she doesn’t say: that maybe it means they will meet again, that if they fuck this all up horribly - which they’re liable to do - there will be another chance.
Kumiko hopes this is true, because she thinks they’re at the cusp of something with no return point, no way back at all.
“I’d find you.” Reina finally looks at her and it is like being knocked asunder, it is like the moon fixing it all on you, and Kumiko stumbles for a beat.
“I believe it, Reina.”
“I would. No matter what. Even if I was reborn as something without a mind. A slug.”
“You would, huh?” What about Taki-sensei, she doesn’t say, even though she wants to, and she really has changed, then, because the old her wouldn’t have been able to help spitting that out. Would you find him, would you be slugs together, who gave you the right to say these things and then say you love him?
“It’s a nice thought.” It’s a weird thought. But then, they’re still kids – legally, for another month (Reina) and another four months (Kumiko) and emotionally, probably for a while longer. They have every excuse to be weird, and overwrought, and Kumiko doesn’t know if she wishes things were easier or if she’s glad they weren’t, because at least it means this was earned.
At least it means she has a reason to catalogue each of Reina’s touches, to treat each like its own miracle, and take none of it for granted.
***
“Oh, Midge!” Yayoi howls. Kaho takes a little longer to read subtitles, so she’s only getting about a third of the jokes, but Yayoi’s mom left popcorn out for them and they’re snuggled up under a blanket, and Kaho can see the gap in Yayoi’s teeth when she laughs, from this angle.
“You really like this, don’t you?”
“I hope it gets picked up for a whole season. Can you imagine it? Like, ten whole episodes of the jokes, these costumes, these characters!”
“That’d be nice.” It would, mostly because it means they’d get to keep doing this.
“I like the tuba and all, but this is really where my heart is. Comedy. Making people laugh.” Yayoi leans back, glances at Kaho. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Got something you love that much? Something you’d stake it all on?” On the television, a lanky woman is spitting mad about her husband and rambling, drunk, to a crowd of captivated patrons.
“I think so,” Kaho says, and it starts again.