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i. clara bow
Kumiko holds the book over the printer like she is an archeologist, like it is old and precious and irreplaceable, because, of course, it is.
Kitauji’s copy machine is nigh-unusable, so she’s taken a trip into the city, gone to the nearest office supplies store, and she’s now hunched over this thing with a songbook already thumb-smudged and wrinkled, but she won’t mess it up more than that. She refuses to do that.
In the part of the photocopier-surface that isn’t taken up by the notebook, by Hibike! Euphonium, Kumiko can see her face. She’s not wearing her uniform (it’s Saturday and soon enough she’ll never need to wear it again) and the face that stares back at her has a sharper jaw, a different set of the shoulders, than she remembers.
“Oumae-chan?”
“Asuka-senpai?!” Kumiko puts her arms out, flails for purchase, tries to hide for reasons she can’t completely understand. “W-w-what are you doing here?”
“Visiting my favorite kouhai, of course.” Asuka struts forward, musses with Kumiko’s hair. “No, really, Kaori is visiting family and I go where she goes, so.”
“Right…”
“I didn’t believe it when she told me, you know.” Asuka leans back against one of the other photocopiers, and Kumiko tenses up, and her mind fills with visions of her senior crashing to the ground. This is something she’s noticed a lot lately, and she wishes that growing up didn’t include your idols falling apart (or down) in front of you. “That you won gold?”
“Ah, you didn’t, did you?”
“Can you blame me? It isn’t a knock on your abilities, of course. Just that the competition was nasty and if we couldn’t win, what chance did all of you stand without your precious upperclassmen?” Something inscrutable passes over Asuka’s face. It disappears quickly, which is par for the course with her. “But you proved me wrong, didn’t you? You did fantastically, all of you.”
“You didn’t even see it.”
“You won gold, didn’t you?” Leading questions, trying to get Kumiko to admit something she won’t say for herself. It feels different than when Mayu asked, a little less needling, a little more nudging.
And in what world would Kumiko ever think Asuka Tanaka was actually showing her kindness? Maybe it's because she doesn't need Asuka's approval anymore. Not the way she did, before, anyway.
“We did.”
“That was thanks to you, President.” Asuka knocks her with her arm, harder than she should, because she’s bonier than she looks and stronger, too. Then she notices the photocopier. “What’re you doing?”
“Oh, uh, y’know the- the song that you gave me?”
“Ah, you’re reproducing it for the mass market.” Asuka nods sagely. “Very savvy, Oumae-chan. Preparing to pay off your student debts before you even get to university.”
“It’s for Kanade-chan! And, uh, Hariya-san, too.”
“I don’t know who either of those people are,” Asuka says, flatly. Kumiko’s about to open her mouth to explain when Asuka waves her away. “I’m kidding! I can glean it from context clues, you know. You’re passing it down to your underclassmen, just like I wanted. My influence will extend forever and ever! Muahahaha!” Asuka spreads her arms out and cackles, and she would probably earn the ire of other shoppers if there were any, which there aren’t, because it’s rainy and not really the place to do it. “Millions of tiny Asukas throughout time and space!”
“I just didn’t want to give her the original.”
“Mm, I get that.” Asuka drops her shoulders, peers over Kumiko’s. “I mean, I would’ve, but I’m not as sentimental as you.”
“I guess not.”
The scanner light passes over both of their faces. Kumiko turns the page, once.
“How did things end with Kousaka-san?”
“Not your business.”
“C’mon, Oumae-chan! You’re killing me here!”
“Then perish,” Kumiko says, parroting some meme Hazuki showed her once, a reflex, a mean thing to say and a joke at once, and Asuka - thankfully - takes it in stride.
Asuka licks her lips, puts her knuckles under her chin. Kumiko realizes that they have the same thinking pose, which scares her a little.
“That bad, huh?”
“No! J-just- it’s fine! We’ll be fine!” There’s just the last part of the book to be scanned, and Kumiko presses it down as hard as it will go. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will.”
“Why?”
“Because you did this, didn’t you?” Asuka collects the copied pages in their tray, shuffles them into a tight stack. “You won gold. You led them. Not everybody can do that.”
“I…guess.”
“You’re impossible, Oumae-chan.” Asuka shakes her head. “You’re still so young.”
“You’re two years older than me.”
“There’s a wide chasm between eighteen and twenty, my sweet little euph, and you will learn that soon enough.” Asuka ruffles her hair again, and this time Kumiko pushes it back into form, instinctively. “But you made me proud. Hell, you made me actually have a reason to visit Uji sometimes instead of just fucking off forever, which I think is perhaps your biggest feat, because I hate it here.”
“Then what’re you doing here, specifically?”
“Making business cards? I didn’t tell you that?” Asuka waves to the clerk at the counter, some thirty-something woman who Kumiko has never seen in her life. Kyoto is small, it’s big. It sometimes feels like it contracts and expands at will, like time. Like her. “This place prints them for cheap.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, let me know how those copies go over. If I don’t hear Hibike! Euphonium at Nationals in a few years, you’ll have failed me!” Asuka struts away, waves once, smiles big and toothy, and Kumiko musters the courage to wave back.
ii. stevie nicks
“You’re going into teaching?”
“Probably, yeah. I mean, that’s what I’m studying. The plan is to go to college for that, then come back to Kitauji for a few years, help Taki-sensei out, and then see where to go from there. Obviously if, y’know, I hate it or anything I’ll look for something else but for now - yeah. That’s the plan.”
“Hm.” Natsuki picks through the racks, rubs something between her fingers. “Try this on.” She tosses a shirt at Kumiko, who just barely manages to catch it. “I think we have, like, almost the same body type.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Nah. It’d wash me out.”
“Ah.” Kumiko holds the shirt out in front of her – white, collared, with buttons going down to the center.
“Dressing room’s back there.” Natsuki jabs her finger towards some nondescript stalls, pale wood, a single bra hanging off of one of the doors.
“Have you been here a lot?”
“Guess you could say that, yeah. I mean, the second I graduated I gave back my uniform and decided to, like, never wear a skirt again, so.” Natsuki stops rifling through the clothes, turns around, and sits on one of the long little benches that are meant, Kumiko thinks, for trying on shoes. “Not a ton of thrift stores that aren’t just granny shit.” Natsuki tugs at her own shirt, collared too, and looks up at the ceiling lights. “It’s nice.”
“You look great,” Kumiko says, which she’s said before. “Really, uh,” and the word is newer on her tongue like this, but then again all of this is new, and soon enough her whole life will be new, too, “handsome.”
“Thanks.” Natsuki doesn’t smirk, doesn’t brush it off, just smiles and turns to her. “Might want to grab that dressing room before it gets occupied, though. People - Prez would say I’m part of this group, but she’s a liar and you shouldn’t trust anything she says - will take, like, ten things in there and spend half an hour trying them on.”
“Oh, yep.” Kumiko gets up and takes her shirt - along with two others she’d found - into the dressing room, where she locks the door, where she tugs off her T-shirt and takes the white shirt out of its hanger and briefly regrets the order in which she did that because it means she’s in her bra longer than she’d like to be (it’s cold in here) and pulls the white shirt on before she realizes it’s been buttoned all the way up to the neck. She unbuttons it and pulls it on that way.
She looks at herself in the mirror and- well. It is a shirt like Natsuki’s in some ways, it’s sharp and it’s androgynous and it’s comfortable, but it’s also a little simpler, it’s not as loud, it’s a bit softer. It’s not a dramatic departure from anything she wore on weekends, but it makes her look a bit older, and she does like that.
“Ready to come out?” Natsuki calls from the other side of the door, clearly enjoying her wordplay much more than anybody else is, and Kumiko rolls her eyes and walks out anyway.
“How much was this one again?” she asks, once she’s in front of her. Natsuki takes her in.
“A thousand yen, I think.”
“Hm.” Kumiko pictures herself in front of a class. She pictures herself with a baton in her hand, like Taki. It’s a fuzzy future, it’s not one that’s nearly as clear as she’d like it to be (not for the first time she is jealous of Reina, who knows exactly what she wants, and has always known it) but it exists, and she’s happy in it.
“It suits you,” Natsuki says.
“I’ll take it.”
iii. taylor swift
“What’re you doing this summer?” Kumiko has most of her things packed, and she has Reina in her room because, apparently, she is a masochist of the highest order and she keeps coming back to her, even though their days are very literally numbered and she doesn’t know when, if at all, Reina will come back from America after she’s tasted a life away from this one. She, Kumiko, is leaving for college in two days. .
“I’ll actually have most of the summer off, which is strange in and of itself. American schools don’t start until the autumn.”
“You’re not taking a train and traveling?” Kumiko hates herself as soon as she says it – how dare she take something sacred, something admitted the first night of the rest of her life, and turn it into a joke? A question with an expected answer?
“I thought about it.” Reina twists a lock of hair around her ear, smooth and silky and hypnotic, and Kumiko’s heart catches in its old place in her throat. “But in the end, I wouldn’t want to do it without you.”
And Kumiko — well, Kumiko can’t say anything to that, not really.
“Oh,” she croaks.
“I do intend to travel, eventually. To join an orchestra, or something of that ilk. I can’t imagine myself staying in place for long.”
“You are restless, aren’t you?”
“You aren’t.”
“I guess not.” After all, she’s all but planning to come back to Kitauji, she’s building the rest of her life around staying in high school concert band forever. This is the worst and most cynical reading of something she actually is pretty excited about, so she does her best to banish the thought.
“Four years of undergraduate study, and then I’ll see where it takes me.”
Back here, I hope, Kumiko doesn’t say, because she could never keep her, it would be like holding a feather – she’d either crush it or it’d fly away, with no in-between – and because she knows, really, that Reina won’t.
“But depending on your breaks. On how much free time I have.” And this isn’t the first time she’s said it – because that is Reina, after all, always hoping to have it all, and Kumiko wishes she could be the same – but Kumiko clings to it every time. “We’ll visit each other.”
“Why are you doing this?” Kumiko means for the words to come out sharper than they do, because instead they come out small, almost whimpered.
“What?”
“I failed you, Reina. I-I wanted us to play that soli together. And I can’t be mad at you for picking Mayu-chan over me, especially since we won gold, since we-”
“You made me happier than anybody ever has.” Reina holds Kumiko’s hand. She must know what she does to her – there’s no way she can’t. “You did that.” Reina, right here. Reina, in the March heat. Kumiko could die, she could die. “We wouldn’t have won without you.”
“As the- the- the cheerleader.” Kumiko wipes away a tear before it even runs down her cheek, and if this were anybody else she’d blame it on the allergies but Reina has seen her cry and she has seen Reina cry and they both know each other’s tells, so it would be completely pointless.
“As the president.”
“I guess.” Except – she believes it. Somehow. “I…yeah. I’m going to…”
The buzzer rings.
“Who is it?!” Kumiko screams to Mamiko, who is in the living room, where she usually is.
“Answer it yourself, it’s one of your weird band friends!” Mamiko screams back, from the couch, where she could very easily get the door.
“One second,” Kumiko says, apologetic, and picks up a sheaf of papers as she goes.
She is not surprised in the slightest by who faces her when she opens the door.
“Kumiko-senpai, you weren’t really going to leave for university without telling your most favoritest underclassman goodbye, were you?”
“Kanade-chan,” Kumiko sighs.
“You said you had something for me?”
“Hisaishi-san,” Reina says, and acknowledges her with a dip of her head.
“Oh, hey, drum major.” Kanade waves to her, once, then turns her attention back onto Kumiko. “So?”
“It’s this.” Kumiko holds out the papers, stapled together, a little clumsy. “The piece that I play ‘when something’s wrong,’ as you pointed out.”
“Whoa.” Kanade takes them in like something that matters, and it shocks Kumiko that this moves her. Because Kanade never knew Asuka, after all. Because as far as she knows, this is Kumiko’s song.
Because it still means something to her, despite that.
“Take good care of it, okay? And, uh, let me know if you need more copies. I have one in there for Hariya-san and one more for if another euphonium starts this year, but, uh, there’s a pretty good office supplies place in town.”
“I will.” Kanade folds the papers so gently, and she tucks them away in her bag, and she wraps Kumiko in a huge hug.
This girl is already replacing her, somewhat. This girl is the next in a long, long line of euphonium players, and storytellers, and dramatists. But she was a part of that. She meant something.
Kumiko hugs her back, and breathes in her sweet scent, and resolves to keep playing the song.