Work Text:
Click!
Kirumi unlocked the door, the soft light from the hallway illuminating her otherwise dark bedroom. The sun had long gone down, only some of the starlight from above allowing itself to come through the windows.
She turned the light on and closed the door with her heel, followed by her usual tired sigh.
The Ultimate Maid always had a busy schedule, both at school and the building she and her 15 classmates inhabited. The latter especially took up an incredible amount of her time. It started early in the morning with making breakfast for everyone, followed by cleaning up said breakfast before heading to school whilst making sure nobody slept in. God knew several students such as Kaito had a tendency to sleep through their alarms.
Then after class more cleaning showed its head around. Despite being classmates, their schedules, due to Hope’s Peak opportunity for everyone to hone their talent, turned out to differ from one another. It resulted in the unfortunate 24/7 sighting of an overthrown kitchen accompanied by scattered mugs, glasses and plates. Some were, in fact, so well hidden that they wouldn’t turn up until several days after usage. Truly a sight Kirumi could not stand.
So what did she do? Why, take care of it of course.
Nobody had ever requested her to, not even the cleaning schedule they created at the start of the semester only to never be looked at again, but she did it regardless, even if it was just for her own peace of mind. Although ‘peace of mind’ would perhaps not be a fitting description.
With how extraordinary of a group they were, the task to keep the building spotless proved to be daunting. Even if everything had been scrubbed to a shine a singular storm from one person could erase all that in exactly 4 minutes and 36 seconds - so the current record holder Miu had proven.
In a nutshell; the days were long. And then Kirumi hadn’t even considered the homework on her desk.
Her tired emerald eyes fell on the neatly organized pile of books at the edge of her desk. What she still had to finish sat on the left, what she had completed on the right. Sadly, the right tower showed little progress compared to its sibling.
“Not again…”
Despite how much she wanted to, now was not the time to dive in the books anymore. The clock nearly struck midnight, a final call to go to bed. Even an Ultimate such as her could not escape the basic need for a good rest. Besides, at this hour, her brain would not retain much of the hard studying. It would just be a waste of time.
She slowly took off her make-up followed by the many layers of her uniform, and slid into her Victorian nightdress, the black cotton hugging her body. One never knew if someone would knock at her door with a request, so Kirumi always had to make sure to be presentable for the event.
Another sigh left her body as she slipped under the sheets. Despite her body’s repeated call to close her eyes and drift off to dreamland, her brain refused to cooperate.
Her thoughts kept wandering to those books, to that pile of work she’d have to get up early for in order to finish on time. It felt as though the papers stared into her body and procured anxiety riddled whispers.
“What if tomorrow morning there won’t be enough time to finish?”
“It’s not useful to learn so late at night… But so early in the morning isn’t that much different, is it?”
“Getting at least some of it done now so there’s less to do tomorrow would not be so bad, would it?”
“Admittedly, at that point you might as well finish the entire thing.”
Kirumi became exasperated over the thoughts, her brain running overtime despite needing to close its doors and go on break. She couldn’t fall asleep, but knowing it wouldn’t be right to study now she couldn’t get up either. Meanwhile the minutes continued ticked by, straying deeper and deeper into the night.
But somewhere between the constant doubting, a different sound came through.
Kirumi had a lucky room in the sense that it sat at the end of the top floor’s hallway without a neighbour, while simultaneously being unlucky due to the recreational room next door. It generally didn’t get used as the downstairs living area had cozier furnishing than the one upstairs, but due to its bigger size it was often occupied for Friday or Saturday movie nights. The projector would be pulled out, take-out food placed on the big table while everyone hung out in the old musty couches.
Despite her attempts at joining, Kirumi often found herself returning to her room early for studying and - most importantly - an early morning wake-up to clean up the mess left behind. She knew with all the fun none of her classmates would clean up before heading to bed. They barely did when sober, let alone when they were drunk on either fun, alcohol, or both.
There was one other thing about the room though; a piano.
Although the campus had a beautiful grand piano right in the musician wing, Kaede every now and then made use of the one in their housing, most often on rainy days when she didn’t want to bother slogging through the stormy weather.
But sometimes, she played deep in the night. Nights such as this.
The piano’s tunes reverberated through the thick wall, dancing to Kirumi’s bed, across the sheets and into her ears. A soft melody that soothed like a cobbling mountain stream.
The notes seemed so simple, yet Kirumi knew Kaede to be sitting there with her eyes closed; both hands swiftly hovering over the black and white keys as though possessed by whatever feeling she wanted to convey. It was an extraordinary experience to watch the Ultimate Pianist play in private.
But it was even more enamoring to listen to.
Her timing always seemed so perfect. Nearly every time Kirumi had trouble falling asleep, brooding, the orchestra of sweetness echoed in the distance like memoirs of a lullaby.
It must be mere coincidence, yet Kirumi could not quite shake the idea that perhaps Kaede took more notice of the maid’s nervous ticks than thought.
Whichever the case, Kirumi’s eyelids, no longer commanded by anxiety, finally grew heavy as a small soft smile tugged at her lips. Her worries washed away along with her consciousness, the last thing on her mind being the pianist beaming a loving smile at her.