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Tsubaki hated music. She loathed it. To her, it was the devil that took Kousei away from her. Yet for reasons she could never understand, music was the thing that mattered to Kousei the most.
Music flowed through Kousei, the same way it would inhabit every cell of Kaori's body during a performance. How Kaori's body would sway at every polyrhythm, how her face would contort at certain passages, how she would mirthlessly exert her complacency over Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.
Kaori exerted dominance, her ego, over the composers. She refused to be solely confined to the rigidness of the score. There was a certain feeling one got while hearing her play, the sense that this phrasing of the piece could never exist elsewhere.
This maddening craze entranced Kousei, and Tsubaki couldn't really blame him. Nor could she blame Kaori. They were both just players after all. She simply detested the game, the never ending competition that sucked the life and soul out of its participants.
She'd seen it happen to Kousei, and she refused to let it happen again.
So why did Kousei still chase after it? What led him to play music again and again? What was so worth sacrificing everything for, neglecting the other aspects of your life in pursuit of something so insignificant as mastery over a jumble of notes?
The chance of less competition, an easier life. A lesser need for perfection, more enjoyment. Yet most of all, freedom. The freedom to soar free, unconfined to the stiffness of the composers will. All the things that he was missing.
And yet, Kaori somehow seemed to achieve both of this, with such confidence and certainty that left Tsubaki gaping in her wake. She inserted her ego into her performance. She refused to bow down to the picky composers. Her music was her own creation, in a sense. It had the rawness of an improvisation, yet the refineness of a piece that had been perfected to the point.
Maybe this was what Kousei chased after. This rawness, this originality. To convey such an emotion, to exert such feelings over a group of people. This egotistical hunger, this insatiable craving. The need to convey the passage of time, to prove to the audience that he had changed. That Kousei wasn't just a human metronome. To show the world that he wasn't his mother's puppet, yet a creation of his own hard work.
And there was that thing: Change. Something Tsubaki so heavily resisted against, so desperately denied. She longed for them to be little kids again. She longed for Kousei to remain her "kid brother." She failed to recognize how both of them were much older, and how both of them had changed so much. Or rather, she failed to accept that.
Most of all, she failed to accept how music had changed Kousei for the better, how it had transformed his previous monotone outlook on life.
Instead, she blamed music as the source of the change, thus contributing to her loathing for it. She was envious of the way Kaori had commanded Kousei's heart, how she had stolen her kid brother away from her. However, Tsubaki refused to accept that her feelings about Kousei had changed, how they could become something more. She didn't blame Kaori for taking Kousei away, but was jealous of her at the same time. Put simply, her unrealized feelings contradicted each other, creating confusion and chaos in her heart.
It was all music's fault, she decided. It was the easy answer, at least.
___________________________________
And yet, she still found herself in front of the piano, the night that her boyfriend, an older student she had adored for so long, who had dated her for a short while, ended up dumping her. Yet she didn't blame him. She blamed herself.
Tsubaki pulled back the seat in front of the piano and sat down, adjusting the distance from the piano. It was a hot and humid night, and her tears from earlier had mostly dried up, but still left a sticky residue on her face.
She plunked her index finger down on a white key in the middle of the piano, the cool ivory key giving in to her gentle touch. She tensed up slightly as she heard the clear tone ring through the silence.
She pressed the key a few more times, each time with a rougher tough, getting louder and louder. She relaxed her shoulders slightly. Then, she pressed the black key right next to it, higher than the white keys. The note sounded apprehensive, strange, yet uniform.
She jumped up slightly just as Kousei walked into the practice room. He first looked at Tsubaki, then at the piano, then at Tsubaki again. Her cheeks flushed, and she prayed it was too dark for him to notice.
The silence was so thick, Tsubaki imagined it could be sliced by a knife.
Kousei awkwardly cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, looking down. It didn't help that what would have already been an awkward situation had already gotten a thousand times more uncomfortable, especially considering her reaction yesterday, on the beach.
He walked towards her, pulling back the bench. "Move over, I need to practice."
"Don't push me, I'll fall off the seat!" Tsubaki half yelled, half mumbled, creating an interesting tone.
"I thought I heard the piano making some strange sounds. So it was you, after all."
Tsubaki blushed even harder, for reasons she couldn't quite understand.
"What do you mean, after all?" she asked. Kousei just laughed, infuriatingly.
He relaxed his shoulders, then began to gently coax out a tune out of the piano. It was the same tune that Kousei had been humming on the beach. The piece distinctly reminded Tsubaki of the moon, but she couldn't understand why.
She turned away from Kousei, and stared out the window, gazing at the moon. It was beautiful that night, but more importantly, she couldn't bear to look at Kousei. She couldn't let herself get too attached, after all. He'll be leaving soon, anyway.
Suddenly, she felt her eyes well with tears. It was strange, especially for her, someone who rarely cried, to cry twice in a day. Tsubaki fought the tears back, and tried to swallow the painful lump in her throat.
After she was certain her eyes were tear-free, she glanced at Kousei. He seemed so different now. He had a gentle smile on his face as he gave his total concentration to the piano. His eyes sparkled. He looked so calm and composed, but most of all, happy. In all the previous times Tsubaki had watched him play piano, whether he was preparing for a competition or performance of some sort, he was always tense, looking out for mistakes. Yet this was the first time she had seen him look so happy while playing the piano. Maybe music had changed him.
Tsubaki was quick to dispel that thought.
"You're not asking me anything." It was a gentle statement, whispered into the music. She didn't expect him to reply.
"If you want to talk about it, I'm listening." Strange, how their dynamic had changed so drastically. Tsubaki had always considered herself the strong one, the "older sister." It was the least she could do to be strong for Kousei. Yet now their whole relationship had reversed. Tsubaki felt like the kid sister now.
Tsubaki took a deep breath. "I just got dumped." Her voice hitched on the last consonant. "He was an older guy I've always looked up to." She tried to describe his appeal, his niceness, his perfectness, what had made him special.
"He was like premium ice cream to me!" she laughed. "No, not like that." Her voice got quiet as red spread across her face like wildfire. She looked down into her lap, slightly embarrassed. "More like a fancy, like 120 mL." The kind of ice cream that's not my style.
"He told me he liked me. An-and then..." Suddenly, everything she'd been holding back came pouring out. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she struggled to get the words out.
"I-I got ahead of myself. I got stubborn. A-and then, well, I got dumped," she stammered through her crying fit. Tsubaki clutched the hem of her skirt in desperation.
"A-and I." She stopped, and tried again, taking a deep breath. "And I ended up hurting him!" she almost yelled, chest heaving with sobs.
"I'm such an idiot!" she declared on a whim, bawling. Tears and snot streamed down her face. This was unprecedented, especially for Tsubaki. She quite literally had no idea what she was doing. After all, she had no right to feel this way. She was the one who had hurt him.
Kousei's music swelled into a crescendo. She thought back to Watari's final soccer game, Kaori's violin competition, and Kousei's preparation for his musical future. They were all moving ahead, supporting each other at the same time. I'm the only one frozen in the past, stopping them from moving on.
As a consequence of her adherence to the past, she had ended up hurting her boyfriend.
I had no idea about my own feelings. Watari, Kousei, Kaori, all supporting each other, all helping each other move on. And me, the one stopping them.
Suddenly, Tsubaki lashed out. "What the hell's your problem?" she hissed through gritted teeth, spitting venom. "All you ever do is play piano!"
Kousei flinched, startled, and let out a strangled yell as his hands froze.
"Music nerd!" she jeered. She crossed her arms over her chest in defiance. "Can't you at least try to comfort me? Useless jerk. It makes no difference to me whether you're here or not!" Tsubaki shrieked through strangled sobs. Kosei just stared at her, taking in her expression. She sniffled, slightly embarrassed at her sudden outburst.
" Okay, then. I'll stay with you," he quietly declared.
Tsubaki's face brightened momentarily, then collapsed.
Part of Tsubaki selfishly rejoiced at this statement, even though she knew it was an obvious lie. The other part, well, did what she did best: denying. Denying that she wanted him here. She wanted him to move on, but most of all, she didn't want to be an adherence to the people she loved. Ah! Don't stay here! Move on! And yet, her two wishes contradicted themselves to the fullest. She was unsure what she really wanted.
She decided that maybe, it wasn't so bad to be unsure. After all, she still had time, right? Did she really?
She hit Kousei on the arm, staunchly rejecting his affirmation, and subconsciously pushing down her feelings. Maybe next time.
"Hmph! So unfair. So jerk-like, being nice to a girl who was just dumped!"
"It's not as if I'm being nice to you. I'm treating you the same as always," he stated, half laughing, half rolling his eyes.
Since when has he ever rolled his eyes at me?
He continued playing from where he left out. Tsubaki could sense that the song was coming to an end. At last, Kousei stopped, reaching the end, concluding with a certain flair.
He suddenly turned to Tsubaki. "Hey, look at the moon!"
"The moon?" What?
"It's so pretty tonight, isn't it?"
"What does that have to do with anything?!"
"It's beautiful," he softly declared, his voice airy and whimsical.
Tsubaki stared at the boy. He's not my kid brother. At least, not anymore. The guy who was always at her side, who saw things other's ignored, who could read her like a book. The guy who had slowly but surely woven his way into her heart. Tsubaki had a strange feeling she was watching him grow up, right in front of her eyes. Music really had changed him.
Maybe, just maybe, Tsubaki didn't really hate music after all.