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“Rin!! Wait, wait right there! I've got a song for you!”
Yugo screwed up his face with concentration, his lips puckered forward like a duck bill. Rin paused in the doorway she had just been passing, a bouquet of tools balanced in her arms. She stared over the tips of wrenches and screwdrivers. Yugo sat on the floor of the common room. His legs were crossed and his hands were raised up with a wooden spoon in each hand, a collection of dented pots displayed before him in a half circle.
“This is the start of the awesome pots concert! Watch and be amazed!!”
“Y-Yugo, those aren't Kawasumi-sensei's pots, are they? You know she doesn't want us playing with them!”
Yugo didn't appear to be listening. He tapped one spoon to the top of the biggest pot to get a nice round sound. A grin split his face, and he started tapping both spoons against the top of it. He played across that one for a few beats and then one spoon started to move down the line.
It was a rickety, uncertain sort of beat, but the longer Rin watched, the more surprised she was—there was actually a real rhythm that Yugo was keeping with, and the way he had set up the pots was making it so that he had a bunch of notes in a row, like a piano. He had definitely spent a lot of time thinking about setting them out and...and it really seemed like there was a real song in there.
Rin stood frozen in the doorway, just watching Yugo's spoons dance across the tops of the pots, listening to the strange, junkyard sort of rhythm washing over her. Yugo's face was alight. The grin spreading over his face seemed to have an illumination all its own, glowing from somewhere in his chest and up through every movement he made, like he was a living lightshow.
How long had he been sitting here waiting for her to walk by? How long had he been practicing this, even?
Had he been listening those weeks ago? In the junkyard, taking a break from searching for pieces for the D-Wheel they were planning together, with him crosslegged on the ground with one quarter of a sandwich and her with the other as she perched on top of an old fridge. Had he been paying attention when she had heard distant flutes from the lanes of Tops overhead, with just a few measly bites of sandwich to stave away the hunger, when she had mumbled to herself, “I wish I could see a concert someday”?
Rin all of a sudden felt tears bubbling up in her eyes. It was a strange, awkward song...but it was a song for her. A song that had all of Yugo's joy and excitement and cheerfulness for the every day wrapped up in it.
Yugo hit the last pot with a satisfying end note, letting the spoon bounce off and then holding it frozen in the air to let the last note ring between the walls of the common room.
He just sat there for a moment, eyes closed and a satisfied smile on his face. Then his bright blue eyes opened wide, and he looked up at Rin with a huge, goofy grin that flashed his crooked teeth.
His smile dropped when he saw that big fat tears were rolling out of Rin's eyes.
“Augh!! I'm sorry, it wasn't—it wasn't that bad, was it?? R-Rin, I didn't—”
He leapt to his feet and hurdled the pots, hands flailing at his sides as he ran over to Rin. Rin choked through her throat, shaking her head wildly.
“N-no!! It wasn't bad! I'm—I'm sorry, I just—”
She couldn't wipe her tears with the tools in her arms, and she shoved them towards Yugo.
“H-Hold these for a second!! I'll be right back!”
Yugo almost dropped the armful before he managed to snap his arms around it, and then Rin was pushing them back and darting back into the hall, running headlong towards the tiny room she shared with the other orphanage girls. She skidded into the room—three of the younger girls were all balanced on one bed, playing with some hair ties by putting each other's hair up in random ponytails and buns. They looked up with surprise at her arrival, but she didn't have time to listen to their questions. She bolted for her own cot and peered underneath it—there!
Her fingers fumbled with the ties, where she had hidden her little special pouch. With the long, thin fabric released, she gripped it against her chest and bolted back towards where Yugo was.
He was still standing in the door, his mouth hanging open and the tools still in his arms—it was almost comical, and she almost laughed through the tiny tears that were still bubbling in her eyes.
She swallowed thickly, and then she held out the pouch.
“Let's—let's play together,” she said, as she pulled away the fabric, revealing a thin, cracked recorder. “Let's do the concert together, okay?”
Yugo's eyes widened.
“You...where'd you find something like that?”
“Um...in the junkyard the other day....I know it's kinda old and stuff but...I want to learn how to play it so...can we play together?”
Yugo's eyes moved up to hers, his mouth still slightly open. Then his mouth broke again into his trademark goofy grin.
“So you liked my concert!!” he said.
Rin snorted and pushed him gently with her free hand.
“Of course I liked it, you big dolt! Now let me play with you, it's more fun to play music together!”
Yugo crossed his eyes at her. She crossed her eyes back and stuck out her tongue.
When Kawasumi and the older children came back from picking up their tiny bags of food, they were greeted by the sounds of lightly banging pans and a thin, reedy whistle. Yugo and Rin, in the middle of the common room with their mismatched instruments, with children gathered around and staring with wide mouths and soft oooohs, smiled at each other through their shared music.