Work Text:
To: Kagami Taiga,
Care of Alexandra Garcia
Meredith Wilson Residence Hall
60 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023
United States of America.
Re: Invitation to perform with the Seirin Chamber Orchestra
Dear Kagami-san,
It would be our great pleasure to invite you to perform with the Seirin Chamber Orchestra upon completion of your degree at the Juilliard School. We understand that you will have received multiple offers from orchestras both within the United States and internationally. With that in mind, we are willing to accommodate your schedule on the possibility that you agree to perform with us for however long a duration you see fit.
We are aware that Seirin is very new and may not have a reputation on par with that of your other offers...
*
"Another one of the newbies looking to get their claws into Taiga," Alex says, tossing the letter into the Fuck Off, No pile. She and Himuro are cross-legged on the floor of Kagami’s room, going through his mail while Kagami himself sprawls lazily across the couch. It’s plain that Alex has very high standards. There's a grand total of one letter in the Maybe but Probably No pile, and-- there isn't a Yes pile.
"At least see who it's from," Himuro says reprovingly. He's sorting through the letters Alex flings at him (the Fuck Off, No pile is his lap) and being way more thorough than she is. He picks up the newest letter’s second page.
"Let's see... It's from an Aida-san. I feel like I've heard the name somewhere before. Alex, do you know it?"
"Nah, I don't know many Japanese--" Thump. "-- whoa, hey, Taiga, what's up?"
From the floor next to the couch, Kagami flails at them wordlessly for a few seconds before he finds his words. "Did-- did you say Aida?" Himuro raises an eyebrow and checks the letter.
"Yeah," he confirms, somewhat warily, "But--"
"I'm going there."
There’s a beat of silence.
Then, "What?" Alex crawls her way over to Kagami to stick a finger in his face. She does this often nowadays because she claims Kagami is a stubborn ass and doesn't listen to any of her advice. Himuro wouldn't know, since when he speaks Kagami listens-- or pretends to, at least. "Japan, I'm okay with, but Seirin? If you have to go back you've got other offers!" She snaps her fingers in Himuro's general direction and he hurriedly passes her a stack of letters.
"Look, here, there's Seihou, I hear they've got a really solid strings section, that'd be--"
"Nope, I've made up my mind."
"Don't you want to look at the other offers?" Himuro tries; predictably enough Kagami isn't having any of it. Kagami is impossible to persuade when he's decided on something. The last time he'd argued with Alex was when a junior had begged him to play the harpsichord at a fresher's party, even though at the time Kagami had been in the middle of practicing for his final recital. He'd gone ahead and done it anyway, despite Alex practically tearing her hair out asking him to please rethink his priorities.
Kagami picks up the first page of the letter and stares at it dreamily. "Seirin, huh? Wait, this is from a month ago-- shit, I should push my flight earlier."
"You little-- What is so good about this fledgling chamber group?"
Himuro looks down at the part of the letter he's holding while they bicker and Kagami fends off Alex's talons. Even so, it reads, we hope that you will consider us when you decide your future course of action. Yours sincerely, Aida Riko.
"Since when were you a fan of Aida Riko?" he asks, but Kagami's not listening.
*
The walls of the two-storey shop house are covered in peeling blue paint, and the ground floor is taken up by a small but respectable looking burger joint. Nothing about it looks at all like a concert hall, or even a place that can fit an orchestra. And yet this is apparently it, since this is where the taxi dropped him off. Kagami looks at the scrap of paper in his hand on which he'd scrawled the address, at the words 'Maji Burger' emblazoned on the glass doors, then back at the address.
"Um." Goddamn kanji, and goddamn his own pride for not letting him ask the Internet cafe workers how to read Japanese Google Maps. "Sorry, I think I might have the wrong place..."
And he turns around to see traffic and pedestrians and the very definite lack of a taxi.
"What the--"
Had he even-- yes, he'd paid, he'd passed some notes over while eyeballing the questionably decrepit buildings around him. I didn't even hear him leave, he thinks incredulously, looking around like the driver's going to pop out of an alley somewhere. People are starting to give him weird sideways glances. He guesses he does look out of place in his neatly pressed shirt and slacks, courtesy of Alex's threats and Himuro's gentle reminders that first impressions are important. Sighing, he turns back to the shop house. Might as well get something to eat before he starts looking again.
When he's about to push open the door to Maji Burger, though, a small sign off to the right catches his eye. It's grey with dust and faded, like it used to be a cheery yellow but is now a sad off-white, and it reads 'music rooms for rent upstairs', with an arrow pointing to a suspicious staircase next to it. Underneath, someone has taped up a torn piece of paper that says in blue ballpoint:
Seirin Chamber Orchestra!! (≧∇≦)
Kagami is coming to the slow realization that there was probably a really good reason for Alex's 'Fuck Off, No' pile. But it’s Aida Kagetora, the composer he’s looked up to since he was a kid just starting to get interested in music, the composer who made him fall in love with the piano. He can handle a small practice space. So he swallows his doubts, resettles his bag on his shoulder and trudges up the dingy stairs.
The second floor is just an empty space with plywood and scattered construction tools on the ground, so he continues up to the third and top floor. This time there are actual rooms, but it's quiet; there doesn't seem to be anyone around.
"Hello?" he calls. There's a scuffling noise from the nearest room. The door opens, and a head sticks out.
"Yes?" says the head.
"Uh-- I'm looking for the Seirin orchestra? Am I in the right place?" Kagami looks at him dubiously. The person who's stuck his head out doesn't look particularly dependable... Or even like a musician, although Kagami has no right to judge anyone on their looks considering everyone tells him he should be playing basketball instead. This guy has a strange, perpetually upturned mouth that reminds Kagami of a cat, and it forms into an 'o' of surprise after Kagami mentions the Seirin orchestra.
"Oh! Are you new? Do you want to audition?" Before Kagami can contradict him he's already pounced on Kagami's arm and is leading him toward the back rooms.
"We've been looking for new members recently, you showed up at a great time! What do you play?"
"Piano," Kagami says, feeling his earlier doubts begin to resurface. No, he tells himself firmly, you didn't send them a reply so it's no surprise they're unprepared. The other man doesn't answer immediately, but he stops in front of a large door and pushes it open.
"Piano is great-- hey guys! Look who I found!" he announces happily to the room. There's a piano on the other end, and scattered chairs and people with their instruments. At the guy's announcement most of them look up. The man at the conductor's stand doesn't bother looking at them, just sighs gustily.
"Geez, Koga, I told you to get a music stand, not a per... son..." he trails off when he glances their way and catches sight of Kagami's face proper, and his eyes go wide. Kagami shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny. "Riko, you might wanna see this."
A girl he hadn't noticed looks up from checking someone's violin, sees him and promptly drops it ("Riko! My violin!" yelps the owner, narrowly catching it before it falls). "Kagami-san?" she says, disbelieving. He nods. She takes a step closer, and then all of a sudden she's right up in his space.
"I'm so sorry!" she says, taking his hand. "We didn't get a reply letter from you so we had no idea you were coming-- oh god, we're such a mess now--"
"No, it's fine, um-- this is the Seirin orchestra...?"
"Yes, that's right! We're not all here at the moment, so we're taking it slow today--"
"Wait," says the violinist whose instrument Riko had dropped, "Kagami as in Kagami Taiga? That Kagami Taiga? Here?"
Kagami is getting more and more uncomfortable with this entire situation. He tries doing an awkward penguin dance in his head, like the one Himuro once showed him on YouTube in between videos of cats. It's not helping.
"We sent him an invitation to play with us," the conductor says, then turns to Kagami with an apologetic look on his face. "Sorry, Riko's a bit of a fangirl--" Riko smacks him over the head and he winces, "but anyway, I'm Hyuuga Junpei-- it's good to have you with us. I mean, if you've decided to take up our offer," he adds when he sees the uncertain expression Kagami has. Behind him, the violinist is whispering frantically to the guy who brought Kagami in (Koga? Kagami thinks that's what Hyuuga said).
Kagami makes a vaguely positive noise that is very carefully not a 'yes', then opens his mouth to ask the question that's been bugging him for a while. "Where's Aida-san?" Short pause. Riko blinks at him.
"That's... me. Just call me Riko, though.”
It takes a moment for this to sink in. Then Kagami feels his heart drop into his shoes and all he can think of to say is, “Oh.”
Oh.
If the awkwardness of ten seconds ago was bad, it’s quadrupled in the silence that follows. Kagami’s busy struggling with the disappointment of not Aida Kagetora, and the other members of the orchestra are beginning to cast each other speaking looks. They probably know that he's not here for Riko, it's probably written all over his face but he can't quite hide it.
Hyuuga clears his throat loudly. “Great! So, now you know Riko-- Izuki, come here-- this is Izuki Shun, our concertmaster.” Izuki holds out his hand and Kagami shakes it. “That’s Koganei on second violin, who still hasn’t brought the music stand.” He says this last with a pointed look at Koganei, who jumps up and scurries out. “Mitobe and Tsuchida on cello, Furihata on trumpet...”
The rest of the introductions pass in a blur of names and faces which he only half-remembers, but they all smile at him and don’t look like they’re even thinking about what has to be on their minds. Kagami’s starting to feel a bit guilty-- he could have been less obvious about his disappointment. What I get for not listening to Tatsuya, he thinks ruefully.
When he’s been introduced to everyone present and Hyuuga turns away for a moment to talk to Riko, Kagami walks over to the other end of the room to look at their piano. At first glance, it’s unassuming. The instrument is a baby grand, only five feet long, and when he strikes a tentative A chord (just softly; he doesn’t want to interrupt any conversation) he can definitely hear the difference. Still, it’s in tune and has the comfortable looseness of a piano that’s been played often, unlike many of the concert pianos Kagami’s had the opportunity to play up until now. He consoles himself with the fact that it could have been a hell of a lot worse considering the rest of the place.
“Kagami-san?” Izuki’s voice jerks him out of his thoughts. The other musicians are setting down their instruments and stretching their limbs.
“Oh, er, just Kagami’s fine, I bet you’re all older than me.” He looks around. Koganei has just come back with the requested music stand and is griping to Mitobe about how he could have done that later, not noticing an annoyed Hyuuga right behind him. Kagami smiles a little. It reminds him of days with Alex and Himuro, especially when Hyuuga whaps Koganei and they start to wrestle with each other.
“Kagami, then,” Izuki says amiably. “Do you want to have lunch with us? We were going to get lunch before you arrived, and then start practice.”
“Which you can watch,” adds Hyuuga, who’s gotten tired of play-fighting with Koganei and has come over to rest his elbow on Izuki’s shoulder. “Maybe just get a feel for how we work and see if you like it.”
“Thanks, I think I will.” It can’t hurt. He’s already here, anyway, he might as well-- and he’s wary of offending them if he leaves right after finding out Aida-san isn’t actually Aida Kagetora. “I’ll pass on lunch, though, I want to check out your piano,” he adds, with a nod toward it.
“Oh, want to get familiar already? You’re all keyed up!” says Izuki, grinning and avoiding the exasperated swipe of Hyuuga’s hand.
“You should get used to that,” Hyuuga tells him resignedly. “Anyway if you’re sure you don’t want to come with, we’ll just leave you to it, alright? We’ll probably be back in about forty-five minutes."
"Yeah, no problem, go, don't worry about me." Right after he says it he regrets it, wondering if his desire to be alone is coming across a bit too strongly. Hyuuga and Izuki don't comment, though, just nod at him and join the rest of the orchestra to file out of the room.
When the door finally clicks shut behind the last of Seirin’s members, Kagami drops onto the piano stool and lets his shoulders slump. It’s coming to lunch and his stomach is starting to protest; part of him thinks wistfully of a good pile of burgers, but he isn’t in the right mood to have a meal with a group of near-strangers.
The thing is, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The Seirin people are nice; the members that he’s met have been pretty welcoming, especially considering how twenty minutes ago they hadn’t even known his name. He'd been particularly surprised when all of them gave him a smile or a little wave as they left. But as the distant sounds of their conversation fade into silence-- the soundproofing here is shit-- Kagami gives in to the strong urge to thump his head on the lid of the piano.
Unfortunately, the new lump on his forehead doesn’t bring with it any miraculous solutions to the problem of where the hell he goes from here. It only really reminds him of the excuse he’d given to escape lunch.
He's supposed to familiarise himself with the piano.
So, hesitantly, he spreads his hands over the first chord that comes to mind and starts to play.
The first few bars of Debussy’s Little Shepherd convey a question, and Kagami can’t help but feel a splash of envy for the ease with which the answer comes. His left hand joins in, both segueing into a series of quick running measures, like sheep returning to the fold at the shepherd’s call. By this point, Little Shepherd has been in his repertoire for years, and his hands know the shape of the music, the progression of the chords.
Maybe it’s still not too late to book a flight back to the States; Alex will never let him live it down, sure, and even Himuro will no doubt tease him about it for awhile, but...
The last chord fades away too soon. In the ensuing silence, Kagami takes a deep breath. Sitting back, he startles a little to see that a thin booklet is sitting on the piano stool next to him-- was that there before? He can't remember.
In any case, he recognises the name on the cover. After a moment’s hesitation, he sets it on the stand and flips through the arrangement, not even realising that he’s started to hum the melody line under his breath.
Kagami honestly doesn’t notice the other person standing beside his piano stool until a calm voice asks, “You’ve played William Tell before, Kagami-san?”
There’s a crash of discordant notes as Kagami’s hands come down hard against the keys, then he’s whipping around to stare at the blue-haired man beside him.
"Who are you?" he blurts, raising a hand as if he's warding off a ghost.
"Kuroko Tetsuya," says the man, and he has the gall to sound slightly surprised at the question. Like he didn't just show up out of nowhere and know Kagami's name. "I'm a clarinetist."
“You’re... a clarinetist,” Kagami repeats. He really can’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t be rude. He doesn't even remember Hyuuga introducing a clarinetist at all, and okay, the names of everyone past the second violinist are a bit of a blur, but he wouldn't just forget someone he'd met twenty minutes ago.
A thought occurs to him and he bristles a little in reflex. "Wait, were you here the whole time?"
Kuroko fixes him with a blank look that somehow manages to look mildly injured at the same time. Kagami has the presence of mind to be a little ashamed of how accusing he’d sounded, but that doesn’t change the fact that Kuroko has obviously been creeping like a creeper (he has Alex and her inexplicable Tumblr obsession to thank for this vocabulary failure). A performer Kagami may be, but there’s just something particularly off-putting about having an audience during practice.
“Yes."
Kagami boggles at him. Before he can think of something else to say, the door of the music room opens and Koganei pushes his way in. His face brightens immediately into a grin when he sees who else is in the room. “Oh, Kuroko! When did you get here, we missed you at practice earlier.”
Kuroko executes a small half-bow and says, “Good afternoon, Koganei-san. I’ve been here for a while.”
“Yeah, of course you have. Hey Kagami, Hyuuga and Riko sent me ahead with some food for you!” Koganei juggles the food in his arms, then holds out one plastic bag. “Big Maji large set! We didn’t know what you wanted, so we guessed.”
Oh, well. That's nice of him. And Kagami is kind of hungry. “Uh, thank you,” he says, brilliantly managing to sound both dubious and ungrateful. He gives himself a mental kick, but since Koganei just grins at him and unwraps his burger, Kagami does the same and takes a bite of his own. Abruptly, he realises with some chagrin, half the burger is gone. They clearly don’t make them the same here as they do in America.
Koganei has started to chatter about their practices so far, how he’s still getting the hang of the piece’s abrupt change to a furious allegro vivace, but Kagami is only listening with one ear. He’s too busy looking curiously on as Kuroko crosses the room to pick up his clarinet, fingers running deftly along the joints, and he thinks, huh.
“Hey, Kuroko, did you get a stand?" Koganei says brightly. Kagami belatedly notices that the other guy's stopped talking about practice and has probably been watching him stare at Kuroko. Crap. "Wait, let me go get another one from the store room outside...”
“Please don't trouble yourself, Koganei-sa-- oh.”
But Koganei has already dashed out, and Kuroko is left to blink at the door. He glances at Kagami, who is still staring at him, brows furrowed (well, he's already been discovered, might as well look until he's satisfied), and turns to fiddle again with his instrument. It’s pretty clear why the atmosphere has turned awkward, and Kagami isn’t delusional enough to think it doesn’t have everything to do with him.
“I, um, have played it before actually.”
Kuroko looks up, raises an almost imperceptible eyebrow. Kagami can feel his face heat and he rushes to continue, “William Tell. I played it with my college orchestra a couple years ago.”
“Ah. I see,” Kuroko says, and maybe he’s imagining things but Kagami thinks he can see the barest hint of a smile again. “In that case, you should not have any problems keeping up with us, Kagami-san. If you decide to stay.”
If he decides to stay. “Yeah.”
Then there’s the distant sound of loud voices and the front door opening, and Kagami turns to focus his attention back on the piano.
*
Burgers in Japan, Kagami thinks, are really fucking small.
It turns out the one that Koganei had brought him was the largest kind they had, and even then he’d demolished it in three bites. He’s already added on to his order twice, and has had to consume a small mountain of burgers just to stop the audible growls from his stomach.
The Maji Burger underneath the music rooms seems to be Japan’s version of McDonalds, and despite the fact that the food is tiny, it’s really not all that bad. It’s a good spot to sit and watch the world go by, as well as a pretty alright place to think about what he's going to do next.
Rehearsal... hadn’t actually gone badly.
Well, okay, if Kagami’s being honest with himself it had gone a lot better than he had thought it would. He’d thought that maybe he would just listen, observe a little of their dynamic, and leave none the worse for wear. Simple as that. But when they’d all settled in from lunch, he’d been so quickly drawn in by their easy camaraderie.
Hyuuga, Izuki and Koganei talked at each other over their instruments with the relaxed air of people who've known each other for a very long time (even if it was, on Hyuuga’s part, mildly irritable) while Fukuda teased Furihata about something that made him flush red. It hadn't taken much of Tsuchida's one-sided conversation with Mitobe for Kagami to confirm that the tall, reticent cellist didn't speak much at all. Watching all of this had awakened a strange sort of warmth in Kagami, like he'd known them from before he came to Seirin. Eventually, Riko had corralled everyone into their places, and Hyuuga had slouched away from Koganei and Izuki up to the conductor’s podium.
Kagami didn’t have to join in. In fact, no one'd been expecting him to, except that when the swell of the Galop rose around him and he watched the rest of them sink into the music, Kagami couldn’t have done anything but. He’d joined them at the allegro vivace, playing half from the score and half from memory, and out of the corner of his eye he had seen Hyuuga’s sudden smile and Riko barely restraining herself from clapping.
It had been fun. Something tells him it's going to keep being fun, and it's a feeling that he hasn't had since the last time he and Himuro were facing off at a hastily-thought-of talent competition back in Juilliard (he'd won, Himuro'd been runner up, cue social awkardness until Alex smacked them upside the heads and told them to stop being snot-nosed brats).
Yeah, he could be in Seihou right now, with its fantastic strings section, or in any of the orchestras that had sent him offers in the States. But when Kagami thinks of playing with people now, he also thinks of Koganei’s slightly flat violin that Hyuuga had yelled about, of Izuki’s terrible puns and the thoughtful comments Riko had given afterwards. The Seirin members have managed to get under his skin already, and as hard as he tries Kagami doesn’t think he’ll be able to dislodge them.
Not that he's that unhappy about it, mind you-- and what do you know, it seems he's made up his mind after all. Maybe, Kagami thinks, gulping down his last burger, maybe this won’t be so bad.