Chapter Text
Isn’t it fascinating that humans just know how to make music?
Music is a versatile language that you can feel in your heart. It is not something that needs to be taught over time. It connects people without uttering a single word.
Babies grow up listening to their parents speak in high controlled pitches, nearly vocalizing as they communicate. When they’re put to sleep, parents sing to them. Eddy was one of many to grow up absolutely surrounded by music. His mother had Taiwanese ballads in the background as she cooked and Eddy lounged, procrastinating piano practice and dreading days to come. Teresa Teng lined his childhood with her voice, inevitably.
He loved talking with music. What he couldn’t say through words, he said with staves of notes.
That’s why when he couldn’t find the courage to talk to the mushroom-haired boy with braces next to him at math’s tutoring, he looked at the treble clef keychain on his backpack and shot:
Do you like classical music?
Surabaya, 2004
The boy turned to him, gleamed with a blinding smile, and nodded. “Yeah! How did you know?”
“Your…” Eddy gestured at his keychain. He reached out to feel the cold brass plated metal, tugging on it, dragging the zipper to the boy’s red backpack slightly downwards. “Your this, keychain.” The boy grins even wider. “I love Tchaikovsky. Who do you like?” Eddy gulped.
“Um, um- uh, yeah!” He turns around to fish around his backpack. “I have this uh, folder of my sheet music. I play the violi-”
“Me too!” The boy exclaimed, buzzing in excitement in his seat, trying to get a peek at his folder. His eye lands on the big fat Eddy on the black PVC of the folder. “Eddy,” the boy spells out, tasting how the name feels on his tongue first. “Eddy. Hey,” He offers his hand. “I’m Brett. We should play some duets!”
The Brett he knew was a very bubbly kid.
Always pranced around with his violin case, finds his way to Eddy’s doorstep everyday. He picks him up after school to play at the playground, read sheet music and coax Eddy into playing Yu-Gi-Oh with him, in which he succeeds. His thick mushroom hair loved to bounce as he nodded along to pop music, swinging his feet left and right as he sat on the floor of Eddy’s bedroom like a grandfather’s clock hands. Eddy could never understand him.
Never.
Sitting under his open window, he looked at Brett humming to his cassette player, sleeving his Yu-Gi-Oh cards and putting them in his binder so he can carry his unit of a collection to trade at the convention he and Eddy will go to. Irritated, Eddy flicks off the tiny black headphones off of Brett’s head. “Dude. Why are you listening to your pop songs, I’m in front of you.” Brett’s eyebrows curl in confusion. “I’m… I like them?”
“Yeah, but you’re in my room! I’m bored.”
“So what, you’re a classical music purist? I can’t listen to my pop music anymore?”
“Yeah.”
“Geez.” Brett snorted, shaking his head. “Possessive much.” Eddy ignored him.
It wasn’t a bout of possessivity, or a stroke of childish jealousy. He wasn’t those rowdy kids that never shared his toys, or that one smart kid who never let anybody peek into his notebooks. He’s a generous kid.
What’s wrong is what stabs his heart when he sees Brett leave his doorstep.
Longing. Some type of love he hasn’t learnt yet. It tugs on his heart so silently, pushing him softly to walk after Brett, to ask him to stay. It doesn’t shout at him or beg him, it walks alongside him, lingering and always leaving a building mark.
But fear coats that kind of love in a viscosity he can’t wash, and it glues his feet to the floor. The fear of something he can’t decipher holds him by the collar.
And he stays.
He stands just outside of Juanda International Airport, that familiar fear gluing his legs and arms in place as he sends Brett off to go to Australia. “I’ll miss you,” Eddy hugs him the tightest he’s ever let his arms hold on. “I’ll always be here waiting for you.”
“I’ll come back.” Brett pats his back.
He says he’ll be there for a student exchange.
He’ll come back.
He says he promises and won’t ever break it.
Eddy thinks he’ll come back. He has to.