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“Oh, Nozomi? What’re you doing here?”
The music room door slides shut with a gentle click, and it’s just them. Maki and Nozomi. Nozomi looks up in surprise, her finger accidentally coming down on a key. It resonates.
“Oh,” she says, “I was just looking. It was a silly thought of mine, really. I don’t even know how to play piano.”
Maki walks (the click clack is almost rhythmical – she can feel, in the recesses of her mind, an idea to end her creative rut) over to Nozomi’s side. Her sheet music is still on the piano from this morning, and in the fading afternoon light it looks even more poignant.
“‘Träumerei’,” Nozomi reads, with a hum.
“Schumann.” Maki adds in, unnecessarily. God, she’s always so unnecessary. But Nozomi smiles and nods, and looks back at her like she matters.
“'Reverie’, huh? Sounds pretty.” She says, a mere whisper. Maki didn’t know she spoke German. Sensing her confusion, Nozomi just laughs and leans further back on the stool. “Divination and tarot cards are not the only thing I am, Maki-chan.”
Maki smiles wryly. “No, you’re also lazy, a pervert, and a really bad role model for someone who’s the vice president.”
“Maki-chan!” Nozomi sounds wounded, but her smile gives it away. That gentle twinkle in her eye gives it away. Maki’s just a cardboard cutout compared to her. A shadow. Maybe that’s we she likes her so much.
She always knows.
Like now. Nozomi turns back to the sheet music. It’s a single page, despite herself. A single page.
“I’ve been trying to work it out for the past ten minutes,” Nozomi admits, not a trace of embarrassment or shame in her voice. Maki snorts. “Don’t laugh! I can sort of… get it. Maybe, the first two notes.”
At this point, Maki can’t help but notice that Nozomi seems to have moved over to the side and she’s not stupid enough to miss the hint. But she doesn’t say anything yet, just stands there, a mute fish. An awkward, mute fish. She wants to say, piano maybe isn’t your thing, it’s ok, or it’s not anything special, really, but she knows that’s just jealousy talking. Or maybe it’s bitterness. Frustration. That, after all this time, shunting her piano playing in the sidelines has made her not as good as she could be. And she’s a child again, and she’s not as good as she could be, and there are more important things, Maki.
“Play for me?”
But it’s those three words that crack her, and she obediently (eagerly) sits. Focuses herself. Sets her fingers over the keys, ghosting them tenderly. It’s not the best piano she’s performed on. It’s too tinny and too bold for the piece she’s about to play. But she does play. She lets the first note linger more than it should, but she silences the judges in the back of her mind. This is her performance. For Nozomi.
It’s about the feeling behind the notes, more than the notes themselves.
She thinks of muse, of all nine working in harmony, as her fingers twist around Schumann’s deceptive interlocking lines. She counts at least three mistakes, where she doesn’t read the accidental on time, or her fingers don’t quite stretch the octave. She can no longer play it completely from memory and finds her heart hammering as she very nearly forgets the second section.
It’s ok though, because Nozomi doesn’t say anything. And when Maki finally ritenutos to the final cadence, she waits for it to ring out before opening her eyes. Nozomi is smiling in bliss, eyes closed, and a halo of sunlight around her braided hair.
“That was beautiful,” she says at length, breathlessly, and there’s a hand on Maki’s hand but she can’t look down.
“It was nothing, that’s only a simple song.” Maki rebuts for absolutely no discernible reason. She can’t take the compliment because she knows she’s done so much better.
Nozomi thinks otherwise. “It was beautiful.” She insists. “I’ve never heard you play this kind of stuff before, even though you write all our music…”
“It’s different.”
“I like it.”
Maki sighs and stretches out her fingers, and feels them ache. “It’s been a while since I just… played this kind of music. For anyone. Idol stuff is nice, but -”
“You were hoping for some inspiration, weren’t you.” Nozomi guesses, but Maki’s sure it’s not even a real guess at all because it’s exactly spot on. She doesn’t say anything because she can’t deny it. “Sort of a melancholy piece for that. Very pretty, though. Are you going to try something like that?”
Maki does consider it. “No, no,” she says, “that’s a little too complicated. Nobody would find that interesting.”
“I would,” says Nozomi, and was she always this close? Maki coughs but she doesn’t get the hint. “I love listening to you play. But, did you end up getting the inspiration you needed?”
Did she? Maki looks down at her hands, clenches them, unclenches them again. She hadn’t realised it, but she’d felt so good playing that way. The unity between both hands, and each hand in itself, was important. And the feeling – that was most important of all. Notes sounded like notes but songs – they made you feel.
Looking at Nozomi also made her feel, all surrounded and bathed in glow like that. Like an angel. Like a little glowing heartbeat.
“I think I did.” Maki smiles, and Nozomi just beams, literally beams, with the sun catching her eyes and her lips and her face. Naturally, Maki can’t say anything as Nozomi gently picks herself up from the stool and begins to click-clack walk out of the classroom. She halts by the door. Maki seizes the chance.
“Wait,” she calls feebly, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Um… I think I might try playing more like this – f-for inspiration.”
She waits. God, would Nozomi even realise this is an invitation? But it’s Nozomi. Of course she does.
“Then, I might come and listen if you do,” she says, and then she winks, so slightly that Maki might have missed it if she weren’t looking so intently. “For inspiration.”