Chapter Text
Today would be Atsushi’s first day at Yokohama Academy of the Musical Arts. Atsushi didn’t really know what to think about this, his dad had recommended it, or well, forced him to attend.
“Might as well be useful for once, you could get a scholarship and a good education,” Atsushi’s dad had said after unlocking the closet he was put in for punishment. Atsushi loved his dad, well, most of the time, but he still trusted him with his education and life, after all he was the only person there for him when his mom left.
So of course Atsushi decided to enrol in the Academy, but while he waited for the day of classes to start, he didn’t know what to think. Atsushi wasn’t really a music kid at heart, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, right? If he could get some breathing space away from his dad, as the school offered dorms, he couldn’t really complain.
When Atsushi entered the school building, which seemed way bigger than lots of other schools in Japan, he expected a really strict school, because this academy did require uniforms; a white polo top; black pants or skirt if you’re a girl; a navy blue vest if you choose; and to finish of, a black tie, black shoes, and black school jacket/ sweater for when it’s cold.
But as Atsushi turned the corner to the principals office, which was according to the map, he was met with some kid chasing another kid. The kid that was running was a short kid with ginger brown hair, he had a black hat on and was running away from another kid with dark brown hair, who was covered with bandages over his eyes, wrists, and neck.
Before Atsushi could think anything of it, the ginger kid shouted as he zoomed past him.
“JOIN BAND, OKAY?” He shouted, making a beeline for the left hallway while securely holding his hat. Atsushi cocked his head to the side and decided to just ignore them, but he then felt someone behind him, staring.
“You must be the new student,” The brunette said, he seemed less energetic now that he wasn’t chasing the ginger, actually, he seemed creepy.
“That’s correct” Atsushi stammered, trying to appear nice to this new kid, he seemed older than Atsushi, maybe that was the reason. “Why? Are you going to show me around?”
“Nope!” The brunette said, and he started to walk away, which was really rude in Atsushi’s opinion. “The name’s Dazai, by the way, welcome to Yama” Dazai said, and he disappeared around the corner.
Atsushi sighed mentally and looked at the map again, the principal's office was approximately five minutes away from where he was standing, so he started for that destination.
♬ ─── 𝄞𝄢 ─── ♯♪
Atsushi expected to be greeted with a principal, not three random students hiding a fucking body in the closet. Atsushi just stood there dumbfounded, here he was, witnessing three students, one with white hair, another with half purple half white hair, and the last one with black hair, commit murder on the first day of school.
“Oh, Heyy!” Said the white haired, looking more closely, Atsushi could see that he had an eyepatch on, other than that, he had some design on his nails. Atsushi never really was allowed to express his style, so seeing things like that often grabbed his attention, and the boy seemed to notice Atsushi’s genuine interest. “You like my nails, right? I did them myself!”
“You ought to do Fyodor’s someday, Nikolai” The half haired said, ignoring Atsushi’s existence as he watched Fyodor finish stuffing the body in the closet.
“But Dos-kun always bites his nails!”
“I don’t always, besides, I think our work is done here, we’ll be leaving now” The black-haired kid that seemed to be Fyodor said, he glanced at Atsushi and then nodded. “You must be Nakajima, I’m covering for the principal today so I’ll find your schedule uh…”
Fyodor nodded and looked around the room while Atsushi was trying to understand this school, what did he mean ‘covering for the principal?’. Was this normal, or did these three kill the principal? Atsushi suddenly felt a hand on his wrist and he just screamed the first thing that came to mind.
“Please don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!” Atsushi exclaimed, and Nikolai burst out laughing, literally rolling on the floor like he was on a Peppa Pig episode.
“SIGGY DID YOU HEAR HIM?” Nikolai managed to get out in between laughs, and Fyodor chuckled a bit as he took off Atsushi’s Apple Watch.
Sigma rolled his eyes playfully and nodded, turning to Atsushi. “You are aware that what we just put in the closet is a dummy, right?”
“A what?”
“OH DEAR, HE’S NO HOPE, SIGGY” And Nikolai started his laughing fit again, ignoring the glares from Sigma. “HE THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO MURDER HIM!”
Sigma sighed and glanced at Fyodor, who had somehow correctly put in the code for Atsushi’s watch, and after 5 seconds, he gave it back.
“Please do check your phone email, once you choose Band, Orchestra, or Choir, your schedule will update accordingly” Fyodor said, clapping his hands together as Nikolai got up and pushed Atsushi out the office, closing the door behind him. And Atsushi could swear he heard Nikolai ask Fyodor if they should instead burn the body, and Atsushi took no chance of staying any longer.
♬ ─── 𝄞𝄢 ─── ♯♪
Scrolling on his phone, Atsushi couldn’t decide whether he wanted to join Band, Orchestra, or Choir, which wasn’t really a hard decision at first, but once you realise that you would have to keep this choice for the rest of your school life, you were put under a lot of pressure.
Atsushi then remembered the kids from earlier, Dazai and Fyodor seemed weird, and they gave off an orchestra vibe, he wanted to stay away from that, and Nikolai had some sort of Choir kid vibe to him, and he didn’t want to be with him either. The only available choice after sorting them through would be band, so he clicked the button, and was given a schedule in under ten seconds.
Atsushi then was taken to another page, an instrument choice page. Right, they don’t just assign instruments… Atsushi thought, and he scrolled through the options.
Drums, too much work; Flute, too high for his liking; Tuba, too heavy; Oboe, he didn’t know what that was; and triangle, which was kind of random. Atsushi then stopped scrolling at the last option, trumpet. He’d just play trumpet and get this over with, he was thinking too hard.
When Atsushi pressed the Trumpet option, his phone started vibrating as the screen flashed rainbow colours, was he seriously getting hacked right now? Atsushi was about to shut off his phone when he received a message.
♬ ─── 𝄞𝄢 ─── ♯♪
YAMA Band:
Notice: Welcome Nakajima Atsushi, to the Yokohama Academy of the Musical Arts Band class, @everyone meet our new member! 🎺🪈🥁🎷
♬ ─── 𝄞𝄢 ─── ♯♪
Atsushi didn’t remember having this number saved, maybe it was just because of the flashing screen he received, but he didn’t complain, he was in the Band and was going to make lots of friends!
The bell then rang and the empty hallways filled with students coming in from outside, Atsushi was merely lost in this mob and hurried to find his schedule on his phone. The first class he had was actually band, which made sense because Atsushi saw a black haired girl with a flute case walking into a classroom, so he followed, making sure not to look creepy.
When Atsushi entered the classroom, he turned to look up at the teacher’s desk, where some grey haired man with a spiky moustache was sitting, talking to another grey haired man that was for some reason wearing a Yukata. Atsushi shrugged and made his way to the desk, not before a cymbal came flying at his head, which he thankfully dodged.
When he turned his head to the direction the cymbal came from, he met eyes with a short kid with half white half brown hair, and he had more cymbals.
“Let’s play again! You were so good at dodging mister!” Exclaimed the kid, and Atsushi had three more symbols thrown at him before a blonde guy picked up the monstrous creature and brought him to a room, locking him inside.
Atsushi felt sick as he remembered the times he was locked in the closet by his father, that didn’t feel very nice, and his hands started to get sweaty. Before he could register it, he was trying to open the door, but it was locked from the outside and inside.
“What are you doing? He’s just a kid, get him out!” Atsushi exclaimed to the blonde man, who was now cleaning his instrument.
“He’s fine, plus I have the keys, stop worrying gamin” The man sighed, giving Atsushi a sharp scowl. Atsushi heard the word ‘gamin’ before, it was French, and he looked at the blonde man’s instrument and guessed that it was a French horn. I guess beating the stereotypes doesn’t exist in this school… Atsushi thought, reluctantly giving up on trying to save the kid in the storage room and going next to another blonde guy with a trumpet.
“This is the trumpet section, right?” Atsushi asked, and the blonde guy straight up rolled his eyes and ignored Atsushi’s question. “I don’t have time for you today, next time make a reservation”
Atsushi sighed at the attitude and was about to sit down when he felt someone grab his hand, and for the second time today, he flinched. When he looked down, he saw the black haired girl from earlier tugging at his sleeve.
“We don’t really have sections unless we’re performing, but you can sit with me,” The girl offered, leading Atsushi to a group with three others. “My name is Kyouka by the way, I like crêpes, bunnies, and cute things”
Atsushi kindly smiled at Kyouka, who then started introducing everyone in the group. “The pretty girl in the Kimono is Kouyou, she is like a sister to me,” Kouyou smiled at Atsushi, and he felt some sort of motherly warmth towards her.
“The one in glasses,” Kyouka continues, pointing to a black haired man with round glasses. “Is Ango, he is very trustworthy to us,” Ango nodded at Atsushi and pushed up his glasses.
“The blonde French person that locked the other kid in the closet was Verlaine, he is the brother of Chuuya, who you will meet soon, and the kid in the storage room is Kyuu, he is also apart of our group but is always locked in the closet for giving trouble” Kyouka explained, and Atsushi wondered how she didn’t run out of breath, she seemed like she would play flute, but Atsushi wouldn’t be surprised if she played a bigger instrument.
“Well, I’m Atsushi, but are you sure it’s the first day of school? Because everyone’s kind of already in groups” Atsushi was kind of overwhelmed, but was glad he met someone nice instead of some bullies or something.
“Well, most of us are friends with people from outside groups and stuff, but don’t feel bad dear, we’ll take you into our group if you would like.” Kouyou reassured, opening her flute case and smiling while Atsushi smiled back and looked at his phone. He was assigned trumpet number two, so he went to the second storage closet, which was really messy compared to the other one, and made an attempt to find trumpet number two. After about five minutes, Atsushi couldn’t find a trumpet case with number two on it, but he did find one with the number 67 on it, so he decided to take it since all the trumpets were mysteriously missing.
Just as Atsushi came out of the storage room, a bunch of different sounds bombarded his ears and made his head hurt, there were sounds of really loud drumming, flutes, and horns of some sort. And worst of all, half the instruments were really out of tune so everybody just sounded like a three year old smashing soundboard buttons.
Atsushi couldn’t cover his really sensitive ears because of the trumpet in his hand, so he just tried to survive making it back over to Kyouka’s group without throwing his instrument at the drummer kids, because they sounded like they were having a drumming battle.
As Atsushi sat down, he wondered how long this would last before the bell rang for other classes, but he then heard a really loud whistle and everything and everyone, including the Air Conditioning, shut up.
“Silence! Jouno, pass out these!” The grey haired moustache man ordered, giving a stack of white binders to a white haired kid that had his eyes closed. He was probably blind, but had no problem passing out the binders one by one.
“When I call your instrument, come up here and grab the music sheets for this term, no grabbing for your friends, and make it quick” The man continued, his name was Fukuchi-sensei according to the gold tag on his breast pocket.
As Fukuchi called the drum kids, the same short haired ginger that was running earlier and a spiky white haired kid made it to the front of the room while laughing at nonsense, they seemed like they would be popular, but Atsushi wasn’t really the person to make assumptions about people.
When Atsushi’s instrument group was called, he awkwardly walked up to the front of the room, feeling like everyone was watching his every move even if they weren’t. When he went to take up the stack of trumpet music, somebody bumped into him and the table went falling, which actually wasn’t Atsushi’s fault, the table was on its last life.
The classroom became a laughing and paper mess as the table collapsed with Atsushi, he felt like he was about to cry and as he looked up, he was met with a hand and a very pretty boy.
“Sorry dude, I’m Chuuya, sorry for bumping into you”
“You’re the kid from earlier,” Atsushi said, the person who helped him up was the Chuuya, the drummer, and now that he was up close, he looked ethereal. When Atsushi’s instrument stood up to thank the angel that just saved his school life, he was met with an awkward silence, because Chuuya was fucking short, and he was probably older than Atsushi.
Atsushi glanced at Chuuya nervously who gave the same scowl as Verlaine from earlier. “Don’t think anything of my height, I can take out a police force so don’t try me” and he went back to his friend to their section, leaving Atsushi with a warning not to mess with him.
Atsushi then awkwardly went back to his group as others were called, unfortunately for the other instruments, they had to scavenge for the music and it was really really annoying to Fukuchi, because he then shooed everyone away from the table and made an announcement.
“Get away from the table! We’ll just be playing something you can make out in your head, Twinkle little star” Fukuchi said, and everyone in the classroom groaned as they got ready to be counted off. Atsushi put his trumpet to his mouth as Fukuchi snapped in beats of four.
“One two three four, one two ready go!”
♬ ─── 𝄞𝄢 ─── ♯♪
Here Atsushi was, on his first day, already getting a crash out from his band director.
“Why didn’t we practice during the summer?” Fukuchi paced around the room and pointed to Jouno as if accusing him of something and Jouno put his hands up in annoyed innocence. “Jouno, why didn’t the class practice?”
Fukichi then gestured towards Chuuya, who braced for something. “Nakahara, I told you to pick a smaller instrument for your size, but did you listen? No!” Chuuya snapped his drumsticks in half with one movement and stormed to a door connecting the band room to a different classroom, and Atsushi could see the other grey haired Yukata man gently approaching Chuuya before the door slammed shut.
After Fukuchi stopped complaining, the class was given free time, which was silent because nobody wanted to end up in Chuuya’s or Jouno’s position.
Atsushi’s first band session was really, really, weird.