The Rehearsal

(Shin's PoV)

—

We waited by the gates for about five minutes.

Akane was leaning against my arm with her hand firmly locked around mine, with the same energy of a predator.

"If she survives today," Akane said to nobody in particular, "it means my jealousy issues are officially cured."

"Well... that's a really nice way to find out," I replied, laughing a little.

"It's the only way." She sighed. "Let's wait for that walking disaster then."

And then, after a few minutes, we heard them before we saw them.

Laughter first, bright and overlapping, the sound of four or five girls moving through a street not even caring about other people, like they were the only ones existing.

Then they came around the corner, and Tsubame was at the front, because of course she was. She was wearing an oversized university hoodie and sneakers, and her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she looked, for the first time since I'd met her, like an actual college student instead of a magazine cover.

The first thing that I had noticed was that the girls with her were not the same as the ones who were with her after our dinner with Sora. No bleached hair, no platform boots, no performance, nothing. Just normal university girls with bags and water bottles and slightly confused expressions, like they weren't entirely sure what they'd signed up for.

Tsubame spotted us from forty feet away.

"SHIIIIN-KUUUN~" 

"Oh. Here comes the virus." Akane sighed.

Tsubame then broke into a full sprint, which was deeply unnecessary given the distance, and before I could prepare any kind of defense, she had closed the gap, thrown both arms around me, and pressed her face directly into my chest.

"You came! You actually came! I was so worried you'd cancel!" She said, like someone greeting their loved ones after returning from war.

Beside me, I felt Akane's hand tighten around mine with enough pressure to reshape a small diamond.

But despite that, she stood still, not even speaking. Her face remained perfectly, terrifyingly pleasant, probably because Tsubame's friends were standing right there.

Then, Tsubame nuzzled. Actually nuzzled, rubbing her nose against my chest like a cat marking territory.

It lasted exactly five seconds, and I know because I counted them with the specific focus of a man defusing a bomb.

Then she pulled back, beaming, and turned to Akane.

"Hi, Shin's scary girlfriend!" she said, with a wave that had entirely too much energy in it.

"Hi," Akane said.

Flat. The temperature of the air around her dropped about three degrees.

Tsubame's friends giggled nervously behind her.

Then Tsubame clapped her hands together, tilted her head, and hit us with the classic wink.

"Okay! Are you two ready? Let's head to the auditorium; everything's already set up!" She bounced on the balls of her feet. "I've been there to prepare all the stuff since four. The amps are in, the cables are done, and the mics are tested. We just need our supervisor." Another wink, aimed directly at me. "That's you, by the way."

"We know," Akane and I said at the same time.

Tsubame grinned, turned on her heel, and started walking toward the school building at a pace that could only be described as a choreographed skip.

Her friends fell in behind her, and Akane and I followed, hand in hand.

Akane leaned close to my ear.

"She'll be dead before seven," she whispered. "Brutally."

"Akane." 

"I'm being generous. I originally gave her until six thirty." She said casually.

And then, we walked..

The auditorium was the old one at the far end of the campus, the one they used for assemblies and the occasional guest lecture.

Inside, the chairs had been pushed to the walls and a small stage setup occupied the far end: two amplifiers, a keyboard on a stand, a drum kit, a bass rig, and three microphone stands.

Cables ran across the floor in taped-down lines, while a mixing board sat on a folding table near the center of the room, and a boy with headphones around his neck was adjusting levels with focused concentration.

It looked surprisingly professional.

After a few minutes, Tsubame's friends took their positions on stage with the easy efficiency of people who had done this before. One behind the drums, one on bass, one at the keyboard. Tsubame moved to the center mic and started adjusting the height, and for a moment, with her back to us, she looked like a completely different person.

She was focused and competent. The bouncing energy was gone, replaced by something quieter and more precise.

Even Akane noticed, because I saw her eyes narrowing by a fraction.

"I'll sit over here," Akane announced, dropping into one of the pushed-aside chairs near the wall. She then crossed her legs, folded her arms, and settled in with the composed authority of a queen attending a performance she hadn't requested. "You go do your supervisor thing. I'll watch."

"You sure?" I asked.

"Positive. Go." She made a small shooing motion with her hand. "I'll be here. Observing. Silently. With no violent thoughts at all." She said, but the way she was gripping her own arms was telling the opposite.

"Okay..." I sighed.

And then, I went.

The soundcheck took about twenty minutes.

I moved between the amps and the mixing board, adjusting levels, checking the feedback loop, making sure the monitors were balanced.

During all this time, Tsubame followed me around the stage, asking questions, handing me cables, and, I had to admit, being genuinely helpful. She knew her equipment and where the problem frequencies lived. She even explained the set list order without being asked and had already marked the transition points on a printed sheet she pulled from her back pocket.

And through it all, she also did the Tsubame things.

She bent down to pick up a cable directly in front of me, slowly, with the deliberate geometry of someone who wanted to make sure she wanted to be seen. You could see everything.

Then, as I looked at the mixing board, she stumbled on a taped cable and fell toward me, and her hands landed on my chest. She then looked up with wide, apologetic eyes and said, "Oops! Sorry, Shin-kun, I'm so clumsy today~." I caught her by the shoulders, set her upright, and went back to the amp.

"Watch where you put your feet, Yamamoto-san," I said.

"Yeeeah... soooorryyy~!" She giggled, scratching the back of her head.

From her chair across the room, Akane watched every single one of these moments with the serene, unblinking focus of a nature documentary cameraman filming a prey animal that didn't know it was being studied. She was standing perfectly silent. And she didn't do anything.

She just watched.

For some reason, she didn't even try to push Tsubame away or call her.

I wondered why, but then I remembered her words about her. She was doing everything on purpose, for an unknown reason. That was her performance.

Once the cables were sorted and the levels balanced, I walked back to the chairs and sat down next to Akane.

"All yours," I said to Tsubame. "You can start now. I'll listen from here and be your audience."

Tsubame nodded, bounced back to center stage, and counted her band in.

"One, two, three, four..." She counted.

The first chord hit, and I sat up. A C Major, played with softness.

It wasn't what I was expecting. I had prepared myself for something bright, pop, and slightly too loud, like something that matched Tsubame's energy.

Instead, the opening was gentle. A clean keyboard line, simple, just four chords cycling in a pattern that breathed. Specifically C Major, G Major, A minor, nad a G Major.

The bass came in underneath, warm and restrained, while the drums stayed on brushes.

And then, after the opening, Tsubame sang.

Her voice was nothing like her speaking voice. That was something else. The speaking voice was performance, volume, sugar, exclamation marks made audible, while this voice was lower and cleaner.

She was singing "Shiawase."

I knew the song. Everyone knew.

That was one of those melodies that had gotten into the bloodstream of the country at some point and never left, the kind that gets played at weddings and graduations and in the background of commercials, until you forget it's a song and start thinking of it as just a sound the world makes.

But Tsubame wasn't singing the version from commercials. She was singing it slow, stripped back, with the keyboard carrying most of the weight and her voice sitting on top of it like something resting on water.

"Shiawase to wa, nandarou... (I wonder what happiness is...)

Kimi to tomo ni aruku koto... (But walking together with you...)--

Mainichi ga kotae... (...Every day is the answer...)

Kono ai o kanjiru koto..." (...Feeling this love...)

For some reason, my lips moved on their own.

I caught myself doing it about four bars in, mouthing the words under my breath without having decided to, and my fingers were moving too, tapping silently against my knee in the shapes of the chords. C, G, Am, G... One of the easiest progressions in the world, and here it was doing exactly what it always did.

Then, I glanced to my left, and noticed that Akane was looking at my hands.

She had her chin resting on her palm, and she was watching my fingers move against my knee with an expression I couldn't fully read.

Then, the song finished. The last chord rang out and faded, and the auditorium was quiet for a moment.

After that, Tsubame's friends gave a small, satisfied whoop from the stage.

But there had been a problem, and I'd heard it.

The keyboard amp was crackling on the sustain, a thin static buzz that sat underneath the clean notes and muddied the low end. It wasn't terrible, but in a full auditorium with real acoustics, it would be noticeable.

So I stood up.

"Hold on," I said, and went up to the stage.

The girls looked at me in confusion.

"Shin-kun...? What's wrong? Did I sing that badly?" She asked, with a worried expression.

I looked at her.

"No, not at all. The song was really nice, and you sang well. The problem here is with the electronics." I said. "Wait a sec, I'll fix everything right now." 

"Oh, okay... but how do you know all these things?" Tsubame asked. 

"Well, some research, a little of my own study... nothing special. I only like this stuff, that's all." I said, smiling.

Then, I spent a minute with the amp, checking the cable, the input jack, the gain. It was the cable. I swapped it for a spare from the box by the wall, ran it again, and the crackle cleaned up.

"Try it now," I said to the girl at the keyboard.

She played a chord, and this time it sounded clean.

"Good. That should do." I was about to step off the stage when Akane's voice came from across the room.

"Shin." She called me, her tone of voice unreadable.

I immediately turned to her.

She was still in her chair, chin in palm, watching me with that same quiet expression.

"Why don't you play it?" She asked.

I blinked. "What?"

"The piano part. You were playing it on your knee the whole time. So why don't you just sit down and play it for real?" Akane said, her voice softening.

Tsubame's head snapped around from the mic stand.

"Wait, you play, Shin-kun?" Her eyes went wide. "You can actually play the piano?"

"No," I said. "Not at all."

"LIAR." Akane's voice came from the chair like a gunshot. "He plays. He composes. He even composed a beautiful song for meand made me cry! So just sit down and play, Ishikawa." 

That was a demand. I know that tone of voice. She even had the courage to speak about her composition. I thought that this was also a way to mark her territory.

"Akane—" I tried to protest.

"Play." Her voice was absolute.

Tsubame was already bouncing on the balls of her feet, her hands clasped together.

"Oh my God, please, please, please, Shin-kun, that would be amazing! The piano part is the weakest section, and Miki-chan has only been playing for a year; she's doing her best, but if you could—"

The girl at the keyboard, Miki, was already standing up with the relieved expression of someone being rescued from a burning building.

"Please take it," she said. "I've been having nightmares about this section, and seeing someone else playing it might help me a lot. I still have a lot of things to learn."

I looked at the empty keyboard bench. Then at Akane, who was giving me the flat, unarguable stare. Then at Tsubame, who was vibrating. Then at Miki, who was already halfway to the chairs.

Left with no other choice, I sat down with a sigh.

The keys felt different from my piano at home.

They were lighter and more plastic, with a slightly delayed response that felt strange.

I took a deep breath, and after a few instants, I ran through the chord progression once, finding its weight and adjusting.

"From the start?" Tsubame asked from the mic.

"From the start," I said.

The drummer counted in. Brushes on the snare. Bass coming in on two.

And I played.

The arrangement changed under my hands without me planning it.

The original keyboard part had been straight chords, functional, keeping time. But my fingers knew a different version. They opened the voicings, spread them wider, let the left hand walk a bass line that breathed underneath the melody instead of sitting on top of it.

On the second verse, I even added a small counter-melody in the upper register that wove around Tsubame's vocal line, and I heard her voice shift in response, leaning into it, finding the space I'd made.

The chorus came, and I stripped everything back to just the root notes, letting the bass and drums carry the weight, and Tsubame's voice opened up into the empty space, filling it.

My hands were moving automatically.

"Shiawase to wa, nandarou..."

I felt every single note in my chest. Everything felt beautiful.

At the bridge, I let the piano climb. A rising line, a change of key, simple, each note a half step up, building toward the final chorus with a patience I hadn't planned.

The bass player somehow caught it and followed, while the drummer switched from brushes to sticks, just barely, just enough.

And Tsubame, at the mic, closed her eyes and sang the last chorus like she meant every word of it, and maybe she did.

The final chord resolved. D major. I held it, let it ring, and then lifted my hands.

Silence.

Then Tsubame turned around from the microphone, and her eyes were wet.

"That," she said, her voice smaller than I'd ever heard it. "That was... oh my God."

The drummer tapped her sticks together twice. The bass player was grinning. Miki, from the chairs, started clapping.

I stood up from the bench.

"That arrangement should work," I said, because I didn't know what else to say. "The crackle's gone, the levels are balanced. You might want to adjust the monitor mix on the left side; it was a little hot during the bridge, but other than that I think you're good."

Tsubame wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, laughed at herself, and then crossed the stage in three quick steps, throwing her arms around me.

This time, Akane snapped.

"GET YOUR DISGUSTING GYARU PHEROMONES OFF HIM." Akane's voice sliced across the auditorium from her chair with the precision of a surgical instrument.

Tsubame jumped back immediately, both hands up in surrender.

"Akane-chan, you're so harsh!" she laughed, wiping her eyes again. "It was a professional hug! A gratitude hug! Purely platonic, I swear!"

"I saw the nuzzle earlier, Yamamoto. You're on thin ice, and the ice is already cracking. Step back before I make something dangerous." She said.

Luckily, I hadn't hugged her back. Otherwise, Akane would've yelled at me too.

"Oooookaaaay~." Tsubame replied.

Then, Tsubame retreated to a safe distance, still laughing, and I stepped off the stage and walked back to the chairs and sat down next to Akane.

She was smiling, looking at the stage, at the keyboard I'd just been sitting at.

"You enjoyed that," she said quietly. "It looked like you were in another dimension, you know?"

"Heh... maybe..." I scratched the back of my head.

"No. I saw it. Trust your beloved girlfriend." Akane then looked at me, softly.

"...If you say so..." I felt embarrassed for some reason.

She then reached over and took my hand, and her thumb found the knuckles.

She held it in her lap and looked at the stage where Tsubame was now excitedly debriefing with her band, gesturing at the keyboard and talking at the speed of someone who had just had a religious experience.

"You should do that more, Shin," Akane said, cheerfully. "Play for people. Show who you are. Not just for me in a dark room."

"I like playing for you in a dark room, by the way," I said.

"I know. And I love it. But you should also do this." She squeezed my hand. "You had a face up there that I've never seen in public. Like you forgot anyone was watching. Like you were just... in it." She paused. "It was really beautiful, Shin."

I kept looking at her.

Her eyes were warm, right here in a room full of people.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "I'm being nice. It happens occasionally. So, don't get used to it."

"I would never," I said.

"Good." She stood up, pulling me with her. "Now let's go tell the virus her concert is going to be fine so we can go home and watch a movie where nobody screams."

So, we walked back toward the stage together, and Tsubame saw us coming and lit up.

Akane saw right through me. Playing music, sharing a little piece of myself with the world... was a little dream of mine that I've never had the courage to pursue... until now...

-

Author's note: OFFICIAL DISCORD SERVER! .gg/Js3vKU6a  You'll find everything here, along the gallery, art, discussion. I'll wait you there!