Work Text:
//
Fingers danced along the keys like sparkling stars. The world around her was nothing but a voidless blur, black and white, white and black, hammers hitting strings in the old, hulking wooden mess that was the piano in front of her. A finger slipped, pressing two notes at the end of a chord, but she kept going, pulling the song down to match the mistake. A pause here, emphasis there, slower and faster, spiraling and twirling into an orbit between her and the hundreds and hundreds of notes swirling in her head-
A sudden cramp forced her hand away from the keys. Sana hissed, and the room was left with nothing but her own breath. She shook her head and tried to put her hands back on the keys, but she was out of it now. It’d take too much work to lock back in.
“You okay?” A girl asked from behind her. She turned.
“Oh, uh...” Sana immediately recognized her from looks alone—to be honest, she’d been staring at her in the hallway every time she passed by, shamelessly—but she’d been so focused on the piano that trying to converse immediately made her draw blanks.
The girl fortunately took the hint that she didn’t mean to put down, and talked for her. “Your playing was gorgeous. It felt like I was spinning the whole time. What song was that?”
“It’s, uh, not really something you’d know,” Sana mumbled. “It’s from a video game, so it’s kinda obscure, and I made up a bunch of it, and...”
“I see, I see,” she giggled, her voice floating through the air. “It’s that type of thing.”
Sana felt herself burning up. Was she really that nerdy? “Yeah.”
“Do you play here often?” She approached as she walked, glancing at the keys and the rough, splintered finish of the piano. “Think I’ve heard piano playing every time I pass by the choir room.”
“That’s me!” Sana lit up. “Every girl’s got her hobbies! Been playing since I was a little boy at, I think six? And...I like space, too, so I’ve played a lot of songs about stars, which...yeah!”
The girl looked surprised for a moment. But her expression promptly faded into a warm, knowing smile. “Humu humu.”
Sana giggled. “Humu humu.” She liked that noise.
Before either of them could say much more, the bell rang for the end of the period. Sana jumped, and immediately reached for her bag. “Shoot, that’s the bell, I’ve got class!”
The other girl didn’t seem phased by the bell. Sana wasn’t sure if she had class here, or if it was nearby, or if she just didn’t care. She stepped just out of the way, giving Sana a path out.
“Thanks.” Sana huffed. She wanted to ask her name, but it felt awkward to ask so late, and she might be late, and if she was late she’d have to go to the office or whatever, which she didn’t know where it was or what even happened in there, she’d never been late, and oh, fuck it, just spit it out, Sana.
“What’s your name?” Sana stuttered hurriedly, shoving sheet music for songs she’d forgotten to play into her folder. She wasn’t sure why she was even trying to be neat, she could fix it in class. “I don’t think I ever got it?”
“Ina.”
“I’m Sana, nice meeting you, but I really gotta go fast-” Sana zipped up her bag. “-so bye, see you, maybe? Bye!”
She sprinted for the door, but stopped when she heard Ina call back to her.
“By the way,” Ina smirked, staring at Sana on the way out. “Route 209 is not that obscure, and you know it. Play it again sometime, I’ll be there.”
Sana’s face burned. “Sure, just for you!” That was awful, that was an awful flirt, I’m leaving, thank GOD I’m leaving, get me out of here-
...
“...I’m just saying, your team could use a little work.” Sana pouted, arms crossed. “You don’t have to...antagonize me, or whatever!”
“They’re my babies, I’m not gonna change them.” Ina frowned, almost as if she was offended at the mere suggestion. “You’re a monster, cold and uncaring for the creatures you’re supposed to love like family-”
“Alright, alright, I get it-!” Sana doubled over laughing. “You sound like a medieval knight or something!”
Ina held her head high. “I’ve dabbled here and there. You should join the DND club.”
The hallways were surprisingly empty for this time of day. It made for a nice place to talk, without all the talking and screaming and fighting and whatever other noises that made Sana feel overstimulated. She’d never had anyone to talk to while walking in the hallways, keeping her headphones snug over her ears 24/7, but having a friend that went the same way as her made the headphones an afterthought.
Sana realized the hallways were still empty because the substitute had let them leave early. Passing time was about to start, and she quickly felt dread setting in at the thought of sweaty teenagers and troublemakers pouring into the halls like an eldritch mass of flesh.
That’s not what it actually was. She had to make that clear to Ina the first time she made the comparison. Ina had a thing for cosmic horrors, as it turned out.
“Let’s, uh, hurry up a little,” Sana mumbled, hands in her pockets. Ina nodded with her, and for once, for once, someone agreed that the hallways were an awful place to try and talk in when everyone else was rushing to their next class.
“Wanna race?” Ina twirled in front of her, arms open. “First one there gets to pick a ‘mon to trade.”
Her skirt flowed with her as she swayed, moving as if she’d inexplicably summoned wind just to make her twirl look prettier. If she did, she really didn’t need to, because Sana found her effortlessly gorgeous anyway. Jealous is an understatement.
“Oh hell no, you’re on.” Her attempt to mask her infatuation with a grin was only somewhat successful. Luckily, Ina wouldn’t have much time to process it, as Sana broke out into a sprint that definitely would have gotten her in trouble with security if they were patrolling here.
“Hey, no fair-!”
“You started it!”
...
The next time she was at the piano, she wasn’t alone. Though, she never really considered herself alone when she was on the bench. The keys were always there for her, right in front of her, closer than the stars could be. Not that she could ever dislike the stars, just that they weren’t something she could touch so easily.
Touching a star would probably be the worst sensory experience imaginable, in hindsight.
“I’ve seen you in the halls,” Ina sat on a nearby chair, writing something with a pen that looked far fancier than the piano Sana found herself in front of. “I never took you for the piano-playing type. To be honest, you always seemed like...”
“Like a boy who never got over his space fixation even after she stopped being one?” Sana chuckled. “Look, as I said, every girl’s got her hobbies. Several. Multiple. All two.”
“I guess not everything is black and white,” Ina mused, humming airily as she spun her pen.
Sana looked at the piano and snorted. She quickly covered her mouth, but Ina didn’t seem to judge her at all. She seemed more preoccupied with the pun she’d just made than Sana sounding weird.
“...I see you’ve found the key to my heart,” Sana shot back. “Though I suppose puns were always your signature.”
“My forte, you mean?” Ina retorted without even looking at Sana, still writing something in her notebook.
Sana took a second to respond. She was lucky Ina was patient. “Mmm...you seem more like a piano with that skirt.”
“Thought you meant my voice for a second.” Ina continued writing, smug as ever. It took Sana a few seconds to realize what she meant by her voice.
“How much music do you know, actually?” Sana squinted. “I thought you were a writer, not a musician. Don’t tell me you’re multitalented.”
“I sang in a choir once.” Ina was immediately interrupted by Sana groaning loudly.
“You cannot be serious, why are you so smart and talented?!” She flailed her arms as she went on. “You can’t be an amazing person and attractive, that’s not-”
Ina blinked, though it was less out of surprise or disgust—which Sana had feared would happen in most of her plans for confessing to Ina—and more out of excitement. “Could you say that again?”
“Okay I’m gonna play now, shut up and listen-” Sana giggled, internally disintegrating into piles of cosmic space dust.
She took a few (seven, as Ina later told her) deep breaths, resting her hands on the keys. She pushed a few of the keys down, letting whispers of notes fizzle out through the strings. Ina almost opened her mouth to make a comment, but Sana could see her shut it out of the corner of her eye.
She pressed her fingers down on the first chord, then the second, and her hands were off to the races. She didn’t have sheet music. All she had was the general progression in her head. Sometimes that was all she really felt like she could remember: the general shape, form, structure, the key things were in, the atmosphere, the tone. Remembering specific details was out of the question, unless it was about Ina, anyway.
The song started to morph into something else entirely. The melody was still there, shining through the mess of whatever she was playing, but everything else seemed to be up to the flow of her brain. Cosmic wind blowing through her hair, gravity pushing and pulling—does gravity push, she didn’t think so, but then again, everything was relative, right, and maybe there was some obscure experiment or, god, she was tangenting again, she couldn’t do this now—the song following a chaotic ebb and flow, fingers running up and down the keys, the melody practically dissolving into a mess of grace notes and trills that were probably polluting the song to an excessive degree, all until her fingers slipped right off the piano.
Her fingers slipped again as she hastily tried to readjust. She fat-fingered a chord, and this time couldn’t think of anything but how embarrassing it was in front of Ina. She pressed, harder, the song tumbling and falling just as she was.
They said piano was a form of self-expression, but sometimes Sana felt like it’d express too much, express what wasn’t meant to be said, express what wasn’t meant to be there. That maybe that comment Ina made about what she thought she was did get to her. That maybe she did feel outclassed sitting next to a girl that was far, far more gorgeous and talented than she was.
She pressed. Pressed and pressed, fingers slipping from sweat. Pressed and pressed, until the strings inside were practically screaming with every strike of the hammers. The piano roared with her emotions, like a solar flare ripping through the delicate, radio-wave infested atmosphere. She pressed,
and a chip broke off from one of the keys.
“S-Sana? Wait, you’re-” Ina rushed over to her, lifting her hand slicked with sweat, and, right, that’s blood, isn’t it.
The keys were sharp when she broke them. It wasn’t the first time, anyway. One look at the piano and you could count the amount of chips that were broken off.
For some reason, this chip felt worse. Sana didn’t want to look at her, greasy hair covering her eyes and sticking in spots she hated.
If anything, at least the keys were still there for her. As much as she’d destroyed them over the last few months.
...
“How’s the cut?” Ina danced around the subject like a ballerina. She might as well have been moving like one, pacing around the piano room like a chicken with its head cut off. She was trying to hide her worry, but Sana could tell. “I don’t think it was that deep, right?”
“You can say you want me to talk about what happened, it’s fine,” Sana sighed, chuckling at the end of it. It’d been a week already, she was over it, but she couldn’t help but feel sorry. “It was just me going off without thinking about anything else, you know I do that a lot.”
Ina sighed. “Was...was it something I said?”
“No,” Sana responded a little too quickly, and promptly reeled herself back. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong, it’s...I just think too little and too much, at the same time. It’s weird.”
She stared at the piano in front of her, black and white. The chip she’d made last week was still there. Ina hovered beside her as Sana felt the plastic and wood against her finger, tracing the clean cut.
“It looks like a little mouse took a bite out of the key.” Ina tilted her head as she stared from behind.
Sana chuckled. “Mice? Keys? What’s next, some sort of door-”
“-did someone say the Door to Darkness?” Ina practically shouted in an admittedly pretty good impression of Mickey Mouse, derailing their serious conversation into fits of laughter.
Sana brushed her hair as she laughed. “Can I have one serious conversation with you?!”
“No! Never!” The piano laughed along with them, with Sana resting her arms on several of the keys and Ina accidentally leaning on the keys with her full palm.
“But...” Sana mumbled through her arms. “Seriously, I’m okay. It’s the type of thing that happens, and in the moment it feels like the worst thing in the world, but a week later it just sucks, and that’s it, you move on. Piano in general gets me riled up, too.”
“I can kinda get that, in a way,” Ina exhaled. “Are you sure you’ll tell me if something’s really wrong?”
“I will. I text you about a hundred things already.” Sana smiled. “Humu humu.”
Ina stared dryly. “That’s my thing, you can’t take it.”
“You’re too cute! It’s only fair I get to take something from you,” Sana leaned on her shoulder, prompting a giggle.
“Then...” Ina stared at her with a look that meant something Sana couldn’t figure out. “Can I have something from you?”
Sana froze up like a deer in headlights. Honestly, she wouldn’t mind if Ina ran her over at this point. Especially if she looked like she did right now, legs crossed on the bench beside her, resting on her hand as she leaned in towards her.
“I’ll, um...” Sana laughed like a nervous wreck. “I mean, if you’re asking for another song, then I’ll play, but I’ll have to be careful, and...”
Ina held up a box, and Sana immediately slouched over, knowing what was in her hands the second she saw it.
“I was gonna fix the piano keys for you, it was gonna be a surprise and everything, but I realized yesterday that I’m really bad at this, so-”
“Okay princess, you and your ‘good deeds’ or whatever,” Sana rolled her eyes dramatically, smiling ear to ear. “Let’s get fixing it.”
When she looked back down at the keys again, her bigger hands alongside Ina’s own, gentler pair, she could see her poor, mangled attempt at fixing a key. She smiled. Wow, she wasn’t lying, she really was terrible at it.
...
“They asked you to-” Ina’s quiet excitement was muted with an even quieter hiss, practically mute among the excitement of the lunchroom. “...they asked you to-”
“Ina!” Sana whispered loudly, the type of whisper that cartoon characters did just for a comedy bit. “It’s supposed to be a secret, not even my parents know this!”
Ina beamed with excitement. “So, what song?”
“I have no clue yet,” Sana sighed. “You know I can’t play a Pokémon song for grad, everyone’s gonna recognize it!”
Sana felt the dread setting in again. She wasn’t the type to really go up and play at recitals—her parents never forced her, bless their hearts—and if her first time playing for a big crowd was going to be at her school’s graduation, then she might as well blow up then and there. Like a supernova. Or anything star related. Look, I’m trying to calm myself down, brain, let me HAVE this.
“Have you...made anything original?” Ina leaned forward on the lunch table, focused. “Some of the covers you’ve played for me have been practically unrecognizable compared to the originals.”
“I need something to base the song off of.” Sana stared at the cafeteria exit behind Ina. “So unless you’ve got any originals I can steal, I don’t think I’m playing anything other than a boring classical piece.”
Ina paused for a moment. For a moment, the look in her eyes said something. Or maybe Sana was imagining things out of her fantasies, because as soon as she blinked, the look was gone.
“Classical pieces aren’t boring, don’t slander them,” Ina chuckled.
Sana wasn’t sure if she’d gotten the cue right. “My old teacher only let me play classical pieces, you get bored of them after a while.”
They continued eating, and Sana still wondered if she should ask. She got the feeling that Ina was thinking something similar, too.
Wow, this bread tastes like, uh. Like I should probably ask Ina if she actually does have an original piece.
She took another bite, watching as Ina did the same. She swallowed, and as Ina did the same again, she opened her mouth.
“So about-”
“Sana, can I-”
They both stopped.
“You were gonna talk about the thing right?”
“Yes, I was. I can start-”
“No, let me have this one.”
“You sure?”
“I kinda wanted this one, it’s like a pride thing.”
“You have pride?”
“If you let me have this.”
“Fine, go ahead.”
Sana exhaled. “Did you, uh, actually make anything original?”
Ina chuckled, digging through the backpack beside her that looked more like a sack of potatoes. “Not a song. Just some lyrics. They’re, um, a bit cheesy, maybe, but...”
She handed her a messy, crumpled piece of paper torn from her notebook. There were hundreds of layers of pen marks, crossing out words, adding new ones, inserting new paragraphs, then removing those paragraphs, on and on. But there was, if Sana squinted really, really hard, something she could read here.
Sana continued reading. “These are...”
“Bad?”
“No, they’re really, really good.” Stars sparkled in her head. “Like, really good.”
Sana looked back up. Ina’s face was bright red, a color she’d never seen on her face before. Ina would be caught dead before she would be caught actually blushing. Sana looked back at the lyrics.
Your gravity is pulling me / Until our hearts collide
“...these are about me, aren’t they.”
She quickly realized the both of them were blushing now.
“I made up a melody too...?” Ina squeaked, curling up as if she was scared.
Sana laughed with her head in her hands. “Alright, you got me. I’ll make something up when we’re back in the piano room again.”
...
“This is awful,” Sana groaned.
There was another chip in one of the keys. Sana tried to convince herself it was just an accident, that she was just trying really hard to reach a really high chord, but her brain wasn’t buying it.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ina rubbed her shoulder, sitting beside her on the bench.
“I have two days, Ina!” She made a noise halfway, quarter-way between a laugh, a sob, and a growl. “It’s not even close to good enough, and I’m being really lenient when I say good enough.”
“... if it’s the chip you’re worried about-”
“It’s not the chip!” Sana leaned back, laughing, but still stressed.
“Take a break, it’s been half an hour,” Ina advised. “I don’t think I’ve seen you drink at all.”
“Hey, I’m supposed to be the one who says that type of stuff!” She reached for her bottle anyway. “Taking everything from me, I swear.”
Ina paused. “...was...was that a serious comment?”
“No it wasn’t.”
“Oh, okay.”
Five minutes later, and she was already back to the keys, despite Ina’s advice to make the breaks longer. She started slower this time, more patient, stopping and rewinding to make sure she was happy with the flow of the melody, tweaking each chord and tuning the melody in turn. She was making it all up on the fly, and it’d been long enough since she read sheet music that she felt like writing it down would probably make things worse.
I don’t think I’d even have time to write all of this down, anyways. Definitely not making Ina do it.
Ina stopped her at the final chorus. “Could you try to do a, um...a chord thingy...”
“Ina, you’ve gotta be more specific than that,” Sana laughed, and Ina followed.
“I-I don’t know, just put some sorta spin on it or whatever, I’m not that musical!”
Ina’s giggles made her heart flutter. They always did, but here, sitting before the set of keys that told everyone how she really felt, they were special. She’d never thought she was alone with the piano beneath her fingers, but she didn’t need to tell herself that anymore.
“Do you...” Sana mumbled, trying to find the right chord to resolve the final chorus. “I mean, I know we talked about this already, but it wasn’t really direct before, and I just wanted to confirm...”
“Humu?” Ina looked over her shoulder as she was leaning on Sana’s own.
“Are you really okay being with someone like...like me, y’know?” The chord her fingers played lingered in the air. It didn’t resolve, but, somehow, she felt like it was the right chord anyway. “I’m really weird.”
“Sana, I started writing lyrics for a song about you and I when we first met. I think being ‘too weird’ is out of the question.” She flicked at Sana’s hair. She’d been trying to grow it out longer, and moments like this made her glad she’d tried, taking a few flustered glances at her out of the corner of her eye.
“W-well, yeah, but...” Sana huffed. “You know what I mean.”
Ina stopped for a moment. “You know I’ll always love you, Sana. Whatever you want to be.”
Her hands landed on a chord she didn’t even know she could reach for. It was slightly detuned from just how old the piano was, but it was the best resolution she could’ve asked for. She could still feel it lingering in her chest even after it stopped ringing.
Her eyes met Ina’s own. Shimmering lights dancing in her pupils to the tune of a waltz, hand in hand, orbit in orbit. She smiled, lifting her hands from the keys. Ina relaxed on Sana’s shoulder, eyes closed in satisfaction, and Sana reciprocated with a gentle bear hug.
“To Jupiter?” Sana mumbled.
“...to Jupiter and back, yes.”
“So if I was a Worm-”
Ina jabbed Sana in her side. “Divorce, now.”
...
“We do have a special extra something for today...” The amplified voice faded in and out of her ears. “...you may have already been wondering what the piano on stage was for...”
It felt like she’d blinked, and suddenly she was on stage. She was paying attention, hell, it was the worst, most excruciating graduation ceremony of her life, not that she’d gone to one beforehand, she was an only child, and god, is she really tangenting now of all places? She just needed to breathe, sit down, put her hands on the keyboard, and play the song she’d forcefully wired into her brain.
“...a piece she composed herself, along with...”
It was Ina who’d wired it into her brain, really. Whistling and humming the lyrics during their walks together, during lunch, muttering them under her breath, I’m not alone, now you are here, the constellations are so clear-
Sana sat down, ignoring whatever the principal was saying about her, and stretched her arms.
“Give a warm welcome to her!”
Suddenly, noise roared through the giant hall. She quickly realized it was actually applause, and stopped covering her ears to smile. She could see her family at the far end of the stadium, their cheers practically cutting through the rest of the noise. But no matter where she looked, her eyes eventually gravitated back to Ina in the crowd of graduates, lavender strands standing out amongst the rest of the crowd.
The piano was much cleaner, grander, shinier. She pressed down a few keys to test it, wincing at how much harder they were to push. At least it was in tune, and none of the keys were broken. Yet.
She exhaled as the crowd died down. There were still a few people talking, because of course there were, but she ignored them. For the next few minutes, it was her and the piano.
A chord, then another, and another. The melody crept in, shaky at first, but still there. She paused on a note and exhaled, playing it off as intentional. It started as a push and pull, but slowly found its rhythm, flowing gently through the air. The keys shimmered in the glaring spotlight over her. The piano’s surface was shiny enough to let her see her own face with a growing smile stretched across it. She reached across the piano, and her hand-
-hit the chord. She exhaled again, lingering for just a moment before speeding back up to the usual tempo. She played and played, seconds stretching into what felt like days with every chord. The world was a blur, just her and the keys, her soul strewn across the piano, heartstrings ringing out underneath starstruck hammers that told the world that this song was hers.
Her hands were getting sweaty at this rate, but she kept playing, trying desperately to keep her grip on the piano. And eventually, they started to slip. She messed up a chord, then another, and another. The bridge ended dissonantly, as she stared at her hands and the keys. There was a chip, a tiny, miniscule chip in one of the keys.
It felt like, whenever it was just her and the keys, she’d always mess something up.
In the few milliseconds of panic, she looked at Ina. She was spinning her finger in an orbit.
“Just put a spin on it or, whatever, I don’t know.”
She exhaled for what felt like the billionth time, and dragged the song down to meet her mistakes. She didn’t quite know where it was coming from, but there was a swing to the piece, trills and grace notes coming from somewhere in her hands. The melody stopped flowing, started to spin, spinning, spinning, something making the song go around and around like a dance between her,
and Ina.
She’d always felt like music could express too much, express what was there and what really wasn’t. As the song soared past the atmosphere into melodies and chords she didn’t even know, she let her heart speak what she’d meant to say. Sometimes it felt like it was just her and the monochrome keys in front of her, but that was back then. Things weren’t black and white—she giggled to herself, Ina would’ve scoffed at a repeat like that—because she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t alone now, constellations of notes ringing clear in her head. She poured her soul out, pushing and pulling, plucking the strings of her heart with starstruck hammers that told the world that this song wasn’t hers, but theirs.
Her fingers landed on a dissonant chord that was meant to be the end. She snorted, lifting her hands back up to play the correct chord this time, and she let it ring.
For a moment, she dreaded the deafening, disappointed silence.
And then the roar of applause and cheer burned itself into her ears.
She smiled, wide as the crowd could see, stood up and bowed with her dress in her hands, laughing, because the world still felt like it was a twirling blur of emotions and tears. Agh, dammit, there’s tears in my eyes, I didn’t even notice.
Ina stood up amidst the applause, along with several others, until the whole stadium followed in reverence and excitement. Sana squinted at Ina through the crowd of hundreds taller than her. She was still spinning her finger, twirling her hair in the same motion. Sana giggled. Thanks for that.
Ina mouthed “Anytime,” and smirked back.
...
Sana leaned half her weight on Ina, and she nearly crumpled.
“...so about what’s in the Amazon cart...”
Ina squeaked. “Y-you can see that?!”
“Yeah, we shared the account as soon as we started rooming, Ina.” Sana leaned forward so she could see Ina’s face. “Dummy.”
She glanced at the empty space in the corner of their dorm. Most of their dorm was decorated already, from stars, to flowers and makeshift bookshelves. But there was just one thing missing, in this corner of the room.
“If you were planning on surprising me, you’ve gotta hide it better,” Sana chuckled. “Plus, who’s gonna carry a whole keyboard?”
“Kronii could!” Ina pouted. “Do you think I don’t have other friends?”
“Hm. Valid. But it’d be easier with me, you know. I’ve beaten Kronii in an arm wrestling contest before,” Sana flexed.
“No you haven’t.” Ina ducked out of Sana’s grip and poked her in the shoulder. Much to her dismay, it was firm enough to be at least somewhat convincing of Sana’s claim.
“Yes I have! Proof, here, I have a video.” Sana paused. “On second thought, it’s a really old video, I wasn’t, y’know, yet.”
“Right, right,” Ina shrugged. “And your uncle works at Nintendo and says there’s a secret unused Arceus distribution event.”
“That one is literally real, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Graduation didn’t do a thing to separate either of them, both somehow managing to find a college that worked for both of them. Or, it was more that Ina already had a choice, and Sana didn’t care where she was going anyway. It made finding dorms a lot easier, which was a massive relief to Ina, who’d been stressing out about it before she met Sana.
The only issue was that the dorms were entirely and wholly bare. “Like a canvas,” Ina had told her. “Or a blank piece of paper, or an open set of keys. Whichever metaphor suits the moment.” Sana had never been great at home decoration, especially since her last attempt ended in a hole in the ceiling, but Ina helped make it work.
The piano came in a few weeks later to fix up the last corner.
“Hey, kinda assumed this is where you wanted it, but I can move it if you need me to.” Kronii was leaning against the wall. “This look good?”
Sana grinned wildly. The piano—KEYBOARD, as Sana screamed every time Ina got it wrong—sparkled in the starlit corner of the room, keys in perfect, pristine condition, ready to get broken a thousand times over. “I could literally kiss you.”
“Your girlfriend is right there,” Kronii deadpanned.
“And this was bought with my money!” Ina crossed her arms. “So ungrateful. Peasant.”
“I pitched in sixteen dollars!” Sana leaned down to meet Ina’s level. “Not my fault I’m broke from going here!”
“And I gave you those sixteen dollars back because I thought that was a dumb idea, so you didn’t even pitch in!”
“Sorry to interrupt your divorce counseling, but I was promised a song for helping out here.” Kronii kicked off the wall. “Really no rush, but, like...I still listen to your grad piece and all...”
“Oh, nonono-” Sana covered her face. “That one was so bad, don’t remind me-”
Kronii squawked, and Ina giggled in turn. “I-well-I was trying to COMPLIMENT you and-just play. Go ahead.”
It was already plugged in, red light glowing at the bottom of the keyboard. She turned the volume up to max, bracing herself as she sat down. She promptly breathed in the dusty air and coughed a second later.
“Don’t die!” Ina called out.
“Trying not to!”
It felt weird, being in front of a set of keys again. It’d been three, four, something-number months since she’d last sat down at one of these. The keys were plastic, cheaply finished. The speakers were probably worse for wear, and she could already see some dust accumulated on the sides, somehow. But it was still a piano. A keyboard, a set of black and white, monochrome keys with her heartstrings splayed out as the wires. Sana exhaled, placing her hands on the keys.
Plink.
“That was the wrong chord,” Sana chuckled nervously.
Plonk.
She stared with her hands up. “Okay, why the fuck is it detuned already?”
“I think we bumped it twice on the way here,” Kronii pursed her lips. Ina brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Sorry.”
“...neither of you are getting a song until you help me fix this. Where’s the manual.”
“It’s in Korean.”
“Well, I’ve got the two perfect people to read Korean, so get to it.”
//