Work Text:
It is the first day of spring, the cherry blossoms have started to bloom, and Kousei Arima is playing the piano. Later, his best friend, the girl who he will always see as his big sister, will ask him who he was playing for. His answer will be: “I’m always playing for her.”
Tsubaki won’t ask who he is talking about. She doesn’t need to.
Kousei pictures her how he first saw her, bare-footed and playing the melodica, whilst children laugh and dance around her and pigeons fly in arcs across the sky. He hears her singing: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
How I wonder what you are.
She stands before him, her arms raised, as music flows silently around the pair of them and her legs tremble and shake, her face pale with the effort to keep herself upright. Snow falls in flurries, covering her bare feet and Kousei knows he will never see anything as beautiful ever again.
She pulls the music out of him, every agonising note that he can’t hear and she smiles and says “But you have the music inside of you.”
“You have no idea how lucky you are, not to be able to hear.”
She smiles mischievously at him as she raises her bow, and when he fails, she sighs counts herself back in and keeps playing, giving him no choice but to try again, to keep trying so that she doesn’t stand alone on that stage, so tiny and frail in that large space.
And around her, the cherry blossoms blow, until all everything is pink and white, blinding him, filling his lungs with their scent.
“Don’t forget me,” she whispers. “Promise me.”
He cannot forget her. She is in everything he loves, the canelés he buys from the bakery as a treat, the friends he doesn’t see nearly often enough, the music that has hurt him and healed him and that he can’t stop playing. They only played together once, but in his mind, every piece Kousei plays is a duet, her presence filling the room, an imaginary violin singing with his piano.
He sees her everywhere, but especially in spring when the cherry blossoms bloom and the pigeons fly in arcs across the sky, and sometimes at night, when the stars are twinkling high up above him, shining down like great jewels in the sky, he whispers to her.
“Today I played Beethoven.”
“Remember when we raced the train and we thought we could win?”
“I’m sorry I was scared. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you that I loved you. Will you forgive me?”
“I miss you, Kaori.”
“I’m glad I knew you. You changed my life. Thank you. I’ll never forget what you did for me.”
.....
It is the first day of spring, the cherry blossoms are blooming, and Kousei Arima is playing a duet with a girl long gone. Around them, the world turns pink and white, and the pigeons fly in arcs across the sky.