♪♪♪
ON the Saturday afternoon of that same week, I drank tea with Kon on the couch after practice in the Genda annex. This brief respite before going home had become a vital destresser for me.
“Oh, right, I nearly forgot. Take this.” Kon placed her cup on the table and handed me a white pamphlet.
“Seio is putting on a Christmas concert?” I asked, glancing over the pamphlet.
“Yup. It’s on the twenty-third. Does that work for you? If you don’t have any other plans I would love it if you came.”
While the word concert was in the title, they appeared to be hosting the event to allow Seio Academy’s high achieving students a place to put their skills on display. The middle school department was performing on the twenty-third, the high school department on the twenty-fourth, and select students from the university were going to put on a concert with the local orchestra on the twenty-fifth.
I carefully turned the pages and checked who was performing on what days.
“Wow, this is an amazing line up! That’s Seio for you, all right. The concerts and events they host are on a whole other scale.”
An up-and-coming conductor who’d won a famous music competition was conducting the local orchestra. The mass media had been covering him a lot lately, so I wanted to hear what a concerto conducted by him sounded like.
Kon’s expression sunk apologetically when she noticed me drooling over the program line up for the twenty-fifth. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any tickets for the twenty-fifth. I can try and get my hands on one if you want to go.”
“What? Nah, I’m all good! Really! I was just marveling over how impressive the whole concert is going to be.”
“It’s the first event Tobi is putting on. He seems to be going all out for it,” Kon explained with ice in her voice.
According to Kon, Prince Tobi was currently working for the Yamabuki Group’s trading firm, and starting this year, he was being added into the management ranks at Seio too. Considering how he was supposed to become the principal and director of the board at Seio in three years, that pretty much painted the picture of how much of a shrewd go-getter he was.
“He plans to run Seio by marketing the school alumni in a big way and enhancing the academy’s prestige through them. Seio has tradition and history on its side, but new and improved music academies have been on the rise lately. It’s creating a sense of rivalry in the board of directors, I’m sure.”
“I see. Prince Tobi’s an ambitious one, isn’t he?”
I was about to say, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be passionate about your work,” but snapped my mouth shut. Kon’s expression had hardened. Wanting to change the electric mood in the room, I glanced back over the program for the twenty-third. Kon and Kou’s name were both listed there.
“Neat! You’re playing the third movement from Beethoven’s piano sonata “Appassionata”! I can’t wait to hear it!”
Kon and a girl named Yukiko Sawakura had entered the concert from the piano department.
Kon smacked the printed name “Yukiko Sawakura” with her index finger. “This girl is one of Kou’s fangirls. She’s the one who lent you that piano jazz arrangement.”
“Oh, so it belonged to her, huh? She must be pretty good at the piano if she can participate in Seio’s concert.”
I wonder what her performance will be like. Never having the chance to hear anyone the same age as me play the piano, I could only compare myself to Kon’s prodigious skill. When I thought about it that way, the concert sounded like a good opportunity to learn what level Seio’s middle school department played at. I was getting excited now.
“Pretty good isn’t quite how I’d put it…” Kon said ambiguously, studying my face. “I think it was Yukiko who saw the operetta with Kou.”
“So that was her! Then that blue-haired beauty is Yukiko. Kou only has eyes for the pretty ones, huh?”
“…That’s all you have to say?”
“What else should I say?”
For some inexplicable reason, Kon peered at my face as if disappointed in my reaction. Her brown hair spilled onto her cheeks when she leaned forward, stealing my breath and causing my eyes to be glued to her dizzying beauty. Eek. T-Too bright for me!
“…Hah,” she sighed. “I know he did it to himself, but I’m starting to pity my brother.”
I pried my eyes from the grumbling Kon and dropped them to read the rest of the pamphlet. Staring at Kon too much had the adverse effect of putting me in shock when I saw my own face in the mirror at home. Was I the only person who got deluded into thinking they’re pretty when they’re with beautiful people for a long time?
Aside from the piano department, representatives of the strings department, woodwind department, and brass department would be partaking as well. Suddenly, my eyes stopped on a familiar name.
“Clarinetist: Riko Miyaji”
Hmm, I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere. Who is it? I scoured my memories until I remembered. I’ve met her before too! She’s that black-haired beauty with raven black eyes! That girl who acted like the captain of Kou’s elite guard of groupies!
“Is this Riko girl a member of Kou’s fangirl group too?” I asked Kon, pointing to her name in the pamphlet.
“Oh? How’d you know?”
“I was right then.” I recalled the time I met her at the shopping mall during elementary school and how she warned me off Kou, and briefly summarized it for Kon.
Once I finished talking, Kon grimaced. “She’s definitely the type to say something like that. Speaking of groupies, look here. The violist Misa Utsunomiya and the flutist Karin Teranishi are both members of Riko’s group.”
Now that she mentions it, I sorta remember two flunkies flanking Captain Miyaji back then.
“What do you know, all of Kou’s fans are pretty and skilled musicians. Women should run and hide in fear of his seducing skills!” I jested, impressed by his track record.
Meanwhile, Kon was shaking her head, her expression bitter. “There are much better students at the Academy. Tobi chose those girls as members to repay their parents for their large contributions to the school.”
Yikes! Now that’s playing dirty. But Prince Tobi seems like the type to do something like that. He looked like the type who stood by the sayings, “Successful crime is called virtue” and “Nothing succeeds like success.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Hey, Kon, why don’t you give up trying to capture that no-good player?” I pursed my lips.
A slight smile made its way to Kon’s lips. “I don’t have a choice. My—the original heroine’s romantic partner is set as Tobi.”
Something about her remark stood out as awkward to me. In the past, Kon had told me, “You are free to live as you want, Mashiro. You don’t need to be manipulated by Hear My Heart.”
She said that I was free to live how I wanted. But why did that seem to imply otherwise for Kon? Why did Kon want to go down Prince Tobi’s route according to Hear My Heart?
No, that’s not right. What if she doesn’t want to, but has to? Then her actions up until now would flip the board completely and take on a whole new meaning. I was starting to connect the dots around the big secret Kon was keeping and continued to mull over the meaning of what she’d said to me long after that day.