Gokudera and Haru are presently 20 years old in this story.
This story is mine; but with you I share its sentiments.
Evoke - "To elicit or draw forth; to produce, through artistry, a vivid impression of reality."
I . Consonance: harmony in sound
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Her Mozart piece disgraced the ear with the sound of ink-stamped notes; nothing more, nothing less. Triplets faded into one another with the musicality of plastic—stiff and dull, fitted with a cookie-cutter.
On the score, "bright and cheerful" was etched in with pencil, encircled numerous times. Instead, her tone radiated an austere, forced contentedness; uncomfortable as one who had taken in too much for dinner and settled with a bloated stomach.
Perhaps she was bloated; overfed with a gloom that contrasted the perfect weather outside.
"You've got to want it, own it—feel it and convey it unlike anyone else. If you're set on studying abroad, you need to take this competition seriously. Do you have an incentive? Why do you play?"
She sighed, letting the instrument fall from beneath her chin, muttering, "I just can't get in the mood for a spring fugue." With a bow in her hand, she removed the sheet music of her preferred piece from the folder, and propped it up against the stand.
"You're depressing me with Chopin's nocturne, Haru. Your name embodies the meaning of 'spring'. Play some lighthearted Mozart for a change."
Eyes closed, she raised her arm; poised.
An explosive smattering of notes broke her focus; shattering it like a pane of glass. The disturbance hurtled out into the hall with the force of a ten foot tall rolling wave. She breathed in shakily, an intoxicating numbness surging through her. Her eyes snapped open in recognition. Chopin's etude number 12, Opus 25.
The score drifted to the ground in the wake of her sprint as she dashed out of the practice room, all forgotten.
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The brunette had located the source of the undulating waves of arpeggios. A shaft of sunlight beamed into the long and skinny rectangular window on what would otherwise be a slab of wood referred to as a door.
She inhaled deeply, her brows creasing and sinking downwards toward each other as she strung out an improvised accompaniment. Her sound was polished and yet inexpressibly raw, spiking from a rich alto voice to the highest octave in a matter of seconds.
The pianist on the other side did not stop at her intrusive addition; if anything, his tone grew bolder, rising and swelling to complement her own train of arbitrary melody, rambling along the tracks of a lost destination. With every base note struck on the ivory keys, she spun varying chords of triplets in the same key, two octaves above.
As if they were both holding their breaths, the rapid succession of one arpeggio linking into another ran persistently, and beyond the warm color seeping into her eyelids, she witnessed the tempest whirling into a deep mass of indigo fury, blasting the frothing waves, slapping them onto the faces of eroding rocks.
The aggressive onslaught gentled as the evocative low melody chimed a softer, higher tone.
A place where the glinting diamonds of seawater laps at the infinite sands of time. . .
. . . Where the blue horizon fuses with blue waters, reflecting a high heaven of relentless chaos and capricious essence.
She cringed when she missed an accidental in the key signature, but plowed forward, pausing in-between to allow the piano part to pervade the flow of the piece. Her playing was far from perfect; but this—this catharsis streaming out of her every pore into a woven harmony with a stranger—this was pure. The bow jerked spasmodically as she played, skipping and slicing across the strings as her fingers madly flew between the notes, each contact point between the fine hairs of the bow and the taut cord both caressing and forceful.
The soprano timbre of the violin carried into the distance, crying out as a lark may sing from its freed cage.
His sound boasted the dexterity of agile speed and expression; dragging her pulse in and out of the etude with every buildup and release of tension.
Yes, she thought. I know why I play.
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An eternity and three minutes later, she slid down against the deteriorating brick walls, utterly spent. The back of her cardigan resisted the rough texture of stone, and sweat clung to her forehead in a string of ornamental beads. The blooming redness in the fingers of her left hand throbbed with indentations of where the strings dug into her soft skin.
The door of the practice room creaked ajar ominously, exiting the pianist bathed in eerie sunglow.
The intensity of his expression seared a lingering mark in her memory. His gazed locked on hers, the sea green complexity churning with turbulence. The magnetic depths of her dark-chocolate orbs flickered in the light. Their transfixion was somewhat surreal.
It had passed so quickly she was uncertain it even occurred.
His silver locks swayed as he strode past her, not a word spoken between them.
Panting with exertion, she stared after his retreating figure, wondering what had just happened. Wondering if she'd ever be so overcome with whatever she had just experienced ever again.
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x
A/N: To get a better idea of the piece that, by chance, drew Gokudera and Haru to the same spot, search "Chopin etude 12 opus 25, Ocean" on YouTube. Now imagine that riveting piano etude paired with some harmonizing violin.
Feel free to answer: Do you appreciate classical music, or is it just an antiquity to you? Do you connect more with contemporary styles?