a/n: so i had to watch whiplash in film studies and i thought "hey that protagonist dude kinda reminds me of reina" so while i was writing a paper on the movie that was secretly a reina kousaka character study i decided to write an actual reina kousaka character study as well.
title comes from the marina and the diamonds song of the same name, every single one of her songs fit reina to a scary degree
Reina Kousaka did not consider herself a sentimental person.
She didn't consider herself much of a person at all, really, more a collection of ambition shaped into something resembling a teenage girl, which was why she was so surprised at herself when, instead of throwing it out, she started flipping through Kitauji's yearbook. Pages of faces stared back at her, and she settled onto her satin bedsheets with a sigh. So this was what she was going to do with the rest of her day.
At least she didn't have to worry about homework.
First there was the first day of school, which was to be expected. Candid photos of students looking just prepared enough for it to seem unnatural, trying to make a good impression for just a few hours. Reina caught glimpses of the band members - Katou waving her younger brothers goodbye, Yuuko following Kaori around like a lonesome puppy, Yoroizuka on her own.
Reina felt an odd surge of indignation at that one. Who had taken a photo of this girl, all alone, and hadn't asked about her life or anything like that? Then she realized that she would probably have done the same thing. Yoroizuka had never been a part of her life until Kasaki had dragged her, headfirst, into Kitauji's hellish drama. Reina resented Kasaki, but Yoroizuka- Mizore, she wasn't guilty of anything but the sin of miscommunication, that thing that befalls us all.
Can't get too sentimental like that, she berated herself silently. A thin breeze blew through an open window. What's done is done, and those two made up anyhow.
Class pictures, then, each one sitting in a cluster, beaming or flashing a funny pose. Reina sat off to the side with hers. She'd never bothered much with her class - none of them were in the band, after all, and so they didn't affect her life in any real way. Some secret part of her had longed, quietly, to be in the same class as Katou and Kawashima and- well, no, she wasn't going to go down that particular rabbit-hole, not right now, but the feeling still persisted, bothersome, in her chest like a well-placed burr in a cat's paw. Her class was fine.
Still, her lungs seemed to prickle when she looked at the other classes arranged like that.
The staff pages. Of course. There were countless teachers she didn't know, sports coaches and the like, and so her eye drifted, unconsciously, to Taki-sensei. Why wouldn't it? She loved Taki-sensei, had said so herself. Sure, perhaps she'd exaggerated his importance to Kumiko a bit - he was not her motivation for playing the trumpet, that was all her own doing and frankly it would be a bit reductive to dedicate herself so fervently just for the sake of a man, but he was a part of it. And she loved him, because she had to, because that made sense.
He would never look at her in any way other than that of a fatherly figure, and that was fine by her.
Reina shut the yearbook, keeping one finger on the inside of it so as to save her page, and took a long, deep breath. Her trumpet sat on her bedside table, and her hands tugged her towards it, longing for the familiar notes, the things that she knew.
She knew how to play the trumpet, placed herself into it so wholeheartedly that it sometimes felt like an obsession, but if that was what she needed to be social than so be it, she'd do anything, anything to get better and be special because then things would work, maybe, they'd finally start to work and she wouldn't feel like this, in a bedroom too big and too small, with her finger in a yearbook.
In the end, she just kept reading.
Oh, of course there was the band, all posed after the regional competition - not for Nationals, no, of course not, that was a miserable photoshoot because copper, after everything they won copper, she felt so miserable that day but she hid it in Taki-sensei, of course, that was why she was sad. Everyone was smiling after regionals, so that was the one the yearbook chose. This made perfect sense, but it still instilled in Reina a sense of discomfort, of lying, and she hated it.
The snow fell outside, thicker and heavier than before, and she couldn't be bothered to go out and shovel it.
There were layers of feelings hidden here, choked down so she could ignore them and keep doing what mattered, and any rational person would've shut the yearbook by now and stopped tormenting themselves, but Reina's pride got the best of her as it always did and so she kept reading.
There were some photographs of students hanging out outside of school, which struck her as a bit invasive, but she supposed the students had submitted them themselves, so it was probably fine. There was a photo of Kumiko, along with those two who always stuck by her like hounds - guiltily she remembered how she'd spent a few weeks around them only to retreat back into herself again. After all, she was too busy, and Kumiko was certainly too busy what with her habit of finding herself knee-deep in other people's problems, so why should she hang around two girls she hardly had a thing in common with?
But oh, she was a lonesome teenage girl, much as she'd tried to pretend otherwise. There were pictures of the school and she remembered the festival, the "advanced class" building that haunted house. A girl whose name she didn't know had asked about the concert band while putting on her makeup.
"You just won that big competition, right?" she'd said, holding Reina's chin.
"Yes."
"Not many cute boys in the band, are there?" Suddenly, her hand had felt like an iron as she gently pushed Reina's hair back to keep it out of the way from the ghoulish-white paint.
Maybe she'd felt a bit scarier than usual when Kumiko walked in with Tsukamoto in tow.
Reina checked her phone while halfway through the sports pages - Nakagawa flashed a thumbs-up at the camera while the girls around her swooned. She wasn't even on the basketball team. There weren't any messages, or so Reina thought, but then again she'd just turned it on. Sometimes things took a few minutes to pop up. Idly she toyed with the ribbon on her uniform, which she still hadn't taken off. There wasn't much of a point in it, she thought, and besides the day was nearly over and she'd have to change out of it soon anyway. The yearbook was close to the end. The sun was going down. Soon another day would begin and the world would start anew.
When did I become so dramatic? she wondered, opening her mouth to vocalize the thought before closing it again. Her lips were chapped, bruised, weary from playing the trumpet with such fervor. It rarely bothered her - it was a small price to pay for becoming special, after all - but her lips still stung and her mouth still tasted like copper from time to time, especially in these winter months. She was only human, after all, a fact she scarcely admitted to.
She was only human, and her phone was silent and the snow kept piling up outside.
There were signatures at the end. Not many - seven, to be exact, but they were still there. Katou and Kawashima had both written their names in cutesy, loopy handwriting, buzzing around everyone's yearbooks like little bees. Kaori had written have a lovely break, Kousaka-san, and good luck, which Reina felt was far too nice considering how she'd been. She felt the same way with Yuuko's signature, which was begrudging, just her name half-scribbled while she looked away. It was still something. Nakagawa had doodled a little cartoon rabbit playing the trumpet in the top corner, like it was a secret, like it was meant to be hidden. Asuka had taken the opposite approach and written her name in big, sweeping letters across the page. Marking her territory, Reina had thought grimly, and had felt relieved at the knowledge she'd be far, far away next year.
And then there was Kumiko.
Oh, of course there was always Kumiko.
They'd been pressed for time, the train fast approaching its destination, and the snow falling outside just like it still was, and it was obvious Kumiko had more to say, red-cheeked and sniffly as she was, but Reina didn't - wouldn't - push her. That she didn't just go ahead and ask what she wanted to know surprised her. Perhaps the others were rubbing off on her more than she'd thought. So Kumiko wrote something barely legible, rambling and sappy, and now Reina ran her finger along the already-smudged ink, careful, like the yearbook was a precious artifact from a time long lost. It might as well have been one.
So she was sentimental on occasion. So what? Reina Kousaka was not infallible, at least not when she was alone, in her too-big room with all the snow in the world climbing higher and higher. The princess in her tower, the lonesome queen, the one who wished so deeply to be special. Ambition was a wonderful and dangerous thing. Taki-sensei would never reach her here. Neither would Kumiko, in all likelihood, but she had a better chance of it at least.
Yes, maybe Kumiko would reach her, now, now that the dust had settled and a new year was ahead of them. The thought made something prickle in Reina's chest, and she stood up. The yearbook pages fluttered closed.
She'd finally found her, and she'd be damned if she let that slip away.
a/n: reina, in many languages, means queen. i've wondered before if that was intentional on takeda's part.
i have no idea if yearbooks are a thing in japan, google turned up nothing. anyway happy thanksgiving if you celebrate it, watch she-ra and the princesses of power, and have a great day/evening/night/what have you.