a/n: it's been two years since i first started watching hibike! euphonium and i've never been more glad about slacking off on studying for that history exam, because this show changed my life
Kumiko would have been lying if she'd said that she wasn't at least a little bit relieved when she saw Reina approaching the same elevator in the same building, a college counseling program waiting a few stories above them.
"I g-guess you're going here, too?" she mumbled. Reina nodded.
"I told my parents that I didn't need it - I know exactly what I want to do, and my grades are fine - but I suppose they didn't listen. It's annoying, really." Reina tapped her foot impatiently. "I could be practicing right now, or doing homework, or even sleeping, but instead an old man is going to tell me what to do with my future."
"Yeah." Kumiko adjusted the straps on her bag, hoping it'd stop feeling so heavy on her shoulder. I'm gonna have sore arms tomorrow, she thought. The elevator doors slid open as the arrow above them lit up, and Kumiko held her arm against the open space as Reina stepped in.
"At least the building's nice." It was true - even the elevator was fancy to some degree, with mirrors taking the place of wallpaper and gold-painted railings resting on each side.
"It'll only last an hour. M-maybe we could go out for ice cream or something afterwards?"
"Maybe." Reina pushed the button for the sixth floor and stood back as the elevator rumbled to life. Kumiko half-sat on the railing. "Or we could head back to my house, maybe watch a movie or something like that."
"Yeah, that'd be nice too."
"It's taking a long time to get up there," Reina noted.
"It looks like an old elevator. Maybe it's just slow." Kumiko, despite her own words, could feel her chest starting to constrict and her breaths start to become uneven.
"It's stopped." Reina pressed the button to open the metal doors, but to no avail. "I think we're trapped."
"No," Kumiko mumbled, "-no, we're not. We're fine. You've got your phone, r-right? I left mine at home, but-"
"It's dead."
"Oh, crap." Kumiko sat down in a corner, holding her legs to her chest as if she could roll up like a roly-poly if she just tried a bit harder. "Crap, crap, crap-"
"Kumiko-"
"We're gonna be trapped in here forever, we'll never make it out-"
"Kumiko!" Reina's voice sharpened. "We'll be fine. It's just like when we were trapped in that closet in our first year, that turned out fine."
"Yeah, but someone showed up then! What if nobody thinks to find us and w-we just starve in here, or a wire snaps and we go plummeting down?"
"That kind of thinking won't do us any good." Kumiko didn't miss the way Reina's voice wavered as she spoke. "Someone will inspect the elevator eventually. Until then, we should just make ourselves comfortable." Reina sat down beside her, resting her head on Kumiko's shoulder. "I brought a book."
"What book?" Reina held up the book in question in lieu of an answer. Kumiko's eyes lit up as she read the title.
"H-hey, I've read that one before! How far did you get?"
"They just started on the road trip."
"Oh, the road trip's the best part - the movie's great, b-but they make it a lot shorter than it is in the book."
"I suppose I'll have to keep reading, then." Reina flipped to a bookmarked page and held the book up to her face, leaving Kumiko to sit in awkward silence. Eventually, she found herself pulling college pamphlets she'd accumulated over the year out of her bag, nearly all of them terribly wrinkled.
"I should've brought a book," she muttered, and flipped open one of the pamphlets without another word.
Some time passed - Kumiko's watch told her that it had only been about an hour, but she wasn't inclined to believe it - and she had long since gone through every pamphlet.
"What if we got out of here in a few days," she mused, "-and j-just . . . ran away?"
"Hmm?" Reina set down her book, keeping her index finger between the pages.
"Nobody would know where we went, so they'd give up on looking for us pretty quickly. We'd find some nice little cottage, and you could play the trumpet in the garden while I harvested our vegetables."
"You hate vegetables."
"They'd be home-grown vegetables, Reina. I'd force myself to like them."
"Somehow, I doubt that."
"H-hey, weren't you the one who talked about wanting to hop a train and travel away our first year?"
"That was two years ago, Kumiko." Reina stayed quiet for a moment, furrowing her brow in thought. "Exactly two years ago, actually. The Agata Festival's tonight. I'd nearly forgotten about it."
"I guess we won't be going this year, huh?" Kumiko joked weakly.
"The weather forecast said it'd rain, anyway. I doubt it'd be any fun."
"Maybe, yeah."
"Keep on telling me about how we'd run away, though." Reina nestled closer, still leaning on Kumiko's shoulder.
"We'd buy a bike - just one bike - and ride to town on it when we needed to buy stuff."
"Why just one?" Kumiko could feel her cheeks turning pink.
"I've always sorta wanted to ride on a bike with someone," she mumbled. "Y'know, like they do in movies? It sounds dumb when you say it out loud, b-but it seemed . . . nice."
"It does."
"Oh! And we, uh, we wouldn't tell anyone where we were! We'd just be these forest people, living with each other until we grew old! We'd cuddle together in the snow until our hair turned gray and we had to just sit in rocking chairs on our little porch!" Kumiko grew more and more animated as she talked, but Reina looked away. "That's . . . not what you want, is it?" Reina shook her head slowly.
"I have to become special," she murmured, more to herself than to Kumiko. "I can't hide myself away." She held her knees close to her chest. "As much as I want to, I can't just . . . live without doing something first."
"I get it." Kumiko intertwined her fingers with Reina's, something that neither girl even took particular notice of anymore. It felt as natural as breathing. "Still, I'll be here for you. No matter what. You're not walking this road to specialness alone, Reina." Reina pressed herself closer.
"Thank you," she whispered, hushed and fast, like someone would overhear.
"It's kind of a shame we're missing the festival, though. It w-would've been nice. I guess we can come back home next year and go up the mountain again, but it won't really be the same."
"I wonder what we'll be like, next year." Kumiko shrugged.
"I don't know."
Hours passed, and Kumiko had started to give up hope on ever being found. She could hear the rain pitter-pattering outside, but nothing else, no strangers to rescue them from this little prison.
I guess this isn't such a bad way to die, she thought, despite her best efforts to keep those kinds of ideas from her mind. Sitting here, with Reina. There're worse ways to go than this.
"Did you hear something?" Reina whispered. Kumiko strained her ears.
"N-no, I don't think so."
"I must've imagined it, then."
"I don't want to be stuck here forever," Kumiko said, more to herself than to Reina. "I mean, this isn't the worst way to go, but I still want to . . . experience life, y'know? There're so many things I haven't done yet that I want to do - with you, Reina." Kumiko's voice broke off at the end until it was hardly above a whimper. "I want to experience it all with you."
"You said you heard something coming from this elevator, sir?" Kumiko and Reina froze as the nasally voice of someone who probably worked in the building grunted.
"Yeah - sounded like two kids. I think they're trapped in there or something." The unpleasant sound of a crowbar prying open the heavy metal doors rang through until Kumiko saw two older men peering down at her and Reina. "What do you know. Alright, run along. The place closed an hour ago." Kumiko rose to shaky feet, pulling Reina up with her, and the two of them ran down the stairs as fast as their feet could carry them. The world outside had turned gray from the rain, but Kumiko didn't care.
"Let's go," she whispered, taking Reina by the hand as she ran through the automatic doors into the rain. Reina smiled, a bigger smile than Kumiko had seen in a long time. The rain might've soaked the two of them through, but they didn't care. Reina picked Kumiko up in her arms and spun her around as both girls laughed a shaky, relieved laugh, and there wasn't any hesitation as Reina took Kumiko's face into her hands and kissed her.
It was soft, and sharp, and chilling and warming all at once, and it felt like every piece of home that Kumiko had imagined. She pressed her forehead against Reina's when she broke away, and the two girls simply stood there, alive, no longer wondering about the best way to die but instead thinking of all the ways to live.
a/n: can you believe it's taken me nearly two years to write this trope