a/n: i can't believe i wrote a 2k word fic about the tuba-kun costume. is this my life now. (but yeah i've admittedly really been enjoying writing about asuka, there's just something really intriguing about her blatant lack of caring coupled with how everyone else sees her that makes her super interesting to write about. anyway. enjoy the tuba-kun.
Kumiko stood in the doorway, watching Reina neatly stack the sheet music and put instruments back in place.
"S-so, this is what you do after school, huh?"
"Yes. I figured that it was the least I could do. I'm not alone, either - the president joins me sometimes." As if on cue, Haruka ran through the hall with a rather large package clumsily held in her arms, shaky and out of breath.
"Kousaka! I'm sorry for being late, I needed to clear some things from the junk closet, they would've thrown it out otherwise!" Reina critically eyed the box, setting aside an old CD to look at it more closely before turning to Kumiko.
"Kumiko, did your small friend try to throw away her contrabass?" she asked. Kumiko blinked.
"Midori? She'd never do something like that."
"Oh, it's nothing special," Haruka trilled, already beginning to step out of the room with a forced smile on her face. "Just a bunch of old files, some discarded instruments and trophies and things. It isn't anything you two would find very interesting, I don't think." Within ten seconds, Haruka was gone, running from the room with the speed of someone who wanted to get away as fast as they could without making it clear that they wanted to leave at all. Kumiko shrugged.
"Well, uh, I guess we'll just put this in one of the cabinets," she said. "It's p-probably something really important to her, otherwise she wouldn't have been so freaked out."
"That doesn't make you somewhat curious as to the box's contents?"
"W-well, yeah, but that doesn't mean we should look at it."
"She would have sealed it if she was truly worried."
"Reina, w-what if it's personal? She's the president, we could get in trouble with Taki-sensei if we started poking around with her things." Crap. She's probably already mad at us. Reina seemed to consider this for a moment, her eyes flickering to the box and then to the yet-unstacked music stands.
"If she brings it up again, I doubt that I'll be able to resist," Reina admitted. "It's undeniably mysterious, Kumiko, you need to agree on that, at least."
"Uh, s-sure. If Haruka mentions this, whatever it is, again, then we'll open it. D-deal?" Reina gave a satisfied nod and immediately went back to putting away the music stands. She turned to Kumiko, who still stood in the doorway, and blinked.
"You can help, if you want."
It was strangely peaceful, Kumiko thought, to lose herself in these simple, mindless things. She made small talk with Reina occasionally, talking about exams and the band and anything else that could bring easy conversation. Reina remained focused on her tasks, usually responding in one-word answers, and she was so intent on putting away the music stands that she didn't even seem to notice the gigantic box in front of her.
"Reina, w-watch out!" Kumiko yelled, her voice echoing in the tiny space of the room. The warning came too late, and Reina crashed right into Haruka's mystery package. The box was crushed, a strange white object that vaguely resembled a paw sticking out of the side. Reina winced as she stood up. "Are you okay?" Kumiko asked, ready to call the hospital if she needed - she remembered idly that the school nurse didn't stay there during the summer.
"I'm fine," Reina muttered. "The contents of the box were fairly soft. They broke my fall, though I'm not sure if the contents themselves managed to survive."
"Y-yeah, well, we'd have to, uh, open the box to find that out. I really didn't want to, b-but I guess if it was important enough to Haruka, then, it'd be, er, a good idea to do it." Kumiko had no idea what was in the box, and she was somewhat afraid of finding out. Reina, however, had no such qualms, instead simply hacking at the lid and dumping out the box to reveal something that she didn't seem to be expecting, considering the way her violet eyes flashed with confusion. Kumiko hadn't expected it either, this strange thing that had been hyped a ridiculous amount in the past hour and yet was oddly simple. On the floor in a crumpled heap lay the Tuba-kun costume, looking battered and somewhat tired. Kumiko hadn't even thought that a costume of a cartoon instrument could look tired, but here was the proof.
"What is that?" Reina asked, poking the costume as if it would suddenly spring to life.
"W-well, you know those instrument characters you can get in those dispensers near the convenience store?"
"I've seen them, yes. You have two on your bag."
"Earlier this year, I sorta dressed up in this thing. It was to encourage Hazuki, since this is a tuba and she, y'know, plays the tuba."
"Hmm." Reina held up the costume, its oversized, cartoonish head sagging as she did so. "Was it comfortable?" Kumiko let out a snort.
"If you want the truth? Not at all. It was really stuffy and smelled like stale perfume. Being tackled by Midori wasn't, uh, very comfortable either." Reina chuckled, holding her hand over her mouth.
"Who made it?" she asked, trying (rather unsuccessfully) to hide her amusement. Kumiko shrugged.
"Asuka said that they, uh, used it for a parade last year or something."
"Why?"
"I don't know. You know her, she's kinda mysterious."
"She's pretentious and self-absorbed, if you want my opinion. She inadvertently makes everyone fall in love with her, mindlessly following her lead because of how 'cool' they see her as, and yet she does nothing to help those who care for her. Asuka is a selfish woman, Kumiko."
"The euphoniums practice together, I t-think you're being a bit-"
"The trumpets practice together as well, Kumiko, and that means that I'm forced to listen to Kaori's seemingly endless drivel about how wonderful she is while also being forced to listen to Yuuko's drivel about how wonderful Kaori is, and I wouldn't be surprised if you had to listen to Natsuki saying the same about Yuuko, and the cycle all begins with her."
"I d-didn't know that you felt that way," Kumiko admitted. Reina shrugged, sweeping her dark hair over her shoulder.
"Regardless of how I feel about her, it doesn't change the fact that she is our superior and our vice president, so it would be best if we kept this conversation between us and the tuba costume." Kumiko looked to the floor, where Reina had dropped the costume and left it to once again lie in a saddening heap on the tile.
"Do you want to, uh, try it on?" Kumiko asked. Reina blinked.
"Why?"
"It might be fun, and it's not like we really have anything else to do."
"I suppose." Reina, with surprising agility, stepped through the leg-holes and hoisted up the costume. "Does it go like this?"
"I think so." Reina let out a frustrated hrm as she wrangled the sleeves and finally managed to keep the costume up.
"I wouldn't be surprised if whoever wore this during the parades fell unconscious," she commented, her voice muffled through Tuba-kun's head. "Even in here, with air conditioning and open windows, I'm already beginning to feel somewhat faint."
"Y-you can take it off if you want." Reina pulled off the head, sitting down and making no move to take off the rest of it.
"Why was the president so insistent on keeping this?" she wondered, stroking her chin with the one of the costume's oversized paws. "She does tend to be sentimental about things, but this doesn't appear to be something anyone could be sentimental over. It's a gigantic cartoon tuba."
"Maybe she, uh, made it herself?" Kumiko suggested.
"Or she received it as a gift from a close friend." Reina, somehow, managed to still appear somewhat ethereal in the sunlight, even bunched in the costume with her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, cheeks red from the heat. Kumiko wondered if it was possible to hear someone's heartbeat from across a room, because hers was currently thudding and blasting through her ears.
"Or maybe-"
"You were right the first time, Kumiko." Kumiko and Reina both turned around to see Haruka standing in the doorway, a sad smile spread across her features as she looked at Reina with an odd sense of what seemed to be longing. "I made this last year as somewhat of a side-project, but Asuka saw it and insisted that we use it at SunFes. One of the third-years was more than willing to oblige, for some reason." Haruka shifted in her place, and Kumiko felt a great tremble in her throat, as if she was about to hear something of importance. "I kept it around, after that, and all she would do was wear it during practice and tackle any unsuspecting students around."
"Didn't that cause disruption among the band?" Reina asked.
"Ah, that's right. You two weren't here last year, you never knew the old band advisor. She was lovely, somewhat of a motherly figure to us all, but she didn't care how well we did as long as we had fun."
"R-right!" Kumiko blurted out. "Natsuki told me that the band wasn't really motivated at all last year, that's why there are hardly any second-years."
"Exactly. In any case, Asuka seemed to be enjoying herself, jumpscaring any innocent first-year who happened to be nearby. It terrified Yoshikawa the first time, I'll tell you that!" Haruka chuckled softly at the memory. "She tackled me, once."
"B-but you're the president!" Kumiko yelped.
"Wouldn't she get in trouble?" Reina wondered.
"I wasn't the president back then. Besides, it's more of a figurehead position than anything. Even back then, Asuka led the band without even needing any type of official position. In terms of real power, she didn't have any - she was just my friend. I can still remember it vividly - she was crouching behind a garbage can. I think it might've been the one in here, actually. She wasn't exactly invisible, but I pretended to be surprised anyway. We both tumbled to the floor, laughing, and then the big cartoon head fell off and she was 'smiling.'"
"She smiles rather often," Reina commented.
"No, not like how she teases the younger students and radiates that aura of leadership. She was smiling, truly smiling, and she looked so happy, with her hair all messed up and her cheeks red from how hot it was in there." Kumiko and Reina looked at each other for a split second. Reina shrugged, still in the bulky costume. "It was the first time I had ever seen her smiling like that." Kumiko wondered if it was her imagination, or if the band's president was starting to cry. "Can you two promise me something?"
"Y-yeah," Kumiko mumbled. There was sadness held behind Haruka's eyes, and Kumiko felt the need to try and take it away in any way she could. Reina simply nodded in response.
"Promise me that you two won't lose yourselves, alright?"
"What?" Kumiko and Reina said in unison. Haruka paused, running her hand along a sleek wooden bookcase. She's trying to figure out what to say, Kumiko realized.
"Promise me that . . . that you'll try to stay like this, that you won't grow up so quickly." Haruka was just about on the verge of tears, now, her voice shaking and blubbering as she spoke, and Kumiko didn't know what to do. "You might not understand this yet, but growing up is the most terrible thing anyone can do."
"I get that," Kumiko mumbled. Oh, I definitely get that.
"So do I," Reina added. Haruka smiled, clasping her hands together in an expression of what looked to be relief.
"Thank goodness," Haruka murmured. "Oh, thank goodness."
"If there's anything you need me to do in order to continue cleaning up-" Reina began, but Haruka cut her off with the raise of a shaky hand.
"You've done fine, Kousaka. I'd suggest that you and Oumae here go outside, hmm? The weather is lovely today, it would be a shame for kids like you to waste it." Reina dutifully nodded, still stuck in the Tuba-kun costume, and ran from the room with Kumiko's hand in hers, murmuring something to herself about how the president wasn't quite as stable as she pretended to be, how being that emotional could lead to the band's downfall. Kumiko mindlessly nodded in agreement, her head still spinning over what had just happened.
If she had looked back, down the hallway past the glaring sunlight that beat down through the windows, perhaps she would have seen Haruka wipe away a stray tear, stepping back into the room with the sadness held in her eyes that only a senior in high school can have.
Perhaps Kumiko would have seen a cautionary tale, a warning to never end up like that.
As things were, however, she saw nothing of the sort, and instead asked Reina if she wanted to go for ice cream after school.