The place was far larger than what she had expected.

Kaede Akamatsu, teen pianist who had gotten known with her participation to a talk show not so long ago, was doing her first concert on this night, in front of such a large audience. The seat rows seemed infinite and she was wondering if all of them would be able to hear what she would play in a few hours from there.

The piano was already proudly standing on stage. She went to it, checking all of her music sheets were in order. She couldn't get mistaken during her career's grand opening. The Piano Freak was finally going to be the Piano Prodigy.

Her mother had forced her to shop for a pretty yet classy yet fancy yet not too vulgar nor fancy dress earlier this week. She had rehearsed this concert for weeks and weeks, she could almost play her pieces by heart, but having her sheets made her feel safer.

Clair de Lune would be the ending piece, she decided of so. She was dedicating it to a very special someone, who she invited, and hoped would come see her this night play in front of a large audience for the first time... This person even had a VIP seat, probably not so far away from her parents' seats.

Hopefully they would get along during breaks.

This place was huge. He almost got lost in there.

After a few moments of walking around the seats, trying to find the number on his ticket, Shuichi Saihara had finally found where he was supposed to sit.

For a VIP spot, it wasn't that far away from a bathroom. Saying this soothed him up was an understatement: he had been sick as a dog for a few days now, but he wasn't going to bail out when Akamatsu had given him her last VIP ticket remaining. He wondered if he would meet her twin sister, or even her parents. Hopefully he was not going to cause too much noise, drowned by the piano's notes.

People were already here, including a middle-aged couple right next to his seat. He was in the border of the only alley of this VIP balcony.

Well, this piece of information would have mattered if there weren't only three seats in this one balcony, making him alone with who was clearly a couple. The woman's blonde hair and the father's pink eyes leaded him to think they were Mr. and Mrs. Akamatsu...

He felt a bit naked to be around people he didn't know while not wearing his hat, but it would have been both inappropriate and not matching the fanciest outfit he could find in his closet: an ordinary tuxedo. He had a bowtie to go along with it, but considering how shallow his breathing was, he had decided not to wear it. Hopefully in the black of the room nobody would notice his partially unbuttoned shirt.

"Excuse me, sir..." called him a man's voice from his right.

"Hmm?"

"Are you sure your seat is here? This seat is for a very important guest whom our daughter invited..." the main explained.

Shuichi showed his ticket as a way to prove himself.

"It means you are our darling's best friend then! She talks about you so much when she comes back home for weekends!" exclaimed who he could guess was Mrs. Akamatsu.

"We forgot to introduce ourself, haven't we? I am Yoshiki Akamatsu, Kaede's father."

"And I am Ayumi Akamatsu, her mother! What is your name, my dear?"

"I'm Shuichi Saihara, I'm a classmate of Akamatsu..."

"Pleasure to meet you, Saihara!"

The woman did seem worried.

"Are you sick?"

"Huh, yeah... It's just a cold, but I didn't want to make people sick"

The father suddenly interrupted the flow of conversation.

"It's about to start! Look at how lovely Kaede looks!"

He then looked down there, at the stage he could surprisingly see very well from his high-up seat, and does indeed see Akamatsu even prettier than she usually was. She looked like an angel playing the piano.

She sat next behind the piano and started to play the first notes. The atmosphere went completely silent except for delicate, perfect notes filling the air. It was soothing to hear, even when his insides were burning up under a fever he wanted vanished, banned, out of this realm even if it was just for this evening.

He tried to muffle his coughing as much as possible, less for the public than for him to be fully able to listen to the music. His ears were pleased, if it wasn't for the fact they were a bit muffled themselves. Judging by her parents' reactions, they were absolutely blown away.

These melodies were so amazing, he was confused as to how she hadn't been known before. Akamatsu had tremendous talent and it showed on this night. Maybe he was biased, but this music was the best he had ever heard, and for once in his life, Shuichi didn't care if he was being objective or not. All he knew that he was going to congratulate his friend on this at the end of her concert.

One of his coughing fits, during a really impacting piece to make matters worse, made him spit on the floor.

"Saihara, could you be quieter?" asked the father, in a semi-impatient tone.

"I-I'll try..." he replied while keeping back another fit.

An entracte soon came, and as soon as it was announced, Shuichi rushed to the bathroom. He had to check... Something. The carpeted floor of the balcony didn't allow him to check this, he had to have lights around him to be sure about this one small thing. As such, he rushed to the nearest men's bathroom. Taking off his mask in front of the mirror, his fears were confirmed when he saw what remained of his earlier spit on the corner of his mouth.

He had to sit back before he would get too dizzy to do so. Running around to this bathroom got an unexpected toll on him.

The concert didn't have such a long break between its two parts. Soon enough, Akamatsu was back to playing the piano, and with even more intense pieces this time around. Oh, how he wished he could actually hear them as well as he could... Instead, his coughing was getting out of control, her parents were sighing because of the noise he was making, his ears were getting muffled and, even worse, he was starting to wheeze.

"Urgh... Shuichi, get yourself together. You can't do this to Akamatsu" he told himself, all the while he was panting for air.

It was cruel to hope the concert would end soon enough, but he felt like he was ready to pass out already. All that was keeping him awake was his care for her and her music.

His fever was getting the best out of him. He was sure that he couldn't see straight anymore, or at least, not as well as before. The black of the place helped him not worry about this too much, but when he would see her -if he could still walk up to her at least- it would be a far bigger issue.

Suddenly, after a piece, Akamatsu spoke up in the microphone next to her keyboard, for the first time in the whole evening.

"I want to dedicate this one piece to my best friend, who's been with me through my fears and anxiety, no matter piano-related or not. I wish he loved himself as much as I love him, but for now, I'll play for him and for everyone what he told me was his favorite classical piece... Saihara, this is for you!"

Shuichi bolted from his crouching position, bent over to cough and spit, to a normal position. He knew he had tears in his eyes, and he grinned under his mask. Her parents were looking at him as Clair de Lune started resounding in the giant room, from the stage to the balcony.

Yes, he could be there for hours listening to her playing piano, but before he had the time to truly enjoy everything he had missed during the evening, it stopped and she had already said her goodbyes.

An encore got requested, and Akamatsu played a piece she had prepared just in case for this occasion. She told him about playing the Ninth Symphony in case an encore happened. No surprise there, but he still appreciated it despite knowing before everyone else.