Disclaimer: Fruits Basket and all of the original cast belong to Takaya Natsuki. This pertains to this and all upcoming chapters on "First Chair Violinist."

Rated T for adult themes, use of multiple languages and general egg-headed humor. Please don't be afraid to ask in the reviews if you don't understand some of the words/terminology I use.

Chapter 1: Intrada

So they had finally left. No one could really believe it yet, of course; the idea that the sunshine of the Sohmas had left and taken that cloud, now not so stormy, with her, had still not sunk in with those who were left behind. The Rabbit, rosining his bow, still looked up eagerly when he heard the knock on his door, as if expecting the half-a-face smile and cheerful voice of Tohru-kun. Nevertheless, he was not altogether disappointed when all that poked inside was the fluffy white hair of Hatsuharu.

"Yo," was the enthused greeting.

"Nice to see you, Haru! Ah, and," opening the door wider, "Rin!"

She nodded curtly in reply and wordlessly took off her shoes, entering. Haru followed behind, one hand smartly placed on the small of her back. Momiji closed the door gently and turned around. Haru took a brief glance around the sunshine-spilt room.

"Not as spacious as your room back at the main house," he said, "but it certainly holds your personality in better."

Momiji grinned and prudently refrained from looking over the walls, plastered with posters of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, pictures of Tohru (oh, and also the others), and miscellaneous rabbit paraphernalia. "Suits me fine," he said. "Besides, I feel like I have more room to breathe here than I ever did over there." Ultimately, it was the kind of place where someone felt relaxed, comfortable.

Haru joined Rin on an oversized, overstuffed bean bag on the floor. "Our place is bigger," he bragged. Rin turned her large, unsettling dark-blue eyes on him and blinked, purposely. Haru got the hint and became slightly "sunburnt" around the cheeks. Momiji ignored this statement, since although he disapproved of the nature of Haru and Rin's relationship, neither was he going to condemn their way of living. Instead, he nimbly changed the subject.

"Last year of high school, finally!" he said, grinning widely and leaning against the black coat-tails of the conductor of the Tokyo Phil. "Granted," his countenance falling somewhat, "Some of the life will have left that school."

Haru, unwisely taking the opportunity to notice the certain picture Momiji's eyes drifted to, commented, "Yeah, well at least she's taken the cat with her." Then, realizing the bluntness of what he had just said, blundered, "I mean, it's not like it's a good thing he's gone, too, I mean he was rather fun to fight once in a while and when you really think about it…"

"Yeah, yeah, don't try to cover up," Rin said, looking away. "In any case, things certainly seem a bit…bare…around here now."

Haru, who had taken the opportunity to stare at such "bare" areas on his girlfriend's person, reddened more and subsided.

Yes, things were more bare, thought Momiji after the couple had left. Life was more bare…like a tapestry worn thin. The colors were not as bright; the fringe had been torn away. He hadn't really realized until she had left just what she had meant to him. Three years trying to cover up his feelings…more successfully than Kyo, at least. But he had known from the beginning he couldn't have her. So this was it, then…a lifeless life. Something to do…he needed something to do. Something to patch up the holes in the thread-bare tapestry.

It was fortunate, therefore, that a week before the fall term began, he discovered the poster outside the ice-cream shop.

"City orchestra…blah blah blah...looking for local talent from ages 16 up…more blah...call ###-###-####...ask for Batsushi Fujita. Hmm…"

Pencil, rabbit mini-notebook. "Batsushi Fujita, funny name," he muttered aloud. "I wonder if he'll let me call him Shi-san. Not likely."

The ten minutes after the first day of school left him staring at his watch and wondering what to do. "Shi-san" had gruffly informed him that he ought to arrive at the concert hall at six o'clock, and to have his violin ready. His apartment was on the opposite side from school, so there was really no point to head back there for twenty minutes.

"Ah, time to kill," he said nonchalantly. "Hmm, what to do? What to do? Ah, I've got it!" he said finally. "Popsicle!"

Yet, when he arrived in front of the frozen-food section of the market, he found himself unwilling to open that glass door. Cheerful red, yellow and blue boxes greeted him from inside, but for some reason he couldn't reach inside. When was the last time he had eaten one of these durned things? Oh, yes, with that cheerful brown-haired young lady, the one fondly called "Tohru-chan".

He turned away. There was no joy in popsicles without her to share them.

He took a deep sigh and wandered aimlessly up and down aisles. A squat, plump jar eyed him from the shelf, and he narrowed his eyes at it. They stood there for a minute, staring at each other. It insolently refused to blink, so Momiji did, first. "Ah, damn you," he said, and suddenly realized that there were more staring at him than the pickle jar. To be specific, a mother with two children playing in her long skirt, a junior-high boy with bandaged knees, and an elderly man leaning on a cane, who hobbled up to him and said, "Do you need any help, sonny?"

"Ah, no," said Momiji, turning slightly red (had he ever done that before?) and flusteredly picked up the jar and walking to the cashier.

"350 yen, kudasai," from behind the counter elicited a digging-through pockets for change, and, deaf to the cashier's offer of a bag, the somewhat embarrassed young man walked out of the market, pickle jar under arm.

It was the first thing she noticed. Stopping at E flat in the middle of her B flat minor warm-up scales, she unconsciously stood up, scooting the bench farther away from the piano as she did so. The rehearsal room suddenly went out of focus in favor of the object of her admiration.

Ah, her favorite thing in the world!

Momiji, setting the pickles underneath his chair amid bemused glances from the other violin and viola players, noticed the slight young lady at the piano staring at him. He smiled and raised a hand in greeting, and then sat down to arrange the sheet music he had been given on the stand in front of him. This proved to be a bit of a trick. As soon as he had neatly placed the music on the stand, it immediately shifted ten degrees to the left, and said music slid off said stand onto the floor. When he had finally balanced the stand to his satisfaction, the bass trombone, fat, balding, slightly puffing out of breath, knocked the stand to the right as he hurried by; so the process began again. He had just begun the well-practiced process of tuning his strings when he suddenly became conscious of a presence standing directly in front of him. When he looked up, he beheld the close-up version of the young lady at the piano. She looked like one of those people who try to make the people around her comfortable and happy, but who also have more than the usual helping of humor. She also looked as though she might have an evil side. Frankly, Momiji was amused.

"Ah, ah, shitsurei shimasu," she said, in a voice that could have belonged to a female Yuki, (of course, would there be any difference?) "are those…pickles?"

"Hai," said Momiji, smiling, albeit somewhat confusedly. "Would you like one?"

"Oh, please don't go out of your way for me…"

"Dozo!"

"Itadakimasu," said the young lady, not waiting to be asked again, and immediately opened the jar he offered her, picking out a spear and eating it in three bites. Momiji fought to keep his laughter inside. As it was, he succeeded in making his face rather red. Hers was too, of course, having eaten the blessed thing the way she had.

"You enjoy cucumber pickles, then?" he asked, a stubborn muscle in his cheek twitching.

"Ahhh, I'm afraid I've made a nuisance of myself," she said, turning redder (if it were possible), and looking away.

He screwed the lid tightly back on and offered her his (rabbit embroidered) handkerchief, which she delicately wiped her fingers on and gave back to him. "Not at all," he said, thinking rather that he needed the distraction of light, unconscious comedy to tear his mind away for the topic which generally haunted his mind. "I hope you enjoyed it."

"Oh, hai!" she said, eagerly, looking up at him. As she did, he noticed how large her dark-green eyes were, like pines in November, and smiled gently, thinking that, perhaps, she wasn't bad-looking, despite her awkwardness. She noticed the gaze and, since her face was as red as red could get, turned purple instead.

"Ahem, ahem, attention, please!" the conductor said. The young lady looked up and hurried back to her brown parlor-grand (Chicago Irving, if you wanted to know) piano. Certainly, "Shi-san" did not look like the pictures of the conductors in the orchestras Momiji had pored over. He wore glasses that were most likely bifocals, gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. Although for his face he might have been in his fifties, his posture and gait betrayed him for his late sixties. He tapped on the stand with his baton and said, "Let's begin from concert letter D, please, in the Mendelssohn Konzertstücke."

It was fortunate that Momiji was a good sight-reader, or he soon would have become lost in the flurry of notes that strung out as pearls on manuscript paper. He noted that the players around him, far fewer first violins than in a real orchestra, were struggling with the notes almost as much as he was. The bassoon was slightly sharp, as if the player had tried too hard to tune it, and the second horn…ah, the second horn. Oh, well, he had gotten himself into this, now, and he wasn't going to back down.

However, he was very glad when rehearsal finally ended, an hour and a half later. The sky was beginning to fade into navy, and his right shoulder was sore after having been jabbed half-a-dozen times by the tip of the bow of the violinist sitting too close to him. He loosened the hair on his bow and put his violin carefully away. Then he bent over and picked up those pickles, which he had the slight feeling had been mocking him ever since the start of rehearsal. When he straightened, he realized that the same presence from earlier was standing in front of him.

"I…I didn't introduce myself from earlier," she said, bowing and incidentally banging her head into the stand slightly, which tilted and rocked its three extraordinarily uneven feet. "My name is Hime Michiko. I'm the pianist…when they need one."

"Hajimemashite, Hime-san," Momiji said, standing up and bowing in his turn, carefully avoiding said stand. "My name is…"

"Michiko!" She turned at the sound of her name, and they both saw a middle-aged man, tall and slightly-built, waving at her from the doorway leading outside.

"Je viens, Pere!" she said, and turning back to Momiji said, "I need to leave. Please treat me well in our future encounters."

"Kochira koso," replied Momiji, but she had already left.

Notes:

Kudasai: please

Shisturei shimasu: excuse me; I'm making a nuisance of myself

Hai: yes

Dozo: help yourself

Itadakimasu: thank you for the food

Hajimemashite: nice to meet you

Kochira koso: same to you