Author Note: Hey everybody, this is a new fic I'm working on for NaNoWriMo 2016. It is a very very slow burn NozoEli, so buckle your seat belt and get ready for a long ride.

Glossary:

String Orchestra: An orchestra consisting of violins, violas, cellos, and string basses. It has 5 sections total, including two violin sections.

Dynamics: Markings that indicate the volume to play at. Fortissimo is marked by ff, and means to play extremely loudly. It is usually the loudest dynamic use. The next one is forte, which is marked by f. It means to play loudly. Mezzo forte, mf, is next, and it means to play at a medium volume. Mezzo piano, mp, is a little quieter that mf. Piano, p, means to play quietly, and pianissimo, pp, means to play extremely quietly. Most pieces do not go louder that fortissimo or quieter than pianissimo.

BPM: Stands for beats per minute. Lower numbers indicate slower songs while higher numbers indicate faster ones.

Shoulder Rest: A small object that attaches to the bottom of a violin or viola to help hold it on the shoulder of the player. Google it if you are interested in seeing what once looks like.

Crescendo: A steady increase in volume. Playing in one dynamic and slowly raising the volume to another dynamic. Playing louder over time. Marked in music by a big greater than sign.

Decrescendo: The opposite of a crescendo. Playing quieter over time. Marked in music by a big less than sign.

August 27th

When Eli moved across the country she wasn't sure what to expect. She'd lived in Florida for her entire life; she'd never even been out of state before. When she had to pack up and move to Michigan she had no idea what the future would bring. She made sure to pack all of her belongings, which all fit in about five large boxes. Subsequently, those boxes fit into her car for the long drive north. She moved during the summer, and though she'd already been there for a few days it didn't feel real until her school schedule arrived in the mail.

The mail came while Eli was working on unpacking her belongings. She'd arrived a few days before, but had only unpacked one of the boxes. Her Grandmother's apartment had a guest room which she converted into a bedroom for Eli. Arisa, Eli's younger sister, took over the den as her space. The plan was for Eli and Arisa to stay there until they finished their schooling. Eli wasn't sure about staying through college; she'd already applied to schools in Florida.

The room itself contained a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a closet, a window, and a desk with a mirror on it. If Eli looked out the window she could see the rare car drive by. The furniture filled most of the room, but once Eli cleared out the boxes invading the space she'd be able to move about the room freely. As it was, she could only take a few steps in from the door. She had to hop over a box to reach her bed, and then another to reach the dresser.

Eli started that day with unpacking the box preventing her from entering the room properly, which just happened to contain one of her most prized possessions. When she was packing, Eli thoroughly wrapped the item in bubble wrap to keep it from being damaged. She put it in a box full of packing peanuts and hoped it would be enough. Her knees were starting to stiffen up from the strain after only a few jumps.

As she cut the tape on the box, she thought it looked unharmed. She pulled the item out, making sure to leave stray peanuts in the box. After cutting the bubble wrap with care, Eli opened the case to check on the instrument. Her viola looked the same as normal, and her bow survived the journey as well. The strings had slipped slightly out of tune, but that was easily fixed. The bow was in decent shape and only needed to be tightened a little before use.

As Eli was admiring the instrument she heard a soft knock on the door. Her Grandmother stood in the entrance, holding a large pile of envelopes. She reached toward Eli with one of them as the teen closed her case and turned to face her.

"Dear, a letter came from the school." Her Grandmother said quietly as Eli reached over to accept the envelope. It read on the front 'To Eli Ayase' and the return address was to a school called Otonokizaka High School. Eli had officially transferred over the summer, and she was all set to start as a senior during the 2016-2017 school year.

As Eli ran one finger under the sealed paper, she wondered what the year would have in store for her. She peeled the envelope open, removing the folded paper with care. Unfolded, it revealed her schedule for the year. Her schedule looked like this:

1st Hour Pre Calculus – 506 – Kurosawa

2nd Hour Symphony Orchestra – 102 – Sakurauchi

3rd Hour Physics – 804 – Tsushima

Lunch

4th Hour World History – 704 – Kunikida

5th Hour Spanish – 613 – Watanabe

6th Hour English – 408 – Ohara

Eli's eyes were immediately drawn to 2nd hour, symphony orchestra. She had sent in an audition via video recording for the orchestra, and was confident that it would be good enough. Ms. Sakurauchi, who she spoke to over the phone, said there were two different orchestras she could be placed into. The symphony orchestra was the better one, while everyone who couldn't cut it was placed in the Philharmonic Orchestra. Luckily she'd made it. She wasn't sure how her Grandmother would react if she were in the other one; it was a matter of family pride.

Another important aspect of the schedule were the classroom numbers. Eli made note of them in her mind, hoping that they wouldn't be too difficult to find on the first day of school. Her locker number and combo was also listed on the paper, so she took a photo of it with her phone. She wanted to be all ready for the first day of school.

"How does your schedule look?" Eli had almost forgotten about her Grandmother standing in the doorway as she looked back up in surprise. Oops, she thought to herself, she hadn't been paying attention again.

"It looks good." Eli replied with a small nod. "I got into the orchestra."

"That's my girl." Her Grandmother moved as if to reach for a hug, but pulled back as she reconsidered stepping over the boxes. "I've got some sandwiches in the fridge if you get hungry. I'm going to give Arisa her letter next."

"Thanks." Eli waved her out. She looked down at the schedule again, smiling softly at the creased paper. She was going to make this year work. Even if her whole life was upside down, with orchestra she could make it work.

With a small grunt, Eli hoisted her viola case onto the bed. She re-opened it, undoing the small strap holding the instrument in place. The A string made a sad flat sound, and she turned the tuning peg until the A sounded about right. A quick grab of the shoulder rest and a tightening of the bow and she was ready to tune the rest of the instrument. She gave each string careful consideration, slowly bringing them all into tune.

The rest of her unpacking could wait. After all, school was starting soon and she needed to be prepared.

September 6th

"beep beep beep beep beep click"

Eli reached over with one hand to shut off the device that interrupted her precious sleep. It went off right on time, bright and early at 5:30. Despite it's timeliness, Eli groaned at it in annoyance. She asked herself for not the first time why high school started so early in the morning.

She reluctantly rolled out of bed to start getting ready for the day. Things she needed to do included pick what to wear, pack her school bag, not forget her viola, decide how much makeup to put on, and make sure her hair was perfect. She wanted to make a good first impression at school.

By the time Eli was ready to leave it was already 6:30. According to her schedule, the first bell would ring at 7:15, so she needed to be at the school by 7:00. She stuffed her backpack into her small car, which she'd bought during Junior year in Florida, along with her viola, which she set down with a bit more care. She drove away from the apartment at 6:40 and pulled up to the school at 6:55. It took her a few minutes to find a parking space in the large lot, but once she did she took her belongings and entered the building.

The school was about the same size as the one she attended before. It consisted of long crisscrossing hallways and was built almost entirely out of large white bricks. Students milled about in the halls, greeting each other after the summer and catching up on the gossip. They barely noticed the new student among them.

Much to her surprise, Eli was able to find her locker with relative ease. It was right near the entrance to the school, so she just followed the locker numbers until she found it. It took a couple tries to enter her combination correctly, but she was able to complete the task. Once the locker was open she had to decide what to put in it. At her last school, she carried her backpack around during the day, but kept her instrument stored in the band wing. It looked like it would fit in the locker, and she didn't want to carry it to her first class, so Eli made a decision.

She lifted the case up and turned it sideways, measuring the length and width with her eyes. It looked like it would fit. With one exaggerated motion she shoved the case into the locker. It protested around the edges, but did slide in with a second good push. Closing it took a little extra force as well, but it did stay shut. This way her viola would be safe until orchestra.

Satisfied with her work, Eli took a step back from her locker. She looked around, and tried to remember what room her first class was in. She drew a blank, so she had to pull her backpack off to look for her schedule. Near the first hour Pre Calculus marking she saw what room it was. Unfortunately, her brief walk through the school hadn't help her learn where any of the classrooms were. If she didn't want to stumble lost around the school, she would need to ask someone.

She glanced around at others in the hallway, looking for a good candidate. She saw a couple of tall guys drinking energy drinks, and decided to keep looking. The next person she saw was a girl who looked to be close to her age. She wore her purple hair in pigtails, and was watching people walk by with piercing green eyes. Eli's breath hitched in her throat at the sight of her; something about this girl caught her attention. Perhaps the girl might be willing to help Eli find her classroom. Even though she needed help, she hesitated. What if the girl laughed at her, and then hated her forever? That would be awful, not to mention a terrible first impression.

No, Eli told herself firmly. Nothing like that would happen, now go talk to her you coward.

Eli spurred herself to other side of the hall where the girl leaned on a locker. "E-excuse me." She cursed in her head for stuttering as her heartrate surged. "Do you know where classroom 506 is?" She did it, somehow.

The girl tilted her head as she looked Eli up and down. "Yeah, do you want me to show you where it is?" She offered as Eli breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yes, please." She managed to say. The other girl nodded and gestured for Eli to follow her. The pair set off down the hall, with the other girl maintaining pace a few steps ahead of Eli.

"So you're a new student?" The girl looked back over her right shoulder to talk to Eli, while somehow managing to maneuver through the crowd.

"Yes, I just moved here this summer." Eli kept her eyes forward as she followed, making sure not to bump into other students.

"Welcome to Otonokizaka." The other girl came to a halt in front of a classroom. "Here's your stop," she said with a grin. Eli looked at the door in amazement. She remembered walking, but she wasn't sure how she'd actually gotten there. It felt like barely any time had passed since they left the lockers.

"Thanks." She said kind of awkwardly. Eli inhaled as if to say something else, but decided against it.

"Feel free to ask me if you're ever lost, the school is kind of a maze." The purple hair girl winked, and Eli felt her cheeks flush pink. "See you around." She waved once before setting off down the hall, probably to arrive on time to her own class. Eli stared after her for a long moment, fighting to get her cool back. The end results were good, she did make it to class, but she stuttered and embarrassed herself in front of someone in the process.

Eli entered the classroom in kind of a daze, picking a seat at random to sit down in. She chose a seat near the front, since Pre Calculus was not her strongest subject. The teacher, Ms. Kurosawa, was a woman in her thirties with long dark hair. She nodded at Eli when she entered, but didn't offer any greeting other than that.

When the bell rang a few minutes later, Eli realized that she never got the name of the girl who helped her. That was okay really, maybe the girl would forget about the stuttering if they didn't know each other's names.

After Pre Calculus, which felt like it took far too long, Eli's next class was Symphony Orchestra. Since she hadn't been paying attention earlier, she knew finding her way back to her locker would be a challenge. She knew she had to turn left out of the room, but exactly how far to walk and where to turn after that was beyond her.

After stalling for a moment, Eli decided to just wing it. Worst case she ended up at orchestra without her viola, which would actually be quite embarrassing. She started walking down the hall, keeping an eye on the locker numbers. Somehow, after closing her eyes and randomly picking two turns, she made it back to her locker. Eli had to look the combo back up to open it, but she was able to recover her instrument. It was hard to pull out of the locker, since it barely fit inside in the first place.

Once it was released, the next task was to find the orchestra room. She was pretty sure she saw an arrow pointing to the auditorium up on the walls in the building, and the orchestra room was usually right near the auditorium. At least, that was how it was in her old school.

She set off in that direction, keeping her ears perked for the sound of strings. She followed the arrow through one left turn, then burst out of a crowd into students into a nearly empty hallway. At the end, there were three sets of doors. The one on the left had windows leading to the outside, while the one on the right led to another hallway in the school. Dead ahead lay the entrance to the auditorium. Eli's eyes darted back and forth with the prospect of choice, but her only real option was to turn right.

After she pushed through the door she heard the familiar sound of tuning strings. It drifted from a propped open door at the end of the short hallway. Eli double checked the number as she approached, confirming that it was the right room.

As she entered, Eli felt her heart rate settle. The familiar tiled floors and open space invited her in. Chairs sat in their typical arcs with small gaps between each section. Most of the students had already arrived, and some had started tuning. The first and second violin sections consisted of about twelve people each, while the cellos had about eight and the bassists in the back had three. None of the cellists or bassists had instruments yet, since they needed to be assigned school ones. The section Eli strolled towards, the viola section, had seven people sitting in it. In the last row there was one extra seat.

Eli hesitated before sitting down in it, since she definitely wasn't a last person in the section kind of player. At her old school she'd sat first. But all the other seats were taken, and if she wanted to move up she'd actually have to talk to someone. Eli paled at the thought, convincing herself to sit down in the empty chair. She cast a short glance at the boy sitting next to her, and was grateful that he was too preoccupied with fighting with his strings to notice her. Every time he turned the peg for his A string, it slipped right back out of tune.

Her instrument case went to her left, and her backpack went beneath the chair. She unlocked the case and pulled it open, removing her viola along with the bow and the shoulder rest. Once it was all together, Eli joined the rest of the class in tuning. A small smile formed on her face; finally something felt familiar here.

Less than a minute later the bell rang. Its last tones died out as a young woman with long red hair emerged from what looked like an office. She carried a large pile of papers in her arms, that from a distance looked like music. Hopping up onto the podium, she smiled out at the class.

"Hello everyone, my name is Ms. Sakurauchi. As many of you know I teach orchestra here." That got a chuckle from a few students, but Eli wasn't sure why it was funny. "We're going to do a few things today, including sight reading some of our new pieces and assigning instrument lockers. Please take one and pass back the music coming to you right now." Ms. Sakurauchi took a small portion of her stack off the top and handed it to the first stand of first violins, then another to the second violins, and then the violas. Eli stopped watching Ms. Sakurauchi when the first piece of music reached her hands.

As each piece was passed back, Eli looked over them carefully. One caught her eye. It was a piece by Tchaikovsky titled Serenade for Strings. Ms. Sakurauchi had given them the first movement along with the last one. The first movement, titled Pezzo in forma di Sonatina, looked manageable to Eli. It was marked in 6/8 time with a tempo marker of andate non troppo. Eli wasn't sure what non troppo meant, but she knew andante meant that it would start slowly, at about 70-80 beats per minute. The piece was in C major, which was kind of a relief. That meant there would not be any sharps or flats to mark from the beginning. The first measure was marked fortissimo, and Eli circled that marking with her pencil. She went through the piece in this manner, marking changes in tempo or volume. She also circled part D because it looked like it would need extra practice. By the time she was done it was the viola sections turn to receive their locker assignments.

Eli left her instrument on her chair as Ms. Sakurauchi called the group over to the lockers in the corner opposite of the entrance. "Alright viola section, these will be your lockers. The first one here belongs to Maki." She handed a red headed girl Eli presumed to be Maki a slip of paper that probably contained the locker combination. "The second one is Eli's." The slip of paper felt small in Eli's hand, as if she might lose it at even the slightest disturbance. She looked down at the combo and vowed to commit it to memory.

After Ms. Sakurauchi finished assigning the viola lockers, Eli went back to her seat to continue looking at her new music. She was in the process of trying to decide whether a note should be up bow or down bow when the cellists left to get their cello assignments. Eli glanced their way for only a moment, but that was long enough to see something surprising. The girl who helped her earlier was in the cello section. She grinned happily next to a more serious looking girl with dark blue hair.

As Ms. Sakurauchi started assigning them cellos, Eli kept her ears turned that way to try and learn the girls name. She was barely able to hear them, but she managed to make out the name Nozomi. That was a good name; she thought it suited the friendly girl.

That information was not enough to get Eli to start a conversation with her though. She'd already embarrassed herself by not knowing how to get to class and not being able to speak properly, why make it worse?

Making a point to not look over at the cellos, Eli focused on being ready for sight reading. She marked up the finale as well, making note of the andante tempo, the G major key, and the time signature which was 2/4.

By the time she was done all of the cellos and bassists were ready to tune. Ms. Sakurauchi took to the podium, pulling the classes' attention back to herself. She raised one hand and gestured for the first chair violinist, a young woman with bobbed brown hair, to play a tuning A. She did so, and Eli raised her viola to check her tuning. She sounded ok, so she quickly checked the other strings as well. Each student did the same, and after about thirty seconds the whole orchestra was as close as they were going to get to in tune.

"We're going to start with the Tchaikovsky. Set your page to movement one." She waited for the flutter of papers to die down. "This is in 6/8 time, so make sure to count in threes. The tempo starts slow, so watch me for every beat." She raised her arms, and Eli put her instrument in place. Eli's fingers aligned over the two notes she needed to play in the first measure. Ms. Sakurauchi gave them three beats, then they were off.

The first thing Eli noticed as she played was that the boy in her row was very out of time and out of tune. He seemed be sharp one note then flat the next. She also noticed that the two girls sitting in front of her were only slightly better. They played a few lines before Ms. Sakurauchi cut the group off and grinned at the orchestra.

"Not bad for your first time, I think we can handle this piece. Now let's try that opening again. Make sure you're coming in at fortissimo. Don't be afraid to attack that entrance, and make sure you don't miss the crescendo in measures five and six." She raised her arms in a familiar motion, and Eli was prepared.

They played the same part a few more times before moving on to the next segment of the piece. The group had trouble dropping dynamics like the piece wanted them too. Eli in particular struggled with playing quietly, so when she was knocked down to mezzo forte, then piano, then pianissimo, that didn't work easily for her. Nobody could hear her when she played pianissimo, which went against the point of playing. Ms. Sakurauchi scolded their whole section for it, and the group tried again.

Before Eli knew it, it was time to pack up. She looked over at the clock in annoyance, for once wishing that a class would be longer. After popping her case open and stowing her viola, she carried it over to where her new locker was. The code on slip of paper worked, and she was able to deposit her precious instrument in a safe place where it wouldn't get stuck.

"Hi there!" Eli's muscles tensed involuntarily as a chipper voice sounded near her left ear. She spun to face a younger teen with short orange hair and bright yellow eyes. The girl bounced on the balls of her feet as if she couldn't stand still, her hands intertwined in front of her.

"Hello." Eli said to be polite, unable to meet the fierce stare.

"My name is Rin!" The volume level at which Rin spoke was too much for this space. "I heard that you were new and I wanted to introduce myself." Eli thought the girl might go for a handshake, but she didn't. "I'm a sophomore and I play the violin and I sit waaaay over there." Rin gestured with both of her hands.

"I play the viola." Eli contributed to the conversation before glancing over at the clock. "By the way, do you know how to get to room 814?" She thought she might as well ask while another student was there; that way she could avoid a third embarrassing conversation.

"Oh yeah, you go out the door, make a left, take the next left, go straight, make a right, then it's down the hallway on the left." Rin nodded once in affirmation.

"Thank you." Eli wasn't sure what else to say, so she nodded, finished locking her viola away, waved once at the energetic sophomore, and left. She had another class to find, and based on those directions it wasn't going to be easy.