Title: Master Class
Author: Proverbial Pumpkin
Rating: PG for just a tiny swear word.
Pairing: Tohma and Ryuichi friendship, ephemeral mention of K/Tohma.
Summary: When Tohma delivers a master class at a nearby orphanage, K thinks it must be a publicity stunt. Ryuichi knows better.
Disclaimer: I disclaim NOTHING.
"Are you sure this isn't about Shuichi? A little retroactive vengeance, maybe?"
Sometimes I thought K fought with Tohma for fun, but never when it was about music. You can't fight Tohma for fun then, because Tohma will always win.
"Shindou-san's voice is financially viable. His writing is not. You've barely made the top five percent in sales this fiscal year. He's inconsistent. Another change is necessary, and Nakano-san shows considerable promise."
"He's never written anything I've seen. Shuichi writes, Hiro plays, it sounds good." K was not happy, which made me nervous. I was hiding under Tohma's desk. Well, not hiding – we all knew I was there. Just waiting.
Tohma was patient, too, even though he and I had somewhere to be. "It could sound better."
"Not from Hiro."
"Surely you wouldn't underestimate a young, willing musician?" Tohma was mocking Bad Luck, but just a little bit. "He improvises solos as well as I do. Ask him if he's considered composition. You may be surprised."
K didn't believe him. "Shuichi's the best you've got, outside Nittle Grasper. Whether you like it or not. If you stifle him and it pushes him the wrong way, almost half of NG takes a dive with him." I picked at a lint ball on the floor by Tohma's shoes, listening.
"A little collaboration shouldn't 'stifle him.' Is he or is he not a professional?"
"A professional musician. You know it's still about the music for him. If it even ever was for you. So why don't you drop your vendetta, get out of his way, and let him make his songs?"
Tohma's eyes looked sharp then, and even scarier from down below. "K-san, there is no vendetta. You can think what you will about my personal opinion of Shindou-san, but I've done more for his music than anyone. I'm the president. And now I want Nakano-san writing. If you haven't addressed it with them by the time Sakuma-san and I return this evening, I'll do it myself."
I heard K grumble something over me, and smiled up and Tohma from below. Tohma wins.
The argument dropped out of K's voice. "When will you be back? Should I wait here later... or meet you at your… "
I lifted my head off the floor, but he either changed his mind or something I couldn't see in Tohma's face shut him up.
"…Downtown office?" he finished. I didn't hear Tohma answer, and K cleared his throat and picked up something from Tohma's desk.
"Fill me in on this event you're doing. A one-off, nearby?"
"No. A master class. It's a charity...thing."
I knew, from my desk cave, that it was more important than that. Tohma had more than Bad Luck to worry about. He'd spent weeks making arrangements for this afternoon. From what I'd heard while he was on the phone, we were also donating things. Instruments, computers, software. To a school, a place where kids who've been hurt go, to get better.
"Ah. Got your camera guys there already? Good photo-op while you're there, I guess."
"I don't believe the invitation was extended to them."
K was reading, I could see his black shoes. "St. Jude's School and Orphanage?" I heard him flip a page. "From abusive homes and relationshi- really? You're giving a master class at a fucking orphanage and you're not even taking the press? Why?"
Tohma snatched the papers from him. "If Sakuma-san and I want to step outside NG without our entire PR team flanking us from both sides, that's our prerogative."
"Alright, but why them? Why... assaulted teenagers?"
I laid my head down on the floor. I'd wanted to ask the same question, but I knew K wouldn't get an answer. If Tohma actually wants to be nice to some Tokyo kids who've been hurt, that's not the kind of thing he'll explain to anyone. I was going along, and that was good enough for me. The trick with Tohma is to take what you can get. Sometimes the questions answer themselves, sometimes they don't.
Tohma had lots of instruments delivered there earlier, and now I counted exactly thirteen boys, each sitting behind a keyboard looking at Tohma at the front. It was fun seeing him at a plain old keyboard, the same type the kids had. When he plays with me, he's behind two giant synthesizers or the kind of piano only people like us can afford.
The kids were all a little worn-out looking, sort of damp and faded behind their shiny new keyboards. I'd met some of them, let the younger ones toss around Kumagaroo when we first arrived and caused a stir. Some woman whose job was to watch them had let us play while she talked to Tohma. Now, she came in and out to check on us, and made them each tell us their names. "Lee." "Michael." "Jhoni." Tohma looked them each in the eye and listened, but he knew thirteen was too many to try to remember them all. I remembered them.
Then Tohma began, an introduction to music for young people with generally unhappy lives. But at the same time, Tohma talked like they were adults, like they had more sense than me, although he kept an eye on the littler ones. I sat in the back, and watched how he glanced towards the smaller boys now and then, and re-worded things so they were easier to understand. He'd play at his keyboard, with fun little modal surprises just because he could, but only after he did things simple, easy, maybe so that little guy in the back didn't look so scared. Every once in a while the woman stuck her head in and I waved to her.
About an hour in, Tohma had just explained improvisation in early keyboard playing. "So we'll take a break in a moment, but first I want you to plug in your headphones... No, the little green hole... Right. And you're free to play. You can try some of what we've talked about today, or do whatever you want. First be sure to test your – "
There was an 'argh!' from somewhere, as somebody pounded into his own eardrums.
"... Volume."
Tohma came back and sat with me while they messed around, thirteen boys at their keyboards, arranged in two rows with space in-between. I had my own seat, and jumped up when he made it back to me. "I think they like you, To-chan."
He knew I was offering him my chair, but didn't sit. "They certainly listen well. But then, I'm used to the likes of you." He was teasing me. Tohma likes to do that, so I like it too. "I'm a little worried about this one, though," he said quietly, pointing just barely to the small boy, very close to us in the back. He had his headphones on, but his hands were balled up in his lap, like he wasn't happy at all. He was looking over at an older boy, who played into his headphones with harsh, fast movements, like he could barely keep the music in. Tohma and I knew that it doesn't matter what a player playing looks like, though. Not until he's got a couple thousand fans in the arena.
I asked Tohma if he'd like to hold Kumagaroo. He said no thank you. Then he got everyone's attention and said "alright, that's good." He sent them all out of the room, to where the woman was waiting to watch them during their break.
"Except you," Tohma said, pointing to the boy in the back, near me. Tohma doesn't always know how to tell people he wants to talk to them without making them very, very frightened.
When everybody else filed out, the boy spun around to watch but stayed put on his bench. It was too big for him, way too big. When they were gone Tohma knelt down in front him, with one arm resting on his knee. He was smiling now, friendly. Maybe Tohma remembered what it's like to be little, and to have big people looming over you all day long. I did. Sometimes I still felt that way. Sometimes I felt smaller than people I was bigger than.
"What's wrong?" Tohma was asking him. "You don't feel like playing today, um...?" Tohma didn't know his name. "...Small boy?" I smiled, listening in, and plopped Kumagaroo on the floor by my sneakers to wait. I remembered the boy's name – it was Marco – but Tohma didn't need it. "You can't think of any music?"
"I'm not good enough," he answered Tohma, and looked over to where the older children had sat, playing fast, all looking very important for twelve-year-olds. "I don't want to play anymore. I want to do something else."
"I see." Tohma was quiet for a second. You wouldn't underestimate a young musician? he'd said. Tohma glanced over his shoulder, to make sure it was only me there. Then he put his hand on the bench next to where the boy sat. Some of the children got nervous easy. I could play with them and the younger ones liked my rabbit, but you shouldn't touch them unless you know it's okay. So Tohma didn't. "Well," he said, "why don't you and I play together for a minute? Then you can leave."
"I'm not as good as you are."
Tohma caught my eye and laughed, a nice laugh I liked hearing the most. "No," he said, "but that's only because you're little. When you're big enough to reach the pedal, I bet you'll be better than I am."
Marco swung his legs a few times under the bench, thinking. He nodded then and Tohma, putting his hand behind the boy's back as lightly as he would with me, turned him back around towards the keyboard. Then he sat next to him. "Let's make it tricky. Just the black keys, okay?" Everyone knows the black keys are trouble. "But only one note at a time. One at a time, black keys only."
I sat down, a couple benches away, trying to look less scary than Tohma sometimes did when he listened in on a new singer or demo at the studio. I wanted to be a friendly audience of one. Two. I arranged Kumagaroo on my right so it looked like he was enjoying himself.
Marco's notes didn't sound like much – he was five or six years old. But that's the secret of the black keys. If you stick to the black keys, and don't play them all at once, they can't sound bad. They sound cryptic and sad. When the boy had played enough of nothing to start repeating some part of it, Tohma joined him with both hands, in D-flat if I heard right. Which I probably did. He'd set Marco on five notes he couldn't possibly mess up, while he played real chords, real rhythms beneath it. Marco knew enough to know it sounded good, and started bouncing his feet along in the air with the beat Tohma had found in his music jibberish. Every once in a while Tohma would slip in a white key, just for the edge of it I guess. I laughed, and helped Kumagaroo clap along. Ladies and gentlemen, for your jazz-styled pentatonic pleasure... Tohma-chan and this Small Boy!
Tohma let him finish on a random note of his choosing, and put in important-sounding, loud flourishes to cap it off so that Marco grinned like they'd just finished something awesome. I clapped hard and stood up in the aisle. Kumagaroo toppled over so I had to fix him. The boy hopped off his stool and clapped too. He smiled so big I saw he'd lost a tooth recently. Good job, boy named Marco. Then suddenly, he put both palms flat on top of the bench, like he was protecting it. "I still want this one when I come back," he told Tohma.
Tohma had known how close he was to giving up on it before. Now the boy looked like he'd be willing to fight Tohma for it.
Now, let's hear your million-yen song.
"Of course you can keep it," Tohma smiled. "We'll start class back up in twenty minutes. Go join your friends." And Marco whizzed by me, and his feet made fast little thudding sounds on the carpet.
Tohma shook his head, just once or twice, as he went. Then he joined me in the aisle. "They're going to be missing you too, Sakuma-san," he told me. "You wouldn't deprive them their new playmate?"
"Nope!"
"Not too much shouting, though, okay? You're showing them some voice exercises when they come back in."
I nodded, starting an old warm-up, getting in key as I marched towards the door to find the kids. "Mmmmminnie-minnie-minnie-minnie, mah, mah, mah! Mmmmm-"
"Not yet, Sakuma-san. Right now you're just playing with them."
I balanced Kumagaroo on my head. Ready to do my part. Behind me Tohma started re-aligning a few benches that had barely been knocked out of line, making everything perfect.
Sometimes Tohma could be mean. I'd seen him make people feel bad and not apologize. But I didn't blame him... I knew him before. I knew the part of him that had never been completely wiped out - it just hid behind the desk sometimes. It was what brought us together in the first place, a long, long time ago.
Some people who are good enough start out not good enough, and Tohma can tell. He knows a thousand ways to put an instrument – a keyboard, a mic, a pen – in someone's hands. Maybe K didn't see, but I did.
Shine out, Shuichi. You'll reach them.
Tohma taught me how to share music.
End.
A/N: This fic, ever so tame, has made me realize that I can't stick with this Naïve!Ryuichi POV for long. It's cute but maddeningly asexual.