A/N:

Hello there! So to those who had read this story (the older version): omg guys, guess what's back! Yes, The Pianist!

After neglecting the story for a long time, I've decided to rewrite it. It was easier than dealing with the old piece. Besides, I've finally realised what I want to do with the story, how I want it to turn out, and I can assure you that it's going to be a punch in the throat.

It started off as a silly love-story, and now it grows into so much more. Hopefully.

So, what's new in the rewritten story? I've cut out the inner monologues. As I've re-read the old piece, Kisa's inner monologues annoyed the hell out of me. I found them unnecessary.

Also, I'm trying to explain Kisa's feelings, memories and such things a little bit more. His struggles with his past, him not understanding why things happened how they happened etc.

Well, hope you enjoy this new, reloaded and rewritten story.^^

Prologue

Almost like in those hyped, famous shoujo anime series, the sun was shining bright and the gentle breeze made the curtains fly when Kisa stepped into the house. He was following something – a melodic piano music that made his heart race fast and his face go red. He loved this song. It was slow, but not the sad kind of slow. Cheerful, you could almost dance to it.

Whenever he asked Yoshida Ryou what this song was, he would never tell. He would always just smile and it always made Kisa forget what he wanted to know. He just enjoyed the music without the chance of knowing what it was so he could maybe download it and listen to it wherever he was without Yoshida.

When he finally reached the room, he stopped, his smile grew wider. He couldn't take his eyes off of the brunet boy playing that piano. It felt magical, as if it wasn't even real. Kisa leaned against the opened door and watched Yoshida playing. His eyes were closed, no emotion showed on his face. Anyone who watched him like Kisa did now would know he was only physically in the room – otherwise he was in a state of mind that Kisa didn't really understand. He was somewhere else as he played.

"Look, who stopped by," he suddenly said without missing a key on the keyboard.

"Come on, why would I not stop by?" Kisa chuckled.

Yoshida now stopped playing, and the sudden pause made the melodic, peaceful music end in a very grotesque way.

"Listen… I need to tell you something," Yoshida said now, biting his bottom lip as he turned to Kisa with this serious face.

"Oh, shit," Kisa muttered. His heart which was beating so fast from happiness and excitement now felt like it skipped a beat.

"Kisa, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

A moment of silence. Yoshida seemed to search the words to express his thoughts and feelings, and Kisa wanted to run away now. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear it. But he waited patiently.

"I came to realise that the things between us…"

"…just aren't gonna work," Kisa finished the sentence. "How did you come to this conclusion after three years?"

"I–"

"You know, what? Save it." Kisa was fighting hard against his tears. "Thanks for the past few years, Yoshida. I appreciate everything you did for me."

He said that without any sarcasm. He left the room without a final goodbye, and just run and run until he was far enough from that house. The sun that was shining so bright now was hidden by storm clouds, and soon enough, it got colder and started raining.

And Kisa was sitting on a bench in an abandoned park, trying to figure out where the things could have gone wrong.

And after getting soaking wet from the rain and crying his eyes out, he understood it.

He got his heart broken because he had chosen the wrong person. Again.

Chapter One – Yukina Kou

Silence. Peaceful silence filled the classroom as people were working on their tests. It was almost mid-term, the end of autumn, and whenever Kisa looked up at his students, all he had seen were tired, sleepy eyes and faces. Even he was thanking god that it was the last class today. Getting tests ready for different classes and different years was just exhausting – probably as exhausting as, for the students, getting ready for these tests.

He turned back to his papers and textbooks, correcting tests of other classes.

"I'm done, professor," someone said, and Kisa slowly turned his gaze up to meet this brunet student. Yukina Kou, that was his name. Well, Kisa wasn't sure about that. Memorising hundreds of names made him confuse one student with another.

"That was fast," Kisa breathed. He didn't want to be too loud.

"I hope I didn't screw up, though," the boy said, shrugging. "Can I?"

"Oh, yeah, you can leave."

Yukina Kou smiled and left the classroom. Kisa sighed. Soon, more people handed in their tests, and in a little bit more than thirty minutes, everyone was out of the classroom, except Kisa. He grabbed all the tests, counted them one more time to see if everyone turned theirs in, and only after that did he leave the room.

The corridor wasn't as noisy as it always was in the daytime. The setting sun painted everything orange and purplish, even the corridor. Kisa hurried back to the office and started correcting the tests. He had to give them back by next week, and there students of five classes had already done their tests, and there was one more to go.

"Why are you still here?"

Looking up, his eyes met the glance of the vice dean, Yokozawa-sensei, and the dean himself, Miyagi.

"I'm correcting test, Yokozawa-sensei," Kisa replied tiredly.

"Are you well prepared, though?" Yokozawa asked now.

Yokozawa Takafumi, in Kisa's opinion, was irritating. He always tried to show how much better he was and that he'd always done his work right in time. It wasn't like Kisa had ever ran out of time when it came to his work. But somehow, Yokozawa did everything faster, and he always found a way to shove it in Kisa's face. Why? Because he was the vice dean.

On the other hand, Miyagi liked him. Kisa didn't know why. Probably because of his incredible work.

"Just leave him alone," the dean rolled his eyes. "What's the point in arguing if he does everything on time?"

"I'm just making sure nothing goes wrong, that's all," Yokozawa replies in this deep tone.

Kisa sighed and put all his stuff in his bag.

"I'll be leaving now," he said as he put on his scarf and winter coat. "See you tomorrow."

"It's Saturday tomorrow," Miyagi-sensei said and Kisa turned around with a frown.

"It's not?"

"It's Friday, Miyagi," Yokozawa cut in, and Kisa couldn't help but notice that Yokozawa-sensei didn't use any honorifics. Were they this close? Well, Kisa didn't really have the time to mind that. He waved and left the office to the deserted corridor.

As he left the huge building of the university, the cold breeze felt painful against his face. He took a shaky breath and walked to the bus stop. It was crowded as usual, young students were probably on their way out to drink and party. Kisa had never had that. When he was their age, he focused on his degree to be a teacher which he desperately wanted to be. He never gone out to party and drink himself to death.

Well, he had gone out a few times to gay bars and hooked up with different guys that were closest to him and looked decent. He would let them buy some drink, and in less than an hour, he would be making out with them, and in another hour, they were all in his bed. That was how he spent his twenties.

After that certain day…

He sighed as he pressed the stop button, and as soon as the bus stopped, he got off, massaging his temples.

Again. He thought about Yoshida again. For ten years, he had been trying his best to hide the memories of that brunet boy, tried to forget him and get over him, but he failed. Every single time, he failed.

The little apartment he lived in was so silent that it was sometimes physically painful. Kisa still remembered the days he had brought Yoshida up to this apartment, drinking wine on hot summer days and hot chocolate on cold winter nights.

And every time he couldn't help but remember him, his heart clenched. He felt the urge to hit the wall right now. He just wanted to get rid of these memories somehow, in some way, but he couldn't. The feeling of not being good enough for someone who meant the world to him was just too much to forget. Even after ten years.

He took a quick shower and continued his work until midnight. It turned his mind off and he only concentrated on the tests. The exhaustion made him fall asleep right after he finished correcting the tests.

And he dreamed. As he always did almost every single night since the breakup. It was exhausting to wake up every night, choking on tears, feeling unbearably lonely without Yoshida. There was a short period of time when Kisa could have sworn he had been over it. But he had to admit that he wasn't. No matter how long it had been, no matter how many people he had been with, he just couldn't completely erase the memories and the pain Yoshida left.

And the worst part was that he had never found out why Yoshida broke up with him ten years ago. And it was still haunting him to this day.

His heart was beating fast in his chest as he reached for the glass of water he left on the night stand before sleep. He hated this. He hated that he wasn't over Yoshida, he hated that he was left behind without answers, and he hated that no one on this Earth was able to make him forget that boy.

Damn.

One hell of a day. That's how Fridays felt. At least for Kisa. The last school day on the week, and it felt the longest of all. One class after another, one group of thirty or forty people after another. And some of those classes had only just written their tests.

Kisa sighed. At least in his last class he didn't have to think about the tests. Damn mid-term.

He walked in, put his stuff down, read the names, then told them where to open the book and what to do. The class worked in silence while he checked if everything was going alright.

He taught English. Some students walked up to him, asking question about grammar and spelling. And every time, Kisa would explain everything all over again patiently. And then this boy came. Yukina Kou.

"I'm sorry, I just feel like something's not right," he said as he reached Kisa's table. Kisa looked up at him, and his heart pounded.

Damn this guy.

His face just reminded him of Yoshida…

He swallowed down his feelings as he pulled Yukina's notebook closer to read.

"It's all okay," Kisa frowned. "Why did you think it wasn't?"

"I mean this sentence just felt like I used Japanese word order instead of English, and..." Yukina now pointed at said sentence, and his finger touched the skin on Kisa's hand.

"There's no problem with that sentence," Kisa managed to say, pulling his hand away from Yukina's. "It's perfect. Well done."

Yukina grinned and said a quick thank you as he hurried back to his seat. On the other hand, Kisa couldn't even smile. Maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks with him, but for that moment, Kisa honestly thought it was Yoshida standing right in front of him. Well it wasn't possible anyway. He's thirty as well as Kisa is, he wouldn't be in a university.

Finally, the class was over, and Kisa went to the office to grab his stuff, and was ready to leave the school, but something hit him.

And it hit him hard. Right in the stomach.

From the distance, he could hear music. Piano music. It was possibly coming from the music room, and before he could think about what he was doing, he rushed towards that certain room. He ran as fast as he could to reach the music, the music that was playing on the day Yoshida left him.

And just a moment later, he barged into the music room, and that was when he actually thought about what he was doing.

He was running around the corridor which is forbidden. He was running, although he was a thirty-year-old professor.

He opened his mouth to shout the name, to shout his name, but the one who suddenly stopped playing and turned around wasn't Yoshida.

It was Yukina Kou.

"Sensei?" he said slowly with his head tilted to the side. He must have been confused that a professor just barged into the music room.

"Yukina-san..." Kisa breathed. His heart just wasn't going to stop racing. "You should be home by now. Why are you still here?"

"Probably for the same reason you barged in." He laughed at his own joke. Well, Kisa assumed it was a joke. "Okay, well, I play the piano almost every Friday. I just love this thing. It calms my nerves and helps me study later. I mean, it totally helps me focus."

"Uh-huh..." Kisa slowly nodded. Although the things Yukina said stuck in his head. That was exactly what Yoshida said when they started dating. That was the same reason he played the piano. What the hell?

"Everything okay, professor?" Yukina asked now, his eyes narrowed. "I don't mean to be rude or anything, but I've never experienced such a thing. I mean, a prof barging into any classrooms."

Yukina laughed softly, and Kisa didn't really know what to say.

"I didn't mean to barge in, I was just, you know, checking who it was," Kisa ended up saying.

"Well, that makes sense."

Yukina threw a grin, then reached for his coat and bag.

"That's right, go home, you should be on your way home," Kisa said, forcing a smile.

"I'm twenty-one, professor, I can take care of myself," Yukina chuckled. "It's not gonna hurt if I stay a little after class to play piano."

"Not, it won't, but if you disappear on your way home we'll be the first ones to be suspicious, so be careful!"

Yukina laughed loudly, and even Kisa smiled a little. All the things he said to Yukina was just made up to cover his silly act. But yet, Kisa felt like these words were true.

And he felt like he had to take care of this kid.

Just because he looked like Yoshida.