a/n: so in the books kumiko actually starts crying after reina says the thing about playing for herself and because the anime unfairly robbed us of this Potential Angst (along with robbing us of yuuko literally attempting to punch mizore in the face) this fic happened
Kumiko had hoped that Reina wouldn't notice the slight tremor in her step, the uneasiness with which she looked at the neon stoplights.
She was not so lucky.
"Kumiko."
"Eh?" Kumiko turned, her mouth open in a comical 'o' shape, to face the girl beside her.
"There's something wrong, isn't there?" There was such determination in her voice, such dead-set knowledge, that Kumiko found herself nodding along before she even realized what Reina had said.
"W-what makes you think that?" Kumiko couldn't think of an excuse, not really, and she once again realized that Reina saw right through her.
"You asked me if I played 'for anyone,' out of nowhere." Reina walked ahead a few paces, her shoes clip-clopping on the pavement. "Wouldn't most people find that weird?"
"You're not most people, Reina." The trumpeter stopped in her tracks.
"Do you need to get home before dark?"
"I, uh, don't think so." Reina gave a hum of satisfaction before holding her hand out to Kumiko as if asking to dance.
"Shall we go, then?"
Kumiko wouldn't have been able to describe how, exactly, she ended up sitting in the parking lot outside a convenience store as the sky turned a bluish-purple hue. Her soda had numbed her hand, the cold pressure nearly forgotten. Reina sat, hunched, in front of the toy dispenser, as she had for the past ten minutes.
"Dammit," she cursed as she cracked open another plastic bubble. "Kawashima told me that Trombone-kun is the worst one." Kumiko held back a snort. "What's so funny?"
"Ah, it's nothing." Reina's eyebrows furrowed, and she put her finger over the keychain so that it shared an identical expression. "Okay, okay! Maybe it's just kinda funny that you're always so cool and mysterious at school, but here you are, surrounded by like, twelve of these things." Kumiko picked up a discarded Flute-kun from where it lay on the ground. "Maybe I'll give this one to Nozomi . . ."
"Don't dodge the subject, Kumiko."
"The subject being . . . ?" Reina let out an exasperated sigh, turning away from the machine.
"You seemed upset about something, or at least unsettled."
"Is this about what I said earlier? Because, really, Reina, it's no-"
"What happened with the second-years?" There was an unusually clinical coldness to Reina's words, a feeling of distance that Kumiko hadn't felt since the beginning of the year - no, since middle school.
"Do you really want the f-full story?" Reina nodded, turning another one of the keychains around in her pale hands. "From what I know - obviously it's not all of it, I was just watching them talk it out and got some tidbits from everyone and-"
"It's fine, Kumiko."
"Y'know how great of an oboist Mizore is?"
"I suppose. If you want the truth, I've always thought that her playing was a bit dry."
"Oh." Kumiko paused for a moment. "W-well, anyway, it turns out that all along, everything she's been doing, all of it . . . it was for Nozomi."
"That's it?"
"Pretty much, yeah." Reina took a long sip of her soda.
"Why did it bother you enough to ask me a vague question and then hug me when I gave you an answer?"
"I guess it's just weird to think about."
"What, her dedication?"
"Clinging to someone so . . . wholeheartedly, I guess. So lovingly." Kumiko rocked back and forth in her spot, regretting her choice of caffeinated soda immensely. "It's romantic, right? But, it's also p-pretty dangerous. It could've lasted for the rest of their high school years, y'know?"
"Of course it's dangerous," Reina said, after a moment of deliberation. "Doing everything to one person, giving them all of that power . . . it's just not a good idea." A plane flew overhead, just barely visible in the evening sky. "It'd probably just end in tragedy."
"Y-yeah, but . . . isn't that why a lot of people play music anyway?" Reina straightened her back, her violet gaze piercing Kumiko to the very depths of her bones. "Isn't that sort of admirable, even if it's dangerous?" Reina shrugged. "I mean, shouldn't we all have a reason?"
"I told you, I play for myself." Reina looked up to the sky, where a few scarce stars began to dot the horizon. "You like the euphonium, right?"
"Yeah." A powerful gust of wind blew through the parking lot, and one of the keychains began to tumble away. Kumiko put her hand on it, the plastic cold and sharp to the touch.
"That's what should matter, then." Reina held herself, arms wrapped around slender legs, and she seemed so very small in that moment. "Nothing else."
"That's such a Reina thing to say," Kumiko chuckled for the second time that night, and she didn't try to stop the tears threatening to spill from her eyes as she began to laugh. "I'm so glad." She soon found herself leaning against Reina, warm and steady in the windy mid-evening parking lot. There was a warmth in her hand that hadn't been there before, closed around both the hand itself and the keychain that was still clenched in it. "I'm so, so glad."