Author's Note: S'up people, it's been a while. Been making pretty slow progress on this one, but I'll try to update as fast as I can. =X
Anyway, this is Volume Four of the Autumn Arc for my 'Songs of Muse; Songs for You' series, themed after nothing other than Garden of Glass, featuring Nozomi and Eri. But surprisingly, they don't appear as much. Ohnoes!
Warning: Contains 'spoilers' for previous volumes. Anyway, it's best to have read everything else in the Autumn Arc prior to this in order to get the full experience. You can check out my author profile to link to the other stories.
Please enjoy.
Chapter 1: A Familiar Scene
The tension in the clubroom was palpable.
It was mid-afternoon after lessons had ended on a cool autumn day, within the clubroom that was dimly lit only by the weak sunlight streaming in from outside. Since it was a day without club activities, only seven members of Muse were gathered: Rin, Hanayo, Maki, Nico, Kotori, Honoka and Umi. The club president sat at the head of the table, with the second-years on the left side of the table while the first-years were opposite them.
In other words everyone except Nozomi and Eli were there, as the two of them had left to work on their university entrance exam preparations. Lately Nico had been dragged along for half their study sessions (she had been quite reluctant to begin revising this far off from the entrance exams, until Nozomi "persuaded" her it was for her own good), but had successfully wriggled out of today's by claiming she had to take care of her siblings.
The twin-tailed girl sitting at the head of the table placed her hands in front of her in a contemplative position, chairing the meeting. Leaning forwards sinisterly, she began with the question that was on everyone's minds.
"How do we get Nozomi and Eli to start dating? In the first place, we should've discussed this the moment Hanayo and Rin got together."
"Nozomi and Eli, huh," Maki repeated thoughtfully while her left hand twirled with her hair as usual.
Kotori was the next to speak up. "I'm fine with continuing how it is and letting things take its course..."
"Forget it. Couldn't you tell from the last practice we had? They're just not going to get together."
"That is indeed true," the redhead composer nonchalantly agreed with her girlfriend.
Silent till now, Umi started to raise her objection. "But..."
"Waaaaait!" Honoka's sudden outburst stunned everyone into silence as she threw her hands up. "Before that, I can't help but feel like I've seen this scene before!"
There was a brief moment of silence, before everyone decided to just ignore the orange-haired girl.
Standing up and sending her desk-chair rolling backwards, Nico flipped the whiteboard behind her as she yelled, "What makes a relationship?!" The rotating whiteboard flipped over to reveal the very title the club president had just declared, along with a few notes underneath it that she gestured at.
"I've seen this before too!"
Without missing a beat, Nico continued over Honoka's protests. "First of all, there must be mutual feelings! The two parties have to know and love each other for who they are! Secondly, there must be an event to spark off a confession! One of the parties must confess their feelings to the other, and the other must accept their feelings as well as return them! Above all else, the relationship can only continue if the two of them maintain their mutual love and respect! And at this stage, clearly the part we need to help them with is..."
"None of them, right nya?" Rin interjected.
"What the hell?!" the twin-tailed girl did a double-take, tilting her upper body and spreading her arms out wide in shock.
Honoka slumped her head on the table. "... I don't care anymore."
"We need something to trigger a confession!" Hanayo declared in a voice that brooked no argument. "The two of them clearly like each other but there's just no opportunity for them to get together!"
The blue-haired archer raised her objection once more, uninterrupted this time. "But how would you even know that in the first place? While I am in favour of helping out those two, we have no idea what Eli and Nozomi are really feeling. I don't think it's right to just interfere with their relationship without knowing that for sure."
There was another moment of silence as everyone turned to look at Umi. The easily-embarrassed girl shrank under their combined questioning stares. "... What?"
"Umi-chan, they couldn't possibly be any more obvious about it." Kotori had quite the awkward smile on her face as she delivered her reply.
"Yeah, that's right nya! Besides, Umi-chan promised to help Eli-chan that time during practice too!"
"I'm just saying we don't know for sure!.. But Rin's right, I guess I did promise Eli we would help however we could back that day. Wait Rin, you were listening?"
"Eheh... Rin was curious nya!" the orange-haired girl answered sheepishly with a hand behind her head.
After waiting for a brief moment for everyone to catch up, Nico placed her hands on the table decisively. "Okay, so we all agree we need to help them, and we just need to make an opportunity for them to confess to each other. The question now is how do we do this?"
The girls sunk into a contemplative silence as they brainstormed for ideas, pensive looks on their faces. It was not a question with an easy answer, considering how distant the seniors actually were despite how close they had always seemed. The third-years (minus a particular diminutive twin-tailed girl) had always been wise to a fault, leading their discussions, guiding them along, spotting who was emotionally distressed... It was only now that they were starting to realise just how little they actually knew about Eli and Nozomi.
"Maybe... we could just talk to them like how they did to some of us?" Kotori raised hesitantly.
"That's not going to work," came Nico's flat reply. "It's those two we're talking about. Eli would just brush everything off shyly..."
"While Nozomi-chan can see what we're trying to do from a mile away," Hanayo completed.
Umi sighed while she leaned back against her chair, losing her normal perfect posture. "Back to square one..."
After another minute of quiet pondering in which the only movement was Maki's constant twirling of her hair, the redhead finally let out a sigh of her own before contributing to the discussion in an indifferent voice.
"Why don't you all just think about how you tried to convey your feelings for each other?"
It took quite a while for the composer's words to sink in, as the other members tried to figure out what she meant. Eli and Nozomi would be the fourth couple to get together, which meant this had already happened three times before. And in each of those cases, all of them had tried the very same approach...
The conclusion hit everyone else at the same time, with their voices shouting excitedly while Honoka shot up from her seat with the force of the revelation.
"That's it!"
Across the town in a quiet and small apartment, a set of wind-chimes gently tinkled in the late autumn breeze where they hung next to an open window.
Raising her head from her notes where she had been working away alone for the past hour, Nozomi stifled a yawn as she stretched to loosen up the muscles tight from her lack of movement at the desk. Studying was never a fun thing and the constant silence of her abode, broken only by the occasional vehicle driving by, was getting to her. Perhaps I should have asked Eli-chi to come over today after all...
Drawing a card at random from her tarot deck, all thought of the previous topic flew out of Nozomi's head while she stared blankly at the 'Judgement' card, interpreting its meaning.
Judgement, huh? Now that everyone else is together, guess it's finally time for us to...
Picking up her phone, the violet-haired girl began looking up Eli's contact before pausing thoughtfully. Come to think of it, many other things were moving already, weren't they? The way the others were behaving...
She wasn't alone any more.
There's still time.
Nozomi smiled as she placed her phone down once more. "Oho, things seems like they're about to get interesting~"
EDIT: I would just like to add a note regarding the layout of this story. After this introductory chapter we'll be switching back and forth between the other couples and NozoEli, so it would go something like: Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 6, chapter 3, chapter 7... and so on. The chapters are intended to be paired: Chapters 2 and 6, chapters 3 and 7, chapters 4 and 8, chapters 5 and 9. The only reason why they ended up being released separately was because they grew so much in length I had no other choice. xD