Disclaimer:
Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!
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FS
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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.
(new version)
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He kills with total cruel efficiency
Leaves no traces
His evil past is still a mystery
So evasive
Behind his smiling face
There beats a heart of steel
As sharp as any blade
Don't let it touch you
("Moriarty", from Holmes Sweet Holmes, by John Debney (score) and Carol Mendelsohn (lyrics))
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More attackers…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
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More attackers had appeared—three men and another three men, who were tailing them in the shadows of the trees, as Haruka discovered when she discreetly glanced over her shoulder. She had no desire to face them now, when both Seiya and she were dressed in their best formal clothes and utterly unprepared for serious combat. Expressing her lack of motivation for a confrontation to Seiya, who had seen the men as well, she suddenly saw—perceived and took in— for the first time how picturesque he looked in the moonlight. So this was how his silhouette appeared to other people (people who were less blind to male beauty than she was) when his ponytail was tucked beneath the collar of his jacket, when he sported a scarf (his ninja cape, which he had taken off and wrapped around his neck), a dark costume, whose top piece resembled Haruka's dress shirt and whose slightly tapered legs were cut like Haruka's dress pants, and fancy leather shoes, which looked quite similar to the ones Haruka was wearing! In short, Seiya looked undeniably attractive when he was dressed like her—they didn't only share the same taste in women but also the same taste in style and clothes. It was irksome and mildly frustrating, considering they had to become enemies eventually…
Realization dawned when the thought occurred to Haruka that Seiya didn't just resemble her but that she resembled him, that despite their different hairstyles—hers short and wavy, his long and gently curled—their profiles must look exactly the same in this light… Haruka recalled that Michiru, while analyzing a Yumeno Yumemi piece, remarked that ugly people were more interesting to draw since they were unique in their differing combinations of irregular features whereas classically beautiful people often resembled each other like stereotypical manga characters or diamonds in a jeweller's showcase, or mannequins in a store: It's always the same cuts, the same shapes! I'd rather take on the challenge of depicting an ugly person exactly as they are and still make their portrait beautiful! (Michiru had proceeded to gush about Rembrandt and Rubens and de Goya, comparing their models to Bouguereau's; and Haruka, who hadn't known any of these artists' names before Michiru and she got together, could give a spontaneous public speech on them now.)
"Those guys weren't after me," Haruka stated soberly. "They were after you!" She had felt indebted to Seiya for his noble, selfless intervention against an armed opponent, but now she felt duped for not suspecting that he could have been the attackers' true target (and—knowing him—most probably responsible for the troubles they were in). Seiya only chuckled in response to her exasperated sigh, which made her hate him a little more than she already did. It was too late to distance herself from him now—in this light, the two of them resembled each other like two stray cats in the dark, and their opponents didn't seem particularly discerning when it came to the question of who to attack in their eagerness to please their employer.
Like a mirage in the desert, Venezia—lit by a series of Murano cage lanterns—loomed at the end of the tree-lined road; and Haruka's sharp eyes could discern her trusted Suzuki Hayabusa at the usual parking lot. Courage wasn't synonymous with stupidity. Haruka knew better than asking for trouble and relying on luck's caprices. Six against two were at least three too many. And an elegant swords(wo)man would always favour flight over fight in situations in which a hard-earned narrow win didn't pay and couldn't compare with a graceful, swift, unexpected exit.
"What do you do when you're outnumbered?" she asked; and without waiting for Seiya's reply—she knew what he had so carefully prepared his shoes for—she darted off into the woods, taking a shortcut to the parking lot while he stayed by her side like a newly adopted puppy. He even jumped on the passenger seat (custom-made for Michiru!) as a matter of course, and they laughed in delight at the sight of their pursuers, who were visibly out of breath while helplessly sprinting along the tree-lined road, on which no other soul but themselves could be seen.
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They ended up…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
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They ended up driving to one of Haruka's latest hideouts—a small dilapidated-warehouse-turned-atelier-and-recording-studio, which was rented to musicians for an hourly rate—since Haruka wasn't tired enough to go to bed yet while Seiya didn't feel any need to face his two angry brothers before they had blown off steam. Haruka didn't ask how the second Light "blew off steam"—Taiki Kou resembled a giant hidden glacier one wasn't ever aware off until it sank one's ship. She was still wrecking her brains about the past offence she must have committed, but apart from the scandal she had caused to separate Seiya and Odango, she couldn't recall anything.
Since Haruka didn't feel like playing anything yet, Seiya was improvising at the piano now, surprising Haruka with a technical level she hadn't expected from a singer and drummer (and wouldn't even have expected from a professional jazz and pop pianist). After going through several jazz progressions, he tried out toccatas and préludes, and even gave a decent rendition of Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu. And while Haruka wasn't going to humour Seiya by complimenting him on his skills, she couldn't help but ask him whether he had been whipped by his parents and chained to the piano for four hours a day when he was small.
"No whip, but it was either this or the saxophone, and I preferred an instrument I could sing to."
He proceeded to tell her about the music lessons he and his siblings had received, little anecdotes about how Yaten always complained about the blisters on his fingertips and how Taiki memorized all the pieces he had played, which resulted in a temporary inability to sightread a new score. And since Haruka refused to bond with people she would be forced to eliminate in the future—she didn't fool herself into hoping they could find a violent-free way out of this mess—she directed the talk away from fond childhood memories to the less intimate topic of piano practice and musical education.
"I've been teaching someone who is a great technical talent although he started out quite late. Technically, he is better than any other adult beginner I've known." But "he" was also exasperatingly tense—she told Seiya—"he" made a gigantic effort at getting everything right, at hitting the right notes at the right time. "Nothing flows! It hurts me physically to watch him wrestle with himself at the piano."
Was "he" someone who had experienced loss in the past? Seiya, who must have become fully aware that she was talking about Mamoru-san, asked. You couldn't take away other people's fears and coping mechanisms without offering them an alternative they were willing to accept. Letting go was the hardest thing in the world. It was impossible to do it in a stress situation without hope and trust in one's own abilities.
"Well, he won't develop his abilities at all if he doesn't take a chance," she sighed. "You can't learn without making mistakes. It's the same learning process whether it's singing or fighting, or playing the piano or the violin, or just living."
"You know a surgeon isn't the same as a pianist, right?" Seiya pointed out, without bothering to conceal that he was indeed talking about Mamoru-san, whose dream was to become a surgeon. "When you hit a wrong key, you're just going to embarrass yourself in front of your audience. When a surgeon makes a mistake, he can kill the patient. That's why he can't ever make mistakes. People are often stuck in their default mindset. It doesn't suffice to tell your surgeon to loosen up while studying an instrument. You'll have to force him to do it and show him how to try."
Haruka must admit Seiya had a point—she couldn't demand that Mamoru-san changed his approach without showing him exactly how to do it. But she knew she was a terrible teacher when it came to letting go—she had never struggled with the same problem, having developed the opposite coping mechanism to the same trauma as his. It had always been easier for Haruka to sever ties than to hold on to things past their expiration date. She had no idea how to help someone who didn't dare to take a single wrong step to run with the wind.
"How would you do it?" she asked, admitting defeat. No one she knew had the problem Mamoru-san had—they all erred in the opposite direction as well. Seiya might be more experienced than her after growing up with siblings. In life, one always needed help. Not even she could do anything she wanted alone.
"I've tried everything in the book to make him more expressive—I've analyzed the piece for him, used metaphors, told him what to feel and think, inserted all the right fingerings, dynamic and tempo markings, even biographical details whenever something interesting was going on in the composer's life at the time the piece was written…"
"You said he put too much effort into hitting the right keys the right way—he doesn't need your instructions. They only make things worse. While teaching him, I'd focus on the technical aspects."
"He is almost perfect," she protested. "When it comes to accuracy, he is even better than me! The last thing he needs is working on his technique before learning how to stop playing like a robot or a zombie."
"It doesn't matter what you think he can do—if he puts too much effort into this, he thinks he isn't good enough yet. Take chords, for example: He doesn't need to play the one chord you want him to play well—he needs to be able to play all the chords with the same pattern, and then all the chords with a similar pattern. Insert even all the dissonances and possible mistakes he could make into the practice score if you write the exercises for him yourself! And then you show him all the possible ways of articulating those chords down to the smallest detail."
Her student had to be able to do this blindfolded and in a poor shape, Seiya insisted. "Don't assume anything—you have to make sure that he practices so much that his body knows what he can easily do. Afterwards there will be no need for him to tense up at the sight of a chord anymore."
Doing the same with any musical pattern sounded like a pain—a feat worthy of Hercules for a simple issue which an hour of rethinking would solve, but Haruka realized that Mamoru-san would enjoy this rotation of technical studies more than she could. Seiya might be right and this was the only way to help Mamoru-san build confidence. Haruka could remember that she had practiced fighting like this—perhaps this was why she could skip the same steps at the piano.
Haruka's mental and physical awareness were already fully developed when Haruka started out, and Haruka had been so young when she began to play the piano that she had never had to deal with adult anxieties at all. She might have taken many things which Mamoru-san still had to learn for granted. She had to try this out for Mamoru-san before letting him throw the towel.
"It sounds like the best way to go about this is writing a long etude," she mused. "One in which every passage will be repeated in another key, starting out with the easiest and ending with the most difficult. All the common chord progressions in all available keys, also arpeggios, scales in various rhythms, thirds, sixths, octaves, jumps…"
"Don't forget about the crossed hands, polyphony, trills," Seiya gleefully added. "And then there are the musical problems: complicated rhythm combinations while playing wide chords which force the thumb to hit two keys at the same time, complex syncopation of both pedals, trilling and playing a melody in the same hand, etcetera, etcetera…"
"I see you're having an awfully good time picturing this torture," she gloomily said. "It will be a challenge to squeeze all these techniques into one piece—I'm sure it will fill a whole recital." But he was right that even the most anxious person would let go of their fears after performing such a piece for a few times. "Either that, or he will feel so overwhelmed that he quits playing."
That was a possible outcome, too, Seiya admitted. But in that case, her student would have quitted playing sooner or later. Being perfect forever took too much effort. Most people couldn't do this to themselves for the love of their life, much less for a hobby they could just pick up or drop on the fly.
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Haruka knew this wasn't unusual and happened to fighter pilots, soldiers, double agents, even prisoners and their wardens—sometimes you realized that you had more in common with the enemy than with your own people, that under different circumstances, you could become fantastic friends with the adversary whose weaknesses you were going to exploit. Here, in this rundown building where the antique Bösendorfer Imperial and the Bechstein Model D looked oddly out of place among the cheap narrow chairs and ragged curtains, she had begun to feel as much at home as she had ever felt in Michiru's house at the sea. Seiya had begun to sing for her while she was accompanying him; and though Haruka was no stranger to the unsettling power of music and its ability to divide allies or connect enemies, the sentiment still caught her by surprise.
It seemed to her as though Seiya and she were cut from the same cloth. Responsibility rested on their shoulders, and though they had run away from it at first, they were fine with it now. They both could come across as cold and ruthless to the people who knew them superficially, they both were robust and humorous to a fault. She suspected that her way of coping with tragedy was the same as his. Without their irreverent humour, a tough disposition, and a short memory for all negative experiences, it would be impossible to care for the people they loved. Nobody had the energy and strength to worry about others while drowning in their own anguish and pain.
"Let's sing 'Charade'," she suggested all of a sudden, surprised by her own boldness. It was time to face her fears, to grow out of the ghosts of her childhood, which had been holding her back for too long. Seiya threw her a worried glance but eventually complied; and while the past came crashing down on her again with the sound of the waves and the enveloping darkness, his voice and the cool touch of the piano keys beneath her fingers lingered through the fog of despair. For the first time since her impulsive, arrogant declaration that the whole city could play "Charade" and she wouldn't care, Haruka truly believed that she could do it. One day, "Charade" would only be an earworm among many other earworms, years after she had had her revenge and desensitized herself to the memories "Charade" could trigger.
Haruka felt calmer after reminding herself of her mission, and while she appreciated Seiya for his unexpected great tact and the support he had provided her in the last hours, she was no longer thrown off balance by it. Even in war, there would be kind gestures from some people one considered one's enemies. This was life—and yet a pawn on a chess board would always keep its true colour, would always stay true to the side it belonged to even when it had moved far into the opponent's back line. One day, when this white pawn had turned into a queen, it would wreck havoc on the remaining team of its opponent. There was no way in hell Haruka would let a passing emotion prevent her from finishing a scheme she had been carrying out since she was barely tall enough to ride a motorcycle.
Still, there was a level of conduct one had to keep up, just out of personal pride. Even when Haruka was going to shoot Seiya someday, she could still apologize to him when an apology was appropriate or, as it was in this case, already overdue.
"I'm sorry for the scandal I caused back then," she said, awkwardly poking at the keys, on which her hands were resting. "I shouldn't have separated Odango and you."
Seiya shot her a skeptical look from the windowpane where he was sitting as though he trusted her less than the cacti in the pots to his left and right. "It wasn't your place to even attempt it, and the scandal was terrible!—Odango still cries whenever she remembers it," he responded, matter-of-factly. "But I'm over it now, and it wasn't you…" He turned his face away to the dreary cubes of warehouses outside, and then to the moonlit sky above, which seemed to belong to another place, another time. "I could have pursued it! I could have succeeded if I had shown her I was determined. There was a moment… I sensed she would have chosen me then if I had seriously tried."
Haruka knew he was right—it had been so close, and it still frustrated her that only she had seen what Odango and her friends were still in denial about—that not even Mamoru-san and Odango were the fated couple they tried to be, that if things had gone differently, Odango would have married someone else.
"So why didn't you do it?" Haruka asked, wondering what had held him back if it wasn't her intervention. She felt a little lighter now, although she knew it would take her years to get over the occasional stabs of guilt, partly because she would always wonder whether Seiya had only been downplaying her role in their separation in order to make the aftermath easier. "You were so thoroughly in love with her. I expected you to elope with her the moment she told you she wasn't completely averse to the idea of it…"
He gave a faint smile and frowned at a recollection, then hid his face in his hands for a moment before he left the windowpane to join her at the Imperial. "She told me she wanted… that she needed security. I knew she was serious about this. She said she loved peace and happiness and friendship, and she was working on her Crystal Tokyo utopia manga in which people wouldn't ever die. And you've seen what happened tonight. This is my life! She valued security above all else, of course she deserved security." He gingerly touched a single key, listening to the sound of it echoing down the hall and dying away in the night. "I wanted her so badly! But I knew she would never be safe with me."
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