(Author's note: A few operas and songs are referred to, as Hinata goes to a music conservatory as a vocal student. I do not own Naruto or any copyrighted material referred to herein. No copyright infringement is intended. For the version, I cut out some swearwords. The uncensored version is on A03.)
You had to audition regularly to stay at the conservatory. Hinata vowed to never get used to it. If she did, she'd get too comfortable and other students would swoop in to take her spot so fast. It had only happened once. She was seventeen. She remembered where it had happened: She was walking outside the building where auditions were being held, and she was thinking about what else she was doing that day. Ten minutes later, she went in, auditioned, and they'd kept her. She'd walked out shaken. She'd made strange performance choices when she meant to make edgy ones. To try and cover up a tiny phrasing mistake, she'd been sharp on a note. Half a measure from the end of her piece, she fought not to run from the room. It ended and she smiled. She wanted to cry. Nice things were said and she was dismissed. None of the later feedback was useful. It just felt like adults were telling her, "For any other kid, this would be terrific. From you, it was baseline. We're keeping you and at some point, you need to amaze us again." Later that day, she had called Sasuke. He had commiserated. Just by listening, he'd helped.
Hinata was so, so glad Neji had introduced them. Telling friends at school how things went was—they were all going through it together. She was careful how she explained things to her family. She didn't want them to think she wanted to come home. But Sasuke wasn't going to school with her. He was a performer, too, and he got it. She could talk to him. Sometimes she felt like other people were waiting for her to screw up, verbally patting her on the head, or didn't care. It was only the second quarter of the first year. Hinata tried not to think about how many more times she'd need to do this over the next four years.
A few weeks later, posters appeared on campus advertising mock auditions for all departments. Students were encouraged to prepare pieces that they wouldn't ordinarily perform for an audition, or something fun, or something they'd never perform for an audience. They would do this to take the pressure off formal auditioning. "Maybe professors will learn to be nicer at these, too," someone sniped upon seeing the poster. "What one are you doing?" Hinata's friends asked her. She was still deciding whether to go or not.
"There's a duet I want to perform," she admitted, "But I don't know anyone well enough yet to ask."
"They said for us to prepare something fun, not something we've been dreaming of doing in front of—oh, is this the one you'd never be—what range do you need?" A new friend of a friend started out on one thought and ended on a question as he figured out what was going on.
"My partner would have to be, well a uh—"
"Some manly range," someone suggested, and they all cracked up laughing.
"And I have to learn Italian," Hinata frowned. "I never wanted to train in opera, but this is kind of pop opera. I don't know if I'll make it."
"I can tell, since you can't sit through the DVD versions. It's why I'm not taking you to any live performances," Josephine, one of her close friends at school, piped up.
"They have great stories and scores, they're just…long. I've tried watching three of them! I liked the ending of Don Giovani—"
"The whole opera is a torture test for sopranos. Of course you'd want to do something from it to show off."
"La Boheme—and nobody start talking about musical theatre!"
"What?" her friends were confused.
"Oh, a friend of mine back home really hates the musical theatre adaptation of La Boheme. The other opera I tried to get through was—now I can't remember it."
"What was the plot?"
"Love triangle. What else is there?" someone joked.
"La Traviata," Josephine recalled. "The review I read of it was for another production entirely. We sat through the DVD trying to figure out what was going on."
Hinata listened to the Sarah Brightman duet she wanted to perform and wrote out the words for her part phonetically. It wasn't part of an opera. "Con Te Partiro" was a pop opera song about saying goodbye that, for once, wasn't sad. It was hopeful. Hinata had trained in enough techniques that the song used, to feel confident about it. Sort of. She walked into a classroom early a few weeks later. Students were allowed to so they could get used to the acoustics in the room. Classrooms were different than performance halls, which were different from auditoriums, apartments and dorm rooms. Sometimes it drove Hinata crazy. Naruto, her roommate, knew how she felt. "At least I don't look at the audience," he noted glumly one night.
"I look at the wall across the room," Hinata admitted. Not always. There wouldn't be that many students in the classroom yet, so she could—apparently watch another student.
He was tall and skinny, with big brown eyes and curly brown hair. He wore a slate gray turtleneck and dark jeans. Hinata sat down and listened. Students had to be vocal powerhouses here. Some people, though, had voices that just transfixed you, that made you want to laugh and cry simultaneously and listen for a long time. Some just made you sit down, hypnotized. He was that. Hinata had never wanted to perform so badly with someone in her life. "We complement each other. Do you want to work together?" was one thing. Working well together and discovering you sang well together was another. It was a nice treat. And then there was this.
Hinata walked carefully up to the front of the room after the boy sat down. She heard her speech impediment still, even if others didn't. The student smiled encouragingly. He'd sung the Rufus Wainwright cover of the song "Hallelujah," and had sung it a capella. Hinata couldn't think instantly of a song she could sing that matched the tempo, lyrical themes or overtones. Plenty of songs were in C Major, though. It was a versatile chord. So Hinata sang the first song that came into her head, "Memories" by Within Temptation. Not related to the other student's piece at all, except in tempo. Hinata was still at the stage where singing it a capella was a little weird because of how she was counting.
The student introduced himself. His name was David. Did she want to do a duet together at some point? She named it. David had heard of Andrea Bocelli but the music was mostly new to him and he was definitely up for it. They became friends. Naruto was David's accompanist as of recently and Hinata's roommate, they explained to each other. It seemed like an unfair advantage for Hinata to have Naruto as both for her, so she'd never asked. Instead, she and David found a fellow student, a violinist, to accompany them for "Con Te Partiro." It made more sense, as the song had extensive violin in it and no piano. David was learning Italian. Hinata learned a little bit. It helped. David had a different vocal range than was common for the duet, and so he figured out how to write new sheet music for himself. They sounded good together.
Naruto's concert blacks were a suit with a dark tie and a peach dress shirt. His favorite color was orange, and peach was a gentler color. David's were similar, but his favorite dress shirt matched the leaves of willow trees that grew near the nearby lake. Hinata wore a black, ankle-length dress with long sleeves and a high neckline. She wore strappy plaform heels underneath. She felt much more confident wearing them—she'd never break a heel that way, and was more steady on her feet. They fit great. She wore makeup that matched her face normally so she wouldn't look washed out and creepy under the stage lights.
For the mock audition, she wore the same shoes and makeup, but the dress Sasuke had given her. David wore the same gray turtleneck and dark jeans he had when they met. They were each singing a capella. Hinata was singing an upbeat Broadway tune for a change. The woman running the audition had mahogany red hair, anchor gray eyes, and listened carefully. She didn't give empty compliments. She asked detailed questions about students' choices, goals and training. Hinata wasn't interested in Broadway. She just liked the song. The experience helped Hinata a lot, and it really did take the pressure off. She was glad she'd done it. Hinata traded spots with David and perched on a chair in the single row behind the table the woman was sitting at. A young woman—a sound technician, maybe?—fiddled with an orange power cord nearby for sound equipment. She lay on the floor to do this, but stopped and stared at David as he sang a song from a dark, campy 70s musical that had been screened at midnight in the decades since. Judging by the smile on the moderator's face, she was familiar with the song too.
Hinata knew the background vocals and sang them. She hadn't known David would sing this, and—he looked pleased. Hinata had never seen anyone actually roll on the ground laughing, but the technician was. David spread his arms during a crescendo in the song, which was a nice touch. On the final note, Hinata, the sound technician, and the moderator clapped wildly. "The backup vocals were great," the moderator said to Hinata, then turned back to David. She started to say something and laughed heartily instead. "Just—give me a second." More boisterous laughter that went on a bit. David looked relieved, then beamed. "That was amazing," the moderator chuckled.
There was a tradition for students who got cut. After the results came in and before they left, they performed their favorite pieces at a somewhat darkly lit all-night café near campus. An open mic night but a little more formal. A way to get closure. The sound technician spread word of David's mock audition and Hinata's backup vocals. For the next four years, Hinata and David sang the song as the concluding number of the "Closure Mic Nights," as they came to be called. Students who played instruments other than what they were at school for, played for the piece. Actors from another performing arts college, too. One actor was a left-handed electric guitar player. She lived in the area and played songs from the musical often. A violinist whose teacher Hinata once heard screaming, "You have a vibrato like a machine gun, and when you play pizzicato you're inaudible!" also played. A saxophonist joined. They rarely had a drummer, though. Always a pianist. Over the years, sometimes the saxophone portion was played by a trumpet player. Sometimes the electric guitar and violin portions were played solely with an electric guitar, or solely a violin. Sometimes people who were staying at school wore party hates as a way to indicate status. It was originally part of the musical the song was from, anyway.
They had one last "Closure Mic Night"—for them, anyway. It would continue in years to come. It was the weekend before graduation. Everyone invited family and friends, and they rented out a local black box theatre for the evening. It was a classy event for the audience. Sasuke convinced his parents to fly out with him. Hinata's did instantly, as did Neji and his parents. In the playbills that were passed out, each piece for the evening was named and introduced, as were the students performing them. Their home cities were named, and the instruments they were playing. Introductions were done verbally onstage, too.
"I've seen this movie," Neji declared after Hinata introduced him to her friends, finally, as her boyfriend. "Some friends took me to a midnight showing. We'd all been drinking and hitting the grass pretty hard." Hinata's eyes widened. "He doesn't talk like that," she said to her friends. Then, accusingly, to Neji, "But I know who does! He took you! He somehow convinced you to go."
"It was weird. But it was fiun."
Sasuke had laughed when Neji told him about it later. They were sixteen. Sasuke had seen it when he was fourteen. Hinata was as well, and had some alcohol for the first time that night, too.
The evening was a grand success. Hinata and David had sung "Con Te Partiro" in a filmed performance, then separately for their own demo reels. Hinata had been so proud and stressed out at the same time after the formal performance that she'd been teary-eyed. Now, she and David sang the duet again as the opening. The acoustics and lighting in the theatre were great. Everyone played well, and some people cried. The audience laughed at the opening notes of the final number since so many people recognized it, and applauded enthusiastically. The performers all stood together for curtain and bowed twice.
Just like that, it was over.