Chapter 12
" Can you imagine," Syaoran said to Tomoyo during lunch, " Going on stage without an audience?"
Tomoyo shuddered. " I would be so embarrassed!"
Sakura made her way to the table. " What's going on?" She asked, dropping
her violin down on the floor next to a spare chair.
" Oh," Syaoran laughed. " It's just a story my teacher told me. He had a friend who
was a great pianist, and she was performing at this college; I forgot which one it
was. So she was waiting backstage and the manager was like, ' are you ready' and '
whenever you're ready'. So he dims the lights, she walks out, bows, and notices that
there's no audience."
Sakura, who was drinking water, spat it out violently in surprise. " Nani?!"
" Hai." Syaoran grinned. " There was no audience. So she went back in, and the
manager was like, ' what's going on? What's wrong? Go back! Go back!' So she
shows him what the problem was, and he nervously looks out, realizes, and was, of
course, plenty embarrassed."
" No wonder Mizuki-san invites so many people." Sakura blushed. " If I were to go
out with no audience, I would be even more embarrassed then if I messed up in
front of a full one."
" I personally don't think there's a comparison." Syaoran chuckled. " Hopefully that
will never happen to me in my lifetime."
" What is this?" Tomoyo lifted with her chopstick something black from the noodle
soup she bought at the cafeteria. The black ball had a very definete shape of-
" Ew! A boiled cockroach!"
Tomoyo became green. " I'm not hungry anymore."
" You just paid twenty yen for a boiled cockroach." Syaoran began laughing at her.
" Shows you how well the school's service is!"
" Onegai." Tomoyo looked dully at the laughing boy beside her. " I nearly ate that
thing."
" No worries. Since it's boiled, all the bacteria would be dead. The enzymes would
denature."
" Why are you bringing biology to music school?" Sakura asked.
" After a whole week of enzymes and their part in the digestion system and
excretory system, one is bound to go crazy."
" Excretory?"
" Hai. We just did a urine lab on Wednesday. It smelled terrible."
" Syaoran-kun! Spare us the details!" Sakura shouted.
" Gomen nasai."
Eriol dumped his bag on the chair. " Good thing theory class was canceled
today. I am so not in the mood for it."
" Theory class was canceled?" Syaoran blinked.
" You didn't know?"
" Hurray!" Syaoran ignored him. " Besides, I lost the homework."
" Say, what was supposed to be on the quiz?" Eriol asked. " Passing tones,
suspensions, neighbor tones..."
" That's basically it. She didn't go into much about the appogiaturas." Syaoran
answered.
After finishing Syaoran stood up. " Sakura-san, do you want to go look for a
practice room with me?"
" Sure!" Sakura nodded.
Down came Meiling, who heard nothing so far. She threw her arms around the distressed Syaoran, who looked at Sakura for help. Then she threw a glare at Sakura.
Eriol and Syaoran sighed. Tomoyo just looked at Syaoran sympathetically.
" Xiao Lang! Come practice with me!"
" I'm coming. Sakura, you?"
" Ano...sure?"
" A D G C. That's the same as the cello." Sakura observed.
" Don't break it! Watch it!"
" Meiling, it's only a viola." Syaoran muttered. " If you break Sakura's violin-how
much does that violin cost?"
" Bought it for around...well, Oni-san bought it in America, it costed like...around
twenty-seven thousand American yen."
" ?!?!?" Meiling gaped.
Syaoran began laughing at Meiling. " That violin of yours costed only that
much Chinese yen. And to think!" He chuckled. " That was pretty expensive
already. Let's see, if every eight yen in China equals one in America, then twenty
seven thousand times eight equals-"
" One ninety six thousand." Meiling gaped. " You must be rich!"
Syaoran laughed harder. " Meiling, it's only a viola." He repeated.
Meiling huffed, aware that she lost, and sat down unhappily.
Syaoran sat down heavily. He was bored. The guy was a bad composer. It
sounded terrible. He fumbled a little with the attendance sheet.
Ahn Huilin, Female, Grade 9, fourteen years old.
Haskins Dayne, Male, Grade 7, twelve years old.
There were some others in the composition class.
Li Syaoran, Male, Grade 8, thirteen years old.
Syaoran was about to put the attendance sheet down. There was nothing special about it. No one was ever absent.
Then something caught his eye.
Hiriingaziwa Eriol, Female, Grade 8, thirteen years old.
Syaoran stared at the sheet in surprise. He measured with his finger.
Yep, they were all on the same line.
" Eriol-san!" He called. Eriol looked up. Syaoran handed him the attendance sheet. "
See anything wrong with it?"
" Iie. What are you talking about?" Eriol blinked.
Syaoran pointed.
Eriol stared at the sheet and started laughing. The teacher turned around.
" What's going on?" Asked Ushuro.
Eriol handed the attendance sheet to the teacher. The teacher stared at it and
shrugged. " I don't know."
" Look." Syaoran pointed at Eriol's name. " They said that Eriol's a girl!"
" Nani?!" The students cried, and all began laughing as the teacher shook his head
and chuckled.
" You know," Syaoran said to Eriol as they packed up after class, " You really
should go to the main office."
" Why?" Eriol asked.
" Because they probably got the whole thing wrong in their computer." Syaoran
laughed.
Eriol blinked. He had a perfect vision of it.
" And the next graduate," The director announced on stage, " Is Hiriingaziwa Eriol! She's going to go to Oxford University in England majoring in science and technology! Where are her parents? Congratulations for your daughter!"
" You know, I'll just do that." Eriol hurried out.
" What are you talking about?" Yamaguchi blinked. She stared at the two boys. " I
don't think it's possible. Let me check." She called to one of the girls at the front
desk.
The girl blinked, and turned around. There was a clicking of a mouse.
" Uh...let's see, Hiriingaziwa Eriol, eighth grader, goes to Tomoeda Middle School, been in this school for four years, got mostly A's, thirteen years old, a female, birthday's on-"
" NANI?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
" That's really sad Eriol." Syaoran chuckled. " Wait until the girls hear this."
" You won't."
" I will. Don't worry."
" You won't!"
" I will! I'll tell everyone that you were supposed to be a girl!"
" Urgh..." Eriol growled. " It's not funny!"
" It is so!"
" Is not!"
" Is so!"
" What's going on?" Meiling blinked, coming with Tomoyo. " What are you two
shouting about?"
Syaoran told her the whole story.
" Ai vei," Meiling shook her head. " These people are getting worse and worse."
" Hai." Eriol and Syaoran agreed.
The next Saturday.
Syaoran went out of the main office. The girls were waiting for him.
" What's going on?" Sakura asked.
" Had my schedule changed. Again." Syaoran muttered dully. " But let's see, I think
I have ear training with you."
" Really? That's good." Sakura blinked. " Why did you change it?"
" Schedule was bad." Syaoran sniffed. " I requested lunch."
Sakura burst into giggling. " Aww, poor you!"
Syaoran scowled. " Hey!"
Sakura went into the room where the chamber class was supposed to take
place to find Syaoran already there. No one else was in there. She set her violin case
down and opened it.
" Shoot, my bridge is going to collapse." She looked at the thing, trying to move it.
It snapped.
" Well, proves your point." Syaoran was staring at her. " Now what are you going
to do?"
Sakura stared at the broken bridge and sighed.
" Hai, what am I going to do?" She looked at Syaoran. " It's not like you have a
spare bridge with you, do you?"
" I'm a pianist. Not a violinist. What would I be doing with a bridge? But perhaps
you can ask someone to borrow their violin maybe?"
Sakura blinked. " Hai...maybe I can ask the teacher."
" Suits me." Syaoran shrugged. " This piano's so out of tune."
" Hai, too bad you can't tune it." Sakura glanced at her violin. " Did you practice?"
" Who practices for chamber?" Syaoran blinked. " I practiced a little," He admitted,
" But I'm not intending to make Chamber my main course. I practiced my own
pieces instead. What about you?"
" Nah. I never practice in the beginning of the year." Sakura giggled.
The door opened.
" So how are ye, lovebirds?" Tomoyo called, with Eriol following her.
" N-Nani?!" The two shouted, then stared at each other, blushing hotly. Eriol and
Tomoyo laughed.
" What do you mean, lovebirds?" Syaoran yelled. " We're just friends!"
" Hai!" Sakura agreed.
" Sure. Right." Eriol smirked. Syaoran rolled his eyes.
The two of them were blushing really hard. Eriol and Tomoyo laughed at them, until Meiling came in.
" Syaoran!" She chirped, wrapping her arms around the boy, who looked at his
friends for help.
" Ano...how are you Meiling?" Syaoran slowly freed himself from his cousin. " I
have to...get to the piano!" He opened the lid and pretended to look for something.
Meiling glared at Sakura.
" Hehe," Sakura really didn't like that.
" The thing about contemporary pieces is that you can't really tell whether the
person makes a mistake or not because it still sounds like nonsense. That's the good
thing. The bad thing is, you don't know if you made a mistake because the notes just
don't sound right to the ear."
" Which is why learning Rachmaninov is so hard." Eriol muttered.
" And any modern composer." Syaoran muttered. " I remember that time I played
double piano with you. The worst mistake I ever made in my life."
" Why?" Tomoyo asked.
" He plays like a monster." Syaoran muttered, making Eriol blush. " I couldn't even
hear myself. If I made any mistakes, no one heard. Eriol was just too loud."
" Oh! I remember there was a chamber concert, and a set of double pianos. I didn't
hear it, but they all told me it was terrible-" Sakura closed her mouth. Eriol glared at
her.
" Oh gee, thanks Sakura-san." Eriol said sarcastically.
" See? Proves my point." Syaoran was laughing at his friend. " But when he plays
the cello he plays like a shrimp. You won't hear a peep out of him."
" That's bad though," The teacher had entered. " Because Eriol has the melody after
a few pages."
The children looked at each other.
" Konnichiwa, Sensei." They said all together, like elementary school students.
" What can we do for you today?" Syaoran asked. They all burst out laughing.
After a few minutes, Sakura borrowed a violin from the teacher, and they set to work organizing their parts.