Back with chapter 2! Hopefully you all enjoy!

Chapter 2: Music Room 3

A lot of things and people can change in twelve years. This does not exclude Tsukasa Domyoji, Rui Hanazawa, Sojiro Nishikado, and Akira Mimasaka, otherwise known as the F4. They had gone through elementary and middle school together and they stayed terrorizing their high school. Shizuka Todo had gone on too France and Tsubaki had married in California.

Every now and then, one of them would say, "Do you remember Tsukushi Makino?" The rest would say, "Oh yeah!" and then reminisce on the carefree days of their youth. Tsukasa no longer said he would marry Tsukushi when they got older, and would always blush and say, "We were kids!" when his older sister brought it up.

Every now and then, Rui would bring up how Tsukushi had won this or that competition or honor in America. But all in all, Makino Tsukushi was just a memory of the past. Just a pathway to old memories of their childhood.

Afterall, they were all different people. Twelve years older, (hopefully) twelve years wiser, possibly twelve years crueler. They had seen more of the world and had experienced more of life and it had shaped them in some way.

If they passed Tsukushi in the streets, would they even recognize her? Would she recognize them?

In general, Tsukasa found school boring. Not because he was exceptionally smart (if anything, his intelligence was average in some areas and a little about average in others), but because he already knew what his future was going to look like. He knew what he was going to do and going to high school at Eitoku was just another step in the plan that was his life. He also knew that the next step would be attending Eitoku college. There is something mind numbing at knowing that whatever you do your life is planned for you.

It left Tsukasa bored and it made him hunger for trouble. It was boredom which made him come up with his infamous red-card game. His fellow F4 members were also bored and had no objections. Even Rui, who disliked the game, rarely spoke up. They were all rich, handsome, and bored.

Which also explained why they skipped class so often and never wore their school uniform. They were heirs to some of the most powerful empires in Japan, if not the world. The school didn't care. It was enough for them to boast that they had them enrolled, so they turned a blind eye to whatever the F4 did.

Students feared them. Beheld them as if they were gods. They were all rich, but the F4 were different. The students knew it, teachers and staff knew it, and F4 themselves knew it.

It had been exciting for a while, but now it was boring, just like everything else. Skipping class used to be exciting, but now it was boring. The F4 still did it. Sometimes they would wander around together. Other times they would wander around alone. But on certain days they would go to a music room and lie around.

Today was one of those days and as they lounged about in Music Room 5, they heard the strains of someone banging away on the piano. The piece that was being played sounded very difficult, and it was obvious that the player was pouring their heart and soul into it. And then it stopped. Then the music started again, this time with someone singing.

It went off and on again until lunch, which is when they passed by the music room the person was it, Music Room 3.

"I wonder who it is," Akira said.

Tsukasa was tempted to look in, but there were no windows in the door.

"It sounds like a girl," Sojiro replied. "Wonder if she's hot."

"Girl or boy," Rui mused, "they are an excellent musician."

"I wonder if they will come out for lunch," Tsukasa added.

They stood outside the music room for a couple minutes but when the music showed no intention of stopping, they continued on.

It was a mystery, which made it exciting. Which meant that they thought about it for the rest of the day. Even though they didn't usually go to a music room twice in one day, they passed by Music Room 3, but it was empty.

They would be lying if they said that they weren't curious who the mysterious musician was. Tsukasa even mentioned in it his phone call with Tsubaki.

"Baka, you could have knocked on the door and seen who it was," Tsubaki said. Even from this distances Tsukasa could see his sister rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, and interrupt them, that's just rude and you know that Rui would never let us do that to a musician."

"Well you do it to him so often that I don't doubt he has some PTSD from it."

"Don't over exaggerate."

Tsubaki paused for a moment. "I talked to okaasan earlier."

"Oh yeah? How is she?" Tsukasa could really care less about his mother was but the habit of pretending like he did was a hard one to shake.

"She's doing well. She told me some news that I think you'd find interesting."

"What is it?"

"Remember Makino Tsukushi? The one you swore you were going to marry?"

Tsukasa felt his cheeks heat up. "Yeah, what about her."

"Okaasan said that Eitoku told her that she had transferred there. She should be in school right now."

Now this was exciting. "Really?"

"Yep, find her and become friends again."

"Wow don't I have a choice?"

"No, you know that you were going to anyways."

Tsukasa hung up. He hated that his sister could predict what he was going to do. Picking up his phone, he sent out a single text:

Domyoji Tsukasa: apparently makino tsukushi transferred to eitoku and is there rn

The next day, both Akira and Sojiro demanded answers.

"What do you mean she's here right now?" This from Sojiro.

"Yeah! And how do you even know that?" This was from Akira.

"Tsubaki told me that the school told my mom," Tsukasa answered them.

"Why don't we search some of the classrooms for her?" Sojiro suggested. "She should be a second year like us."

"Mm," Tsukasa agreed. "It would give us something to do."

If the teachers and students were bothered by the F4 coming into the classrooms and then leaving after they scanned the room, they didn't say so. When they came up empty handed after searching all of the second-year classrooms, they looked in the first- and third-year rooms. Nothing.

"Maybe she's sick?" Rui said.

"Maybe," Akira replied.

In their wandering, they had come again to stand in front of Music Room 3. Beautiful music emitted from it.

"Why don't we see who's in here," Tsukasa said. "I mean they have to be a bit ballsy if they're going to skip classes."

Tsukasa half expected Rui to object but to his surprise, he was the one to open the door. A slight girl with long, brown hair sat at the piano.

It had been twelve years. But when Tsukasa looked into her big brown eyes, he instantly knew who it was.

"Tsukushi-chan."

I was watching this on crunchyroll and I think it was the first or second episode but there was a comment that went along the lives of "this is like a dark version of OHSHC" and I was like yeah so that's why I thought Music Room 3 would be a nice nod to that lol.