Chapter 8: "Eet"
Taxis were halting, then continuing on their way outside in the heavy October evening rain. Guests; familiar and not so known faces were still hanging about, with one last glass of Halloween punch, with one last conversation piece hanging in the air, with one last minute left until their cab arrived.
Brook was thoroughly spent after the engagement party. Tired to the bone, he might have said, yohohoho! Franky-san and Robin-san weren't the people to waste time with things such as commitment, marriage and family. And Brook couldn't have agreed more! Life was short and feeble, so easily brought out-of-tune, so easily scratched, or broken, or even lost. He wished them both good fortune and merry melodies to guide them on their path to happiness. Why shouldn't they start treading on it while the sun was still in the sky, when the stars still shone dazzlingly bright?
Stroking its deep black finish, Brook closed the wooden hood onto the piano keys. Until recently, he had hit those keys down, or strummed on his violin forlornly, searching something long lost. As if he had forgotten the tune most dear to him; what tempo, what gusto it had, how exactly the liquid harmony of the notes following each other flowed, even though it had been etched into his bones, onto his skin, in shape of names, places, dates…
Oh, Brook had still been afraid to board airplanes. Still missed his friends, his band, so strongly… But after meeting Luffy-san and his crew, it was as if a void had filled within him. Not the same way, not completely, no. But comfortingly, warmly, promising life, and light on the road once again. And Brook had remembered his favourite song once more.
Life. Life was but a song. An orchestral play, a serenade, a rhapsody. Whatever you made of it. Life was in how the piano had sung beneath Brook's fingers, life bubbled forth from Robin-san's throat as she let her own song be heard in front of her closest for the very first time, life buzzed and throbbed in the drumsticks and trumpets and electric guitars of the Franky Family accompanying her… It had been such a beautiful performance. Robin-san even shed tears. And so did he.
Life was in the way Luffy-san never got the tones right in a song, how Usopp-san and Chopper-san tried to insert rapping into every possible place, how Nami-san, Vivi-san and Kohza-san made jests out of each others motions during singing, how Sanji-san and Zoro-san made a competition of every possible aspect of a song - how high it could go, how much tenor it could take, how fast of a pace it could have…
And relationship, too, Brook tied to music. They weren't all that hard to figure out, if one cared to dwell a while on the details. The dots, the little arches, the line breaks on a music sheet, the annotations written on top, of old days and new. The hand that holds the sheet, leafs through it, traces a finger over the fresh or frayed paper. The voice that chooses to sing to it, the band that chooses to play it, or create a new and fresh cover with their own taste, their own views… Yes, sometimes, the melody needed to be reinvented, combined with others, over and over, precisely to keep it originality, its flavour of life.
Yes, that was Brook's philosophy. Life was a mashup. The grandest mashup in existence!
There was life, there was music in how Zoro-san and Sanji-san fought each other. There was a rhythm to their banter, their shoving around, their huffing breaths. There was gentle sunset and sparkling starshine in the way their hands touched as one brought the other a simple can of coffee from the vending machine…
Friends of old, friends of new! Keep playing your music, keep playing your songs closest to your heart. Reinvent, reorganize, reiterate… but never, ever forget how it felt. As it played, played along sweetly, on the cords of your soul.