#is it obvious i took band and choir in middle school and music was one of my favorite subjects in elementary school yet

[jinxedshapeshifter]

I've been wanting to post about this since I finished episode 3 of Resolve (I decided to finish the game first and I'm glad I did) but so much about prosecutor Kazuma breaks my heart.

Kazuma, from the moment he's introduced, is very obviously proud of being Japanese. This reflects in his design and his theme (Samurai With A Mission) — The Great Ace Attorney's soundtrack composers did incredibly well with the soundtrack, especially character themes (the absolute genius of The Great Ace Attorney's character themes is for another post and I swear I will make that post at some point). Kazuma's default theme uses a lot of Eastern inspired instrumentation. It's also incredibly uplifting and optimistic, being played in a major key.

Prosecutor Kazuma is the total opposite, not in that he's necessarily ashamed of being Japanese but he throws his culture away. He utilizes a western-styled sword instead of his usual katana (and at the end of Resolve gives the katana back to Ryunosuke because he doesn't trust himself with it) and dresses quite similarly to van Zieks, a member of the British aristocracy. Additionally, his theme as a prosecutor (The Revived Prosecutor) is in a minor key and more akin to van Zieks's theme (and both are sinister but in a fast-paced way. I also think both have tragic undertones).

In addition to all of this, he acts like he's not Japanese during the last trial, something Ryunosuke brings up multiple times, for example this exchange between Ryunosuke and Kazuma during the discussion of gentlemen's clubs:

As a prosecutor his design and theme are completely separated from his heritage and he makes an effort to separate himself from it and it makes me really sad. He willingly goes against Stronghart's will, which has me inclined to believe he's purposely trying to separate himself from Japan (alternatively, he was pressured into it by van Zieks, which while I can see happening because of how van Zieks is, I also can't see Kazuma going along with unless he wanted to appear more British because Kazuma's stubborn as hell).

It's just really sad to me, seeing Kazuma go from very obviously proud of his heritage to actively trying to ignore it.

[miss28ff]

SHRINE

(AU) (MUSIC/ROMANCE/DRAMA) (Yatori) (Kazubisha) (Daifuku) (18+ due to language, mature subjects and a little smut)

Summary: With her earphones on and melodies filling her ears, the girl looked at the ceiling, thinking. She, Iki Hiyori, a regular schoolgirl, had jumped at the street to save the life of a promising rock star.

Track 11. Evil Ways – Santana

 The guy looked up, takin his attention out of the glass of cold beer on the noisy bar, in which he was already a familiar face. Being faces and contacts his specialty, he hadn’t any problem recognizing the shape of the newcomer… even using a ridiculous outfit to, according to him, pass as inadverted as possible.

“Good night, Yato.”

The other man sitted next to him, really close, putting his finger over his mouth and making a loud “SHHHHHHHH”, which the first guy, wearing glasses, found really amusing.

“Oh, please, Yato. Half the place knows you’re here since you entered. Being inconspicuous is something you don’t really pull off well.”

Yato froze and then laid back on his seat, looking at him suspiciously.

“You always have to use those big words, Sera.”

Sera smiled and gave a big gulp to his beer. Tasting the bitter flavor of the foam, he pulled his eyeglasses up his nose.

“What brings you around here, Yato? Are you looking for another job, like before?”

Yato let out a loud laughter, and Sera eyed him with renewed interest.

“That was ages ago. Now things are different.”

“You do look different.” Pointed the glasses wearing man. “Did something good happened to you?”

“Is it that obvious?” asked Yato, a bit embarrassed.

“I haven’t seen you laughing like that in a long time.”

Yato stared at him directly in the eye. He bent his body forwards and let his chin rest on his hands, placing his elbows on the table.

“Sera Kaii,” he said, “even you, having the mysterious life you have, in your many businesses you should’ve had ups n’ downs.”

Sera could barely hear him on top of the pub’s noise. He finished his beer.

“It sounds like you have good news.” Sera said, trying to hide the curiosity in his voice. “Want a cigarette?”

  Once outside, Yato lit up his tobacco cylinder slowly, while Sera looked at him impatiently. It had began to snow.

“So? What’s all this mistery about?”

“Have you ever” Yato began, taking his time to speak, “had the impression that you run up to something that simply changes… everything?”

The other guy looked at him over his eyeglasses, not so sure about what he was meaning.

“Well, you are privileged, you can change whatever you want in the minute you want.” Sera pointed, bitterly.

“That’s not entirely true, but I imagine you’re talking about the double life you have.”

“What do you know about that?” behind his chill appearance, Yato noticed his friend shifted his weight, unconfortable.

“I only know you have bet on things you shouldn’t before.” Yato pointed to the bar behind them with his chin. “And you still doin’ it. You have a really solid support. I’m sure you have a good job.”

Sera let out an eloquent laugh. “You’re an extremely interesting person, Yato. It seems sometimes you’re completely oblivious to the world, and sometimes it seems you’re amazingly perceptive.” Yato scoffed. “What the hell did you found that made you change so much?”

“A singer. She’s fantastic.”

“To your standard, she should be really good.”

“She’s technically on diapers, but she has a huge potential.”

“Did you take in a rookie?” the voice of the guy with glasses bounced back from the wall in front of them. “Did you lost your mi – Oh.”

Yato looked at him in confusion, while Sera gave him a stern look.

“I see. That actually explains a lot.”

Yato reddened to the tip of his ears.

“Whatever you’re implying, you’re wrong. She’s actually exceptional.”

“But you have your doubts about her.” Sera pointed him with the cigarette butt between his fingers, before throwing it away. “You wouldn’t be telling me anything if you were completely sure.”

“I’m only thinkin’ if I should make some changes.” Said Yato. He took a few steps away, and turning his back on him, he continued. “We’re rehearsing at the label’s house. Call me whenever you’re available.”

“Sure do.”

Yato left, leaving fresh black tracks on the thin snow layer on the ground.

Sera sighed, curling his lips upwards. That smile turned into a thin small line when he felt the cellphone ringing in his pocket.

“Iki speaking.”

  Iki Takamasa hung the hall speaker down, and sat at the table along his wife and daughter, who gave him an inquisitive stare.

“Masaomi will miss dinner again.” He said, in a serious tone.

Iki Sayuri, an elegant lady who still had traces of her youthful beauty clinging to her face, let out a strained sigh.

“He works way too much. I will ask for his share to be saved for him to eat something at the hospital tomorrow.”

Hiyori was not surprised by this scene anymore. Lately it seemed like her impressions were being abruptly melted down one by one. She had noticed they were not the same family as before. His father looked tired all the time and everytime he had to relax, he fell asleep. Her mom was beginning to show traces of stress on her face and a hidden tobacco addiction around her mouth. Masaomi was never home, and she had spent most her teenage hours studying. It was hard not recognizing the people you sit with around the table every night.

“You’re quiet today, honey,” her dad told her, “not hungry?”

Hiyori flinched. She had been staring at her plate during the last couple of minutes. Shyly, she began to eat.

“Maybe she doesn’t know how to tell you the news, dear.” Pointed Sayuri, with a suggestive voice. Takamasa froze right there in the middle of cutting his hamburger steak.

“What news, Hiyori?”

“Uhm…” she doubted. Right when she was beginning to talk, her mother cut her abruptly.

“She chose the music club at school.”

Hiyori closed her mouth softly, looking at the flower vase on the table.

“Music?” repeated her father, thoughtful. “Well, congratulations, dear. It’s not exactly a family tradition or something the Iki’s are particularly skilled on, but I’m sure you will do your best.” After a brief pause, he continued. “So? What instrument you chose? Flute? Clarinet? Violin?”

“They picked me up for the choir. I’m a soprano.”

“That is wonderful, sweetie.” Her dad got up from the table abruptly, answering his cellphone. “Iki speaking.”

“Oh, dear!”

“I refuse to keep talking to you through email like a caveman! Come to my house before rehearsal.”

Hiyori sighed, closed his e-mail session and turned off the centenarian computer on her school library. Through those weeks, his email had been cluttered with a million messages left by Yato (sometimes at very inadequate hours past midnight), some with a clear topic, but most of them were actually about any random stupid thought coming through his mind at the moment. Hiyori was beginning to think he was mistaking her email account with a notebook of dumb ideas. She made what she could to answer, but sometimes she could not manage more than writing two or three things full speed in her school’s computer. Of course, her father had a last generation laptop in his study, but Hiyori had never dared to touch his things. Libraries came really useful to write down papers and in case any emergency came up, she could count with Ami or Yama to lend her theirs. Yato and his urge to let her know even the link to that commercial that had made him uncomfortable in the morning was turning her world upside down.

Hiyori made it until the main door of the building with her school bag in hand, but turning to one of the hallways, she heard a voice calling her stubbornly.

“Hiyori-chan!”

When she turned back, Fujisaki Kouto reached at her.

“Sensei! Is something wrong?”

“Sensei? I might be the substitute teacher, Hiyori-chan, but I’m actually just a few years older than you.” He blinked an eye at her, and Hiyori let out a small laugh, not finding any other appropriate reaction. “The music academy has its perks. You can call me Kouto-kun.”

“I… actually don’t think that’s really appropriate… sensei.”

“Ow, c’mon!” Fujisaki insisted. “Don’t be that serious. In fact I have something to show you, come with me.”

The guy took her by the arm with a powerful grip, a surprise for someone with his complexion, and he practically dragged her to the music room. Hiyori followed, nervous, expecting to brush him off quickly to make it on time to Yato’s apartment before the rehearsal with the band.

Once in the music room, Fujisaki took his baton, and pointed an empty chair. Hiyori sat on the edge of it, uncomfortable. The teacher turned his back on her and scrambled around the handful of papers piled neatly over his desk. Hiyori got one of the pamphlets.

“La nuit” she read, a little lost.

“This is part of the repertoire we’ll go over next week.” Fujisaki leaned closer to her, and fixed his eyes really close, with his hands on his knees to be at her eyesight level. The necktie dangled forward in a very sloppy way. “Your voice is simply perfect for this solo.”

Hiyori skimmed over the score. “I have never sang something this difficult before.”

“This is for begginers, Hiyori-chan!” With an exaggerated gesture, Fujisaki raised both hands to the ceiling, and turned around to lean tragically over his desk. “Leave your stuff, we will begin right away.”

“B-but!” she began complaining.

“Or could it be that you have plans? Oh, don’t worry, I understand your personal life is more important than being responsible with your projects!”

Hiyori sighed and stood up. She didn’t move an inch. Fujisaki smiled and attacked the piano immediately.

“You enter right after the phrase with G, A…”

  Every tick of the clock hand generated waves on the clear surface of his mind, like drops of water in a full basin, growing closer to knock over. With his chin over his laced up fingers, he listened every second and every minute passing, how many hours he had been sitting there? Every muscle on his body was unsure of working properly together with the rest, and when Yato finally used them to look at the time in the kitchen clock, they screeched in a peculiar way. He looked at the device furiously, as if it carried the guilt of being this late; then he took his jacket and stormed to the door. Before going out, he looked at the package laying on top of the coffee table, on a paper bag with handles. Exasperated, he returned for it and then he went through the door like a demon.

Walking with big strides through the street, he almost runs over Hiyori, who was running to his basement. Not long after they understood they were each other, they began talking at the same time.

“That’s precisely why one should get a cellphone! I can’t believe you simply can’t have any civilized way of letting anyone know you’re running this late! You could have never made it and I would be there waiting for you like a fucking idiot!”

“I’m so sorry! I actually wasn’t planning on taking that long and I had the intention of running to your place as soon as the classes ended but my teacher found me and insisted we should practice! I told you I’m sorry! Are you even listening to me?!”

They both sighed when the silence raised. Yato took one hand to his neck.

“Look, it doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s just hurry.”

Hiyori nodded and walked with her head low behind him all the time until they made it to the station. At the platform, Yato tried to engage with the normal small-talk.

“So they accepted your request for choir?”

Hiyori nodded again.

“The teacher is really strange.”

“Bet he is.” Pointed Yato in a distracted tone. After an uncomfortable silence, he went straight to the point. “I told a friend of mine to come whenever he has the chance to listen us.” He felt Hiyori tensing next to him. “He’s a nice guy, I’ve been trusting him from a while now. His specialty is moving contacts. He likes to invest his time and money in difficult projects.”

“He supported you guys?” asked Hiyori, shyly.

“Thanks to him we met that nasty Tenjin geezer.”

Another silence ensued.

“When will he come?” she finally asked.

“Dunno. He’s a busy man.” Yato muttered. “I want him to check up on you. I actually think we should adjust some stuff about our style, to make your voice pop up.” He took one hand to his chin. “And I fully trust Sera’s opinion.”

“Sera-san?”

“That’s obviously not a real name. He introduces himself as Sera Kaii.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“That’s a stage name! you really don’t think we are going to introduce our singer as Iki Hiyori, do you?”

“...But that’s actually my name.”

“No way! We will have to think of another name for you.”

“I still don’t get the point of that.”

“What about Anpangirl?”

“WHAT?!”

“It’s actually a cute name, everybody likes Anpanman…”

The conversation flowed on that same note during the rest of the trip. Getting down, they tried to make it to their friends house as fast as possible.

“Your late!” growled Daikoku, all the way from the kitchen.

“What are we waiting for, then?” said Yato mischievously, getting close to the basement stairs. One by one they began to enter the basement studio for another rehearsal.

“Whatever it is you’re doing, musically speaking, Hiyori-chan, you better drop it right away. It will end up getting in the way for the choirs matters.” Had said Fujisaki earlier. And he had added: “You really should not get together with that kind of losers.”

It had been an oddly specific comment. Looking at Yato’s back moving instruments and connecting things, commenting options with Yukine and Daikoku, she realized how mistaken her teacher was.

They were the reason she had come to him at the first place.

That night, she sang with a confidence she had never felt before.

  “You sound tired.”

Hiyori jumped when Yato came from behind, sitting halfway on the bench’s back watching Kofuku’s garden.

“I just had a long day, that’s all.”

“Hmmm…” muttered the guy, searching around in his pockets. A paper bag dangled on his wrist. Hiyori interrupted him when he was about to spin the lighter’s  wheel.

“The choir teacher is giving me private training.” The man looked at her, surprised.

“That idiot with the baton and everything?”

“He’s the orchestra director, Yato.”

“All those guys are just assholes.” He snapped, mockful, and finished lighting his cigarette. Another oddly specific comment, Hiyori thought, and looked at her gloved hands in her lap.

Yato looked at her briefly and jumped over the bench like a cat, sitting next to her, staring. Surprised, Hiyori watched him stutter, even when the previous movement had been precise and agile.

“Listen… Hiyori…” she didn’t liked to admit the nervousness of the guy made her hear beat really fast. “I want to give you something.”

Saying this, he deattached the paper bag from his wrist, and offered it to her with both his arms extended up the front.

“I didn’t wrapped it or anything; it’s actually not a big deal, I don’t want you to think weird stuff.” Yato looked at the floor, and Hiyori surprised herself thinking how strikingly handsome he looked with his flushed cheeks, the scarf on his neck, puffs of steam coming from his mouth, with his hair up in a ponytail and offering him a strange bag that, actually, didn’t looked like it was light. The girl took the package and began opening with caution. It was thrill this she felt receiving a gift directly from him?

She froze when she opened the cardboard box and picked up the brand new smartphone carefully.

“Yato…”

“As I was telling you, don’t make anything weird out of this!” Yato spluttered, “It’s really annoying having to contact you through e-mail with no certainty that you read an important message or not!”

“But…”

“But nothing! Take it, it’s yours.”

Hiyori’s teeth began hurting due to the cold air outside, having her mouth open, completely surprised. It seemed like all her ability to speak had just left her right there.

“If you don’t want it I can turn it back…” he muttered, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. Hiyori came up abruptly from her dizziness.

“I’m so thankful for this!” She got up and made a bow in front of Yato, who waved his hands exaggeratedly, trying to avoid Hiyori took it too seriously.

“I only want you to have it in case we need to call you immediately, that way we won’t need to wait until you can confirm if you’re coming or not.”

“I promise I’ll pay you!”

“Tha’ FUCK are you talking about?!”

“These things are not cheap!”

“Okay, now, let me tell you something.” Yato went dead serious quite abruptly, and got up to get closer to her. Hiyori took half a step back. “If you really want to do something for me” he looked at her directly in the eye, deeply, “promise me you’ll always sing for us.”

She had a really hard time trying to undo the knot in her throat before speaking. “I will.”

Inside, Kofuku stepped off one of the windows silently, with a dainty smile covering her face.

“It was just a matter of time, Yatty.” She whispered, and continued her way down the hallway.

  It was not hard to convince her friends that the phone had been purchased with her savings, and they gladly shared with her their favorite pictures, apps and cellphone numbers. It was a little bit more difficult to get the strange look off his father’s face when Hiyori showed a little bit more interest in technology that they thought. However, Yato, the reason behind that phone in particular, was beginning to get on her nerve.

Without any warning, at completely inconsistent times, Hiyori would get text messages from him, just as at her email before. This guy didn’t cared at all if it was 2 o’clock in the morning and she had a text the next day. She had ended up silencing her phone whenever she was at school, and she had finally came to turn it off during the night.

“Maybe I would answer more gladly if you weren’t harassing me every single hour!”, she had written one morning that Yato’s endless messages had reached her phone after turning it on. The last one had been a “):” at 4 in the morning. She later apologized to Yato on the rehearsal that afternoon, but she pressed over the fact she had still tests coming up midterm and asked him to moderate the amount of texts he sent. Yukine found really funny Yato finally had someone else apart from him to pester on.

At his basement, Yato opened the door to shelter himself from the strong snow that began falling just after that days reunion, and he pulled out his cellphone from his pocket to ask Hiyori if she thought it was true ants didn’t sleep, before thinking twice and placing it on top of the coffee table, with his interest now over a yellow envelope someone had slid under the door.

Inside, he found a simple printed paper. The only phrase in it, just in the middle, on a really small font, read “Missed me?”. Yato felt a stone down his stomach and wrinkled down the envelope and paper with all his strength, throwing it with rage on the kitchen’s trashcan. It took a long time before he could actually manage to normalize his breathing and heartbeat.

Hiyori was walking alone the last blocks from the station to her house. In spite of being a relatively safe area, something about today made her feel watched over. For some reason the dark or shady parts made her walk faster and look behind her shoulder.

The vibration in her skirt’s pocket scared her and she almost yelped, reacting just in time to take the machine out and see on the screen that an unknow number was trying to communicate with her.

Hiyori slid the green button to the right.

“Iki speaking.”

“Hiyori-chaaaaaaan!” said a sugary voice, filled with danger.

  Hey guys, It’s me. Again I thank you all for reading up until this point and I would give you the usual rubbish about why I’m taking a long time to update but actually, at this moment I do have a really good excuse.

Turns out after all the things going on with my life I finally managed to transfer my school to Japan. It might sound unbelievable, but it’s true. So right now since obviously I don’t have an appropriate visa, I can’t work so I have a lot of free time on my hands when I finish school everyday. So besides of homework, chores and going out to know Tokyo, I do spend a lot of time at my apartment doing pretty much nothing else than writing.

So expect an update really soon! Thank you all again for your kudos, comments, reblogs and everything. I deeply appreciate it!

Also, in case you were wondering, “La Nuit” is part of the soundtrack of the movie “Les Choristes”. This is the link to youtube in case you want to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQg-3wkzJ3s