#keeping the natsuki nozomi interactions together in the same part though

[watchingyouflytl]

Chapter 1: Nozomi Kasaki is Unlucky (Part 2)

*

In their third year of middle school, Natsuki and Nozomi were in the same class. Because Minami Middle had four classes per grade, there were some kids she had never been in the same class with. The majority of Natsuki’s main friends at the time were in the going-home club or the light music club, and Nozomi and Yuuko felt like sub-friends. She hadn’t spoken a lot to them, but they recognized one another as friends of friends. They could speak to each other normally if they were ever alone together, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they would go hang out together. That level. She didn’t even know of Mizore’s existence. Probably, if she hadn’t joined the concert band, she would never have known her.

To be honest, Natsuki in middle school disliked people who were passionate about club activities. She was the type to laugh scornfully at the antiquated ideas of “hot-bloodedness” and “guts”. She thought that the sports festival and the chorus competition were both a bother, and didn’t care what the results were.

Conversely, Nozomi was the one who would passionately work on school events. She would warn boys who weren’t practicing properly, and would frequently reach out to the kids who tended to take time off from school.

“Club president.”

Nozomi was called this even outside of club activities. Natsuki thought this title was appropriate for people like her. President of the concert band, popular in class. Her eyes began to follow Nozomi in the winter of their third year of middle school. The spark was during their provided break time in the middle of gym class.

Natsuki and the others’ school, Minami Middle, held a long jump rope competition every year on the third Thursday of January. Girls and boys would be divided up by class and would compete based on the number of their jumps. It wasn’t as though there was a prize for winning, so the only thing winning got you was honor.

She wondered what would even come of putting everything you had into this. As she gazed at the girls from the illustration club sitting in the corner of the sports field, Natsuki let out a big sigh. She twisted open the cap of her water bottle and poured its contents into her mouth. That was the exact moment Nozomi came to talk to her.

“Do you hate long jump roping, Natsuki?”

Having been spoken to at such a close proximity, Natsuki instantly removed her mouth from her water bottle. She’d narrowly been about to spill it.

“I don’t really hate it or anything,” answered Natsuki, hiding her inner unrest and faking calmness. Other students’ belongings had been left in the corner of the sports field. To prevent dehydration, they were given permission to bring water bottles to gym class.

“Anyway, what is this? All of a sudden.”

She hadn’t had that intention at the time, but her wariness might possibly have been showing in her attitude. Nozomi was always together with her concert band friends, so it was strange that she had come all the way over to speak to her during their short break time.

In response to Natsuki’s question, Nozomi showed her white teeth with a broad smile. Her last name, Kasaki, had been embroidered on the breast pocket of her blue school jersey.

“It’s not all of a sudden, though? Should I not come and talk to you, Natsuki?”

“That’s not what I mean, I was just surprised.”

“I didn’t mean to surprise you, though…”

Lowering the ends of her eyebrows, Nozomi scratched the back of her head. I’m sure she didn’t, thought Natsuki. Nozomi wasn’t the type to act with an agenda. That’s exactly why she was hard to approach, she thought. The positive aura she released was too bright if you looked directly at it for long.

“Natsuki, you’re always making a sour face when it’s time for long jump rope.”

“No, I don’t mean to do that.”

“What, that’s definitely a lie!”

Nozomi stared directly into her face, waiting for an answer. Natsuki wiped the rim of her water bottle, then stirred up its contents all at once. She had the feeling that the kettle-made mugicha tasted somehow different than when she normally drank it at home.

“More than long jump rope, I hate team sports.”

“Why? There’s a feeling that everyone’s cooperating together.”

“The idea of all together is gross. I hate when the air feels like the people who can’t do it are bad.”

It had been like that in their practice earlier. The illustration club girls who weren’t good at sports had gotten caught in the jump rope over and over. The girls who messed up would apologize with an “I’m sorry” over and over, and each time the girls around them would call out, “It’s okay” or “Don’t worry about it”. She thought Nozomi in particular had put a lot of energy into backing them up. She had shown the consideration of a club president in order to keep the atmosphere from becoming bad and to keep the girls who messed up from getting discouraged.

Ahh, the fact that she had come to talk to her was a part of that, Natsuki understood. Nozomi guessed the irritation of her classmates, then came to remove the seeds of discord.

“I didn’t think the atmosphere of our class was that bad, though. It felt peaceful, and nobody was blamed for messing up.”

“No, I don’t care if the atmosphere is good or bad. Just that it’s unpleasant that the girls who messed up had to apologize every time.”

“But nobody was making them apologize, though? I just thought they were because they themselves felt bad.”

“If we didn’t have the long jump rope competition in the first place, there’d be no reason for those girls to feel bad. It feels like, apologizing if you can’t jump rope? Huh? You ever apologized to your classmates for getting bad grades on a math test? You ever said sorry for having horrible art? Why is it when it comes to sports, you have to apologize if you can’t do them? It doesn’t matter if you jump zero times in the actual competition. It’s seriously pointless that we’re being forced to do this even now we’re middle school students.”

As she expressed her thoughts aloud, her choice of words became fierce. But that couldn’t be helped. Because that was what she actually thought.

Nozomi laughed as though she were a little troubled at Natsuki’s speech. It was a laugh that included incredulity, like an adult taming a spoiled child.

“Natsuki, you’re super direct.”

“Are you picking a fight?”

“No, no, I’m just saying what I thought. I think what you said is correct. But it might be a bit too correct to apply to reality.”

“What do you mean?”

Not understanding the meaning, Natsuki cocked her head. Nozomi lightly cast her eyes down.

“I think that if you try to bring a lot of people together, just being correct doesn’t mean it’ll go well a lot of the time. It’s important to find a proposal to compromise for your feelings and the other person’s feelings. School events are the same, and more than there being meaning in long jump rope itself, it’s more a training for everyone to accept a hardship together and think how to overcome it.”

“Is that your opinion as the club president?”

“No, it’s just my opinion. But I may have come to feel that there’s differences in how the people bringing others together and the people being brought together see things. School rules might look unreasonable, but it’s not like they’re evil incarnate.”

“That’s the opinion of someone who lives in a group.”

“You’re the same, Natsuki. You’re one person in the group called school.”

Natsuki knit her brows at Nozomi’s words. That was exactly right, but Natsuki hadn’t chosen to be a part of a group of her own accord. It had been chosen for her, and furthermore, she didn’t want any part of the rules that had been forced upon her for no reason.

“That’s a hair-raising way of thinking.”

“Really? I think that if you’re affiliated with a group, quitting is the last resort. It’s the first choice that comes up when you’ve struggled a lot and think it’s really impossible. Changing everything in your environment is impossible, so first off, changing yourself to fit with your environment is more effective. It might even change from something hateful to something that feels fun as you continue to do it.”

Those were plausible words, she thought. She couldn’t empathize with them, but she could comprehend her line of thinking. Everyone who said they loved school might all be thinking like Nozomi. They had a high ability to adapt themselves to the current situation.

“Nozomi, you’re a really good kid.”

“Is that payback for earlier?”

“Could be.”

Shrugging, she placed her water bottle close to her bag. Wiping her sweat-streaked forehead with the back of her hand, Natsuki faced Nozomi.

“You don’t have to worry, Nozomi. I’ll jump properly. I have some complaints, but it’s not like I’m thinking that I want to ruin it.”

“I’m not worried about that. You seem surprisingly responsible, Natsuki.”

“You don’t even know me at all and you know that?”

“I know, I know. Your complaint just now, it came from you being genuinely worried about the illustration club girls, right?”

“Not really, I just got pissed off on my own.”

“Seeing that and getting irritated is the reason why I thought you seem to be responsible.”

Rubbing her fingers over her black hair, which had been tied up in a high position, Nozomi let out a giggle. At the center of the sports field, the gym teacher gave the order, “Break time’s over now…”. The resting students began to move in a crowd towards the meeting place.

“Okay, let’s go too.”

Saying this, Nozomi pointed ahead. It was a voice overflowing with the unaware confidence that Natsuki would naturally follow after her. Resisting would make her look childish, so Natsuki followed after her obediently. This was what having leadership was, she thought vaguely as she did.

In the end, after that gym class, Natsuki and Nozomi’s relationship hardly changed at all. They were friends who didn’t dislike each other, but even so, weren’t at a level where they would proactively talk to each other. The long jump rope competition ended smoothly, and Natsuki’s class had gotten a half-baked 3rd place out of the 4 classes in their grade. Still, the unity between her classmates had deepened all at once as a result of this event—not that there was any way that this had actually happened, as they had entered into entrance exam season without much being different about the atmosphere than before.

And so, on graduation day, Natsuki participated in the ceremony without having any strong feelings. The remarks from the higher-ups, singing the school song in unison, being presented with the diploma, all were a pain.

To be honest, Natsuki couldn’t relate even a bit with the people who cried during their graduation ceremony.  It had been like that in elementary school, and also now that she was in middle school. What on earth was so sad about graduating? All you had to do was just make a commitment to meet with those who you actually got along with, and anyone else wouldn’t be the type of people who you’d be upset to part with.

She watched the faces of the students who were lined up one by one in the gymnasium to stave off her boredom. The delinquent boy who wore his hair standing up on end was sniffling over and over, and the female class president with an emotional personality had a surprisingly cool expression as she looked out from atop the podium. The boy who bit back a yawn of disinterest, the girl who looked over at the friend next to her and laughed.

There were kids who were going on to high schools outside the prefecture, and there was a pattern of people who would be going to the same local high school as the majority of their friends. At Kitauji High School, where Natsuki had been accepted, 50 percent of the students in the entire school were from Higashi Middle. It wasn’t as though there were few kids from Minami Middle, but it also wasn’t as though there were overwhelmingly many either.

For the kids who were carrying their middle school friendships on to high school, what was this graduation ceremony? Did it just feel like a closing ceremony? If she wasn’t mistaken, around ten students who had been concert band members, including Nozomi, would apparently be going to Kitauji. Would that girl carrying on her friends be like the feeling of upgrading smartphone models, she wondered, and when she checked her classmates’ faces, Nozomi was crying. With her spine straight, she was wiping her flowing tears with her fingertip multiple times.

Why?

It was a simple question that came to mind before anything else. Nozomi would have friends even when she went to high school, so why on earth was she crying? Natsuki thought about Nozomi even when the ceremony ended, even when homeroom ended, even when she was on her way home.

After that, even after they were released from their classroom, each of the concert band members gathered in the courtyard and took pictures and wrote notes to each other. Kouhais gathered around Nozomi, giving her gifts. You could immediately tell which students had been in the club because they were holding bouquets. In order to not give away her empty hands, Natsuki adjusted the hand that held her own bag.

Passing through the mob of people, Natsuki hurriedly made her way home. Every time she walked, the graduation album inside her bag swayed. The last page of the graduation album had been blank, made for people to leave their signatures on it. Friends had come over to Natsuki, filling it in with long sentences in colorful pens. The space in Natsuki’s graduation album had been around halfway filled with a few friends, but Nozomi’s graduation album had been crowded with a large amount of people. Even Natsuki had been made to write in it for some reason. One, two line sentences had been lined up with no spaces on the page, but she didn’t know if everyone who had their name in there was close to Nozomi or not.

Signatures from kouhais, bouquets, none of these were here in Natsuki’s hands right now.

It wasn’t as though there was anything in her life up until now that she had once regretted. Still, the fact that not even the slightest bit of a feeling of loss came to her made her feel somewhat lonely. Natsuki’s middle school life had been three years spent just for her own sake.

She didn’t like her time being taken by others. However, continuing to spend all her time on herself was somewhat futile.

She didn’t think at all that she wanted to become like that, but somewhere in her heart, she admired a campus life like Nozomi’s. The path that she continued to choose with no trouble seemingly had so few obstacles, it wasn’t dull even when she looked back on it.

When she closed her eyes, Nozomi’s appearance from behind was reflected on the back of her eyelids. Her swaying ponytail. Her heel-first, cheerful way of walking. She thought just a little that she might want to live a life like hers. Even Natsuki wanted, just once, to become a person who loved school.

It was the day of Kitauji High School’s entrance ceremony. Nozomi’s name was listed on the roster for Natsuki’s class that had been put up in the hallway. Natsuki’s seat was by the window, while Nozomi’s was on the hallway side. Natsuki’s hair at the time had still been short, and she hadn’t been putting it up. Looking at her face reflected in the windowpane, Natsuki lightly pinched up the tip of her hair. She thought about maybe going blonde or getting a piercing once it was summer vacation.

On the other side of the transparent glass was a contrast of blue and white spreading out before her. Giant clouds were stretched out across the clear blue sky. When she inhaled, the scent of an immature spring greeted the deepest part of her lungs. A new life, these words were stifling. She hated the sound of them, seemingly holding unlimited possibility.

“We’re in the same class.”

Her desk rattled with a jolt. Averting her gaze from the window, Natsuki faced Nozomi, who had placed both hands on Natsuki’s desk and was leaning forward, gazing over at her.

“Whoa.”

“Are you spacing out too much? What are you looking at?”

“No, nothing.”

Tucking her hair over her ear, Natsuki turned up just one end of her mouth. The area of her desk had become even smaller because of Nozomi.

“The sports field? Are you interested in the track team or something?”

“I was only looking at the sky.”

“Huh, I see.”

“What’s going on with you? Coming over to talk all of a sudden.”

“No, no, you’d speak to someone from the same middle school who was in the same class as you. We’ve been classmates two years in a row. Doesn’t it feel like fate?”

Saying this, Nozomi pointed to both her and Natsuki’s faces. It was true that spending time in the same classroom as both middle school third years and high school first years was a pretty rare case.

“There’s not any other Minami Middle kids here? Like someone from concert band?”

“Sumire’s also here, but the others are in different classes.”

“Sumire? Ahh, you mean Wakai-san.”

Natsuki had been in the same class as Sumire Wakai in their first year of middle school. They had almost never talked, but she remembered only her face well because of her characteristic flashy white-rimmed glasses.

“Sumire’s super good on the sax. We promised we’d join the concert band together in high school too.”

“You’re joining the concert band too, Nozomi?”

“That’s the plan. We all said we’d join together.”

“How’s Kitauji’s concert band?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“Whether it’s good or not. Wasn’t Minami Middle pretty good? It got awards or something, right? Gold at the Kyoto Competition, appearing at the Kansai Competition and stuff.”

Every year at Minami Middle’s second semester opening ceremony, the concert band members were recognized for the results of the competitions over summer vacation. Natsuki had no idea about the workings of the concert band, but nonetheless had guessed that only good schools were given gold. After all, it was the gold prize. There was no way they could be bad.

“We-eell, we thought we were good…”

As she said this, Nozomi pushed aside the black hair falling on her cheeks with her fingertip. Natsuki was bewildered seeing her react by dropping the ends of her eyebrows as though she were troubled. She thought she would have immediately responded by saying that they were good.

“Natsuki, do you know how concert band competitions work?”

“How they work? Doesn’t first place normally get the gold prize or something?”

“People outside the concert band tend to think that, but it’s really different. For starters, gold doesn’t just go to one school.”

“Oh, really?”

“Schools that participate in the competition are recognized with either the gold, silver, or bronze prize. How it goes is that the top three schools out of those that got gold go on to the Kansai Competition, and then the top three schools from there go on to Nationals.”

“Hmm, sounds tough.”

She could understand winning and losing based on differences in points through a match like baseball, but how could music be evaluated? Unconsciously, Natsuki rubbed her chin. A world where your hard work was evaluated by others, it seemed somehow stifling.

“Minami Middle got to go to the Kansai Competition when we were second years, but in our third year, we weren’t good at all. We stopped at the Kyoto Competition with silver. Not even a dud gold.”

“Dud gold?”

“Ah, we call gold prizes that don’t let you move on to the next competition dud gold. Our advisor told us to stop using that name, saying that we didn’t have respect for the gold prize.”

Her hands still on the desk, Nozomi crossed her legs. Natsuki followed her dropped gaze with her eyes. Nozomi slightly clenched the tips of her fingers. The shadow made by her straining herself made the hollow of her hand look somehow lonely.

“It was frustrating, the competition in our third year.”

Her downcast eyes, and the lips making the shape of a smile. The pushed-up cheeks told her that Nozomi was trying to force a smile.

It was unexpected. Because she had been crying that much at the graduation ceremony, she’d thought that the concert band had had nothing but good memories for Nozomi.

“So, are you planning to give it another try at Kitauji? Is that why the kids from the band at Minami Middle came to Kitauji? You all came here for club activities or something.”

In response to Natsuki’s question, Nozomi’s eyes widened in amazement. The opened pair of eyes kept sparkling repeatedly. 

“No way. You’d pick a powerhouse school if you wanted to choose your school based on club activities.”

“Really?”

“Natsuki, do you know how many people were in Minami Middle’s concert band?”

“There’s no way I’d know.”

“When I was president, there were 83 people. There were especially a lot in my grade, 34 people. So, in a normal year, around 30 percent of Minami Middle goes to Kitauji.”

“Basically?”

“That the kids in the band didn’t all arrange going on to high school beforehand. Kids who picked their school based on club activities are, if you think about it, usually in the minority, right?”

Being coolly told this, Natsuki opened her mouth wide. No, you’d say something like that? Her true thoughts were about to spill out.

From the start, Natsuki had thought those who went on to high school with club activities in mind were considerable weirdos. That was because she thought that choosing where you would go based on commute time, school spirit, and academic level were important. She thought it wouldn’t be strange for types like Nozomi to choose their school with a youthful way of doing things, such as wanting to give a competition another try. Anyhow, it was because their way of thinking was different from a person like her.

“So, then why are you joining the concert band?”

“Because there’s a band.”

“Oh no, I don’t get it.”

“Whyyy, it’s simple. Even if I didn’t go to Kitauji, even if none of my friends from concert band were there, I’m sure I’d enter the concert band. At any rate, I love music.”

Nozomi opened her mouth widely and smiled. At this pleasant smile that made her think of the summer sun, Natsuki arbitrarily let out a sigh. She rubbed the wrinkle that naturally came to her brow with her thumb.

“Then, you don’t care if Kitauji’s concert band’s good or not.”

“I mean, Kitauji is honestly on the pretty poor side, but we can change it as much as we like once we enter it ourselves. If a weak school rose in the world, wouldn’t it be fun, like a shonen manga?”

“Hah, that’s quite a positive thing there.”

“How about you too, Natsuki.”

“What.”

Nozomi moved her hand. The index finger of her right hand was directly thrust at Natsuki’s chest. The trimmed-short nails, the white wrist peering out from the cuff of her uniform. It was just one small part of Nozomi’s body, but it was burned intensely into Natsuki’s retinas.

“Want to join the concert band together?”

Her voice was cheerful. It was a voice that didn’t expect one bit that the person she spoke to would agree, but simply one-sidedly expressed her own desire.

“Why me?”

“I thought it would be fun if it was together with you, Natsuki.”

The sun peeking through the rift in the clouds shone white light onto half of the desk. The direct sunlight that flowed in from the window was, in any case, radiant. Natsuki averted her eyes right away, but Nozomi was smiling broadly. Dazzling, dazzling. So much so that her eyes felt like they would burn up. Even so, the only one paying attention to it was Natsuki, and Nozomi didn’t even seem to pretend to care. 

This was why she didn’t like her, Natsuki sighed deeply. She sheltered herself with her left hand to protect her body from the sunlight.

“Nozomi, you invite people to the band no matter who they are, don’t you?”

“Aha, you caught me. But, you know it’s true that it would be fun if it was together with you, Natsuki?”

“Seriously, you’re really…”

Natsuki was hesitant to say the words beyond that aloud, so she faltered into a mumble. Misunderstanding that, Nozomi corrected her posture in a panic.

“Ah, was there maybe another club you wanted to join?”

“Not really. Well, if I had to pick, the going-home club.”

“No, no, that’s not a club.”

“Thinking that the choice of entering a club is obvious isn’t right to begin with. The going-home club is a respectable option.”

“I get that the going-home club is one respectable choice. But isn’t the band the same as that?”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it, I get it.”

Whatever she said, it would end up getting connected to being invited. Nozomi smiled pleasantly at Natsuki, who hadn’t even tried to hide the exasperation in her reply.

“I think you’d be suited for percussion or something, Natsuki.”

“Which one’s percussion.”

“It means the percussion instruments. Like drums and timpanis and stuff.”

“If you’re saying that, then I won’t do that one.”

“So that means you’d be a bit more motivated to do any of the instruments besides that!” 

Nozomi gave a vigorous thumbs-up. It seemed that somehow she’d been skillfully talked into it. She should say, as expected of an experienced club president, since Nozomi had a nice personality. It definitely didn’t mean that her personality was good at all.

“Let’s go to the club activity workshops together.” Natsuki shrugged her shoulders in resigned relief as Nozomi said this happily. Even though she could have refused, the fact that she didn’t was because Natsuki herself was starting to feel comfortable with being pushed around.

And so, in the end, Natsuki decided to join the concert band. Nozomi inviting her was one reason, but the largest deciding factor was that Kitauji’s concert band was weak.

There was some practice, but you didn’t need to do it desperately. There were many senpais who slacked off, and there was no intention of seriously challenging themselves in competitions or performances. In Natsuki’s eyes, that half-heartedness was reflected as something that seemed pleasant. If there had been a strict practice schedule like at a powerhouse school, Natsuki definitely wouldn’t have joined. She had an interest in club activities, but even so, she didn’t have the smallest idea to dedicate the majority of her time in high school to it.

She found out for the first time when she joined, but the concert band had all different kinds of instruments prepared. Those that Natsuki knew the names of were the trumpet, trombone, horn, sax, flute, and the clarinet. She even knew percussion because she had heard about it from Nozomi. However, there were even more instruments in the world.

For example, the euphonium. The brass instrument that had been allocated to Natsuki. It was a relatively new instrument when seen historically, and it was on the relatively less known side. At Kitauji, it was a part of the bass section with the giant brass instrument, the tuba, and the giant-violin-looking contrabass.

“Newbie-chan, do this and you should be fine for now.”

The senpai one year above her who passed over the sheet music while saying this to her—Asuka Tanaka, was recognized by club members of every year. Good at her instrument, intelligent, and beyond that, she was a profuse talker. As long as that senpai was there, no problems had ever occurred in the bass section. Her friends in the same year had kind personalities, and there were hardly ever any disputes.

Very mild days continued. At least, in the bass section.