Blossoms of The Forgotten Day Chapter 11: Chapter 11

Read chapter 11 of Blossoms of The Forgotten Day by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

The week before the competition moved differently than other weeks. Not faster, exactly. More like the way water moves when it knows it is close to the edge. Everything with a little more current in it. A little more direction. We practiced every day now. Not just at the clearing but wherever we could find a quiet space. The music room after school. The stairwell at the far end of the east wing where the acoustics were strange and close and made everything sound more urgent than it was. Once, on a lunch break when the roof was empty and the wind had died, we ran the whole song standing against the fence with the school spread out below us and the sky enormous above. Haruka said the wind changed her breathing. I said that was the point. She threw a bottle cap at me. I did not move out of the way fast enough. Haruki and Asahi came to one of the clearing practices on Wednesday. They sat on the slope above the flat stone and watched without saying much, which for Haruki was an act of considerable restraint. When we finished she was quiet for a moment and then she said simply, "Okay. You two are going to win this." Asahi nodded once, the way he nodded when he was genuinely certain of something rather than just being kind. "It is good, Sae. It is really good." I looked at the guitar in my hands. I did not know how to receive that. I had spent so long not playing that being told I was good at it again felt like being told something about a different person. Someone I used to know. But maybe that was the point. Maybe that person was not as gone as I had thought. The days settled into a rhythm. Morning, school, practice, evening. Haruka and I walked the river road together more often than not, sometimes talking, sometimes not. She had a way of being quiet that did not demand anything from you. Most people's silences have a shape to them, an expectation sitting inside them waiting to be filled. Hers did not. It was just quiet. Room to think or not think as you chose. On Thursday she brought two cans of hot corn soup from the vending machine to the clearing and handed me one without asking if I wanted it. I did not drink corn soup. I had never drunk corn soup in my life. I drank it. It was warm and faintly sweet and not as bad as I had expected. She watched me drink it with the expression of someone collecting evidence. "Well?" she said. "It is acceptable." She smiled like she had won something. I did not give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her smile. Friday afternoon, two days before the competition, we ran the song four times back to back without stopping between runs. By the fourth time there was nothing left to fix. It was not perfect in the technical sense. But it was true in every sense that mattered more than perfect, and truth in music, I was learning again, was the harder thing to achieve. When we finished the last run Haruka sat on the stone with her knees pulled up and her chin resting on them, looking out at the river. The last of February's light was thin and pale above the trees. "Are you nervous?" she asked. "About the competition." "Yes." I thought about it honestly. "Not about the performance," I said. "The song is ready. You are ready. That part does not scare me." "What part does?" I looked at the bare branches. The buds were more visible now than they had been two weeks ago, small and tight, holding their color close. "What comes after," I said. "I have not thought past the competition. I do not know what it means that I am here again. Playing again. I do not know what to do with that yet." She was quiet for a moment. "You do not have to know yet," she said. "You just have to play on Sunday. Everything after that gets to wait." I nodded. It was not a complete answer. But it was enough for now. She stood and stretched, her arms above her head, and looked up at the pale sky with the easy unselfconsciousness of someone who never thought about being watched. Her scarf had come loose slightly. Her hair caught what w