Blossoms of The Forgotten Day Chapter 8: Chapter 8

Read chapter 8 of Blossoms of The Forgotten Day by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

It started raining before first period was over. Not the soft kind that arrives gently and leaves before you notice it. This was the heavy, committed kind, the kind that shows up in February with no warning and settles in like it owns the place. By the time the lunch bell rang the courtyard was a shallow lake and the sakura trees along the walkway were bent low, their bare branches dripping. Asahi pressed his face to the corridor window and assessed the situation with the seriousness of a general surveying a battlefield. "Roof is out," he announced. "Obviously," Haruki said. "Canteen is going to be packed." "Also obvious." "We could eat in the classroom." Haruki made a face. "I am not eating where I study. That is a rule I have." "You do not study," I said. She pointed at me. "Exactly. So eating there would ruin the one thing that room is good for, which is sleeping through class." Haruka appeared at my shoulder, already holding her lunchbox, her notebook tucked under her arm. "Music room?" she said. Haruki and Asahi both turned to look at me. I picked up my bag. "Music room," I said. The music room was at the far end of the east wing, past the art rooms and the small library that no one used anymore. It was warmer than the rest of the building because the pipes ran through the wall behind the instrument storage. The rain hit the single window in long, heavy sheets, and the sound of it filled the room the way water fills a glass, steadily, from the bottom up. The four of us spread out. Asahi took the piano bench and immediately started pressing single keys at random, not playing anything, just touching them. Haruki settled on the floor against the wall and opened her lunch with the focused energy of someone who had been thinking about food for the last two hours. I sat in the chair by the window, the one I always used, and Haruka took the chair beside the instrument shelf, close enough that I could see her notebook when she opened it. For a while it was just the rain and the sound of everyone eating. "Play something," Asahi said, still touching piano keys one at a time. "You play something," I said. "I only know one song." "Then play that." He played three notes of what I recognized distantly as a children's lullaby, decided that was enough, and stopped. Haruki laughed with her mouth full. Haruka made a sound that was trying very hard not to be a laugh and failed. I looked at her without meaning to. She had her hand over her mouth again, the same way she had on the roof the other day, and her eyes were bright with it, that particular brightness that comes right after something has caught you off guard and made you genuinely happy. Her notebook was open on her knee but she had stopped writing. The pen was loose in her other hand. I looked back at the window. The rain kept coming. Asahi and Haruki started arguing about something, the way they always did, easy and circular, neither of them actually trying to win. Their voices filled the room and I let them wash past me and watched the water run down the glass in long, branching lines. After a while, Haruka moved her chair closer to mine. Not significantly. Just enough that when she held out the notebook I could read it without leaning. "I rewrote the chorus," she said quietly, under Haruki and Asahi's ongoing argument. "Tell me what you think." I read it. She had changed two lines, shifted the rhythm slightly so the last word of each line landed a beat earlier than before. It was a small change but it opened the whole section up, gave it more air. "It is better," I said. "You are sure? It felt right when I wrote it but then I read it back this morning and I was not sure anymore." "The original version was slightly closed. This one breathes." She looked at the page, then at me. "Breathes," she repeated, like she was testing the word. "The space between the lines. The original did not give you anywhere to land before the next one started. This does." She looked back at the page and