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31_days2007-05-11 03:25 am
nutty-scribbler.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2007-05-11 03:25 am
[May 11] [Nodame Cantabile] Into the care of Amphitrite, I surrender my beating heart
Title: Into the care of Amphitrite, I surrender my beating heart
Day/Theme: [May 11] all other perils and misfortunes of the sea
Series: Nodame Cantabile
Character/Pairing: Chiaki, Chiaki/Nodame
Rating: G
Spoilers: Up till Volume 4 of the manga. Spoilers up to Nina Lutz Music Festival in the Anime.
***
Chiaki cannot remember when did he fall out of love with Nodame's piano, and actually fell in love with Nodame.
He isn't even sure if they're not altogether synonymous from the start.
***
"The sound of your music has changed."
Chiaki opened his eyes and looked towards to door to discover Etoh leaning against the door. He frowned, but waited to see if the man would further elaborate.
"It sounds quite like Nodame's, now," Etoh continued. He tried to hide a smile a the sight of Chiaki's obvious displeasure at the comparison. "It isn't meant in a bad way. It just means..." he paused to consider his next words, "your playing has soul now."
Chiaki looked to his score, but not really seeing it.
Etoh walked over, and did something he had never done before. He patted a student on the back.
"I guess I'll just have to accept that you have found a better teacher."
***
"You've changed," Saiko remarked as she raised her glass to her lips, eyeing him contemplatively. She inhaled the potent fumes of the spirit and allowed the heady fragrance to fill her nostrils. The glass tipped over and the dark liquid washed across her lips into her mouth. She swirls it around with her tongue, weighing it experimentally before letting it burn a bitter path down her throat.
"How so?" Chiaki asked, taking a sip of his own.
Your voice is kinder, she wanted to say. Your shoulders are more relaxed. Your eyes are not as lonely. You are more willing to let other people in.
You look happier than you ever were when we were together.
Saiko closed her eyes and drained her glass. "You're not as cool as you were before," she told him, and signalled the bartender for a refill.
***
Chiaki hated the sea - hated the unpredictability of its mecurial nature, hated how just when he thought he had all the signs figured out - it comes and blindsides him with a fucking tsunami that throws him completely off balance, off course, and steals the very breath out of his lungs.
***
But that time in Nagano, on their way to the Nina Lutz Music Festival in his fourth year, Chiaki remembered watching Nodame from where he sat in the pavillion. She was standing at the edge of the shore, facing some distant point in the horizon, where the endless green-blue of the sea met the infinite bright blue of the sky. Her eyes were closed and her lips twisted into that pout he once hated so much, long fingers tapping uncontrollably at the sides of her thighs as she swayed to the constant rhythym of salty waters rushing up to gently lick her toes.
Chiaki tried to look away but found that couldn't. She had bewitched him, and Chiaki could almost hear the strains of music she was hearing in her head, the sweet chorus of Sirens against the muffled shuffle of rolling waves. Amphitrite herself had risen from the sea and and had taken Nodame into her foamy embrace, whispering into her ear the secret songs of men who tried to tame her stormy heart, of those who succeeded and of those who failed.
Suddenly, Nodame was the sea, and the sea was Nodame, and Chiaki realised that he can hate the sea no more.
Someone knocked into his shoulder and broke the spell. Chiaki looked away hastily, feeling all light headed and heart pumping hard, and gulped down his already flat soda (the carbon dioxide had long escaped), and took in deep breaths.
When he looked back at Nodame, she had already come out of her trance as well and was waving energetically at him.
***
"It isn't enough to be good," Stressman lectured him once. "You must be great. To be great, your music must have heart."
Chiaki wasn't paying attention. It would be hard to take even a great maestro like Stressman seriously, when he was leaning heavily against you for support, smelling like a pot-pourri of cheap perfume.
"Your music must have heart in order to reach out across time and space to connect with your listener's heart," Stressman stretched out one hand and folded his fingers around an invisible goal, "Only then can you qualify to call yourself a maestro..."
He ignored his master's rambling and dumped him unceremoniously into the middle of the hotel bed.
***
Years later, someone asked Nodame, "how can two such different people meet in this world?" It was a purely rhetorical question.
But Nodame, being Nodame, made a literally interpretation and proceeded to describe their first meeting. "It was fate~<3..."
He hit her lightly on the head with his fist before she can continue (she muttered 'gyabou' under her breath), and told her not to give people the wrong idea.
In any case, Chiaki disagreed with her version of the story.
***
Chiaki can still remember that day they first met.
He hadn't known who she was then. But her playing... In its imperfection, Chiaki could hear the strength of the pianist's soul: pure, giving, spirited and above all, humanly flawed. Something went off in him: his heart raced, his palms sweated and in the span of that single rhapsodic moment, he wanted to both laugh and weep his heart out.
He now remembers also thinking, so this is how it's like to fall in love.
***
Notes.
1. Wikipedia Entry on Amphitrite, Greek Goddess of the Sea.
2. Really, this turned out much different from what I expected.
3. Dedicated to the talented![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ai_ling, whom I admire tremendously. <3 Dedication mentioned last because do not want her to feel obligated to like the fic whilst reading. But hope you all liked it anyway.
Day/Theme: [May 11] all other perils and misfortunes of the sea
Series: Nodame Cantabile
Character/Pairing: Chiaki, Chiaki/Nodame
Rating: G
Spoilers: Up till Volume 4 of the manga. Spoilers up to Nina Lutz Music Festival in the Anime.
***
Chiaki cannot remember when did he fall out of love with Nodame's piano, and actually fell in love with Nodame.
He isn't even sure if they're not altogether synonymous from the start.
***
"The sound of your music has changed."
Chiaki opened his eyes and looked towards to door to discover Etoh leaning against the door. He frowned, but waited to see if the man would further elaborate.
"It sounds quite like Nodame's, now," Etoh continued. He tried to hide a smile a the sight of Chiaki's obvious displeasure at the comparison. "It isn't meant in a bad way. It just means..." he paused to consider his next words, "your playing has soul now."
Chiaki looked to his score, but not really seeing it.
Etoh walked over, and did something he had never done before. He patted a student on the back.
"I guess I'll just have to accept that you have found a better teacher."
***
"You've changed," Saiko remarked as she raised her glass to her lips, eyeing him contemplatively. She inhaled the potent fumes of the spirit and allowed the heady fragrance to fill her nostrils. The glass tipped over and the dark liquid washed across her lips into her mouth. She swirls it around with her tongue, weighing it experimentally before letting it burn a bitter path down her throat.
"How so?" Chiaki asked, taking a sip of his own.
Your voice is kinder, she wanted to say. Your shoulders are more relaxed. Your eyes are not as lonely. You are more willing to let other people in.
You look happier than you ever were when we were together.
Saiko closed her eyes and drained her glass. "You're not as cool as you were before," she told him, and signalled the bartender for a refill.
***
Chiaki hated the sea - hated the unpredictability of its mecurial nature, hated how just when he thought he had all the signs figured out - it comes and blindsides him with a fucking tsunami that throws him completely off balance, off course, and steals the very breath out of his lungs.
***
But that time in Nagano, on their way to the Nina Lutz Music Festival in his fourth year, Chiaki remembered watching Nodame from where he sat in the pavillion. She was standing at the edge of the shore, facing some distant point in the horizon, where the endless green-blue of the sea met the infinite bright blue of the sky. Her eyes were closed and her lips twisted into that pout he once hated so much, long fingers tapping uncontrollably at the sides of her thighs as she swayed to the constant rhythym of salty waters rushing up to gently lick her toes.
Chiaki tried to look away but found that couldn't. She had bewitched him, and Chiaki could almost hear the strains of music she was hearing in her head, the sweet chorus of Sirens against the muffled shuffle of rolling waves. Amphitrite herself had risen from the sea and and had taken Nodame into her foamy embrace, whispering into her ear the secret songs of men who tried to tame her stormy heart, of those who succeeded and of those who failed.
Suddenly, Nodame was the sea, and the sea was Nodame, and Chiaki realised that he can hate the sea no more.
Someone knocked into his shoulder and broke the spell. Chiaki looked away hastily, feeling all light headed and heart pumping hard, and gulped down his already flat soda (the carbon dioxide had long escaped), and took in deep breaths.
When he looked back at Nodame, she had already come out of her trance as well and was waving energetically at him.
***
"It isn't enough to be good," Stressman lectured him once. "You must be great. To be great, your music must have heart."
Chiaki wasn't paying attention. It would be hard to take even a great maestro like Stressman seriously, when he was leaning heavily against you for support, smelling like a pot-pourri of cheap perfume.
"Your music must have heart in order to reach out across time and space to connect with your listener's heart," Stressman stretched out one hand and folded his fingers around an invisible goal, "Only then can you qualify to call yourself a maestro..."
He ignored his master's rambling and dumped him unceremoniously into the middle of the hotel bed.
***
Years later, someone asked Nodame, "how can two such different people meet in this world?" It was a purely rhetorical question.
But Nodame, being Nodame, made a literally interpretation and proceeded to describe their first meeting. "It was fate~<3..."
He hit her lightly on the head with his fist before she can continue (she muttered 'gyabou' under her breath), and told her not to give people the wrong idea.
In any case, Chiaki disagreed with her version of the story.
***
Chiaki can still remember that day they first met.
He hadn't known who she was then. But her playing... In its imperfection, Chiaki could hear the strength of the pianist's soul: pure, giving, spirited and above all, humanly flawed. Something went off in him: his heart raced, his palms sweated and in the span of that single rhapsodic moment, he wanted to both laugh and weep his heart out.
He now remembers also thinking, so this is how it's like to fall in love.
***
Notes.
1. Wikipedia Entry on Amphitrite, Greek Goddess of the Sea.
2. Really, this turned out much different from what I expected.
3. Dedicated to the talented
ai_ling, whom I admire tremendously. <3 Dedication mentioned last because do not want her to feel obligated to like the fic whilst reading. But hope you all liked it anyway.