Love Live! Dear Song (Maki Nishikino x Male reader)

Chapter 5

Two Weeks Later...

As lunch began, I was sitting at my seat for a bit to check my phone for any new notifications when at the door, I heard a voice say "Is Y/n in here?"

I turned my head and saw it was my senpai and friend in the guitar club, Hinagiku Katahara. I raised my hand and said "Right here. What's up?"

She walks towards me and said "About your idea for what the guitar club could do for the upcoming school festival, Mrs. Abe wanted to get a better idea of what you have in mind so she asked me to come get you."

"Oh right. Yeah, I can do that." I said as I got up. Mrs. Abe is the club supervisor for the guitar club and also the homeroom teacher for Hinagiku's class. Since the school festival is coming up in the not too far future, we've been trying to come up with something to do for it and I suggested something that I did with the guitar club I was in back in middle school.

Me and Hinagiku then started heading for the door as Hinagiku asked "You've been busy helping your parents out a lot recently and you haven't been coming to meet up with the rest of the club too often, I hope you've been keeping up with your practice."

I shrugged "Yeah, I've been making sure to get some practice in when I get the chance but I'm still just as mediocre as always. I haven't really been able to improve as much as I would like."

"Just give it some time." Hinagiku said

"Yeah I guess..." I responded

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Once class came to an end, I stretched and packed up. As I got up, I saw that Rin and Hanayo had presumably gone ahead while Maki was finishing something at her desk. I walked over to her desk and said "Hey Maki, once you're done with that, how about we walk over to our clubs together? Since we'll both be headed the same way and all."

Maki looked up from what she was doing and said "I guess we can but don't you need to get to your club?"

"I've got time, the first little while is getting our guitars tuned and restringing if we need to. I played my guitar some right before I headed to bed so I don't really need to worry about that." I said "In any case, I'll wait for you at the door."

Maki nodded and returned to what she was doing and I headed to the door. And after a couple of minutes, Maki got up from her desk and walked over to me. We both started the walk towards where our clubrooms are situated when Maki said "So you were playing before you headed to bed last night? I guess it's easier to avoid bothering the rest of your family playing compared to piano."

"I have my acoustic and my electric guitar. I can just not plug the electric guitar into the amp and it doesn't produce much noise." I explained, "It helps me relax and every little bit of practice gets me that little bit closer to being more than just okay at it."

Maki then looked at me with an annoyed expression and said "I really don't get you. You constantly downplay your guitar skills even though you're better than you say. You're good at it, do you have no self confidence?"

I do get what she's saying, but I just feel like I'm nowhere good enough to reach the play alongside Maki before we graduate and I don't think at the rate I'm improving I'll be able to do it. My time where I can possibly do it is limited and so I need to be better. Still, maybe I should try to tell Maki a little bit about why I've been so hard on my guitar skill since I came to Otonokizaka.

I sighed and looked at Maki then said "Listen, after club activities are over, can you meet me in the music room? There's something important that I need to tell you."

Maki looked at me and said "I guess I can, but I don't see why you can't just tell me right now."

"I need a little bit of time to figure out how I can word this." I answered

"If you say so, then I'll try and come by after practice." Maki said

"Thanks, I'll see you then." I said

From then we split up after we reached a point where I needed to turn but she didn't.

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After everything was done in my club, I headed over to the music room and sat in silence for a bit while I tried to figure out how to word what I wanted to tell Maki. I don't plan to tell her the whole thing, but I want to apologize for her having to deal with my dumb self constantly belittling myself and explain a bit of why I've been hard on myself. After I finally gained an inkling of how I wanted to say it, I started to look out the window at the world in my sight to pass the time.

I lost track of time, but I don't feel like it was too long before I saw the door open in the corner of my vision.

I turned and saw it was Maki. I nodded and awkwardly said "Hey." I was so caught up on deciding how I would say it that the rest of this conversation has completely left me.

"So what is it that you wanted to tell me?" Maki asked

"I wanted to apologize for you having to deal with me saying that stuff, and maybe explain why I have been so hard on myself." I said "You see, back when I was just barely able to leave the hospital for good, I was invited by your mom to come see one of your piano recitals. After running into you again, and seeing how much you've improved since then, it ended up reminding me of how far I need to go to achieve my goals and how I haven't been able to get there by the time I want to have. But it's natural that your musical skills are so far ahead of me, after all, I was just barely starting around the time of that recital."

"You were at one of my piano recitals when I was seven?" Maki asked "Then that would have been one of my first recitals."

I smiled as I said "You know, I'm really glad to have been able to meet you in person and get to know you some, remembering those early days reminds me of the start of me learning to play guitar and it makes me want to keep pressing on and improving. And I promise that I'll try and quit being as hard on myself as I have."

"You really do put down your efforts way too often, so have some more confidence in what you do." Maki said

"Right." I said as I got up.

Maki's cheeks began to lightly blush and she said "Hey... since we both are headed the same way again, how about we walk home like when we worked on the song together?"

I looked at Maki, who looked pretty cute and said "Sounds great, shall we go?"

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A/n: I'm really enjoying writing this story, but there are moments where I have trouble with Maki's dialogue due to it being such a different kind of dialogue compared to other tsundere characters. It has led to a few cases where I either have to look through her all stars character episodes in hopes of finding her speaking about a similar thing, or wing it and hope it doesn't seem too out of character. In any case, expect the next chapter by friday