Four thirty-three

Chapter 14

The thing with playing an instrument is, no matter how hard you practice, there are good days and bad days, and there's nothing you can do about it. And in those bad days, where even the simplest thing feels like swimming up a stream, it's hard to remember that the clumsiness of your fingers, the dirtiness in your tone, will only last as much as the day does.

Brett crinkled his nose as he started over from the top of the page.

"Stop scolding yourself." Eddy's voice cut through his worked-up brain, and he stopped playing abruptly.

"I'm not."

"Have I corrected you? Told you you did something wrong?"

"...not yet."

"Then why do you keep starting the piece over as if I had?"

He huffed, wiping the sweat of his left hand in his pants. "Sorry."

Eddy sighed. "Let's just call it a day, shall we? I need to leave early anyway, I've got a meeting."

Brett started packing up his stuff as Eddy went back to the teacher's table and started rummaging through his bag.

"Here."

Brett looked up from his case.

"Is... is that a chocolate cookie??"

Eddy snickered. "Yeah. Figured you could use one today."

Oh. "Thanks!" He grabbed it and started munching at it slowly, savoring it. "It's been ages since I had one of these."

"Yeah, I figured," Eddy muttered, and left the room before his student had even finished the sweet treat with a "see you next week."

As he watched the retreating form of his teacher, Brett thought he really could get used to Mr. Chen being nice to him.

♪ ♪ ♪

January had gone away on a whirlwind and it was now the middle of February. It suddenly dawned on Brett that in just two months, in April, it'd be a year since he got to the Con.

With most of his friends busy with their exams (Phoebe'd given him a death glare when he'd suggested she take some rest yesterday night, and looked miserable this morning at breakfast), and Ibo dating this bassoonist on top of everything else, Brett spent most of his free time in the practice room.

Oddly enough, he mused, the more time he spent on the violin, the more he liked it. Practice sessions were long and sometimes frustrating, but he felt more and more at home every day, his body adapting to the foreign movements, his ears slowly picking up more and more subtle nuances in sound.

He blinked at the score in front of him. He was spacing out again. He looked at the clock. No wonder, he thought. He'd been there for two and a half hours already. And he knew that, if he did a small break now, he could go on for a solid hour still.

He raised his eyebrows. Eight months ago, mere ten minutes on the violin were excruciatingly tiring. But Mr. Chen kept giving him so much work, he'd had to spend more and more time in the practice room, and now here he was.

Yeah, his teacher was becoming more and more demanding of him with each passing week. He was no longer as nasty as he'd been towards him at the beginning, but wouldn't hesitate to roast him when he felt Brett did not live up to his standards. And so he practiced his ass out, so he wouldn't have to withstand his teacher's disapproving glances.

(He had not been at the end of one of those for quite some time now, though. Rather, Eddy kept telling him how his tone was improving - hey, your violin is finally sounding like wood! -, and how all his practice seemed to be paying off.