Life Made Anew

22: Christmas

It was the last day of school for the term, and everyone was excited for Christmas. It was December 24th.

Mateo and Kamino had been dating for two months. They had fallen deeper into love. Compared to now, what they felt then was just a strong liking for each other.

"Merry Christmas, Kazama." Make held out a small gift.

"Merry Christmas, Maki." They were eating lunch on the roof of the school. Kazama opened her gift. A simple scarf. The stitching was rough.

"Mateo taught me how to crochet, so I made this for you."

Kazama kissed her cheek. "I love it." He wrapped it around his neck.

Sakura gave Kaname a bracelet she made, and Kaname bought her a necklace. Tomoru got Hotaru a ring, and Hotaru wrote a song for him.

Kazama wrote a piano solo, a quick etude, and an entire ballade for Maki. "I'll play it for you tomorrow morning."

(Just for this chapter, I don't have a ballade written, yet. But I have written several Etudes. I'll just post a link to it.)

"Okay, Kazama." She kissed his cheek. "I can't wait to hear it."
—
Christmas morning came and Maki ran downstairs. Kazama started to play his ballade when her heard her footsteps.

It was a rather slow piece. It was in 6/8, felt in triplets. (I wish I knew how to describe time signatures and all of this music theory to those who don't know music.)

She sat there, listening to his playing and closed her eyes. It slowly grew harder with his left hand starting to play some runs. The piece grew more erratic, and its pace quickened. The right hand and the left hand split sextuplets and went up chromatically until hitting the tonic note, starting the main theme of the piece. (It's better known as the chorus.)

Maki tapped her foot to the beat, feeling his expression of the piece. She knew his style of expression and knew exactly how much he'd stretch and compress certain parts, though sometimes, he messed with her expectations by off-setting some notes a bit. She pouted a bit when that happened.

He finished playing the ballade. Maki clapped. "That was wonderful, Kazama. You wrote that for me?" Maki asked.

"No, it was for Kamino." He laughed and patted her on the head. "Of course, it was for you."

Maki pouted at his sarcasm. "Whatever, you go play that for her and leave me here." She turned away. "I'm joking. Thank you, Kazama."

"Don't thank me yet. There's one more performance. This wasn't necessarily for you because I wrote it a while back, but I'll play it especially for you."

(This will be the Etude I wrote. I would recommend pulling it up on your computer and or getting the Musescore app because you cannot listen to it in Safaru on your phone.) https://m.musescore.com/anime_music1/hopes-and-dreams-undertale-ost (I don't know why it says it's Hopes and Dreams from Undertale because it isn't.)

Kazama played the Etude. It was very short but quite difficult. It had 5 bar phrasing, different from the usual 4 or 8 bar phrases, and was in 6/4 instead of the normal 4/4, 3/4 or 6/8.

"Wow."

"I'll give you the music if you want to learn it," Kazama suggested.

"Nah, I need to focus on my competition piece for now." The contest was in just a few months. Maki has learned half of Ballade in F minor. When she runs through what she knows, her hand grows quite tired. She doesn't know if she'll be able to make it through it all easily.