The Piano Man (Iwaoi)

Chapter 11

        Tooru finally decided on minor key.

        For the few days after earnest, heart-shattering and anger-inducing Detective Wakatoshi Ushijima took Tooru out for dinner and kissed his cheek as if he were ten and not twenty-five, he just glided through his home. Arms out, pencil in one hand and notebook in the other. A single note would come to him, so he would jot it down, play it over and over and over until his house was drowning in it, and then he would scratch it out and start on another. Eyes bloodshot, hands shaking, knuckles redder than the blood pulsing through his aching heart. He was starting to get unbelievably frustrated, and he wrote letters in his little pink notebook with the ribbon; letters to Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, begging them to give him some tips. Anything that would help him find the composer waiting to come out, since the performer had withered.

        He wanted Hajime to be in his house with him. He didn't have to be doing anything. Just lounging on the couch, scrolling through his phone, one leg crossed over the other. Smoking a cigarette and making Tooru's house smell. Letting his narrow, dark eyes wander from the floor to the ceiling to the piano gathering dust. He didn't have to say anything, either. Just breathe. Just blink. Just be there, long enough that Tooru got accustomed to his presence. Alone in that house, Tooru couldn't stop hearing distorted, off-key melodies in his head. Almost Mozart, but not quite. Almost Tchaikovsky, but not quite. Everything was off, out-of-control, confusing and just not right. When the pings on his phone went off and he ran to see Hajime's messages, only to find that they were Ushiwaka's, he couldn't understand the constrictions of his heart. Anger, frustration, relief, overwhelming joy all at once congealing to solidify, crystallize him in twisted unnatural forms. He wasn't sleeping very well.

        At ten o'clock in the morning three days after his dinner with Ushiwaka, his cheek still burning and blistered from that too-chaste kiss, Tooru's phone started to ring. He saw the caller, caught his breath, and answered.

        "Hello, stranger," he said into the phone.

        "Yo, Shittykawa."

        "When are you gonna stop with that unsavory nickname?"

        "When you stop warranting it."

        "Why did you even call? To tease me?"

        Hajime laughed and Tooru had to sit down on his bed.

        "No. I actually have something important I need to ask you."

        "Important? Okay. What's up?"

        "I...would really rather do it in person."

        "Oh."

        "I'm free for lunch. Noon okay?"

        "But I—"

        "Don't worry. We'll go to a café or something. Somewhere public."

        "Okay. Noon sounds fine."

        "Why don't you come by the precinct and we'll find a café."

        "All right. I can do that."

        "Great. Thanks. See you in a few hours."

        Hajime hung up, leaving Tooru to stare at his phone screen for who-knows-how-long. His stomach wouldn't stop turning, he felt lightheaded, when he happened to pass by the mirror he was pale. But he put on a pair of jeans and his glasses and went to meet Hajime at noon anyway.

        Hajime was already waiting outside the precinct when Tooru arrived (you always have to be fashionably late, don't you?), and side-by-side they walked down the road until they hit a café that Hajime said had good sandwiches. They walked in, grabbed a booth, fiddled awkwardly with their menus and glasses of water. Tooru still felt lightheaded and terribly anxious.