To celebrate the third season of Hibike Euphonium, here’s a caption featuring cutest girl Nakaseko. This is not based on anything or any characterization in the show, I’m just borrowing the character design. If you’re wondering why it’s a club and not a class, all of the music stuff is based on the way it’s done in Eupho (I don’t know anything about music). Though there may be a class portion as well...
Picture source: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2628595
Full text:
Some people just are music people, and others aren’t. My parents always required that my sister and I do afterschool activities, and they believed in fostering talent… as long as it was something they approved of. Both of us had to learn piano from a young age, but I was too clumsy and uncoordinated to be any good at it. Thankfully, they let me switch to doing tennis in middle school, but it was just the kind of thing that I put up with so I could include it on my college applications. My sister, on the other hand, switched to the trumpet – and though she has always sucked at it, she stayed with it, probably because she was too lazy to try anything new. Fortunately, she could only practice it over at school... so I was usually spared from having to hear its pathetic sounds.
She had this pair of magic rings that she got somewhere, that allowed us to swap our bodies whenever we wanted. There was no use for them at first, but one day I randomly bet that I could play trumpet better than her in her body. But then, she wanted to prove that I had it easy playing tennis – and then she started saying that I was the lucky one for some reason, being the boy in the family.
But it really was different in her body. My breaths felt more smooth and controlled, and oddly natural, as if I suddenly had more lung capacity. I thought that it actually sounded good. When we entered high school, I went to her wind ensemble club as her, and I quickly started to get better. I started going to all of her music club as her, and of course, that also meant doing all of her practice time.
Every day I would go to school early in her body, and I would grab the music stand, and find a spot outside, and just stand there and patiently practice, all by myself – just waiting for the real day to begin, when I could go back to my body. And then in the afternoon we would swap bodies again and I would go to her club, and when it was over and I was waiting for her after school, I would practice more, and if she was really just taking too long, I would use the time for studying. I never thought too much about what she was doing in my body – I had the feeling she was enjoying her time as me, but I didn’t feel weird or strange about it. I just wondered if she ever thought about what I was doing in her body, but she never seemed to worry about it.
I started looking forward to the performances. When I’m playing, in her body, I feel strangely confident, like I’m in an alternate reality, where it’s impossible for me to mess up. And in the moment, I feel beautiful, and graceful and elegant – words that I never thought could describe her or her body, but it really feels that way. Everyone thinks that she loves the instrument now. Our parents would definitely be disappointed if she gave up the one thing she was good at now. But the image they have in their heads of their beautiful, talented, dedicated musician daughter is just a lie…
But now it’s the final year, and it’s almost sad that I’m gonna have to give up the instrument. It’s not like I love it or anything… but it’s like I have to say goodbye to a strange part of myself that I’ve discovered. It makes me think of all the actually passionate people who have to give up their talents for whatever reason.
Somehow, my playing was good enough to get her entrance to music schools (which was a miracle with her slipping grades). I could offer to take her place in life, and switch it with mine… But, even with all the time I spent in her body, it feels like I have zero idea of what she’d actually be open to. But there’s an impulsive side of me that really wants to see it happen...
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