forsaintcecilia | IC Inbox [Victory Road]

Very large. Tho' my world is like this one-- you can use technology to talk to people halfway across the world whenever you want. It makes things seem a lot smaller than they actually are. And you're right, it's not peaceful everywhere...

[Some places do actually super mega suck, but he's so far removed from them that he'd never be able to fully comprehend the suffering that goes on there. Which is a sobering thought.]

Just "thanks," or "I'm looking forward to it" is good enough. [He explained as he got up to retrieve his trumpet from indoors. It was never far from his hand.] How're you feeling? I can pick a song to fit the sort of thing you'd like to hear.

Edited 2019-05-19 22:16 (UTC)

[ Her world has that potential, too, but not the part of her world she's from most recently, so she simply hums something like acknowledgement, sipping at her alcohol more thoughtfully now. Humanity carries the same trends everywhere. It just feels like something closer to hope that there are places not under constant threat of war, oppression, or annihilation in other worlds. ]

Surprise me.

[ She says, tipping her cup to him. How she's feeling is a question she barely answers for herself. Self-deception is an artform she uses to compartmentalise, and while she's feeling not as shitty right now compared to even earlier, she has no answer for anything that fits.

She'd prefer the surprise. One of the kind that doesn't leave her bleeding, or killing, or watching others die. ]

Alright. Let me think about it for a second...

[He sat down next to her again, and opened his case. His trumpet was in impeccable shape. Kazuki could be a bit careless with his belongings from time to time, but he never neglected his instrument. He cleaned the mouthpiece and tested the valves, then assembled everything together. Then he fiddled with it a bit more as he thought of the right kind of song for the moment.]

Okay, I think I've got it. [He stepped off the porch and stood up on the ground to play. This way, he wasn't looming over her too much.] This one's called Ave Maria. It's a pretty popular song in canon, but it's kind of... Especially important to me too.

[He paused for a second. Kazuki was an empathetic person, and his emotions were also extremely palpable. There was a gentle, nostalgic fondness in his eyes, and in the quirk of his lips. No matter where Kahoko was, or who she loved, she always had a place in his heart.]

...I hope you'll like it.

[The trumpet wasn't the perfect instrument for the song. It sang well on violin, or on a more mellow cello, but to capture the gentle tones of unconditional motherly love on a brass instrument was no easy task. It was hard to make a trumpet whisper instead of shout, especially without a mute. But by the sound of Kazuki's playing, it was a technique he'd been practicing.]

[ She watches him attend to his instrument, curious at the particulars. She can see it's in good condition, and he's thorough and familiar with how he handles it, which makes sense if this is his life, livelihood, and passion.

Passion is something she'll always admire, even when it's ill guided or disastrous. She can admire what she likewise finds stupid. It thankfully has no place here and now, and she straightens up as he stands. Ave Maria is a meaningless pairing of sounds, but she knew and expected that, finding herself anticipating the unknown in a way she did not always enjoy.

He plays... ah, she's not so insensible to most the world around her not to see he plays with the emotions he feels. She can feel it in the music, a novel experience when most the music she hears here is background music that has managed to do little past dull her to the constant noise. There are no words she can correlate, having never heard the song sung, and the sentiment, if she'd know the words, would have also been odd, in a way provoking thought.

It is different, hearing it like this for a first time, hearing the trumpet produce softer sounds, and it isn't motherly love that she gets from any of it, because there's no concept of motherly love in her life. It's a sense of unconditional something, affection and tolerance and acceptance and a plead to what leaves to remember where it came from, and who was there. She wonders, briefly, who he's playing for in the same way she wonders who any of the people she meets are motivated by the people they've known, but it's a passing thought, swept aside in the unfamiliar, almost haunting melody.

When he finishes, she has her cup clasped in her hands, resting in her lap. Annie is perfectly still, the breeze teasing at the loose tendrils of her hair the only movement about her at first. Lute has likewise gone still, head tipped to the side, as if he'd been listening to a melody he couldn't quite make out. It'd been present, and overflowing, and in a sense overwhelming, only not chasing after any of the things she knew.

But she can identify the longing, if not his, than her own. For her father, for that last goodbye, for the life she'd never have and had said goodbye to as a child. Bertolt manages to eke out his happiness. His slice of life. She thinks Reiner would have done well with that, too.

The music finishes, and Annie breathes, until she bows her head forward and closes her eyes and swallows with a dry mouth to say: ]

Thank you.

[When it came to well placed words and purposeful intent, Kazuki wasn't always the most apt. He wasn't a manipulator. He could only be earnest. His music, however, could reach places that he otherwise could not touch. Everyone interpreted the meaning behind music differently, so a universal message often wasn't possible, but a general heart could usually be conveyed.]

[It looked like something had reached Annie. He couldn't be sure what it was, but he'd wormed his way in there somehow. And that alone gave him plenty of satisfaction -- To touch something that was guarded by walls that seemed impossibly high, and stir some real emotion in there.]

[Kazuki was infamous for his poor presence on stage, not because he was meek, but because he was too friendly with the audience. But today he managed a polite bow. The atmosphere was somber enough to keep him from getting too excited, like he usually did after a performance.]

Thanks for listening. [He responded in kind.] I've known the song for a long time. Anyone practicing classical music does. But I only really understood it a couple of years ago. You really have to hear it the right way before you can understand a song.

That's what the music is called? Classical?

[ Wording, in this case, is what distracts her. She'll take his word on hearing a song the right way before it becomes understandable: she doesn't think she understands Ave Maria, but she accepts it. Understanding and Acceptance needn't occur in the same moment. ]

Classical is a genre. [He sat down again, and kept ghosting his fingers over the valves. It was rare for Kazuki to truly sit still.] It's called "classical" because mot of it was written a long time ago, so... It's classic, I guess. It's all stayed with us for all this time.

[ She lifts an eyebrow. ]

Genre?

[ Lacking some context on how else that term is used... bc who knows if a term from 19th century France is or is not in AoT verse, help ]

Is there such a thing as ancient classical, or does classical keep slowly growing without aging out of the label?

Well, a genre and a period in history. The Classical Period. The two kinda get mixed up together into one meaning. People call anything with that kind of feel "Classical."

That's what a genre is, I mean. It's a feeling, or a style of something. Usually an art, like visual arts and music.

Really old music that you can't trace back to a date, stuff that's been around since we first started making simply instruments, is called Prehistoric. Then I think the next era is Ancient, and then... Early, I think? Then the European Renaissance happened, and music really took off as a popular art form. Then the "Periods" I talked about before started to happen.

And those periods apply across the whole of your world?

[ If so, that's way more organised than anything on her world. ]

Classical music mostly centered in a continent called Europe, and especially in a country called Austria. While that era was happening, I don't think instruments like trumpets and pianos and violins had even been seen in Japan yet. But over time, the genre spread all across the world.

That's pretty magical to me. I don't know English, or any other European language, but music breaks all those barriers. It doesn't matter where you're from; humans love music everywhere. It's a language we all understand.

What's the term for ancient Japanese music, then?

[ She does think it's... fascinating, but that's largely because he so clearly cares about what he's discussing. That does make it compelling: people's passions have that effect on her perceptions. ]

Well, the sort of music that was played in the royal courts was called Gagaku. I guess that'd be the closest thing we have to classical music. But like I said, we didn't have those European instruments. The most popular was the Biwa, which is a kind of lute...

[He looked over at Annie's own Lute, smirking at the coincidence.]

Then there was Min'yo, which was folk music that the common people played. Their instrument of choice was the Shamisen. It was a simpler, three-stringed guitar. A lot of those old folk songs are still known today.

[ Lute lifts his head and looks back, blinking. He finds it interesting: so he shares a name with an instrument in one of these outside dimensions. ]

Were you ever interested in any of those, or just the trumpet and classical music out of Europe?

[ Assessing how people relate to foreign countries is... a habit she hasn't thought about having. ]

Not many people play those instruments anymore, aside from folk artists and musical historians... Oh, and Geisha too.

Honestly, when I was young, I never thought much about music. I was more into sports and track team. But when I was in my sixth year of school, I heard one of my upperclassmen practicing trumpet on the roof. I got mesmerized by it. All of the sudden, I wanted to learn to play music more than anything.

So I went after it! I had to work really hard to catch up with my peers, but I was having fun too, so it wasn't so bad.

Geisha?

[ Using terms she knows nothing about... but she doesn't mind. He's good at explaining when she points things out, more or less. ]

How old did that make you, if it was your sixth year in school?

Geisha are women that train in different Japanese arts, like music and the tea ceremony, and entertain people. It's a really high class sort of thing. Nowadays, they're kind of like historians themselves. Or maybe... Living history.

If you've ever been to Ecruteak and seen the Kimono Girls-- it's a lot like that.

I was around 12. Most people start learning music way younger... Like, as soon as they can sit up straight at a piano bench.

[ Ah, entertainers. Keeping a history alive that's relevant to Japan in specific, less the world at large. Living history indeed. ]

I have. [ She says, nodding. The Kimono Girls gives her a greater context, at least. Then she tips her head to the side, looking out over the garden, only seeing him in her periphery. ] How many of those had passions initially driven by their parents, I wonder.

Plenty of them. I know a couple of guys who are real virtuosos... Ah, that means that they're incredibly skilled at their instrument-- One of them, both his parents were famous musicians, and the other, his mother taught piano out of their home. They were exposed to it from the start. It's really common for parents to pass their skills down to their children.

[ Yes, it is, isn't it? Regardless of the cost, though she supposes music is not as controversial as other things. ]

Easier to learn that way. They're as motivated for you to learn, I'd think, as you are to keep learning.

Sure, if it lines up that way. But in some cases, it can be a lot of pressure. Everyone's music is different, and some people can't help but compare themselves to people who they think are better at it than they are.

And there is a difference in skill there, but... At the same time, skill can only go so far, you know? There's more to music than just how well you can move your fingers or control your breathing. It's got a heart.

The same can be said for any skill, artistic or not. Or that's my opinion on it, anyway.

[ Martial arts, her father's style, has a heart too: a useless one, a painful one, but a meaningful one. It's not the skill she has in knowing how to move like that, but that it matters, deep down, who she learned from. One single point of communication between a father who sold his daughter to the War before he realised all he was giving up and had already lost in the process.

Come home alive. She wonders if he's still living, if Paradis has done anything with the Colossal Titan, what Zeke was up to, what the mess of their shitty world has become. She simply doesn't know, and she's closer to dying simply by existing unchanged and untouched and so freaking ignorant. ]

I think you're right about that.

[Kazuki could feel a bit of underlying pain in Annie's expression, even if he didn't know its source. And this encounter was beginning to help him understand that there was only so much he could do about it. He set his trumpet aside for a moment to pour her another drink.]

[ She makes a small humming sort of sound in thanks when he finishes pouring her another drink, taking it and................... downing it all in one.

Elegant drinking partner she is not, but she appreciates that he's not so simple that he presses on points she can't say out loud. Even if Armin didn't try to keep her cornered, she already doesn't want to harm the lives the rest of them have built here. Even Bertolt.

If he doesn't fill the silence, she'll settle into it, saying after some time: ]

You're a good person.

[ Not special, because when she says that, it isn't flattering so much as aware of potential and the drive that changes lives, for better and worse. Changes societies, introducing that chaos the rest have to muddle through.

And there's that joke of an edge to it still, because she can remember Armin's response when she'd posited that question: Do you think I'm that good a person?

You can be a good person to me. The world is viewed through a personal lens, and always will be. Kazuki is good to her. And she suspects, from many perspectives, he is good, for varying definitions of the word. She's glad for that, she thinks. ]

[Kazuki chuckled when she downed her drink like someone with experience, and poured himself another glass as well. He just sipped at it. He didn't have experience. At all.]

[He normally wasn't a silence kind of person, but he was able to get comfortable with it after awhile. Annie's silence wasn't awkward or sad, just contemplative. It gave him the opportunity to appreciate the softer sounds of the nature that surrounded his house.]

[When she finally spoke again, he couldn't help but quirk his head at her comment. He didn't yet know the significance she placed on those words, so they sounded strange to him.]

Thank you? [It was a compliment, after all... Right?] I mean, I hope that I am. Do you not know many good people?

IC Inbox [Victory Road]

"field" is like, the biggest egg group. how absol fits into it I have no idea

who needs sense when you could have a field day

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this feels hilariously overdramatic so HELLO

nah my dude I eat this shit for breakfast

i am so glad

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