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Before Takezou could fully prepare himself, the time for his high school graduation had arrived. The ceremony was nothing special, filled with endless platitudes, and even as he was aware of the notoriety of the moment, the enormity of the milestone this day marked, he mostly felt like everything was flowing past him, going over his head. It didn’t seem real. He already remembered very little of the event, as the final call for disassembly was heard.
His diploma in hand, he left in hurried steps to get a breath of fresh air, aimlessly walking in the corridors for a while.
“Senpai! There you are!” came Kouta’s excited (and breathless) voice. “We looked everywhere for you.”
Obviously, the whole koto club was right behind him, their faces flushed from running.
Kurusu-san, who had been suspiciously far apart from him during the ceremony, was also with them.
“Let’s go to the club room,” Momoya-kun stated, in his characteristically calm and neutral tone, yet, at the same time, exuding some level of command.
In the seconds it took Takezou to grasp the situation, he already found himself with his back being strongly pushed forwards by his juniors, their usual youthful mood infecting him too. Ah, he would miss them terribly.
Letting nostalgia take over during the whole time it took to reach their destination, Takezou reminisced over their shared time together. The competitions and all the time spent practising for each one of them easily took the center stage but he surprisingly ended up vividly recalling his birthday celebration, just at the beginning of the school year. Kurusu-san had informed the other club members of the incoming date and together they’d brainstormed ideas for how to spend the day. Since his birthday fell on a weekend this year, and it still being April, they decided to briefly interrupt their practice time to hold a picnic on the school grounds, before dutifully continuing playing the koto for a few more hours.
Each of them had brought a piece of homemade cooking. The boys, barring Kudoo-kun, asked their families for help and to teach them a few easily reproducible dishes, which they then promptly invaded Kudoo-kun’s kitchen to put the recipes into practice. While Kurusu-san and Houzuki-san did their part of the cooking (which mostly consisted of sweets and dessert - Kudoo-kun was the most delighted among them) together at the former’s house.
As expected, the food wasn’t perfect but that’s all the more reason for why it tasted so heavenly.
When Yoshinaga-kun and Momoya-kun heard the story a couple of months later, both were visibly envious (despite each showing it differently) they hadn’t yet been part of the club back then. Realizing they wouldn’t have another chance of celebrating the club president’s birthday together, Yoshinaga-kun had decided the two of them should still get him a present and thus bought him a new set of koto picks from their favourite shop. It’d been a sweet gesture. If he were completely honest with himself, Takezou still wasn’t sure how he had managed to earn all of his juniors’ respect but they always gave him special treatment in their own ways, and made him feel like he was welcome among them, even with every one of his obvious flaws. He was forever grateful for that very first impulse that made him want to join the koto club, for all the happiness that single decision had brought into his life, for every major accomplishment he had been lucky to reach with these members, for the growth that they had all experienced together.
“Kurata-kun,” whispered Kurusu-san from his right side, her hand tugging his sleeve. “Don’t start crying yet.”
So she’d noticed. As always.
Takezou showed her his brightest grin in reply.
As soon as their group opened the door and the club room came into view, witnessing the way the kotos were already set up on the floor, both of their teachers awaiting inside with expectant faces and a look that Takezou hesitantly recognized as outward pride, Takezou anticipated what was about to happen.
Of course they wouldn’t say goodbye to the club’s oldest member and the two eldest without a final performance.
Takezou had almost been disappointed when no one had come forth with such an idea during their last months at the club. Even after nationals, even when him and Kurusu-san’s priority had shifted into answering the ever-pressing and ever-nearer real world’s demand to study and prepare for their exams (and then take them), they still joined the rest of the club for practice more often than not. Obviously, they couldn’t clock in as many hours as before, nor did they ever stay for a full session, but instead they’d focus their remaining time on guiding the rest through the trickier sections of the first performance they were putting together without them as featured players. It was bittersweet watching all the preparations from so up close with the full knowledge they couldn’t be a part of it, but they never left without playing a quick piece with all nine members to delay the inevitability of their separation as much as possible.
In the end, it turned out that not only did they think of playing a graduation song they had been planning it as a surprise from the start. Kurusu-san was in on it, though. This is a tribute to the one who put it all into motion , she said.
As soon as they began playing, Takezou’s tears finally ran freely down his face. Despite everything they already had on their plate, there were no flaws in their performance. Not only was it a testament to their growth as players, it also showed how much effort had gone in the preparations. For the majority of its length, Takezou’s fingers were itching to play along with the ensemble; he recognized the song they had settled on, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to play a few notes with them. But instead, he decided to merely bask in the gift his juniors, his friends , had figured him worthy of, to carve into his memory every detail of this moment, so that this would always be the graduation ceremony he’d recall for the rest of his life.