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Record stores are some of her favorite places, after practice rooms and instrument stores and performance stages. There's something about a record shop that's unlike anything else. The dust of vintage buildings, the cracked jewel cases of pre-owned CDs. The grooves and surfaces of old vinyls, the pale fluff of worn cardboard at the corners of LP covers. There's magic in a single store dense with thousands of hours of music, hoards of treasure.
She could spend hours roaming through stacks of vinyls, through shelves of albums familiar and near to her heart, or more obscure records by bands and groups she might never get around to listening to in her life. Not for lack of want or effort, but there's only so much time she could actually spend to sit and listen to music when she'd rather use it to practice.
Today she visits the local shop with Akane Isuzu, who's utterly convinced that they're the best of friends, and she can't quite bother to go through the trouble of telling her otherwise.
"Mitsuoka-san," Akane asks her, while reading the tracklist of an old LP. "Who's your favorite trumpet player of all time?"
That's an easy question. "Miles Davis."
Akane's grin brightens. "Ooh, and your favorite record from him?"
That question is a bit harder. She has to actually consider this for a moment. "In A Silent Way, probably."
"Really? That's his jazz-rock fusion record, right?"
"He did several, but yes." It's not something she would have imagined when she first heard the album or the countless times she'd spun it since then, but maybe there's something a little prescient about being drawn to that LP when it'd broken so many conventions.
She returns the question, half to humor Akane, half to satisfy genuine curiosity. "Who's your favorite saxophonist?"
Akane is like an open book, the way her face goes from mildly thoughtful to deeper serious consideration. Then a hopeful kind of smile spreads across her face. "It has to be John Coltrane."
"Really now." But she feels the threat of a smile, herself.
Akane holds up the vinyl in her hands: Kind of Blue, a classic among classics.
"Think we can ever be as good as them one day?"
Her instant gut reaction answer is no, or utter amazement that Akane could even ask such a thing. Akane had been the naivest of the naive back when she'd joined band, and it's clear that embarrassing naivete has never quite been snuffed out. It shines brightly still now even after months of training from hell. Admittedly, her skill improves nearly by the day. Her sheer drive and effort had just barely sparked a hint of interest in Mitsuoka way back when all her days were defined by endless sheets of orchestra practice music.
But legends like Davis and Coltrane are untouchable. The idea of coming anywhere close to their artistry and legacy is practically unthinkable. Maybe no mere mortal could reach their heights again, maybe such talent only comes along once in the lifetime of a universe.
Maybe.
And yet she can't really believe this either.
She doesn't do blind hero worship, not when she knows most of all how heroes could fall. It used to be that she'd admired Subaru-sensei more than anyone in the world, more than her parents, more than Miles Davis. She was a stubborn child, who could expect her to appreciate jazz? She might owe an unpayable life debt to Subaru for helping her fall in love with music, with the saxophone, with art that she'd dedicate her life to playing. Subaru had torn down her idealism and built her up from scratch into a trumpet-playing automaton, torn down her view of Subaru herself as a saxophonist heroine to—
A woman, underneath it all, who simply wanted to win.
She might not be in band under Subaru anymore, but her desire for victory burns no less bright. Could she be as good as Subaru one day? All the ambitions of her soul wants to answer yes. Subaru herself would challenge her to keep aspiring to new heights and the heights beyond that.
So could she be as good as Miles Davis one day? A man whose artistry is like Everest, practically untouchable?
If Subaru taught her anything, she might have taught her that nobody is infallable, everyone is only human. And when she looks at Akane's hopeful look, the hesitant but insistent clutch of her fingertips on the record—
Akane makes her want to try.
She smiles back. "We have a lot of blood sweat and tears in our future if we want to be anywhere near Davis and Coltrane." She takes the vinyl from Akane with a brush of their bandaged fingers, and from the corner of her eye she can see Akane beam bright as a spotlight.
Playing until their hands wounded, until she almost physically couldn't play or even read music anymore... was it excessive? Was it worth so much pain and existential doubt? Years of anguished training, Subaru's fury, the bone-deep fear that if she couldn't play music her life's purpose might be over—did Davis and Coltrane go through such hell? They must have and worse, fought discrimination and addiction and so much more all for the sake of their art and legend.
If they could do it, maybe she could too. With Akane and Honda Shiori's band, together.