Chapter Text
Iroha likes to sing.
You wouldn’t think it, at first glance. Kaguya certainly didn’t. Iroha is, after all, very particular about the ways in which she prefers to stand out. She lets her excellence separate her, but she doesn’t… she doesn’t call attention to herself. Not in the way that singing does.
‘It fits you more,’ she’d once told Kaguya, the words slipping from her lips carelessly. Absent-mindedly. Like saying them had been the most natural thing in the world. ‘You’re always bright, but you’re brighter when you sing.’
Kaguya wonders if she even remembers she’d said it. Kaguya wonders if she’ll ever be able to forget it.
But still, Iroha does like to sing. Just not in public.
It’s become one of Kaguya’s favorite hobbies, listening for it.
The shower is an easy one. Everyone loves singing in the shower, and Iroha is no exception. Kaguya elects not to think too much about what she’s doing when she listens in, crouched next to their bathroom door listening to the muffled sound of Iroha humming her way through one of Yachiyo’s songs. It is not creepy. It is love.
Studying brings it out of her. Anything requiring enough focus does, now that Kaguya thinks about it. Iroha will sit down at her desk, and she’ll twirl a pen between those long, pretty fingers of hers, and her brain will be so preoccupied with calculus that she will not notice she is three-out-of-six grandes études deep into an acapella performance of Paganini. She will labor away in that music production software that Kaguya has never been able to get the hang of, and some of the melody will bleed from her headphones while the rest falls from her lips, quiet as the wind.
Kaguya brings it out of her.
She’ll be in the kitchen, fish skewered on the countertop, and she will hum whatever song she’s due to record next, and sometimes Iroha will just… join in. Her eyes won’t leave the TV, or her homework, or the laptop, or the view of the city from their too-big windows. Kaguya sings, and Iroha joins her carelessly. Absent-mindedly. Like doing so is the most natural thing in the world.
And Kaguya will beam, unrestrained. And Kaguya will rush over, a giggle bubbling from her lips. And Kaguya will wrap her arms around Iroha, who will act far more embarrassed than she really is, and who will not even try to push her away. And Kaguya will drink in the feel of Iroha’s pulse, thumping insistently against the side of her throat, like it is the best thing in the world.
And Kaguya will say, “You’re brighter when you sing.”
Iroha likes to sing.
Her voice sounds like riverbed stones, smooth and polished and suffused with something that flows like the tides.
It’s beautiful. Kaguya’s sure she’ll never be able to forget it.