The overly intense initiation left Masumi staring blankly into space for a while.
She would not go so far as to say she was burnt to ash, stark white and spent. Still, the shock of what lay ahead was so thoroughly discouraging that she found herself thinking it might have been far better to simply pass on properly than to get lost in a place this incomprehensible.
She knew perfectly well how irreverent that was.
Even so, it had rattled her that badly. She did not feel as if she would recover any time soon.
“Are you all right?”
Kasumireaz offered her a silver cup. Slumped in a simple wooden chair, Masumi accepted it gratefully.
She still felt as if she might spill her guts.
On top of that, after biting her tongue so many times, her mouth tasted of nothing but blood. She took a sip to wash it away and found it was not plain water, but something with a faint tang. The refreshing taste eased the cold sweat on her brow, if only a little.
This was Ark’s private waiting tent, set up right beside the investiture grounds.
Thanks to the two men’s superb sprint, they had apparently managed to arrive with a bit of time to spare before noon. However, because Masumi had absolutely no experience riding a horse, she had gotten violently motion-sick, and under the pretext of letting her recover, the ceremony’s start had ended up being pushed back by an hour.
An investiture delayed, unprecedentedly.
Even now, the commotion from the venue was clearly audible. It was easy to imagine curiosity and suspicion churning together as people wondered what sort of musician would fall ill at the last moment.
She was only a substitute, and yet she had needlessly stoked their interest.
“Honestly, I thought I was going to die about three times.”
First, when she realized they were being pursued. Second, when she bit her tongue with the force of a botched suicide attempt. Third, when Kasumireaz’s horse reared up.
“And you’ve survived in the frontier until now,” Ark said, utterly detached.
“I keep telling you, it isn’t the frontier…”
She corrected him out of habit, though her voice lacked any real force. She could not help thinking she was diligent in the most pointless ways.
“If you can do that, you should’ve just done it from the start.”
Then she would not have screamed like that, and she would not have needed to bite her tongue four times.
When she aimed that small grievance at him, Ark merely shrugged.
“If I do it on the road, they’ll just keep coming, one after another. It’s faster to wipe them out all at once at the end. Besides.”
“Besides?”
“It’s before the investiture. I don’t want to waste shots.”
“Huh. So it’s not something you can do as many times as you want?”
He had tossed that sphere of light with such casual ease that she had assumed it could not be a particularly difficult feat.
Not that Masumi herself could ever do anything like it, even if she were told to try.
“It looked so easy. I just figured you could do it whenever.”
“Frontier… no, did you come from some hidden land so remote even beasts can’t live there?” Kasumireaz stared at Masumi in open disbelief. His blue eyes were practically shouting, You didn’t know that? His eyes truly spoke.
Masumi could only react awkwardly.
After insisting so many times that she was not from the frontier, she had now been promoted to being from a secret, uninhabitable wilderness. It was an unexpected development.
If she denied it again, she would probably just be reclassified as being from some demonic realm. In a situation where their common sense did not even align, she judged it pointless to keep correcting them, and resigned herself to the label.
Or rather, she stopped picking fights over it.
“I could fire it as many times as I like,” Ark said, “but I was being considerate.”
“Huh? Of what?”
“Of you.”
“Huh? Why?”
“If my reserves drop, you’re the one who suffers.”
That was why, even if supply failed to keep up, he had conserved enough for the worst case. Ark had said it plainly.
But Masumi did not understand the meaning of it at all. The shock she felt was the same kind of shock as when she first met calculus in school and could not understand a single word her teacher was saying.
And so, in the end,
“Ah. I see.”
That was all she could manage, a harmless response.
If she were honest, she would have preferred a slow, steady horse to concern based on a principle she did not even grasp. But it was too late to complain, so she swallowed it.
“How about it,” Ark said, neatly closing the topic. “Since we’ve got time now, why not play a little, to clear your head?”
He pointed at the rough wooden table. Her violin case was set there. On the road, Masumi had been far too busy clinging to Kasumireaz for dear life, so Ark had carried it.
The suggestion was reasonable.
She did not need an hour of concentration or adjustment, but tuning was essential. She drained the cup and stood.
She tightened the bow, attached the shoulder rest, tucked the violin between her jaw and shoulder, and took the bow in her right hand. All that remained was to make it sing.
She searched for the precise A.
There were exceptions, but ordinarily the reference pitch came from a well-tuned piano’s A. In an orchestra, the oboe provided it.
But “A” was not just one thing. The same note name could shift subtly depending on the chosen frequency.
“There’s no accompaniment, right?”
This would be a solo performance, without question.
She turned to confirm, and Kasumireaz nodded.
“Normally, at an investiture, only the commander’s dedicated musician performs.”
“Okay.”
Then she did not need to worry about blending with other instruments.
A reference pitch, however, was almost something without an international standard.
Because what frequency sounded pleasant to the human ear varied wildly. In America, A was often set to 440 hertz, but in parts of Europe it could be 444 hertz or higher for a brighter sound. A difference of four hertz was close to a semitone, and even with the same score, the impression of the music could change completely.
Where to place the reference was an enduring question in music.
And in times like these, perfect pitch was useful.
With the caveat that it worked best for solo playing, it meant she could align to a chosen pitch anytime, anywhere, like a human tuning fork.
In everyday life, the term “perfect pitch” was well known while discussions of what it truly meant were often left behind. People sometimes looked at her with envy for having it, but Masumi did not believe it automatically made one musically gifted.
Perfect pitch was, at its core, simply the ability to precisely identify the divisions of the twelve notes in an octave.
Unlike relative pitch, which could be trained, perfect pitch was something you either acquired in early childhood or never acquired at all. In Japan, the former was often treated as something glamorous, but Masumi believed true musicality lay in how rich one’s relative pitch was.
“So… should I go with 442?”
“Four-four-two?” Kasumireaz tilted his head at her.
She kept finding her reference A as she explained.
“Four hundred forty-two hertz. I’m deciding where to set the pitch.”
“Reference?”
“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t know.”
It would be hard for someone who was not a musician to grasp reference pitch right away.
It was faster to let them hear it than to talk. When she had done outreach performances at kindergartens, she had sometimes played the same melody at different pitches to catch their interest. Young ears responded quickly, and the children would squeal, “It’s different!” and “Amazing!” It had made for an amusing little demonstration.
With that nostalgic memory softening her expression, Masumi faced the two men squarely. Their gazes stayed fixed on her.
“Where you set the reference changes whether the same note feels higher or lower. For example.”
She drew the bow across her A string while slightly loosening the peg with her left hand.
She played A at 440 hertz.
“This is A.”
Then she tightened the peg a bit, taking A up to 444 hertz, to make the difference obvious.
“And this is also A, by name.”
“That’s completely different,” Ark said.
“It’s different because the reference pitch is different.”
Kasumireaz fell silent, his face unconvinced. Masumi explained carefully.
“That’s what it means to choose a reference. Saying there’s one absolutely correct A is, in a way, nonsense. Even with the same sheet music, how you interpret the piece affects whether you choose a heavier, lower pitch or a brighter, higher one. Though if you get too carried away and set it too high, the strings can snap more easily.”
“So that’s how it works.”
“Yeah.”
As she spoke, she turned the peg again and returned to the familiar A at 442 hertz.
Once she had that, she moved through D, G, and E, sounding two strings at a time and finding the resonance. Before long, the strings settled into their most responsive vibration. Tuning complete.
Both men watched her every movement. They probably had not absorbed everything, but she could see them trying to understand the difference they had heard.
Now, what to play.
“Well then… for a warm-up.”
She considered, then smiled faintly.
“Since I got a request, I’ll play Bach.”
“That piece,” Ark reacted at once.
He had liked it that much. Masumi loved it too, and the thought of someone else sharing that affection made her simply happy.
But the piece she had in mind was different.
“No. Same composer, but this one is called ‘Air on the G String.’”
Among Bach’s many famous works, this was surely one of the most widely known, alongside “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
Formally, it was “Air on the G String,” from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. It was most often performed by an orchestra, but its beauty did not fade in a solo arrangement.
If anything, as a violin solo, it lost the layered power of an ensemble but gained an exceptional elegance and delicacy.
“It’s interesting, you know. Just like the name says, you can play it all the way through on the G string alone.”
She plucked the G string, which carried the lowest register, and added, “Though if you do it that way, it ends up in C major.”
Then Masumi closed her eyes.
The first long tone began on F-sharp. It swelled gradually, reaching its peak as it climbed to the high B. Like waves that came and went, it repeated its crescendos and decrescendos, the melody quietly growing richer.
Today, that clear, beautiful line was beloved across the world. Yet in Bach’s lifetime, it had been ignored. It was only about a hundred years after his death that his value was properly recognized, and the music reevaluated.
The sound, transparent to the end, pressed against her chest.
Like sinking into a crystal lake, that clarity slowly turned into something bittersweet.
Its beauty remained unchanged even without a quartet or orchestra.
Carefully connecting each note so it would not break, Masumi opened her eyes.
The two knights, as if this moment were all that mattered, had their eyes closed, listening deeply.
For some reason, that made her very happy.
