#shamyliciouss

He was soon asked to help with school events, music performances, dances…just plugging all the wires in earned him admiring comments.  

He found the attention he had originally been seeking in a much different vein.  It was ironic in a way he appreciated, considering that he was never in the spotlight.  He always thought drama would be about standing out and expressing the individual.  He realized he had a passion for the other side of that.  Working with a team to, really, control the emotions of the audience, to dig deeper into drawing out the will of the actor.  There was a kind of power in being behind-the-scenes that he hadn’t expected, and it was a shared understanding all the backstage guys held.  

From high school to volunteer and part-time work as a Casual, and all through college, he worked with and befriended numerous different artists.  Each had their own unique vision, and he got to play a part in bringing that to life for the artist and the audience.

The connections he made through it all served him well.  The Historic Konoha Theatre had an opening on their tech team.  He applied.  He was hired, even with how young he was.

The first show he worked was for a famous comedian by the name of Jiraiya.  He was more than a little starstruck to meet the King of Laughs in person.

But not all of the shows are established artists.  The Konoha Theatre has numerous different types of events.  Due to its more intimate architecture than the Konoha City Concert Hall, many up-and-coming artists choose HKT for their concerts.

And Naruto found he likes working with these younger artists more.  In creating a memorable performance with these artists, he feels like he has greater impact on their careers, like he might really be making a difference for them in helping them achieve their dreams.  

He’s been feeling this way especially with their current preparation with a young pianist, perhaps the youngest solo performer he's worked with yet at HKT.  She seems only a little younger than he is, practically fresh out of college.  But despite the media attention she seems to have been getting for the past handful of years, the girl seems uncharacteristically shy, from her cautious expression to her modest attire.

“Hinata, did you have any specific lighting in mind for your concert?” he asks during their first scheduled meeting.  He scans her setlist, recalling the songs from her online profile.  He wasn’t familiar with her before, but he did his research.  He recognizes that half of the songs on the list are from her work for the season’s hit drama.  “Or did you plan on projecting any scenes from the drama during the concert?”

“Oh, no,” she quietly begins.  “I wasn’t thinking of anything fancy, just…something regular?”  Her voice turns up at the end, suggesting that she doesn’t have any idea of what “regular” might mean.

“Okay.”  He nods.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know anything really about the lighting,” she adds quickly.

“No need to apologize.”  He smiles.  “I’ll show you some options, and we can go with what you feel comfortable with.”

Her expression immediately clears.  “I’d like that, thank you…”

“No problem.”  He shows her the common ways, from under-lighting to increasing the diameter of the spotlight, and the use of colors to help convey feeling.  He encourages her to consider a blue tint on the backlight for her moodier songs from the drama.  “It would be subtle.  It wouldn’t take away from your playing,” he assures her.

She pinches her lips together, obviously uncertain.

“Why don’t you get up there on the stage and see how it feels?  I’ll play one of your songs…how about...‘you and the stars’...from the speakers?  You can sorta get an idea.”

She nods, and as she makes her way up toward the stage, he finds her song and begins to play it.  Her piano music fills the house.

He watches her turn this way and that at the center of the stage, one moment looking thoughtfully at the backlight, the next moment staring out toward all of the seats.  At one point she stares blankly toward the wings, probably picturing the grand piano there or imagining herself playing it.  When he realizes she might be out there for the entire song, he sits back to relax and just listen.

He’s constantly amazed by the talent he meets.  It’s no different today, but composers are a different brand from musicians, dancers, actors, and even choreographers.  Perhaps even lyricists.  He wonders again, just as he had when he first took a listen to her music, what exactly inspired the sounds she somehow strung together.  

This song he chose in particular stands out.  It’s one of her hits from the drama, which he still needs to actually watch...he plans on marathoning it tonight...but this one in particular makes him think about his mother.  He wonders if the song relates at all to the death of a loved one in the drama.

Eventually, she makes her way back to the board.  She still wears a thoughtful expression.

“Whatdja think,” he asks.

“It’s nice...but if I use color for this song, then I should probably use colors for all of the songs, right?”

He smiles and shakes his head.  “Not necessarily.  For some of the songs, we can use just a spotlight.  That might be effective if you’d like the audience to focus more on you, your technique, or prowess.  For your songs that are more emotional or for the ones you’d like your audience to be looking more inward at themselves...more reflectively, then color on the backlight would be effective.”

She nods slowly, and he lets her process.  Finally, she looks directly at him.  “Okay.”

He looks back at her, at her somehow determined yet simultaneously blank expression.  Ah, maybe she doesn’t know where to start.  He leans forward and pushes the setlist in front of her.  “Why did you choose this order?  Tell me your thought process and we can go from there.”

She takes a deep breath, as if she’s getting ready for something really challenging.  “Okay,” she repeats with an expression of complete focus, and he wishes he had someone on the team to witness this with him.  “This” being, her.  She comes off as being overly serious, understandably so with it being her first solo concert, but it’s kind of funny and adorable.  

Yet as she walks him through the setlist, she very eloquently explains the journey she hopes to take her audience through.  There are times when she blushes as she shares her personal feelings about a song, and there are times when her eyes light up when he smiles at her in acknowledgement of her ideas.  He comes to learn that many of her songs were inspired by people she’s been with or seen, even just once, or places she’s been to, from foreign cities to nature walks, hinting at perhaps a more extroverted personality than one would expect.  She shares quietly and unrushed, as if she’s telling him secrets.  It’s definitely charming.

He can tell as he helps her decide her lighting design that she’s much calmer now.  They can both see the show coming together, which very apparently relieves her stress.  She voices her opinion more readily, and her smiles come easier, shining whenever he shows her a lighting that fits her developing vision.  It’s one of those moments that make him feel fulfilled in this profession.

He finishes the last of the notes on her concert and turns the laptop to show her.  “Alright, this is the plan!  I’ll share this with the team.”

“Thank you,” she softly replies, but her bright smile shows her excitement.

It’s a pretty smile.  

“Yeah, it’s going to look great!  We’ll see you at the rehearsal on Friday.”

She hums her affirmation as she gathers her things, and he notes how she’s still smiling in her quiet way.  Then, how her gaze flits back to his, and how her smile turns even sweeter.

It has him wondering at the meaning behind her looks, and if they’re meant to make him feel like they’re especially for him, meant to make him feel good, and if...maybe she...

“Uh actually- Hinata..me and a couple of others from the team were gonna go grab lunch soon.  Would you wanna join us?”

“Oh!...Um, I wouldn’t be intruding?”

“Not at all!”  He stands to walk out with her.  

“Okay, then.”  She smiles shyly once more, looking up at him, and he grins, happy that she seems happy.

Not very fashionable, with her long skirt and sweater layered over another sweater, but maybe that just means she’s not high maintenance (unlike his semi-serious, acting-major ex Shion from sophomore year).

It’s not like he’s really fashionable, either.

He recalls her quiet smiles and determined expressions.  Yeah, she was cute.  She definitely seemed sorta innocent, which is a quality he doesn’t see too often in girls his age anymore.  That seems to really up her appeal to him in ways he doesn’t want to self-examine.    

Wonder if she has a boyfriend.  

He remembers everything she told him and the things he learned about her online.  He knows she doesn’t have any social media accounts, or they at least don’t pop up on search engines.  And nothing she said hinted at a special someone.

She did talk about a few friends.  

He frowns at the extent of his contemplation.  I should just ask her out!   It wouldn’t be a big deal because if she says no, he’d probably never see her again after the concert, unless she has another concert, but it’s whatever.  

He’s old enough to ask people out casually, isn’t he?  

It’s just not something he’s ever really done.  With his “free” time in college spent in various theatres around town part-timing, building his network, or watching other shows to learn new design ideas, he doesn’t exactly have a strong dating history.  Usually Sakura makes it her personal mission to hook him up with someone, but it’d be nice to not wait for her to find him his next maybe-we’re-together-but-maybe-we’re-just-seeing-each-other fling that inevitably ends because the girl can’t handle his fluctuating work schedule (Monday and Tuesday or Thursday off, work some weekday nights and every weekend).  

Imagine if he told her he started dating someone without her help!  Hah!  He’s not a helpless case after all!

Anyway, it’s not a big deal.        

He can do it.

And, if he doesn’t start now, Sakura will run out of willing friends eventually, and he’ll have to start signing up for those dating apps and “sliding” into random people’s DMs, and, well, he’d rather not?

Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask her out for coffee or something.

With that matter settled and tucked away for later, he grabs the remote, turns on the streaming app, and navigates the site to the drama.  It’s only 13 episodes long, one hour each. He can definitely marathon it, especially since he doesn’t have to go in for work in the morning.

He’s halfway through the first episode when his flatmate, his best friend, walks in.  “Oh, you’re watching Picture Tomorrow.”  

Naruto turns to hear Sasuke dumping his stuff in the kitchen.  “Yeah, did you watch this?”

“Sakura made me.”

Figures.  Naruto turns back to the show.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I’m not?”

“Well, of course not since the girl dies at the end.”

Naruto turns furiously to see him standing there indifferently.  He throws his hands up.  “Sasuke!”

“What.  You didn’t know that?  How could you not know that?”

“Well, I didn’t!”

“Oh.”  Sasuke retreats back to the kitchen.

With the end spoiled, Naruto continues the show with less enthusiasm than before.  He watches the love interest gaze at the simpleminded heroine curiously.   She’s gonna die!  Don’t fall in love with her!   He sighs as he realizes every single moment watching this drama will now be colored with those thoughts.  “Did you like it?” he questions loud enough for Sasuke to hear over the sound of the sink’s running water.

“...”

Naruto watches Sasuke silently deliberating across the serving counter.  If he hated it, he would have said so already.  “So it’s a good show, then?”

“It’s interesting.”

That’s pretty much Sasuke-speak for ‘it’s great.’  “I’m gonna marathon the whole thing tonight.  You wanna join?”

Sasuke grimaces at him.  

But a couple minutes later, after he microwaves some leftovers, he joins him on the couch.

“Oh, this is one of her songs,” Naruto comments aloud as the episode flashes a few sponsors before a commercial break.

Sasuke turns to look at him.

“Hinata, the pianist.  She’s having a concert at HKT this Saturday, and I’m her point person,” he explains.

Sasuke silently nods.

Throughout the drama, he vocally notices her songs.  “This is her song, too...think this one’s called ‘Finally Arrived.’”  He mentally considers that the music sounds different from her online profile, like with other instruments added, and he doesn’t doubt that she composed the music for them, too.  “Gee, she’s really talented.”  

“Hn.”

Eventually Sasuke leaves him alone, and it’s a good thing because when the heroine tells her love interest her diagnosis, but they start dating anyway, Naruto finds himself tearing up.  

By morning, he’s got a permanent frown on his face when she tells him she wants to break up with him, while keeping her terminally ill prognosis secret.

Sasuke comes out, readying for work.

“Sasukeeee...why…” he exhaustedly whines.  

“I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

“No, no, I like it...I think…”

“Are there still tickets for her concert?”

“Wha?  Oh, I dunno...probably…ugh I hate this show...I mean I don’t hate it…”

“Stupid.”

“Noo, this is your fault.”

“Later.”  The door clicks shut, and Naruto is left alone to wallow in his misery.

Sasuke doesn’t come back that night, probably staying over at Sakura’s place, so he doesn’t have anyone to voice his thoughts to until the next day when he goes in for work.  

He tells the rest of the crew about how his jerk of a flatmate spoiled the ending, and how touching it was that the boyfriend ended up becoming a cancer researcher.  

To which their only reaction of note is how Naruto didn’t know that the girl was going to die at the end.  “How did you not know that?”  “The novel’s been on the best-selling list all season!”

“I just didn’t know!”

When Hinata comes in for her rehearsal, he unthinkingly engages her in his venting.  “I finally watched Picture Tomorrow!” he informs her.

Her lips turn up slightly.  “Oh, did you like it?”

“Yes!  I hated it.”

“Oh…”

“It was so sad,” he bemoans.

“So...you didn’t like it?” she asks.

“No, it was great!  It was awful,” he clarifies for her.

It starts quietly, her giggle.  He watches her light grey eyes disappear into small slits under dark lashes, and he’s momentarily struck by the realization that he made her laugh.

“Your music was great, too,” he adds, and he suddenly finds himself much more taken with her smile than the drama.  She’s wearing make-up today.  And a dress.  “It completely tied together every scene, it was really nice.”

Her eyes, her entire expression, shines up at him.  “Thank you.  I’m glad you liked it.”

“Yeah...”  He works his hand into the back of his neck.  Right before the rehearsal starts would not be a good time to ask her out.  So, he redirects his thoughts to his work.  “Are you ready to get started?”

She nods, her shy gaze still focused on him, her cheeks still lightly pink from her laughter.

And he notes how she still looks happy as she follows him toward the stage.

He and the rest of the crew clap and give her cheers as she bows to the empty seats.  

She turns and looks at him, smiling a scrunched up, embarrassed and amused expression at their antics.

He grins at her, making sure to holler an extra loud “Wooh!”

Her mouth seems to drop open in surprise, her brows furrowing in confusion at his enthusiasm as she comes off the stage into the wings.  

“We won’t be able to cheer you on tomorrow night, so we gotta do it today,” he explains.  Tomorrow they’ll all be in work-mode.  Silent and invisible.  

“Oh,” she answers thoughtfully.  “Thank you.”

“Yeah!  Everything sounded great.  Looks like we’re ready for tomorrow!”  

She smiles in agreement and nods.  

He feels his weight tipping forward toward his toes, an antsiness that urges him to bounce on his feet.  Now’s the time, now’s the time.

His senior’s yell bursts through his thoughts.  “Hinata!  Before you go, I wanted to know if you’d sign this sheet music for my wife.  She teaches your songs to some of her piano students.”

She turns from him, her smile directed away.  “Oh, sure!”

Naruto lets out a silent sigh.

He doesn’t get another moment alone with her, and he doesn’t want to subject himself or Hinata to the pressure of asking her out in front of everyone.

It’s only later that night when he’s leaving the theatre and walking to the bus stop that it occurs to him he could message her.  He has her number saved, at the time it was for “just in case” as her point person.  

Well, but asking her out in a message seems like a cop out.

He fiddles with his phone for a few seconds before opening a new thread.  

“Hey Hinata this is Naruto”  

He sends it before he can regret it.

He waits a minute.  

Nothing.

She might be one of those people who doesn’t obsessively check their phone’s notifications.

He starts typing again.  

“We’re all getting dinner around 4:30 tomorrow.  You’re welcome to join us before your warmup”  

He stares at his phone for a few seconds before pocketing it.  Based on her response, he might be able to gauge her interest in him.  If she responds.

His phone vibrates when he’s nearing his stop, and he’s relieved to see that it’s her as he exits the bus.

“Hello, Naruto, thank you :)  I’ll be there!”

A positive response.  A pretty normal, positive response.  

He doesn’t gauge anything from it, and now he has to figure out how to reply.  For anyone else, he would just “like” her reply.

But she’s not exactly just anyone, and he kind of wants her to notice him the way he’s noticing her.

“Great, see you tomorrow”

He considers adding “have a good night,” quickly decides against it, and presses send.

Her reply comes almost automatically.  “Yes, have a good night :)”

He frowns at his phone.  He should have just added it the first time.  Now is it weird to drag on the conversation?  Why didn’t she just say “see you tomorrow” in response?

Before he can take any longer thinking about it, he sends a short message.  

“You too”

He lets out a long breath.  

The last time he exchanged messages with a girl (that wasn’t a platonic friend) was three months ago.  That contact didn’t last past the first date, set up by Sakura.

They were incompatible.  Little attraction on both sides when it came to conversation.

It would be nice if he could have a relationship.  None of this waiting around, none of this feeling the other person out, none of this second-guessing every move, or just trying to make a move.  

He’s ready for more.

For awhile, the only thing she felt she could do successfully was play the piano.

So that’s all she did.  

She practiced a lot.  As soon as she came home from school, wrote random lettering on her reading homework, and carefully completed her math homework, she jumped on the piano bench to practice her lesson.  

But when she had done her scales and songs over and over and over and over and over...she had nothing else to do.  

Then one day, she got an old song from home stuck in her head.  It had been the popular tune that all of her friends used to sing at recess.  

She spent hours trying to figure out the correct notes on the piano.  And slowly but surely, she created a simple melody for it.

It became a hobby of hers.  Simple melodies on her right hand quickly developed into two-handed pieces.  A year later, around the time she turned nine, she started trying to add chords to her songs.

Her skill didn’t go unnoticed.  She advanced through her exercise books on her own, showing up to lessons over-prepared.  Her long hours of practice and play helped her to quickly learn several bars of music within one lesson, forcing her teacher to supply her with more difficult songs.

Then her piano teacher recommended her for a competition.  “She has such a good ear,” the teacher told her father.

Hinata didn’t really know what that meant, but she did know that she was so extremely nervous, she thought she was going to faint.  

Until she heard everyone else play.

She won easily in her age category.

Her father said he wasn’t surprised at all, with all the hours she practiced.  

That recognition alone from her busy, busy father encouraged her more than the trophy.  And at school, she was finally starting to understand what everyone was saying.  She began listening to the radio to learn local songs to play on the piano.  It developed her vocabulary and gave her a way to relate to her classmates.

By the time she entered Intermediate School, she could make friends, even if she was still shy.  Music became her key to social and personal success.  She would figure out how to play songs her friends requested.  Then she started trying to compose her own short pieces as gifts for her friends.

She was growing in confidence and identity.

Then they moved back to Fire Country.

It wasn’t nearly as difficult a move as the first time.  She at least knew the language, and they had gone on several trips over the years to visit relatives, so nothing was really unfamiliar.  Adjusting to the school culture took a little time, but she quickly figured things out.  Friends came much more easily since people were interested in her experience living abroad.

What she wasn’t expecting was...piano drama.  

She entered competitions, just as she had been before, and that’s when it started.  

The sudden appearance of a new “prodigy” amongst a group of piano students who had been competing against each other for years was startling, to say the least.  Her win was such an upset, she got interviewed for the newspaper.  Taking advantage of the attention, her school featured her with the symphonic orchestra as an accompanist at school concerts.  She was invited to play with the school’s choir, too.

Students at her school who were in the competition gave her ugly looks and talked bad about her behind her back.  They criticized her playing style, spread rumors that she wins due to her money, background, or her father’s name recognition, or said she was stuck-up.

She tried to talk less, dress plainly, speak politely, or ignore it.  They just called her socially awkward, weird.

She did competitions for another year, until she just...couldn’t.  

She didn’t want to do it anymore.  She was tired of the attention, the good and the bad.  

In her last year of high school, she asked her piano teacher to let her focus on composition, where her real passion lies.  Thankfully, her piano teacher was receptive.  Kurenai helped her record her songs and release them online for public download.  Her teacher used her connections to get Hinata’s profile some attention, and she became known as an artistic youth to keep an eye on.

Through college, she developed her composing skill.  She studied the other instruments, their key changes, and their unique qualities, and began composing chamber music, which opened up an entirely new range of sound she hadn’t had the chance to explore before.  With friends in her music major, they collaborated on and played original songs at student-run concerts.

It was fun and new, but she didn’t experience the same success as when she won competitions.  She knew focusing on technical composition wouldn’t be the same, but she had no way of rating herself against others.  Working beside so many other musical talents who excelled in their instruments, who planned on entering professional orchestras and had a straightforward path after college, gave her anxiety about her future as a pianist and composer.

So she decided to take a break.  To find her passion again.  To not associate piano with winning or losing.  

She studied abroad.  She traveled.  She saw new landscapes, heard new languages, ate new foods, and surrounded herself with new people, just as she had been when she first found sanctuary in music.  

She didn’t touch a piano unless she had a stroke of inspiration.  Sometimes it was a particularly gnarled tree she happened to pass on a bus ride, the sound of a person’s laughter in an outdoor market, or vibrant wall art on a building’s surface.  At other times, she felt the sounds develop over weeks, through repeated interactions with a classmate or watching the movement of customers in her favorite cafe.  Those were her favorites.  She would record it, upload it to her profile, and force herself to be too busy to check the number of hits.

When she finally returned home after her year abroad, she still didn’t want to check her profile’s notifications.  She was too busy anyway with her senior portfolio, which she decided to dedicate around her literal and figurative journey as an artist through her formative years.  She was proud of her work, albeit still nervous about her next steps.

Then Kurenai asked her to come over.  

She informed Hinata that she had been contacted about an opportunity to have her ex-student compose tracks for a dramatization of a popular teen romance novel.  According to the producer of the drama, Hinata’s music ‘carries a nostalgia for beauty, a youthful eye at the fragility of time and age.’

Well, it sounded a little pretentious for what Hinata had actually been trying to get at with her music.  But, she agreed just on the relief alone, understanding that she may never get a chance like this again, and that it would at least delay her worries for a while.

When the drama was released last year, it became the hit show of the season.  It garnered her profile attention, and requests began to come in for her sheet music.  Before she could really realize it, she found herself experiencing a type of success she hadn’t felt before.  

Other pianists were playing her songs!

Now she has young learners of the piano who write to her, calling themselves her “fans” who love her style, who eagerly await her new compositions, who would actually pay to see her perform.

And that’s how she’s found herself in this uncomfortable position.  

Holding her own concert.  

And despite the many times she’s been on stage, she’s never once had to interact with the tech crew.  They were just these mysterious entities who walked around the theatre looking all official and intimidating with their headsets, microphone pieces, and control panels.  

Well, she’s easily intimidated by strangers.  She knows that it’s likely due to her high school experience.  It doesn’t make being naturally anxious any easier.

“You must be Hinata Hyuga?”  A blond man who looks just about her age notices her standing awkwardly to the side.

She nods.  “Hello.”  Why does everything she say sound uncertain?

He closes his laptop and walks up to her.  “I’m Naruto.”  He holds out his hand, which she shakes, hoping her grip was firm enough to not feel wimpy.  “I’m going to be the point person for your concert.”

She nods again.

He grins at her then, for reasons quite unknown to her.  It’s a really nice smile, though, and she smiles a little in return.  “I’ll take you over to meet the rest of the crew?”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course!”

He and everyone else are a lot friendlier than she would have expected.  Less business-y.  Certainly a team.

She learns that it’s Naruto’s first time leading, apparently an effort by his seniors to build capacity within the crew.  The thought is somewhat comforting that she’s not the only one doing something new.

“Why you gotta tell her that!” he complains comically.  

His senior just laughs.  “There’s no need to worry.  Naruto’s good at his job, and we’ll all be there to support you.”

The camaraderie among the crew is palpable.  “Thank you..” she replies simply.

Naruto smiles brightly.

She decides that he really has a nice smile, and she can’t help thinking about it throughout their meeting.

After all, he smiles often.  He smiles so widely, his cheeks bunch up to his cerulean eyes.  She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen anyone smile as much as he does, which is saying a lot because she’s met many people.  She wonders if he does it on purpose.  He seems confident enough to know that he has a great smile, but he also seems just genuinely that cheerful.

And that smile of his makes her feel a little less worried about her concert.  If he’s not worried, then she needn’t worry, either, right?

So she focuses as best she can on her task.  Earlier, Kurenai explained that a solo concert is different from a school performance.  She has to keep the audience entertained on her own, that she’ll have the entire theatre all to herself.

It’s really the knowledge of Naruto’s cheer and encouraging smile that keep her from crumpling inward like an origami fan when she gets up on the stage.  She ends up standing there for too long, mentally hyping herself up, then calming herself down, then refocusing on the lighting situation.

Without fail, his smile greets her when she returns to him as the song finishes.  

When they’re halfway through designing the lighting for her setlist, he turns another shining grin at her.  “See?  This isn’t so confusing, is it?”

She nods in agreement.

“You seemed so worried earlier,” he chuckles.

“Oh, it’s just that it’s the first time I’m doing something like this, so…”  She turns away, tucking her hair behind her ear.  She didn’t realize her nervousness was so obvious to him.

“Hm, yeah, but you’ve won a ton of competitions before.  Concerts aren’t like competitions, right?  I don’t like working competitions.  I can literally feel everyone’s tension in the air.”  He holds his hands up in stress as if he’s holding something heavy.

She stares at him, realizing that this cute guy must have looked her up online beyond just her songs.  Her basic profile doesn’t talk about her past.  The thought automatically triggers her blush.

He goes on, “If you can handle that, then you’ll be fine this Saturday.  Concerts are fun!”

She nods through her embarrassment, understanding that he only did it for his work as her point person.  “Yes, I think it will be fun.”

“Yup!” he replies cheerfully.  “So don’t worry.  Me and the crew will all be there for you, too.  You’re not alone,” he repeats, an echo of his senior’s sentiments, but his words somehow sound even more sincere.

It dawns on her that he’s been trying to help her relax this whole time.  She bites her lips and turns a small smile at him.

Of course, he smiles back brightly.  “Alright, let’s talk about ‘Too Fast to Hide.’  You said it’s a very technical piece, so we could go a couple of different ways with this…”

A steady warmth of assurance wraps her up, and she relaxes more, happy to go along with his mood.  He definitely seems to have fun in his job, and she wants to enjoy this process as much as he is.

His enthusiasm makes it easy for her to forget her nervousness.  His charm makes it even easier.  She can’t help admiring his good nature, his happy demeanor, and by the end of their meeting, she somehow finds herself feeling incredibly prepared for her concert.  She can imagine the entire event, a miracle that’s all thanks to him.

She’s already wondering what little gifts would be acceptable for her to give to the tech crew members, especially for Naruto, to show her appreciation.  Saturday will come quickly, and it will likely be over just as quickly, which was something she was counting on...

But now she thinks she wouldn’t mind getting the chance to have another concert if she gets to meet and work with people like Naruto.  

She peeks at him beside her as she picks up her purse, to see him watching her...with his ‘resting smiling face.’  

What would he think if I told him he has a nice smile?

She imagines he’d just smile wider, and the thought makes her want to laugh.  She doesn’t, of course, since that would be rude, and he definitely doesn’t deserve that.  Not with how thoughtful he is, like inviting her to eat lunch with his team.

To which she maybe too easily agrees, but she thinks she wouldn’t mind spending more time with his team (and him).  

She can practically hear it, the way his expression brightens upon interrupting the other members’ work, how warm it is when he informs them that she’s coming, too.  The downtown foot traffic a lively accompaniment as they make their way past other historic buildings, finally arriving at a nearby food truck.  His sigh of absolute, dramatic relief when he opens his take-out.