Amber fiddles with the brass in between her fingers, cleaning the mouthpiece delicately as she stares down the sheet music on the stand in front of her. It's six in the morning and literally no one else is at school but her and the staff, but she needs to get a headstart on this piece if she is to keep her position as head of the trumpets.

Her tongue pushes against the inside of her cheek in concentration as she mentally plays the flurry of black notes on paper, and she's so lost in the mental sight read that she doesn't notice the figure creeping behind her.

"Amber!" The young woman yelps and turns in a flurry of limbs, wide eyes staring down the person who broke her concentration.

"Hyo!" she breathes, putting a hand to her chest. Her heart is still racing. "God, you scared me!"

Hyoyeon sneers, sitting down in one of the chairs beside her friend. Unlike Amber, who is adept with trumpets, she owns the role and title of Best Tuba Player (this could also come from the fact that she's one of five tuba players of their school's band). "Maybe if you weren't up so early to practice, then I wouldn't be here to scare you, you ever thought of that?"

Amber groans, setting down her mouthpiece and glaring at the older. "You aren't even here this early in the morning, usually. What do you want?"

One of Hyoyeon's eyebrows quirk up, and she leans forward. "You know the showcase that's coming up?"

Amber looks at her warily. "Duh. 'Course I know."

At their performance arts high school, the showcase is something that happens only once a year, at the end of the year, and each section of the high school -- band, orchestra, vocals, theatrics, dance -- clamor for a good time slot. This is because there are usually many recruiters for local and international groups or agencies that come to the showcase, and to turn up an opportunity like that would be tossing away everything one has risked their life for to get into the school.

Rarely could students apply and be accepted at Korea Performing Arts High. Middle schoolers countrywide are scouted to join, and this is only after a fantastic display of talent has been shown. Students who joined have a big chance of making a name for themselves, especially with the amount of recruiters that come every year. Students are also desperate enough to be the best in their category, because for those who graduate without getting signed, their chances of going into a symphony or showbiz are slim.

"From my sources of information," Hyoyeon begins slyly, "I hear that the orch dorks are trying to get an earlier time slot than us."

The factions had various alliances and rivalries with each other. Band students and orchestra students tended to despise one another. Amber didn't care for the rivalry either way; she's there to make music, not to care about enemies made thirty years before when the school was founded.

"And?" Amber questions. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I'm telling you this because you're pretty much the leader of this high school's band," Hyoyeon states exasperatedly.

Amber wrinkles her nose. Sure, she's well-liked and keeps the rest of them from being too rowdy, but she's not sure if that counts as being Supreme Overlord of the entire band. "And?"

Hyoyeon falls silent and it seems as though she's refraining from yelling out profanities. "And," she stresses, "this means that you need to talk to the leader of the orch dorks, and try to negotiate out an earlier slot for us."

Amber exhales, turning back to her music. "All right, see now, that's impossible. How would that solve anything and get us our slot? Doesn't that mean that they'd have to give up their own?" Also, I don't want to get beaten up with bows, she grimly thinks.

"Well, if they can get an earlier slot from the school," Hyoyeon begins, "that means that they greased themselves up to the staff in charge of the showcase already. Which means that we have to be all buddy-buddy with them so we can get a good spot, too, and not take theirs, like you thought we would -- oh, don't worry about others, Amber, it's a dog eat dog world here. And," she enunciates, placing a small slip of paper on the stand, "I know you don't want your kicked by a bunch of dweebs, so here's the number of the supposed leader of the dorks. Taken directly from my source, of course."

Amber looks at the piece of paper, lower lip worried by her teeth. "So... I just call?"

"Yeah! And schedule a meeting. See if you can't work something out. Take ten showers after to get their resin-sticky aura off of you."

Hyoyeon stands and exits, calling out a, "Think about it!" as she leaves, and Amber sits rooted to her seat for the rest of the morning until the first bell rings, staring at the offending piece of paper.

She mulls over it during lunch, even, lost in weighing the pros and cons of doing such an act while biting into her sub. The blonde knows Hyoyeon wouldn't come to her for such a task unless it was urgent, and with the showcase coming up in a few months, she could sense the desperation in the other's actions.

"Amber, what's up?" Victoria asks, a fry pinched between her fingers. "Usually your sub would be demolished by now." Victoria is a student in the dancing faction who just so happened to befriend Amber after the latter spilled ranch all over her bear claws. That was a messy beginning to a beautiful friendship.

"Yeah, Amber," Sunyoung chimes, "what's wrong?" A friend of the young woman since childhood, the two were ecstatic to know that they would go to the same high school, albeit with Sunyoung being in the vocal division.

Amber shrugs, pulling out the phone number in her pocket. "It's nothing, really."

Her friend Amy, a vocal major, slides over atop the canteen bench until she slams into Amber's side, eyes squinting at the slip of paper. "Hey, is that a phone number? Did you get someone's digits?"

Amber stammers. "What?"

Eric takes this moment as a perfect opportunity to wake up from his noon nap, and begins to chant after picking up on the contents of the conversation. "Amber's crush, Amber's crush, Amber's crush," he proclaims, drool still drying on his cheek and round glasses smushed into his face.

Her other friends pick up on the chant, and it grows loud enough that students eating at other tables turn curiously to look at them. Amber buries her head into her hands, miserably sighing.

—

Phone in hand, Amber in her cheek nervously as she dials the number, a little afraid of what the outcome is going to be after this ordeal. She hears three rings, and then a male voice answers, "Hello?"

"Hi, is this- " Amber turns the small slip over to look at the back " -Henry Lau?"

"Yeah, that's me. Who's speaking?"

"Well, uh." Gosh, she didn't think this far into their conversation. "I'm Amber Liu, I go to the same school you do, and I was hoping that maybe we could set up a meeting?"

The voice pauses. "What's this meeting for?"

Oh, how is she going to bring up her purpose without sounding like a self-serving ? "Well, it pertains to the showcase," she offers. "I'm hoping I can go into a little more detail at our meeting?"

The young man on the other side of the line clicks his tongue. "All right. Three after classes at the Auditorium."

"That's fair. Thanks." They hang up at the same time, and Amber takes a deep breath, stuffing her phone in her pocket as she heads to her next class.

At the school, common subject classes are offered as well for the factions, and aside from three-four hours of their faction split throughout the day, students rotate through math, a foreign language of their choice (which is usually English), science, history, and Korean language. Each school day is eight hours long, with an optional choice to take four more hours of student-picked classes decisively split into the early mornings and late afternoons for the dedicated students.

Usually most students stuck to the eight-hour plan and opted for an hour extra if they felt the need to for their division, but if students are in more than one faction, they'll need to take extra hours to stay on top of their grades. Should a student fail a class, the school will drop them immediately.

For those like Amber who arrive early at school just because they can, they do so without any stress or mental preparations to do well. However, for the students in two or more factions like her friend Eric, who's in both the vocal division and theatrics, they need to take extra hours and study hall on top of that. For that reason alone, when her friends congregate at lunch Eric is always passed out on the table before the rest of them get there.

Amber thinks about what would've happened to her if she had signed up for the dance division as well as band, and shudders about what the outcome would be.

By the time she finishes sluggishly taking notes for science and reading aloud passages in perfect English, it's time for the normal school day to end, and Amber takes in a deep breath as she rubs at her eyelids. Just one more task to handle, and then she can go home and sleep.

Without watching where she was going, she collides headfirst into a warm body, and falls back on her and palms with a loud "oof!"

The other person yelps as they hit the floor, a loud crashing sound meeting the both of their ears, and Amber's stomach sinks. That's not a good sound to hear.

Sure enough, when she looks up, the person is on their knees and cradling a violin, and the bridge has completely snapped off with what seems to be a fine crack running alongside the wooden instrument.

"Oh ," Amber pales, scrambling to her feet and crouching beside the other. "Oh , man, are you okay? Your instrument- "

The young man looked up, eyes ablaze, and Amber has a fleeting thought of how attractive the other is until he opens his mouth to shout. "You completely totaled my violin!" he hollers, holding out his instrument as if Amber didn't see it already. "This was a $3,000 violin, and you just totaled it! How am I supposed to even play it now?! Why don't you watch where you're going, knucklehead?!"

At the scathing tone, the blonde both shrinks back into herself in apology and glares at him defiantly. "Well, who told you to carry it around out in the open like that?" she argues back, eyes hard-set. "Maybe if you were watching where you were going, then this wouldn't have happened!"

The young man stands, fuming. "The paint on this is still wet, !" he roars, and Amber looks over to see that, oh wow, the instrument really was recently repainted, specks now embedded into the drying paint from the fall, and now she feels like a jackass for yelling back when if the roles were reversed she would've done the same.

Her eyes soften, and she stands. "Look, man, I'm really sorry for doing this. I'll even help you pay for the damage cost, alright? Just, uh, write down your name and number and we can talk about repairment- "

The other heavily exhales, rubbing his face with his free hand. "Look, you know what, it's fine. I have somewhere to be right now, so I don't have time to talk to you." Without another word, he picks up his bag and turns on his heel, walking away.

Amber's frown morphs into a scowl, and she glares after the other. Okay, so she isn't a prize citizen; there's no need to be rude about it. She bares her teeth threateningly at the other's disappearing back and turns to walk in the opposite direction, only to realize that the way to the Auditorium is in the direction that the young man stormed off in. Because of this, her pride forces her to spend a few minutes in the exact same area, waiting for the stranger to disappear completely from her peripheral vision until she trudges on towards the Auditorium.

When she gets there, she slowly opens the heavy doors, peeking in for a brief moment before stepping in and shutting the doors behind her. Her eyes squint to slowly adjust to the dim-lit environment as opposed to the rays of light still shining outdoors, and further down the flight of stairs in the large building, she can see a figure. Quietly, so as to not attract attention to herself, Amber treads down the carpeted stairs and past hundreds of seats, and stops a few yards away from the figure.

Whoever is standing against the railing is donned in white skinny jeans, high tops, and a red long-sleeved sweater with black stripes running along it horizontally, a collared shirt worn underneath. The person continually checks their phone for the time, impatiently exhaling, and Amber comes to the understanding that this is who she's supposed to meet for the showcase times, Henry Lau.

The only problem with the young man being Henry is that he's holding a cracked violin in his other hand.

Amber chokes on her spit, trying to quietly back up to the doors without the other noticing her arrival or disappearance. She slithers out of the small gap she creates for herself opening the door, gently shuts it, and then proceeds to high tail it out of there and to her dorm.

She may be a responsible adult, but she is not good with her pride or selflessness. If Hyoyeon wanted her to meet up with a stuck-up violinist, then she could do so herself!

—

a/n: i had the next chapter almost done bUT THE AUTOSAVE DIDNT WORK AND I LOST EVERYTH IGN

AHAHAHAHAHAHA also i would've had this up four days earlier

but i have spent those four days yelling insanely abt big hero 6 and tadashi

[inserts another parks and rec picture here]