(love)birds of a feather

chapter two

Eddy. Eddy Chen.

His name brings a smile to Brett Yang's face every single time. It looks like sheet music splayed out on a desk by a sunlit window. It tastes like bubble tea pearls. It sounds like Sibelius 1st movement. It smells like vanilla and honey and morning coffees. It feels like the entire world.

When Brett was a child, his mother would tell him, "The Earth is everyone's world. One day you'll find someone who's your world and your world only. Someone you can talk to the stars about—someone who'll talk to the stars about you."

And he lets that concept stick, but for now, he shares his world with millions of other people.

He's 14 when he first takes a seat next to Eddy at math tutoring; a 13-year-old boy sitting in the second row. He had a mullet haircut back then, Brett remembers, and he was fingering a piece on his wrist.

"Do you play violin?" Brett asks, starting it all, binding them together side-by-side for their whole lives, unknown to both at the time.

Next day, they run into eachother again at youth orchestra, and just like that, their friendship forms a seal of diamond; unbreakable.

They strayed from their thought-to-be inevitable med career paths together to pursue music. They studied at music con and played in orchestra together, their shenanigans to become stories to tell to their future fans.

Years later, they'd set out on a mission to make classical music relevant to the modern world. They toured the world and brought their personalities to the stage lights.

It's been seven years of them content-creating together about the thing they love the most, the thing that bonded them together in the first place, reaching and surpassing milestones together, gathering an incredible community of musicians and non-musicians alike.

And notice the word together.

It depends on the way one decides to take the word together in the context of Twoset; it could mean how they've been side by side for more than half their lives now, how it's always has been and always will be Twoset Violin and never Oneset Violin.

Or, one could choose to understand it as them being in a secret relationship behind the scenes, and one would be surprised at how many choose to believe it as Option B.

These are the thoughts that scramble unhinged through Brett's brain as he looks at a reddit post that suggests so with Eddy, his best friend, nothing more, thank you very much.

But what do you say when you and the person you're most comfortable with suddenly lapse into awkward silence when someone suggests that you and them are more than friends?

You make a joke that's attributed to your YouTube channel, of course. And so Brett saves them that way.

"Yes, gotta practice. Are you practicing? No, you're not! So practice—when this video finishes." He does a small head bow. "Thank you."

And they move on, but Eddy's still tense and quiet next to him. Brett chooses a post by a talented tuba player to view next, to get Eddy back to his usual spirit.

He wouldn't feel that way towards Eddy in a million years. They're friends, nothing more.

• • •         
                                  
Brett can read anyone like a book. Especially Eddy.

Sure, they have conversations alone together where they share their deepest secrets and vulnerabilities with eachother like it's no big deal; we're talking Brett Yang and Eddy Chen here, an unbreakable bond ongoing for the last decade and a half.