He twisted the wire around in his hands, whipped his head back and forth, and stood still for a solid minute with his head tilted to the side, but to no avail. The speakers in his headphones sputtered, the sound coming only in short, sudden bursts, and then there was nothing. Silence. He pressed on the speakers, the rough insides rubbing against his ears. There was no sound.
He'd known his headphones were dying, but it is an inconsistent, fickle sort of death that comes to headphones. They would work perfectly for an hour, then only one side would work the next. Or else they would only work when the wire was held in a very specific way.
But now they were just dead.
There was something about it all that just felt wrong. Neku had mourned the passing of one hundred thousand pairs of headphones. The funerals were short. No long eulogies, no tears. Just a quick trip to the trash can.
Neku just didn't feel like he could dump these headphones into the trash.
They'd lasted four weeks, pretty good for a pair of headphones. He'd spent all the money he'd been saving on them and it was stupid, but they looked so cool and he really wanted them. It had seemed like a good way to enjoy the moment, so he bought them.
When people were too loud, he would just press the volume control. He'd found his hands wandering to the volume control more frequently than ever during those three weeks. He was surprised to see that both the plus and minus symbols painted onto the control were completely worn off. Never before had he worn down the button that lowered the volume.
His headphones still had a lot to say about him, he mused, pulling them off. He turned the pair of headphones around in his hands, staring down at the purple plastic with a fondness that didn't even make all that much sense to him.
He thought about the way Beat still called him 'Phones, even though he didn't wear his headphones in public all that much anymore.
"I guess I'll just keep them," Neku sighed, dropping them onto his desk and wondering why he couldn't bring himself to get rid of a stupid pair of dead headphones. Maybe they would even start working again when he picked them up again later.
He'd been dead once too.
Writer's woes: Not much to say here. I'm just kind of writing a bunch of weird snippet stuff for TWEWY and I have no idea what to do with it. No editing here. The whole thing went from head to computer screen. Ummmm I might take this back and explore it some more later, because overall, it's very boring and a might bit bland.