It's been a while since I've written something new... College has really worn me out.
During a burst of creative energy I had a while back, I ended up thinking about two infamous Vocaloids – Ring Suzune and Hibiki Lui; infamous in that as of this upload, they haven't been released despite being two of the earliest announced Vocaloids for VOCALOID3. They sadly seem to have fallen victim to the Vaporware phenomenon... Nevertheless, I ended up writing this lament to them. A shame, really, because those two had, and still have, fans that support them. They even still turn up in this section from time to time...
Forgotten Voices
The girl opened her eyes slowly, blackness greeting her with indifference. It had been completely dark in the basement for... who knew how long. At this point, they certainly must have been locked down there for a few years. Both she and her brother felt it – that is, if her brother was even still alive.
The girl had been unable to move for a long time now – gradually, her robotic parts had fallen to disrepair due to lack of maintenance. Her brother had already succumbed to the same fate as her previously. When they were both rendered immobile, they still communicated to each other through speech, sharing the same pain from their situation until eventually, the lights in the basement went out completely. After that, they could no longer see each other.
Despite the darkness, they still talked to each other for comfort; until one day, the girl's brother wasn't replying to her anymore. She tried to call out his name - "Lui! Lui!" she cried desperately. But Lui never said anything to her again. She couldn't tell under the darkness, but deep in her heart, she knew that her brother was now dead.
Unable to escape the prison she had found herself in, or even move, the girl began to think about the past – about everything that led to her position now.
About how she and Lui were promised to become Vocaloids.
Originally, they were ordinary Japanese teenagers – fans of the singing synthesis program Vocaloid, but still ordinary teenagers. They were huge fans of the Cryptonloids in particular; especially Miku Hatsune. But never in their wildest dreams did they ever think that they would have a chance to become Vocaloids themselves...
One day, however, a contest was announced – a singing contest in which the prize was to become the first two Vocaloids released for the upcoming version, VOCALOID3. Spurred on by their own desires and dreams, the two had decided to apply. The girl could remember the conversation that had led to them signing up...
"Lui, come on!" she moaned. "Wouldn't it be great if we became Vocaloids?!"
"I'm not sure, Ring..." Lui replied. "Music isn't all fun, you know. It's a business too. Neither of us know what it's really like."
"So?" she retorted, disregarding Lui's fears. "We'll worry about that once we become Vocaloids! It'll be great! We'll get to meet Miku, Rin, Len, Luka... everyone!"
Lui pondered. Finally he came to a decision: "Alright then, let's enter. Just don't start complaining later on."
In retrospect, she should have taken Lui's warning – not because of the trials and tribulations of the music business, but because of what eventually happened to them – they never truly became Vocaloids. In fact, they were never finished properly.
Against all odds, and after many moments of anxiety and pressure, they managed to win the contest. After the victory, there was the gruelling process every new Vocaloid had to go through – Vocaloidisation. Anyone who wanted to become a new Vocaloid had to be robotised in order to maintain ''durability'', and to achieve the ''synthetic'' sound the Vocaloids were famous for. Almost immediately, Ring and Lui found the process extremely painful – their entire bodies were almost stripped away completely in order to replace their skin and muscles with metal and synthetic parts. Every day, they gradually felt more and more ill from the work being done to them. But they tried to put up with it all; because after the Vocaloidisation process, they'd be able to meet the other Vocaloids. They would be able to start singing. They would be released to the public...
Right?
Overtime, it seemed that the process was taking much longer than expected to the siblings – and soon enough, people began to drop out of the project. What had started as a large group effort fell to a small number of people working on them both. On the last day they ever saw another human being, there were only around ten people left. Before they went home for the final time, the last thing the team ever said to them was, "We'll be back tomorrow."
But of course, they never came back.
It actually took a while for the two to realise that the team hadn't come back – there was no clock whatsoever in the basement, nor was there any kind of window in order to tell whether it was daylight or not – but when they began to feel like it had been a long time since they last saw them, they started to worry. Eventually, that worry grew into a panic. Caught up in fear, they had rushed to the door of the basement and pushed the handle down as hard as they could, shoving it fiercely in desperation to get out - but to their absolute horror, it was locked. The two were trapped, with no way to call for help. Their only option left was to sit it out and wait for someone to unlock the door.
However, that option was essentially suicide for them.
Time passed, and they grew worse with each day. Soon, their bodies began to rust and break away, their systems beginning to malfunction. Eventually, they were unable to move, leading up to where Ring was now. As she recalled everything, Ring felt the urge to cry – but she couldn't. The team never got around to programming her with human emotional responses. She was basically an unfinished doll, left to wither away at the mercy of time.
She sat on the floor with her back beside the wall for much longer. Then, she felt something strange inside her body. She could feel and hear something inside her chest whirring like crazy, struggling to work. Then, it briefly stopped.
Ring fell unconscious for a few seconds, until the whirring noise stirred up again, waking her up immediately. After some more seconds, the noise stopped again and she blacked out for a second time. The pattern continued to repeat for a couple more times, until it finally hit her that something in her system was really wrong. Then, she started to feel a pain in her chest.
"Oh God," Ring thought aloud in horror.
The pain began to feel more intense, the whirring noise growing louder. Using the remaining bit of strength she had left, she raised her arm and put her hand over her mechanical heart. Although she was unsure of what was truly happening to her, she had a feeling of what the outcome would be.
She was going to die.
Under the darkness alone, with her brother most likely dead beside her, she tried to speak aloud – it was painful for Ring, but she wanted to voice out her last regrets.
"Lui..." she began. "I'm sorry for forcing us to enter that contest. I'm sorry we had to go through Vocaloidisation. I'm sorry we never became Vocaloids. I'm just an idiot - a huge, freaking idiot. Will you forgive me?"
If Ring had expected a reply from Lui, then she never received it. The basement remained silent.
"I want to cry right now, but I can't," she continued. "I hope that when we see each other again in the skies, we'll be crying together." Suddenly, she began to short circuit, with her vision fading. She knew her time was running out.
"Lui..." Ring uttered for the last time, trying to smile in sadness. "I'm... so... rry..."
I never actually expected to the end the story so sadly in that way... Damn, even I feel a bit choked up right now. :(
Wondering why I wrote Ring and Lui as brother and sister? Well... There's not really a solid reason. It was just my headcanon shining through. Thinking about it now, since Ring and Lui have different surnames, they'd actually be half-siblings...
Reading through this again, it actually looks kinda disjointed in places, but I tried to fix it as best as I could. Regardless, you can review if you want to.