Phew! Been a while! Here goes nothing! [read: the culmination of many tears and much thought]
Hope you enjoy.
Sleep
"We're going to start the anesthesia. Just breathe deeply."
The last sound she heard was the surgeon's low timbre. She did as she was told. The look of determination of her face was betrayed by the feeling deep in her gut: the surgery wouldn't work. Of course it wouldn't. She had seen too much in her few years to know that the Universe doesn't sway with the plea of a single family, a single girl. If it did, she wouldn't be sick. If it did, Kousei would never have lost his music. If it did, she would be able to see him again, might be able to play a duet with him again- the desire for which was the entire catalyst of her short, bright, musical life.
She began to count backward in her head. It seemed like she had heard somewhere before that you were supposed to count backward until the anesthesia took you. As the darkness slowly ebbed over her, she made each second into its own eternity. She knew that they could be the last moments that her conscious self would be privy to; the last thoughts that she could shape into any kind of real meaning. She couldn't even speak, with the mask placed over her mouth. So, she retreated into her mind, closing her eyes for the very last time.
"Five…"
She silently bid farewell to light. It's an odd feeling, knowing one's eyes will never open again. Knowing they'll never look upon a warm summer's afternoon, sunlight glistening against the water. They'll never admire one of her parent's delicious desserts, never study a new piece of sheet music, eagerly tempting her fingers to start playing. Even the harsh florescence of the fixture lighting the operating room would be missed, she mused, as it was replaced with the million dancing specks of faded color she found behind her eyelids.
"Just as well," she observed. Sight was never her preferred sense, anyway. She'd always favored listening. And listen she did. The steady beat of the ECG hummed its constant staccato. The doctors spoke in soft whispers, their voices unnervingly calm as they waiting for her to lose consciousness. And, of course, her own voice was still able to permeate her mind through the drug-induced haze slowly settling over her. She was glad. It was a small thing, but it was a way in which she could maintain her identity, even to the end.
"Four…"
"What is it you're even supposed to think about," she wondered, "when you're afforded so little time?" Was it your parents? She couldn't imagine what this loss would do to them. She blamed herself for their suffering- how could they, the kindest people she'd ever known in her short tenure on Earth, deserve a child that wasn't even strong enough to stay with them? They would never say it aloud, no, but inside their hearts, they would forever carry the weight that comes with the loss of a child, and she would be the one that placed it there.
She pictured them, waiting quietly just outside the operating theater. She saw her mother, praying to any god that would listen, silently begging some higher power to save her child. She saw her father, softly frowning, not so much as daring to hope that the surgery might be successful, because its failure, then, would hurt all the more.
"I'm so, so sorry," her mind ached, trying to reach out to them through her haze, through the darkness.
She had begun to lose all feeling in her muscles, though, so she could only manifest her suffering as a single tear that rolled down her right cheek. The tear itself was a work of art against her once-bright skin. In it lived the anguish of one five times her age. The nurse or assistant or anesthesiologist quickly wiped it away, oblivious to the effort it took to produce it- unaware that feeling it trace down her face was some, small, comfort.
"Three…"
She silently forgave the culprit, whoever it might have been.
"It won't do to bring any grudges into the afterlife," she thought. "Or regrets…" And yet she was riddled with them. She remembered her letter to Kousei:
"I'm so, so, so, so sorry," it had said. Sorry for her lie. Sorry for her death. Sorry she couldn't be there today, supporting him as much as he had supported her.
"Sorry you thought I'm something I'm not," she settled on. She knew of his reverence for her- had known for a while. At first, she didn't act on it because she understood that his pain would only be magnified by her leaving. She stymied the will of her own heart in order to protect him, and kept the lie going. It was a decidedly selfless act.
So why was she feeling this regret, here, at the end of all things?
Maybe it was because of what the lie became. Kousei had begun to see her as this omnipotent god that had given him back his music. What he didn't understand was that it was he who had given her music in the first place, all those years ago. It was he who had opened up a thousand doors for her. All she did was walk through the one that led her back to him.
She wasn't a god. For one thing, a god doesn't die, here, on an operating table, while the one she loves carries on without her. A god would have kept her promise, and played that last duet with him. No, she wasn't a god, and she hadn't given him music.
"I was just borrowing it for a little while," she admitted. "It was always yours, Kousei." She hoped he could see that, after she was gone.
"Two…"
That's when she heard it, as if on cue: a soft melody, with a loneliness that matched her own. It was just at the edge of her hearing- as if taunting her, knowing she couldn't move or adjust herself in order to hear it better.
She couldn't quite make it out at first, but she didn't have to- she immediately knew without thinking what it was- who it was.
It was Kousei.
She would have smiled if she could have. She would have cried a thousand more tears if she could have. She knew that it was probably some hallucination, some side effect of one of her many medications. But as it became louder and clearer, she decided that she didn't care.
She was practically there. She could see him, now. And this energy; this was something she had never heard from Kousei before- never heard from any musician: a raw vulnerability that betrayed his years. He seeded every note full of cascading emotion, and she could hear each sound as fully as the next. She could hear the bated breathing of the audience, even as it stifled his tears that fell delicately against the keys.
And each and every note, she knew, was for her. Every movement might as well have been him shouting her name through the keys- every touch against the piano might as well have been a caress, a kiss.
"It's reaching me, Kousei," she smiled. "I hear you." But what could she do? How could she make him know? He was giving her everything. And here, near-unconscious, all she could do was accept it, without so much as a thank you to let him know how much it meant to her. This was, perhaps, the cruelest part of her situation, she thought: to be made only to listen to a song she could never be a part of.
She would have screamed, but for the anesthesia, and her not wanting to miss a single note of his song.
"One…"
Suddenly, she was standing. Confused. Dazed. The operating theater was gone, and she was outside, she thought. But she wasn't cold. She looked around and saw the endless expanse of water upon which she stood. Cherry blossoms filled the air, softly swooning this way and that.
And the music persisted. She was thankful for that. She turned around, hearing it behind her, and saw him. There he was, just as she had pictured him: tearful and persistent, Kousei was pouring himself into the piece.
She knew what to do. Feeling none of the fatigue that had come to plague her daily life, she brought her left arm forward, and angled her right arm toward her side. Her violin and bow were already in hand, of course, as if she had been summoned here by some divine will for this very purpose.
Effortlessly, she joined Kousei's piece. He looked up suddenly, obviously surprised at the phenomenon. That's when she realized that he was there too, experiencing this miracle as much as she. She gave him her brightest smile for his trouble, to which he returned a pained look, afraid to hope it was real- as if the situation were so delicate that his acceptance of it would shatter it like some cruel illusion. He closed his eyes hard, trying anything to keep his tears from falling freely, keep her from seeing how broken he was. Turning back to the piano, eyes still closed, he continued playing.
He was still facing down through their first few bars together. She longed to see his face, and so, in order to get his attention, began to played a stiff tremolo. Its contrast to the loneliness of the piece was quintessentially her, and she succeeded in bringing a soft smile back to his face as he eased into their song.
"That's more like it," she smiled. They proceeded, bearing themselves entirely to each other through their duet. She was sure to make each note reflect a piece of her soul, and could see the pieces of Kousei's that he was sharing with her- could feel them as they washed over her like a spring wind.
This was it, she knew. Her last chance to be with him. She conveyed her entire being to him. She made these minutes last hours. They played until the sun slowly dipped from the sky, bringing night down fast upon them.
Once she had told him all she needed to, she tenderly drew her bow across the strings for the last time, and silently looked at Kousei, who himself was drawn to attention, curious as to why she had stopped. She smiled knowingly, and instinctively felt it was time to go. Her being there at all was gift enough, she knew.
And Kousei knew it too. Yet still he pleaded.
"Wait. Please don't go. Pester me for canelés again. Call me out of nowhere to kill time. I don't care if I'm just Friend A- don't go." All the while, his fingers never left the keys, and the piano underscored the pain in his voice.
"Please- please Kaori! Don't leave me behind!" he begged. How she wished she could obey. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her short life. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to stay here in this dream with him, forever being a part of his music. But their song was finished. He knew it as well as she.
And as Kousei brought the song to its crescendo, she evaporated into the swirl of cherry blossoms that she was. A tempestuous beauty. A dream of spring. She left him with a single tear on her face.
"Goodbye," he finally conceded.
"Zero…"
She was back. Darkness everywhere. The steady beat of the ECG replaced the symphony of color and music she had just experienced. But the beat was different now, slower and softer, as if someone thrown a blanket over it in an effort to stymie the sound. Her eyes, closed though they were, felt heavier than they ever had. Whereas before she had been groggy, now it seemed like her muscles were actively choosing to ignore any command she gave them. Even the faded colors that had once danced behind her eyelids were absent, abandoning her in this sea of black.
"This is me, now," she thought, wryly. "This is all that's left of me." She didn't mind. She would have given anything for the gift she had just experienced; this seemed such a small price for it.
"No. That's not quite accurate, is it?" If nothing else, her time with Kousei had afforded her an understanding that she had become so much more than this broken shell. She lived in every note of his music, poignant and clear. She was the cherry blossoms that had so flooded the sky on the day they met. She was in every bite of every canelé they had enjoyed together. She was every bruise she had given him, and every tear they shed together.
All she was losing was a body. Her death would be nothing more than the silence between notes: just an anticipation of something more beautiful to come. Until then, she'd be with Kousei, fundamentally imbued with his music: a heartbeat keeping time. She would wait for him there.
That didn't seem so bad to her. And, as the last bit of consciousness finally drained from her, Kaori Miyazono found herself content, her smile as peaceful and knowing as the thaw before spring.
She fell asleep.
Please take the time to review! This one is something I felt I had to get off my chest after watching this show for the first time recently and being deeply affected by it. Hope you found something worthwhile here!