「Here's to You」

A soft, flowing nocturne consumed the air. The musical notes splattered across the white walls promptly as each key was touched with a gentleman's elegance. The notation, twirling with excitement among other sets of notation, flew in an omnidirectional pattern. Each note had its mindset along each bar of notes, thus sending the nocturne into disarray. Certainly, the music was soothing to the ears, but all it did to the aerial molecules was obliterate each and every one as a sacrifice to calm living souls. Each note was unforgiving, although unforgivingly beautiful.

One delicate note slithered along the flawless white ground. It hopped and jumped over obstacles jovially. However, the main obstacle was the wall into the bedroom. Was it to turn out of the way and make its journey somewhere else? Could the note just have went through the door instead to make things a lot more simpler? Ignoring the laws hanging above its springy head, the note collided with the monochrome wall. It didn't do well at the first attempt, similarly too at the second, but at the third it burst in with a mighty battle cry. The other notes exclaimed with a cheer, and oblivious to the rest of the notes, the single note snuck further into the bedroom and travelled into the sleeping maiden's left ear.

The girl slowly raised herself in the white curtain-adorned bed, rubbing her eyes slowly and controlledly.

'Good morning,' she whispered to the air. The air tried to whisper back, but couldn't. Pulling away the covers, the girl left the bed in its usual state and slipped into a pair of slippers. She stretched and yawned as she did every other morning and opened the door, leaving no sound of a creak when she closed it on the other side. Blinking furiously and adapting to her new yet everyday surroundings, she looked around the white interior of an airborne spaceship. A transparent window was embedded east of her general direction, looking almost as though you could fly right through it without making contact with the near-invisible glass.

~Here's to you,~ said Seccom Masada-sensei, which to the girl was a series of melancholic beeps. The girl tilted her head.

The piano, the furnishing of the material blooming with a shiny glint of reflected light, stood near the centre of the room. The man, Masada-sensei, caressed the notes he played with care. Madotsuki, the innocent-looking teenager, stared as the musical notation took its form as floating symbols in the air. She took to note every single one of them - quavers, semiquavers, crotchets - as they floated aimlessly but mechanically around the young, grey man in black playing the piano. Masada-sensei seemed to see these notes as well, as for one instance when he played low chords with his left hand, his right hand levitated over a note and he plucked. Madotsuki saw the note rebound against the force of Masada-sensei's fingertip which he plucked it with, and the note fluttered out of existence. A melodic piano key played whenever Masada-sensei interacted with these notes individually, and Madotsuki enjoyed the dynamic interaction between the man and the foreign-looking musical dialect suspended in orbit surrounding him.

~Would you like me to play you a song?~ requested Masada-sensei, sounding to Madotsuki as a caring number of beeping sounds, the gesture of Masada's hand appearing welcoming enough.

Madotsuki nodded in delight.

'Sure!'

The nocturne that had once lingered in the air became frustrated and left. The reason behind this was a flurry of notes being played by the brown-haired girl with the twin-braids. Of course, Masada-sensei wanted to play a song for Madotsuki herself, but Madotsuki only took it as an invitation to try her hand at the piano. Little did she know, her experimentation with the piano only led to dysphoria amongst the encompassing molecules. It would be what was considered a disruption upon nature, according to Masada himself.

~Madotsuki, that's not it…~ grumbled Masada-sensei, heard by Madotsuki in the form of a few flustered beeps. Madotsuki, anxious, pulled away from the piano. She watched Masada-sensei expectantly.

Masada's voice calmed.

~This is how you play…~

Carefully taking Madotsuki's hands as if they were soft ornaments of fragility, Madotsuki began to play a slower piece with her childlike hands under control by Masada.

~Here's to you,~ spoke Masada-sensei. The same melancholic beeps sounded less melancholic than they were before, as if Masada plucked them from the air and changed them with his heart.

Masada found Madotsuki's attempt to replicate his nocturne endearing. His lonely self, temporarily soothed by Madotsuki's presence, had its worry of eternal isolation washed away in a quick, unrelenting maelstrom of emotion. Masada's face, however grey it was, felt as though it reddened in a soft-hearted blush. He wasn't as young for Madotsuki as he would have liked to be, but in the white orbital sanctum of his he decided age didn't matter. In true fact, he never knew his age - nor did he ever know how he came to be born into this omniverse.

~You see, now, Mado?~ questioned Masada with a bundle of uncertain beeps. Madotsuki nodded in reply, preparing her light-weighted fingers to take the lead. She touched a moderately high note and saw it whip away into space before her. She pressed another note, slightly lower than before, and saw that note disappear as well. Worry crept up her torso. Was she playing the keys correctly? Why was the music fleeting when she didn't want it to?

Determinedly, she pressed another note, but this one stayed in position in front of her, floating obediently. Narrowing her eyes, Madotsuki hit another note.

That's right. Sit right there.

And another note.

You can sit over… there. How does that sound?

And another.

All right! Now, listen to me very carefully…

Preparing herself, mind still focused, she continued.

Do exactly as I say. If you don't, you'll be here forever. That's not what you want, isn't it?

The notes slowly rotated in a well-proportioned circle around Madotsuki. The girl could make the notes spin round her at any angle - horizontal, vertical, diagonal: as many as she could think of. Each note spun round and round, and she directed her attention to them individually. She spoke to them from within her empty heart, telling them stories, revealing concealed secrets, praising them, making friends and acquaintances. Immediately, Madotsuki grasped this concept, and she also grasped how Masada-sensei interacted with the immaterial notation. It was a new subject for Madotsuki to become immersed with, yet she never felt so accustomed to this style of reality. Madotsuki was amazed, subconsciously so so the flow of the notes were not perturbed, and Masada-sensei looked upon this with a pleased expression. They sat together on the seat before the piano. Masada set his hand gently upon Madotsuki's right shoulder: the furthest shoulder, and swayed almost inconspicuously to the calm rhythm. Madotsuki had gathered a plethora of notes, ensuring that every one of them that had previously been born into or had re-entered the piano to be lively and content.

Before Masada-sensei knew it, the music became enough to burst the pair's ribcages.

It was the first time Madotsuki had spoken after a long while.

'This'll be the last moment we'll have together.'

The colour - if there was any - drained out of Masada's face.

~L-Last?~

'Yes.'

Masada's teeth began to chatter. Madotsuki looked round, into his eyes, breaking her concentration albeit not the music.

'Masada-sensei, you...'

She stared for another second, closed her eyes to recover her thoughts and reopened them.

'You're crying.'

Masada-sensei shook his head frantically.

~I-I'm not crying!~

Madotsuki rested a lofted hand on Masada's chest, contacting with the fabric of the tuxedo.

'In here, you are. I can feel it. A burning surge of acidic tears… it occurs to me most of the time, except I can't feel it at all.'

Masada slowly looked down to Madotsuki's hand, and took it in his own dearly.

~I… I see.~

Madotsuki smiled and nodded approvingly. For a split-second, Masada saw tears glint in her eyes before she turned back to the piano.

'When the notes go out to see the moon, this piano will disintegrate.'

~Huh?~ Masada looked puzzled.

'When the piano is a flickering nothing, what good will we be to each other? I only hear your words hidden deep inside my soul when I open the remnants of my spirit only after you play the melodies of your life. I see a lot that you've said to me, now.'

~Wh-What?~

Smiling brighter, Madotsuki turned back to Masada-sensei.

'I love you too.'

Interpreted as a farewell message, the notes encircling around Madotsuki began to take a trail towards the open-ended transparent window. The melodies of life: flitting away at an intensely uncomfortable velocity.

~Madotsuki…~

Madotsuki sat still. Her eyes were closed, and it felt that in her mind she was peering into something.

~Madotsuki, I love you!~

Those were not his words at the time.

The words spilled out from Madotsuki's raised hands, which she held high as if to take a beautiful dove onto her tiny palms.

The words addressed Madotsuki like the synthesis of love letters and monologues - and thus Madotsuki knew exactly how Masada felt.

Everyday, since Madotsuki was a petite child, she found herself wandering into the spaceship inside of her dreams. She could still picture her little girl self from the past, sitting innocently beside the speechless Masada-sensei who happened to be playing the same old nocturne: the nocturne that never degraded with time.

As the notes fled into the wide, enigmatic galaxy that was beyond life; as the pair began to fade, Masada moved closer to the piano, assisting Madotsuki in their escape to another world beyond their imagination.

~Here's to you,~ he whispered, turning his head to Madotsuki's. Madotsuki chimed happily with a smile, and returned the honour with a gentle embrace that lit the spaceship and gave it its vivid colour.

When she returned to the normal world, Madotsuki sat up in bed with a smile. Her usual room - the Aztec-patterned carpet, her copy of NASU, her doorway to the balcony… it was all there. All except for the Masada her lips had caressed, leaving her dull and lonely for another day. A day embodied of the same loneliness of everyday life.