Ten times she had sung, and ten times she had died.
In the eyes of the reaper, all were equal. What each person did in life mattered not when they were buried six feet underground – but no one had ever sung quite as beautifully as she did, not when they were faced with the terror of knowing this was their final moment. For that, he remembered her.
If he had to choose one type of soul to reap for the rest of eternity, he would pick those of artists and musicians. In both life and death, their souls were like spun glass. Delicate, beautiful, ephemeral.
She was no exception to that. Every mortal was transient, their lives flitting past him in less than the blink of an eye, but humans were capable of creating and leaving their legacies behind on earth, a story that would exist even long after they were gone. The great mortal musicians, artists, writers and bards, they all got their names and their very selves immortalised in the history of mankind.
He wondered if she too would someday carve out her name among the greats. Ten times she had sung; ten times she had died. Perhaps the eleventh time would be different.
Hatsune Miku couldn't remember the last time she felt truly happy. Precious, fleeting moments of joy – the sound of laughter, a baby's first gurgle, the triumph of accomplishing a long-held goal – these all fluttered past her on butterfly wings. When she grasped for them, the thin silky wisps would brush past her fingers, and her hands closed on nothing but empty air.
The window of her room opened into a vast sky that was constantly obscured by thick clouds, throwing a shadow over everything else in the valley. In the middle of the day, the occasional thin stream of sunlight would pierce through the suffocating blanket and illuminate parts of the town, but otherwise the streets, the trees, the pavement, everything was grey.
Sometimes, her teal hair would glimmer when those weak beams of sunlight struck it. That was the only spark of colour in an otherwise dull world. She yearned to be elsewhere, to be far away from here, somewhere she wouldn't feel so…heavy. There was a weight on her chest and her shoulders, and while she couldn't quite describe it to anyone else, she knew she didn't like it, and she didn't want to be here.
Veldemore was all she knew. This place was where she was born, where she had grown up, and in all likelihood where she would die. It was a dreary town with dry inhabitants, and the streets grew deserted at night. The only thing of any importance here was schooling. Grades and studies, things that could help them progress, these were what mattered. Science and facts were the currency in Veldemore, and the performing arts and humanities were outlawed.
But if science and math were so important, and they were what was necessary to achieve a better life like what the Kapitol said, then why did she feel so unwilling? She ought to be more excited about going to school, but day in, day out, when the alarm clock rang each morning all she could feel was dread.
Waking up felt like a death sentence. She would rather huddle in her room and plug in her old earpiece into the tape player her best friend had given her for her fifteenth birthday before he disappeared a few months later. Miku would listen to the tapes she so carefully collected, closing her eyes as she lost herself in the music and the beautiful singing that seemed so otherworldly. The melodies spoke to her of an entirely different universe – a world where she too could join them, be a part of them.
These tapes were her deepest, darkest secret, perhaps more precious than her life itself. She took great pains to hide them from her parents, shoving them in a hidden cavity she dug under a loose floorboard. She had begged and pleaded for a rug in her room precisely so she could hide the floorboard, and her parents had finally given her a threadbare, ratty carpet after she came in among the top ten in class.
But there were rumours that left her uneasy. People whispered that the Kapitol had developed some sort of new technology that would enable them to listen in on previously safe gadgets like earpieces, which normally wouldn't be connected to any sort of wireless network. Miku wasn't sure if those rumours were true or not; still, she kept a tight hold on her older model, reluctant to exchange it for a new one although one side of the earpiece was no longer functioning.
There was a deadline by which everyone was supposed to surrender their old earpieces, and it was fast approaching. She wasn't sure what to do. She wished her best friend was here so he could give her advice. It had been three years since he left, and she still wondered where he had gone.
Looking out of the window again, this time she directed her gaze towards the rugged peak which towered over the rest of their small town. It was a distance away from the town outskirts, but the mountain was so tall that it was still very much visible. It was dark now, but once in a while when the sun shone it would reflect off a hint of gold that nestled way up in the cloud-shrouded peak.
The mountain housed Elysia, the golden city where the wealthiest citizens of Veldemore lived. She had only ever heard stories about what the city looked like. People said that everything was made of pure, solid gold and diamonds, and milk and honey ran through the streets. There were large gardens filled with exotic blooms and fauna, and everyone lived in giant mansions that could touch the surface of the moon. The citizens of the gated community were said to be fair and delicate; a single touch could bruise them and a push would break their bones. Underneath their skin, blue blood flowed through their veins.
But these were all just stories. No one knew for sure whether all the rumours were true. The only thing that was known for sure was that the mountain was guarded by the Red Men, ruthlessly efficient elite soldiers who only listened to the Kapitol. The presence of the Red Men made it impossible for anyone to ever lay eyes on Elysia, for they had orders to turn away anyone unworthy of ascending the peak.
Some said that the Red Men did far more than just turn people away, but again that was a rumour no one could verify. Those who returned from attempting to climb the mountain usually refused to say a single word about their experiences. And there were some who never returned at all.
Still, those rumours did not stop her, or anyone else for that matter, from wondering what life could be like at the very top. The Kapitol encouraged everyone to aim for Elysia. The way to become elite, they said, was through studying and hard work. They were a meritocratic nation, and rewards would come to those who worked hard and became the very best at what they did.
And so people threw themselves into the possibility of escaping their dull, impoverished lives. They worked, schmoozed, bribed, begged their ways into esteemed institutions and establishments, taking on prestigious careers in medicine, science or engineering. Architects, builders, teachers – all these were respectable jobs too, work that helped build a foundation for a thriving, successful society.
But Miku, she was not gifted in math or science. Concepts and theories slipped past her like water dripping from cupped palms. She dreaded completing her assignments, sitting at her table and trying to revise and study until her vision went blurry and the government-provided lights turned dim. She wanted no part in this frantic rat race; this was not the kind of life she desired.
She turned away from the window, quietly humming a familiar song. She had played it on repeat the past month whenever she had a chance to listen to her music tapes. It was a song by Megurine Luka, apparently one of the most popular singers in Elysia, or so the black market trader claimed. Elysia was the only place in Veldemore where useless things like the arts thrived. Only the wealthy could afford to idle their time away, wasting it on unproductive things like music and drawing.
Miku had saved up for an entire year in order to purchase the illegally-recorded music tapes on the black market. The quality of the music was tinny, and she had to discard some of her old tapes from her hidden cranny to make space for Megurine Luka's tapes, but it was well worth it. Luka had a beautiful voice that somehow resonated within her. It was as though the singer was singing not at her, but to her. The price she paid was worth it to escape into a few moments of bliss in an otherwise monotonous life.
Her laptop suddenly pinged, and she perked up, getting off her bed. The floorboards creaked as she walked carefully across the room, making sure to avoid the bucket she had placed in the middle – water continuously leaked from the ceiling, and the bucket was half-full now. She would have to pour out the bucket soon. In her shabby little room with its Spartan walls and moth-bitten curtains, the only thing that looked sleek and shiny and new was her laptop, issued by the state to help further every child's education and give them a fighting chance at succeeding in life.
Miku mostly used her laptop to chat with her friends online, which admittedly wasn't the main purpose of the laptop, but she didn't like to think about the many incomplete assignments she had piling up in her hard drive. She tapped on the touchpad, smiling wistfully when she saw her desktop wallpaper – it was a picture of herself with her best friend from back when they were kids, still innocent and happy.
Checking her laptop notifications, she saw that she had received an email from her teacher, reminding them to complete their assignment due next week. She sighed. This just made her think about how she was only halfway done with the worksheet, and she really didn't want to pull out her textbooks again just to answer a bunch of questions she had absolutely no interest in. She wanted to listen to people sing and watch them dance, like the butterflies that came to the public garden every few months or so.
The last time she tried to dance in front of anyone besides herself, her mother slapped her and told her to stop in an anguished, terrified whisper so guttural that Miku never tried anything like that again.
Sitting at her creaky wooden chair, she opened up her incomplete assignment and sighed again. The next question glared up at her, demanding and incomprehensible. Maybe she ought to just start on this tomorrow when she was back in school and she could at least ask Teto for help. Teto's cousin, Kasane Ted, was really smart and he always helped them out with their work when he could spare the time.
Minimising the worksheet, she decided to finally sort through her emails – her unread mails had been piling up for a while, and she finally could no longer stand her messy inbox. Most of the emails were from school, but once in a while, she received email notifications about friends' posts on Kluk. And of course, there were the standard shopping newsletters showing her things she could not afford.
Not like she wanted most of the things she saw online anyway. Everything was controlled by the Kapitol, so whatever was being sold never included the things she liked – no music, no theatre performances, no dance recitals, nothing. It was just page after page of basic necessities. Even the clothes were boring. They were usually just dull, plain blouses or jeans or the occasional fancier dress, but nothing inspiring.
As she scrolled up through her mail, methodically sorting out the important things from the marketing spam, she came across an email bulletin that made her pause. Normally, she would just scan quickly through the bulletin and then send it to her trash folder, but this time one of the short headlines caught her eye. She glanced at the date this email was sent. This morning, 11.20AM. Just an hour ago.
"Missing boy found at the base of Elysia Peak", the bulletin proclaimed. There was a grainy picture of the boy in question, but the quality of the photo was so bad that she could hardly even make out people inside, let alone a recognisable face. This particular piece of news was at the very end of the bulletin, almost as though it was tacked on as an afterthought. Shouldn't it occupy a higher position? This was about a missing person, after all. But then again, so many people disappeared in Veldemore each year.
She opened the online article. It was written by a Kapitol journalist, so it was easy to read. There were some people who tried to do freelance journalism but with the lack of focus on language in school, more often than not their grammar was terrible, and it was hard to decipher what they were writing. In school, only the ones who truly excelled in science and math were given the opportunity to take writing classes. Becoming a Kapitol journalist was one way to get a comfortable life. Few could make it that far.
Miku was only able to read and write well because she enjoyed reading, and actually made it a point to read all her textbooks even if she didn't understand the theories very well. She eventually progressed to other non-fiction books, borrowing once a month from their small library. Kapitol enforced a borrowing limit of four books per month so that people wouldn't get distracted from the more important things.
But given her unpredictable academic record in school, it was unlikely she would ever become a Kapitol journalist. She sped through the article, trying to find information on who the missing boy was. Even now she still harboured a faint glimmer of hope, that perhaps her long-lost best friend was back. But the article provided little information besides saying he was a teenage boy, found unconscious by patrolling members of the Red Men. She bit her lip, reading through the article over and over again in the hopes of somehow extracting some unread, valuable information, but eventually, she gave up her perusal.
It was unlikely he was someone she recognised, anyway. She scolded herself for still maintaining such unreasonable hopes. Her best friend was but one of the thousands who went missing without explanation every year – this newly-found boy's family was very fortunate. Few people who left ever came back.
But her spirits felt dampened nevertheless. There were a few soft taps on her window, water droplets sliding down the dirty glass. The clouds were darkening. Getting up from her table, she switched off the one light she had in her room, burrowing underneath her thin blanket. There was little else she could do to pass the time, and she hoped that when she opened her eyes, a new day would come.