Disclaimer: The characters and anime do not belong to me. However, the story does belong to me.
Summary: Even though Yurippe said that we shouldn't disappear, I let her down. I'm one of the closest ones to go, and I'm sorry for that. However, I'm happy that I can disappear like this. Good bye everyone.
My life was not like the ones all my friends had.
My parents were always fighting, but it was often my mother who got hurt badly. At times, the person who ended up with the injuries was me. You see, my father was always drunk, and they were always arguing about one reason to another.
I had always thought, "Why did they marry in the first place?" If they were going to keep on fighting, what good would it do them to marry? What good did me being born have on their lives? The answer at that time was nothing. They married for nothing and had me for nothing. That's all.
At least that was what I had thought.
Several times before a turning point in my life, I would escape the misery by walking outside and imagining my own world. Since I didn't have my own room, I had nowhere to hide, to run. Then one day everything changed. It sounds cliché, but for me, everything really did change.
Often before that day, I would visit the record shop in order to get my mind off of everything that was happening to me. That day was the same. I entered the record shop and checked what music could be listened to for free. I didn't have the money, so I could only listen to what the earphones played.
That was when I stumbled onto a band called the Sad Machine. The band spoke out to me. The vocalist was in the same situation as me. However, she had a different method of escaping the cruel reality of the world. She'd cover her ears with her earphones and listen to music. To her, music changed her life.
It was inspiring.
I decided to give their band a try. When I put on my earphones, it was like everything disappeared. There was only me and the music. The vocals screamed out my grief. The instruments destroyed the idea of common sense. The ones who put on a common façade are nonhuman. The ones who cried tears of life were the ones who were truly human. I was saved.
Then one day during my walks, I stumbled upon it. It was a rainy day. It was left on the sidewalk, about to be thrown in the dumpster. When I saw it, I thought the same thing as it probably did. That we were both abandoned, thrown away. We were perfect for each other. I gave it a few strums before I decided to keep it. That day was the day when I started singing.
Even when nobody listened, we kept playing our music. Since we had nothing, we could risk everything. In that lonely world of ours, music was our friend. Soon people started to listen, and that accomplishment made me decide to pursue music even further, even going far enough to throw away my chances of going into some of the best universities in the world. I didn't mind as long as I had myself, that guitar and my music.
Day after day, I relied on my part time jobs for a living. I kept trying to audition for different recording companies. That guitar had changed me, giving me a future. I no longer cared for staying with my parents and longed to live on my own one day. I lived life happily for a while until the next turning point of my life.
That day, I was working at a part time job when suddenly everything became blurry. I couldn't see anything and eventually fainted. When I woke up, I found out that I couldn't speak. I had cerebral contusion. The doctors said that it probably originated from the time when I tried to get involved in my parent's fight. All it took was a hard hit to the head from a beer bottle. That's all it took.
I thought that my fate was cursed. I began to lose all hope of living. The doctors were unable to do anything since it was a problem with my brain. Patients came and went, and eventually, I was the only one left. Without any support left from my parents, without my guitar by my side, I died.
Once again, I woke up. However, the scenery was completely different. I was at a school and a girl was looking at me from a bush. She had red hair and a band around her arm. When I got up, she told me a few pointers about where I was. Number one, I was dead. Number two, I was in God's world. Number three, if I wanted to fight against God for giving me a cursed fate, I should fight. With those three pointers in mind, I began to use my music to fight against an unfair life.
Several months passed by and those like me came and went. However, three of them stayed and we formed a band together. We called the band Girls Dead Monsters. It was a bit of a joke yet a true fact. We had concerts that were not allowed by the teachers. Over time, our popularity skyrocketed. That was when a guy with no memory came along.
His name was Otonashi, and that's all he knew. He didn't know his past, so we thought that he might have had head trauma or gotten his brain damaged somehow. However, only a few days after he came, a operation was put into set. That operation would let us observe our enemy's supernatural powers and see how she came to obtain it. Our band was put into the operation as well. We had to create a huge turnout for another concert. We also had to lure our enemy into the concert so that the rest of the members could sneak inside her base and get the necessary information.
That sort of operation was normal. However, the NPC teachers came barging in with help from the enemy, Angel. The teachers took away our instruments and forced us to stop playing. That would've been okay. It would have been. We would have classified it as a mission failure and try again another day. But that day was different.
One of the teachers found my guitar. It was the same guitar that I had played before I died. How it came with me to the after world; I didn't know. He took it and asked if he could throw it away. That was when my mind snapped. It was my companion who literally followed me from death. It saved my life in more than one way. Although we might have been less than trash in front of others' eyes, to each other, we were precious!
I fought and grasped it in my hands.
For a second, it was as if time stopped. Then suddenly it began. The microphone came on, and not knowing what to do, I just decided to sing what meant to me the most. Using the guitar, I sang the one melody that I made using it. It was called 'My Song' because it was like an autobiography. It had my life story in there. It had all my emotions in there. It was me.
Together, me and the guitar sang. Every tragedy in our lives and every moment of happiness, even the time of death, we sang it all. At that moment, I cared not on what anybody, not even what the red haired girl said.
She said that if we gave up our fight, we would disappear.
But you know, during that song, I decided that it would be okay to disappear. The only thing I wanted in my life was to be able to sing my song. I was unable to sing it before I died, but in that world, I could sing it.
Every day, whenever I wanted to, I could sing that song and not worry about getting any sort of disease. I could sing without having a sore throat. It was the thing I always wished for.
When I realized that, it was as if somebody turned on the light bulb in my head. At that moment, my life flashed through my eyes. My time there and my time here; both were played. I was filled with bliss. At that moment, I didn't need revenge. I got my happiness, and that was revenge enough.
I disappeared at that moment.
Author: That's the end of my first one shot. I wrote this because Iwasawa was exactly like me. She and I had similar lives. I grew up with neglect and loneliness like her. I found my savior faster, but we both had the same savior – music. Music made me want to live, which is why I have friends today. It's why I can have a future today, and it's why every day makes me think of life's simple joys, such as breathing and eating, walking and running.
More importantly, I made this to show everyone the joy of being able to live. Whether it's bad times or good times, every moment is precious. It sounds cliché and corny, but it's true. You should appreciate every bite of food that you eat. Every laugh should be loved. Every heart break should be a warm memory. Finally, every sound should be music to your ears.
I hope you liked this.
