The mayor's death was an accident. Call it a curse, as some later would. Or call it a blessing, as Seiji later saw it.
Seiji played his father's song for the corpse. An impromptu funeral attended only by one, illuminated by the cold moonlight. That intimate song that once filled his heart with delight. As if the damnable spirit of Mayor Kameyama deserved it.
Moonlight Sonata. The voice of his father, Keiji Asou.
Seiji's fingers labored over the keys, as if possessed, to produce his words. There were two urgings in the song. Both his father. And each directly conflicting with the other:
"Seiji, avenge us."
"Live."
The message was distorted through the bellowing inferno that raged in Seiji's heart. His bitter reality was that he couldn't make the decision himself. He would lean one direction, hesitate, and ruminate on these two options again.
"Father, what do I do?" He asked the music. The fiery organ in his chest was overwhelming him. Choking him until he couldn't speak. Smog billowed up behind his eyes and forced tears.
He remembered his beautiful sisters.
He played on. Hoping to discover the truth in all that he heard.
There is always only one truth.
"Please, Father." The mayor was already dead. Kill the remaining monsters? Make himself into his father's instrument? Or carry on with that superficial melody Seiji called his life since his family was murdered?
There was a great building urgency. An upward crescendo inside Seiji. As the heights grew dizzyingly higher, it was more and more impossible to decipher what he was careening toward.
Seiji played on, his fingers frenetic. Grabbing vainly, but never grasping. Searching, trying to find his father- the truth- in the melody.
His mind drifted to his beautiful mother. Seiji looked the most like her. He had been a feminine boy, and he'd grown into a feminine man. These days, he wore his mother's clothing. He found himself looking into mirrors often as he wore them. There was the phantom image of his mother inside. When he smiled, so did she.
It was difficult to smile.
The melody bled back in, still that terrible duet:
"Avenge us."
"Live, Seiji."
It was the same voice. And it was all one song. Which was he to believe?
"Mother..." He desperately pleaded with his reflection, seeing her in it. "What do I do?" What had begun as a requiem for the deceased mayor had quickly become Seiji's twisted séance.
The harmony spilled out and echoed into the empty rooms around him. As haunting and vain as Seiji's tortured pleas. As meaningless as his ruminations over the piano. All projection. All fabrication. All of the mind. Seiji knew this.
Though even if the spirits weren't real, the sin against his family was. It was enough that blood had been spilled. In essence, his own. It couldn't be forgiven. For the murderers of his family, there was only one atonement.
The fury in the song was growing. The fire burned white-hot, and the meaning grew clear. The flames of the music were lapping at the walls of his heart.
Father's hands that glided across the piano. Mother's eyes stared back in his reflection. His sisters' black hair swayed in his vision. These phantom fragments lingered. Seiji saw them in himself, inescapable and cruel.
His family was urging him. His family was haunting him.
His family was gone.
"The hellfire rage will burn," Father declared at last.