Teardrops on my guitar
By Tragic Lullaby,
I do not own Gakuen Alice
Rhythm of your heartbeat
My brother has this weird idea that I was born to play the guitar. He goes on and on about it, has begged me a thousand times to join his little band with my magical fingers. He told me he would provide me with the guitar. He bragged about me to his friends, and he often told me the story of how, when I was born, I screamed out my first word, guitar.
I got really, really sick of it. I wanted nothing to do with his little band and nothing to do with the guitar.
"Mikan," my brother, Tsubasa, was at more door again, I didn't even have to turn around. I knew what he wanted. "I want to talk to you."
"Would you get over it, Tsubasa?" I asked, exasperated, as I didn't turn away from my colouring book. "I know what you want to talk about, and no, I refuse to play the guitar for your band."
"That's not what I want to talk about…"
"Then what?!" I snapped, turning as I spoke, "Oh my god, don't tell me you want me to play the drums instead, and I can't sing to save my live, I've told you that already, and no bass guitar because that's almost exactly the same as…" I stopped my monologue once I saw Tsubasa. He was looking hesitant and rather distant, not to mention hurt at my refusal. He only looked like that when he was going to admit to someone that he'd was going to do something terribly wrong. "What's wrong, onii-chan?" I adopted my childhood endearment for him. I climbed out of my chair and staggered over to him.
As much as I'd like to deny it, my brother and I were connected big time. Whenever he felt or looked weak, I felt weak too, and whenever he was strong and passionate about something; I was strong and passionate about it too. Except the past couple of months I had been strong and passionate about refusing to join his band, which was his passion.
A small smile crossed his face as he knelt down; he often did this when we were younger. Even though I was twelve know and he was only fifteen, he still towered over me. He grabbed my hands and swung them from side to side, "Mikan, this will be your last chance to see me for a while," he said.
"What are you talking about, onii-chan? I see you every day," I frowned.
"I'm taking the band to Tokyo, Mikan, to a music school. You know how much I'm serious about this band. I'm going to make us famous, Mikan," he gave me a smile. "I can still take you with me if you want."
I shook my head fiercely, refusing to believe all this, "Mum and dad won't let you! You can't go to Tokyo, they told you that already! You can't, you can't, you can't."
Tsubasa sighed, as if he was suspecting this, "That's why I'm going to sneak away."
"No! I'll tell dad! If I don't go, you can't go because you don't have a guitarist!"
"I've already found another guitarist, Mikan, it's alright now," he patted my head as my eyes started to brim with tears. The fact that he needed me to play guitar made me feel needed and loved, but now that he had someone else, it was like he was abandoning me. "Shh."
"Who's your new guitarist, onii-chan?" I asked, determined to hate this person forever and ever for taking my brother away from me.
He hesitated before he spoke, "Natsume Hyuuga." I felt my heart stop. He had taken my best friend, well my ex-best friend, instead of me, his sister. He had taken his sister's ex-best friend to replace her. "I'm sorry, Mikan. I can still take you with me," he whispered.
"No! No!" I cried, "No. Don't leave me, onii-chan."
His grip on my hand tightened painfully, "Don't say that to me, Mikan. Please don't tell me not to leave. This is my dream, okay? I'm sure one day you'll understand too, okay?" He began to stand.
"Will I ever see you again?" I sobbed, clutching onto him, not ready to let go.
He smiled, "In four years time, Mikan, you'll run away from here and find yourself at the music school's front gates with your guitar. We shall see each other again, definitely.
"How do you know? How do you know, stupid onii-chan?"
"Someone told me, someone with magic," he ruffled my hair. "But whether you decide to walk your destiny or not is your choice, Mikan. Nobody else can choose it for you. You can either become one of the greatest guitarists in Japan or you can be stuck here, going to school and eventually working in an office. Now, would you give onii-chan a hug?"
Almost at the point of bawling my eyes out, I launched myself into his arms. "Shh," he murmured into my ear, "It'll be our little secret, Mikan." He held me until I had cried all my tears out and then he tucked me into bed.
By the time I woke up the next morning, my brother and Natsume were gone.
3 years on
The sudden disappearance of my brother had driven my parents hysterical. My mother had found refuge in her bed, inconsolable and hadn't seen the light of day for about two, if not three years. Ever since the police had come back from the search without Tsubasa, and the 'Missing' papers gone unanswered, I was almost scared that my brother had disappeared from out lives forever myself. Sometimes when my parent's suffering had gotten too much, I wished I could tell them what had really happened to Tsubasa, but the words "It'll be our little secret" rang in my heads and I knew that if I did, they'd drag him back to square one.
He'd never forgive me if I did that.
Back in the first year of my brother's disappearance, I used to play the guitar at times. But my father told me to stop because it reminded them too much of Tsubasa.
My father, he kept the family running, he kept the income coming in and he made sure my mother was kept fed. However, he wasn't the same either; when I was younger, music would always play in my house, but now silence was deafening and all the CDs were stacked away never to be seen again. My father used to love music. He'd always sing along to his favourite tracks and dance with me in the dining room, he'd laugh whenever Tsubasa asked me to join his band. But now, whenever he sees me, his eyes cloud up with pain and he's forced to look away because I remind him too much of my brother.
So now, I took the bus to school, I came home late; I ate dinner alone and avoided my parents. They had lost all love for music but for me, music became my heartbeat, like my brother told me it had become his.
One day, I got sick of it all. I charged into the house, ignoring my father's surprised exclamation, and I raced up the stairs towards my mother's room. I flung the bedroom door open and headed towards the bed where my mother was curled up under its covers, hiding from the world and the truth. I halted, not ready to face her yet, so I went over to the windows instead and opened the curtains wide.
I wanted to show my mother that there was something called sunlight.
"Yuki," she called out her nickname for my father out feebly, "Don't open the blinds, please. I need rest."
"Mother," I said firmly, "It's me mother."
Her eyes widened, "Tsubasa?" A pale hand reached out towards me from underneath the covers, "My Tsubasa? My little boy?"
"No, it's me, Mikan, mum," I said, scared that she had forgotten me, "Your daughter, remember? Your daughter, Mikan, you remember don't you?"
"Mikan," her voice sounded uncertain, "O-of course I remember you, dear. Now would you shut the blinds, sweetie? Mummy needs a rest."
"Mum! You've been resting for almost three years," I went over to the bed and sat beside her, "You've forgotten what the sunlight feels like, you don't join in family dinners like you used to, and you have lost your passion for cooking. It's time to get up mum, get up and walk again." I ran a hand through my mother's limp hair. "It's killing dad to see you like this."
"I'm tired, Mikan, I'm tired," she murmured, "Your father knows that I still love him."
"It's hurting me as well, mum," I said, "Why can't you hear it? Why do you refuse to hear music?"
"Because I hate music," her voice was venomous, "I took my little boy away from me."
"If you hate music then you hate me as well,"
"You are not music, Mikan,"
"If you hate music, then you hate onii-chan as well! For onii-chan, music was his life!" I cried, "I'll make you hear it again, I'll make you hear it." I wiped my eyes and raced to my room to get my guitar. My mother looked terrified as I sat back down in her room, my guitar in her hands. She was scared; scared of music, scared that it might take something else away from her, and she was scared of me; her own daughter, the messenger.
Slowly I strummed a note and watched her flinch. I smiled softly at her, tears coursing down my own cheeks as music reminded me of my brother as well, all those past happy moments, "It'll be alright, everything will be alright," I soothed.
I will not make the same mistakes that you did
I will not let myself cause my heart so much misery
I will not break the way you did
You fell so hard
I've learned the hard way, to never let it get that far
I watched my mother's misery stream down her face; her eyes were begging me, begging me to stop. Half of me wanted to stop causing her such painful memories, the other half forced me to keep going on, wanted me to make her remember how happy music was.
Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalkBecause of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid
I lose my way
And it's not too long before you point it out
I cannot cry
Because I know that's weakness in your eyes
I'm forced to fake, a smile, a laugh
Every day of my life
My heart can't possibly break
When it wasn't even whole to start with
I closed my eyes, forcing out the picture of the dark room out of my sight. All I could see was Tsubasa's happy but hesitant face, his hands swinging mine, speaking in soft, musical tones, "This will be your last chance to see me for a while."
Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid
I watched you die
I heard you cry
Every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain
And now I cry
In the middle of the night
For the same damn thing
I hear the sounds of my father, charging into the room, demanding that I stop, that I shut the music away forever. But the Tsubasa in my mind urges me to keep going, to remind them, to keep playing at my song, at my guitar.
Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don't get hurt
Because of you
I tried my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid
It'll be our little secret, won't it Tsubasa, it'll be ours.
Because of you
Because of you
I open my eyes to my parents; my father frozen, looking drained, sad but there is a spark behind his eyes that I hadn't seen for a while. My mother was pale, quietly staring at me as if I were my brother in front of her. I forced a smile, "Can you hear him now?" In my head, the ghostly image of my brother nodded.
'Now you're cooking with gas, chibi,' he tells me, before walking into the black.
Half a year later
My mother was still weak and traumatised, but she had gotten out of bed, gotten out of that room. Often, my father and I would take turns at walking her around the garden. My father would often take her to the swing where she could sit down and rest, but I wouldn't let her rest; I took her to where the birds sang their songs, to hear the gushing of the fountain and we took turns guessing what kind of song it sounded most like; my mother often guessed sad songs, but I disagreed, thinking that the water sounded happy.
My father smiled a lot more these days, he'd even listen to me play my guitar sometimes and rarely he gave advice. He stopped looking at me like I was my brother and called my name often during the day, as if it reminded him of who I was. Our family would sit together at dinner and I often stood with mum as she watched him cook with wonder.
I foolishly thought that the happy days would last forever.
It'd been one of the most ordinary nights of in the history of ordinary nights. We had eaten dinner, I watched my father dance my mother around whilst I played the guitar, laughing, I did my homework and feeling jubilant that I was sowing my family back together, I went to bed.
However, we had overlooked a very important, small but life changing thing; someone had left the stove on. The tea towel resting on the element caught fire and fell to the floor, the sparks flying to the carpet and the carpet caught fire.
I was awoken by the stench of smoke, choking my lungs. Coughing, I grabbed my bed covers and blocked the gap at the bottom of my door. I had to get out, now. I grabbed my guitar and a couple of pictures and forced open my bedroom window and looked down.
It was a long drop, but it was either break a bone or perish in the fire. So, closing my eyes, I jumped out, and fell. The sudden sharp pain in my leg told me I had broken it, I dragged myself away from the house, praying that my mother and father would get out alive.
But the shock and pain were too much, and I blackened out.
Officer Shuuyuki had never had to deal with such a tragedy before in this small town. He knew the Yukihara family had had too much pain to deal with. He had known the kids back in the days; both were bright, happy and incredibly musically gifted, and as well as that Tsubasa and his sister were little troublemakers. Wherever they went, trouble soon followed.
He'd also had been the Police officer to lead the search team to find the eldest, Tsubasa and the little girl's best friend, Natsume Hyuuga, when he had disappeared. However, when they returned without any news and they were sure he was dead, the look in the younger sibling's eyes when she heard their report was heartbreaking.
He kept an eye on her, hoping it would amend the fact that he couldn't find her brother. For three years he watched her grow, watched how the formally uninterested eyes of the boys turned her way whenever she walked past them and watched how she was oblivious to it all. He remembered how she played with his kids, and how Natsume was always jealous whenever she payed attention to someone apart from him.
He recalled how Natsume was also a little jealous of her elder brother as well.
And then, he saw a change, about half a year ago; the silent house that used to be full with laughter and music, turned a little bit livelier. He watched with amazement as he saw Mikan's mother actually out of the house and her father smiling; and he dared hope that happiness might actually come to the poor family again.
But now, all Officer Shuuyuki could see was destruction. He watched as the doctors wheeled the last body into the ambulance. He was seriously on the verge of tears, how could such a happy family face such absolute devastation. One of the medics approached him, "The house was completely burnt out, completely unrecognisable, sir. We think it was caused by an element left on in the kitchen."
"How many bodies?" chocked Officer Shuuyuki, he hoped that the Yukihara family had not had a party that night, the death of one family was more than enough.
"Two sir, both middle aged,"
"And the girl?"
"The girl, sir? We only found two bodies, there was no girl in the wreckage," the medic was confused, "Mikan Yukihara was not accounted for."
Officer Shuuyuki didn't dare hope that the girl was alive. Why? When you see an entire family destroyed before you, don't you know?
Hope dies.
I had lost basically everything. All I had left was my guitar, a map to Tsubasa's school that he left me, a couple photos, my clothes and my name. I didn't even have a place to call home anymore. I understood my mother's fear of music now, what else was it going to take away from me.
As I stared at the map, I remembered that once upon a time, Tsubasa said that nobody could choose my destiny for me. This wasn't even destiny anymore; it was my punishment, my condemned fate. I had no money, so I couldn't get to where my fate wanted me to go. It was hopeless; I had no idea where I was or how I managed to escape from the fire.
I dragged myself out of the alleyway where I had found myself dozing and realised that I had a splint next my broken leg. Wincing in pain I came the entrance.
"It's best if ya don't move around a lot, dear," a heard a gruff old voice from next me, "Ya have a broken leg, if you haven't noticed, a bandage across ya head and a few burns 'ere and there. You're lucky I had found you, dragging yourself half conscious up the hill where I had been stargazing, clutching on to a guitar and a couple of photos. Ya wanna tell me how ya got like that?" The old man chuckled as he looked up at my face, "Don't worry, I won't hurt ya. What good would it do if I hurt the little lass I'm trying help hmm?"
"Who…who are you?"
"Ya can just call me Jii-chan, I've always wanted a granddaughter. Well, I'm a busker ain't I? I'm also sort of the local look out," he laughed again, "But enough about me. What happened to ya? Ya look like ya have been run over by an emotional bulldozer, if ya don't mind me saying."
"You busk?"
"One way of getting money around 'ere, dear. But don't go changin' the subject,"
"Well…you really want to here this?"
"Boy, sounds like a good story, tell me,"
"Well, it all sort of started three and a half years ago; my brother, he'd be about eighteen or nineteen now, ran away to join a musical school called Gakuen Alice, because he was really serious about his band. He took my ex-best friend with him and he told me to keep it a secret. At first, he pestered me about joining his band, but I refused to. His disappearance tore my family apart, and my mother retreated to her room for three years and whenever my father looked at me, he saw my brother instead. Music, which was once the very core of our family, became taboo. This was all until half a year ago, when I forced my mother to listen to my guitar because I was scared, scared she'd forget who I was, who dad was, who she was. I was scared that because she hated music, that she hated my brother and me." I wiped away the dirty trail of tears on my cheeks, "And afterwards, after she listened to me, she started to get better, she even went outside. And we started to appreciate music again until last night." I started to sob harder, "Last night, the house caught on fire, I managed to grab my guitar, the map and a few pictures and get out. But I don't think my mum and dad survived. I can't go back there now, I have nowhere to go except find my brother."
The old man patted me on the back, "There, there, Jii-chan's 'ere. I bet your mother and father are lookin' 'ver ya from the stars. 'Ere," he handed me some bread, "Best get some food into ya stomach, eh? Sounds like a pretty tragic story, ya got there. But," he looked at me, "Unfortunately little miss, ya can't go anywhere until that leg of yours is better. Eat." I stared at the lump of bread in my hands, "So Jii-chan 'ere, will let ya stay with him for a while. Ya seem to know 'ow to play the guitar, and ya'll need money to get to Tokyo, so I'll let ya busk with me. 'Ow's that?"
I shook my head, "I don't want to play guitar right now, Jii-chan, I don't want to play it for a long time."
A hand cuffed me over the head, "Lookie 'ere little miss, I know ya missing ya family right now, but didn't ya say before that music was like a core of ya life? This guitar is an instrument to let all ya feelings out without havin' to make sense." He stab me in the chest with his finger where my heart would be, "Music is the rhythm of ya heartbeat, young lass, music is how emotions sound like. So don't ya go saying that ya don't want to hear them anymore otherwise ya'll end like ya old mother. Go out there an' be like ya brother instead. No forget that, be you, not anyone else."
I stared at them, and let a small smile escape to me lips.
"Ya understand me now?"
"Yeah, I understand you Jii-chan," I choked, forcing down the bread.
"Good, now go get some sleep,"
"Tsubasa," Tsubasa was knocked out of his thoughts by the concerned voice of his band mate, Reo Mouri, "Mikochi says he has some information on your family." To this, not only Tsubasa's curiosity perked, but another member's did too. "It doesn't sound too good," Reo added, uncertainly.
Tsubasa shot up, "Give me the phone." He wondered what could've happened, Mikan told his parents about what he'd actually done? Nah, she wouldn't do that. Maybe she'd broken something; that was more probable. "Mikochi," he said, warily, "What news do you have."
"Are you sure you are ready to hear this, Tsubasa. You'd best sit down on something," Mikochi's voice came over the phone.
"Just tell me, Mikochi," Tsubasa felt that this was becoming more and more…unpleasant. "Please."
As Mikochi relayed his information, the guitarist watched in horrified fascination as the blood drained from Tsubasa face, not unlike the way the basin full of water would drain after the plug had been pulled. Tsubasa's hard, cemented down plug had come loose. Tsubasa lost the grip on the phone and it plummeted to the ground, he practically collapsed into a chair, his breathing was fast and shallow, his face pale. The guitarist went over to him, and placed his hands on his shoulders, "Breathe Tsubasa breathe. You are hyperventilating." Then his face went closer to Tsubasa's ear and he whispered in a voice that only Tsubasa could hear, "Has something happened to Mikan?"
It took a while for Tsubasa to answer, "A fire…the house caught on fire, they found the body of my parents, but Mikan's body was nowhere to be found." He put his face in his hands, "I shouldn't have left her, I should've made her come with me and maybe none of this would've happened."
"Tsubasa? Tsubasa are you okay?" Mikochi's voice came loud and clear over the phone. The guitarist rolled his eyes and picked it up.
"No you idiot, he's having a breakdown!" he shouted over the phone, "Think of how this might affect him before blurting it out."
"He has a right to hear if anything has happened to his family," Mikochi argued, "You'd have a right to know as well if anything happened to your family."
"Shut up you idiot, just shut up," snapped the guitarist, on the verge of breaking the phone like he would Mikochi's neck when he next saw him. "But if you hear anything about the girl, let me know." He slammed the phone down on the receiver, wiping away any stray tears before turning back to Tsubasa.
"I'm sorry," Tsubasa moaned, "I'm sorry for taking you away from Mikan, Natsume."
End
Man that was long x_x 10 pages. I know I said I would finish DDG and MF first but I just couldn't resist. It's so sad as well, I am seriously heart broken. Poor Mikan, poor Tsubasa, poor Natsume.
Please read and review :3
~ Tragic