Chapter 1: One More Light (After Part 1)
The silence of the night was shattered by the sound of an author's work being born.
The flurry of mental images flew through his mind, memories fighting against time reaching the surface. The author searching for the right words to transcribe the images and sounds into black ink on white paper. The force of the keyboard resonating with each letter it carved.
But all too soon, the light went out.
And the author, was alone, not even his shadow left to keep him company. In the dark, unable to see the words he had brought forth in front of him, it seemed almost foolish. Who was he to record such history? He wasn't some great writer. He was just a kid named Neal, living in a world that seemed unlike anything he could imagine. But the act of putting word to paper, sitting on a chair that seemed like it would fall apart any moment, being careful not to hit the old mechanical keyboard too hard lest it break, it was something. It was creating.
Instead of just looking at the door, waiting for it to open and for everything to be all right, he wanted to do something.
Even if that act was as pointless as hoping for the world to get better.
Some things couldn't be undone, and some things couldn't just go back to the way they were.
In the dark, Neal tapped his foot against the metal pole leaning on the wall, to a beat of a song that was once had glued to his heart. It wasn't like he even know that the song was anymore, it was a habit, built up over the years, and a way to keep him calm. He needed something calm. Something sane and normal. He closed his eyes, pretending that it wasn't so dark now, that he was just about to sleep and then he could wake up back in his bed, woken up by an annoying prank devised by his brother.
But for Neal, even if he did manage to sleep, that was only an illusion. A dream that he might live for a few hours, before being coldly woken to reality. Even then, a dream filled with lies might be a good escape, at least for a time.
Before he could end up deciding if he could sleep or not, the light flickered back on, causing him to look up and breath a sigh of relief, glad that they hadn't run out of power this soon. He got up from the uncomfortable metal stool, slowly making his way across the path in the floor that he had made in the evening, He pushed the two sleeping backs to the side of the room as he did so. He climbed up the couple stairs and pressed against the door at the far end of the room, pushing it up to reveal the outside world. He felt the chill of the night blowing in on him as he did so, the breeze especially powerful tonight. Neal still looked out over what little of the horizon he could see, looking for any signs of life. But of course, just as before, there was nothing but the sound of a few bugs. So he closed the door and went back inside. At the noise of the door slamming shut above him, the German Shepard at the other side of the room perked up, looking at Neal with a confused wag of her tail, something Near almost missed but for the sound of her tail hitting the wall behind her.
"Just go back to sleep Nine," he said, walking back down the stairs that led to where they lived. But the dog just wagged her tail a couple more times, happy to have someone talk to her. Unable to resist, Neal gave her a pat on the head before making his way back over to the desk that they managed to fashion out of some metal sheets and discarded wood. He looked at the typewriter that he had salvaged a couple months ago, and decided that if his mind was this awake, it would be a waste not to give birth to more words. It didn't take more than a couple seconds on the desk for memories to come flying through his head. Despite the pain they brought him, he wanted to hold onto these memories as long as he could. Though just like life, memories were a fickle thing.
Neal reached beside the desk, pulling out a couple blank sheets of paper. The old clock at the other side of the table told him it was nearly midnight, and that he should conserve the electricity, but he wasn't tried. Or at least, he wasn't tired enough to sleep. He was tired in a thousand other ways, wanting to find some way to escape, and his memories seemed like the best idea. His stomach also started growling, another sign that it might be best just to escape to his dreams.
But still, he wanted to write. He wanted to remember and let the world remember because there might come a day where he couldn't remember. Gazing at the small plaque sitting on the floor next to his sleeping bag with the words 'music lives here' carved on it, he thought back to what his dreams were, what his life was before. A chill ran down his leg again, and Neal wondered how much worse things would get when winter really came. He stared at forcing his fingers to start hitting keys even if he wasn't sure what he had to say, or if anything where to start with the thousand things he wanted to say. Maybe no one read his story, or the story of those who came before. But maybe the story would outlive him. At least, that was both the fear and hope as he mulled over the next word he should type.
He decided to focus on that chance encounter. One that would change his life forever. Even if it seemed so insignificant at the time – and in many ways was.
A/N: Oh boy, this story. This story is the one I wrote for National Novel Writing Month last year in 2017. This was the seventh year I had done NaNo, where the challenge is to write a draft of a novel in a month, or at least 50k words in it. And while I did win, and even managed to finish the draft, it was probably be the hardest story I have ever written. In order to do this story right, it would took a lot more planning than I did. Typically when I write a story I have the beginning in mind and then go where the story takes me with a couple ideas in mind further in, but for this story, I needed to know the whole thing to start writing it well. Plus the whole structure of the story is unusual, which further complicated writing it. I'm not even sure what genres to put for this. I'm going with suspense/sci-fi because, well it is. But it also has some focus on romance and drama, plus music which fits poetry, some action, what could be described as an adventure, some friendship of course, and what could be considered tragedy. So, it will be something that should be a very unique story.
Also, while this may appear to be original fiction, it does utalize some story and a character from anime. For one, the character Aki who will show up soon is taken from the anime Baka and Test. I didn't originally plan for him to be in this story, but when trying to outline this he showed up and wouldn't go away. Granted, it's a bit of an AU, but that also makes this readable without knowing where he came from. Secondly, the general concept is taken from the anime short Zephyr. Since it was such a short anime, it didn't explore the world or the story as well as I wanted, even though the concept was really cool. So I decided to follow one of my favorite quotes about writing, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." So now a full version of this story I wanted to see has been written. I hope you'll enjoy it. Updates may be slow as I work to revise the story now that I know where I want it to go, but reviews and support will let me know if it's something worth continuing to work on.