2nd movement: your fingers
When you took my hand and led me towards the music hall, I didn't know you'd be leading me out of my purgatory.
"You should come too," you had said, gently. I could only stare at you in surprise, but you smiled and stepped forward, starting our journey.
I still remember the warmth of your hands. With your fingers clasped around my hands, you led me back to the origin of my childhood memories, step by step. Just like how my mother once held my hand to stop my nervous shaking, you took away my worries with your delicate fingers. No— it wasn't the same. It was a different kind of feeling from my mother. Her touch calmed me, reassured me, and stopped my nervous breakdowns. But you— you were something different altogether. Taking your hand made my heart speed up like a speeding jet coaster, plunging from an unthinkable height. My fingers tingled from the feeling of yours around them. I couldn't hide my surprise; you were simply unpredictable. But there was another thing that surprised me that day—
I never knew how soft a girl's hands could be.
You held on to my hand until we reached the hall. With a look of slight disappointment, you let go of me. Now that I think about it, I'm sure I had the same expression.
When you first stood upon the stage that was so familiar to me and held that violin in your hands, I didn't know what I was in for. I thought it was going to be just another ordinary violin performance. But when you played the very first note of Beethoven's Kreutzer, something within me changed. The piece you played was, without a doubt, Kreutzer, but it was no longer Beethoven's; it was yours. My mother's teachings of the need to play according to the sheet, what earned me the name of "Human Metronome", seemed to crumble into pieces. You were the one that broke me into a million pieces, and the one that reconstructed me from those very pieces. Violent and stubborn, holding a terrible personality, leaving the worst first impression, yet you… You were so beautiful.
When you stood upon that stage, you made the concert hall yours. You captivated everyone's attention just as if you had special abilities, and you produced a performance that changed a contest into a recital.
You were the one that pulled me back onto my feet. I had never felt as genuinely happy before during a performance as I felt when I played alongside you. You filled me up with a power that I couldn't describe, and that power would only overflow time and time again as I stood upon the stage.
"You have a pianist's hands," you told me once as you put your palm against mine. You didn't see how much my heart thumped as I felt the softness of your palm. It was true; compared to yours, my hands were much bigger. But yours was small, delicate, like a daisy in the springtime.
But just like the wind that ruthlessly rips away the life of a daisy, fate took away your treasure.
Your hand that once gripped the violin with such life and emotion fell limp at your side, and that was when you felt the despair crash down on you. We are musicians. We live and breathe along with music. Music was freedom itself, so what was life after losing the ability to play?
"A violinist that can't even hold her bow…is meaningless," you said, holding back the tears that threatened to roll down your cheeks. But you were wrong. You were the one that pulled me back onto the stage. You showed me how dazzling the spotlights were, how good it felt to hear the cheers of the audience, and how beautiful playing a piece according to your heart was. You taught me how to live again.
You guided me out of purgatory, so why did you go to heaven first?
I swear, I fell in love with Your Lie in April all over again when I was writing this. I had to re-watch many episodes of the anime, and I experienced that feeling of heartbreak and love at the same time again. I just love this anime so, so much. I hope you liked this chapter, and thank you for reading.
~nxiro
