Chapter 12: Listen
The room is quiet, there's no one else in it besides the little boy sitting silently on the bed. Outside clouds pass over the yard as his cousin and her friend dash around. He peers out the white curtains and watches them. The young girl chases after her friend, laughing. Running faster and faster, she suddenly stumbles and sprawls across the grass, her knees scraping against the rocks. She lets out a scream of pain and her mother rushes out the front door.
The woman scoops the girl up and looks her over, talking to her consoling her, placing cute hello kitty Band-Aids over her skinned knees. She murmurs something into the girl's ear and the child laughs, her tears falling down. Her mother kisses the rest away.
His hand tightens around the fabric of the drape and he moves it closed again. Looking back around his room his eyes fall on the corner, the empty walls, the wet spot on his pillow. There was no one to run to him when he needed it. Those people, the ones that lived for him, are gone. Disappeared in a haze of fire and twisted metal.
Suddenly the room is full of noise, a cacophony of clangs and waves rush through his ears. He closes his eyes, clenching his teeth, his throat closing up.
Don't make a sound. No one is there to hear it.
Miku's eyes flash open, blood rushing in her ears. After a moment she realizes that she isn't breathing and inhales hastily, choking on her own inhalation. She sits up, holding a hand to her pounding head. Outside, the rain is light, the thunder stopped. The clock reads around midnight.
She can't remember her dream in specifics, only feelings, cold things that feel like broken glass where her gut should be. It expands, filling her, she starts shivering, a tingling in her fingertips. She looks around the nighttime room. No lights save for the clock. Not black, but dark. Too dark.
Pulling herself up, she strides over to the door praying that Kaito has returned home by now. She rubs her bare arms – she's only wearing a cami and capri sweatpants – and gently steps across the hallway. The house is silent with the hush of night and sleep and the soundlessness seeps into her like cold water. With surprise she realizes that there is a soft light coming out from under the opposite door; Kaito's door. The power has come back, and he is using it.
She raps on the wood and slowly opens it, relieved, sticking her head inside and faltering at what she sees. The room she had only glanced into before, dominated by a large low bed, is cast in a dim golden hue from a small table lamp. The man lay spread out across his mattress, clad in an old t-shirt and pajama pants. His eyes are half-lidded, focusing on the ceiling as if all the answers to his questions are written there. He moves his head slightly towards her and she sees it again, the raw underneath.
"Miku," he whispers. She tenses at the crack in his voice. His eyes are shiny, watery, but he blinks that away. "What is it?"
Slowly she enters the room, footsteps soft on the carpet, and closes the door behind her. Her dream seems silly now; what was she afraid of? He was right here in the next room after all.
Her gaze meets his, her eyebrows furrowing in worry. His hidden feelings are barely visible, just bubbling beneath the surface, but she sees them. They are there. They always have been.
She strides over, sitting herself down on the bed. He scrambles up and stares at her, leaning on one elbow. His eyes look over her arms and shoulders, the many scars and bruises finally uncovered and shown in the dim light. He has never seen this much of her before, and although he tries to hide it, Miku can tell he's startled. She swallows, pushing that topic away. This wasn't about her. Not right now. She tries out words that usually come out of his mouth.
"Are you okay?" His eyes widen, his mouth opening marginally. After a moment he smiles.
"Of course I am, Miku." She frowns and clenches at the sheets. He didn't want her to dig further; she could tell. She hadn't wanted him to go further either. It was painful. She hadn't wanted him to know anything, to worry about her. But he had reached out. He had pulled her sleeves back. He had saved her.
"No, you're not," she says quietly. The man tenses and his smile lowers. After a moment he shakes his head.
"Don't worry about it," he whispers, looking down. The lamp casts heavy shadows across his face.
"No." He doesn't look up, just smiles gently and falsely at the bedding. She waits a moment for a response, something, anything, but nothing happens. Her hands move of its own accord, one grabbing his arm and the other his face, moving it gently to look at her.
"Every…" she begins, staring into startled blue eyes as troubled as a stormy sea. "Everyone always thinks that just because someone acts alright, they must be alright. No one ever comforts those who don't seem to need it." He stays silent as she continues, her eyes focused deep in his, finally understanding. Finally knowing what she had been seeing, who he was.
"No one ever thinks that those who help may be suffering themselves, do they?"
His eyes widen and something seems to give, letting out what he had stifled up over the years. The heartache that no one ever condoled, the crying that no one ever heard, it sneaks out in one silent tear which seems to be all the contained man can manage. Miku moves closer, slowly, and carefully extends her arms around him, thin strips of white around his shoulders. His breath hitches and he tenses for a moment, before bringing a hand up to grasp her back.
"No one wanted to know," he whispers into Miku's ear. His voice is low and gravely, as desolate as a lone bird singing in the wintertime. She lays her head on his shoulder and holds tighter. "I can't worry anyone; it's not their business." He pauses for a moment. "There's no one that wants to hear me."
Miku keeps her head down, her face hidden, so that he cannot see the tears that fall and soak into his shirt. To be alone, to have no one, to know that there's not one person you could go to, what do you do? What happens then? Those feelings, the sadness, it doesn't go away. It just curdles and festers inside you, growing more painful every day, and there's no one there. No one to push away the darkness.
She forces herself to pull back, to look at him, the man who hides his feelings. The man who is lonely, more lonely than she had ever realized, than anyone had ever realized. This feeling, this unexplainable yearning and wretchedness, is this what he feels when he sees her?
"Tell me," she breathes finally. "Tell me. I want to know. I'll worry." He pulls back, staring at her with an expression of disorientated wonder. She swallows and continues, surer every second of her words, of what she needs to do, of what he needs. He needs someone. A person. Someone who will listen to him and think of him and care about him always. Somehow, he needs her.
"I want to hear you," she whispers. He looks at her with the same steady gaze as usual, but it begins to deteriorate, breaking apart, a wall falling down. He stares down at his hands lying uselessly on the coverlet, seeming at a loss.
"Talk to me," Miku urges gently. Her thoughts wander back to weeks past, alone in the loft, wanting someone, wanting him, but not being able to ask. He had taken that away, given her devotion, a warmth she had never truly felt. She had it now, but it was still lost to him, as it had been since his parents died.
Not fair, not right.
She won't let this go, won't let him be alone anymore.
"Talk to me."
Kaito slowly lifts his head. His eyes are filled with softness, alight with something unrecognizable. "Sorry, I…" he blinks once. "I just don't really know what to say right now," he murmurs, his voice filled with thought. The room is draped with the easy sound of falling rain. After a moment he lowers himself onto his pillows and closes his eyes.
"Could…Could you sing for me?"
Miku blinks, breathing in with surprise. She didn't consider herself as great of a vocalist as everyone praised her to be. She had never had lessons or anything, she just memorized tunes and repeated them the best she could. But he wanted to hear her. And she wanted to hear him. She'll have to be the one to start.
She gazes out the darkened window and back down at the form lying next to her. Very slowly she taps out a beat on her knee and sorts through her mind for a song.
I add my suspended thoughts to sound
The present is so softly shaking
Picking out a blurry story
Is it okay if it piles up?
Softly close your eyes
And then open them suddenly
So that an audible sound can be heard
Please sing
Miku stops halfway through her lullaby, reaching down to the bottom of the bed where the covers had been pushed. She grabs them and hauls them upwards, draping them over Kaito and her. His eyes open halfway for a moment, questioningly. He smiles, grabbing onto the sheets and pulling them close like a small child with their favorite blanket.
"Keep going."
She lowers herself and places her head on the pillow opposite him, a good two feet away. Her voice lowers, softer, smoother, drawling out the notes like a music box winding down.
I add emotions I wished for to sound
The present is so softly shaking
I stow away blurry words
Isn't it alright to stop them up?
Softly close your eyes and
You'll hear your next pulse
Listen close and you'll be able
Please sing
Her voice drifts off, escaping into the corners of the room. Kaito doesn't move other than soft rhythmic breathing and the occasional flutter of his eyelids. Miku watches, thinking, feeling, trying to make sense of her emotions towards this man. Her eyelids droop, heavy. The blanket folds comfortingly around her.
As a wave of tiredness and something else wash over her, Miku sticks out a hand, feeling out towards the other person. Another hand emerges from the covers and takes it, encompassing it in warmth. She closes her eyes.
He is…
A/N: The mask is broken.
The song is 'A Love Song' by Miku; one of my favorites.
