A Music-of-the-Soul Vignette
In truth, the months of medication, therapy, and support she'd received, at best, held her delusions at bay, but they still leaked through. No longer did she feel like the world around her was little more than a videogame filled with NPCs, or that she had access to the code. However, she still heard things from time to time. Sometimes she'd see someone sitting there.
Most often, she saw Sayori. The guilt still plagued her. Though her psychiatrist had helped her overcome it. She intellectually understood that she didn't alter Sayori in any way—that the poor girl had suffered severe depression that finally got the better of her.
But it still ate her up inside. Her last conversation with Sayori had been insane gibberish—hurtful gibberish when the girl needed help the most. Sayori had confided in her about her depression and her love for Kazuo, and both of those things—however guided by delusion—she threw back into Sayori's face at her most vulnerable.
Sometimes Sayori sat there and watched her take notes. Sometimes she just poked her head into the classroom. She smiled and waved then. Sayori was no longer demonic or accusatory. She was fleeting, and her face was beginning to fade. That hurt more than anything. She didn't want to forget Sayori's face.
o o o
"Hello?" Monika called out as she opened the sliding door. It rolled smoothly and for some reason—maybe because this was the music room—she noticed the lack of the gara-gara grinding of 40-year-old, dirt-encrusted ball bearings.
Several boys and girls turned their heads to look up at her and went silent.
"Can—can we help you?" one girl ventured.
"Yes!" Monika said, smiling. She clapped her hands together, pleased. "I heard this school had a light music club and I wanted to check it out."
o o o
Her father had pulled a few strings, called in a few favors, and had done a lot of begging, but the school had acquiesced and taken her. They'd of course been wary at first. She'd had not one, but two psychotic episodes at Nakayama High and she was now nineteen. Technically, she shouldn't even be a student. Still, her academic performance previous to her breakdown had been stellar and anything that increased the school's standing was welcome.
Only her homeroom teacher had been informed of her past—not that the rumor mill hadn't done its due diligence. When she'd first gotten here, someone at lunch walked up and asked her if she'd had sex with her boyfriend at her own best friend's funeral. She'd have been far more scandalized if Eisuke hadn't already told her what sorts of things were being said about her.
She'd politely rebuffed the student, explaining that a jealous suitor had spread those rumors because she didn't pick him. It was mostly true, though that coward, Toshi, never had the balls to confess to her, so it wasn't as if she'd ever rejected him. She did take the opportunity to make it clear that she did have a fiancé, though. That probably shocked the school more than the rumors had.
Boys generally left her alone, but a couple still confessed—especially as her hair grew past her shoulders and she kept up her appearance more. The girls, though, didn't have much to do with her. She couldn't walk home with them—her father came to pick her up each day, and dropped her off in the mornings. She'd have gotten her own license and driven herself if the school hadn't explicitly forbidden it. Her father asked her not to, as well. He didn't trust her not to have an episode whilst behind the wheel.
Thus, she didn't have a lot of opportunities to make friends. Well, to be more accurate, she didn't create many opportunities. She caught herself on more than one occasion making such excuses. Maybe she was just scared.
o o o
"Yes. We're the light music club," a boy said. "Did you just want to watch us practice, or do you play an instrument?"
"I," she was beginning to waffle. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. She looked around the room and spotted a violin case at the top of stacked up drum set. She could almost feel Eisuke come up behind her and slip his arms around her, hugging her to him and kissing her cheek. Sayori winked at her from the corner of the room and gave her a thumbs-up.
"I play the piano," she stated. "I started last year, when my . . ." she smiled "When my fiancé and I first met. He was playing violin and I was fiddling around on the keys. Ahaha!" She blushed and looked away. "Anyway, I started taking lessons not long after and I've gotten pretty descent." She looked over and Sayori had disappeared.
"Oh! That's great! We're looking for a keyboardist!" one of them exclaimed.
"YOU HAVE A FIANCÉ!?" a couple of the girls squealed.
"Ahaha! I thought that was common knowledge . . ." Monika replied.
One of the boys said, "Well, maybe amongst the normies, but we're all nerds here, so—"
"Speak for yourself, Kouta!"
"Yeah, we're all nerds here, so we don't get to be a part of the school's rumor mills."
Monika showed the squealing girls her engagement ring, and explained her circumstances—a very, very, curated version of it, to them—how she'd missed half a school year due to a medical issue that had relapsed and some rather nasty rumors about her at her old school spread by some vicious people, so she was re-doing her senior year, here. And of course, how Eisuke had proposed when she got out of the hospital a second time. No need to mention that it was a mental hospital!
She demonstrated what she could do on the piano, and was soon accepted as a member of the Ouzan High Light Music Club.
o o o
"I'm Home!" Sakura Higashiyama called out to her apartment. She didn't expect a response, but she said it anyway.
"Welcome home, honey!" her mother called from the kitchen.
"Wow! Mom! You're home early!"
"Yep," her mother answered. "They just got a couple new nurses, so my hours got shifted around. No more evening shift!—but I will need to go in earlier than before."
"That's great!" Sakura beamed.
"How was school?"
"We got a new member today!"
"Oh? This late in the year?" her mother asked.
"Well, she transferred in from Yamanaka a few months ago."
"Yamanaka, huh?"
"Yep! And get this! She's got a fiancé!"
"A fiancé! That's a little young," her mother said, as she continued preparing the evening meal.
"Well, actually, she's nineteen. She's repeating her senior year because she had a medical problem. Apparently her boyfriend proposed when she got out."
Her mother dropped the knife she'd was holding.
"Honey, what's . . . what's this girl's name?"
"Sumisu Monika!"
"Honey?"
"Yeah, Mom?"
"Do me a favor."
"Sure . . ." Sakura said. Her mother was acting weird all of a sudden.
"If she says anything . . . out of the ordinary . . ."
"Like having a fiancé?"
"No . . . um . . . If she mentions a—What was her name? Oh, right.—If she mentions a 'Sayori' or does anything really weird . . . let me know."
"Mom, you're scaring me. Do you—do you know her? Monika wasn't one of . . . wasn't in your ward . . . was she?"
"Sakura. Honey," Her mother said, gripping her daugther's shoulders and looking her in the eye. "I've already said too much, so don't say anything to anyone, but just let me know if Sumisu-san does or says anything really weird . . . or makes you feel uncomfortable—argh! That's not what I mean—I mean, if something isn't right. Okay?"
"Mom? Is—is she gonna hurt me?"
"No, Honey!" she tried to reassure Sakura, "No, she's not going to hurt you. But she might need you to be her friend, and if that happens, part of being a good friend is letting me know so she can get the help she needs."
"She was!" Sakura yelped. "She was in your ward! What was she in for? Did she try to off herself? Is she totally batshit?"
"SAKURA!"
"Sorry, Mom . . ."
"Sakura, I didn't raise you like that!" she said, disappointed. "I told you, I've already said too much. I'm . . . I'm just concerned. Look, don't bring it up, but just be a friend, okay? She probably needs it, badly. She's a really good girl; she's just been through a lot."
"Okay, Mom. I'll do my best."
"That's all I ask."
"Mom?" Sakura asked after a moment of silence.
"Her fiancé is real, right? Not . . . um . . . you know . . ."
"Yes," Sakura's mother confirmed. "He came to visit her every single day. Violinist, I think he is . . ."
o o o
Monika slid the door of the music room open. She had in her hand a clear file folder with little music symbols all over it. Inside, were stuffed a bunch of sheet music.
"Sorry I'm late!" she said, "I forgot this in my desk!"
"What's that?" Sakura said. Her voice seemed a little off.
"Eisuke got me a bunch of music yesterday—recommended we look through it, give it a try. I can play some of these for you. When I told him I joined the light music club, he was beside himself and it was all I could do not to be saddled with three kilos of sheet music! Ahaha!"
"Your boyfriend—er, fiancé—sounds like a music nerd like us!"
"I told you he plays violin!"
"Ouch! Souta!" one boy elbowed him, "She even says it like they're synonymous, and she's marrying the dude!"
Everyone laughed.
Sakura was the first to go over to her and hold her hand out for the folder. Monika happily handed it over. "So, what have you got for us?" she asked Monika.
"Eisuke said it was a bunch of 'light music'—easy pieces that we can learn and master quickly to fill in the gaps between our own songs during a performance."
"Our own songs?!" Kouta exclaimed.
"Yeah!" Monika said, "We should write our own! I wrote one already but . . ." she shut up.
"But?" Sakura prodded.
Monika's smile fell.
"Um . . . it's not a happy song and it has too much baggage. You know what, forget I said anything. Sorry."
"Maybe when you're more comfortable with us, you can share it?" Sakura said. "We don't know one another so well, so sure, you're not going to feel comfortable sharing something like a song. Right? When we're your friends, then that'll be a different story."
"Sure . . ." Monika said. "Sure . . ." She brightened and pulled a notebook from her bag. "How about this? I was the president of Nakayama's Literature Club, so how about I help us write some good lyrics and then we can each come up with a melody to lay on top of it?"
"What should we write about?" Souta asked.
"Anything!" Monika replied. "Ahaha! That's a bit broad, isn't it? Here, I'll write the first line. And the next person writes the next."
On her notebook, she wrote a line.
Red BOW, blue EYES, smile NEver DIES
She circled the lower-case words and drew boxes around the upper-case words. She then drew six alternating circles and rectangles under it, then eight under that and another six.
"Okay, this line needs six words, or maybe a two-syllable word like you see I did here, with 'never'," Monika explained. It doesn't need to rhyme with 'eyes', or 'dies'."
Sakura took the book and looked at Monika. Her mother's words rung in in the back of her mind. She wrote in the spaces provided:
What SHE needs IS a FRIEND
She handed the notebook to Kouta, next to her.
"Hmm? How'm I s'pos'ta add to this?"
"Fill in the ovals and squares—light syllables in the ovals, stressed in the squares—and make it rhyme with 'dies'," Monika said.
"Don't you dare make that rhyme 'french fries', Kouta," Sakura said. Everyone laughed.
"Okay, um . . ." He wrote:
InSTEAD she ONly GOT told LIES
"How's that?"
"Next is Souta. You need six syllables and it has to rhyme with 'friend'," Sakura explained.
Souta thought for a moment and wrote:
She MET a TRAgic END
Monika could no longer hold back her tears. Sayori skipped over from the window sill and gave her a hug.
"Monika?" Sakura asked, "Are—are you okay?"
Sayori hadn't spoken to her in ages—she always just smiled and stared or waved, but never stopped smiling. And suddenly Monika heard Sayori hum. It was quiet at first, but Sayori began humming louder then sang her new song to Monika to the tune of that old 1960s American television show, Gilligan's Island. Monika, through her blubbering tears began laughing. She couldn't help it.
"It's . . . ahaha! It's such a Sayori thing to do, too!"
Sakura's attention was caught.
"Um . . . could you tell us about . . . if you don't mind . . . um . . . Could you tell us about Sayori?"
"Was she your friend" another girl, Miki, asked.
"Sorry, guys!" Monika laughed and cried at the same time. Sayori hugged her and continued humming Gilligan's Island to her. "She was my best friend. She was such a ball of sunshine and happiness and made you happy being around her. But she was so sad inside and . . . well, the world's a greyer place without her, but I . . ."
She thought about how to explain it . . .
Sakura couldn't help but notice Monika look at someone who wasn't there, as if she were looking for advice from the person.
"The lines of this poem line up with a funny TV them from the 1960s and I had this image of Sayori humming it just now and I realized that it's just such a Sayori thing to do. This verse looks really depressing, but she'd make it hilarious like that!"
Sakura moved closer to Monika and tentatively put an arm around her, then another and pulled her in for a hug.
"She sounds like a wonderful person," Sakura said, trying to be a good friend. "I—we don't know her, but maybe we can work on this song together and really make it nice—to honor her."
Though sniffles, Monika said, "I'd . . . I'd like that. Sorry guys, I know I just joined and I didn't want to unload on you like this . . . But it all just kind of came out."
"It's okay . . ." Kouta said, scratching the back of his head. He felt awkward and didn't know how to handle this kind of situation. "Uh . . . yeah, don't fret it, none."
Releasing Monika, Sakura said, "Okay . . . enough emotional stuff for now. Let's hear some of that music your boyfriend gave you."
Monika smiled and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. "Sure!"
She sat down at the piano and began playing for them.
o o o
"Hey, Mom?" Sakura asked the woman sitting opposite her at the table.
"Yes, Honey?"
"Um . . . so, Monika brought up . . . um . . . Sayori. Like you said . . ."
Her mother stopped eating and looked at her daughter. A hint of worry etched itself across her brow.
"And . . . what about Sayori?"
"She said Sayori was her best friend, but the world's a greyer place without her . . . I'm guessing she died—that much is pretty obvious, but . . ."
Sakura's mother let out a sigh. More of relief that her former patient wasn't seeing the girl crawl through someone's eye sockets as she'd said before.
"She lost her friend to suicide, Honey . . . and . . . well, the rest is privileged, so . . ."
"I understand, Mom," Sakura said.
"Good . . . Incidentally, I probably should have told you last night, but you and your friends should probably not talk about things 'hanging' around her. Maybe say 'go out' rather than 'hang out' or, you know."
"Oh my God! That's awful! Um . . . Monika wasn't suicidal, was she?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that . . . But I think you can guess how she lost her friend."
o o o
The Light Music Club decided to meet at the local Ai-en Mall. It was easy to get to for everyone. In particular, it had a really good Yumiho Music store with a pretty good instrument selection. Now that Monika was more serious about playing the piano, and had several months of lessons, she was in the market for a proper keyboard that she could move around with the Light Music Club during performances.
Eisuke drove Monika and parked. They got out of the car and walked over to bus stop where Souta, Miki, Kouta, and Sakura would get off, soon.
The bus arrived and the four Light Music Club members debussed and greeted their friend.
Sakura said, "So, I guess by the way you two're holding hands, this must be the infamous 'Eisuke'. Nice to finally meet you."
"Infamous, huh?" Eisuke asked, bowing to the girl. "Nice to meet you, too. You all as well."
"Well, the whole school was all abuzz when it came out you two were already engaged . . ." Kouta explained. "'Course, no one at the time knew that Monika was already 19 . . ."
Author's note:
I wrote this a few weeks ago and just kind of sat on it. I thought about writing more of it, but after coming back to it after a few weeks, I realized it feels like it can stand on its own as it is. I don't really need to write a scene of them buying a keyboard or anything else. It's just a little vignette that shows how treatment has allowed Monika to manage, but can't cure her problem. She no longer has terrible fits or debilitating delusions, but she still sees things—usually Sayori. Anyone confused by Sayori doing things in this vignette, it's all in Monika's head.
Incidentally, I completely forgot to mention, I think, that the title of The Music of the Soul is a play on the first notes of Your Reality, which is Sol-Sol-Sol—.
