Sanae frowned deeply as he watched over Joshua's shaking, too-frail body that lay on the couch of his proxy. The barista was taking the night shift while Neku got some sleep. The man had seen his friend like this more times than he cared to remember. Yoshiya Kiryu was a puzzling child to his parents, a freak of nature to his classmates, and a nuisance to half the population of Shibuya.
But Shibuya herself sang to the boy. She gave him his Sight, the cause for his misery. She took him under her wing, hiding him from the cruelties he often faced because of his gift by opening his eyes to the hiding place Sanae's shop offered, She filled his belly by directing him to Ramen Don with breezes and sounds to entice him inside. She gave him a yearning to seek out the UG, where she needed him desperately to go. Her Composer had been abusing her Music, and she was deteriorating. So she chose him as soon as he came into the world, and her music guided him when he left it.
Joshua, for his part, could not clearly hear her music until he became Conductor, but that wasn't to say he didn't hear it at all. Sanae knew the city had chosen the boy for something when a young Joshua, age 11, complained about hearing distant music that 'no speaker was capable of playing.' When Sanae asked him where he thought it was coming from, the young boy simply replied 'It's coming from everywhere, but I feel it...inside my chest. Like a heartbeat.'
That was when Sanae knew he was looking at the next Composer. This boy...skinny, eager, seeing...this boy was going to rise to power so quickly, the current boss man wouldn't know what hit him until he was erased.
And he hadn't.
Shibuya sang when Yoshiya Kiryu ascended to his proper role as her Composer, and he in turn celebrated with her, writing anew her damaged symphony, kneading in his own harmony and spinning a cocophony of imagination back into her Soul.
It was beautiful.
Unfortunately, the city knew it could not last forever. Under Joshua, she flourished and grew and became a great symphony of the highest quality. But he could not maintain that greatness. Rather, the people who were her sheet music began to write sour and flat notes. Joshua became distressed over what was happening to his Shibuya...to her melody. His distress grew, until finally, though it tore him completely apart to do so, he decided to destroy what he had created. Of course outwardly, he seemed callous and uncaring.
But inside he wept in agony at his descision.
So it was with a heavy heart (But an uncaring air) that he initiated the Long Game.
Sanae had never seen Joshua as upset as he did that week before Sho decided to force the Composers hand a little too early. The Composer was stressed, and lamented very loudly with his own music that his Shibuya had to be rased to the ground, and him along with it, for his melody was so intertwined with her harmony, that erasure was the only fate he would accept if she was to be destroyed.
Sanae sighed and cringed as the window panes once again roared with rain, Shibuya's wind aching to ruffle her Composer's blond locks and comfort his fading Music.
"I know old girl" he murmured to the racket raging outside "Be patient. Josh'll be in tune to you again soon. You just have to give him a little time to turn up his volume."