Festival, Together

🎸📚

The strap of Haruki's electric guitar rubbed against her shoulders. 

Outside, the snow was coming down heavier now, collecting in mounds on the ground. 
Inside, she could hear students and their parents in the assembly hall, awaiting them.

She flexed her fingers. She wasn’t sure if they were her own.

It’s happening again... those thoughts that aren’t mine.

“Haruki, you don’t have to do this—”

“No,” she replied.

“I need to.”

I am not alive.

I am floating in a place without shape or gravity. The void is soft and loud all at once. It’s a womb filled with noise instead of blood.

I don’t have a body, yet this time, I feel that I do. I was inside her, beneath her, around her. 

I was her spine, her hands, her breath.
Every vibration, every reverberation, every pulse. 

I can feel her heart beating. It’s fast.
I can feel her breath. It’s erratic.

I can feel the weight of the guitar against her shoulder.
I can feel the crowd’s cheers on the other side.
I lift my hand, she raises hers too.
Like she’s mirroring me, or perhaps I’m mirroring her.

Haruki stepped into the light.

So did I.

Dust floated above her like glitter in the dimension of light that shined down.

The glitter danced above me too.

The crowd roared.
She saw Sakura on the drums,
Mayumi ready with her keys.
Aika gave her a two-fingered salute.
Her hand gripped the guitar neck.
Another vibration passed down her spine.

I felt it too.

She breathed in.

I did too.

She raised her hand over her instrument.

I reached out in this uncompromisable space, and in doing so, I moved her hands. Not as a puppeteer or a ghost pressing strings from beyond. It was closer than that. It was like breathing through lungs I didn’t own, blinking through someone else’s eyes. Yet somehow they felt like mine.

The countdown.

Four.
Three.
Two.
One—

And something inside me lit up.

I was playing with her.
We were perfectly synchronized.
Her notes were my notes.
Her movements, my movements.
We were becoming a single instrument. 

She strummed.
The first note striked.
And then the second...
And then the third...

It reached both the crowd and the cosmos and back.
Each note rang with a vibration.

Our hands moved in unison, our voice in perfect harmony.

Each chord that struck felt like a step forward.
Each lyric carried with it a memory from a forgotten past.
We didn’t hesitate.
We reached for the final chord.

Her heartbeat was a metronome.

I matched it beat for beat.

Haruki swayed with the music, spotlight blooming over her like a halo.

Our lips parted, drawing breath.
I inhaled through our lungs.

She wanted to move.

So did I.

She took a step left.

I felt myself step too.

She sang.

I sang.

The chorus hit. The strings sung. The crowd whistled.
Mayumi twirled. Sakura stomped. Aika riffed.

We reached for the final chord.

Her hand lifted.

Mine rose with it.

Not Haruki Amane.

Not Tsukasa Kurayami.

Only the one that remains.

We struck the last note.

An applause.
She took a bow.

I felt our spine arch.
Our fingers ached. 
Lungs exhausted. 

The curtains dropped.

I could feel the tremble in her knees.
The sweat running down her forehead.
The tension in her spine.
The goosebumps on her skin.

The band cheered.

And when she turned to walk off stage, she whispered:

“We did it…”

But none of it mattered now.
Because she was burning up. 

Her knees buckled. Her vision dulled. Her breath hitched.

I tried to hold us up, but it was useless.
We collapsed beyond the curtain.
The guitar clattering beside her.
The strap tangled around our arm as if trying to hold us together.

Mayumi screamed.
Aika yelled her name.
Sakura rushed forward, abandoning her sticks.
The crowd went silent with confusion.
There were more frantic yells.
Someone called an ambulance.

I could feel her pain.

The sound cut.
Replaced by the wail of sirens.
The lights dimmed.

And so did we.

🎸📚