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Chuuya loved to sing, but there were very few people who loved to hear him.
He didn’t have parents to call his own. He was being taken care of by people who weren’t his parents, and he felt lonely for not having a real family. They were gone more often than not, so Chuuya spent a lot of time in his own world. He had a vivid imagination.
His vivid imagination was what led to him to the moon.
From his bedroom window, he had a clear view of the night sky, and the moon that cast a glow in the otherwise dark room. Chuuya imagined the moon to be some kind of being that watched over everyone, but it looked sad. Lonely, like him, because despite there being stars in the sky the moon wasn’t like those stars. It was different, and for that reason Chuuya imagined that it was alone.
So Chuuya decided to sing to it, hoping that the moon might enjoy his singing. He didn’t know if he was any good because no one had ever told him, and this was mostly for his own comfort, to make himself feel a bit less lonely in the often silent house. Imagining that he was doing this for someone else made him feel better.
A few months after he started singing, he was given good news. His caretakers would be taking another child into their care, a young girl named Kyouka. She was too young to walk or talk, but Chuuya was excited to have someone to protect as he got older.
The first few weeks that Kyouka was home, Chuuya sang to her at night to help her fall asleep. She was restless, getting used to her new environment, but she seemed to calm down whenever Chuuya sang to her. Chuuya was more than happy to keep singing if Kyouka enjoyed it.
One night, the moon wasn’t in the sky, but Chuuya didn’t notice. That happened every month, so it didn’t concern him. He sang to Kyouka as normal, and once she fell asleep he stood up from where he’d been sitting next to her crib to go to his own bed.
When he turned around, he saw a woman standing near the window.
Chuuya didn’t know what to do. She wore traditional clothes. Her skin and the very air around her seemed to glow in the same way the moon glowed when it was out.
“Chuuya-kun,” she said, and she had a strong voice. It was a voice that made people listen, and Chuuya was rapt with attention. “You’ve neglected me.”
“Neglected?” Several questions came to mind — how did she know his name? Who was she and when had he met her? If he didn’t know who she was, how had he neglected her?
“Neglected,” the woman repeated. She moved forward, her movements fluid and graceful, until she was standing directly in front of Chuuya, her hand cold on his cheek. “We both were creatures of loneliness who found kinship in each other. How could you forget?”
“I don’t know who you are,” Chuuya said.
“You can call me Kouyou,” the woman told him. “I’ve watched over you nightly, listened to your songs, and suddenly you were silent. You’ve been distracted by that girl.”
“That’s my sister,” Chuuya said, a little defensive. “She needs me.”
“She has a family, does she not?” Kouyou asked. “I am alone. But I will not be forgotten. Chuuya-kun, we shall keep each other company.”
Chuuya felt strange as the glow surrounded him as well. “What are you doing?”
Kouyou gave him an unreadable smile. “Making sure that neither of us is lonely again.”
*
Chuuya woke up in a cage.
It was a nice cage made of silver, the bars woven in intricate designs. Chuuya could almost forget that he was in a prison.
But he was different. He wasn’t a human any longer, and only his singing voice remained. Kouyou had some kind of magic and she had turned him into a bird covered in black feathers, small enough to fit in the cage. She told him to sing to her, and Chuuya hoped that if he sang, she would be satisfied and let him go.
She hung him from a high tree on top of a mountain, and Chuuya realized that Kouyou wasn’t just a woman who could do magic. She was the soul of the moon itself. That was why she believed he’d neglected her.
He tried to explain that he’d been unaware that the moon had a soul. He tried to strike a deal with her, promising to sing to both her and Kyouka. At one point, he begged her, saying that the cage felt suffocating because he couldn’t leave and that if this went on long enough he wouldn’t enjoy singing anymore.
Him not enjoying singing triggered something in Kouyou that made her listen. She didn’t want to lose his singing. The joy in his songs and the passion in his singing brought her comfort, and without it she felt the sadness that Chuuya felt.
“Let me go once every month,” Chuuya said. “I just want to be a good older brother to Kyouka-chan. She’ll grow up thinking she’s alone, and our caretakers don’t pay much attention to her. I want her to know she isn’t alone. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be alone, just like you don’t want to be alone.”
Kouyou thought about it. Once a month seemed like a fair deal, and her magic would always bring him back. She nodded. “Once every month, on the full moon, you will be allowed to return to your sister. You can appear to her as a human, but you will still be under my spell. Once the night is over you will become a bird again and return here.”
Chuuya took the deal. He’d lost hope that he could be human again because Kouyou’s loneliness seemed to have consumed her but maybe, if this turned out well, Kouyou would let him visit Kyouka even more.
*
At first, Kyouka thought it was a dream.
The strange person who visited her came once a month, and he was in her earliest memories. He wasn’t like the other people she saw, and because his appearance was so striking he etched himself in her memories and she could recall him clearly even when he wasn’t there. He was made to be remembered.
He seemed like a young boy, a few years older than herself and aging every year similar to her, with red hair and one blue eye. The other eye was darker, almost black. Feathers just as black made up parts of his hair, covered parts of his skin, and told her that he wasn’t a normal person at all.
He also had a lovely voice.
Before Kyouka could talk, he would sing to her. Every month he would come, and once Kyouka could understand words she heard him say, “It’s me, Chuuya, your brother.” And then he would sing her to sleep.
Once Kyouka got older, she became curious enough to not want to sleep. She was a quiet girl who didn’t talk to many people, but she was sharp and observant, and the intensity that she projected combined with her reserved nature caused most people to avoid her. It was strange to her that Chuuya would want to be in her company without knowing her that well, but he’d been a constant fixture in her life. One day she learned what a brother was, and realized that Chuuya was trying to be one. He was trying to protect her, trying to bond with her, and trying to make her feel less lonely.
They talked more as the years passed and he sung less, although sometimes she asked him to sing because she loved his voice. She understood, though, that his time was limited, and she wanted to spend more of it getting to know him and telling him about her own life and her own worries because she didn’t talk much to other people. He was happy with whatever she wanted, and she got the feeling he craved another person’s company just as much as she did.
Even when his voice changed, it still sounded beautiful. They were both growing older and Kyouka was learning more about the world. She noticed more complex emotions and in Chuuya she saw longing and sadness. He wanted to stay. He talked in a way that suggested he wanted to be human, even though to Kyouka he acted like a human. And he was tired. He seemed exhausted in a way that went beyond physical tiredness.
It took her awhile to ask him about it, because part of her was afraid of the answer and part of her was afraid she would be brushed off. If this was just how things were, then maybe Chuuya would be annoyed at her for asking. He never talked about it either, so she wondered if it was a bad topic.
She found a perfect segway when Chuuya mentioned that he was turning eighteen in a few days. By now, she knew that eighteen year olds were considered adults and that at that age, they usually left home to further their education or start their careers. Chuuya didn’t seem to have any plans of the sort and she noticed the flatness underlying his words when he said that he would be eighteen.
“Are you going to a university?” she asked.
Chuuya gave her a strange look. “No, I’m not.”
“People leave home when they’re eighteen,” Kyouka said, “but you don’t live here, so you don’t need to leave. It seems like that age is when people choose what they want to do with their lives. So what do you want to do?”
Chuuya gave her a tired smile. “I already have a job.”
“Is that why you only come by once a month?”
The silence that followed stretched out for far too long as several expressions passed over Chuuya’s face. He settled on something neutral.
“When I was younger, a spell was put on me,” he said. It was clear he was trying to keep any emotion out of his voice. “I used to sing to the moon before you came. The moon visited me and liked my singing so much that she decided I should live with her and sing for her as a bird, but once a month I can come visit you as a human.”
Kyouka stared at him. Her thoughts put together the pieces faster than Chuuya probably would have liked. If he sang to the moon before Kyouka came but lived as a human, then that meant that the moon probably took him after she arrived, because the moon was likely jealous that Chuuya’s attention had been split. She felt guilty that her presence had caused this.
“That sounds like a curse,” she said, “because of me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Chuuya insisted, looking horrified that she would think so. “Not at all. It’s mine, for neglecting her.”
“You didn’t know,” Kyouka said. “If it’s not my fault it’s not your fault either.”
“Then it’s no one’s fault,” Chuuya said. He smiled.
Kyouka swallowed. “Are you happy?”
Chuuya’s smile faded.
“You’re not happy,” Kyouka said. “I can see it in your eyes when the night ends each month. You look sad and tired, because it’s not your job. It’s a curse that you were forced into by a terrible person.”
“Kouyou isn’t terrible,” Chuuya said. “She’s sad. She’s lonely.”
“Then she must know what she’s doing to you and to me,” Kyouka said. “I’m least lonely when I talk to you, but the rest of the time no one wants to talk to me. I don’t know how to talk to people without scaring them off. She doesn’t care that I’m lonely.”
Chuuya’s eyes widened. “Kyouka-chan, you’re lonely?”
Kyouka had never admitted it out loud but she nodded. She wasn’t one to express emotions openly, but her throat felt tight.
Behind Chuuya, the sky was getting lighter.
“You have to go,” Kyouka said.
Chuuya’s breath caught. “I’m sorry.”
Then he was gone.
*
The conversation with Kyouka had shaken Chuuya to his core, bringing to the surface emotions that he hadn’t let himself to feel in a long time. He allowed himself to acknowledge his loneliness and sadness, his longing to be with other people and live the life of a human.
He was angry.
He hadn’t felt angry in a long time, but he was angry now that Kouyou hadn’t allowed him the choice of whether or not he wanted to continue singing to her. She never asked him what he felt, never checked in on him, never suggested that they could amend the spell after all these years. She just kept him there and expected him to be okay with being caged, regardless of his feelings. She acted as if he didn’t have feelings, that she was the only one who felt things.
He wanted so much and she made him forget that he wanted it because she’d never given him the chance to have any of those things. He never thought about what he wanted because he didn’t want to be constantly disappointed.
But the longing and disappointment and sadness had embedded themselves into who he was as a person. He didn’t notice, because he felt that way all the time, but Kyouka did, and once she pointed it out he felt the full force of the pain those things caused. He saw how unnecessary it had all been, learned how much he had lost based on what Kyouka told him about life and about her expectations of what he should be doing at eighteen.
Because of Kouyou, to him eighteen meant nothing but another year passing.
He wanted to break the cage into a thousand pieces. His restlessness was worse. Instead of being sad that he was back, he felt trapped, every cell in his body protesting at being locked up again.
So when night fell again, instead of singing, Chuuya screamed.
Kouyou appeared in front of him, sitting on one of the tree branches. She often did that, watching him with a soft smile as he sang to her every night, but now she looked worried. She quickly covered up that worry with an emotionless mask.
“Chuuya-kun, why are you screaming?”
“Because of you!”
Kouyou remained calm. “Because of me?”
“You took away my life,” Chuuya shouted, “and trapped me here in this stupid cage. You never asked me what I wanted, and for what? Your own selfish reasons? Because you couldn’t stand the idea that someone might not want to stay for you?”
“Chuuya-kun,” Kouyou said, her voice holding a dangerous edge.
“If you’ve always been like this I can see why people wouldn’t want to stay,” Chuuya snarled.
The change in Kouyou’s expression wasn’t huge, but something shifted and her eyes became cold, her gaze knife-sharp, and her entire body tensed as if for a fight. She was suddenly in front of the cage, reaching her hand in and grabbing Chuuya by the chin, and that’s when he realized he was in his human form.
She forced his eyes to meet hers. “After all of the companionship I’ve provided you, this is how —“
“Companionship.” Chuuya practically spat the word out. “You trapped me and I was only a kid. You took away my entire life because you’re a selfish —“
“Choose your words carefully.”
“— cruel…” He didn’t have the words to describe what she was. “Coward,” he decided. She was afraid of what he’d do if she had set him free. She was so afraid he’d never come back that she wouldn’t let him go.
Kouyou’s painted lips pulled back in a kind of snarl. “Who put these thoughts in your head? Was it that girl? I should never let you see her again. You would have been perfectly happy if she hadn’t corrupted your thoughts.”
“I was never happy,” Chuuya said. “I wanted to be a good older brother and you never let me.”
“I’m sure it makes no difference to her,” Kouyou said.
“She said you cursed me,” Chuuya said. “That’s true.”
“She has others,” Kouyou said. “She doesn’t need you. She doesn’t value you the way I do, and she doesn’t understand you the way I do. But there is no use talking about it. I can solve the problem.”
“You don’t understand me,” Chuuya snapped. “Why don’t you talk to her and ask her for yourself, since you seem to know so much about her? Then you’ll see — but maybe you’re too much of a coward to know the truth and know that I’m right.”
Kouyou’s grip on his chin tightened for a moment before she let go. “Tomorrow night.”
Then she was gone and Chuuya was left shaking from his anger.
*
Night came. Kouyou took Chuuya from his cage and together they appeared in Kyouka’s bedroom.
If Chuuya could have escaped right now, he would have, but Kouyou’s magic was too strong. He hoped that Kyouka would be enough to convince Kouyou that he was right.
Kyouka wasn’t outwardly emotional, not like Kouyou, but she was sincere. She didn’t lie. She saw the world for what it was and presented herself to the world the same way.
When they arrived, Kyouka sat up in bed, her eyes wide. She had never seen Chuuya come two nights in a row, but her eyes moved from him to Kouyou and narrowed.
“You’re the witch putting the curse on him.”
“Witch?”
“Witches put curses on people,” Kyouka said. “The bad ones do, anyway.”
“I assure you I am not a witch,” Kouyou said. “You, however, might be for all of the horrible thoughts you’ve put in Chuuya-kun’s head. He was perfectly fine until now. Whatever you said to him has made him miserable.” She placed a hand on Chuuya’s shoulder.
Kyouka looked at Kouyou, her eyes completely clear. “I told him the truth. He always looks sad and I want him to look happy.”
“I could curse you right now for lying to me,” Kouyou said.
“No!” The word tore out of Chuuya before he could stop himself.
The look Kouyou was giving Kyouka was terrifying, but Kyouka was unmoved. She never looked away and she didn’t move. She simply said, “I wasn’t lying. He cares about me and he wants to stay here. He wants other things and he’s unhappy because he can’t have them.”
Chuuya heard Kouyou’s sharp intake of breath and felt the hand on his shoulder tighten, nails digging into his skin. “And what does his happiness mean to you? Nothing. He is simply a novelty that visits you once a month and you want more.”
“No.”
“No? Enlighten me.”
“We talk,” Kyouka said. “I don’t talk to many people, and he listens to me. He gives me advice sometimes. He seems like the only one who really cares. Maybe that is selfish of me, but I like listening to him too. I like hearing what he likes and what he thinks of things and what he wants, and I want him to be happy.”
“You only care about me for my singing,” Chuuya added, looking at Kouyou. “Kyouka-chan cares about how I feel, and I care about her life. I barely know anything about you except that you’re lonely and you’d do anything to not be alone. I know about what Kyouka likes and dislikes. I knows what she wants and what she’s afraid of. She’s my sister, and you were never anything like that to me.”
Kouyou turned to look at him and to Chuuya’s horror, tears were running down her face.
“Why would you hurt me this way, Chuuya-kun?”
Her voice sounded despairing. It tugged at Chuuya’s heart, but he didn’t give any ground. He knew that if he went left tonight he would never be back. He needed Kouyou to see the truth.
“Now Kyouka-chan is lonely too and it’s your fault,” Chuuya said. “If you hate being lonely why would you do that to someone else?”
Kouyou’s eyes widened.
“She’s a little girl,” Chuuya continued. “And I was a kid. What makes you think I can’t care about more than one person at once?”
That was the thing — Chuuya wasn’t upset because he didn’t care about Kouyou. He was upset because he did and felt betrayed by what she’d done.
“Please don’t force me to stay with you,” Chuuya said. “I know it’s hard to be lonely, but it would be better if I stayed here. I would still sing to you. I would talk to you, too. But if I go back, I know I’ll be angry at you and I’ll be miserable and we’ll both feel lonely anyway.”
Kouyou looked away from him. He could hear her take an unsteady breath and held his own. Kyouka watched the both of them and for once there was an emotion clearly written on her face: anxiety. She wanted this too.
“I have rarely dealt with humans,” Kouyou said after a moment. “You are social creatures.” She turned to look at Chuuya and Kyouka, her eyes dry. “I can tell that you’re not lying, and that would be a shame. Whatever you may think of me, I don’t want to see you suffer.”
Chuuya and Kyouka both waited.
“You can stay,” Kouyou said.
Chuuya felt a strange tingling in his body. When he stretched out his arms, he saw that any of the feathers that had once been there were gone.
“Whether or not you choose to sing to me or talk to me…” Kouyou swallowed. “I can understand why you wouldn’t”
Chuuya was quiet, thinking. The reason he’d started singing to Kouyou in the first place was because he was lonely and in need of companionship. He’d been lonely since he was taken, and although Kouyou was the reason for it, he could also understand that it was a horrible feeling that could eat away at a person. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
“I want to,” he said.
Kouyou gave him a slight smile. “You are a better person than I, Chuuya-kun.”
Chuuya didn’t think he could know what kind of person he was right now, but he was excited to finally find out.
“Can you sing?” Kouyou asked. “Now? Before morning comes?”
Chuuya smiled. Their emotions were running high and it would probably soothe them all, so he nodded. Kouyou sat by the windowsill and Kyouka remained on the bed. Chuuya sat down on the bed as well, cross-legged and close to the edge so that he was somewhat in-between the two of them, and began to sing.
It was the most joyful song he’d sung in a while, his voice lilting with happiness, filling the entire room. He sang until the sun started to rise, and once the sky lightened, for a brief moment he and Kouyou exchanged a look full of promise.
Then she was gone, and for the first time in a long time, Chuuya remained with Kyouka as morning dawned.