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It starts out slow and peaceful.
It's a sad song, because of course it is. Kaede always says Chopin's like a poet on the piano, and he sees why.
The raindrop prelude.
Shuichi has to wonder - when did she listen to this? Was it during the dark days when the rain would slide down the windows and thunder cracked in the distance? Was it on happy days, when the sun shone too bright and the sky was too blue?
He never thought Kaede would welcome a fall of rain.
Then again, he never thought of Kaede as a murderer either.
The sounds of Chopin pounds into his ears as his hands fly over the keys, one half of a haunting duet. He can hear, tell, know that it's missing Kaede's part, missing what gives this heartbreaking duet any semblance of real depth.
It's only heartbreaking performed alone.
Kaede once asked him if he'd heard the raindrop prelude. He said no, because why would he have?
Saihara, Saihara, ignorant in the nuances of the world and the bitter lies rolling off his tongue. Back in the days when he still hid under the brim of his hat and still seemed just as weak as he was. Back in the days where he didn't believe in his own strength, back in the days where he could lie so easily, so so easily that it came just like breathing.
(He'll never be as good as Kokichi was, but that hardly matters)
Perjury, perjury, twist the lies to tell the truth. Perjury, twisting his words into hypocrisy, but it doesn't matter an inch because he won.
(Did he win, though?)
Today would have been is her twentieth birthday.
And on some level, he hates it.
She should be able to celebrate with them. Have a cake decorated with tacky music notes, listening to Shuichi trying (failing) to play some sort of birthday tune (not a surprise, she taught him) while their friends are all around them.
Empty chairs, empty tables, and the dining hall falls quiet with the sounds of despair.
She never saw it, did she?
Again, a reflex, his mind flits to the blue-haired mastermind, and he wants to scream. To sob. To yell and refuse hope or despair so that Kaede could be here.
She didn't kill Rantaro.
So why is she dead not here?
Love, meaningless platitudes, rolling off her tongue like poison. Hope is a virus, infecting all it touches.
But if Kaede and hope are toxic, then he's okay with that.
At the same time, turning his back on hope...
She'd be so disappointed.
Or would she be happy?
The notes tangle with his confused thoughts and his fingers miss a few steps, creating a dissonant chord that snaps him out of his reverie.
Outside, a drop of rain lands on the window, sliding down slowly, making a last gasp for life and love and joy, but it slides down the window and back into irrelevancy.
Just like Kaede Akamatsu.
He doesn't realize he's crying until a teardrop lands on the piano, sliding down his porcelain cheek and hitting the piano with a soft 'plick'.
And the room falls silent.
It's like waiting for the dawn. A bitter, silent moment, where there's not a sound to be heard. Only the silent sobs of a detective who gave his heart to a girl, and the girl who shattered it.
B, D, his heart splinters further with each and every keystroke. Caught up in the inner intricacies of the ivory giant, each key pounding massacres his fragile heart.
(Just like those keys played by a corpse, those keys played by the body that once loved them, now mocking her desecrated body)
Wrongly executed.
He's already squandered his earnings on a memorial and booze. A memorial, booze, and a piano.
The piano.
The piano Kaede would have played Clair De La Lune on. The piano in her research lab, the one he placed his hat on with hope still fluttering weakly in his chest, like a cockroach.
Hope is disgusting.
This new, sharper version of Shuichi knows that to be true. No amount of platitudes, sweet songs, and heartwrenching duets can change that.
Kaede is dead.
He resists the urge to mentally add a strikethrough, resists the urge to deny it, to re-watch the first episode again and again and revel in the shining hope that was Kaede Akamatsu.
But she'd be twenty today.
And if he keeps burying himself in the lies (a la Kokichi Oma, a boy so buried in lies it's hard to tell where they ended) he'll forget.
And he can't forget.
He'll remember the girl with the thin hands and pale skin, the girl with the pastel clothes and bright smile.
He'll remember Kaede Akamatsu.
For himself, and for the dead.