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Toya isn’t sure how his head works.
He never has been, really. It’s never been his own; his mind belongs to music, whatever it is he’s giving himself over to at the time. He’s content in that, for the most part. His mind is music scores, a metronome, staves listing off his thoughts and feelings. It’s a simple enough existence.
Still, it’s confusing at times.
He had school today. He knows he did, he remembers it; the teacher droning on, though the words and formulas are lost to him. He remembers lunch with his partner. Akito was soft today, touches lingering longer than usual, gaze sticky like honey. They held hands. Toya remembers it.
He’s sure he does.
But, the time is lost to him.
He’s home now, resting on his bed, fabric warm under him. His body feels heavy. Something feels off. He focuses his eyes– just on his hand, laid out in front of him– and it feels wrong, fuzzy, like he’s simply watching the image on a staticy screen. The static is everywhere, actually; his head and his heart and his lungs and his limbs, whatever parts of him remain are consumed by it. Bodies aren’t supposed to feel like that, are they?
He isn’t sure. He’s always felt this way.
A child, on a stool too tall and with a heavy hand on his shoulder. He watched himself move over black-and-white bars, saw staves fade away as soon as he averted his gaze. He misses a key, and his fingers flicker with a bright spark of colour.
He isn’t sure what he’s doing. There must have been something for him to do when he got home. Something to play or compose, work to be done. There always is.
He searches his mind. He can’t find it.
It must be hidden somewhere, then; lost amidst a stack of papers, shoved to the bottom of his bag, stuck between wires and wood and catgut strings. If he can just rid himself of that static, make himself human again, he’ll be able to find it.
His vision is a fog of blues and greys. He attempts to focus; his eyes ache, seeping back into his skull, but he manages for a moment. Back onto his hand. He curls his fist.
His fingers only twitch.
He mustn’t have tried hard enough. The signal must have faded, somewhere between tissue and bone and synapses, dissipating in tingles against his skin. He tries again; his palm flattens out, slow and sore. Blood pulses under his skin.
He’s still alive, then, not paralysed or stuck in rigor mortis. He flexes his hand again, watching distantly as his fingers slowly curl into a fist, like a spider folding in on itself after death.
His hands. He can move his hands. That’s the most important thing, after all.
Slowly, he regains movement in the rest of his arm, blood warming through the limb as he contracts and relaxes the muscles to the rhythm of metronome in his head. He manages to pull his arm back towards himself.
He blinks. He’s in his room. He uncurls his fist. He feels it, he’s sure.
The static in his head hasn’t dislodged itself, still sticking to his eyelids and throat. He isn’t sure what time it is. He had school today, but it’s entirely a mystery to him how long it’s been since he came home. That should be something he knows.
The time– his phone.
He moves his arm again, feeling around on the sheets until his fingers hit something cold. The sensation flickers against his skin; he messily puppeteers his fingers to grab it, pulling the feeling closer to his face. He fumbles to press down on the side.
The glow of the screen instantly stings his eyes, and he recoils in discomfort. He blinks a few times, mind aching with the effort it takes to focus his eyes onto the images there.
He manages, eventually, eyes jumping over a line of text.
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