Chapter Text
A few days after the fight.
The shadows in the corner of the room had lengthened, stretching across the hardwood floor like reaching fingers, but Toya hadn't moved to turn on the lamp. The only light came from the sterile glow of his desk light, pinning him to his chair like a specimen under a microscope. Between his fingers, the fountain pen felt heavier than a lead pipe. It was a high-quality instrument, a gift meant for someone who took pride in their calligraphy, yet in Toya’s grip, it was a weapon of self-destruction.
His pulse was a frantic, visible thrum in his wrist, mocking the stillness of the room. Every time the nib touched the paper, a microscopic tremor ruined the stroke. The ink bled—a dark, spreading stain that looked like a bruise on the pristine white surface. He stared at the words Dear Akito, and the name felt too heavy for the page to hold. How many times had he said that name in the heat of a performance? How many times had it been a lifeline? Now, written in his own hand, it looked like an accusation.
Dear Akito,
I write to you because I am not good at expressing my feelings, not that you would find these letters anyways. First of all, I need you to understand I did not mean what I said, about surpassing RAD WEEKEND being a childish dream. I find it great that you have a goal in life, unlike me. Which is the first reason of why I left you. I do not possess that resolve that is settled deep in your heart. So I am automatically not worthy of standing next to you, as your singing partner.
But, please hear me out: You carry so much power in your voice, your presence outshines everyone else’s. You will be remembered for your growing talent and fiery passion. My chest lightens up whenever I hear you sing with that astonishing and powerful voice, it feels like I am reaching towards the sky. You ground me with your presence, but at the same time, you lift me up from that cage I used to be locked in. There were times where I wondered, why me? Why did you choose me as your partner? I originally didn‘t carry the same dream as you, nor did I possess the talent to actually achieve that goal with you. So I believed that the best option was leaving you, since I am certain about you finding an even better partner.
I wish I could describe how it felt when I left you, fully distanced myself from you. You, who hung the stars in the dark night sky, you, who shone like the sun, you, who gave me a purpose, you, who was sure that I was the right one. Sometimes, I wish I could turn back time and rethink my actions. Because I realised how much I missed you, needed you. And how much I wanted to be with you. But at that time, I thought it was necessary to distance myself from you. It was painful, agonizing, even. It took a lot out of me I can’t put it into words.
I felt hurt and broken by the decision I made. The decision to let you go. Eventhough deep down, I never wanted to let you go. I wanted to hold you, to care for you, to simply to there for you. I still recall how much brighter life was when you were part of it. The memory of soft smiles appearing whenever I saw you, whenever we hung out, whenever we talked, sang, relaxed, and god, the way you made me feel safe. That was when I realised how much impact you had on my life. I probably didn’t express or say it enough, but I appreciated you so much my heart felt like bursting.
But I also feared that feeling. I feared of you getting bored of me, I feared of you finding out about the real me. The one with zero passion, much less resolve or a dream.
I feared of you leaving me on your own choice because you saw how many flaws I had. So I left you first. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Maybe I really was a temporary rebound until you find someone better, maybe what we had was just an occassional fling. But for me, you were one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
Someone who meant so much, which is why it was so difficult to move forward these past few hours without you, because we never got the chance to truly begin, yet somehow, we still came to an end. But eventhough we aren’t together anymore, I can’t be grateful enough for everything you did for me.
Please keep in mind that me leaving you has nothing to do with you, so don’t blame yourself, Akito.
Yours, Toya
Stormy grey eyes stared at the ink ruined paper, while a strange hollowness started to grow in his chest. Toya did not know what exactly he was feeling, only that it was painful.
He read the letter, over and over, scribbling out words, replacing them with new ones, only to erase them again. By the time he stopped, the paper was smeared all over with black ink and covered in small creases.
Toya glanced at the paper one last time before throwing it into the bin, and rewrites the letter. He used „Dear Akito,…“ he used the same sentence structure, he tried to utilize a variety of words that usually flows out of his mind whenever he had to write an assignment for school, but this time, it seemed like his brain was stuck, and his hand held back, like it was attached to a marionette string. So, the second piece of paper flew into the bin, then a third one, a fourth one, Toya was not satisfied with what he wrote.
He was certain that Akito deserved better. Paper ripping sounds filled the silence, soon replaced by heavy, frustrated breathing. Toya felt like he was going insane.
Why couldn't he find the right words? Writing used to be so simple for him, yet, he couldn‘t place any of his thoughts into the correct order, let alone write it down. He grabbed a new piece of blank paper, whispered a soft „sorry“ to it, like it could understand that Toya didn’t mean to use it, nor tear it apart.
A few kanjis were carefully written on the paper, then Toya crossed them out. He felt like it wasn’t enough. He could do better, so much better, considering his grades. So why does this time feel different?
He knew emotions weren’t exactly his strong suit, but he surely should manage putting some of his definable feelings into words. It was for Akito, afterall.
Toya burries his hands into his hair, gripping tight at those blue strands. This whole thing was wearing him out, and he didn‘t know why. The fountain pen was a cold, silver weight, an extension of his hand that had performed thousands of hours of Bach and Mozart without ever faltering.
But now, it felt alien. The sweat on Toya’s palm turned the polished barrel into something slick and uncontrollable. He watched, with a strange, detached horror, as his thumb began to twitch, the tendon in his wrist pulling tight like a piano wire about to snap.
He tried to command his fingers to tighten. Hold on. Just one more word. But the "marionette strings" he felt earlier didn't just pull; they severed.
Time seemed to liquefy. The pen didn't just fall; it tipped, the nib dragging across the word Akito and carving a jagged, black scar through the name. It was a final, unintentional act of violence against the only person he cared about.
Then, it was airborne. It tumbled through the sterile light of his desk lamp, silver flashes glinting like a falling blade. Toya tracked it with stormy eyes, his breath hitching in his throat, unable to even reach out to catch it. In that hollow second, the pen represented everything he was supposed to be: precise, expensive, and functional.
And it was falling.
It was succumbing to gravity, just as he was succumbing to the crushing weight in his chest. It struck the floor—not with a bang, but with a hollow, plastic clatter that echoed off the blue walls.
To Toya, it sounded like a gavel brought down in a silent courtroom. Guilty. The sound sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through his system, the final catalyst that pushed his hollow feeling into a sharp, piercing panic. The tool was gone. The words were gone. There was nothing left but the void in his heart and the rising heat in his lungs.
A small, mean voice started to whisper: “Look how useless you are, can’t even write a proper letter, let alone describe your emotions. You really are good for nothing, just like how your father always tells you-„
„Shut up“, Toya mutters.
“At least you have common sense because you left Akito. He sure will see the real, messed up you and abandon you anyways-„
„I said shut up“, Toya curses, this time increasing his volume.
„No wonder your family hates you, no wonder your father will never be proud of you, you will never be enough, you are just a useless, pathetic, messed up crybaby that can’t do anything right-„
„I SAID, SHUT-!“
A scream escaped his throat, the air suddenly becoming too thick, as if it ran out of oxygen. Glass shattered against the blue-painted wall.
The sound ringing in his ears, making him feel dizzy. His throat felt like closing up, as if he was trapped in a space that keeps pressuring down on him, pushing the air out of his lungs.
The room also didn't stay level. As the oxygen failed to reach his brain, the horizon of his desk tilted violently, the expensive wood grain blurring into a smear of mahogany.
His legs, which had stood through hours of grueling rehearsals and silent dinners, simply ceased to exist. They weren't his anymore; they were pillars of salt crumbling under the weight of a storm.
The descent felt agonizingly slow. He watched the floor rise—a vast, beige expanse of high-pile carpet that looked like a desert of static. When his knees finally struck, the sensation was jarringly "wrong."
There was no sharp spike of pain, only a heavy, muffled thud that vibrated through his kneecaps and echoed up into his pelvis. It felt like hitting the floor through a foot of water.
The carpet was supposed to be soft—a luxury chosen by his father to dampen the sound of footsteps in a house that demanded silence—but against Toya’s raw nerves, it felt abrasive.
The individual fibers pressed into his skin through his trousers, hundreds of tiny, synthetic needles that felt cold despite the room's heat.
He stayed there, anchored to the spot, his weight sinking into the foam padding beneath the rug. It was the only "real" thing left in a world that was turning to grey mist. He dug his fingers into the pile, clawing at the floor as if he could keep himself from floating away.
The texture was dry and dusty, the smell of industrial cleaner rising up to meet him—a sterile, lonely scent that reminded him of empty hallways and locked music rooms.
Being on his knees felt like a final surrender.
He was no longer a performer, no longer a partner, no longer a son. He was just a body, pinned to a beige rug by the sheer force of his own heartbeat, waiting for the floor to open up and swallow the mess he had become.
He lunged for a breath, but his lungs had turned into lead. He pulled at his hair, the sharp sting at his scalp the only thing tethering him to the room, but even that was fading.
The scream left his throat raw, but it didn't empty the pressure in his chest. If anything, the shattered glass on the floor looked like the state of his own mind - jagged, useless, and impossible to put back together.
„Breathe. Just breathe.“
He couldn't. The air felt like sandpaper. Each inhale hitched, caught in a throat that had swollen shut with the weight of all the words he couldn't write to Akito. His heart wasn't just racing; it was a frantic, irregular thudding that shook his entire frame, a trapped bird battering itself to death against his ribs.
The room continues to tilt. The blue walls - the color of his own hair, the color of his failures - seemed to bleed inward.
The "shut up" he wanted to scream remained trapped behind his teeth because he didn't have the oxygen to form the vowels.
Useless. Pathetic. Broken.
The voice was no longer a whisper; it was the rhythm of his pulse. His vision began to fray at the edges, eaten away by a creeping grey static. He reached out a hand, perhaps to steady himself or perhaps to reach for the bin of ruined letters, but his fingers were numb, tingling pins-and-needles needles that felt like they belonged to a stranger.
The papers on his desk didn't just fall from the impact of the glass being shoved from the table; they scattered like mocking white birds across the floor.
Toya stared at them, and for a moment, the silence of his room was louder than a scream. The sob started in his gut - a jagged, ugly thing that tore out of his throat before he could choke it back.
The floor was no longer a floor; it had become a swamp, pulling at his knees, anchoring him to the beige abyss of the carpet.
„Get up“, his mind hissed, a sharp command that felt like a whip crack against his skull.
„Get up, or you’ll stay here forever.“ Toya forced his weight onto his palms.
The tremors in his arms were so rhythmic and violent they felt like a mechanical fault. He could feel the pulse in his wrists thudding against the floorboards beneath the rug—thump, thump, thump—a frantic SOS that no one would hear.
He dragged one knee forward, the fabric of his trousers dragging against the carpet with a sound like a low growl. His world narrowed down to the corner of the mahogany shelf. It was his only hope for leverage.
He lunged for it, his hand trembling so badly that he missed the edge twice, his fingernails scraping against the polished wood with a screeching sound that set his teeth on edge.
Finally, his fingers hooked over the ledge. He pulled. But his center of gravity was gone. His head swam with a sudden, nauseating surge of vertigo, and instead of pulling himself up, his body lurched sideways.
His arm didn't act as a lever; it acted as a scythe. In one clumsy, unintended sweep, his forearm collided with the row of neatly aligned books.
Time fractured.
He watched in a daze as a heavy volume of Chopin’s nocturnes—the very book his father had used to drill him until his fingers bled—tipped forward. It caught the edge of a glass award, a cold, crystalline thing that Toya had never truly wanted.
Then came the avalanche.
The sound was a physical blow.
The books hit the floor with a series of heavy, muffled claps, sounding like the closing of a coffin lid. The glass award followed, meeting the hardwood edge beyond the carpet.
The shatter was high-pitched and silver, a thousand tiny shards exploding outward like frozen sparks. Toya recoiled, his back hitting the side of his bed, his breath coming in ragged, hitching gasps that felt like glass in his own lungs.
He stared at the carnage. The metronome had fallen too, its wooden casing cracked, the pendulum swinging one last, erratic time before falling silent. He had tried to climb, but all he had done was destroy.
The "mean voice" in his head didn't need to whisper anymore; it screamed in the silence that followed.
Look at what you do. You touch things and they break. You touch people and they leave.
The ink-stained letters were now buried under a graveyard of books and broken glass. He looked at his hands—the hands of a musician, now shaking and useless—and the last of his resolve disintegrated.
„I can’t do this“, he whispered to the empty room. „I'm done. I'm just done.“
But as the second sob rose, it didn't come out. It stayed lodged in his windpipe like a stone. Toya reached for a breath to fuel his crying, but his lungs felt like they had been shrink-wrapped. The grief vanished, replaced instantly by a primal, electric jolt of fear.
The room didn't just feel small; it felt pressurized. He tried to stand, but his legs were water, his knees hitting the carpet another time with a dull thud he barely felt.
„Wait“, he tried to think, but the word was drowned out by a rising static in his ears.
„Something is wrong. Maybe I am in the wrong, maybe I am the problem, I caused this mess, and this is my punishment“ He gripped the edge of the desk, his knuckles white and bloodless.
The air was right there - he could see the curtains moving in the draft - but no matter how wide he opened his mouth, his throat remained a sealed straw.
A cold, oily sweat broke out across his forehead. The edges of his vision began to fray into black lace, narrowing the world down to the frantic, useless rhythm of his own pulse.
Toya’s fingers clawed at his collar, trying to tear open a space for air that wasn't there. The panic had reached its screaming zenith; his heart was a frantic drumbeat against a ribcage that felt too small to contain it.
„I’m dying. The misery is ending“, he thought, the words a jagged loop in his mind as a tiny bit of hope crawled its way into his chest
„It’s happening now.“
Then, the peak broke. The frantic energy didn't leave him so much as it curdled. The sharp, electric terror suddenly turned heavy - viscous and cold.
The roar in his ears didn't stop, but it shifted, becoming a low, rhythmic drone like a distant jet engine. His room began to tilt. He watched his hand on the floor - a pale, shaking thing - and it felt like it belonged to someone else, miles away.
The dimmed lights overhead didn't just flicker; they began to bleed into the ceiling, the white light stretching into long, ghostly streaks.
"Please…stop…," he tried to say, but the word was a dry puff of air.
A wave of nausea rolled over him, followed by a strange, hollow coldness that started at the base of his skull and poured down his spine.
His vision narrowed. The edges of the room were swallowed by a creeping gray fog, leaving only the sight of his own trembling knees.
Then came the silence.
The frantic thudding of his heart slowed, not into a calm rhythm, but into a sluggish, heavy beat that seemed to echo in the back of his throat.
His head felt impossibly heavy, a weight his neck could no longer support. The floor didn't feel hard when he hit it. It felt like falling into deep water.
The gray fog turned to solid black, and the crushing weight of the last hour simply... vanished. Or perhaps he was sinking into it.
The last thing Toya saw before the world unplugged was the smear of black ink on his thumb - a permanent stain of a message that would never be sent.
Fortunately, his father never entered his room for a check up.