Chapter Text
God, Kanade’s tired. She woke up early in the afternoon—as is usual for her—and got ready to go to therapy. Afterward, since she was already in the area, she went to visit her father. To Kanade’s delight, today was one of his better days. The father and daughter had a conversation about their recent lives. He complained about one of the younger caretakers in the housing (something about how that caretaker liked to enforce his own idea of how to organize the living space despite what each patient might prefer). She shared some of her group’s recent songs with him. He remembered and asked about Kanade’s housemate, Mafuyu. After she cleared the joyful tears in her eyes, Kanade told him about how Mafuyu seemed excited to start a nursing program after her gap year. Their conversation lasted until a nurse came in for nightly checkups, and Kanade noticed the sun starting to set. As much as she preferred the nighttime, she did not want to be walking around a dark city alone as a petite girl. She hugged him goodbye and left for the train station.
When Kanade pulled her phone out to buy her train ticket, she noticed a new message from Mafuyu, asking her to pick up some honeycrisp apples and dark brown sugar on her way back. Kanade sent a message confirming that she would.
And now, walking out of the grocery store a few blocks from their home, Kanade is exhausted. She feels kind of silly for being so tired after what was truly not much, but in her defence, she usually only runs one errand or completes one task per day. She texts Mafuyu to let her know they were out of stock of the affordable sugar, and that the employees told her they would be getting a new shipment in the morning. Then, as Kanade drops her phone into her left-back pocket, she sees movement at the edge of her vision.
She jerks her head up to look in the direction of the movement, but can’t see anything out of the ordinary. Anxiously, Kanade takes her phone back in her hand, navigating to Mafuyu’s contact menu in case she needs to make a discreet call. As two young girls living together, Kanade and Mafuyu agreed that they would only make calls like this—one with no warning and through the actual phone app on their phones instead of Nightcord—in case of emergencies. Their agreement was that whoever picked up would wait for the one calling to speak before saying anything back, to make sure potential threats weren’t alerted.
With her safeguard in place, Kanade starts speed-walking. After a few steps, she hears a whoosh to her left. Her grip on her phone tightens.
She suddenly feels herself being shoved into the corner on her right. Kanade yelps and quickly manages to press the button to call Mafuyu before a sharp pain bursts from the front of her neck and she feels nearly every single one of her muscles freeze in place.
‘Oh god.’
The girl can’t move at all. She tries to wiggle out of the attacker’s arms, to kick them, to scream for help. She wants to look at the person latching on to her, to figure out why their teeth are biting into her throat with so much strength, but her eyes won’t listen to her brain. She feels her tote bag and phone fall to the floor. Warm blood runs down her neck and chest, staining the beautiful white blouse a friend had just sent her. Kanade realizes said blood is her own, that it’s gushing from her neck, that the amount she can sense on her body is too much. The attacker makes a grunting sound, and at the back of her confused and horrified mind, Kanade notes that this person sounds like a man.
He keeps biting down, sinking teeth deeper into her throat. The adrenaline now rushing through Kanade’s veins somewhat dulls the pain, but she’s getting lightheaded. She can feel her body getting significantly weaker with each passing second. Faintly, the sound of rustling reaches her ears from her phone. Kanade hopes Mafuyu is coming to help.
Kanade doesn’t know how much time has passed when the perpetrator lets go. It simultaneously feels like just a few seconds and countless days. When he disconnects, she’s able to move again, but she only manages to lift her head before her legs give out and she crumples onto cold, stained concrete. She thinks she sees unnaturally long, threateningly sharp canines retreat into the man’s mouth, but her vision is getting quite blurry and he’s turning away already, so she thinks she’s probably imagining it. She makes a pathetic attempt to scream, yell, make any noise to alert anyone nearby, but nothing more than a painful gargle comes out.
Her frail arms fail to keep her propped up. She stares at the wall in front of her as the man makes his full escape before she can try to memorize his face.
Now that she’s alone, though, Kanade realizes it would probably be pointless. She can feel her consciousness slipping away and her heart slowing down. Is this it for her, then?
It’s kind of funny. Just a few years ago, this would’ve been a dream come true for her. She probably would’ve had no will to escape back then—not that she would’ve had the strength to, even if she did.
‘That’s just the way things go, I guess.’
Actually, life has been really kind to her recently. She was admitted into a psychiatric ward a couple of years ago after a failed attempt at taking her life. Kanade had been pretty upset at the time. As she saw it back then, her only options in life were to keep composing or to die. However, as a minor, it’s not like she could sign herself out and leave. The hospital itself didn’t help her much, but it did get her to finally acknowledge she shouldn’t (and couldn’t) keep living like that.
Shortly after being discharged, she (somewhat forced by her grandmother and housekeeper) sought out a psychiatrist and therapist. Around that time, her close online friend, Yuki, mentioned wanting to move out of her parents’ house after high school and cut her mother off. Kanade offered her a place to live while she tried to find a job and an apartment. Eventually, the two found they worked very well as housemates, so Kanade added Asahina Mafuyu to the lease. Kanade thought back at the memory of Mafuyu signing the contract with fondness. It was the second biggest thing Mafuyu had ever done that directly opposed her mother’s wishes; the first was taking an indefinite amount of time after high school to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Mafuyu found small joy in both helping Kanade with her music and also working at a local café.
During Kanade’s healing journey, she realized she was in no state (mental, physical, or financial) to care for her father, despite him being cleared to leave the hospital soon. After many long, tearful conversations, both she and her father agreed to have him live in housing for patients with dementia. It was only about a 20-minute train ride from her house, and she visited at least once a week.
Speaking of healing, Kanade was glad she had been able to heal her relationship with composing. She found out Mafuyu was an incredibly talented lyricist and vocalist, so Kanade asked if she would collaborate with her to make a few songs. Mafuyu agreed. After releasing their first song written together (under Kanade’s producer name, K), an online friend of Mafuyu’s, with the screen name Enanan, reached out to the two girls and asked if she and another girl, Amia, could make an animated short inspired by the song. Kanade didn’t know much about visual art at the time, but she could tell that that artist—Enanan—clearly held both respect and determination for the craft. She was amazing at using color and composition to instill feeling in the viewer. The video was animated beautifully, with a lot of intricate details that Kanade and Mafuyu both agreed brought out the deeper meaning of the song. They asked Enanan and Amia if they would be willing to work on more of their songs with them, and so, about half a year ago, the prolific, anonymous music group, Nightcord at 25:00, was born.
All that to say, Kanade’s life is really good right now. After nearly six years of constant self-hatred and agony, she’s finally making it out the other side. Life still isn’t perfect, obviously. She’s still very prone to overworking herself. She forgets to eat most days, and sometimes Mafuyu has to practically carry her from her desk to the dining table to eat. She’s content, though.
Which kinda sucks, since Kanade can feel that life slipping away from her. Her field of vision is clouded by black fog on the edges and she can’t hear anything. Her neck hurts so bad. It kind of makes her glad she’s dying now so she won’t have to bear that pain much longer.
Ah, she never got to ask Mafuyu out on that date she wanted to go on. And she didn’t get to see Enanan’s final artwork for their upcoming song. Amia was going to tell her something when she got home. Kanade hopes it wasn’t too important.
Kanade thinks she might be too calm, but it’s hard for her to feel anything very strongly at this moment. The few thoughts she does have are scattered and light. At least she got to see her dad smile today.
With that gentle thought, Yoisaki Kanade dies.