Music for the Silence

Silent Past

"Shizuka-chan, are you okay?" Marina asked the frightened child.

Shizuka took a few moments to take in some calming breaths before nodding in response to her guardian.

"Can you tell me what happened between you two?" the adult then asked.

All the mute did was point at her poster.

"Your band recruitment poster? What about it?"

The night before, after returning to CiRCLE, Shizuka told Marina of Guren's history. The guardian was quite baffled upon hearing her condition and was just as worried as the others about the self-proclaimed cursed girl. When Shizuka came up with the idea of starting a girls band revolving around misunderstood people like Guren, Marina was all for it, and thus helped her in making the poster.

Shizuka picked up her notepad and wrote, "She doesn't want to join my band."

"Huh? She doesn't?" Marina asked, in which Shizuka shook her head in confirmation. "I see... If we think about it, it would make sense. If what Guren said about herself was true, then forcing her to join your band was a bad idea."

Shizuka looked down in thought at those words, then to her poster. As she stared at the list of current members, she thought back to her and Guren's session, as well as the girl's thoughts about music.

"Playing music doesn't have to be for fun. Even on your worse days, if you have your instrument and love music, you can still play. Even if you're by your lonesome, even if the world is against you, you still have music by your side."

"I know what it's like to be distanced from others, and not by choice. Outcasts like us, shunned away from the world, should stick together."

That was what Guren said, and yet... Shizuka wanted to go after her, talk her into forming a band with her, a band of outcasts. She wanted to go, but... just thinking of the glare she gave, a glare quite similar to that of her foster parents, sent a chill through the mute.

"You're bleeding!" Marina gasped, snapping Shizuka out of her thoughts, as the mute looked at her in confusion. "Your hand!" Marina took the mute's hand, revealing some blood smeared on her palm. "Did you scrape it when you fell? But, it doesn't look like there's a scratch on you."

As Marina said, there wasn't a scratch on the teen's hand. In fact, Shizuka didn't feel any sort of pain, and the blood wasn't her's. The mute's mind thought back to when Guren had pushed her, how she had let out a scream when she grabbed her arm. Even as she left, not only was she limping, but she even held her arm in pain. Adding the warning last night, it didn't take long for Shizuka to realize that this blood was from Guren, who was undoubtedly in pain, and the added mental stress didn't help.

"Shizuka-chan? Are you listening?" Marina called, getting the mute's attention once more. "Are you okay? In any pain?"

Shizuka only shook her head once more, as she grabbed her pen and book and ran after her co-worker, to her manager's surprise.

"Eh? Wait, where are you going?!"

******

Back to Guren, she was at a park, rinsing her arm by the water fountain, allowing the cold water to soothe the pain and wash some of the blood off. As she cleaned her arm, Guren thought back to what happened back at the live house... and was especially disappointed with herself.

'Why did I do that...?' she wondered. 'She was only trying to help, I'm sure. And yet... She didn't deserve that.'

Guren turned the water off and was about to dry her arm, when she felt nothing in her pocket. "Huh? Where's my-? Oh, right," she muttered, recalling handing her handkerchief to Shizuka the night before for the mute's injury. "Guess I'll just air dry this."