Ongaku Never Dies (Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) (Two-part)

Before Death

(A/N: I don't own the characters. All rights go to Naoshi Arakawa and A-1 Pictures.)

He wished he was at home.

He wished he could pass away among his sheet music; among their dusty smell and rustling pages that reminded him so much of his dear mother. Next to the piano that he had come to love again; the white and black pattern that he had memorized over time. The smooth keys and mahogany surface that reminded him so much of her.

Miyazono Kaori.

His hands, once smooth and unblemished, now shook with age when he placed them lovingly on the thin keys. Ivory and ebony. Like Yin and Yang.

He had refused to stop playing, no matter how much pain shot through his wrists. No matter how much his old bones creaked and popped. It was the last thing he had of her, and her memory flooded his tortured mind each time his knotted fingers flew. The notes consumed him, but he could see her. This was the only time he could see her. Her thin shoulders and beautiful eyes peering at him from over her violin.

Those same eyes haunted him where he lay in the hospital. There was no smell of paper and ink, of wood and ivory and ebony. There was only the smell anesthetics and the steady beep of the machines all around him. There was only the pinch of the I.V. in his paper-thin veins.

He hated hospitals. It seemed as though nearly everyone he loved had been taken from him in a hospital. He felt a need to cry, but no tears appeared. He was too old to be crying over something so simple as death. So he stared at the ceiling and prayed.

He prayed that he might see them again. He prayed that he could apologize to his mother. But most of all, he prayed that he could thank the girl that had changed his life for the better. For in truth, before she has come along, he had not been living.

The piano was a part of him, and he had denied it. But she...she was so stubborn. She refused to accept that he didn't want to touch that damn thing again. He smiled with nostalgia as he lay in the spotless room.

He had been far more resilient than his mother. He had never been in perfect health, but had lived far longer than she had. Perhaps he had subconsciously desired to live the life that Kaori never had a chance to. But he knew in his heart that if he died, he would see her again.

With that thought looming over his head and buzzing in his ear, living on became more and more difficult.

But he fought. He fought with everything he had to live for as long as he possibly could. He knew that if he didn't, and he saw her again in the afterlife, she would beat his ass for giving up. You coward! She would yell. You were supposed to live on for me!

So he lived. He lived for her. He trudged on, and music took over. No longer did he play mechanically. He played from his heart; he became an open book. His joy, his sorrow, his despair, passion, anger, livid and bright and beautiful.

He was stable. He would survive. He was tough and plain as the bark on the trees; but his emotions were raging and as twisted as the branches.

She had been beautiful. Everything about her had been divine. The emotions in her music had been just as prominent as his, but they stretched on to beyond her music; they were clear in her every move, every word, every smile or sob. She hid nothing, and she was radiant.

But her life had been short. Too brief. Far, far too brief. As beautiful and brief as the pink blossoms that adorned the cherry trees every year. But unlike them, she would never return. At least not in this life.

Everyone he loved had passed away. All his friends. Family. Mentors. Even his respected enemies. Kaori had unwittingly turned him into the most resilient of them all.

And he knew it was finally his time.

If one truly listened, they would have heard a violin playing in steady tempo with the old man's dissipating heartbeat.

In that moment, a tear did slip down his aged cheek. It rolled over his chin, down his neck, and on to the pale sheets beneath him. He smiled softly as he gazed at the fluorescent lights above. The monitor beeped one last time.

The rhythm of his heart disappeared, and became the steady drone that signifies death.

Although his heart's metronome was gone, the sound of the distant violin could still be heard.

All that could have witnessed its heart-wrenching notes in that moment would have been overwhelmed by the simplest emotion of all: joy.

I'm finally coming, Kaori.