Muted

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Yuzuru Hanyu was older than he looked.

His baby face made you think he was just a few years older than you, but you were mistaken—he was nearly seven. However, what his face didn't reveal, his stories certainly did. And for the next month, he shared those stories with you almost every evening in the secrecy of his apartment.

It soon became clear that Yuzuru Hanyu was not the model citizen you thought he was.  He didn't just remember the war—he remembered what came before it.  And his stories made you reconsider everything you thought you knew about life.

He spoke of a time when people lived without the shadow of government fear, free to chase their wildest dreams.  He painted vivid pictures of a world overflowing with art, sport, and education, a place where the pursuit of happiness was a daily adventure.  

At times, his stories were hard to grasp, for he spoke of a world so different from the one you knew. Yet, they captivated you. And when he shared secrets you were sure he had never revealed to another soul, something inside you began to change, especially when he confessed that he had stopped taking the Daily Supplements years ago, when he started to feel the memories of his family slipping away.

His eyes sparkled as he told you how his mother's laugh lived on in his heart, and at that point you knew you would carry his secrets to your grave. And when his face softened as he spoke of his father's wisdom and his sister's playfulness, it was such a tender sight that you knew you would return here many more times, just for the chance to see it again.

"What about your family?" he asked one night, as you both sat on the creaky floorboards of his living room.

For the first time ever, probably, you wished there was something about the past you could share with another.  A memory, a story, anything unique to who you were, like he did—but there was nothing.

"I... I don't remember them."

After a moment of silence, he whispered, "I'm sorry."

You studied his features.  His eyes were soft and looking at you in a way you had never seen someone look at you, as if he cared about your life, cared about you. It was startling, but yet, you couldn't look away.

"Don't be," you whispered back.

"I mean, I'm sure you wish you remembered your family," he urged.

You bit your lip, pondering.

Never before had you felt remorse over losing your family—at least, not that you could remember. You knew many had lost their families during the war and accepted it at a young age, being taught that they were casualties, a necessary evil to maintain peace.  And, like a model citizen, you took your Daily Supplements, accepting their side effect of memory loss as just another sacrifice.

But hearing his stories about his family made you reconsider.

Perhaps you also had a family that loved you, much like he did. Perhaps you had a mother whose laugh was infectious, a father who knew all the world's secrets, and a sister who wore flower dresses. Perhaps you had a family whose memory alone was enough to make you risk everything. Perhaps those memories and the risk taken to keep them made life... meaningful.

Was there anything meaningful about your life?

Your lips turned downward, beyond your control. Simultaneously, it felt like something heavy had settled on your chest, pressing down with an unyielding weight.

"Are you okay?" his voice was gentle.

Your hand froze on your chest, where it had been rubbing soothingly, as if the motion could ease the foreign sensation forming there.

Before you could look too deeply into the meaning of your actions, he was kneeling in front of you, holding out his earbuds and Monitor.

"I have something to cheer you up," he said softly.

You eyed the items, the ones the Regime distributed to the citizens for news dispersion, unsure why he was handing them to you. There was nothing about this moment that made you want to listen to the Regime's broadcast. In fact, you were beginning to question why it was necessary to listen to it at all.  Everything about this situation was making that heaviness in your chest worse.  You sighed, pushing his hand away. "I already listened to the news cast this evening."

He smiled, confusing you, before pressing the earbuds into your ears without waiting for your permission.

"What are you—" Your protests were silenced by a gentle finger to your lips.

"Shhh," he murmured, "Just listen."

Then, he placed an item you had never seen before onto his Monitor—a small black box that seemed to be magnetic. He fiddled with it for a moment, his smile growing, before he turned on the Monitor with a soft click. The strange chime you'd heard by the lake rang into your earbuds once again.

After a few seconds, you realized it wasn't a chime at all.

Notes filled your ears, and then they filled your heart.

In that moment, a space opened up between the walls that had long kept your emotions at bay. The notes felt like a gentle touch, a whisper, or a soft breeze, yet it held the power of thunder and crashing waves. It pressed against your walls, gradually wearing them down like a lake reshaping the shore, until they filled your heart like the rising tide.

Your eyes met his. 

"Is this... music?" you breathed.

"You have never heard before, right?" he asked, watching your reaction closely.

You definitely would have remembered if you had heard this before.

This was beautiful, stunning, moving—words you had only ever read about but had never truly understood.

"How could this be illegal?" you wondered aloud, thinking back to the patients you had once called insane for risking imprisonment just to listen to music, to hear contraband. "I was told that music was banned after we won the war for the good of the people. How is this bad for us?"

He didn't answer your question. Instead, he asked one of his own. "Did we win the war?"

That one question set off a cascade of others in your mind. But, you didn't get to ask any of them, his fingers wiping them away, along with the tears that had unknowingly fallen on your cheeks. 

You looked at him in disbelief, his question slipping from your mind as you struggled to grasp the reality that you, you, the model citizen was crying.

"I'm... I'm not sad," you rasped, trying to make sense of what was happening. You thought back to the medical books you had read, the countless prisoners you had chastised for showing the same vulnerability, and tried to reconcile those memories with what you were experiencing now.

Yuzuru shifted until he was sitting directly across from you, his knees gently brushing against yours as you both sat on the floor.

"Not all tears are because you are sad," he whispered, his touch moving up your arm to cradle your cheek, brushing away the lingering droplets. "You can cry out of happiness and laugh through your sadness.  You might feel excitement and fear at the same time, or find relief by expressing your pain.  It is these contradictions that make us human," he paused, his gaze deepening as it drifted to the floor beneath him.

You watched him with new eyes, as if suddenly seeing the world—and him—for the first time.

He continued, his voice so soft you could barely hear, "Some emotions are so simple, but yet so profound that they make us willing to risk everything."

"Anything?" you asked, your voice trembling slightly.

"Yes, anything."

"Which ones are those?" you asked, innocently.

"Hope, and," he began, "and..." He let the word hang in the air, before his eyes locked with yours, "Love."

Your breath caught in your chest, air stolen from your lungs.  Yet, the heaviness there finally dissipated. 

That night, as your eyes held his and you listened to Ballad No. 1 in G minor, your heart skipped one too many beats, and you knew there was no turning back.