KANON

#19 - Your Beloved Voice

Kanon

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Your Beloved Voice

-Itoshii kimi no Voice-

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DONT FORGET TO FOLLOW, VOTE AND COMMENT DESU~

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It was the eleventh of Earth's month called December. Winter, as they called it, and incredibly cold outside. The snow turned my black hair white as I walked towards the huge bricked building in the centre of the City.

A hospital.

In that tall building, on the seventh floor, laying in room 35712, would be a boy of about eleven years old, with golden hair, tied up in a small ponytail at the back of his head, and the deepest emerald eyes you can imagine.

I knew this and that his name was Len, and someone had tried to kill him. "It's their fault." The boy had repeated to himself for minutes. Then he had told me "they" would hit him, sometimes even using knifes to hurt him.

"And now they put this sticky stuff all over me and-"

That "and-" worried me. It still does, because he refuses to tell me. Up until today I don't know what came after "and-".

I can only guess.

It had been three weeks since. The medics had already given up hope, saying that even if he woke up now, nothing would be left of him. And that was, if he woke up.

With my father dying in front of me, and a mother who drowned herself while we were at a party soon after that, the thought of having to go to a hospital to find out I lost yet another life I could've saved if I had been more observant, was not such a pleasant one.

But I went anyway.

When I came to the door I found the bed I had seen the boy lay in just two days ago empty. Stumbling back out the room I checked the number: 35712.

'Where is he?' I managed to ask a medic passing by after I caught my breath again. Yet, the medic didn't know.

Stumbling over my feet I walked down the stairs soon after, twisting my ankle twice before I reached the fifth floor, and decided it would be better to sit down somewhere and wait for me to regain my balance.

As I sat there I watched people passing by. This was a Ferae-Hospital. All patients and medics are Ferae. No humans are walking the paths and hallways in and out of rooms. It's almost sickening to think about it. They have their own hospitals, like we carry diseases or something.

A small girl with grey horns walked by, then stumbled. A boy of her length rushed over, his head adorned by the ears of a dog. But instead of asking the girl if she was alright he started moving his hands and arms in patterns, on which the girl in return did the same, but with different movements.

She was deaf, I realized after seeing their silent conversation.

And that's when I heard it.

Someone playing a piano in an deserted and unpleasant building like that. Someone played a tune so entrancing, I saw patients coming out of their rooms, soon followed by medics, family members, friends of hospitalized, all drawn in by that simple tune.

It wasn't even complicated, just packed with feelings, I suppose. Just that seemed to be enough to bring small smiles to the faces of children walking out their rooms with broken bones, lost arms or immobilization.

It seemed even the deaf girl could hear it somehow.

And when I finally found the room the tune was coming from it was already packed, and I couldn't see anything from behind the crowd. Just hear it, the way that person's hands seemed to slide over the keys like sliding over silk, and the tune those fingers created out of thin air.

After a while the tune turned into one more complicated, an actual song, and someone started singing.

A song sung in high notes, and a language I recognized as the dead language of my ancestors, the language called Japanese.

Now that isn't my first language, but I could still understand about half of the words. Something a fusion reactor and strangling someone, but the song itself sounds sweet, like a lullaby. Very contradictory.

Halfway down the song people started to walk away slowly, the song's focus started to fade, it seemed no one liked what they heard anymore. Yet no one told the player to stop.

As more and more people started to leave I noticed a small crack in the crowd, and I staggered towards it trying to find a place more toward the piano playing person.

When I finally got him into view I only remember gasping. The boy I had seen half dead only days ago had his blonde hair tied up with green lace, forming a small ribbon at the back of his head. His white face I had seen plastered in sweat now showed a small smile as his fingers traced along the keys like he was playing air instead of a piano.

It was simply enchanting, that face.

But Len wasn't the one singing, and as I looked around I saw that there was no one singing, yet I heard it. It must have been someone I couldn't see.

I come from a family of priests and exorcists. I've heard of people capable of hearing voices of things they can't see, or people feeling things that touch them and people that can see those who can't be seen by others.

Apparently it's in my blood, my sisters would later say. But I'm sure it's in his too. He was smiling brightly when he opened his eyes. Smiling at someone he could see, but I couldn't.

'It's quite funny, isn't it?' Ritsu says quietly, looking at Len's sleeping form instead of Akira. 'I'm supposed to be a priest, yet I can only hear spirits.'

Akira doesn't speak, he only looks back at the man in front of him. He's grown since the last time he saw him. Not only physically, mentally too. He's gotten warmer somehow. Caring, more "alive" in some way.

'Before that, you were suicidal.' Akira suddenly speaks, and the words seem to mentally hit the Archer in the head. Ritsu doesn't speak for a long while, but when he turns around his eyes seem different. A tiny glow, a dancing flame almost, seems to radiate from them. Intriguing, is the only word that fits his gaze.

'Not anymore.'

Not anymore. Because he needs me, and I need him by my side in return. I remember his gaze when he told me where he lived. Where he didn't actually...

He was staring out the window, looking around in the small garden around the hospital, watching silently, but not seeing anything.

'Where I live?' He had looked confused at the question, like he never heard the words before. 'Nowhere.' He had finally answered pointing at the street.

'Don't you have any family?' The boy had shaken his head, still standing with his back to the Archer. 'Never.' They had probably died before he could remember them. In a second, without actually making the decision, Ritsu had made his final choice.

'Then come live with me.'

At this the boy had turned around. Dumbfounded he had stared back at him, like the words themselves didn't make any sense. They didn't, actually. The archer had never planned to take the kid into his home, hell, never even considered it in the first place, but it felt right.

'I took him in. That's all. He had nowhere else to go, so I took him in.'

Akira simply smiles.

'Why exactly? Tell me, why exactly did you take him in?'

'I said-'

'But that's not the only reason, and you know it.'

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DONT FORGET TO FOLLOW, VOTE AND COMMENT DESU~

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