juilliard|hq

intro no.3: akaashi

  He has been waiting his whole life for this.

  "Mom, I have some good news," Akaashi Keiji says as he quietly wakes his sleeping mother, who has been sick in bed for 79 days.
  "Hi, Keiji," the woman says quietly, and in her head, she takes her son's hand. In her head, she steps out of bed and makes him a bowl of soup and watches her son and her daughter dance in their living room with their father. In her head, she tells her husband that he doesn't need to go get more bread from the store before they close for Christmas; that her daughter doesn't need to go with him to pick out some treats. In her head, they both stayed at home, safely, alive. In her head, the roads didn't ice over that night, and they came home for dinner. In her head, it wasn't just her and Keiji left.
 
  "I got in," her son says to her, and Akaashi's mother, his hero, and his heart, had never been so happy since the accident. Her cheeks that had once been rosy lifted into a big smile, and her eyes squinted the way that they do- something she had passed down to her son. Akaashi had always liked his smile for that.
  "Congratulations, Keiji. I am so proud of you," she says, and Akaashi blooms.

  He has been waiting his whole life for this.

  "But, Mom," Akaashi says, "I don't know if I can go. I can't leave you here." The woman in front of him loses her smile and in her head, she tells him that she can take care of herself just fine, but in her head, Akaashi's mother is not sick and dying from being so tired. She is healthy. But she is healthy enough to tell the inside of her head from reality, and they both agree that her son is right.
  "I'll be okay here, Keiji." she still says to him, and she's lying because her son still had a glint of hope left, and she's tired of keeping him in this old house. Because this house is nothing but memories and sick, with empty rooms with beds that still haven't been made, toys that were never picked up, suit jackets never hung in the closet. It had been years since the accident, and their house is still trying to stay alive.

  Akaashi packs a suitcase but he knows that he's not going anywhere. He knows he can't leave his mother, his sick, sick, sad mother. Instead, he returns back to her bedroom and sits on the bench of her grand piano, which had been his home for the last ten years.
  "What are you in the mood for today?" he asks her, setting his hands on the keys.
  "Play me something in C major," the woman replies, "make me remember my birthday."

  Akaashi takes a breath before playing a simple melody, one of which resembles the crooked notes that came out of the blue music box that his father had made for his mother for her birthday the year before the accident. She had not had any birthdays since then. Akaashi wondered if she was getting older with age or if sadness had just been drawing the wrinkles on her face and weakening every part of her.

  Akaashi had been seven, just starting piano lessons that year. He had helped his father make the box by constructing the music that would go inside: his first real bonding time with his father. One of his last.
  The day of, his father had given the music box to his wife as a gift from him and his two children. They danced to it all night, swaying in the living room while Akaashi and his sister watched in awe. The first time Akaashi saw real love. The first time he felt that love could be expressed through music.

  As the melody continues, Akaashi starts adding technique to the phrases, improvising a new song that he had dreamed about for years after his mother's birthday. And for every C note he played he saw them as the repetition of tears falling down his mother's face, the same tears, the same look of empty and tired and dying and empty and tired and dying and dying and everybody's dying and his sister is still dying and his father has been dying for ten years he has been dying for ten years-
  and he slams down the keys on C Major and lays his head down on the keys, sobbing again like he has for the past ten years.

  In her head, Akaashi's mother apologizes for making him relive such a surreal moment that he will never have again. He will never have to cry on her old piano again. She tells him to go to Juilliard, his school of his dreams and somewhere that is not this empty, sick, dying house.
  In Akaashi's head, he tells her that he needs to take care of her. But instead, the words "I will write to you until I can write no more" leave his lips.