Colours [MASHIKYU]

8 - A brief history of Hamada Asahi

When Mashiho tells him to try it, singing what he can't say, something clicks inside Asahi.

Asahi is not mute. Some of the others think he is, but his friends know that he's not. They've never heard him talk, and none of them can quite explain how they know he isn't mute, but to them it is obvious. Maybe it's because he wouldn't be here if he was just mute.

Asahi has not spoken since he was six. When he was six, his father divorced his mother. His mother was very, very unhappy. His mother was not stable. Asahi knew something was wrong with her, that she was not like other mothers. She didn't send him to school. Some days, it was like she completely forgot she had a son. Asahi would eat whatever was in the fridge, run himself a bath that was always too hot, too cold, too deep or too shallow, wake himself up and put himself to bed. On the days she remembered him, he would try to talk to her, ask her if she was okay, or even dare to ask something for himself. Every time he spoke, she would hit him. She did not want to hear anything he had to say. Her son was a constant reminder of what she'd lost, and what she'd been left with. Eventually, Asahi just stopped talking. If he didn't talk, his mother couldn't hit him. This continued for a year before one of the neighbours heard Asahi's mother screaming at him one day, and called the police. Then social services got involved. Asahi was taken from his mother, but still, he would not talk.

They believed Asahi just needed time to recover from the trauma, but he didn't talk for weeks. Months. Years. He wanted to, he tried, but he just could not form the sounds. Every time he thought of speaking, the pain came screaming back to him.

They tried sending him to school and he was unresponsive. He was unresponsive in his several different foster homes. Blank face. No words. No anything. And he ended up here. He was medicated every day, sent to counselling (which was really just a counsellor talking at him) to try and fix the crippling depression he was driven into and perhaps get him to speak, but nothing worked.

And then Mashiho said to try singing what he can't say. Singing. Asahi hasn't tried that before. If he couldn't speak, how could he sing?

But when Mashiho leaves, he tries it. And he can. He sings and sings and sings until his throat is raw. His voice cracks, shakes, unpracticed, but in his voice he carries all the emotions and thoughts that have built up over nearly his entire life.

The next day, he will sing. The next week, he will sing. The staff will be amazed. It's working! They'll say. The medication is finally working!

But the array of exotically named pills is not the reason that Asahi will smile, it's because he found out that he can sing what he can't say.