Work Text:
“Music and rhythm find their way into
the secret places of the soul”
– Plato
It’s on Neku’s 11th birthday that the song first comes to haunt him.
He hears its notes when he is walking past the Udagawa back streets on his way home from school. Neku’s blue eyes dart around to the nearby stores, particularly eyeing the Cyco record store. Yet only loud raucous rock emits from its open doors, mixing in with the rap from the neighboring Wild Boar store.
So much more shallow and harsh than what Neku hears.
The song that he hears pulls at him – the soft sweeping sounds of a violin, the sharp tinkling of bells laughing joyously at everything. The music seems to skim across his mind, the barest brush of butterfly wings. A seemingly inconsequential result of Neku’s bright imagination.
Yet the mythical beating of butterfly wings can alter everything.
The song increases in complexity as Neku goes through his first year of Junior High; evolving from those few notes sung from violins and bells to an entire orchestra. French horns twining with cellos to act as a serenade to Neku’s dull life. The tinkling of bells still echo in the song though now they’re softer, more spread apart and threaten to disappear into silence. Lately the song seems to be moving into a calando as if its life is leeching away.
After being haunted by the sound for so long, Neku elects to study music in an attempt to understand it. Or write it down so he has physical proof that he can share with his fellow peers and show them he’s not crazy. He learns about the different chords and their progressions. He listens and analyses musicals. He watches his classmates compose and create songs that are patchworks of tunes he’s heard before.
So he tries to write down the music that echoes in his mind. The melody of the violin at first, yet every time he puts pen to paper or a finger to an instrument it comes out all wrong. Too sharp, too flat. The wrong note or chord. The key isn't right and the entire song’s meter crumbles into dissonance as Neku takes his frustration out on the instruments.
He never touches another instrument again.
Neku follows the siren call of the song all around Shibuya.
Sometimes it’s clearer near the Hachiko statue, other times when he’s shopping at Jupiter of the Monkey. It quickly becomes his favourite clothing store. His trailing after the echoes of sound lead him to favouring spots such as under the Station Underpass as well as the intersection between A-East & Dogenzaka. Neku is often tempted to go into Pork City but it’s too prestigious for a middle class kid like him so he simply hovers as close to it as possible.
Neku knows this behaviour is unhealthy – this knowledge is reinforced by the whispers that follow him at school. All the dull boring sheep that populate his Junior High are mindless and annoying. A few are nice, smart and occasionally original. But they don’t understand.
And sometimes Neku doesn't want them too. It feels too personal now, like it’s become a part of him. A deep integral part that if ripped away will cause a system collapse.
Besides, Neku doesn’t really want to understand them either.
When Neku leaves Shibuya one time it’s as if he’s entered into a soundproof room. The music is gone. It’s only the ambience of city life that greets him, his mind for once silent.
The silence is so loud with his screams tearing through it.
He hates Sundays and Mondays because that’s when Neku can barely hear the music. Sundays it’s too drawn out and quiet whereas Mondays it sounds muted. Those days Neku either lives in his favourite spots or simply curls into the fetal position on his bed and attempts to sleep it off. This routine becomes habit for Neku’s second year of Junior High, only interrupted by his half-hearted attempts to socialise and hang out with friends.
He talks with them during class and lunch, but never sees them outside of school. He’s too busy. Too caught up in this haunting melody with its seductive tones and caressing rhythm. It’s as he ages that the music starts to call to him in this way, beckoning him in this carnal way. Yet it is not how his body responds but his soul: it tugs him higher and higher like a kite on the wind. His soul soars with the music, the notes plucking at his breast and echoing in his bones.
It is Elysium – a paradise that Neku yearns to journey to. It is Avalon in its removed paradisiacal glory; a world for higher beings. When Neku surrenders himself to the music it is as if he reaches enlightenment. Perfection.
He is whole.
It’s third year that quickly becomes the worst. The song is changing still and his tentative friendships become tenuous. The vicious rumours about Neku being crazy and hearing music in his head reaches the point that even his supposed best friend is standing before him now with eyes that betray his suspicion and ill-ease at being near Neku.
“Neku… I think you need help”
So Neku drifts away, broken, until it is just him and the haunting sound of this bittersweet music.
By the time Neku is in his last year of Junior High the tempo seems to have dropped to half its original pace. He hopes that the song is just ridiculously long and its meter remains the same. That it will return to its original soft joyous tones. Although he still loves it for all the discord within it now. Its rhythm is what guides Neku through this teenage hell called Junior High.
Every afternoon he stands at the Udagawa mural painted by CAT. As he tries to find the answers to the haunting sound in his mind, he returns to this place where it all began. There, sometimes he is lucky enough to hear the occasional piano piece in his mind to accompany it; the music’s own non-sequitur. Proof that the song is still growing and not dying. Its struggling growth reaches its climax one afternoon when he is standing there.
How ironic that when the melody finally reaches a crescendo Neku dies.