Requiem - Dies irae Chapter 12

[shivalries]

Season: Winter

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[Downtown]

Tsukasa: (I sometimes listened to that CD when I felt I’d lost my way, and I still do even now.)

(I listened whenever I felt my parents had scolded me unfairly. Whenever I harbored tiny doubts about the traditions and customs handed down from ages past.)

(Whenever I made shameful mistakes that would’ve been forgiven and laughed away for other children, but not for Tsukasa Suou.)

(I listened to the melodies of that pitiful person so different from myself, who cried and screamed and told me not to become like him, to live without regrets.)

(By listening to the music of someone so much more unfortunate, was I simply trying to feed my ego? Or did I take pleasure in looking down on those at the bottom, knowing there were people even lower than myself?)

(I was blessed with my upbringing, always dressed in clothes of the highest quality. I spent my days being loved, never once having to taste a bitter setback.)

(Always a clever and well-mannered boy, I was able to conduct myself in the way the adults expected me to.)

(But…I was even more miserable than the man I ran into that day, the one who’d fallen into ruin. I was struck with the feeling that I still hadn’t managed to grasp my own life within my hands.)

(It felt like my sole purpose was to be polished to perfection only to be sent out into the ranks one day to die-- an existence as empty as the antiques scattered throughout the mansion.)

(I felt I had truly “lost”, not only to Tori-kun, but to everyone in the entire world.)

(And, within my heart, I screamed-- frustrated and sorrowful, ugly and grating to the ears, but choked with emotion like the song that I’d heard.)

(My king, my king! How I hate you and yet love you! How distasteful, and yet how beloved!)

(Ah… Was the “king” that man sang of…actually “himself” all along?)

(I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I’d felt a strange sense of understanding… The conflicting emotions inside of me echoed to the rhythm of that fractured song.)

(And then, I felt calm.)

(Awash in the beautiful, healing melody, I realized that there were others who felt the same jumbled and chaotic emotions that I did, and my loneliness eased.)

(Who could that idol have been? It feels like I may have even dreamed him, someone and yet no one at all, a figure conjured within my confused mind…)

(Just the other day, Sena-senpai told me about the long, bloody path Knights had once left in its wake.)

(The pieces lined up. It’s like I’ve finally found something close to an answer for the questions I’ve held onto for many years.)

(That pitiful man who reeked of alcohol once betrayed his friends to fulfill his selfish desires…and, as if the gods themselves were out to punish him, he ultimately failed, his dreams were shattered, and he became a shadow of the idol he once was.)

(He must have been one of the defeated…out of countless others like him.)

(My surroundings were always curated with only things of beauty. People like that rarely--if ever--entered my field of existence.)

(But there must be a great number of them. …No, as long as I pursue my dreams, even I may end up creating many just like him.)

(In this chaotic world we live in, perhaps it is impossible to move ahead without stepping on the backs of others.)

(Is it right to continue pushing ahead even so? The clever and obedient little Tsukasa Suou would never have chosen such a path.)

(He probably would have gracefully avoided dirtying his hands, and spent his time in a paradise where nothing could hurt him.)

(All the while living in ignorance as Tori-kun looked upon him once more with pity.)

(And yet that would have been sufficient for him. He’d have been happy enough.)

(However, that melody resounds forever in my ears, and even now, I remain lost inside my own heart…)

(Ever so slightly, my gaze began to drift from the beautiful scenery that had been laid out before my eyes.)

(Just like when I took a little detour and burst into the scene of that dimly lit bar…)

(I started having doubts and questions after learning of things I didn’t know. Perhaps I wanted to clear away those doubts that had built up in my heart.)

(So, with the excuse of accompanying Tori-kun, I visited Yumenosaki Academy as a junior high school student.)

(For some reason, the adults around us thought we were best friends…)

(And perhaps they had hoped that, at the very last moment, I would be able to persuade him to change his mind.)

(However, we had a fight before even reaching the front gates, and we ended up going separate ways…)

(Boiling like an angry kettle, I said I just couldn’t stand him anymore and tried to go home in a huff.)

(But as I turned to go back, I thought I heard a familiar melody.)

(It wasn’t my imagination. That same song the pitiful, fallen idol from the past had been singing was now echoing from all around me.)

(I began to wander as if in a dream, searching for the source of that music.)

(The melody was flowing in from every which way. If I had listened very carefully, I wouldn’t have ever thought it was the same song…)

(But at the time, it sounded the same to me.)

(Now that I think about it, perhaps it was one of Leader’s songs? I heard he used to freely give them out to others with no cost.)

(Or perhaps it was inspired by his music, at the very least. I heard it drifting in from all around the school.)

(Just a little ways away from where they were spouting pretty lies to draw in applicants…)

(I saw countless doors lined up in the hallways here and there. From behind them, I heard the voices of students.)

(Some were hiding in places few people passed, quietly and secretly humming the songs as if indulging in a guilty pleasure.)

(Some had tucked themselves away all alone in the smallest restroom corners, too far in for students to bother cleaning, the tiles still smelling faintly of dirt and grime.)

(The melodies that left their lips were muddled and wretched, but also beautiful.)

(I began to feel this very act was more sacred and precious than anything else, more than eating, more than breathing—I was intoxicated.)

(Then, among those echoing voices, one stood out, sweeter than all the rest.)

(No, looking back, it may have been ragged and anguished, a voice so filled with grief one could not compliment it even as a courtesy.)

(But the moment it reached my ears, I felt my heart quicken.)

(I drew closer, as if in a trance…and I came upon several people singing and dancing around a large stone, which I would later learn was a cenotaph.)

(They looked to me like graceful knights, right out of a myth or fairy tale.)

(The cenotaph’s location was a gloomy place, loathed and avoided by nearly everyone…)

(So perhaps…that was why it was the one place my seniors in Knights could best concentrate on practice.)

(I heard that it was first Sena-senpai who had set his sights on it as it was quiet and isolated. And sometimes, Narukami-senpai and Ritsu-senpai would show up there for fun—)

(The three of them were singing together on the day I saw them, too. They looked injured and exhausted…. But they were singing more nobly, more proudly than anyone, as if carrying out an exalted ritual.)

(And what they were singing was the very melody that I knew - the unknown song that couldn’t have reached the ears of more than a handful of people.)

(I was transfixed. I just stood there in the shadows, watching them.)

(As they sang, Sena-senpai stumbled and fell, kicking up dirt on the cenotaph, and began to quarrel with Narukami-senpai…)

(Ritsu-senpai fell asleep during all this, and in the end, they were rather in shambles—)

(But even that made them seem all the more dear to me, you know.)

(I envied them, beginning to wish I could join in that secretive ritual as well. Ah…perhaps I was simply lonely.)

(There was a part of me that wouldn’t be satisfied with just being obedient forever, praised every day for it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.)

(It was an ugly and miserable part of me, buried deep within my heart. I wanted to save it.)

(That’s probably why I started to move toward them almost instinctively.)

(But my seniors froze up and fled like rabbits, as if afraid of getting caught.)

(Later, I learned that it was against school rules to practice there…)

(So I suppose they mistook my approaching footsteps for a teacher’s and believed they would get scolded.)

(But for some reason, I felt that I had been terribly spurned…that they must have been coldly avoiding me. I grit my teeth in frustration.)

(I couldn’t stand the hurt I felt, nor could I resolve the misery within me⁠—)

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