Pleasantville in C-Sharp Minor (Kenji Kurosawa, Sumi Ayaka, mentions of Archie Florence)
The boy tapped his foot impatiently as he waited in the wings, staring hard at the floor. The applause from the last performance had taken an eternity to die down. The air backstage was thick with the scent of old wood, dust, and the cloying perfume of one of the pianists. To the boy, it was all muted. A world painted in shades of charcoal, ash, and dust.
"And finally, making his return to Kageoka Grand Hall and playing for Higan Academy, we have Kenji Kurosawa who will be playing Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 4 in C-sharp minor."
'Finally,' the boy thought to himself. 'Just have to get through this last Etude and I'm done for the next month or two...'
The announcer's voice was a distant, tinny drone. A spotlight found the boy, a blinding circle of white in the sea of grey. He took a slow, deliberate breath and forced his legs to move. One foot in front of the other. As the boy walked from behind the curtain towards the grand piano, the roar of the applause was deafening - almost surpassing that of the previous performer, without the boy even touching the keys. It was a hollow sound. The noise of a thousand ghosts he didn't know and didn't care to. He seated himself and carefully adjusted the height of the bench, looking to the crowd as he did. Picking out any individual would have been impossible - the crowd was an endless sea of white, black and grey, all blending into some amorphous shadowy blob under the harsh stage lights. After a few moments, the boy gave up, turning back to the piano as he finished his adjustments. He moved his hands over the instrument, fingers carefully caressing the polished plastic of the keys.
They were cold. Impersonal.
'Breathe in. Breathe out.'
'Always keep the timing. Just execute the sequence.'
The first notes erupted from the piano like a gunshot. Sharp and arresting, it hushed the murmurs in the audience instantly. A cascade of C-sharp minor arpeggios tumbled from the piano like rain in a storm. The boy's hands flew across the keyboard in a frantic dance, pressing dozens of keys in the span of a second. Each note was crisp and clearly heard throughout the massive hall, but flowed into the next with a practiced ease. There was no passion, no joy to the sound. Only a relentless and terrifying precision. The notes cascaded through the air in a torrent of sound that filled every corner of the vast space. And yet, for the boy playing, they were just keystrokes. A sequence of inputs executed perfectly.
This was the world he had tried to leave behind. The world of empty perfection. The world before her.
The boy's eyes drifted from the keyboard, focusing on the bag seated next to him. Within sat the small digital camera that had taken over his life. Could she hear him right now? Hear the music he had abandoned for her? Deep down, the boy hoped she could. And more, he hoped that she could see how meaningless it was. How hollow the applause was compared to the simple, cheerful beep she made when he turned her on.
Halfway through the Etude. Soon he would be done, and could leave this hall. He could avoid touching a piano until the next recital, or when he needed it for a music score in his film. This was just another performance, after all. Another obligation met to keep the scholarship that gave him access to the club room.
That was all this was. A means to an end.
The boy closed his eyes as he played, eliciting a gasp from the audience. He did not need to see the keys to know where they were. Did not need to see his fingers to know where they would fall. He retreated from the grey stage, the grey crowd, the grey world, into the pure mechanics of the piece. The ludicrously fast arpeggios, the movement of his fingers, the force he must hammer each key with. He did not miss a single note as his hands sailed over the plastic, the piece maintaining the same sharpness and clarity it had when his eyes were open.
It was like a machine was playing. Like you fed the sheet music into a computer and a pair of robotic arms played the keys with mechanical precision.
And for some reason, not a single person in the audience could notice the complete lack of soul in the piece. They were fascinated on the technical level. At the speed, the accuracy, the execution. They heard the storm, but could not feel the emptiness at its center. The hollow vacuum where a heart should have been.
The final, furious arpeggio climbed the keyboard, culminating in three sharp, definitive chords.
Then silence. A heavy, ringing silence that hung in the air for a single, perfect moment.
And with that, the piece was over.
The roar of applause was deafening, many in the crowd standing as they did so. The boy rose from his seat and simply walked stage left. He hadn't even bothered to take a bow before leaving.
Behind the curtain stood several others, both competitors and members of the Music Club from Higan Academy. He couldn't recognize them by their face or the color of their uniform - only the design was recognizable in this colorless world. The looks they spared the boy were a mix of awe at the skill on display and despair for their clear inferiority. Regardless of the team they were on, however, they all remained in stunned silence.
It didn't matter. The boy paid them no mind, moving for the exit at the end of the Hall.
The girl leaning against the exit door gave him a hard glare as he approached. She pushed off, approaching the boy until they were only a few feet apart. She gave a slow, cold applause.
"Well done, Kenji Kurosawa. A perfect imitation of genius, without a single spark of it. I can see why my violin instructor was so enamored with you - in my youth, she spoke of you in the same breath as Bach and Tchaikovsky. Now I'm curious why my parents thought to employ her..."
The boy stared blankly at the girl, clearly uninterested. He made a move to walk past her, but she blocked him and continued, the look of annoyance on her face deepening with every word.
"You played here when you were only 5 - quite impressive. I had once considered you an equal. My only 'peer' in art that I never bested in his field. You're the reason I even took up piano in the first place, you know? And then, just as I was preparing to destroy you in the Hamamatsu International... You ran away. Abandoned the world of music like a coward abandoning the stage."
The boy raised his gaze to meet the girl's. Even with the look of scorn on her face, she was clearly a beauty. Her black hair had an underdye of pink that reached down to her hips in a loose, flowing wave. Her uniform was well maintained, but fresh paint stains could be seen marking her cuffs and the hem of her skirt. Her features were sharp and commanded attention - any man would have viewed her like an artist would a masterful painting.
But in his world, she was just another charcoal sketch on grey paper.
Only one girl had any color for the boy.
"Then, three years later, you come crawling back to perform in no name regional events like this. Even going so far as to attend my school? And what's worse... You didn't put any soul into that performance! Not a drop! I can tell - any artist on our level could see when something is phoned in. It was an insult. An insult to the art, to the audience, and to me. Do you think you can just return to this world without even trying!?"
"...I've never tried before now, either. Not when I first came here when I was 5. Not when I was playing in France and Germany at 9. I didn't even bother to practice the Torrent Etude before the competition. I'm only doing this now for my scholarship, so if you are stopping me because you want me to say you're the better pianist, then here you go: You're better... May I go now?"
An incredulous look crossed the girl's face - as if she had just heard something truly profane. The boy simply stared at the ground, as if he every moment in this place was an act of torture that put the Bohemian club to shame. The girl angrily searched through her bag, before shoving a torn poster in the boy's face. He pulled back, taking the poster in his hands as she chastised him.
"You don't bother to take this seriously, but you put your soul into this GRAFFITI you leave outside my club room!? "
The boy stared at the poster. It was completely nonsensical - a giant wooden cross, with a long-haired and muscular man nailed into it. In each hand he held a desert eagle, firing them into the hoard of rotting Roman legionaries that charged at him from all sides. At the top was the title: Damnation of the Dead III: Christ in Camo. At the bottom next to the cast list was Kenji's name in neat white print. It was a grungy piece - dark brown mud, thick blood dripping from the corpses and the nails piercing the man's hands and feet, and an thundering sky above the burning city of Jerusalem.
As his eyes traced the lines of his creation, something shifted. A single splash of crimson dripped from the hands of Christ. It bled out into the world around it, staining the grey like dye in water. The thundering sky wasn't just shades of black, but a deep, bruised purple. The burning city glowed with a vibrant, hellish orange.
The only piece of color in this monochrome world.
"WOAH!!! That's not graffiti, it's the poster for my latest film! It's the second movie in the ZomBible trilogy I'm working on, taking place 3 days after the death of Jesus-"
The girl seemed taken aback, the look of anger on her face replaced with one of complete confusion. The boy before her was nearly unrecognizable, having shifted from barely cognizant and lifeless to wide-eyed and excited, proudly displaying the poster to the girl as he exploded in machine-gun paced exposition.
"W-what? Film? What are you talking about-"
"-but as it turns out, his revival released a ZOMBIE VIRUS, which went on to infect the apostles. Peter gets this cool body-horror scene where his skin starts peeling off, it's very Cronenberg-"
"W-wait, why does it have 'III' in the title if it's only the second film-"
"-so now he has to use the holy power of THE LORD and DUAL-WIELDED DEAGLES to purify the undead and save the Roman Empire from- oh, and also it's a buddy cop movie, see, he teams up with Pontius Pilate, who's like, the cynical, by-the-books partner to Jesus's loose-cannon-savior routine-"
"STOP IT! STOP! JUST TELL ME WHY YOU PUT TWELVE OF THESE UP RIGHT OUTSIDE MY CLUB ROOM!"
Kenji only just seemed to notice the girl's exasperation as she yelled. She stared as he breathed hard, a glint in his eyes that she had failed to see throughout his entire performance. He didn't look the slightest bit tired after his incredible etude, but he was getting this passionate about some dumbass movie...?
"A-ah, well I actually paid Florence-san to put up posters around the school. I tried to cover as much ground as I could on my own, but had to go to my shift at Morinaga Videos, so he offered to put up the rest for 3000 yen... I guess he got bored and put them up in one spot..."
The girl sighed, rubbing at her temple with one hand.
"I'm very sorry, uhm..."
"...Really? ...Sumi Ayaka."
"Ayaka-san, to apologize for leaving my beautiful posters all over your wall, I'll give you this!"
Kenji rifled through his bag for a moment, before pulling out a blank disc case and handing it to Sumi. She took the case gingerly, holding it like one might hold a piece of road kill.
"That's the first ZomBible Film, Damnation of the Dead: Rotten Faith. Feel free to stop by the FILM APPRECIATION CLUB!!! room if you need a DVD player to watch it on!"
Kenji quickly moved past the girl, running towards the exit and waving behind him, leaving nearly a dozen stunned musicians in his wake. It took a second for Sumi to call after him.
"Wait! Kurosawa-san! I don't... even want this."
But the director was gone by the time she got the words out. She stared down at the blank disc, sighing as she unceremoniously dropped it in her schoolbag.
At the very least, it'd be entertaining to laugh at how far her old 'rival' had fallen.
Kenji Kurosawa stretched as he left Kageoka Grand Hall. The building looked out of place in the Traditional Arts District - sleek and modern western design sitting between the Meiji-period architecture that surrounded it. He hated performing inside there. They did not allow any cameras inside, and while he managed to smuggle Tokiwa-chan in his bag, he couldn't take her out the entire 4 hours the recital lasted. Even that brief time made him anxious, which was only exasperated by having to perform. As soon as he was clear of the premises, he quickly took his camera out, the digital screen lighting up to show a pixelated girl with multiple cameras and screens in place of her head. The moment she appeared on the screen, the last vestiges of grey drained from the world, replaced by the bright, saturated colors of noon. The sky was a brilliant blue, the trees lining the street were a vivid green, and the red lanterns of a nearby shop glowed invitingly. Light pink text appeared above her head in tight lines.
'Wow! You're so talented, Kenji-kun! You sounded awesome in there (≧▽≦)!!!'
"Heheh... If you think that was nice, just wait till you hear the score I've got planned for Damnation of the Dead III: Christ in Camo! Eat your heart out, Chopin!"
Kenji smirked as a stream of wwwww's crossed the screen. Already the anxiety of the day was draining, even faster than the color seeping back into his world.
'Do you think your team won? (>ω<)'
"Probably. I've never lost before, and the Music club didn't perform terribly. It doesn't really matter though. As long as I score high enough individually, my scholarship shouldn't be threatened."
'But what if they want to give us a trophy...? Your mom would be really happy with one of those big gold ones they had out front!(´｡• ᵕ •｡`)'
Kenji didn't respond at that, but the fact he kept walking away from the building was telling enough. Eventually he reached the parking lot, where the small Higan Academy bus was waiting for him and the Music club. The driver, Coach Tanaka, was sleeping behind the wheel, his walkman sitting on the dashboard. He looked like someone put a gorilla in a tracksuit, and smelled like it too. But he was a generally kind man, and even volunteered to be the lead role in Kenji's BALLS TO THE WALLS films, a series about dodgeball, love, and tax evasion.
It took over a dozen seconds of loud pounding on the bus door for Coach Tanaka to wake up, and he quickly opened the door as he wiped the drool from his face.
"W-wha? Isn't this thing supposed to run till noon?"
"Close enough, Coach," Kenji said, climbing aboard the empty bus. "The competition just ended. Now they're going to spend the next hour or so judging and handing out awards. I'd rather wait in here or walk back to school."
"Ah, right, right. Well, how'd it go, kid?" the coach grunted, turning the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered to life with a cough, and cool air flowed through the musty vents throughout the bus. It was hard to tell if the cool air was worth whatever was choking the air, but being back in the Hall had been so suffocating for Kenji that it didn't make much difference.
Kenji found a seat in the back of the bus, and after making sure Coach Tanaka was going back to sleep, leaned his head back into the seat and closed his eyes. His hands moved, slowly rummaging through his bags to retrieve a pair of white earbuds. They found their way into his ears, and without opening his eyes, Kenji plugged the connector into his camera. Only a moment later and he could hear her soft voice echoing in his skull.
"Are you sure we shouldn't- -be in there? -What if they need you?"
Her voice was the sweet and delicate, just like he remembered. The only thing different between it and the living Emi was how her voice cut. Like someone splicing audio together from different sources, a brief static between phrases. It was jarring at first, but after 3 years together, Kenji hardly noticed anymore.
"I don't think they will. I'm not even part of the Music club, after all. The judges will pass any trophies off to the president, he'll put it in a fancy display case on campus, and I'll get to stick around for another semester."
A small hissing sound, like a disk tray spinning.
"Laaaaame! That's like doing- -the Oscars without Tom Hanks!"
Kenji smirked as he opened his eyes, turning to look down at the camera in his hands.
"Most guys wouldn't like being compared to Forrest Gump, y'know?"
"He won an Oscar for Philadelphia in 1993. Want to be- -a gay lawyer with AIDS?"
"Hahaha!!"
Kenji laughed, the camera screen being covered in several scrolling lines of wwwww's. Coach Tanaka stirred briefly, before falling back into his stupor. Kenji held the camera up, pointing out the window towards the concert hall. It wasn't particularly something he wanted to record, but letting Tokiwa-chan get a look at whatever he talked about was something he had gotten into the habit of.
"What are you thinking we do next? Night of the Scissorblades? Higan Academy: A Brief History? We can probably squeeze in 2-3 films before we gotta go through this shit again."
The camera in his hands chirped in affirmation.
"You're the Director,- -Director! I'll help you no matter- -how many takes!"
Kenji smiled, leaning his head against the cool glass of the window as he stared at the filled lot. Even in a scene as mundane as this, the world outside was a vibrant explosion of color. A perfect shot just waiting to be filmed. He knew, with absolute certainty, that if he were to put the camera away, it would all vanish again. Collapse back into that suffocating grey void.
But for now, with her here, everything was alive.
And he would do anything to keep it that way.