Shape of a Miracle EP 1 - The Pied Player

Two Years Prior

Two years ago.

SPLASH!

There, in the gardens of her new elementary school, Shoko stood in absolute horror at the lake a few feet away from her. Despite the familiarity of the situation, she couldn't help but stand there and wait to wake up from this nightmare. She genuinely couldn't believe something that had so quickly become an extension of her very soul could have been ripped so easily from her. Just moments ago, her precious notebook was sitting comfortably in her arms close to her heart. Where it had been for the many months she attended this new school. Yet in a matter of seconds, she had watched it get snatched away from her and flung into the lake. She would have preferred if the boy had just walked away with it.

But there was no time to mull over what she wished had happened. She dashed to the lake and stepped into the filthy water. It was so dirty she almost didn't find her notebook in it. Almost. She finally felt the pages in between her fingers, and she quickly ascended this beloved item out of the water. An incredible wave of relief washed over her. It was soaking wet but it had stayed completely intact. Sure, it wouldn't be as new and pristine as it was before, but it would easily dry overnight. She had saved it.

Her fingers squeezed around the wet pages.

Then why?

Why did she feel disappointed?

She loved this notebook; she had put her heart and soul into it. Every day in her new school she would use it to talk to all the wonderful people in her class, she would tell them all about herself and they would tell her everything about them. Through this notebook she could finally understand the world around her. Through this notebook she could be a part of it. Had she forgotten that? Or was the only way for her to want the notebook back is to forget that.

She stood there in the middle of the dirty, cold water. She stared at the once treasured notebook for such an extended period of time that the words "COMMUNICATION NOTEBOOK" on the cover slowly became unreadable in her eyes. She didn't need to open it up and flip through it to know exactly what had been written in it. All the sweet-sounding words in the beginning paired up with her own empty, polite replies. When did they morph into something different? When did everything that her peers would write in her notebook become nothing but hostile? However, to her that wasn't the worst part, that wasn't what gave her tears in her eyes. What really felt like an ocean of frozen water had just crashed into her spirit was the fact that she hadn't changed. She was still giving nothing but hollow replies to whatever they would write to her. She had been doing it since she started the school. She had been doing it since she was born. The second she learnt Japanese she would always give nothing but barren apologies, apologies to circumstances she would never understand. Not one word she wrote on that very notebook was hers. She never once used her voice.

But what else was she meant to say? Nothing. That was the only thing to say. She knew that most "normal" people could hear. She knew that she had a disability that prevented her from ever becoming that "normal". She knew that this made her a complete burden to those people. So, she always made it clear to anyone who pointed that out to her that she was well aware of it, and completely empathised with their frustration with her. But that wouldn't mean that she wouldn't be able to make a connection with people. Despite her hearing loss she was still a person, so she should be able to get along with regular human beings. She just would have to work ten times as hard as everyone else in order to fit in.

But that was the very root of her sorrows. She had given every inch of her effort into this. She made an easy and convenient way for people to communicate with her if they wished, that wouldn't obstruct their everyday lives. She constantly showed people her appreciation and treated them with nothing but kindness even in the times she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. Even to the girl that wrote how ugly she was in the notebook on a daily basis. even to all the boys that drew all sorts of vulgar images on it. Even to the brutish kid who didn't write anything on her notebook but hated her so much that he threw it in the lake. Even to him, she constantly gave every indication that she possibly could that she only wanted to be friends with him. to be friends with everyone. They only treated her so poorly because they didn't understand each other. If any of them ever stopped and tried to tell her clearly what exactly she was doing wrong, she would apologise and fix whatever pain she caused. Then everyone really would be friends.

But she couldn't fix the mess she made. Because that mess was herself. She had done everything right, and that wasn't enough. She wasn't enough. She just wasn't meant to fit in with regular people. When she tried, she only ever caused them pain and destruction.

She looked up at the sky and asked whatever could hear her, why she was born. The world would be a much happier place if she didn't inhabit it, so why was she a part of it? Had she had known the misery she would have caused in her life she wouldn't have decided to live in the first place. Maybe she wasn't meant to. Perhaps the sickness her mother was inflicted with while she was pregnant with her was meant to kill her, and the hearing disability it gave her instead was meant to be some sort of karma for having the audacity of living. It could be, she was created to be a necessary evil. Isn't that a nice thought? That all the destruction she had caused was for the sake of something purely good to come in and balance it out. Or better yet, snuff it out.

All this, however, was nothing but pointless hypotheticals on her part to give some sort of contrived explanation to a situation where she saw none. With that said, It would have been easy to say that this was all some sort of trivial cosmic accident. That to find a justification for the events in her life were ultimately futile. But Shoko was not that kind of person. Deep in her heart she was certain that her life had some sort of meaning behind it. If she were to believe otherwise, she would have to think that everyone else's also had no meaning behind it either. Which was something she would never consider.

She was tired of crying; she was cold from the pond she was standing in and the choice she had to make was an obvious one. She didn't want to hurt anyone and this way she would also never get hurt by other people. She simply wasn't meant to be a part of society. She will never make a human connection. Her voice will forever be silent.

So she dropped the notebook back into the pond. It's been there ever since.