Music. Love. Despair. Healing.
Hiroki had been getting anonymous love letters for years. Unceasing, steadfast, and filled with yearning. They came like clockwork, one following the other, never stopping. His days, in the meantime, went by like dry leaves in the wind,pointless and insensitive. Those dreams he used to hold onto, the ones that used to give his life meaning, had silently perished.

Yuna was Hiroki's best friend once. But their friendship always existed in an ambiguous, delicate realm—never really crossing the boundaries. Since she got married, their relationship was virtually nil, despite working in the same organization and meeting regularly.

As time went on, a gap formed between Yuna and her husband. Doubt entered. She began to think that perhaps she was just too weak, too damaged.

Hiroki, on the other hand, had always longed to protect her, to be the one to save her from the storm she didn’t even know she was drowning in.
Nobody could've predicted the mayhem those letters would create.
Deep-buried secrets started coming to light.
Wounds from the past reopened.
Old silhouettes returned to haunt them.
And the desperate yearning to break free, to finally breathe, grew louder with every passing day.

Music was their sole salvation. It came back to Hiroki like a present from the ruins—a delicate but shining strand to guide him out of the night.

The melody was slow. Painfully slow.
It echoed the pace of healing, of souls dragging themselves out of the abyss.
And yet, to others, the same tune would reflect their own silent fall— a fall into the bottomless pit they themselves had carved.

 I've never told anyone this, but I talk a lot—so much that it scares even my own mind.


 Yes, it's a kind of relentless inner monologue, a flood of thoughts that surges uncontrollably inside my head. Even I can't stop it sometimes.


 But who could ever hear that stream of consciousness? All anyone has ever seen is the calm surface—a quiet, collected person who, in truth, is carrying so much noise within that it might just explode someday.


 That's why, if I don't rein it in, I could talk for hours to someone. Endlessly.


 But music—music is a miracle. It carries every emotion I can't express in words. Just a few lines of lyrics can hold everything I want to say.


 I'm grateful people accept it. They accept my music. It holds pieces of my reason, my heart, and my soul.


 From now on—no, from long ago—I no longer hide in the shadows of my past.


 I am Jun now. A different person. A person with identity, uniqueness, and voice. The lead vocalist of HIMrs6. A model.


 And the name Akari Akibara... will fade into obscurity. No one remembers her anymore. No one cares. That identity was discarded a long time ago.


Chapter 26 - The Soliloquy of Someone Burdened by the Past